MP3 Available Here
Kevin Butler, Director of Communications for the American Sabbath Tract & Communication Council, and Nicholas Kersten, Librarian-Historian for the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society , will address the theme: "Seventh Day Baptists: Their History & Beliefs".
From Monday, May 10th, through Thursday, May 13th, "Iron Sharpens Iron" will be airing a 4-day live series entitled "Saturday or Sunday: Which Day is the Christian Sabbath?: A Debate Between Baptists". The participants in this debate are Samuel Waldron, one of the pastors of the Heritage Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky, and the Professor of Systematic Theology at the Midwest Center for Theological Studies, and Rod Henry, a former missionary to the Philippines and the pastor of Next Step Christian Church (Seventh Day Baptist) in Thornton, Colorado (see http://www.nextstepchurch.org/).
We thought it would be helpful to our audience to learn something about the history and beliefs of Seventh Day Baptists before the airing of the 4-day debate, so we invited Kevin Butler and Nicholas Kersten on the broadcast tonight to enlighten us about their denomination, and how they differ from Seventh-day Adventists and other groups who believe Saturday is the Christian Sabbath.
Kevin has been Director of Communications for the American Sabbath Tract & Communication Council (an agency of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference) since 1989. His position includes editing "The Sabbath Recorder" magazine, one of the nation’s oldest continuing religious publications.
Nicholas Kersten has been the Librarian-Historian for the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society since 2005. He is also continuing his studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL, in their Master of Divinity program.
It might interest many of our listeners to know that Dr. John Gill, the great 18th century Calvinist Baptist theologian and scholar who pastored New Park Street Chapel and the Metropolitan Tabernacle in England in the century prior to Charles Haddon Spurgeon's ministry, developed a treasured friendship with Seventh Day Baptist pastor, hymn writer and fellow Calvinist Dr. Samuel Stennett. You can read Dr. Stennett's , funeral message for Dr. Gill, delivered in 1771, entitled "The Victorious Christian Receiving the Crown", by clicking here.
1 comment:
I'm really looking forward to the upcoming debates regarding this general topic, and my hope is that they will bring clarification to a couple of issues. For example, I don't know if I've ever met any professing Christian who claims to hold to a strict sabbatarianism--either applied to the seventh day or to the first day of the week--and who at the same time attempts to follow all of the regulations for Sabbath observance as prescribed in the Old Covenant. What would be the basis for such inconsistency? Also, it is my understanding that all Law in Scripture occurs in the form of a Covenant, and that it sometimes includes characteristics which are unique to the Covenant in which it occurs. Note that in the New Covenant, for example, many outward observances of the old Covenant are discarded, and I would say more detailed attention is given to the intentions of the heart.
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