1689 Baptist Confession of Faith

A Foreword

I am brand new to Historical Christian Confessions. So why Confessional and why the Westminster Confession of Faith before settling on the 1689? To answer that is to give the long answer.

I was born into a family with some of the most depraved men you'll ever met married to some of the most Godly women you have ever met.

My grandfather up and left my grandma to be with some other chick in Arizona. While adultery and abandonment within covenant vows before the Holy God is a dime a dozen in our day and age, in the 50s & 60s, it was pretty shocking. My grandma ended up packing up the station wagon and snatching his butt back to Texas, you can only guess how much that impacted his impressionable young sons, who were just coming of age in the midst of what we now call the Sexual Revolution.

Adultery? Abandonment? Followed up with pornography, multiple partners, and legalized abortions. My dad, Baby Boomer, became a man in a time when the world so desperately tried to re-write the rules for sex--because if sex is a good thing, why not get as much as you can while you can. And our society has been on a greased slippery slide to hell ever since.

Addicted to Porn? Try working in porn so you can get more porn. That is my story and testimony.

God, in his perfect timing, would snatch the hearts of all three men--and I have no doubt it was on the praying knees of my faithful grandmother, Frances. My mom was a devout Christian but she ended up abandoning me and my brother to leave my violent, abusive, sexual addicted, perverse husband.

2 Timothy 1:5 (CSB) I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and now, I am convinced, is in you also.

Fast-forward my life some time later, through marriages, divorces, porn addictions, working in porn and all of that, God saved me. In the midst of my sorrow, sin, and depravity, God saved me. And by God's grace and in his provision of the internet, I got to meet so many other Christians outside of AoG. Oh my heart. Oh what joy.

I feel like I became Calvinist before I met any other Calvinist or Reformed. But once I went all in the doctrines of grace, I got to meet my Confessional brothers and sisters: Presbyterian, Reformed Baptist, and Anglican among others. In public, there wasn't a lot of talk about confessional but amongst themselves, the often referred to the Westminster, 1689, Three Forms of Unity and Thirty-Nine Articles were constantly mentioned. And I am over here going, "wut?"

I didn't grow up liturgical or in high church. I didn't grow up reciting creeds or catechism. But every time I did, my heart jump with joy because I got to do the same thing that the people of God got to do for centuries. Those are my brothers and sisters. I wanna see what they do because we are both family.

So, for no other reason, I picked the Westminster because of my wonderful friends in the Presbyterian Church of America. And I may not baptize babies, I understand what they are doing and why they do it and could go as far to defend their doctrinal position when it came to sprinkling water on infants.

I started this exposition right before moving to Kentucky. When the KY move was being planned, I thought, "Perhaps this is God's grace for me to move into another denomination?" because there were no Acts 29 churches in Lexington.

And if I had my druthers, I don't see why I would go to a non-denomination generic evangelical church. Why would I not start out with Reformed.

So I did.

An Anglican, Presbyterian, and oddly enough, a church that started as Calvary Chapel.

The Anglican and the Presbyterian churches were nice. But this "Calvary Chapel" church called themselves, "Creedal, Confessional, and adhering to the Five Solas". That doesn't sound like typical Calvary Chapel.

And they were not. Turns out, they were moving away from their Calvary Chapel connection and heading towards 1689 Confessional.

And this is the church we landed. And it is so wonderful. The best part: they don't need me. I get to sit under the preaching of God's word. And they do Bible Study--like I didn't have to start a Bible Study. We study the Bible together and not on our own.

So now, I am attempting, as a layperson, to exposit the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession.