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All right, well, we're here to, one way or the other, finish up on Baptist origins, at least in England. Didn't quite get to America. And we're going to pick up where I left off last time. And I know there's some new folks that have already popped up, so you won't be completely hanging.

I'm backing up to at least where we start with the particular Baptists. Remember, there's two different groups in the origins of the English Baptists. You got the General Baptists, you got the Particular Baptists. And tonight we're going to focus on the Particular Baptists, which, by the way, becomes the mainstream group of Baptists.

You know, really, truly, you know, in the United States, Baptists are by far the largest grouping of Protestants. And that's true in many places around the world as well. It's pretty amazing considering the rather humble beginnings. So remember last time, very quickly, I mentioned the fact that you have under Charles I, he's going to appoint the leading, I guess you could say, the guy who actually runs the Church of England.

Technically, the king's the head of the Church of England, but in actual practice, the Archbishop of Canterbury is one who does the day-to-day running of the Church. And Charles I appoints this guy, William Laud. Who is basically a high church churchman? That means he likes the Catholic elements within the church.

And he is fiercely Armenian in his, I guess, theology. In other words, you know, basically the view that you can lose your salvation after gaining it. And there's elements to that as well. But his Armenianism is not from Jacob Arminius, the Dutch theologian. It is really from his Catholic background.

And Laud is going to fiercely go after the Puritans, and that's going to agitate even more separatism going on. And we talked very quickly about some of these different groups that are going to separate. And in particular, it's going to be a group there in London who will form a church which actually had several various names during its beginnings.

But in hindsight, people look back and they call it the JLJ Church, name for the three pastors, the first three pastors of that church, Henry Jacob, John Lathrop, and Henry Jesse. And it's out of this semi-separatist, and you say semi-separatist because some of the separatists, when they separated, they took the attitude that, okay, if you're staying in the Anglican church, you're apostate.

And we don't have anything to do with you. You know, you're goned. The semi-separatists, they didn't have that view. Their view was: yes, we think the Anglican church is apostate, but we recognize that there are good Christians in there. We really think you guys should get out of it, but we're not going to say you're not a Christian just because you're still remaining.

And that was the view of all three of these pastors. And we're going to see this church is going to split, but the splits, as I said before last time, were friendly splits. It's not quite the same as doing church plants, but the groups that left left with friendly feelings towards the mother church.

And in fact, apparently, almost all these splits would from time to time return and have joint services with the JLJ church. And so, with that, there's the, you can boo and hiss here. He's the bad guy. This is William Laud, Archbishop of the Anglican Church, who is going to so fiercely go after all separatists, and he particularly despised Baptists, by the way.

And he's going to, you know, cause all kinds of problems, casting them in jail and harrying them out of the country. Of course, some will even be executed. But he's very much against the Puritans and the Calvinist way of looking at things. Okay, so we quickly. Last time I've already been over this, so I'm just going to run through this real quickly again.

Henry Jacob, remember, he's educated at Oxford, signed the millenniary petition, these Puritans presenting this request of James to reform the Anglican Church. And remember, I told you last time that didn't go down too well. James was Calvinist in theology, but he every bit loved the episcopal structure of the Anglican Church.

He was a control freak. He loves having bishops and archbishops who he can appoint and who he can tell what to do. And so he is not happy with the Puritans on that score. On the other hand, I mentioned he does agree with them that the English Bible at the time, which there's variations, you know, I mentioned some of the bloopers and some of the biblical texts at that time in translation.

And he agreed we need to have a new translation. And the result of this is the King James Authorized Version. And it's authorized by the government, by the king himself, although the rascal never paid the translators for the work they did. So he really doesn't deserve it being named after him.

But anyway, and of course, Jacob, I mentioned also he, for a time, had to flee England, you know, because of persecution. And he, for a time, was in the Netherlands, along with all these other various groups. And he, of course, knew of the Smith group, which we've already talked about in the form.

Of the General Baptist, and he personally knew John Robinson, spent quite a bit of time with him. And remember, the Robinson group left Amsterdam partly because they had disagreements with the Smith group. And they go up to Leiden, and there they have a church, and it's from that group that you have the pilgrims coming to America.

So Jacob's very familiar with all the big names of the pilgrims that came and founded Plymouth Colony. All right, but he goes back to England and he forms this JLJ church, which immediately gets him in trouble with the government. But he manages to leave the church there for a number of years.

And finally, though, the harassment got so bad that he does what we're going to see several of these guys do. He came to the American colonies, the British colonies at the time, and he dies in America in 1624. He's then replaced by John Lathrop, which I, and this is actually pronounced and spelled different ways.

Some say Lathrop, but he takes over. He too is fiercely persecuted. And at one point, he's in Newgate Prison, which remember that's where Smith died, the leader of the General Baptist. And no, not Smith, he dies over in the Netherlands, but Helwis, the guy who's succeeded. Seated Smith died in Newgate.

And he doesn't die. He's just there for two years, which was really bad, though, if you knew about the conditions at Newgate. And by the way, you know what, to add insult to injury in England, those days you go to prison, you know what's really insulting about it?

As horrible and terrible as the conditions are, you had to pay rent. You had to pay your own rent while you're in prison. Okay, but anyway, he's there. And remember, I told you when his wife dies while he's in prison, his children literally had to roam the streets almost like beggars.

And then he comes to America, and I mentioned that the church he founded there lived on at Barnstable, Massachusetts. And he's the one who had six presidents. By the way, Brother T, one of them was Teddy Roosevelt. I forgot to mention him last night. What's that? You mentioned the Bushes.

Yeah, the Bushes. Yeah, and Teddy Roosevelt was one. Am I still missing one? But anyway, he had these 80,000 descendants. And the reason we know this is one of them, unfortunately, was Joseph Smith, the Mormons. But then he had R.A. Tory, who helped to write the fundamentals. So quite a few descendants there.

All right, and that's the physical, only physical remnant of the JLJ church is not in England, it's in America, Barnstable, Massachusetts. Okay, he brought about 40 followers from England to this church. And of course, this gets us up now. We're really getting down to nitty-gritty. Remember, Charles is going to be overthrown, and you have Oliver Cromwell come to power and fighting alongside Cromwell's iron sides.

He was never defeated in battle. He's kind of like the English Stonewall Jackson, pray all night, fight all day, and had mostly Calvinist Puritans fighting under him. But right alongside those Calvinist Puritans were a whole bunch of Baptists. In fact, we think it is in the army of Oliver Cromwell that the Baptists make a large number of conversions that's going to result in a lot more churches being formed.

And they got along with Cromwell because they thought that they were really going to set up a republic, right? Remember, Baptists, one of the key elements, where you're general Baptists or particular Baptists, they don't believe in state churches. You know, they already saw the American conception of separation of church and state as forming, you know, and quite different from how we're looking at it today, but this idea that the church should not be associated with a state, it should be independent from the state.

And so they were kind of supportive of Cromwell. But Cromwell turns out to be a dictator. And towards the end, there, they began criticizing Cromwell, and he starts souring on the Baptists. And then, after Cromwell dies, some of his immediate successors, before they recall, you know, the son of the king whose head had been chopped off, Charles I, you know, they're going to recall his son who become Charles II.

They had actually already started harassing the Baptists, you know, even before this new group comes in. All right, so meantime, while this is going on, you got a new pastor, and that is Henry Jesse, the second J, Henry Jesse. And Jesse also noticed from Cambridge, how many of these guys came from Cambridge, you know.

And he was a full-fledged Anglican priest, but he also read his Bible. And he began to start recognizing that there are so many traditions of man rather than following what Scripture says. And so he decides to pull out and renounce his very cush position. You understand? A state church, you know, you have a very safe job because you're a government employee and you're paid by the state and you have a living for life.

And Jesse gave all that up, you know. And he started. Attending the JLJ church. And of course, they lost their pastor once, twice. There's a period there where there is no clear pastor. And he then agrees to become their pastor. And Jesse is, you know, the Baptists can be kind of proud that one of the big deficiencies of Martin Luther in terms of black eye and his attitudes towards a group of people, who was that?

The Jews. The Baptists from the earliest beginnings had very friendly feelings, I'm sure there's exceptions to this, but the early Baptist founders all had very warm feelings towards the Jews. And Jesse even on occasion tried to raise funds. Apparently, I guess this is one of those pogroms going on at the time by the Turks against the Jews, and he's trying to raise money for them.

And so that's kind of a little interesting side note. Another pastor, if I forget to get to, Keech, he also was very involved in trying to convert Jews, but do it through very peaceful, persuasive ways. Jesse's leadership, you might say he's a failed pastor. He has six splits under his pastorate, but it was good splits, all right?

And he winds up joining one of the splits, which is really kind of funny. Before it's over with, you're going to, let's see, this gets real confusing. Let me try to keep it straight for you. It got first split was simply because it got too big. That's a good problem to have, huh, brother Tom?

Got too big. And so they decided to split in half. And he took one half, and look who took the other half. Yeah, that's a real name. Puritans were kind of famous for coming up with interesting names for their children. So he was named Praise God Barebones. And this guy is actually very famous because under Cromwellian period, he actually served in Cromwell's government, which once again illustrates the difference between English Baptists and the Anabaptists.

Remember, the Anabaptists, you're not supposed to get involved in government. Actually, almost every preacher I'm about to mention at some point or another had some kind of office during the Cromwellian or later Charles II's reign. And Jess, a barebone, he was elected to parliament under Cromwell. It was one of those real small, because you know, parliaments under Cromwell never lasted very long.

He is always dissolving them. But because he was a member of this particular parliament, apparently when it got in the papers, they noticed his name. And even though he didn't do that much, the parliament took on the name historically the Bare Bones Parliament because he was one of the members of Parliament, Bare Bones Parliament.

So he actually had some kind of national political fame just because of his name. So he took one group. And he, by the way, he's at first against this Baptist drift that's taking over the JLJ church. But then later on, those Baptists got him. He became Baptist himself later on.

All right, but anyway, so Jesse, I'm getting ahead of myself, will ultimately himself convert to being a Baptist. And he's baptized by one of the most famous Baptist preachers who had formerly been a member of the JLJ church. And that's Hanschert Nolles, who's such a character, and hopefully we'll get to him.

Okay, now, one of these first splits that come out of the JLJ church is led by John Spilsbury. And the Spillsbury Baptist Church is the first particular Baptist church. Okay, but they're not baptizing by immersion yet. Now, remember, the Anabaptists, they didn't baptize by immersion. You know, it was take pitch of water, pour it over you, or sometimes wet a handkerchief and wipe your face with it.

I don't know where that came from. But anyway, they, you know, John Spillsbury is also very Famous because he signs one of the first particular Baptist confessions, 1644. We won't even get to the 1689 confession because you're just going to run out of time. I know that. But the 1644, without the 1644 confession, you probably will never have the 1689.

And the 1689 is the key Baptist confession. Almost all others flow from that. And it is very similar to the Westminster Confession. Of course, it differs on baptism and church-state relations, you know. And it's still used by some churches. Vodie Baccum, I've listened to a whole ton of different lectures, and I saw one by Vodie Bacham, 1689 Confession, and he actually at one time had a church where the elders voted that before you could join the church, you had to go through a 10-week course on the 1689 Confession to then take an orientation course to join the church.

So, anyway, some churches take it pretty serious even today. Okay, so that's the Confession 1644. And by the way, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go for it, try to keep some order here. All right, so you got the Spilsbury Baptist Church's first particular Baptist Church, and they're meeting over there, but they're not doing immersion yet.

Meantime, Back at the JOJ church, you're having another group. They're really saying, you know, this believer's baptism, Spielsbury, he's right. However, we don't think he's doing it right. Baptism, that is. And so you got this guy at back of the JOJ church named Richard Blunt. And Richard Blunt hears about a group of Anabaptists that do baptize by immersion back in the Netherlands.

So he brings us up to the JOJ church and they say, well, let's do an investigation. We will send you to the Netherlands because he spoke Dutch. And you go meet up with these guys and see how they do it and everything. Come back and report to us.

And so he goes over there and he comes back. And we don't know where he got baptized by these Anabaptists or whether he just baptized himself when he got back. But after he gets back, he baptizes a Mr. Blackrock, and they then together baptize 53 others in the JOJ church.

And then that causes two splits. The 53 apparently split up two different ways. One led by Blunt, and the other is led by Thomas Kilcock. So we now have three Baptist churches. Mark Luker was one of the guys in this. Group that was baptized, he goes to America and he starts another Baptist church.

Okay? All right. All right. So, or he's very influential in Baptist affairs in America, Mark Luther. Now, these all, you know, so you now have several Baptist churches, and they've all come out of the JOJ church. Now, at the time, there's this huge debate going on, says, you know, whether they should have gone to the Anabaptists to do this, because you've got to remember, I've already explained, they don't want to be called Anabaptists, right?

Because there's such a bad history, particularly the Munster situation, which we don't have time going through, but you know, this is a group of they were not your normal Anabaptists, and they really messed up big time. We'll just put it like that. And so the very word Anabaptist had become a smear word now.

All right? And so some were wondering if they should have even gone over there to talk to these Anabaptists. However, the other issue was secessionism. Remember, you know, this sort of like apostolic succession, you know, you should receive baptism by an already set up church. Well, I don't know who came up with this, but it was a pretty smart person.

He says, who cares about the Anabaptists? Who cares about secession? Secessionism, how about the Word of God? You know, it's okay because the Word of God says do it. Okay, so that settled the issue. It took some time, but that gets to it. Now, let's get to some of the personalities.

William Kiffing lasted through all three of the JOJ pastors and even some of the others, and he actually makes it all the way down to William and Mary. Okay, you know, that means, you know, Charles I, Cromwell, Charles II, Charles James II, and you know, he makes it all the way up to the Glorious Revolution, 1688.

And, you know, he also gets to see the 1689. He was instrumental also in the 1644 Confession. William Kiffing was born in London, 1616. And starting off, things did not look like he was going to survive as long as he does. Because first thing, 1625, as a kid, he gets the plague, had big old pockmarks.

Both his parents were killed by it. And that meant, you know, he's an orphan. He had some relatives that took him in. We're not quite sure what the story was. His parents were of some meaning. Had an inheritance, but the people who took him in took the money, invested it in their business, and promptly lost it all.

Okay, poor kid. So he winds up being apprenticed to a glover. Make gloves. And he apparently didn't like the person he's working for, and so he decides to run away, story goes. And he's walking down this road, and he hears, he walked past a church, and he hears they're having a service, and he is curious.

He goes in and he starts listening, and the guy was preaching about being a good servant. He felt real convicted, so he goes back, and fortunately, the guy he's working for didn't know that he run away. So anyway, he then starts going to listen to sermons on a regular basis, and one of his favorite pastors he listened to was John Davenport.

Now, that should, if you had a decent colonial history teacher, you should know who that is. All right, he later becomes a famous American Puritan pastor in Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Davenport. But anyway, some think it is under his preaching that he became, I couldn't really get enough sources to confirm that, but he certainly had a huge influence on him.

And long and short of it is, he joins the JOJ church. See, the JOJO church just keeps popping it up with all these different people. And it was there, he was there doing all these pastorates. And when the Spillsbury split came, he joins with the Spillsbury split. He goes with John Spillsbury.

Oh, I forgot to mention when you had the group that goes over there, finds out from the Anabaptists that they baptized by immersion, and they start baptizing by immersion. The Spillsbury group, remember, they're real friendly with JOJ Church, they immediately start baptizing by immersion at that point. And so now, if you could go back in time, you'd feel at home.

We're going to see that next Sunday night, baptism full dunking. Okay, so you got Kiffin going to the JOJ Church, joins the Spillsbury split, and that church plants another church, and that's the Devonshire Squire Church, Devonshire Squire Church, and Kiffin becomes the pastor of that church. And that is a position he would hold for 61 years.

He beat Brother Clyde. Okay, and he, of course, had help, and we're going to see why he had help. Next slide. At the time, King Charles has returned, the restoration. Now, I've heard some of these different lectures I've been listening to and reading this stuff. They attribute King Charles II was horrible.

He was terrible for the Baptists. That's where you have one of the worst repressions, persecutions, even worse than what we had before. Well, during his time period, that's true, but where it wasn't his fault. You see, under the Restoration, you have parliamentary elections, and the Anglicans come back in full force.

And remember, they despise Oliver Cromwell, and therefore they despise the Puritans and any dissenting groups. They want everyone to be in the Church of England, whether you want to be or not. We're going to force you to be. And so they passed a whole bunch of laws, which would bore you to death for me to go through those.

But they weren't boring to the four Baptists at the time because they hurt. These different laws that were passed by Parliament, initiating a fierce persecution against all dissenting groups. And Baptists, of course, were included in that. Yes? Just as a side note, that is when John Bunyan was put about.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Bunyan's part of the group that's imprisoned during this persecution. Kiffen is going to survive, though. And here's why. As he is a young man, Kid at the JLJ church, you know, he starts off as a glover. He had some buddies and they decide to invest in some woollens trade with Holland.

And long and the short of it is, Kiffin made a killing. He became one of the richest men, not just in England, I mean, not just in London, but in England. He became, by today's terms, a multi-millionaire. How about that? Baptist multi-millionaire. That is rarer than dragon teeth back then, okay?

And but being wealthy was a two-edged sword because being a wealthy Baptist made you a huge target. You see, it was a common thing to go and accuse a dissenter who had some money in order to take his entire possessions. You know, all kinds of false accusations. And he was a huge, huge target.

He was put in jail so many times and on false accusations. On one occasion, he was in jail to be executed. And almost every time, his whole church must have been praying for him because at the very last minute, someone would come forth and expose who the person was as lying.

In the neck of time, several occasions. And he, because he was so honest, and everybody knew, even his worst enemies knew the guy was honest, he made some very powerful friends. You see, really and truly, honesty in business will get you further. You know, if you're not honest business, sooner or later, you know, your associates are going to figure you out.

And he was always above board in all his business dealings. And he, and by the way, he used his profits for the Baptist cause. Actually, just for the Christian cause, I should say. He'd find out about some poor preacher at a little church where the church didn't have money to pay him.

He would secretly send money to pay the guy's salary. He found out there's a group here in colonial America, there's some general baptisms, I think it's 12 of them, were to be executed. He went to King Charles personally and got him to issue a pardon for them. He would on occasion, and a lot of this stuff we'll never know about because he never would try to make a big deal about it.

And some of it he did it in secret. He is constantly working for anyone that he thought was a true Christian, he would try to help them out if he could. And on one occasion, And by the way, he was friends with King Charles. There's one occasion where he was under accusation.

They go to the king, you know, to make all these accusations, and the king says, I don't believe it. I'm not going to do anything. On one occasion, he goes to Kiffin and says, Would you possibly loan me 40,000 pounds sterling? Now, a pound used to is like 16 to 1.

I don't know what it is now, but a pound's worth a lot more than a dollar, okay? And 40,000, especially back in those days, that's just an extraordinary amount of money. Although Kiffin probably had it, Kevin, very wisely, says, I don't think I can do that, but let me just give you 10,000 British pounds sterling.

And then he later jokingly said to a friend, I just saved myself 30,000 pounds because Charles was notorious of making loans, and he, I think, sincerely intended to pay them back, but he almost never did. And Kiffin knew that. Okay, so, you know, Kiffin, he is wise in using his money as well.

Some said that great was the authority of Bunyan with the Baptists, but William Kiffens was greater still. Now, at the time that Kiffin was alive, that's probably true. I would say, though, in terms of long run, Bunyan's influence has just been massive. Massive. I don't even have time to go through why that's so, but there's so many reasons why.

But at the time, though, Kiffin literally saved many Baptists from what would have been a very, very sad fate. And there, of course, is James II, and Kiffin's still alive under James II. He had to negotiate a very sticky, wicky political situation under James. Remember, James was openly a Catholic, and he's head of the Protestant Church of England as a Roman Catholic.

Now, go figure that. It was very controversial at the time, by the way. And he's trying to make England back into a Catholic nation, which the vast majority of the, of course, the English people were against. He goes to Kiffin and tries to get him to sign on to this Toleration Act that he is pushing at the time.

But Kiffin knew that ultimately what he was aiming for is bringing back Catholicism, so Kiffin wouldn't have anything to do with it, although temporarily it would have brought relief to the Baptists. And of course, he's gone to make it through, you know, all the way up to William and Mary, and he'll die shortly thereafter.

Benjamin Keach, 1640-1704. He is saved. He comes to Christ. Christ in a general Baptist church. I thought we were talking about particular Baptists. Well, hold on. Baptized age 15, preaching at age 18. His first wife died, and he marries again, and she's a particular Baptist. Huh. Yeah. Yeah, behind all these men who are successful is a woman.

I tell you that. And ladies, I'm sorry you don't get to hear much about yourselves, but I guarantee y'all were there. And she apparently had a huge influence on him. But being a particular Baptist, she apparently had connections. She knew some of the good leaders who would be good for her husband to meet.

And apparently, Hansert Nolles is one of them. He's the one that baptized Jacob. And he's also, it turns out, becomes friends with Kiffin, who I just talked about. And you can well imagine these two fellows and his wife worked on him and they convinced him that the particular Baptists had the better theological view.

And so he switches to particular Baptists. And he becomes one of the leading Baptist leaders of the particular Baptist cause. He will write, I don't know, do I have it up there? 43 books. It teaches catechism, Baptist catechism. Some churches still use that. Go on Google and Google it and buy it.

You know, the Baptist Catechism he wrote is very simple, but some of these other books are more theological heft to them. You know, he goes to Keats Catechism there. And he, of course, is going to lead a congregation, it's actually pronounced Horse Lie Down. Horse Lie Down. And that later becomes New Park Street Church.

Then later on, it moves to the Melt. I can't say it for me. Metropolitan. Metropolitan Tabernacle, Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon inherited his church. Some good bloodlines there. Okay. Yeah. And Keech, he's a character. His son's even more character. His son comes to America. I just go, since I'm not going to get to America, I just have to tell you this.

His son thought he was saved, but he wasn't. But he knew my daddy preached, so I can preach. And so he starts preaching. And then one night while he's preaching, he's convicted by the sermon he preached and recognized he wasn't a Christian, confessed. I don't know if he's re-baptized or what, but anyway.

But yeah, then he becomes a major, major. American Baptists and helped. I think he founded something. He had 43 books. I think he founded something like 40 or more churches. I don't know. Do you remember how many he helped to found? It was a huge number of churches that his son would go on to help found in America.

But let's see. I didn't hand out the microphone. You take too long on it. So, this is one of the older books I came across, had this quotation in it. Don't remember which one it was I was looking at. But, you know, he would get arrested like all the other Baptists would get arrested.

And sometimes, you know, they're horse whipped, sometimes they're tortured. It was perfectly legal back then. What they do to him is not too bad. They put him in the pillory. You know what that is, right? Okay. Yeah. And, you know, crowds would come out and they'd make fun of you and sometimes throw stuff at you and speech to shame you, right?

Well, he didn't get ashamed by it at all. Hey, there's a crowd I could preach. And so he would preach to the crowds that surrounded him in the pillory. And he apparently was so persuasive, they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't condemn him. There's one occasion where an Anglican minister came by, and he starts, you know, because they despise the Baptists, he was saying real nasty things.

Apparently, somebody in the audience knew this minister and knew that he had a public sin that everyone knew about. And they basically, you know, you hypocrite, and they start laughing at him, says this guy's more, you know, better than you. And so, anyway, Keach was, you know, he's undeterred by this.

And he also was the first Baptist, I don't know he's the first, but he's one of the major forces to convince the Baptists to start hymn singing. That was a biggie. Oh, my gosh. They had a war over music. Apparently, that continues in some churches. But anyway, he had, you know, it actually divided the Baptists for the particular Baptist, literally fighting over we should or should not sing hymns in church.

And he very strongly advocated for singing of hymns, and eventually, you know, they would accept his position. But he had some, oh my gosh, there's this one guy, I think, wrote 12 books attacking Keach for singing of hymns. So they get upset about these things. And so, of course, therefore, some of the first hymnals, by the way, are Baptist hymnals.

And we've done a few of those old songs. And Steele, for example, she's sort of the Chris Tomlin of her day. All right, so anyway. Anyway, you get up at this point the Confession of 1644. And the Confession of 1644 is not nowhere near as extensive as 1689 because really what they're concerned about in the 1644 Confession is defending themselves against all these false smears that's being made against them.

And particularly the accusation that they were the same thing as these crazy Anabaptists that had destroyed the city of Munster. So if you go to the 1644 Confession, right off the first start of the Confession, it states that as being of those churches which are commonly, though falsely called Anabaptists, and its express intent is for the taking off those aspersions which are frequently both in pulpit and print, though unjustly, cast upon them.

So, you know, they won't make that clear. And then they do very concisely say, this is what we are about. Now, by the way, in case you don't know this, Nollies, Kiffen, and Perry Nikitsa gotten together and says, we need to come up with this in Spilsbury, and we need to define what we are, and then we need to go forth and win people to Christ.

And so they get the Confession of 1644 lined up, set up, and I think, remember, There are only seven churches at this time. There were around seven. It might have been a few more, a few less. Within 20 years, there's going to be over 100 church plants. We need to get busy, don't we?

I mean, remember what they're facing, too. They were outlawed. They're illegal. Do we have those impediments against us? Well, you might be right. But apparently, that's no excuse, though. You know, they really got after it. So, of course, particular atonement, which we've already covered, perseverance of the saints, human depravity.

We're all born in sin. Faith is a gift of God. Gospel is to be preached to all. Of course, they're not big on covenant theology, which, of course, the Puritans and the Presbyterians were. Very strong Christology. In other words, they view Christ very, very strong. Church is composed of visible saints.

And this is the first official statement on believers' baptism by immersion, is stated in 1644. And then, of course, then you go into organization, polity, government, pastors, elders, teachers, deacons. And it's something of a mystery to me where Southern Baptists, many Southern Baptists, drugs. Lost their elders, you know, and just had deacons.

But the original Baptists, they had elders, okay? And disestablishment of church, state churches, in other words, they're already going for separation of church and state. So, five minutes, I think I can get him in. I'm not going to get to Bunyan. That's pretty sad. Hansert Nollies, 1598, 1691, graduated from Cambridge.

He was a Puritan at first, also an Anglican priest. I've already covered that actually. And he's going to be a Baptist pastor for 50 years. Wrote leading scholarly grammars on both Greek and Hebrew. And he is noted as a scholar even before he left the Anglican church. And he became convinced too many things wrong, did not have scriptural support.

So he resigned his parish church in 1636, renounced membership in the Anglican Church. He had gotten into trouble for not using the sign of the cross when he did baptisms, which was the sprinkling. And he also got in trouble because if he knew someone in the church was openly in flagrant public sin and they wanted to come and do communion, he says, you've got no business taking communion.

In fact, you're drinking damnation upon yourself. And so, you know, he, of course, the Anglican hierarchy got real upset with him over that. So he's arrested, he escapes, literally, flees to America with his wife, sailed to Massachusetts, where the Puritans do not give him a warm welcome, refused to license him to preach.

So he winds up in Dover, New Hampshire, and he's preaching there as a Baptist. And then Massachusetts annexes the town where he's at, so he can no longer preach there. So they all up and move to Long Island to escape persecution. Then, his father, apparently was elderly, getting sick, asked him to return to England, 1641, so he returns.

Once there, he immediately began preaching in churches for the Baptist cause, and he immediately gets into trouble. And several times, there's crowds on one or two occasions try to stone him. His meeting house in Great St. Helens of London had crowds gathering to hear him, and it is said some of the crowds got up to a thousand people.

He must have been some kind of preacher and must have had bullhorn for a voice. He could outdo me, probably. Okay, I'm kind of famous for that. But anyway, so he was called before the Westminster Assembly of Divines. This is an Anglican house. High authorities. So it kind of reminds me of the story of, you know, the apostles being called before the Sanhedrin, ordered not to speak of this man, right?

And he gave them the same answer. You know, he says, I'm going to preach no matter what. And, you know, publicly from house to house. And in 1645, he's officially ordained pastor of the Baptist Church that he had there in London. He holds that position until 1691. He is always ready to give an answer in defending his faith, deeply loved by his congregation, led many to Christ.

He was especially close friends with Jesse of the JLJ church, who he, Jesse, asked him to baptize him when he decides to go Baptist. And he's baptized by him. And he is also good friends with Kiffin. He is also good friends with Keech. Now, there's a story that I came across several different sources talking about it.

And in 1689, Benjamin Keech, you know, got very, very ill. Apparently, he had several health problems on top of everything else. And the doctors told Keech, you're dying. You're not going to make it. And so, you know, a lot of his friends come by, and one of the friends is Nollies.

And so Nollies goes in and asks Keech, Would you like for me to pray for you? Of course, I'd like for you to pray for me. And so he starts praying. Nollies was an incredible prayer warrior. I don't know how long the prayer lasted. I suppose it lasted quite a while.

But we got through praying. Nollies gets up and he looks at Keech and he says, I will get to heaven before you do. I prayed that, oh, yeah, Hezekiah, that you have the same grace from the Lord that he gave Hezekiah. Hezekiah, you know, prayed and extended, his life extended 50 more years.

And he says, I pray the prayer. He didn't say you're going to get it. He just says, that's the prayer I prayed for you. And then he got up and he left. Keech recovers. Two years later, Nollies dies. 15 years later, Keech died. That's something, isn't it? Okay.

And Bunyan. Let's see. What is 701? I guess. Technically, we go 7:15, but you already know Bunyan because we did the vacation Bible school. But let me just quickly say: Bunyan is so different than Kiffens in that he was born poor and he dies poor, relatively speaking. He was a tinker.

And a tinker is sort of like a handyman in fixing stuff. And he, of course, Course, the thing that's so amazing, the time period. I think it's something like Shakespeare died 12 years before. The first English colony has been in existence, I think, like maybe nine years. Just all kinds of amazing things were happening at the time that he's born.

And yet, this guy who talks about wandering pilgrim, other than I think, two trips to London, he never traveled probably further than five miles from where he was born. Well, now, there's also the time when he's in the military. I'm sure he traveled quite a bit when he was in the military, but most of his life was within five miles radius of where he was born.

He was not a Christian starting off, not anywhere close to it. By his own admission, that's the quote: a blasphemous, profane man. And he was known as a troublemaker there in Bedfordshire. You know, it had a bad reputation. He served for a time in the parliamentary army. Some think this is where he first came in contact with Baptists.

We're not sure about that. But he didn't convert at the time. When he comes back to Bedfordshire, not quite sure what prompted it, but he started going to this church led by Andrew Gifford. And it's under his preaching that he surrenders to Christ. And he becomes a Christian, particularly in Baptist church there in Bedford.

And so when he's born and up through his childhood, probably up until he is in the army, he didn't know how to read and write. Now, that's this guy had a huge impact on the English language, you know, because of Pilgrim's Progress. But starting off, he was illiterate, you know.

And is he, you know, pretty much self-educated. And so he must have been brilliant, had to be, you know. And he's not until his 30s that he starts to preach. And his sermons, you can go check them out. They're printed. They are very simple, incredibly simple. But apparently, the delivery of them had a huge impact.

When he went to London, huge crowds would come out to hear him. But his preaching, this is during Charles II, and Parliament's passed all these laws and is illegal. And the local authorities there were pretty hardcore, and they arrest him. And they put him in jail. And of course, he's got to pay rent, so he made lace, laces, you know, and, you know, helped.

Fund his stay there. The church was able to help his wife. Actually, I believe that's his second wife. I think so. Yeah. And she was all the time trying to get him out, would go and testify on his behalf different times, but never was successful. After six years, they let him out, and he immediately preaches, and they immediately arrest him and put him in for another six years.

But the funny thing about it was, you had the authorities that put him in jail, but the actual jailers apparently had immense respect for him, and they would let him sneak out, go to the woods, preach to his congregation, and he promised he would always come back, and they'd lock him back up again.

And in the midst of this, in the midst of this, he writes these incredible works, which has profoundly touched us down through the generations. And of course, we had a whole group of kids that were incredibly touched by this man in Vacation Bible School. And I guess with that, I should bring it to an end.

So, Thomas, would you please pray to conclude, and we'll be dismissed?