Urban Puritano

For your convenience and listening pleasure, the first hour is just a church member and his pastor shooting the breeze about Evangelicalism, especially in North America and the West. The second hour, we get down to the nitty gritty of the Nicene Creed and Sola Scriptura. Do they fit like a hand and glove or are they like oil and water? Can Biblicists believe in the usefulness of creeds? Do creeds...

What is a Reformed Baptist Church? Pamphlets, booklets, and sermon series have been produced to answer this question for decades. Although their presence online may indicate large numbers, this would be mistaken. If the visible church is likened to a tree, how did the Reformed Baptist branch shoot out? What is the good, the bad, and the ugly, especially in North America in the last and present cen...

The Sufficiency of Christ Considered: Promises Made, Promises Kept - Expository Devotional on Hebrews 11:39-40 All Urban Puritano explorations in expository preaching have been preached in a Spanish congregation and have been translated by yours truly to exemplify a hybrid Puritan approach to preaching for today. There is a simple style that presents the fruits of textual analysis and translates i...

Certain circles in Evangelical and Reformed academia are giving the Quadriga a pass when it comes to Biblical hermeneutics. It’s toleration and eventual acceptance and advocacy may be under the guise of an apostolic or Christocentric method of interpretation. Soon, there will be a full court press to a full throated embrace of the Quadriga by Evangelicals and some Reformed scholars may fall under...

The literal sense of Scripture gives way to no other sense of Scripture because there is no other sense than the literal sense of Scripture. Sorry, not sorry, Quadrigans! It's time for Evangelicals and Confessional Protestants to retrieve its rejection! Some things are so fundamentally flawed, coming up with alternatives should be easy. Some things are so fundamentally flawless, coming up with ref...

Bryant Rueda, writer and preacher extraordinaire joins us to discuss his life, writing, and preaching ministry since leaving the concrete jungle in Chicago for greener pastures in Texas. Bryant is keenly interested in hermeneutics, homiletics, lay preaching, pastoral ministry, church planting, and Spanish ministry. What life experiences led Bryant to develop a love for preaching? From Five-Fold Pe...

Straight Outta Chicago! The only Reformed Baptist rapper I know of: Regenerit! Who wudda thunk it? From writing rhymes as a young kid to a quiver full of kids, we discuss the art of rap, conversion, discipleship, church membership, family, theology, and 4 songs that showcase the artistic creativity possible when you have a passion for Christocentric expressions of faith combined with a boom bap so...

Dreams, visions, promptings may not be spiritual gifts, but what is their ongoing spiritual significance? Are they inherently authoritative? Is their content veridical? How can we assess them? Do they provide infallible guidance as lesser rules of faith and practice? Must confessional calvinists be against hyper-cessationism? Our guest, Ryan Denton, says: “Yes!” I tend to demur and say: “If loving...

What does deconstruction mean in the context of faith, Christianity, and the Church? On today's episode, we scratch the surface on the phenomena of deconstruction, deconversion, and apostasy. We've all heard of professing believers fall away from the faith. Sometimes, we've even known them. What does the confession (2LBC or WCF) say about such people and their faith in flux? Is there hope for the...

Pastor Mike Neglia invited me to The Expositor's Collective to discuss my recently published book: Christ's Scope and Scepter: His Word, His World With his permission, I've slightly edited it and chopped it up in a good way...not like the way the Quadriga chops up the Word of God. Speaking of chopping things up that shouldn't be chopped up, we discuss the continuity between a Christocentric interp...

Reformed Baptists. Confessionalism. Honoring our predecessors, investing in our successors. Religion & the State. A Political Reckoning in America. Leftist Meltdowns. Masculinity. On Wives and Hobbits. Getting to know the neighbors. Zachary Garris. "Sinning in the right direction." Joel Webbon. White Knight Syndrome. "Attractional Church Model." Is re-posting Andrew Tate approvingly equally as...

FROM THE VAULTS! This episode survived a house fire and was almost lost. Now, a year later, it has been recovered for such a time as this!  Biblically, theologically, and pastorally, we scratch the surface on Dr. Jared Moore’s book titled, “The Lust of the Flesh: Thinking Biblically About Sexual Orientation, Attraction, and Temptation.” Gird your loins and ponder the verities of this solid convers...

Like a bombshell on the lay theologian's playground, I am happy to announce a forthcoming new book I wrote that I hope serves the body of Christ! ( https://urbanpuritano.com/new-book-preview ). CHRIST'S SCOPE AND SCEPTER: HIS WORD, HIS WORLD scratches several layers below the surface to show the continuity between a Christocentric interpretation of the Word and a Christocentric interpretation of t...

What's on the menu for today's discussion? Topical? Textual? Verse by verse? No! It's the other white meat: Redemptive Historical Preaching! I would actually liken it to red meat since Redemptive Historical Preaching is a form of Expository Preaching.  From the vaults of the "Cross-Eyed" Podcast with Bryant Rueda, we are serving up much food for thought concerning the Redemptive Historical approac...

FROM THE VAULTS! This episode was recorded at the end of 2023. Better late than never! I was like a fly on the wall to the weekly Pastoral Prayer and Care Meeting where the Pastor and two Pastoral Assistants, Matt and Stephen, conduct a Lord's Day Service review, pray for each other and the church, and plan ahead for ministry. Little did we know how much on the verge of WW3 2024 would be! Regardle...

There once was a pastor from Scotland Whose name was Begg, not McLachlan Out of no where one day To old ladies he’d say Bring gifts and attend that transgender function. Well, despite my attempt at capturing one particular example of doctrinal and pastoral decay in American Evangelicalism, am I really that far off? Poetically, yes. Actually, no. Allow me to extend podcast hospitality to two guests...

Un Devocional Expositivo de Romanos 1:16-17 | El Evangelio de la Reforma es el Evangelio de las Escrituras 

👇🏽👀👇🏽👀👇🏽👀👇🏽👀 On today's episode of Urban Puritano, we scratch the surface on the Reformation and why it can't stop and won't stop! Reformation Day 2023 or World War 3

On today's episode, Pastor Brandon Myers of Christ the King Reformed Baptist Church joins me for a chilled out conversation along the banks of the Tiber River.  What are some areas of appreciation and even possible alignment with Romanists in common cause for the common good? What hath Papists to do with "separated brethren"? Well, our conversation covers four broad areas of possible cooperation w...

Let's be real. Family worship is a little known subject among evangelicals.  It is more known and practiced among Dutch Reformed denominations. Anecdotally speaking, I've known and worked closely with Presbyterians in my life, and although it's a known subject, it isn't practiced as much as you may think. Same goes for Reformed Baptists. But overall, this situation is changing as more resources ar...

Disputes among Christians on social media are funny...until they aren't. When things heat up, it's either someone's intelligence, integrity, or orthodoxy being questioned. When things calm down, we are told to keep discussions focused on doctrines, not dudes. The same thing can be seen in the discussions of the needlessly frustrating topic of Biblicism. What is Biblicism and why does it matter? I...

Welcome, once again, to Urban Puritano! On today's episode, we scratch the surface on a classic allegory of the Christian life according to good ol' fashioned classical Calvinism: The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Charles Spurgeon once said of Bunyan, "...his very soul was saturated with Scripture...he cannot give us his Pilgrim's Progress...without continually making us feel and say, 'Why, t...

We live in a world that offers competing forms of Revelations and Traditions. In the Church, one or the other or perhaps a combination of the two are set forth as a Rule of Faith. But what type of Revelation or Tradition is offered in the Bible? Is the Bible a sufficient Rule of Faith or is it inherently in need of a parallel source of material that constitutes, in perpetuity, an equal Rule of Fai...

You, too, can be a Master of Sacred Scripture! The Scripture of the Old and New Testament is unique theological literature. The inspired Word of God is Special Revelation. From God to us through His messengers throughout time, space, and redemptive history. As such, it is understandable via ordinary methods of learning appropriate to its nature. After all, its nature is to communicate. Therefore,...

Once upon a time, a budding, young Calvinist preacher heard a guest preacher preach a sermon on a robust Text of Scripture. He was excited as he anticipated a rich, spiritual banquet on Acts 8:26-35 which consists of the hybrid textuality of a dialogue between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch concerning a Messianic prophecy in Isaiah.  Alas, the budding young Calvinist (and the rest in the congrega...