Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Baptists and the Bible: Dr. Tom Nettles on Faith, History, and Children's Education
Baptist historian Dr. Tom Nettles joins Courier Conversations to share the story behind his newest book, "Baptist History for Kids" – a beautifully illustrated journey through Baptist heritage designed to help children understand their theological roots.
Drawing from over four decades of experience teaching at institutions like Southwestern Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Nettles brings his scholarly expertise to a format accessible for young readers. The book, featuring stunning artwork by his son Robert Nettles, covers fundamental questions: What does "Baptist" mean? How did Baptists begin? What do Baptists believe and do? Who are some significant Baptists throughout history?
During our conversation, Dr. Nettles shares how his earlier groundbreaking works "Baptists and the Bible" and "By His Grace and For His Glory" helped establish that Baptist commitment to biblical inerrancy and Reformed soteriology weren't recent innovations but reflected the denomination's historic foundations. This new book extends that mission to the next generation.
What sets this resource apart is its unflinching portrayal of the cost many early Baptists paid for their convictions. Through stories of figures like Obadiah Holmes, who was publicly whipped for his Baptist beliefs, children learn that theological distinctives like believers' baptism by immersion weren't held cheaply but represented deeply-held biblical convictions worth suffering for.
The book highlights familiar Baptist giants like Spurgeon and Bunyan alongside lesser-known figures such as George Lyle, a freed slave who became an effective missionary, and John Jasper, whose preaching gifts were so extraordinary that his master freed him to preach more widely. Dr. Nettles also discusses South Carolina's central role in Baptist history, from establishing the first Baptist association in the South to providing key leadership in forming the Southern Baptist Convention.
Whether you're a parent wanting to nurture your child's denominational identity or someone curious about Baptist roots, this conversation illuminates why understanding our theological heritage matters in an increasingly anti-denominational age. As Dr. Nettles reminds us, Baptist history represents not just cultural tradition but theological conviction worth preserving and passing down.
Ready to help your children discover their Baptist heritage? Find "Baptist History for Kids" at courierpublishing.com or on Amazon today.
https://baptistcourier.com
https://bobslone.com/home/podcast-production/
Hello, I am Jeff Robinson and this is Courier Conversations, the podcast of the Baptist Courier and Courier Publishing, and today you're in for a treat. I have one of my dearest friends in the world on the podcast today, who also happens to be one of our authors at Courier Publishing, has written a book that we're going to look at here in just a few minutes, and just shortly we'll look at Baptist History for Kids, a book that we are overwhelmingly excited about. So with us today is Dr Tom Nettles. Dr Nettles has served as a Baptist historian for more than 40 years.
Speaker 1:I taught at Southwestern Seminary in Texas, taught for many years at my alma mater at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, kentucky, where I first met him 25 years ago. In fact, on my first day of class in 2000, my second class, after Baby Greek, was History of the Baptists with Tom Nettles. And to get myself prepared for this, a couple years earlier I had read two books, the first two books I ever bought off Amazon, which was a new thing. Back then. The internet was relatively new. Some of you can imagine that One book was Baptists in the Bible by Tom Nettles, and the other was by His Grace and For His Glory, also by Dr Nettles, and those books turned out to be life-changing, as did that class. Tom and I have been dear friends. Our families are like family. For a long, long time, margaret Nettles has mentored my wife, tom, with me and did my PhD at Southern, and he was my supervisor. And so, tom, welcome to the podcast. It's such a privilege to have you with us today.
Speaker 2:The privilege is mine. Thank you so much for having me on. I hear people say that all the time when they're guests on a program, they say thank you so much for having me on. Well, I really mean that. It's a great privilege to be a part of this.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it's great to do podcasts and talk about books. It's even better to have one of your friends, and so I'm really glad to have you on here. So I am actually writing a biography of Dr Nettles, and it actually took Tom Askell and I. How many asks did it take us to get you to agree to that?
Speaker 2:finally, I still haven't agreed to it.
Speaker 1:That's right, it will be the unauthorized biography of Tom Nettles.
Speaker 2:You can quit any time you want to.
Speaker 1:Well, and I remember what you told me. You said who's going to want to read that? I said, well, if your mother were alive she would read that, right.
Speaker 2:If she were alive, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, as it turns out, Dr Nettles and I'm going to, you'll read this in the book. I'll give you a spoiler alert here. But no, and to my mind, in the minds of many, including one of our friends at Southern Seminary who lead there and the Southern Baptist Convention, tom was the most important historian of the conservative resurgence of the SEC, because Baptists in the Bible showed us that Baptists weren't crazy to believe the inerrancy and full inspiration of Scripture. That wasn't just an old Princeton notion that we had glommed on from them as the moderates argued that. This was in fact the historic Baptist foundation, and the book goes to great lengths to show. That proves it overwhelmingly.
Speaker 1:You wrote that with your dear friend Russ Bush, who's with the Lord today. Another fine Baptist scholar, historian, and then Baptists, by his grace and for his glory, builds on that foundation. It shows that Baptists have been a people of we might say a people of grace, of a theology of grace, and so that for me was life-changing. Having not really grown up with that, the doctrine of grace being taught, that really changed everything for me because I realized Baptists, this is who we have always been.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's your observation that Baptists in the Bible led into. That is precisely the case, because once you get into looking at Baptists and their view of scripture and you're reading their confessions of faith and systematic theologies and their expositions of Scripture and all that, you can't help but run across what they think about the larger scheme of confessional theology. And it was virtually unanimous on the Reformed side but with a very strong Baptist ecclesiology. The whole way that Baptist in the Bible came about was really an amazing providence, because when I was in the MDiv program there were a lot of rumblings going on in Southern Baptist life about the authority of Scripture and people were saying that Baptists had really not believed that Princetonian view of the inerrancy of the autographs and so forth, but rather they were more focused on things like the right of private interpretation and liberty of conscience. And so you couldn't oppress a Baptist individual through some sort of an authoritative view of biblical authority. And so I would go out with a group of guys during the MDiv program, we would talk about all these things and Russ Bush and I developed a really good friendship during that time and we pledged, we said Russ, I said Russ. If we are ever in a place together and we have time to work together. We need to investigate this question is what have Baptists really believed about the Bible? And he said okay, so in god's providence, uh, I was asking the the fall of 75 to go and and teach at southwestern seminary starting january of 76 and russ was already teaching there. So I went, I finished my dissertation, graduated in June.
Speaker 2:After one semester of teaching, russ and I were having a meal together and I said okay, russ, we made a pledge that we were going to write about this issue of Baptist in Scripture. Are we ready? He says well, you know it's going to cause problems. And I said, yeah, we probably do know it's going to cause problems, but we said we'd do it. And so we started and it came out in 1980.
Speaker 2:And it was built upon this series of providences of developing a friendship, talking about these issues.
Speaker 2:And the thing that surprised us I know we're not here to talk about that, but I've just sort of when you get old, you reminisce about god's providences in your life and it is just so filled with all these providences of how we met each other at mississippi college and weren't really friends, but then we became friends in the md of program and then we began to talk about these issues and finally it came to fruition in, uh in baptist and the bible, and that was, uh, a very satisfying thing from an intellectual, a spiritual and a historical standpoint, especially when the particular issues that were being challenged in the contemporary situation were answered just voluminously in the historical material, starting all the way back with John Smith and coming all the way up into JP Boyce and BH Carroll.
Speaker 2:So that was just one of those things where you realize that that's what a lot of people today would call retrieval theology. We were doing retrieval theology before we knew what even that, what that was. But it's a very satisfying adventure to go back into the history of the language and the history of the kinds of concepts that are used and how they match with scripture, and so anyway, that's the way that developed and then, of course, out of that, by his grace and for his glory, came, because it was just so obvious what Baptists had believed confessionally.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a very real sense in which I'm sitting in my office here at 100 Manly Street, the corner of Manly and Pettigrew Streets. By the way, manly Street, the corner of Manly and Pettigrew Streets. By the way, ironically, because of your influence, I pastored for many years and was pastored in Louisville, and Tom would always, many times say I'd love to see you in a role Most of our listeners know. My background was in journalism, secular journalism and, of course, journalism in the SBC.
Speaker 1:But you would like to see what I would do if I could be the editor of a state newspaper and my dissertation on Henry Hillcombe Tucker was taken largely from research gleaned hours and hundreds of hours of research in the state Baptist newspaper on microfilm, which is why I need glasses now. But amazing, just such a rich heritage of Baptist state newspapers. And so you know, here at the Baptist Courier, my predecessor and I both have tried to make that, to make the help the Courier stand within its traditional moorings of defending, you know, baptist theology, christian, you know Christian living and sound doctrine and Baptist ecclesiology and all those things that would make those papers such a rich resource back in those days. So you can thank Dr Edels for me being here in part, if you like that.
Speaker 2:Well, you were. You, of course, you did a great, great job with that, but you also you were involved firsthand in seeing how an editor of a Baptist paper can speak to contemporary issues, how he can be theologically minded and be speaking to all of those kinds of things, and so he was friends with JP Boyce and you go through and you see the way in which a Baptist newspaper can help mold the thinking of a denomination and deal with particular issues that threaten its viability and threaten its integrity, and so that was, I think, a perfect, providential kind of preparation that God was giving you for where you are now.
Speaker 1:Well, what I love is the first editor of the Baptist Courier, which was called the Southern Baptist in those days, was James Pettigrew Boyce, the founding president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary right here in Greenville, just about I don't know three quarters of a mile from where I sit. So just so much we could talk about with that here, and I definitely owe you so much gratitude, as do our readers if they like what we're doing, and we've had a lot of good input on that and lots of kind words in my couple of years here. We'll continue doing that. Well, let's talk about your book Now.
Speaker 1:You retired as a professor of historical theology at Southern just a few years ago, but by no means are you retired from ministry. You continue to write. You write for us, and now you have written just what is an amazingly unique resource Baptist History for Kids. And of course your son, robert, my dear friend of many years as well, illustrated this. We're going to talk about that in just a minute. But let's talk about where did the idea of a book for children on Baptist history come from? Where did that originate in your thinking?
Speaker 2:Well, it came from Evan Knies. He's the one that contacted me. Yeah, is that the way you pronounce his name? Knies, he's the one that contacted me. Yeah, is that the way you pronounce his?
Speaker 1:name Right, that's right.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he contacted me and I guess you had been talking with him about it, and he said we would like for you to do a Baptist history for kids, and I thought that is a great idea, why not? And so that's yeah, that's where it came from, and I began to think about all right, what kinds of things should you introduce children to when you're writing a baptist history for them? It can't be the kind of critical historiography and interaction with all the the prevailing mistakes and so forth. You've just got to make a straightforward presentation, and so I thought it would be a good idea just to talk about what does Baptist mean? That's the first full chapter.
Speaker 2:And then, how did Baptist begin? What do Baptists believe? What do Baptists do, which gets into worship and missions and so forth. And then I couldn't avoid a chapter on Baptists and controversy, because that has been a part of what has defined us all the way through, not just the conservative resurgence but other controversies throughout, and then some biographical material who are some Baptists that you should know about, and of course Lottie Moon is one. I didn't deal with any living people in it, but I did get the conservative resurgence by doing Adrian Rogers in that. So it was a very satisfying adventure for me, and then I wanted to give a plug for Baptist history itself. The last chapter is why is knowledge of Baptist history a good thing? So I encourage the kids to become Baptist historians.
Speaker 1:Well, and I've already sent you a picture of one young reader, my own pastor at Abner. Creek Baptist Church. Donald Thomas, his young son was engaging this sent me a photograph and I immediately sent it to you that hey, we've got at least one customer.
Speaker 2:That was fun. That was fun to see that. I hope that happens thousands of times.
Speaker 1:Well, and I've sat in your Baptist history class and all your church history classes at Southern and I teach Baptist history myself, and so I know even in 12 or 14 weeks you really just kind of hit the highlights. I mean, you do, you can go deeper, three hours a week or whatever we have, as the case might be, to teach, but at the end of the day I still feel like I leave so much out when teaching the full Baptist history class. Again, I've taught many times and you've taught hundreds of times at this point. Again, I've taught many times and you've taught hundreds of times at this point. How did you choose what to deal with, the topics, the theology, the figures, and to pack that into 48 pages and make it right in such language that would be able to, that the children would be able to comprehend and digest it?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess the verdict is still out as to whether or not I've actually achieved the goal of making it comprehensible to children.
Speaker 2:I hope so, but if parents will read it with them. I think that could be a good exercise both for the parents and for the children. I didn't want it to be condescending, like to use just juvenile, and thought that was really not worthy of the subject, but I did want it to be plain, simple sentences. I did want to use some of the vocabulary that would be necessary to use if you're dealing with Baptist life, but not with a deep dive into all the theological and polemical and apologetic reasons for it. So it was a balancing act to do it, but I did think that we needed to start out with what? The whole idea of what is a Baptist? Why are Baptists called Baptists? And so I deal with New Testament views of baptism.
Speaker 2:And then why Baptists, who distinguish themselves from the other Reformation? Basically, just solely on the basis of believers' baptism, that they said the church should be composed of regenerate people, and so baptism was not of infants. It was of those who gave evidence of being regenerated by the Spirit of God, who made a public profession of their faith, who gave evidence of repentance and on that basis were baptized, because the symbol of baptism is being crucified, with Christ buried, with him risen to walk in newness of life, and you can't say that of an infant that you know they're risen to walk in newness of life. You don't know what's going to happen to them, you don't know if they're the elect, if God will regenerate them, and so the very symbol of baptism is something that I thought I needed to explain. So what does being Baptist mean? I thought you needed to start with that. And then some history.
Speaker 2:We need to say how did Baptists begin? How did we become an entity, a denomination as such? Does being a denomination mean that we have somehow invented ourselves and we're not biblical? Well, of course we wouldn't say that. So I tried to tie being Baptist in modern modern day in with reformation, recovery of the principle of solo scriptura and of justification by faith and so forth. And then how do baptists reflect that recovery of biblical authority and biblical theology? And did baptist actually make a contribution, so that their distinctive is not just an idiosyncrasy, but their distinctive is actually a setting forth of the principle of sola scriptura. It is capturing a biblical doctrine that is necessary for the full obedience of a Christian. So that's what I try to argue. And how did Baptists begin? So it was just going to the what does it mean to be Baptist? How did Baptists begin? So it was just going to the what does it mean to be Baptist? How did Baptists begin? What do Baptists believe? And then? So, as a result of what we believe, what do we do?
Speaker 1:It seems to me sometimes I want to see what you think about this, and you and I, I'm sure, in our hundreds and hundreds of conversations we've talked about this at some point, but I don't remember it. It seems to me Baptist history is underrated, and here's what I mean by that. I've had friends over the years and a friend several years ago who embraced the doctrines of grace and then became Presbyterian, and I love my Presbyterian friends. I have many dear friends of Presbyterian, I appreciate them. But we differ on some important things, ecclesiologically especially.
Speaker 1:But I asked him so what was the final straw that pushed you over the edge? And he said well, it's their history. They have such a rich history, much more than Baptists do, and I just I like their history, I like their standards, the Westminster standards, and I just I really love their history. And so I think I don't know, but it seems like our. I mean we have an extremely rich history, as your books show, as your teaching shows, as I try to show in my teaching and even here at the Baptist Courier, trying to show that we have a history that stands up against any denomination's history. We just don't know it. Do you think that's true, that we just don't know our history very well and therefore we just underplay it or downplay its significance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a large part of it. I think that's a very good insight. You look at the history of Presbyterianism, of course, and you go back and you see John Calvin and John Knox and these big names who went head to head with the catholic authorities and then developed these great confessions of faith, and baptist confessions are largely built off of a separatist confession, the true confession, or the the uh, the, the westminster confession of Westminster Confession of Faith, and so it looks like there is kind of an originalist impetus within the history of Presbyterianism that somehow is lacking in Baptist life, and I think that's because we have not perhaps emphasized enough that the breakthrough into believers' baptism was a costly breakthrough. It was something in which the Baptist did not feel like they needed to begin to plow new fields and to To invent new words on those major doctrines that they had recovered in scripture. And so that's this is one of the things they said. They had no itch to clog religion with new words, and so they they used the Westminster Confession. But if you read their articles on the church and on baptism and on the Lord's Supper, you see that they were not at all deficient in biblical exposition or in theological reasoning as to why they distinguished themselves from those brothers in Christ with whom they disagreed on the ecclesiological issues. Another, and so it is the fact that they were able to content themselves because they were convinced of its truthfulness, of the large theological gains that had been made with Protestantism at large, and then they were able to clearly distinguish themselves on the issue of baptism, and this was so important to them that they were willing to suffer for it.
Speaker 2:Now this is the thing that I think when people begin to talk about you know Anabaptism is shallow and you know we don't need to be Anabaptists because they had some people that believed in free will. And you go off and all that and you discredit the Anabaptists too easily, because the Anabaptists were courageous people who had an insight into the nature of the church as being a continued witness to the world for the necessity of the new birth, and they suffered for it. Felix Mons was drowned for it, hubmeyer was burned for it. Baptists in England were thrown in prison for it, as were they in New England. These are not people who took their theology lightly, new England. These are not people who took their theology lightly. These are deep thinkers who are willing to suffer courageously for what they believe is God's truth.
Speaker 2:Someone may say, oh, baptism, you know that's just a third level issue, and so forth. Well, it's the thing that Jesus led them with, left them with, baptized them into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the book of Acts, and as many as believed were baptized, as many as were appointed to eternal life were baptized. And so you can't say this is a minor issue. This is that which distinguishes the church as a believing community in the world, setting itself forth as the redeemed, as those who are born again, as those who are the forth, as the redeemed, as those who are born again, as those who are the, as the Anabaptists said, the followers after Christ. So this, I think you're right, the history, the people who are involved in this are people who are courageous and people who were willing to suffer for Christ, and they were thinkers theologically. And you have the particular baptist movement. Uh, specifically, that is much more aligned with where southern baptists are or where, where they should be today, right? So I think the history another thing that I think is is is important is understanding the nature of the covenant, that baptists, when they began, were not anti-covenant.
Speaker 2:In fact, john Smith, his book the Character of the Beast, is a discussion of the true covenantal relationship of the new covenant to the old covenant.
Speaker 2:It is seeing circumcision as fulfilled in regeneration. As fulfilled in regeneration, it is seeing that this covenant that's announced in Ezekiel and that's announced in Jeremiah places in Isaiah. This covenant that God will change our hearts and give us a heart of flesh and not a heart of stone, that this is fulfilled in the new covenant and the mark of it after regeneration, which is the typology-related circumcision, the mark of that which initiated the new covenant, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ is set forth in baptism. So I think both covenantal relationships and history of Baptists, showing the power of their being willing to consent to the Reformation and then being willing to show. But you're stopping short because you still have a state church, you still are under the old covenant as far as it relates to the constituency of the church, and so I think those two things are very important in setting forth Baptist life and I try to do that to a degree in this book. Baptist History for Kids.
Speaker 1:Well, obviously I love the book, but one thing I think maybe my favorite aspect of the book is you just touched on this the fact that you show that Baptists did not hold to these doctrines on the cheap. You deal with Obadiah Holmes and the whipping. There's a great, a wonderful picture Robert has contributed there of Obadiah Holmes being whipped here in America in the 17th century. John Clark and other more minor figures that a lot of our readers will not have heard about. But showing all to say that believers, baptism by immersion is not just a thing we glom on, it's not to be held on the chief, that we are theologically convinced that that's true and willing to suffer for it, and that in fact in the past Baptists have shed their blood for it. I don't think we know that today because we live in such an anti-denominational age and we think these things don't matter. But you're showing here that there's a real, profound conviction that Baptists have that we use after the Reformation semper reformanda, the Latin term being reformed always reforming, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Baptists, kind of. I think they exemplify that notion of always reforming. And of course, we, you know, we stand on the shoulders of Calvin and Luther and those men, in terms of soteriology maybe, and appreciate them deeply and read their writings and look at their exposition and their theological reasoning and have deep appreciation for them.
Speaker 2:Go ahead Right.
Speaker 1:But we continue the Reformation in that matter of ecclesiology, which is kind of a seamless thread. If God has an elect, then he has this kind of church, a regenerate church. It demands that, and then that church demands credo, baptism. And so I think you do a good job of showing that notion of semper reformanda, that the Baptist did continue the Reformation. I mean, if Calvin lived another 50 years maybe he would have been a Baptist. I know you believe Jonathan Edwards would have been if he'd lived a little bit longer, right?
Speaker 2:Yep, the Lord took him out before he would lose his appreciation for the magisterial reform. Great, in fact. This morning you know I love Jonathan Edwards and Baptists loved him. John Gill quotes Jonathan Edwards. They were contemporary Edwards, quotes Gill. Andrew Fuller benefited greatly from Jonathan Edwards.
Speaker 2:So Baptists have not been afraid to reap the harvest from that which is good exposition and good spiritual teaching from other people. They've been very open to that and at the same time they have tried to show that the best of this theological reasoning fits most comfortably within the concept of a regenerate church, a body of people that are giving testimony to the completed work of Christ historically, and the completed work of Christ as it relates experientially to the soul of the person who was dead in trespasses and sins is now made alive by the work of Christ and the regenerating power of the Spirit. So I think those are important things and I hope that to a degree I've communicated that in this book to help children realize that it's not just sort of a cultural mistake that they should consider seriously Baptist life, but it is a matter of theological importance and a vibrant personal witness and sacrifice that this is a witness that God wants in the world.
Speaker 1:Well, this may seem like a silly question, but I don't think it is. Don't you think adults could benefit from this book? I mean, there's a lot of Baptist history.
Speaker 2:I hope so. Yeah, I hope that parents will sit down and read this with their kids and they'll say you know, there's more to this Baptist story than I had really thought about, and there are more people that I need to be aware of and there are more beliefs connected with this and the interaction of these beliefs with each other. I need to look at this more carefully. So I hope that will be one of the effects of it.
Speaker 1:Well, now you deal with Bunyan in here, and of course most people have at least heard of the Pilgrim's Progress, a classic work, one of the bestselling books in human history. Charles Spurgeon and most people, their pastors, have quoted him, so they've heard of him. And of course Lottie Moon we take one of our major offerings in Southern Baptist life and of course Adrian Rogers, who's almost like the Luther of our denomination, but there are some figures in here that most Baptists wouldn't know. Who are a couple of those that you include. I again just love that.
Speaker 2:Well, I have George Lyle. He was a missionary. He was a freed slave and was a very effective missionary. John Jasper was a great preacher and showed great gifts of preaching and his master freed him so he could go and preach on the other plantations and he started a church there in Richmond that was greatly attended. A Baptist, a white Baptist in Virginia named WE Hatcher, wrote a biography of John Jasper called I think it was called Rhapsody in Black. That just was filled with admiration for the preaching talents of Jasper. And of course we do have John Bunyan in there and we have Lottie Moon.
Speaker 2:I think William Carey is William Carey, one of the persons that I include in this, and so we try to introduce people to sort of different movements and different types of people who have been involved, to show the sacrifice and to show the variety and to show the distinct types of ministries that Baptists have been involved in. Like the whipping of Obadiah Holmes. This shows the courage of the Baptists in New England and it's one of the things that Congregationalists and Presbyterians should take into account when they think that their history is so superior that they were involved in persecution of people who didn't fit in with their state church propensities. So these are the kinds of things that I hope Baptists can see and can learn to really appreciate in a deeply spiritual way.
Speaker 1:We're almost out of time but I do want to talk about two more things in brief, and one is this is a beautiful book. The artwork in it is just amazing, and it was done by your son, robert Nettles. Talk a bit about his work. I have two or three of his paintings hanging on my wall in my study at home and have for many, many years. Talk a bit about Robert's work here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's some, also a few things in there by Valentina, his, his daughter is going to be a uh, uh, an extra one in the Bunyan. They had left out one that was Bunyan sitting at his desk in prison writing Pilgrim's Progress, and that'll that'll be in there. It's probably not in the copy you have right now, but she did one of John Smith baptizing himself. Uh, one of one of the young kids here at the seminary said he liked that picture best and she drew it with John Smith having a big bucket holding up above his head with the water pouring out on it. And so the artwork Robert just found a gift at artwork.
Speaker 2:He was a pitcher in high school and he got his arm hurt. He couldn't pitch, and so he was in college wanting to play, but he couldn't play, and so he just started doodling and he found out through his doodling that he could virtually repristinate, as it were, a picture that he saw. And then he began to get into oils and he just showed a talent for it. So he's drawn pictures of all of our children and our grandchildren and he did the cover by his grace and for his glory, and he's just, yeah, he's quite talented and he's willing to use it for the Lord. So I was really happy that he was willing to draw these pictures.
Speaker 2:So all of the illustrations of the individuals and of many of the events are written by or drawn by Robert, and then Valentina has done some also. They really are quite remarkable If you see them in the full size. I look at them and I just can hardly believe that a human being actually drew that, and I just can hardly believe that a human being actually drew that. Of course he's my son, so I have an extra measure of pride welling up in me for that.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a beautiful book and I did not realize that about Valentina, and just for some context here, Valentina and my son Jake my children and your grandchildren grew up together in Louisville and are very close friends and have been their whole lives, and what I remember about Jake and Valentina being around close to the same age is they collected insects all the time when they were three or four years old, Would come back with the largest number of grasshoppers and what have you.
Speaker 1:But at the risk of sounding sophomoric, I have my favorite Robert Nettles picture is one that my wife asked him to draw as a gift for me and painted for me a few years ago, and you know this, so I'm talking about it. It was me, my son Jeffrey and my son Jake at a University of Georgia football game. We're beating Tennessee in this rendition and it's on my wall in my house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like from the top of the stands or something and looking down and there y'all are sitting watching this game.
Speaker 1:It is done for a picture taken at a game in Lexington a Georgia Kentucky game and then another picture from Sanford stadium. So he just did an amazing job on there. We love that and and so you'll. You'll appreciate that where that is not in this book, if you want to see that you'll have to come to my house and so we can do that if you really want to see it. One last question I'm sitting recording this podcast at 100 Manly Street in Greenville, south Carolina, the heart of the historic district of Greenville, south Carolina, and I've said in the pages of the Courier my time here that South Carolina is the single most important state in Southern Baptist history and I think I've said that with confidence and good reason. And you mentioned South Carolina rightly so in your book for children. Why should South Carolina Baptists in particular be interested in a children's Baptist history for children?
Speaker 2:There are all kinds of reasons. One is, when the Southern Baptist Convention was started, the one who took to Augusta, georgia, the plan for starting a new convention was a pastor in South Carolina named WB Johnson, william Belan Johnson, and he met with the South Carolina Baptist Convention and they talked over the issue when they were considering separating from the Northern Baptists, from the American Baptist Convention and so forth, and they he brought this plan down and then he was elected as the president of this consultative convention, as it would have been called. And then, after they decided on a program having a domestic mission board and a foreign mission board and they would have a series of elected offices, they elected WB Johnson as the president. So he was the first president of the convention and he is the one who set forth the basic constitutional arrangement of the convention. And South Carolina Baptist, the South Carolina Baptist Convention, the South Carolina Baptist Convention, was the one that had agreed on setting that forth at the Consultative Convention in Augusta.
Speaker 2:And then, when Baptists wanted to have a theological education, it was JP Boyce who, when he began to teach at Furman University, at his sort of his inaugural address Furman University, in his sort of his inaugural address, he presented an address called Three Changes in Theological Institutions, which set forth a theory of what a freestanding theological seminary should be. All the theological education was done in conjunction with colleges, and so they didn't have a full range of theological subjects that were taught. And he said that it should be, and it is something that should be governed by a confession of faith. And so he has a strong defense of the use of confessions of faith and even calls them creeds there. And then he proposes also that Southern Baptists begin to train their own teachers, and so it should make provision for having an advanced degree offered also.
Speaker 2:So JP Boyce, who was there in Greenville, south Carolina, at Furman, who suggested that, and so both the convention structure and theological education all arose out of the kinds of factors and influences and sort of healthy denominational propensities that were present in South Carolina. Also, the First Baptist Association in the South was the Charleston Association and First Baptist Church, the Charles First Baptist Church of Charleston. So yeah, I mean it's not just a boastful claim that has no warrant from the historical evidence. It's something that can be pointed to as sort of the beginning point of many of the most pivotal issues in Southern Baptist life and some of the most heroic figures and faithful figures. Yeah, I don't have any jealousy over that claim being made for South Carolina, because I think the facts bear it out.
Speaker 1:Well, another book I want to make particularly of interest to my South Carolina readers would be a biography you wrote a few years ago in James Pettigrew Voice I think P&R published that and it's a very fine biography. There's a lot of South Carolina details about South Carolina Baptist history in there. His father, kerr Boyce, I believe, owned the land I'm sitting on right now back in that time was a very well-heeled man. Well, the book before us and the book out now is Baptist History for Kids. It is available through Courier Publishing at courierpublishingcom or, of course, on Amazon. And there it is in all of its beauty, and this really is an attractive book. Your children will be attracted to it for the artwork alone, but the writing in there is incredible and you will come away with a far greater appreciation of being a Baptist and cherishing, hopefully, why you are a Baptist and what Baptists are about. Well, tom, thank you so much for being with us on this edition. This is something I just can't really wrap up, but there has to be an ending for everything.
Speaker 2:I do have a thing right at the end that I think is important, and it is why is a knowledge of Baptist history a good thing? That's sort of the last chapter there, two pages, and so people should, I think, pay attention to that, because it explains some of the very issues that we've been talking about here. Well, I think that's a good place to have the last word.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in. Pick up this book and learn about why you're a Baptist.
Speaker 3:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions,
