The Theological DNA of This Book

• The Father — the Author
• Christ — the Author who stepped into the story
• The Holy Spirit — the firmware
• Bob — the bricks
• Greg — the friendship
• Angie — the anchor
• Cole — the humility
• Eileen — the tenderness lived
• Nick — the encouragement
• Wayne and Carole — the foundation
• The facilitators — the forum
• The PG community — the saints
• Joyce — the simplicity
• Mick and Darlene — the faithfulness
• Erkel — the body
• Clark — the logic
• Gill — the scholarship
• Spurgeon — the heart
• Swindoll — the grammar
• Luther — the bravery

Bob Higby. His writings and his friendship have been the greatest influence on my life that I have ever had. I will always be grateful to the Lord for putting him in my path. God used Bob mightily to teach me and make me who I am. This book would not be possible without his theological DNA. I named the system. He gave me the pieces.

Greg Winegar. My greatest friend. Greg found my website in 2005, became a member of the forum, and we have talked nearly every day since. He has encouraged me, challenged me, and given of himself in ways I could never repay. He designed the cover of this book, and when I asked if I could acknowledge him publicly, he said, “Sure, whatever you want to do.” That is who Greg is. Unselfish. Giving. Deserving of far more than I could ever give him in return.

Angie. My wife, my conscience, and my everything. She has always supported me. She has never fought me. She has kept me on the straight and narrow when I wanted to go off the rails. I love her more than my own life.

Cole. My son, to whom this book is dedicated. He has given me humility. He has challenged me in ways I did not know I could be challenged. He has taught me that grace is bigger than my tribe. He has taught me patience. He has taught me to be kind. When I look at him, I see me.

Eileen Beckett. A contributor to Pristine Grace and a dear friend who encouraged me for many years. She was the only female author on the website, and she will always be featured there, because she was graceful and kind and tender in ways that most people only talk about. There is a chapter in this book about tenderness. Eileen lived it. She passed away from cancer, and I miss her greatly. I will never forget her.

Nick Lovins. A dear friend who has encouraged me for many years. He has been a source of inspiration, and I love him.

Wayne and Carole Kraft. My parents. They have always supported me and gave me the basis for my theological framework from the time I was a child. My mother always encouraged me to read the Scriptures and to stand up and speak for what was right, even if nobody else was. She still encourages me now. She is someone I will always look up to. It is this early teaching that has enabled me to finally publish this book. My father has supported me in all of my endeavors. I love them dearly.

The facilitators of predestinarian.net. A team of people who helped keep the forum running for many years and helped keep me on the straight and narrow. Their contribution to the development of this theology cannot be measured.

The Pristine Grace community. For nearly three decades I have received thousands of messages from the saints scattered all over the world, and their words have been encouraging. This book is for them as much as it is for me.

Joyce Coleman. My mother-in-law. She was like a mother to me, and I loved her intensely. She helped teach me that faith is simple. I miss her, and I look forward to being reunited with her in the new reality.

Aaron Coleman. My father-in-law. He passed in March of 2023. He raised the woman who became my wife, and every good thing in her has roots that go back to him. I am grateful for the man he was and for the daughter he gave me.

Mick and Darlene Coleman. Mick has passed, but his memory lives on in the family he built. And Darlene taught me what it means to love and care for those around you. She is the most faithful person I have ever met.

Darryl Erkel. His various articles on pristinegrace.org shaped my ecclesiology more than any other single influence. The participatory model in Chapter 23 is the ecclesiology he articulated, and I have held it for twenty-six years. I owe him a debt I cannot repay.

Gordon Clark. His logic. Clark taught me that all reasoning is circular and the question is not “can you prove your axiom?” but “which axiom accounts for reality?” He was a presuppositionalist who started with the Bible and derived everything through logic. His method was right, even where his conclusions weren’t. Clark showed me that theology is not a collection of independent doctrines. It is a system. And a system has a starting point. Chapter 25 owes its existence to him.

John Gill. His scholarship and his justification from eternity. Gill held the doctrine before I was born, and he held it with a precision that the Reformed world has never matched. The eternal justification of Chapter 15 is Gill’s theology rendered in the vocabulary of this book. He saw the timelessness of God’s decree when most of his contemporaries were still arguing about the order of events in time. I stand on his shoulders.

Charles Spurgeon. His heart. I don’t agree with his theology. He held common grace, a general call, and a Calvinism broader than anything in this book. But that man had a pastoral heart that most sovereign grace men will never touch. He wept over sinners. He loved the people in front of him without making them pass a test first. And when I finally wrote Chapter 30, it was his heart beating underneath it. Not his theology. His heart. The warmth that refuses to let precision become cruelty.

Charles Swindoll. I grew up listening to him in the car because my mom was a big Swindoll listener. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Lord was using that man’s tender voice to set my boot parameters before I could name what was happening. I don’t agree with his theology. But the tenderness I heard in that man’s preaching is embedded deep in my firmware, and it beats underneath Chapter 30 to this day. The warmth that refuses to let precision become cruelty. That was the piece I was missing, and Swindoll was one of the men God used to install it.

Martin Luther. His bravery. I don’t share his sacramentalism, his eschatology, or his view of the Lord’s Supper, and I’d argue with him on half of what he wrote. But the man nailed his conscience to a door in front of the most powerful institution on earth and said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Every Reformer since has been his son. Every man who ever refused to let an ecclesiastical machine dictate what he believed is in his debt. When the sovereign grace world labels me and the broader church labels me worse, I remember the monk with the hammer. The Reformation was not a building. It was a refusal. Luther taught me that institutional tyranny is broken not by strategy but by a single man unwilling to lie. That is the bravery underneath every chapter of this book.

And to Jim Byrd, Phil Johnson, Bill Parker, Frank Tate, Don Fortner, Henry Mahan, J.C. Philpot, John Robbins, Scott Price, Sean Gerety, Monty Collier, Scott O’Nanski, Brandon Tussey, Milton Almeida, Gabriel Gonzalez, Ray Johnson, Tammi and Chip Holbrook, Drew and Melinda Dietz, Jason and Alissa Smith, Richard Warmack, Nicholas Laurienzo, Craig Miklosik, Mike Dickmann, Rick Hein, Mary Covington, James Johnson, Roger Huckle, Travis Findley, John Pedersen, Mikal Smith, Abe and Carol Keil, John Wetzel, Marc Carpenter, Gary Shepard, Bryan Mowrey, John Piper, Pam Winegar, Ruth Higby, Dan Higby, David Bishop, David Alvord, Tim James, Norm Wells, Todd Nibert, Donnie Bell, Bruce Crabtree, Paula Pendleton, Joe Kinney, Chuck Wiese, Ray Kickert, Mike Krall, Stanley Phillips, Charles Shofstahl, Kyle Baker, Conrad Murrell, Nathan Rages, Paul Washer, Chris Cunningham, Larry Brown, Joe Terrell, Cassie Reagan, Julie Ruell, John Calvin, John Newton, George Ella, Ian Potts, Renat Ilyasov, J.C. Ryle, and every person whose name should be here but isn’t — thank you.

Some of the names on this list are men I disagreed with deeply. Some preached against me from pulpits without ever picking up the phone. Some labeled me things I would never call myself. I include them because the Author put them in the filmstrip with me, and every one of them, whether they know it or not, contributed to the man who wrote this book. Iron sharpens iron. Even when the iron draws blood.

Grace and Peace, Brandan