Cessationist (2023) Movie Script

1
The Apostle Paul
was leaving the next day,
so he spoke until late
into the night.
A young man named
Eutycus was falling asleep
while he sat in the window.
When he was sound asleep
he fell to the ground
from the third story
and he died.
[Roman soldier] Over here!
Someone fell!
What is a miracle?
The birth of a child?
A close call?
Surviving an accident?
A miracle is a supernatural
act of God
in which he interrupts
the normal course of life in an
extraordinary and remarkable way
to accomplish his purposes.
When the natural order
is reversed.
When a deaf person
is now able to hear,
a blind person is now
able to see
where out of death
someone is resurrected to life.
God can do anything he wants,
any time He wants.
When most
people think about miracles,
they think they're on every page
of Scripture.
The average person
throughout biblical history
witnessed miracles all the time.
The truth is absolutely not.
There were intermittent times
in biblical history
when God directly,
without the use of a person,
simply performed a miracle.
If we get a little bit
more specific, we might ask
What is the gift of miracles?
Or who was a miracle worker?
The gift of miracles was a gift
given
to a supernaturally endowed
person.
God worked miracles through that
individual, confirming that
that individual was a spokesman
and representative for God.
When Moses said,
What if I don't believe me,
God says, I'm going to give you
the power to work miracles
so that I will believe you that
you're speaking on my behalf.
The miracles
were given to validate
that they are a mouthpiece
for God, that He is
a man sent by God
to speak on behalf of God.
In First Kings 17,
we have Elijah meeting
with the widow.
There's a famine in the land.
And then we have the widow's
son dying.
The widow
thinks that she's under
some sort of judgment.
Through Elijah,
the Lord miraculously raises
this young boy
back to life.
The widow's response in
verse 24 is very instructive.
And the woman said to Elijah,
Now, I know that
you are a man of God,
and that the word of the Lord in
your mouth is truth.
There were times
three of them in Scripture
when God gave to men
the power to work miracles.
There is, first of all,
the time of Moses and Joshua
1400 years before Christ,
a period of about 65 years.
Then you fast forward to
the time of Elijah and Elisha.
You're about 800 years
before Christ, and there again
you have a period
of about 65 years
when God was giving men
the power to work miracles.
The next period of time
like that comes
in the time of Jesus
and the apostles.
And that stems from
the beginning of his ministry
to at the very latest,
the death of John.
There you have another period
of 65, 70 years.
Those were the three epochs.
And in each case
it was to confirm those men
as his messengers.
The purpose of miracles
in the Ministry of Christ
in the Apostles fits exactly
in line with the patterns
we see in the Old Testament.
So when God gave extraordinary
signs and wonders to people
like Moses, Elijah and Elisha,
he did the same thing
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
But here is the Son of God
coming in person
and human flesh.
He did miracles
as his day to day
work to show
that he was the Son of God,
the messenger from the Father,
the true and ultimate prophet.
We ought
to give more earnest heed
to the things that we've heard
than what people heard
under the old Testament
prophets,
because God confirmed
by signs and wonders
and gifts of the Holy Spirit,
the words of those
who heard Him,
who were the apostles.
The word apostle comes
from the Greek word Apostolos,
which means sent one.
And it wasn't something that was
unique to Jesus apostles.
If the Emperor ever sent
somebody out with a message
from the Emperor, he was called
an apostle of the Emperor.
And the message that he carried
was every bit as authoritative
as if the emperor
was speaking himself.
So if you were to reject
the message
of the emperors apostle,
it would be like
rejecting the Emperor.
Or if you were to attack
the apostle, it would be like
attacking Caesar himself.
And the Apostle Paul's
letter to the church of Ephesus,
he uses the metaphor
of a spiritual temple
to describe the church.
And he says in chapter two,
verse 20 that it is
built on the foundation
of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself
being the cornerstone.
So as God was establishing
the foundation of the church
upon the person and work of
Christ, he called men,
known as apostles and prophets
to be foundation builders.
As his apostles, theyre
the foundation of the church.
What they say,
Christ says, what they assert
about his ministry is true.
The Stone
that the builders rejected
has become
the cornerstone of the Church.
Jesus chose the Apostles
to further reveal
the mystery of the Church.
And finally, God provided
various other prophets
within the Church
while the New Testament
was still being written.
This is the foundation of
the church, according to Paul,
in Ephesians
2:20, the Apostles and Prophets
with Christ
as the chief cornerstone.
It doesnt make any sense
to think that the foundation
of a building goes
all the way to the roof.
It's the foundation.
This is an historical assertion
that the Apostolate
was limited to the foundation
period of church history.
When you see the early
discussions about the canon
and which books are canonical,
as we would say,
one of the tests of
canonicity was
Does this book have apostolic
origin?
Or is it given a kind of stamp
of approval by the Apostles?
Now, why is that?
It's because the Apostles had
certain promises granted to them
by the Lord Jesus Christ,
and those promises
related to the ministry
of the Holy Spirit in their
speaking and in their writing.
And so the reason why we can say
with confidence that the canon
is closed
is because
we no longer have
those apostles.
To be a legal proxy
for Jesus, to be a true apostle,
four things had to be true.
You had to be hand
picked, chosen by Christ.
You had to be taught by Christ.
You had to witness
the resurrected Christ.
You had to see him risen.
The fourth qualification
it's found with the 11 in
Matthew 10, when Jesus said,
I'm sending you out to represent
me and I'm going to give you
the power to work miracles
to confirm the revelation that's
going to come through you.
Miraculous gifts were given
during those early years
where they were proclaiming
in many cases for the first time
in a region the event
and the significance of Christ's
life, death,
resurrection and ascension.
When Paul defends
his Apostleship
in Second Corinthians 12,
he refers to these gifts
as the signs of an apostle
miraculous abilities
that either
the apostles alone had or
there were cases where they
could lay hands on someone
and give them those gifts.
But always in the New Testament,
when those miraculous gifts
are manifest, it is in
in the presence of an apostle.
We know that
there is no apostle today
roaming around planet Earth.
So with that, the actual gifts
that were associated
with those apostles
have likewise ceased.
The gifts
that authenticated the apostles,
which were the sign gifts,
particularly gifts
of healing and miracles,
and then the gifts
that were associated
with prophets,
which were the revelatory gifts
which would have included
tongues.
A Cessationist is one
who believes
that those gifts ceased
after the apostolic age
with the death of the Apostle
John around the year 100.
Those
gifts passed off the scene.
A Continuationist
is someone who believes
that the extraordinary gifts,
prophecy, tongues and healing
have continued and therefore
they should be pursued
and exercised by
Christians today.
Continuationists,
including Pentecostal
and charismatic groups,
believe that the New Testament
encourages them to participate
in the miraculous gifts.
They find this idea in chapters
12 to 14 of First Corinthians,
where Paul discusses
the gifts of healing
tongues and prophecy at length,
and even charges
the Corinthian church
to earnestly desire
these gifts of the spirit.
Yes, we should be seeking
the gifts for sure.
We want the Holy Spirit
to gift us so that we might care
for one another
in the body of Christ.
But in the era
of the Corinthian church,
the foundation
was still being laid.
They did need the sign gifts.
We're not in that era anymore.
There is no mention
in the second half
of the first century of signs
and wonders and miracles.
Once you pass the book
of First Corinthians,
there is no more mention
of any miracles
being performed by any apostle.
He writes nine letters
to different churches, six
different churches
after the First Corinthians.
You look at the pastoral
epistles written for the ongoing
life of the church.
First Timothy.
Second Timothy
Titus instructing pastors
how to conduct life
in the church.
And there's no mention
of the miraculous gifts.
You have this lessening
of the miraculous
as the canon of Scripture moves
toward its completion.
You have in Acts, for example,
Paul would send pieces
of fabric out.
People would be healed by that.
That's not happening anymore.
And it wasn't happening
in Paul's time
either,
because when he learned that
Timothy had a stomach ailment,
he writes to him and says,
Take a little wine
for your stomachs sake.
He doesn't
send him a handkerchief.
There's no expectation
that some healer is going
to come and heal Timothy.
Paul in Philippians, when
he was so overtaken
almost by grief
because of the sickness of his
dear friend, and certainly if
if the Apostle Paul still had
this miraculous gift of healing,
he could have done something
about it.
But instead he
recognized there's
no sense
in which that's still happening,
even at the time of Philippians.
Then you see
the next generation.
It becomes churches like ours
where there aren't apostles,
but they're looking back on that
time.
The writer of Hebrews writing
just before the destruction
of the temple, he says, the Lord
spoke this gospel.
It was confirmed to us by those
who heard meaning the Apostles
and the Apostles were allowed
to work.
Signs in miracles
to confirm that message.
And so even the writer
of Hebrews,
writing under the auspices
of the Apostles, he says,
I'm not working miracles.
That's not happening now.
The writer of Hebrews
is looking back and saying
those things were foundational.
That's not the norm anymore.
Miracles, signs,
wonders, and especially direct
Voice of God only occurs
in three significant eras,
which then was written down
and inscriptuated
in the inspired Word of God.
He spoke directly to Moses.
But then Moses
wrote those things down.
Same thing with the prophets.
God did many miraculous things,
but then those were written down
and became inspired Scripture.
Same thing with Jesus
and the Apostles.
Many miracles confirming
that Jesus was the Son of God.
But then the revelation
that was given
during that transitional period
is what we know today
as the New Testament.
And between those key eras
in the progress
of redemptive history
there are long periods
in which God did not
directly speak to people
as a normal experience.
Rather, he expected them
to trust the sufficiency
of what he had written.
And we are in one of those
periods now where we ought
to trust the confirmed word
that God has given to us,
looking for that blessed hope
when Jesus will come again.
But we ought to not expect
that God will be doing
miraculous things, signs and
speaking directly from heaven
because
we have a sufficient word.
Jesus rebuked
even those in his own day
that sought signs and wonders
to validate putting their faith
in Christ, saying in Matthew
16:4, a wicked
and adulterous
generation looks for a sign.
Later, the apostle Peter
described the glory
of personally seeing Jesus
during his transfiguration.
Peter was an eyewitness
of Christ glory,
but he says in the second Peter
1:19, that the prophetic word
is even more sure
than his experience.
Peter even participated
in miracles himself.
But he points to the Scripture
as a more sure
foundation.
The Bible does
not instruct us to seek
after signs and wonders.
Instead, we are told
to stop seeking those things
and to trust
in the finished Word.
The early church fathers knew
that they were not apostles.
They knew that
there was something distinct
about the apostles and distinct
about the apostolic age.
And so when you get to,
for example, John Chrysostom
in the East and Augustine
around that same time
period in the West,
both Chrysostom
and Augustine are very clear
that they believe that
the extraordinary, miraculous
sign gifts ceased after
the end of the apostolic age.
And that was the de
facto view of Bible believing
Christians throughout really
all of subsequent
church history,
including the Reformation.
The view of the church
has been decidedly Cessationist.
Then you had a group
of Continuationists,
especially
Evangelical Continuationists
who have tried
to find examples of miraculous
gifts throughout church history.
But the reality is,
in order to find evidence
of the miraculous gifts
throughout church history,
the modern continuationist
has to redefine
what those gifts are,
what those gifts were.
They generally do so
by pointing to fringe movements
and fringe groups
like the Montanist movement,
which was declared a heresy
by the early church.
Now, in the case, the
Montanists, they make claims
that they are actually
the fulfillment of Christ's
promise of the Comforter
of the Holy Spirit.
They are the ones
who are bringing new revelation
to the church,
as well as declaring that
that Christ was coming
very soon,
even right after their lifetimes
or before the
end of their lifetimes,
which didn't come to pass.
Montanus
and the Montanist movement
was soundly rejected
by the early church.
And so in the second century,
the early church rejected
what was tantamount
to the charismatic movement.
Later on, as we see,
particularly after
the periods of persecution,
Constantine has come into power.
Christianity has become
legalized.
That's the time period
where we see mass expectation
of the miraculous.
You do have a kind of
continuationism
developing in Roman Catholicism.
Their notion of
canonizing certain people
as saints was built upon
the notion of the continuation
of miraculous signs.
One story says that
when Saint Patrick
was baptized as an infant.
The priest was blind
and couldn't
read the baptismal order.
So he took the baby's
hand, made the sign of the cross
over the ground,
and a spring of water burst
forth to wash the priest's eyes.
And his vision was restored and
he could perform the baptism.
Oh, that's just crazy
legendary stuff.
Other miracle stories
are associated
with the supposed power
of relics of dead saints,
or the bread
and wine of the Eucharist,
which were, of course,
believed to be Christ's
actual body
and his actual blood.
And then you come to the
period of the Reformation.
It's very clear
that the magisterial reformers,
Lutheranism and reform movement
coming out of them
rejected on the one
side, Roman Catholicism.
On the other side,
they were rejecting
the anabaptism,
believing in the revival
of the miraculous gifts.
The Zwickau
prophets, Thomas Muntzer,
Melchior Hofmann, Jan Matthys,
all of whom demonstrated
themselves to be false prophets.
They claimed that
the Holy Spirit
was telling them
to incite revolution,
telling them
that the New Jerusalem
would be in places
like Strasbourg
or Mnster, Germany.
Obvious false prophecies.
And the reformers denounced them
in no uncertain terms.
In fact, Martin Luther quipped
that the radical reformers
had swallowed the Holy Spirit
feathers and all,
which was his way of saying
they had a distorted view
of the Holy Spirit.
And then they had gone
headlong after that distortion
to be in Rome with a Roman
pontiff who believes that he's
speaking on behalf of the spirit
and in doing
so is burying the word of God.
To be
there is not to be Protestant
and biblical
and to be an Anabaptist.
The Charismatics of his day,
or someone who believes that
the Holy Spirit is speaking
through all sorts of people
outside of the Word of God
and thus bury the Word of God
is also not to be Protestant.
In other words,
to believe in Sola Scriptura
is to be a Cessationist.
That's
fundamental to Protestantism.
Thus,
if you are not a Cessationist,
you are not historically
a Protestant.
The reformed Orthodox
in the Puritans
consistently dismissed
the idea that miraculous gifts
of the Spirit continued
after the foundational period
of the Christian church.
in terms of the origins of
the modern charismatic movement.
I think we have to start
with someone like John Wesley
in the mid 18th century
in the Evangelical
Awakening in England.
He held a two stage
view of sanctification
that believers are converted
and then they live
kind of an up and down
Christian life for a while.
And then it's possible
at a later point post conversion
to have an experience
that elevates you
to a higher plane of spiritual
existence or living.
And in Wesley's view,
you could actually attain
perfection in this life
prior to glory.
He called that second experience
the second blessing.
And one of his successors,
a man named John Fletcher,
actually associated that with
the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Then, a century later, during
the second Great Awakening,
you have that two stage view
of sanctification
combined with the emotionalism
that was popularized by Charles
Finney and others.
You set the stage
for Charles Parham,
who was a Wesleyan
Holiness minister, to suggest
that maybe the second blessing
ought to elevate us to a place
where, as Christians,
we experience
the same miraculous sign gifts
that the Apostles experienced
in the Book of Acts.
It wasn't really
until the beginning
of the 20th century
that the Charismatic Movement
began in earnest.
There were people
who had tinkered with
healing gifts and healing
claims up to that point.
But the gift of tongues
first manifest itself really on
the very first day
of the 20th century.
on January 1st, 1901.
Agnes Ozman,
who was one of the women
who was studying
under Charles Parham,
she began speaking in tongues.
Other students
also began speaking in tongues,
became known as Pentecostalism,
because the idea is
that they were speaking
in the very same
kinds of tongues as the apostles
on the day of Pentecost.
And that,
of course, is important
because the Apostles on
the day of Pentecost
were speaking in genuine human
foreign languages,
which they had never learned.
And Agnes Ozman, Charles Parham,
they all insisted that
they also were speaking in
genuine human foreign languages,
which they had never learned.
In fact, Agnes
Ozman claimed to be speaking
in the Chinese language.
Pictures of her
writing survived.
You look at those pictures
and it's not Chinese text
at all.
It's just scribbling.
One of his students,
William J. Seymour
came out to Los Angeles,
and it was
while he was teaching in
some of those churches
that revival broke out.
And it's known as the Azusa
Street Revival of 1906.
And it was characterized
again by speaking in tongues.
Azusa Street
is what got Pentecostalism
really started.
And you have a number
of Pentecostal denominations
that grow out of that,
such as the Foursquare Church
and the Assemblies of God.
Azusa Street Revival represents
the first wave
of the Pentecostal
and charismatic Movement.
You have
the original Pentecostal first
wave Asuza Street,
the second wave, the Charismatic
Renewal Movement,
and the third wave,
the continuationist
charismatic movement
within evangelicalism.
Some of the
best known leaders
throughout the 20th century
in the Charismatic Movement
turned out to be fakes
and frauds and
and for various reasons,
discredited themselves.
John G. Lake, Amy Semple
McPherson,
Smith Wigglesworth
or Kathryn Kuhlman
They were theological heretics.
They were prolific
false prophets.
Most of them
were sexually immoral.
So how is it
that these great generals
of the Charismatic Movement,
these men and women
that God supposedly
used to bring about the greatest
move of His Holy Spirit
since Pentecost were false
prophets, liars, charlatans,
and sexually immoral?
And now here's
the host of the PTL Club
the president of the PTL
television network, Jim Bakker.
It actually got worse
from there.
Please welcome the Colonel,
Colonel Sanders to PTL.
The once sacred
turf of television evangelism
has been slipping
and sliding of late due
to the disillusioning scandals
of some of the key players
In the eighties and nineties
you had a series of scandals
with Jim Bakker and
Jimmy Swaggart
Swaggart is stepping down
from his powerful TV ministry
while the Assembly of God Church
investigated him
for having an affair
with a prostitute.
I have
sinned against you, my Lord.
I have sinned against you,
and I beg your forgiveness.
Jim and Tammy
Faye Bakker and the continuing
saga of the PTL Club have taken
on the irresistible dimensions
of a national soap opera.
Jim Baker was found guilty
on all 24 counts
of wire
and mail fraud and conspiracy.
What's remarkable
is that every one of those men
continued in ministry
and were still accepted
by segments
of the Charismatic Movement.
Dr. Michael Brown is here.
A joy to be back
with all of you.
Thank you.
That doesn't
disqualify a Charismatic.
If you can prove he's a fraud
that works all the way
up to someone like Todd Bentley,
who is probably as despicable
a character as ever,
took the stage
in the name of religion.
He had these ugly
fascinations with violence
and low brow
means of supposedly healing.
It took a long time,
a remarkably long time
for even some of the better
Charismatics
to say, no,
this guy is not real.
He's dangerous.
I remember early on
when he came on the scene,
people asked John Piper
what he thought of him.
Piper
was reluctant to say anything.
He said, I just want to watch
and see.
To turn to
the miraculous gifts tongues,
healing, prophecy.
Where would you say
the place for those gifts
would be in the life
of the church today?
Yeah.
I would want my people to know
I believe in those things.
I want them to flourish
in those things.
You could say got
a word of knowledge for us?
Got a word of prophecy?
If you're scared of that
kind of language, you can say
has got impressed
upon you, in some way,
Something that you think
somebody in this room
or all of us need to hear
from your walk with God?
And open yourself up
to that.
Piper, Storms,
and Grudem, and Carson
describe themselves
as open but cautious.
So here you have
guys with at
least some reformed inclination.
They have been working
really hard to say
They believe in a closed canon
and Sola Scriptura,
even though they also want
to say that they in some sense
they believe in the continuation
of prophecy in tongues.
Once you open the door to the
modern charismatic teachings,
how is your urge
and your prompting
of the Spirit of God different
than Benny Hinn?
And who's to say who's right
in the issue?
I'm not suggesting that anyone
who claims to be a reformed
Charismatic should be classified
in the same category
as a Benny Hinn.
But Benny Hinns
positions are very much
connected to the idea
that God is still
speaking today.
So if someone says
God spoke to me, it
becomes the ace of spades
and it trumps everything.
Really,
that's the historic trap.
If you go all the way
back to the Garden of Eden,
you see that
the serpent that he tempts Eve
in such a way as to suggest
that God's Word wasn't enough.
Charismatic
theology has influenced
and affected
so much of our thinking and our
our theology in ways
that we don't often recognize.
And I think that's probably
the most true with our worship
Worship today,
there is this expectation
that if
the Holy Spirit is present
and if we are truly worshiping,
there's sort of going to be this
tangible felt presence of God
which doesn't find
any root in Scripture.
There's no description
in the New Testament of that
sort of expectation that comes
from the charismatic movement
in this expectation
of the signs and wonders
and the felt presence of God.
In fact,
the praise and worship movement,
the praise and worship
theology comes directly
out of Pentecostalism
and Charismaticism.
But it has now branched
beyond Charismaticism
to where even churches
who don't affirm
the continuation of sign gifts,
who claim to be Cessationist,
nevertheless worship
as if we are expecting
this sort of felt
presence of God in the context
of corporate worship.
The Charismatic Movement is
extraordinary in church history.
It's the first time
that these
sort of miracle claims
have moved in to the mainstream
and become what probably if you
just did a numerical count,
you'd find it's a majority
who believe these claims.
And yet most of the claims
are pretty easily falsifiable.
My name is Andreas.
I come from Switzerland
and I'm a former
Charismatic, now Cessationist.
Virgil Walker.
I have been involved in
what was called the COGIC
Church. Church of God in Christ.
I'm Kofi and for really 17
years of my life,
I grew up as a Pentecostal
charismatic.
My name is Becky,
and I come from a Pentecostal
Foursquare denomination
background.
I think what attracted me to the
denomination was the passion,
you know, the excitement
to being actually
excited to go to church,
wanting to go to church.
We went to church.
People spoke in tongues,
People laid hands on people
and they fell out.
Friday night
you would come to church.
They would have these
purging sessions
and the pastor would walk down
the aisles and lay
hands on people and they would
kind of convulse to the floor.
He was speaking in tongues
over us.
My sister was there,
and then she fell.
And then I'm like,
I'm going to fall.
I'm going to fall.
And then I just eventually fell.
People prophesied.
And for me,
that was just normal.
Everyday Christianity is what
Christians did.
You're expecting to have
those things happen to you.
Everyone else
is in this state of mind.
I want to
say it's some sort of hypnosis.
All the spiritual exercises
that are there really began
to cause cracks somewhat
in my Christian worldview.
So I had to figure out
what's really going on
in this movement.
When you compare
the biblical gift
of prophecy, tongues
and healing to the modern
continuationist version,
what you find
is that prophecy, tongues,
and healing in the New Testament
meant something way different
than the way in which
those same terms are being used
In the modern charismatic world.
Continuationists have redefined
the gifts showing the disconnect
between what's happening today
and what was actually happening,
that was truly miraculous
in the New Testament.
The first time
the word prophet is mentioned in
the Bible is in Genesis,
but there's not much definition
given to it. The first time
there's definition
given as an Exodus
chapter seven.
It's a fascinating passage
because what the Lord does
is he explains to Moses
how his relationship to Aaron
is supposed to work
and how Aaron is supposed
to preach to Pharaoh.
And what he says is Moses,
in this scenario,
you are going to be like me
and Aaron is going to be
like a prophet.
You'll speak to Aaron, and Aaron
will say
what you said to Pharaoh.
And so it shows the relationship
between the Prophet
as the recipient
of God's revelation
and what he is charged to do.
What the real prophet does
is quite simply,
he's given a message by the Lord
and he proclaims it to the one
to whom the Lord told Him
to proclaim it.
The biblical word
that we translate as prophet
literally means mouthpiece.
The prophet
became God's functional mouth
by which God would speak.
God use the man as an instrument
to immediately
deliver his exact message,
not by
bypassing the Prophet's mind,
but by preserving the exact
words that God intended for him
to speak.
A true could not speak error
in the name of the Lord
because God supernaturally
protects his own message.
As with everything else
in the Bible,
you have the real thing
and you can have counterfeits.
And so the Bible speaks a great
deal about false prophets.
I mean, they were actually
to be executed.
Why would that be?
Because God guards
his own revelation.
He magnifies his word.
Above all is his holy name,
we're told, in Scripture.
And so those who come claiming
to speak on God's behalf
in the name of God
with the very Word of God, are
held to very, very, very high
standards of accountability.
And those who are proven
false ended up therefore
having to suffer very, very,
very high forms of
punishment as a result.
You go back through
the Old Testament prophets
and you read in Ezekiel
and Jeremiah
about how the Lord describes
the false prophets
who took his name
and his word upon their mouth
and began to say things that God
had not directed them to say.
And the Lord has these
scathing rebukes
for these false prophets,
where he says,
they say that I sent them,
but I have not sent them,
and they claim to speak for me,
but I have not spoken by them.
And then the Lord says,
I will therefore
judge these false prophets.
And some of the severest
judgment is upon
those who claim to speak for God
but were not in fact
hearing from God.
What are the gravest dangers
of the Charismatic movement is
that they will put words in
God's mouth
and they think nothing of it
at all.
I believe prophecy,
if I can steal Wayne Grudems
simple phrase,
is simply speaking forth
in merely human words
What God has spontaneously
brought to mind.
Theyre subtle faint
impressions, like little nudges
and divine hints,
and that individual then
speaking forth what they sensed
God had been saying.
They say things like,
I feel the Lord is telling me.
I sense
the Lord is speaking to my heart
and that
and He might want me to do this.
I think this is what the Lord
might be trying to tell me.
Here's what I believe
the Holy Spirit has impressed
upon my heart.
For the year of 2023,
the rise of the Wild Ones
to be able to confront systems
that have been oppressing
God's people.
The Lord's also
been speaking to me
significantly
about relationships,
and He's going to change
your circles
to change your levels.
You need to evaluate it,
need to determine whether or not
this really,
in fact,
is something that we could have
some degree of
confidence is from God.
I gave prophetic words
to people, to someone
have a word, and it was like
that adrenaline starts to come.
And I remember
just saying something like,
you know,
the Lord wants our obedience.
If we could only obey God
in 80 percent
of that obedience,
then give that 80 percent.
Give 100 percent
of that 80 percent.
You know?
So dumb.
the way it was often
explained was, yes, God
gave us the Bible for sort of
general moral direction
and telling us the truth
about him,
but for a specific direction.
This is how God acts as a loving
father to us.
You know, he doesn't just
leave us to figure out things.
Sometimes he will directly speak
to us and tell us what we need
to know, Tell us what to do,
give us direction in real time.
For example, if I say that
the Holy Spirit spoke to me.
Take this job.
Don't take this job,
but take this job.
It's a word from the Lord.
So there is love Bible,
the Word of God.
And then through history,
God has led his people,
spoken to His people,
directed his people.
He continues to do that,
but it's not the Bible.
So there are two completely
separate animals.
The view of continuing
revelation would in fact lower
people's view of Scripture.
When we have these
two sources of revelation,
the the me-specific voice
inside of my head,
and then this object of thing
that was spoken 2000 years ago
when those two things
were in conflict,
which one do you think ends up
giving way to the other?
It's always the word of God
that ends up getting redefined,
reinterpreted or pushed off
to the side or ignored in favor
of the personal, fresh, modern,
intimate revelation from God.
The problem with
the Charismatic Movement today
is that they don't have
a single prophet who has
been 100 percent accurate.
The honest Charismatics
will admit that they are wrong
far more often
than they are right.
If you used a magic eight ball
to make all of your choices,
you'd be right
at least half the time.
And charismatic prophets
are wrong more often than that.
So I ask
what is the value of this gift?
As a younger prophet,
I've tried to do the best
that I can,
you know, to kind of navigate
the plans of the Lord that
I had had a series of dreams.
At the end of 2020,
I had seen Donald Trump
being elected president.
Many of the modern day
prophets made a lot of news
with their presidential
prophecies, their prophecies
of who would win the 2020
United States
presidential election.
Of course,
all of them, 100% of them,
prophesied that Donald Trump
would win reelection
in November of 2020,
and he would serve a second
consecutive term
in the White House.
The fireman prophet
also predicts the church will
thrive. Will be an eight year
presidency?
Absolutely.
When I
woke up this morning, I heard
four years.
TRUMP!
Well, obviously
that did not happen.
And they just did this
massive face plant.
I really want to apologize,
sincerely apologize,
for missing the prophecy
about Donald Trump.
I prophesied that he would win
another term,
and I was completely wrong.
We went through this season of
me offering a letter of apology
to the Body of Christ
for what I believe was a miss.
It doesn't make me
a false prophet, but it does
actually create
a credibility gap.
I want to look into the reasons
why there is a
disconnection there.
In what I heard.
They also failed
to prophesy COVID coming
even when COVID did come
Then they began to prophesy
that it would be gone
by April of 2020.
Well, that didn't happen.
I command this this, this virus
to to to leave both,
to leave people's
minds, to leave people's hearts,
to leave, to leave the earth.
I just, I command this virus to
leave right now in Jesus name,
in biblical times, if you get up
and you speak in God's name
and that's not God's Word,
you were stoned to death.
But today somebody does that
and either it's inconsequential
or it doesn't come true,
nothing happens.
It's just another day ending
in Y
in the Charismatic community,
They at least should be
exocommunicated.
If the word ends up false
or wrong, let's call it wrong
False sounds like he got a demon
or something.
You know, a false word.
That means like the brothers got
horns, you know, he missed it.
He just missed it.
If they humble themselves and
say, okay, we got this wrong.
We apologize for hurting
your faith and misleading you.
Let's
figure out what went wrong.
Great.
Then we don't throw them
under the bus
and we work it out.
How did this go wrong?
How did so many
hear the wrong thing?
And I believe there are actually
some simple answers
to those questions.
I was not aware that I was under
the power of witchcraft
so severely.
I was confronted by a couple
of prophets who said, We're here
to break the power of witchcraft
off of you.
It's been a pretty wild ride.
And I was going to say,
I can see the peace on you.
We've had some different things
that are said over 30 years
and we've put out statements
and said, this was wrong.
And you know
what? We're not quitting.
But the guy said it was wrong.
It's not a big deal.
Ive never had to make a public
apology for a bad prophetic word
that I've given.
This is my very first time.
I know Ill learn from it.
[sucks teeth]
And they're
back on TV in the next week
filling auditoriums
and conferences.
No consequences, whatever.
Charismatics will acknowledge
that Old Testament
prophets were held to a standard
of 100 percent perfection.
But they somehow say that, well,
in the New Testament,
prophets today arent held
to the same standard
that the Old Testament
prophets were.
The New Testament gift differs
from that which Isaiah or Daniel
or some other Old Testament
prophet spoke
in the Old Testament
If you said it wrong
once, you're false.
But in the New Testament
we judge one another.
And the reason
we judge one another,
because there are
some things said wrong.
The Charismatic scholar Wayne
Graham states
that prophecy in ordinary
New Testament churches
was not equal
to Scripture in authority,
but was simply a very human
and sometimes partially mistaken
report of something
that the Holy Spirit
brought to someone's mind.
The Continuationist view of
ongoing prophecy,
allows for modern prophets
to speak on God's behalf
with less than perfect accuracy
because they have concluded
that prophets in the New
Testament operate differently
than Old Testament prophets.
In their view,
God gives a direct revelation
to the prophets mind,
but the mind of the Prophet
is not protected from
mishearing, misinterpreting,
or otherwise misrepresenting
God's true revelation.
They believe that this results
in a prophecy that is a mixture
of God's true revelation
and the prophets own thoughts.
The resulting prophecy
might even be completely false,
since the prophet
so misunderstood
God's word to them.
In this way
they end up believing
that there are true prophets
who can make false prophecies.
Prophecy when it comes,
is like pure, like spring water.
It's delicious, right?
The person giving
it is like a rusty old pipe.
And then by the time
it gets to me, I'm like, Oh,
and they give me a word.
And I go, Yeah,
that's not, none of that's true.
None of that's true.
I appreciate that the brother
stepped out in faith to do it
right?
But he was, in fact, wrong.
Okay.
And that's going to happen.
I'm not saying they're false
prophets.
I'm just saying they're bad
ones.
There's a difference between a
false prophet and a bad prophet.
False prophet has an evil heart.
A bad prophet
just gets everything wrong.
The question is what
What is a false prophet?
In Acts chapter
21, Agabus prophesies about Paul
Agabus said that the,
that the Jews would bind to Paul
and they would hand him over
to the Gentiles.
What actually happened
is that the Gentiles
bound Paul
and turned him over to the Jews.
Now, what's the point?
The point is,
is that there's a difference
between a bad prophetic word and
a false prophet.
So in
attempting to make the case
for the second tier
of New Testament prophecy,
they look for examples
in the New Testament
of prophets
who got their prophecy wrong.
And the problem is
there are no examples.
but they attempt
to find an example
in chapter 21
with the Prophet Agabus.
So here's Agabus.
He predicted a famine.
He's well known as a prophet
in the Jerusalem church,
and well know
probably amongst the apostles
because of the predicting
that famine.
Agabus - a prophet - was wrong.
Agabus gave a prophecy.
He takes Paul's belt
and he says,
thus says the Holy Spirit. Paul,
when he gets to
Jerusalem, is going to be bound
by the Jews with his belt
and delivered
over to the Romans.
And then when you read later
in Acts 21,
Paul gets to Jerusalem and
he is accosted by a Jewish mob.
And then the Romans show up
and take Paul into custody.
And Continuationists
look at that.
And they say, see,
Agabus got the general scope
of his prophecy correct,
but he got the details wrong.
There are two core elements
to Agabus prophecy.
Number one, that he would be
bound by the Jews,
and number two, that he would be
delivered over to the Romans.
Luke says that Paul was seized
and dragged by the mob
there in the temple.
When Paul appears
before Agrippa, he again
says that the Jews seized me in
the temple.
Paul was restrained in some way
and the natural
implication of the text
is that what Agabus said
would happen did happen,
and Luke just didn't find it
necessary to repeat the detail
That was obviously predicted
from beforehand.
How did the Jews sieze Paul?
It's likely
that they tethered him
using his own belt
just as Agabus prophesied.
What about the delivering over?
When the Roman soldiers arrive,
the Jewish mob
backs away and hands
Paul over to the Romans.
And to make that point crystal
clear all the way in Acts
chapter 28, when Paul is meeting
with Jewish leaders in Rome,
he says explicitly
using the exact same word
that he was delivered over
from Jerusalem to the Romans.
Paul didn't think that Agabus
got any of the details
of his prophecy wrong.
Luke doesn't imply
that he got any of the details
of his prophecy wrong.
When you look through church
history at Bible interpreters,
no one even imagines
the possibility that Agabus
got his prophecy wrong.
It's not until the modern 20th
century Continuationist
view of prophecy
that anyone even suggests
that Agabus got the details
wrong.
It's not so much that I'm
defending Agabus reputation.
Agabus is in heaven.
He doesn't care.
It's that Agabus
is quoting the Holy Spirit,
and Luke records
that quote under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.
So we have a quote
from the Holy Spirit
recorded in the Holy Spirit
inspired Scriptures.
If you're telling me
that the details of that quote
are wrong, you're telling me
that the Holy Spirit
got something wrong
and that is blasphemous.
No new
definition of prophecy
is given by Jesus Christ.
No new definition of prophecy
can be found
any place in the New Testament.
And in fact, the Jews,
to whom the teaching of Jesus
and the Apostles came,
would have rejected
a new definition of prophecy
when they had in their canon
a very clear definition
of prophecy already.
In Deuteronomy 18, Moses
prophesies
the coming of the
ultimate New Testament
Prophet Jesus Christ himself.
He then tells the people
as they look
forward to this prophet,
exactly how they are
to differentiate false prophets
from true prophets.
He instructs.
If you say in your heart,
how may we know the word
that the Lord has not spoken?
When a prophet speaks
in the name of the Lord,
if the word does
not come to pass or come true,
That is a word
the Lord has not spoken.
The Prophet has spoken it
presumptuously.
And again Moses tells us
how such a self-proclaimed
prophet is to be viewed.
The prophet
who presumes to speak a word
in my name
that I have not commanded him
to speak,
that same prophet shall die.
Deuteronomy
18 says that a prophet
who gets his prophecy
wrong is presumptuous.
And second Peter 2
says false teachers will speak
arrogant words of presumption,
meaning
they're going to speak things
that will not come to pass out
of their own presumption.
The gift of prophecy
in the New Testament
was held to the same standard
as the gift of prophecy
in the Old Testament.
Behold, I am against
those who prophesy lying
dreams, declares the Lord,
and who tell them and lead
my people astray by their lies
and their recklessness
when I did
not send them or charge them.
Do not listen
to the words of the prophets
who prophecy to you,
filling you with vain hopes.
They speak visions
of their own minds,
not from the mouth of the Lord.
The Prophet Jeremiah makes it
abundantly clear where the
visions and dreams of today's
so-called prophets come from.
Their words are completely
coming from their own minds.
God has not spoken
to them at all.
I would go up to
someone and I would say
I have a word from the Lord,
but to me it was more of like,
I want to encourage
you and the Lord, but
looking back,
that's a scary thing.
That's a very scary thing.
While that I think often
is unintentional
and people
sort of unwittingly say,
The Holy Spirit told me this
or God told me this
when they don't mean that
in the same way that others do.
Let me just encourage you.
That is not a biblical way
to express yourself.
You're becoming, in
biblical terms, a false prophet.
Because you're saying this is
what the Holy Spirit said,
This is what God told me
when God is not
in fact the source of that.
To attribute
thoughts in your mind
to the Holy spirit you become
a Jeremiah 23 false prophet.
You have your own visions,
your own ideas, your own dreams.
They become
a false prophet, de facto,
even if that's not their heart.
Now, if you think that I'm
overemphasizing something,
maybe stressing a little bit
beyond reason,
I would just simply point you
to first Corinthians chapter 14,
verse one,
where Paul commands
the Corinthians
and all believers
earnestly the spiritual gifts,
especially that you may
prophesy.
Paul is commanding us
here, earnestly
desires spiritual gifts,
especially prophecy.
This is not optional.
If you are not earnestly
desiring spiritual
gifts, especially prophecy
you are sinning.
They keep making the argument
that we're sinning
because we're disobeying
a command of God
by not seeking
the gift of prophecy.
Sam Storms and others
who make that kind of argument
know that
all the commands of the Bible
come to us
with an assumed context.
We might go to Matthew ten
and the commands
that Jesus gave to his disciples
when they went out on mission
for Him.
And we could point after point
after point show how Paul
did not obey those commands
in his own missions.
He did take money from churches.
He did take more than one
cloak with him.
So we have to accept the fact
that biblical commands
come to certain
specific people with certain
specific assumptions.
The same thing is true
with regard to the command
to seek the gift of prophecy
and First Corinthians 12 and 14.
It came in the context
where God was still giving the
gift of prophecy to the church.
If we can show that
the gift of prophecy
is no longer
being given to the church,
the command is
no longer obligatory for us.
No one today has the ability
to see into tomorrow
and reveal that to the Church.
The aspect of foretelling
has ceased.
There is a gift of forthtelling
to stand before group of people
and to take the Scripture
that has already been given
and to declare it
with clear teaching
that is a God-given gift.
We have the comfort
of the Inspired
or authoritative inerrant
Word of God
that is always true.
It is our guide for life.
Thank God Christians
have a guide for life.
We have the privilege
of having an authority
behind us in these 66 books
that can guide us
in every area of life.
When the Day of Pentecost
arrived,
they were all together
in one place and suddenly
there came from heaven, a sound
like a mighty rushing wind,
and it filled the entire
house where they were sitting
and divided tongues as a fire
appeared to them
and rested on each one.
And they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak
in other tongues as the Spirit
gave them utterance.
The significance
of the day
of Pentecost is great.
It was the crowning event
in the life of Christ.
It's a Christ event,
and it was the pouring
out of Christ's Spirit
so that Christ is with us now
by His Spirit.
One of the manifestations
of Pentecost
was the Apostles
speaking in other languages.
The first time tongues
appears in Acts chapter two,
it's very clear that tongues in
that passage is speaking
known languages that the speaker
had never before learned.
And we know that
because there are two terms
that appear in that passage at
Pentecost in the Book of Acts.
One is the word glosses.
It literally refers
to the organ of the mouth.
That's
where we get the word tongues.
It says they spoke in tongues.
Well, what is that?
Well, later he uses the word
dialecto, which is the word
for languages, and he uses
it synonymously with glosses.
The people
who are hearing the apostles
say, each of us
hear these truths
in the language
to which we were born in.
The gift of speaking in tongues
was the miraculous ability
to speak in a foreign language
that the speaker
had never previously learned.
Why did God give this
peculiar gift to many Christians
in the early church?
Paul answers this question
In first Corinthians 14.
He explains that
the gift of tongues is a sign
not for believers,
but for unbelievers.
Some Continuationists interpret
this to mean that
people speaking in tongues
is an impressive thing
for unbelievers to witness.
But Paul immediately debunks
this idea.
He writes so if the whole church
comes together and everyone
speaks in tongues and inquirers
or unbelievers come in.
Will they not say
that you are out of your mind?
So what does Paul mean, then,
that tongues are a sign
to unbelievers?
You need to go all the way back
to the Tower of Babel
and how the various languages
and nations have warred
and murdered each other.
And God is then going to narrow
in and speak to one man
who is a Hebrew
speaking man, Abraham,
and we're going to have God
speaking to that people
and revealing himself
to that people
in their language,
the Hebrew language.
But he promises that he's
going to bless all the nations,
the language groups of the world
through his seed.
God chose the nation of Israel
and the language of Hebrew
as his primary way of revealing
himself in the Old Testament.
But in Isaiah 28, the Lord tells
the leaders of Jerusalem
that a sign of their impending
judgment
would be that He would speak
to the people with strange lips
and a foreign tongue.
The Lord speaking through
his prophets, is warning
the Israelites, I have
been sending you prophets.
If you don't
want to listen to the prophets,
people of a strange language
altogether will descend
upon you and bring destruction
to you as a people.
Isaiah was prophesying
the coming Babylonian captivity
where Jerusalem and God's
temple would be decimated
and the people would be
carried off by foreigners.
But in first Corinthians 14,
where we are told that tongues
are assigned to unbelievers
Paul references
this same prophecy again
in the context of explaining
the purpose of the New Testament
gift of tongues
by people of strange tongues,
and by the lips of foreigners.
Will I speak to this people?
And even then they will not
listen to me, says the Lord.
The gift of tongues wasn't meant
primarily to be an impressive
sign to unbelieving Gentiles
who spoke other languages.
It is actually a sign
to unbelieving Israel that.
God was judging them,
revealing himself to Gentiles
and choosing to speak in
languages other than Hebrew.
You see that
sign to unbelievers
sort of cutting both ways.
On the one hand, it was a curse.
It was a curse to the Jewish
people
who rejected their Messiah,
but at the same time
it was a sign of blessing
on the fact that God was going
to institute a new thing
in which both Jews and Gentiles
would come together.
As Paul says in Ephesians two
into one new man
Glossalalia is a term
that comes from two Greek
words. Glossa - meaning tongue
or language, and laleo -
meaning to speak.
So when we use those terms
together glossalalia is
used to refer to tongue speaking
or to speaking in tongues.
The modern charismatic
understanding
of the term allows for
glossalalia to refer to ecstatic
spiritual speech that doesn't
conform to any known language.
What many modern Pentecostals
and Charismatics don't know
is that the earliest
Pentecostals all believed
that speaking in tongues
was the supernatural ability
to speak foreign languages.
None of them thought.
It is an ecstatic speech.
Parham was in the newspaper
on multiple occasions
talking about how
now that the gift of tongues
has been restored to the church,
no one is going to have to go
to language school
to learn foreign languages
and well be able
to send missionaries
all around the world
without them
having to spend years training
and learning a foreign language
in order to be effective.
And the budding
Pentecostal movement
actually sent missionaries
to foreign fields,
trusting that they would be able
to just show up,
be given the gift of languages
and communicate
with the nationals
in those foreign countries.
So they went off to China
and India and other places
thinking they were
speaking in those languages
while proclaiming the gospel,
only to figure out
that no one in the audience
was able to understand them.
And of course,
they all came back
utterly disappointed
and dejected when they realized
that what they were doing
in terms of their modern
glossalalia did not communicate
in terms of a foreign language
with the people
they were trying to reach.
And so consequently,
the Pentecostal movement
had to change
its understanding of Scripture,
to fit its experience
rather than acknowledging
that its experience
did not fit the clear
teaching of Scripture,
they opened up a second category
of tongues
that included
unintelligible speech.
You don't find the notion
that tongue
speaking in the Bible
is anything
other than real human languages
until you get to the modern
charismatic movement.
The Charismatic movement has
invented a new kind of tongues
because the tongues
that they practice don't match
what the Scripture reveals
as the real gift of tongues.
And as a result, they had to
broaden the biblical category
to make
room for their experience.
Yes,
you can speak in tongues.
The more you do it, the better
you'll be at it.
But we can at least
get you started in this.
I just want to help you
to activate your tongues.
It's very simple.
All you have to do
is just choose to step out
and speak in tongues.
Now, I don't want you
to overthink it.
Just don't speak in English.
Don't think English.
So the first thing you need to
do is just clear your mind.
I want you to flip the switch
from your mind
to your spirit, man.
Don't let your mind
take control.
Allow your spirit
to take control.
You're going to start
to feel this
almost like a bubbling up
that happens
just as you feel it
bubbling up. Begin to speak.
Don't fight it, don't resist it.
It may be a simple syllable,
but continue to release it.
Da, da, da, da, da, da,
da, da, da, da, da,
Even if it sounds weird
to your mind, it doesn't matter.
It's not a language of the mind.
It's the language of the spirit.
Da, da, da, da, da, da,
da, da,
Im gonna give you the command
of faith
And at that very moment,
you're going to no longer
speak in your native language,
but you're going to speak
out of your spirit.
One, two, three!
[gibberish]
Yes, the man mind says It's
weird, but the spirit says Hello
this is awesome.
[gibberish]
Oh ho ho ho ho ho.
[gibberish]
and congratulations
You've been filled with
the Spirit
and you can now
speak in tongues on demand.
I tried to speak in
tongues.
I tried for years with the hope
that that something
external would become internal
and would come out
probably the number one reason
most people don't receive
the gift is
they're just overthinking it.
People wonder,
what if this is just me
praying this or worse, what
if this is a demonic spirit?
What if this is not of God?
What if what I'm
receiving is fake?
What if it's all just hype?
What if it's all just emotion
and we become afraid?
So if you're waiting
for your mind to comprehend
everything that's going on in
praying in tongues,
you're not going to pray
in tongues.
Then I'm listening
to all of these people around me
speaking in tongues,
and I waited for this music
to kind of drive
what was happening
till the point where I kind of
grew in this emotional state,
where all of a sudden
I may said a phrase or two,
and I thought, Oh, I got it,
that's it.
I'm speaking in tongues. Right?
And it was a checkmark
for your kind of your spiritual
journey, Right.
Did I have an experience?
Absolutely. I had an experience.
Would I examine the scripture,
say that that what I experienced
looks like what
the text of scripture says?
Absolutely not.
It's just babble
for the purpose of an ecstatic
emotional experience.
You could study that language
for forever.
You're never going to come up
with a pattern.
It's just it's
just plain gibberish.
But I read Romans
chapter eight that
the Spirit speaks with groans
that are too deep for words.
Maybe that verse is
what is meant by this.
I feel this overwhelming urge
from the Spirit
to utter something,
and that's what comes out.
You have a choice.
You can choose to pray
with your spirit,
to pray in the spirit,
or you can to pray with
your mind in your own language.
So you can choose to
pray in mysteries,
or you can choose to pray
in a known language.
You have the ability
to do that, to choose that
there is no given permission
in Scripture to speak some
gibberish nonsense that no one
is going to understand it.
But think about what Jesus said
when he taught us how to pray
in Matthew 6:7,
He said, don't heap up empty
phrases like the pagans do.
And then he says, Pray
then like this.
And Jesus taught
us to pray, clear prayers.
He was never praying anything
that was some otherly language.
And if there was anyone
who was going
to pray in such a language,
it would certainly be the one
who was sent down from heaven.
Christ himself.
What do you mean by
speaking in tongues?
My sense is from reading First
Corinthians 12 that it was more
of an ecstatic utterance
that didn't have
any ordinary human meaning,
but tongues of men
and of angels.
Tongues of angels.
Often people will appeal
to First Corinthians 13,
where the Apostle Paul says,
If I speak in the tongues of men
and of angels,
but have not love,
then the practice
of speaking in tongues
is not suddenly speaking French
or suddenly speaking German,
but speaking allegedly
the tongues of angels.
You can literally say
whatever you want and justify it
when Paul is speaking of
tongues, of men and of angels,
what he's trying to do
is speak in hyperbole
or intentional exaggeration
for the sake of effect,
to illustrate the point
that even if you have the best
and the highest gifts
that reach up to heaven itself
and you have not love,
you have nothing.
For example, he says, Even
if I give my body to be burned,
but I have not love, it
profits me nothing.
Not that you ought
to speak in tongues of angels,
but that you ought to love one
another as Christ is loved you.
And that's the stress
of the text.
It's actually sad
and unfortunate
that while Paul is seeking
to direct our attention
away from the gifts
and to the grace of love,
we take one phrase
the tongues of angels
and make it
the primary focus of what tongue
speaking should look like.
First Corinthians 14s
rules for the use of tongues
in church
are simply ignored in our day
and Continuationist churches.
The fact that only two or three
tongue speakers should speak.
They want to be trampling
on each other
and standing up
and babbling at the same time.
The fact that Paul says
in the context there
that women should not speak
in tongues in church.
Those tongues
had to be interpreted or
they were not to be permitted.
There are these rules that Paul
gives that are widely ignored.
And this is just another sign
that what's going on,
not biblical tongues.
You do have these
and I've been in these meetings
five, ten thousand people
all speaking in tongues
at the same time or,
you know, an individual
to speak in tongues
with no interpretation,
no one knows what's being said.
All we know is apparently
the Holy Spirit is at work.
I'm sorry,
that just doesn't work.
Either theyre actual languages
like the Bible
describes them to be
or this is something else
that's going on.
And yeah,
you could argue, okay, someone's
making it up as they go along.
Is it demonic?
It's just not the biblical gift.
People
say, I don't understand, Sam,
how you can preach verse
by verse through Romans
and in your private
devotional life
you speak in tongues,
which I do every day.
And I say, well,
the apostle Paul wrote Romans
and he says right here
in 1 Corinthians 14,
I thank God
I speak in tongues
more than you all.
Oh, well, I dont think I ever
thought about it that way.
It's good enough for
Paul its good enough for us.
Paul says not to forbid,
to speak in tongues.
To which I would reply,
I've never in my life forbidden
anyone to speak in tongues.
As far as I know,
no Christian pastor has ever
forbidden
anybody to speak in tongues.
However, the verse
doesn't say don't forbid people
to babble incoherently.
I would forbid that,
but that's not tongues.
Even though
it comes out of people's mouths
and their tongue is involved.
It's not the gift of tongues.
And yes,
I will forbid counterfeits,
but that's just what
a faithful minister would do.
And that's why there is
no room for open but cautious
Jesus enemies
were on the lookout,
always trying to trap him
when he performed miracles.
One Sabbath,
Jesus entered the synagogue
and the Pharisees
watched him to see
if he would heal on the Sabbath.
Jesus came to a man
whose hand was withered.
Jesus said,
Stretch out your hand.
The Pharisees were filled
with fury
and sought to destroy
Jesus Jesus.
If somebody has the gift
of miraculous healing,
surely all he needs to do
is to prove it.
Assuming
he went into a hospital
and cleaned out
a ward of patients,
who are we to say that
he hasn't got that gift?
Jesus doesn't owe you anything.
He doesn't have to prove
anything to you,
nor does the Holy Spirit
have to prove anything to.
You when it comes
to a gift of healing.
If you've got
the gift of healing,
then come to this children's
hospital.
If you've got that kind of
prove it to me attitude,
that is not confidence
in goodness and character.
That is pride at its very core.
If somebody says,
Do you really have the gift
of teaching?
Go ahead, teach us something.
I mean, I'm
not going to balk at that.
I'm going to say, sure, let's
sit down and open the word.
You know, do you have the gift
of encouragement?
Well, encourage me.
I'm not going to say, well,
God doesn't need
to prove himself.
We think God heals.
We think God does
the miraculous.
He just doesn't do it
through these agents
to whom he gives the
power to work at will like that.
if you claim
to have the gift of healing,
if asked to go ahead
and demonstrate that
it really should be no problem
to go empty
the children's hospitals or
or look at a just a dear brother
who sits in a wheelchair
or sister sits in a wheelchair
in the
in that space, in the aisle
in church every week.
If I could just make walk,
I would.
Right.
And if there is compassion
in your heart
to help a
fellow believer walk upright,
heal the man.
First off, nobody owes you
anything
and nobody
needs to prove anything to you.
However,
I would be glad to do that.
Fly me out there
if I have open reign to pray for
people in a hospital. I'm in.
I would love that.
Prayer is not
the gift of healing.
The gift of healing,
Dare I say it,
results in healing.
In the New Testament
It's always
an authoritative command.
Get up and walk.
And he got up and walked.
To have the gift doesn't
mean to pray to have the gift.
It is his gift to wield.
What is claimed to be
the gifts that have continued
bear no resemblance to the gifts
that were in the New Testament.
The idea that somebody has
the gift of healing
is the false notion
that a person actually can have
a healing crusade
or a healing ministry.
And that's their gift.
I wish I could come down
and lay hands on
every one of the thousands
that are standing.
That's impossible.
I came all the way here
from Delton, and I just wanted
to get healed by you.
I've been waiting
so long to see you.
We see in its pretended state.
We don't see it in reality.
Jesus didn't just come
so you can have
a passport Heaven.
And this is why we're called
full gospel preachers.
Cessationists
don't believe in a full gospel.
but I'm a full gospel Christian.
Some of you are going to get
healed on this broadcast,
and I feel that anointing strong
right now,
God's
going to touch your body today
in Jesus name,
that demon of cancer is
backing off your life in Jesus
name. Any demonic assignment
against your mind, against
your body, is being broken now
in Jesus name,
whether the devil likes it
or not, he is losing your
address from today onward.
Healings in the New
Testament were immediate
and they were complete.
A man cannot walk
and now he can walk.
A man is blind
and now he can see.
Whereas the quote unquote
miracles that are claimed today
usually are things
that are not observable.
There's a claim
that there's been healing,
but there's no way to measure it
or it is something
that is only partial
or something that is gradual.
If there were truly healings
where a man who was lame
can now walk, or a man
who is blind can now see,
that would make world news,
but you never see those sorts
of things.
Healings
people claim to have happened
are gradual or secret
or non observable.
When Jesus raised Lazarus
from the dead in John Chapter
11, there were some Pharisees
and unbelieving Jews
who were present there,
and when they left
and went back to the other
Pharisees
and began to have discussions
about how they would deal with
Jesus,
none of them questioned
the legitimacy of Lazarus.
What they did instead
was plot a way
to kill Lazarus and kill Jesus
because they could not deny
that that miracle had happened.
Neither believers
nor unbelievers
ever tried to deny
that the miracles were real.
The only thing
the Pharisees could come up with
was that they
could attribute the miracles
to someone other than God,
and they attributed it to
the devil instead.
Matthew, Chapter 12.
The Blasphemy
of the Holy Spirit.
They were attributing
to the devil
the works of the Holy Spirit.
That was the best
that unbelievers could come up.
When Peter and John healed
the man who had been born lame
from his mother's womb,
and he was laid at the gate
that is called beautiful.
This was a genuine miracle,
a genuine sign and wonder.
And everyone knew it.
And seeing the man
who had been healed,
standing with them,
they had nothing to say
in reply.
What shall we do with these men
for the fact
that a noteworthy miracle
has taken place through them
is apparent
to all who live in Jerusalem,
and we cannot deny it.
The New Testament
miracles could not be refuted.
I can absolutely refute
the fake signs and wonders
being purported
in the Charismatic Movement
today.
I can absolutely refute
what Todd White does out
on the street when he lengthens
people's legs by a half an inch.
That's a parlor trick
In the time of Jesus
and the Apostles, unbelievers
were scrambling for explanations
as to how these undeniable
healings could happen.
And today
it's exactly the opposite.
The people who believe in
gifts of healers
are scrambling to explain
why nothing is happening,
as it happened
in the days of Jesus.
A lot of people report healings
and you look back a year later,
it wasn't real, was it a lie?
Some people lie.
They just lie about healings.
Other people feel pressured,
so they say they're healed
when they're not.
Other people genuinely
feel good.
They feel better two days
and then check in a month
or two later.
Well, what was that?
I don't know.
The very fact that there is
a debate
is self-evident proof that these
sign gifts do not continue.
Theres healing
in the church today.
Of course. Theres instruction
in the
letter of James about
what's to be done,
and the elders are to be called
for and prayer is to be made.
But there isn't someone
who has a gift of healing.
One of my grandsons has got
Klinefelter syndrome.
He has an extra male
chromosome.
There's nobody in the world
today, nobody in South America
or Asia or Africa or North
America that we can call for
who could heal him.
Or those that have Down
syndrome.
There's no record of
a miraculous healing like that.
That was something
that was unique
in the ministry of the Lord
and his apostles.
At the end of the day,
when we pray for the sick,
we leave the results
in God's hands.
We know that God has the power
to heal.
He's the
one that created their body.
And so
we pray for their healing,
but we accept the outcome
as the will of God.
We are getting today
of restoration
and health restored
after illness, and the church
bringing a sick child,
bringing a cancer patient
and crying to God
that God would heal and God
hearing
and answering and healing.
But everyone is going to die.
And so,
you know, let's face up to that.
We see these things
through a glass darkly now,
but in heaven we'll be at peace
and we will know
why my wife died
as she did, why I have a
grandson
who's got an incurable condition
and God will make it
plain. God is good.
There will be a day.
Jesus Christ will raise
every body.
And everybody's dust,
which is precious
in the eyes of God, will be
glorified and transformed.
They will be the resurrection
unto glory.
We look forward to that.
But we don't see that today.
And we cannot see it today
because it's not the time
for that to happen today
in the Bible,
what we see is that
Christians are told to pray
for one another,
but that's not what the modern
healing movement teaches
with the modern healing movement
teaches us that there's
some amount of faith
that we generate
or some confidence we need to
have in some particular healer
that that he can,
as it were, by his own, will
heal us because of a gift
that he's been given by God.
And the sad reality of it is
it is a tremendous source
of confusion
and disappointment for so many
people who believe the lies.
If it's
always God's will to be healed,
but the healing does not come,
then the question must be asked
Whose fault is it?
It cannot be God's fault
because he's perfect.
So the only other one to whom to
look is the one who is sick.
Lack of faith, lack
of making the right confessions,
lack of giving.
Maybe you're not even saved.
It must be your fault
because it can't be God's fault.
So for the last few years,
I have believed in miracles.
And I have believed for healing,
you know, and I'm so shocked
because every time I would pray,
nothing would happen.
It gets discouraging.
Sometimes Id even go oversees
to where I'd hear about
all these miracles happening,
go, Let me at least see it.
And I'd get there.
Whether Africa,
India, whatever, and nothing.
And then
two weeks
ago we were in Myanmar, Burma.
So I've heard of
some evangelicals
who have gone to a place
called Myanmar or Burma.
I can't even tell you
how intense,
how amazing the experiences
we had were.
This lady had built
relationship
and somehow was able to work out
so that we could
go into the village.
and while there have claimed
that they actually came along
and healed everyone,
they touched.
Everyone who touched them was
healed.
People started coming forward
for healing.
Every person I touched
was healed.
You guys okay?
This is this is craziness to me.
I have never
experienced this in 52 years.
And what's interesting about
that story is
I actually know of men
who are church planters
on the ground in that country,
who know the men
who arrange these healings.
Unbeknownst
to the visiting preacher,
poor people of all ages in
a village are hired to act
as if they are deaf or blind,
and they are instructed
to play out a dramatic healing
when the visiting preacher
touches them.
In this elaborate scam,
the preacher is actually tricked
into believing
that he is performing miracles.
I'm talking like a little boy
and a little girl who were deaf.
We lay hands,
she starts
crying and smi -
Again these are not Christians.
These are not people
you ever heard about Jesus?
There's fees paid out
to various people to heal,
because what that does
is that brings
more American preachers
and then more money
into the country.
And so they arrange
a series of healings
and these men
come back with these stories.
And were like, lay
hands on your little brother.
You know, we lay hands on him
and he starts hearing
for the first time. You guys,
this is out of my comfort zone.
This is stuff Id read about,
but I'm going, man, it happened.
It happened.
They're being suckered.
Unfortunately, we go overseas
and we lose all sense
of discernment.
Things we would never consider
acceptable here,
We just go overseas
and discernment is gone
and we just we're just suckers
for every charlatan
that comes along.
I thought I had faith,
but my faith was
at another level.
One of the reasons
I absolutely despise
the charismatic movement
and all that it does
is because it teaches people
to be gullible
and open
to the idea of fake miracles.
And as soon as they discover
this isn't real, it's fake,
they don't just abandon
their Charismatic convictions.
They sometimes abandon
faith in Christ altogether.
What I'm struck with is not just
this doesn't fit with the Bible,
although it doesn't fit in
any way with biblical teaching.
But but just the human cost,
the spiritual cost of this
kind of false
teaching at a moment
when when individuals
are at their most desperate
and have the most openness
to hearing genuine truth
God and know they need something
from God, know that theyre
that they're insufficient
in themselves
to do what needs to be done,
and they're looking to the Lord
in some way.
And yet someone steps in
and gives them this
this false,
self-aggrandizing teaching.
I've seen many other lives
be destroyed
when they finally woke up
and realized
these things aren't even real.
They think nothing is real.
They question
whether Christ is real,
and it's hard to get anyone
who's gone through that
to come back and take a serious
look at faith in Christ
focused on the Gospel
rather than focused on
these phony miracles.
For the first 15
years of my pastoral ministry,
I was a very rigid,
dogmatic, cynical, snarky,
Cessationist
who did not
believe that the Spirit of God
operates in the fashion
as he did in the early Church.
To my everlasting shame
for which I have repented many,
many times
when I read my New Testament
and I see the way in which Jesus
and the Apostles
were confirmed
through the miraculous signs
that they performed
as messengers of God,
who brought new revelation
from God.
And I read about the way in
which the gift of tongues
operated on the day of Pentecost
and the 16 different language
groups that were represented
in terms of dialects
and languages spoken
by those who were giving praise
to God
in languages theyd
never learned before
And I read about the
way in which people
were healed immediately and
undeniably with a spoken word
or with the touch of a hand.
I read that on the pages
of my New Testament,
it just makes me
want to fall down and worship
because our God is a great God
and the Spirit was doing
amazing things to confirm
the person and work of Christ.
When I compare that to
fallible, errant prophecy
to speaking gibberish.
[babbling]
to hucksters
getting up and pretending
to heal people.
It's my zeal
to see the true work
of the Holy Spirit magnified
that motivates me to call out,
and confront that
which uses the same language,
but is not the same thing.
I think
the most dangerous aspect
of those who believe
in the continuation
of the extraordinary
gifts of the Spirit
is ultimately to confuse
their experience
with conversion.
People can have many experiences
that maybe
look exactly the same as what
Muslims and Mormons
and other people claim.
You can look at people
exhibiting Hindu Kundalini
and those look exactly like
you see in charismatic churches
today.
They laugh uncontrollably,
they get slain in the Spirit
and they speak in tongues
in exactly the same way
that Charismatics do.
You literally cannot
tell the difference.
Ey, Ma, ma, ma, ma
[gibberish]
They look exactly alike.
Pagans do it too.
It's very possible
for us to rest
in extraordinary experiences
that we've had
or believe that we've had,
rather than
resting safely in Jesus Christ.
Charismaticism
was invented around
the turn of the 20th century.
They've had a hundred years
to produce
anything that all Christians
would look at and say
that really validates
charismatic distinctives.
Just imagine
one person, just one
with the gift of healing
going in and empty out
just one ward of children
dying of cancer
Theyve had 100 years.
They haven't done anything
like that.
If a Charismatic
wants to make the case
that revelatory and attesting
gifts are still operative,
he has to argue that case.
If they were still continuing,
no argument would be necessary.
We'd all know it.
There is another possibility -
that these gifts did
what God meant them to do
and they've retired, successfully.
Cessationism is false doctrine.
If you're going to
a Cessationist church,
you need to go find a new church
cause nobody should be
going to church
hearing about what
God isn't doing anymore.
We need to be in a church
where we're talking about
what God is doing today.
Cessationism
is not about limiting
the work of the Holy Spirit.
It is instead
about magnifying the true
work of the Holy Spirit
and not being satisfied
with cheap substitutes
or counterfeits.
We've got to really back up
and ask a really fundamental
question about
who the Holy Spirit is
and what he's doing.
The Son is sent by the Father
on mission for a particular work
To redeem us.
And he pours out the Spirit
for a particular reason.
He says he's sending the promise
of the father upon us.
For what purpose?
That we would be his witnesses-
And particularly there
he means the apostles, first
and foremost - in Jerusalem,
starting there,
and then to the nations,
to Judea,
Samaria,
to the ends of the earth.
So the Holy Spirits mission -
his whole mission - is to come
and proclaim the work of Christ
through the Apostles,
and then the church they found
He's going to preach that
work through those preachers.
The Spirit
is going to take that Word,
and he's going to transform them
so that they believe that Word.
In John 16,
Jesus said that he would
send the Holy Spirit
and He would convict the world
concerning sin
and righteousness and judgment.
when God's Word is spoken,
and we see, according to the law
that we've broken God's law
and our hearts are convicted
and we realize I am worthy
of the judgment of God
when the Gospel is declared,
the good news that Jesus Christ
died for our sins
as an atoning sacrifice,
that he rose from the dead,
conquering the grave,
that he ascended into heaven,
and hes seated at
the right hand of the Father,
interceding on our behalf.
We come to
receive and accept those truths
because of the power
of the Holy Spirit.
As John 6:44 says,
No man can come to me
except the Father
who sent me draws him.
Long my imprisoned spirit
lay fast bound in sin
and nature's night.
His heart is a heart of stone.
God removes that heart of stone
and He replaces it
with a heart of flesh
that is alive.
It is the work of regeneration.
God breathes into a dead man
and He brings a person to life,
Opening up somebodys eyes
so that they see Jesus.
That is the miracle
of the new birth.
That's what the Spirit of God
is doing all over the place.
The Spirit comes into the soul
of the believer and enables
their minds
to comprehend, to receive,
with meekness, to believe,
to be impacted
and transformed by that Word.
That I think is the huge mistake
people make.
They think the Spirit
is going to speak to them
outside the Scripture
when the wonderful reality,
the joy of being a Christian
and coming to the Scripture
is the Holy Spirit
turns on the light
to the Scripture itself
and enables us to understand it
in a deep,
profound, life changing way.
We need, really, a
clarion call to the substantial.
It's a lot more exciting
to go see someone stand up
out of a wheelchair,
supposedly, than it is
to be told from the pulpit
You need to die
the self every day.
You need to take up your cross.
You need to be following
the Lord Jesus Christ.
You need greater self-control
through the Ministry
of the Holy Spirit in your life.
You need to be putting to death
obvious sins.
You need to be growing in
likeness
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
You're
not going to gather a crowd
with those sorts of emphases.
But that's where the emphasis
falls in the Bible.
The Spirit seals us,
and sanctifies us and guides
our steps providentially.
He comforts us,
he encourages us,
He illuminates
the Word of God to us.
He regenerates us, He gives us
spiritual gifts.
He empowers those for service.
He uses those gifts in the lives
of other people that we serve.
In the power of those gifts,
He builds his church.
He unites us around the truth.
All of these things,
the Spirit of God does,
and they don't necessarily
put goose bumps on our arms.
They are the unnoticed
and everyday work
that the Spirit of God
does in His people
for the glory of our God.
Peter's Pentecost sermon
He promised them
that they would receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The gift that He was talking
about was the Person
of the Holy Spirit.
God has many attributes.
We talk about His love, His
mercy, his justice, His grace,
another attribute of God
is that He gives His Holy Spirit
to people, to sinners.
He gives Himself.
He gives the gift of himself.
Well, if we don't have the
miraculous gifts,
what do we have?
We have the self-authenticating
word of God
when we have Holy Spirit of God
promise to bless that word.
There's
no reason for disappointment.
Well, is that it? Yes.
We have the self-authenticating
word of God, accompanied
and attested by the Holy Spirit,
and that is all we need.
What does Jesus say?
He says,
if they don't believe the Word,
they're not going to believe
even someone who has been raised
from the dead.
This word
is the final Word.
I ain't got no money
I ain't got no change
I ain't got a dollar bill
to my name
I ain't got a dime
I ain't got a cent. No
But I got a lot,
a whole lot of love
that I havent yet spent
wooooooooh
I aint got no rubies
I aint got no pearls
I ain't got no diamonds
to give to my girl
But what I do have
Ill share with you
cuz what we got is all we need
when this life is through
Whoa, whoa, whoa
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
whoa, whoa
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Oh I aint got no mansion
Here on this earth
All my posessions
they aint got no worth
But i put my stock in
my future rest
so if youre asking me
I got all I need
and Im truly blessed
Ain't got no money
aint got no change
I ain't got a dollar bill
to my name
I aint got a dime
I aint got a cent
no
but i got a lot
whole lot of love
that I havent yet spent