Prophesy

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Kiesler, and Andrew Hudson. So we had an interesting question that we had sent in to us that we all decided that we wanted to tackle and that we thought might be at least interesting that we haven't really covered before because it's rather a narrow focus on a very specific subject, but we wanted to answer it for you anyways.

So the question reads, how would you define prophecy biblically? It seems that a definition has to include foretelling.

Would preaching be replicable as well? Does this happen today? And what is your understanding of worship in the church?

If someone wanted to wave banners during worship, would your church allow something like that?

Michael, wanna start us off? So these questions are related generally by the type of worship experience that is common amongst

Pentecostal or Charismatic churches. The idea of prophesying over people or prophesying of coming events.

Foretelling, not just forth telling, but foretelling is not only common but expected in Charismatic or Pentecostal churches.

Also, the waving of banners, the use of banners in the worship service as a form of spiritual warfare or in terms of activating the presence of God in some special way, tapping into special graces because of the different types of banners being used, different names being on them.

All of these are common in certain Charismatic movements. So they go together.

Now, before Chris shares with us about banners, which I appreciate him thinking through that for us, the first question has to deal with prophecy.

Now, when we think about the term prophecy, we probably have a lot more scriptures to think about than banners, though banners are in the

Bible. We are told about prophets and how to think about their prophecy in the scriptures.

So one particular passage is going to clarify this for us in Deuteronomy 18 when it talks about that there is a prophet.

Now, Moses, of course, a great prophet, a vital prophet for the children of Israel.

But Deuteronomy 18, verse 15 says, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst.

So Moses is saying there's one coming who's going to be like me. Now, Jesus would later on identify himself as that prophet, but he's as greater than Moses.

Peter says that was Jesus as well in Acts 3, right? Yes, exactly. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren, right?

So Jesus was from the lineage of David, from the tribe of Judah, so he is from his brethren.

And then Moses says, him you shall hear. Now, remember when Moses and Elijah showed up on the

Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus. Yeah, let's make three tabernacles, right? Right, and so Peter is like, this is great.

Elijah's an amazing prophet. All the things he prophesied of. And Moses is a great prophet. And yeah, and here's

Jesus. So let's make three tabernacles up on this mountain. This is great.

So Peter's got a plan. All future revelation's going to come through this group of prophets. And then

God says no. God shuts that whole thing down. And in the

Transfiguration of Christ and the glory of Christ, his glory shines so bright that Moses and Elijah aren't seen anymore.

And the voice from heaven, the Father says to the Son, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Listen to him, listen to him. And then when Peter and James and John look up, they see no one except Jesus himself alone.

That's the way that Matthew renders it. So it's pretty clear about who we're supposed to be listening to. Who is the fulfillment and the pinnacle of all revelation is in Jesus Christ.

Now, Jesus Christ is the cornerstone and he has built the foundation of his church on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, okay?

But he's the cornerstone and he has built that foundation. Now, we're not living in a time when the foundation is still being laid.

Jesus promised to build his church. He didn't promise to forever be laying the foundation, right?

So the foundation is laid upon what? The apostles and the prophets. And then the description that we have of the new covenant temple is that it's being built up, being built up into the full stature, the full measure, right?

Yeah, living stones. Yeah, living stones. The picture of the foundation of the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21, not where we are going to live, but who we are, right?

The new Jerusalem is the bride of Christ. So again, we're not going to live in a new

Jerusalem. We are the new Jerusalem. That's what it says in the text. We look at this construction of that city.

There's a foundation and then look, look at all the walls. Now, there's a sense in which this new Jerusalem is being presented to us in a future sense because we see it completed.

But we have confidence that he's going to complete the work. Amen. Yeah, Jesus is the cornerstone and the capstone. So he's going to finish it.

But what we see here is that there's a foundation and we see the foundation of the apostles being mentioned here as well.

The point being made here is that there was a foundation period for the church and ever since then, Christ has been building up the church upon that founding revelation.

So when we think about prophets, Jesus Christ is the greatest prophet. And in the meantime, between Moses writing this in Deuteronomy 18 and so on, how do you know which prophets were saying the right things and the wrong things?

Ultimately, it's going to come down to whether or not they agreed with the word made flesh, Jesus Christ himself. But there are tests given to us in Deuteronomy 18 wherein a prophet that speaks in God's name, but if he speaks a word in God's name that presumes that it's not a word that God actually commanded him to speak, that prophet shall die,

God says, in verse 20 of Deuteronomy 18. And then you say, well, how do we know what's a real prophet and a false prophet?

Right, right. Okay, well, he says in Deuteronomy 18, 22, when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the

Lord has not spoken, this prophet who has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him. And he's slated for death, okay?

So when it comes to prophecy foretelling, telling something that's going to happen in the future, okay, there are a lot of so -called prophets who have been doing this a lot in charismatic churches and in Pentecostal churches, and I don't know of any of them that have been held accountable to this passage of scripture, that they deserve to die if they prophesy something and it doesn't come to pass.

There have been many books, many TV series, many predictions about the rapture and the return of Christ and so on, and people get these things wrong and they're still revered, all of their material is still purchased, they still accrue to themselves filthy lucre over and over again as false prophets, and there doesn't seem to be any concern about whether or not they're getting it right.

And there's all sorts of shenanigans that go on about, well, it was gonna come true, but then the devil got involved and redirected it, and it's basically a con game.

Now, there are passages in the scriptures where it says that we are to test the prophets, test the spirits, do not despise prophecy, and so forth, which is correct, but how do we know if something is in agreement with the

Holy Spirit? Who does the Holy Spirit testify to? Testifies to Christ, that's right. Everything comes into connection to him, and he builds the new

Jerusalem, the new covenant temple on the foundation of who? Prophets, find prophets in the

Bible, they're part of that foundation laying, and the apostles, you find apostles in foundation laying.

We are not in foundation stage. I will say this, anybody who runs around saying, I prophesy,

I prophesy, or I'm an apostle, I'm an apostle, I guarantee you they're trying to lay a new foundation, new foundation outside the word, foundation outside the scriptures, foundation outside of Jesus Christ, and they're not to be trusted.

There is a lot more that we could go into in terms of whether or not there's continuing revelation.

I think that's a bit more broad than this particular episode's going to allow us. Of course, you can always write in and ask us more about it, but there's a lot more to be said about whether or not there is a continuing so -called gift of prophecy for the church.

Was it a gift? Yes. Was it good for the church? Yes. Do we read about the prophesying of various saints in the scriptures?

Yes, and what a blessing those things are, and we treasure those prophecies as they were given to us in God's word.

We rejoice in that. Yep. I think the question was talking about, there was the question about future telling, telling the future, and asking how we define prophecy.

I've heard someone use the definition that prophecy and preaching, they've put those together, that prophecy is speaking

God's word, and in particular, if you're speaking God's word, some of those things in the

Old Testament were things that were yet to happen. They were saying what God was saying, and they were things about the future, and then when you come into the

New Testament, you have Jesus Christ, who many of those prophecies are about, come on the scene, and he fulfills the old, he wraps that up, he gives instruction to how the church is supposed to run, he gives instruction on how to live as a

Christian, so that prophecy now is speaking God's word. It's the same, but now that Jesus Christ has come, and everything is pointing to him, and is fulfilled in him, it's less about future tellings, because any future tellings, they were the word of God about Jesus, and so they were future to them, whereas now, as New Testament Christians primarily, we're looking back towards Christ and what he's done, and we're looking forward to his coming again, which has already been given to us in his word.

Yeah, I was just, I'm reflecting on the nature of the canon of scripture, or what God has spoken, it's just the multiplying of what

God says outside of what scripture has, is very, very hard to take in all the things that are being said about what

God says about what will happen, where you have, now I'm weighing what this so -called prophet says over here, and then what this so -called prophet says over here, and they're in disagreement, well how can

Christ's kingdom be divided against itself, and the nature of the spirit? How do you guys see the canonicity, the idea of a continuing unfolding of what else we need to know, like we need to know this in addition now, or is it more so like revelations that are personal in nature, so I have a personal word for you, this is a -

See that's, like I find that difficult, because then they'll have different categories of prophecy.

Yeah, and this gets to what Michael was talking about, this test for, the Deuteronomic test for a prophet, they fail it constantly, constantly.

Yeah, or they'll say it's not authoritative. Well if it's God's word, if you received it from God, how can it not be?

You can't have it both ways. Yeah, how can it not be authoritative? Either it's of the spirit or it's not. Right, so then you get into the questions of canon.

If it's authoritative, should it be written down for people to follow? A private interpretation or revelation of prophecy, like who are we now,

Joseph Smith? There's a real question, a real pastoral question about whether or not there's a satisfaction in Christ.

Is there a satisfaction in Christ? If there is, there's gonna be implicit trust in the sufficiency of the scriptures. The scriptures are safe enough for a child to wade and deep enough for an elephant to drown.

You're not going to find anything deeper and more meaningful in the so -called prophecies than what's already in the scriptures.

It's not as if you've mastered the word of God, mastered the scriptures and all of the riches of Christ, and so that there's nothing left really to be said there.

Yeah, now it's time to move on to the next level, huh? Yeah, as if you're going to be deeper and wider and more rich than Christ revealed in the scriptures.

It really comes back to him. Daniel 9, verse 24, in talking about the fulfillment of all of God's promises in Christ, as many as are the promises of God, they're yes in Jesus Christ, 2

Corinthians 1 .20. There's a timeline to that. Ultimately, the person of Christ is revealed.

Again, all these prophecies point to him, okay, but where are we to look? So Daniel 9, verse 24 says 70 weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city.

And of course, Daniel does the math. It's actually about seven weeks and 62 weeks and then the final week. And it chords with the history of Israel as they rebuild the city walls and the temple under the

Persian regime. And then the time between the decree from Cyrus all the way to the baptism of Jesus Christ is on the dot to the year, 483 years, right when

Jesus Christ is made manifest as the Messiah. And then the last week is three and a half years and three and a half years.

It's split up there in Daniel 9 for us. This has been used for generations to evangelize the

Jews and say, your Messiah did come. Look, look in Daniel, there's the time period. And look, here's

Jesus in Nazareth and this is the time period. And it's a wonderful thing to look at fulfilled prophecy and you look at Jesus Christ.

But Daniel 9 talks about those 70 weeks and it says 70 weeks are determined for your people and your holy city to finish the transgression to make an end of sins.

To finish what transgression? Transgression was against the old covenant. Transgression in the New Testament is used continually either of Adam, Adam transgression against God's design for him as the image of God, transgression in the garden or transgression is used to speak about breaking the old covenant.

That's how that term is used. To finish the transgression, to finish up the breaking of the old covenant, okay?

To make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity. How is that done? How is an end brought to sin and how is reconciliation for iniquity brought?

Except by the death and resurrection of Messiah. To bring an everlasting righteousness, right? Where Jesus says all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Here he comes, the king of righteousness. To seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.

So in the last week, the three and a half years of Jesus's ministry and then three and a half years that mark from the moment

Jesus said you see the abomination of desolation or in other words he translates in Luke the army surrounding

Jerusalem. Three and a half years from the time that Cestius brings his armies to surround Jerusalem to when

Jerusalem is destroyed, the old covenant is over. So the first three and a half years, Jesus's ministry. Last three and a half years,

Jesus's judgment of Jerusalem. Once that's done, it seals up. Seals up vision and prophecy. This passage has long been interpreted and said that's why there's no

New Testament writings after AD 70. All vision and prophecy are sealed up. Everything in the

New Testament was written with a look towards the destruction of Jerusalem, towards that judgment on the horizon.

All the New Testament was written with a sense that we are living in the last days, not the last days of planet Earth, the last days of the old covenant.

So when we think about canonicity, why is it that we don't have continuing revelation? There was a point being summed up in Christ.

And again, the fact that we don't have any new prophecy from handed down from God, new revelation from God, doesn't mean that we're deficient.

We haven't even, I like what Paul Washer says. I haven't got out of the foothills. The mountains are still before me.

There's so much more of the glories of God. I mean, what do you think we're gonna be wondering at for all of eternity?

So to go back to what you were saying earlier about coupling together preaching and prophecy, and then after, or when

Christ gets here, there's not necessarily no more need for prophecy, but that everything before it was pointing towards Christ, right?

And what he was going to do, what his work was going to be. His prophecies, though, when he's, during his ministry in Judea, what do they do with that?

Because we were just talking about how he's prophesying against Jerusalem and looking toward this destruction that's coming in AD 70.

I'm not sure exactly what group of people you were talking about, so I'm wondering what they do with his prophecies.

About Jesus' prophecies? Are you referring to all of that discourse right now? Yes, specifically.

Sort of specifically that, yeah. So, I mean, they'll hold them to be future. Typically, they'll say, yeah, those are, he was telling the future, so he was prophesying about the future.

But I'd say, sure, he was telling the future. The temple was still standing when he said that.

He had not done those things yet. They'll hold it to future to now, saying that those prophecies have not been fulfilled yet.

Whereas we would say he was speaking God's word, and God's word was that it was in agreement with what he had said in the

Old Testament about judging Israel for their covenant breaking, and then that's what he did in 70

AD. So do they have a problem with prophecy today until those things are fulfilled? These, who you're talking about?

Like new prophecies? Yeah, new prophecies. It just depends on who you're talking to. Like many charismatics, and it depends on who you talk to, because you'll have some that'll give different categories, like prophecy, a word of knowledge, or they'll have different terminologies, and they'll put them at different levels.

Like this is authoritative. They'll say, thus says the Lord, and then they'll tell you, and it's supposed to have come from God. Or they'll say,

I think the Lord is leading me to tell you this, and then you take it and see if it's true or not.

So you get those different levels. But I like what John, I think it was John Owen who said, if your word lines up with scripture, then

I don't need it. And if it doesn't line up with scripture, I don't need it. Then I really don't need it. Then I really don't need it.

So that kind of being the case, back to a couple of those original questions.

Man, I forgot where I was going with that. Help me, guys. There was a question about prophecy. Prophecy and preaching. Is it the same thing?

Prophecy and preaching. There are many passages in the New Testament that talk about people prophesying or what to do in the worship service in 1

Corinthians 14. And there's going to be some disagreement from different scholars who would even maybe agree with our position about that there's no future revelation, there's no more revelation from God other than what we have in the scriptures in terms of special revelation.

But there are going to be disagreement about how to interpret that term, prophesy or prophecy. So they're going to look at that passage in 1

Corinthians 14, so this was proper order for the church during that era. But then you get into all kinds of concerns about, well, what about the different points of order?

Is that still valid today? Or are we just tossing all of 1 Corinthians 14 to the category of different culture, different time period, don't need it.

And so there's a lot at stake about how you read these things. Now, I want to say best intentions. There's a lot of people who have been discipled to think of having an inkling about how to encourage somebody as the very word of God.

Okay, well, maybe it was just that you wanted to encourage someone and you had a good idea about how to do it and you were creative in telling them because you're made in God's image.

And so you wanted to relate to this person in a kind way and you were creative in doing it. Do you have to say this was a word from the

Lord? No, you don't have to do that. In fact, there's a danger Jesus talks about in over -spiritualizing your language.

He warns against taking oaths and taking all these different things and in the name of the gold of the temple and so on and so forth, trying to make it more authoritative than it would be otherwise.

There's no need for that. You can just say someone, yeah, I want to encourage you. I think that you sing well.

You should use that gift for the Lord. I just want to encourage you in that. You don't have to say, God told me to tell you go sing.

You don't have to say it like that. In terms of prophesying and preaching, there's an element in the term of prophecy that there is an idea of forth telling, telling for the truths of God.

And in that sense, I think there's plenty of application to be made from 1 Corinthians 14. I mean, I'm not the only one who teaches from the scriptures and proclaims the word of the

Lord on Sunday. Others do it as well. I know you and Jay, when you lead music, every once in a while you'll say something and relate to some scripture and that's great.

That's orderly. Ken, one of our elders, will maybe give the context and say something about the scripture that he's reading in the public reading of the word and we can have it all in the same service.

I mean, there's a sense in which 1 Corinthians 14 is still being observed. It's not about, I have a future prediction that I think will come true.

That's not, I don't think, the point of it. Well, and I even think of examples. So we've got, he's telling

Timothy, as far as like, we don't have women pastors. We don't have women preachers. But then you've got places where there are people that are prophesying, maybe outside of a church service.

I think where they're prophesying to Paul about his imprisonment, you know. Was it

Philip's daughters? Agabus. Agabus, yeah, Agabus, and then you've got a couple of daughters that are prophesying.

But that's not within the context of like a service. They were gathered together and they had this word.

And so you could see a difference between like preaching and prophesying. And they were foretelling what was gonna happen.

In fact, in Acts 20, it said everywhere that Paul went, the spirit was saying, you're headed, the spirit through the saints were telling

Paul, foretelling to Paul, you are going, you're heading for suffering. You're heading for imprisonment.

You're heading for trouble in Jerusalem. And Paul says, I'm still going. Yeah. Again, welcome to the foundation building era of the church.

Right, he's writing scripture as he's going to these places. But this is why Acts is the second most abused book in the

New Testament, other than Revelation. It's because people look at that and they don't see the unique time period of the end of the old covenant drawing nigh while the new covenant has just begun.

They don't see it as that foundation building period. They see this is what has to happen in our lives today all the time, right?

Desiring something that was initial rather than rejoicing in the further accomplished work that Christ is doing today.

And just a word from Bavinck. He says, whoever seeks the Christ outside the pale of his word through the spirit alone, loses the norm for testing the spirits and eventually comes to the point of identifying his own spirit with the spirit of Christ.

And whoever studies the word without the spirit of Christ is studying a portrait while ignoring the person of whom it is a representative.

So studying the word is a very spiritual exercise. I think it's important to say. It may not be as fun as floating banners around.

Yeah, banners. But why do people use banners in worship services, do you think? I think there are probably several different reasons.

Just a point of clarification, this is a part of the original question that we read earlier, if you didn't catch it, or if you forgot.

The end of the question reads, if someone wanted to wave banners during worship, would your church allow something like that?

So Chris, go ahead. Okay, no pressure. Charismatic window.

So I've actually been in church services where this was the practice. When I was a kid, this was a common thing.

They'd have banners up on the wall, and they'd be on long poles in the stands. And whenever the spirit was supposedly moving, someone would go and grab the banners, and they'd march them up and down the aisles with the song.

The banners might have nice sayings on them. They might have the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the

Rose of Sharon, or they'd have different sayings about. These are the banners you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were in our church, but they were so high up that you couldn't get them. They might be hanging from, yeah. Oh my goodness.

That's because Baptists are at a lower level of, right, we had to be below the banners. You can't reach them. Right, so there's different,

I think there's probably different motivations. If you're looking at the Old Testament, there are verses that talk about banners in different ways.

So like when they're talking about going to war, you've got mentions of banners there. When the

Israelites were out in the wilderness, and they would be bitten by these serpents for their complaining.

God sent the serpents, by the way. They were complaining. God sends the serpents, and then he gives them a way out.

You can raise this, what was the name for it? Nehushtan. Nehushtan, yeah. The brazen serpent. Right, the brazen serpent lifted up, and anyone that looked to it would be saved.

That's foreshadowing. That's a sign and a symbol. So you've got these different ways that the

Bible talks about banners being used, and war, and all of that type of stuff. So I think you have some well -intentioned churches kind of importing that in, right?

We're spiritual warfare. That's what we're supposed to do. So there were banners there. We're gonna be biblical.

Just rip it out of its context and pop it down. We're gonna do that too. But I think if you look at more broadly the way that the

Bible uses the term banner. So I'm going to Isaiah, and there's two places. And there's many more you could go to, but Isaiah 5, 26, it says,

And so here it says a signal, and then God is whistling, and then people from all of the nations are coming to this signal.

Another place is Isaiah 11, 12. He will raise a signal for the nations, and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Some of those places where it's translated signal, it's the word banner. So he will raise a banner. It's talking about God raising a banner.

And I think it's the same context as when they're out in the wilderness and being bitten by the snakes. Anyone that looks to this banner will be saved.

Well, that's a sign and symbol of Christ. The banner that has been raised for us is

Christ. There's places in here where it talks about God raising his banner, a banner of love over us.

Andrew, you had brought up Titus, and you were talking about where it says the love of God, our

Savior, and then it talks about Jesus Christ, our Savior. And I think it's that same thing.

God has raised a banner for us, and that's Jesus Christ. And so rather than going to a physical banner that we've got to grab, and this is how we glorify

God or rally the troops, it's the preaching of his word. It's lifting Christ up.

It's glorifying Christ. That is the raising of that banner. But I think that this question about what's good and proper for worship as far as banners or what we do in worship is an interesting question.

It could be a springboard for other things, like what would you allow in worship? So if someone were to bring in a banner, we don't have any, so that's not happening.

But if someone were to bring - You'd have to supply your own. Yeah, you've got to bring your own, and there would probably - Puggle it in like you're in a stadium.

Right, and then we'd probably take that person aside and say, well, this is what we think the Bible says. But what about other things, right, that people do in worship?

We were talking before about David. Oh, yeah, dancing. David dancing.

And so one thing that has often bothered me, but now I think I'm more comfortable talking about, you'll be in conversations about worship and what's good and proper, and it might be a

Baptist person, and they'll say, we need to get more Pentecostal. And what they might mean is just raising the hands.

Someone else might mean, we need to dance. We need to start dancing in the aisles, because that's very broad, just saying, well, we need to be more

Pentecostal. Do you want to go there? Right, so I would say, okay, I see what you're saying.

We don't need a dead letter of the law, right? We can be excited about what we believe. We can be passionate about it.

So what does that mean? So then we could say, instead of we need to be more Pentecostal, we need to be more biblical.

So instead of ripping things out of their context and say, we're going to do these things, we should be reading broadly about all of these things.

So like the lifting of hands. There should be considerations for our brothers and sisters about what they're comfortable with, but then there is also what the

Bible says. And it's not just Old Testament that talks about the lifting of hands. You've got it in the

New Testament. There's several passages there that talk about it. You know, to lift up hands together. Lifting up hands, the elders, when they bless the congregation.

I think of when you dismiss us for church and you've got your hand lifted, yeah. So there are places where I can see that being appropriate while worshiping or while praying.

It talks about lifting up holy hands. And then there's also the bearing with one another comfort levels.

And that's an opportunity. Well, let's go to scripture together and look at it. But as far as like the David dancing,

I'll say, okay, well, what is the context? Is he in a church service? No. No, they're bringing the ark back in after having lost it.

And they were victorious in what they were doing in bringing it home. And he's excited about bringing that back into the town.

So maybe the context is you're victorious in war and then there's some dancing afterwards, right?

Maybe, but I think you've got to look at it rather than just, well, David danced, so I'm gonna dance in this specific context.

Yeah, the presence of the Lord is the idea there, right? Right, yeah. They finally got the ark of the testimony, like it's back now.

It says that he was - This is a joyous occasion. Right, he was fearful to bring it back. So he put it in Obed's, I think it was

Obed's house. And then he was blessed. He was getting blessed. And he's like, okay, cool, let's bring it back all the way in.

And as they're welcoming it back to the mercy seat, the ark, bringing it back in, he's joyful about that.

And he's dancing before the Lord. Saul's daughter got got. As it pertains to the banners question though, in some of these examples that I'm seeing,

I'm hearing texts that are descriptive of an event that's happened. Yeah, you're talking about description versus normative?

Right, so I'm seeing a description of an event rather than a prescription for liturgy or...

Right, yeah, yeah. And like you just said, this was like, this is a massive occasion. This doesn't happen every day or every week in Israel.

So when we're seeing that versus how we're described to worship, are these even supposed to be a part of the conversation is my question.

There's a big challenge here because read it in the Bible. But if your hermeneutical lens for reading the

Bible is my experience, and I like banners, and I like the dancing, and I felt closer to God when this happened, then if I see that in the

Bible, I say, look, see, it's in the Bible, therefore that's why we do it here. But your experience is not the proper hermeneutical lens for the scriptures.

Christ is who he is. That's why in the New Testament, it doesn't say that they were gathering together house to house and together in the temple and were breaking bread and prayers in the doctrine of the apostles and were waving banners.

They weren't doing that in Acts. They weren't running around with banners. They weren't dancing in the aisles. Everything in 1

Corinthians 14 was about being orderly and so that people could understand and not throwing chaos into the mix.

There's a whole different sense there. And it's not to say that it's spiritually dead, but if my preferences are for everything to be very, very lively and overwhelming to my senses, otherwise

I don't think that we're worshiping, then you're going to look for opportunities in the scriptures to justify that preference.

But when you're looking at the fulfillment of the banners in Christ, so also look for the fulfillment of the joy of what happens when you bring the

Ark of the Covenant back in. And you're supposed to be reading these events and all these things in the

Old Testament in light of who Christ is. There's gotta be a real sense of him being the fulfillment of the

Old Covenant. Otherwise, you're just gonna cherry pick the things you like out of it. David danced in a way that was actually against the

Levitical code. The Levites were told to wear a certain amount of clothing and a good deal of clothing so they would not be exposed.

David was out there dancing in a way that was not according to the Levitical practice.

And not much is said one way or the other about what happened other than his wife was pretty ticked off at him.

And she was bitter, and therefore she became barren. But when you read the whole passage, what parts of that are you trying to bring into the church?

And what parts are you leaving out and why? Some people think that the most mystical, rich experience is to go grab the

Old Testament feasts, bring them into the church, and we're basically going to LARP like we're

Old Testament Israelites. Oh, this is real rich and mystical now.

Why do people feel that way? Because they want to bring the experience. And this is where the banners come in.

I feel moved by this experience. It is artistic and beautiful, and there's dancing going on and so on.

And there's a real inability for people to know the difference between being moved by art and being moved by truth.

Now truth should be expressed beautifully, but so often it's I just want to be moved. And I mean,

I've been in services where the music was so loud and the bass so deep that I can't think straight.

And my bowels didn't recover for like another hour. So strong was the force of the sound.

And people like, oh, now I was moved. That was the spirit. No, those were the speakers. That was percussion.

I tend to find myself moved out to the parking lot in a different location. It's like, no, you're replacing physical elements and calling them spiritual.

I did a little research on this banner thing, and this is not going to be everyone's point of view on using banners in the church.

But these folks have spent a lot of time thinking about it. And here's what they say. They say, as the spirit of God called the watchman, they're calling him the watchman.

I'm not sure why. I'm sure it's deep within the tradition. As the watchman directs the waving of flags and banners will open the spiritual gates of heaven.

So by waving these flags, you're opening gates of heaven by doing this, which allows the

Holy Spirit to flow freely among his people. So basically, you're like the guy on the tarmac at the airport with the little lights.

Oh, yeah. Well, then that begs the question, why isn't someone waving them all the time? If that's the case, why are they ever up on the wall?

If you can just wave the banner to bring the spirit. So I don't know, but it says, but if you do this, this is what allows the

Holy Spirit to flow freely among his people with healing, deliverance and encouragement. Flags and banners are vital to the body of Christ, meaning that the body of Christ cannot live without them.

That's what vital means. And they say a whole bunch more stuff on there, but they're used as totems for spiritual warfare.

And you're getting into some major error of superstition and icons in the midst of worship that this should not be going on.

This is thoroughly inappropriate. It also doesn't take into consideration, we talked in a previous episode about the

Trinity. It doesn't take into consideration what the members of the Trinity want.

Yes. He's told us how he wants to be worshiped. Yes, he has. So say you have a preference for a specific experience or doing a certain thing, but then he says obedience is better than sacrifice.

I've been in many experiences where they say, you need to sacrifice and get outside of your comfort zone.

And I'm like, but you're asking me to bark like a dog. I don't think that's obedience to Christ.

I would rather be obedient to Christ on this issue than do something that you're saying is vital or necessary for me to do to be closer to God.

I'm gonna do what he tells me, and in that, I think I'll be closer to the mark than doing these things that you're telling me to do.

Well, Nebuchadnezzar acted like a wild animal, so. Right, and that was not. It's in the

Bible. It's true, it's there. Why aren't you gonna be biblical? They're kind of doing the meme, right?

Lord, please give me a sign whether you want us to use banners in worship or not. And the Lord says, in my word, here,

Lord, just give me a sign, let me know. Well, it says, you know what?

Since you haven't given me a sign, I'll just step out in faith and do it anyways. I mean, they're doing the meme, really.

The last thing to note is that there is historical precedent for using banners and such in worship services in Christendom.

It comes from a rich Roman Catholic background. But again, this comes back to the very close comparison between Roman Catholicism and the charismatic movement.

Yeah, we were talking about that with the revival at Notre Dame 1960s, where you've got this inflow of like a charismatic revival within the

Roman Catholic Church. Yeah, it's very compatible because it's all about experience. Why do people go to these cathedrals?

Because the cathedrals, and they are beautiful, but the cathedrals themselves, their beauty is what moves you.

It doesn't have anything to do with the actual truths of the gospel. I'm being moved by the experience.

And that's what the charismatic approach is, be moved by the experience. And again,

I think there are some people who really, really wanna worship God and love Jesus, but it comes down to, we're going to take all of these miracles and amazing things in scripture, and we're gonna condense it down.

And on the dot, 10 .30 Sunday morning, all the miracles happen right here, programmed for you. And there's an artificiality to it.

There is a false stirring up of things that, this is not how scripture reads, but we're gonna compress it down and put it into a concentrate.

We're gonna basically eat concentrated orange juice every Sunday morning, because we're gonna take all those miracles and all those wonderful, blessed experiences of scripture, and we're gonna condense it all down.

We have to have it every single Sunday, otherwise something's wrong. I applaud the desire to be biblical.

I applaud the desire to know God and worship him and love him in a biblical way, but this is also putting all manner of legalistic burdens on people, and say, well, if you're not experiencing this and doing this and participating in this, then you're not really holy and spiritual.

Or it's not the full gospel. It's not the full gospel. So, and we're clarifying, we wouldn't say that worship is non -experiential.

It's just that the experiential side is not what drives what we are to be doing in worship. Well, I think we handled that as best we could.

Why don't we move on to recommendations, Michael? My recommendation is, this is a really engaging book.

It's really just full of great stuff. It's called The Logical Fallacies of the Documentary Hypothesis.

Sorry, what? Yes, indeed. But this is by a guy named Clayton Howard Ford, and basically, if you've ever heard anyone talk about the first five books of the

Old Testament, that they weren't really written by Moses. They were written by a variety of different people, and it was stitched together from all the different sources.

The J -E -P -D, the Yahwist, Elohistic, Priestly, and Deuteronomistic sources, and all this stuff from the first five books of the

Old Testament were just kind of stitched together by a lot of different redactors and put together, and then they all just kind of pretended

Moses wrote it. This is the standard byline of academia, their attitude towards the first five books of the

Bible. And so inherent in all of this is, of course, a rejection of any truth value to it.

It's non -historical, anything here, which is like the basic bedrock grounding for the historicity of the entire

Bible, and the legitimacy of Jesus Christ, who said that this was written by Moses and that this was actually historical.

Bingo, yes, there it is. So if the documentary hypothesis is true, then everything in the

Bible is false, and this is why it's so beloved as an academic theory. But anyway,

Clayton Howard Ford has taken the time to take up the basic claims of the hypothesis and reminding everybody it's just a hypothesis, not fact or law or theory.

It's not even theory, it's just hypothesis. And he begins to work through all the logical fallacies of it and how broken it is.

In fact, it's so broken, the leading lights in academia are moving away from it because it's so bad.

There are some holdouts who are still trying to stake their flag to it. But again, this thing has long been held up as the reason why you should reject the

Bible and reject Christ. And sadly, many people have welcomed it as proof positive that the

Bible was false, and then they die and go to hell, and 200 years later, it's falling apart because it can't stand on its own reasoning.

I mean, but this is the way all of these kinds of objections are. It's even in many of the seminaries. Oh, absolutely.

It was presented that way. Don't you want to be respected by the academic community? No. Nope, nope.

Yeah, that broke in 2020, didn't it? Yeah. No kidding. Chris, what about you? You're quotes experts, right?

Yeah, yeah. I would recommend Ministry of Justin Peters. He's got a series called

Clouds Without Water based on a passage in Jude talking about false teachers. There are a lot of crazy things that happen in the name of worship that say we're worshiping

God. And I think when you see a lot of these things, you have to ask, what God are you worshiping?

Because we don't read any of those things in the Bible. But he does a very good job of kind of pointing them out.

You know, you've got people that are watching TBN, they've got it playing 24 -7 in the background.

And he just kind of takes snippets and then he'll say, what is happening here? What are they doing? What does the

Bible say about what they're saying and about what they're doing? And I think his ministry has been very helpful to me in kind of thinking through what's being asked of us in certain circles, you know, to get out of our comfort zone.

We see miraculous and even odd things. When you look at, or even if you were looking at the

Bible, you see things that are out of the norm. And we call those miracles because they're out of the norm.

They're not normative. Whereas we're being told in these circles, this is normal. You should be living this way.

Your life should be wacky or weird because God had the prophets do wacky and weird things.

Daily encounters with the supernatural. Right, right. And so looking at the Bible in a more focused approach, it's about Christ.

So why was he having them do these strange things? There's a reason for it. It's not just for the sake of being weird.

So I would recommend Justin Peter's ministry. All right, Andrew. Go to biblehub .com.

Type in a term, prophecy. Search it. Look at what the Greek is. Look how it's used in the

Old Testament and the Hebrew. Just look at how his word is in reality.

Use a study tool. I know we discussed so many different topics today.

Dive deeper. Get a deeper understanding of what God's word actually says about every single topic.

Have you not read? It's about directing people to the scriptures. So please, go to the scriptures.

We, and I don't know, Michael can definitely, he is not the arbiter of what the truth is. I thank

God that he has given us his word. Yes. That we can, it's been preserved for us.

That alone is a miracle. Please, please, search his word.

Be rooted and grounded in it. Amen. Well, speaking of words, I have been, late at night, when we get done with all of our work, putting the kids to bed, all that stuff, we end up on YouTube when it's actually time to start powering down.

And I have been, as soon as Heather starts to doze off, going onto a

YouTube channel that I've found like weirdly interesting and entertaining, but it's called Rob Words, and he.

I've seen that. You have, yeah, so he studies etymology or philology, and he'll have something like fun for the non -nerds, like how did all the states get their names, or how did all these countries get their names?

And like a lot of times, it's like, well, we don't. Non -nerds? Yeah, non -nerds. Well, I mean, it's like, you know, like basic, very simple stuff, and then he'll start to, like the one that I got into the other night was how

Germanic is the English language? And I was like, yes, I need to see this. So then, and most people, they're just gonna scroll right past that, like, that's stupid, but not me.

But I've been really enjoying his stuff on there, and I say that to say I think he has content that kind of spans your interest level, whether you want to go deep into ruins or Nordic languages or language families.

He does quite a bit of that stuff, but he also has real, like just kind of fun, interesting topics that kids could grasp and go, well, that's weird.

Why is Spain named after rabbits? You know, so. What? Yeah, and the root for it is basically like the place where the rabbits live, because Carthaginians came up from North Africa, and when they found the place, it was largely barren, and there was just these rabbits with large ears.

But the animal that they thought the rabbit was was an animal that was back in North Africa that they had, so they just called it that.

Yeah, so that's the root for the name in Spain. But it just, stuff like that, right? Like, why?

What? And so I find that interesting, and you know, as I'm powering down to go to sleep, that's apparently what

I'm gonna be thinking about. Do you have dreams about large rats? No, I do not.

In fact, no, I do not. The weather's floating. Yeah, going down rabbit holes afterward. Michael, why don't we go to what we're thankful for?

I am thankful for, I think, just a growing sense of the grace of God about how much in life,

I know this is true for, I know this is true for all the Lord's saints, but just a growing sense of my own life.

I'm thankful for a sense of how great His grace is at every level, from my marriage and my children to ministry, relationships with others, opportunities, and so forth, just a growing sense of the grace of God and how this is tied to, you know, when you realize how much has been given to you, you think about Job and how much can be taken away, and yet, at all times, a real sense of,

I was ever in the Lord's hands, and so I am again. And I think that I'm just thankful for that growing awareness and reminders daily.

Amen, Chris? I'm thankful for all of you guys, and I mean all of you,

Joel and Ryan, our non -vocal members, everyone who's involved with this podcast who

I have the opportunity of talking with, either on -air or off -air, the discussions that happen.

I'm really thankful for all of you and what you bring, your different perspectives, the weird things that you're interested in, and Raveth.

He points to Dylan, it's funny. No, there's just a vastness to it because it's all in the framework of God's world and God's creation and pointing back to Christ.

So we get off -the -wall questions, but it's all about how do we live in this world that He created as His creatures?

And I'm just thankful to be sharing at this point in my life with all of you guys.

So I greatly appreciate it. Amen, Andrew? Let's say maybe two or three weeks ago, I was wrapping up Sunday school with the group of kids that I'm teaching, and I was just thanking the

Lord. I thank the Lord for the good works that He prepared for us in advance, that we get to do these things.

I never would have thought I was doing anything like that, but that's just one small slice of the things that He has prepared for us.

Who knows what those good works are that are in your future? Just continue to walk into faith, and I thank

God for it. You don't care to prophesy about what those good works might be? I don't.

No, I don't care. Well, amen to that. We're all thankful for wonderful things around here, but we just got done recording not too long ago on forgiveness, and I'm so thankful for the

Lord's forgiveness in my life that the good works that He has for us to do, how will we be able to do them in any sort of competent or righteous way without that forgiveness of sins?

And how would I make it? I don't know how I'd make it through a day without the Lord's forgiveness now.

Like, how was I existing outside of the sheer grace of God? Amen.

Because now I know what the penalty was for all of that, and that it should have been laid upon me every waking moment of my life.

And just kind of reminds me of the first time I came into contact with Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, when

I was in high school. We actually had to read that for curriculum. And I mean, even then

I felt conviction about certain things in that time period. And at that point, I will say, but man, it was a different kind of theology that I was being introduced to.

And I remember thinking, the rest of us in the room are taking this way too lightly. Like, this is not a light thing to understand that you are in the hands of the

Lord, as Michael said, and as you ever were. So the Lord's forgiveness makes being in those hands so much more of a comfort.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners, and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Having Not Read.