Romans 16:1 - God's Roles for Women in the Church, Pt. 3 (04/23/2023)

Good job, Abby. I couldn't tell, I don't know if our camera was positioned right.

Could we see Abby? Okay, good. So that's fantastic. Great job, everyone with our music today.

We appreciate it so much. And good to see all of you.

Good to see all of you as well. And let's go to Lord prayer.

We'll get into the word of God. Lord, thank you for this day to come together and worship with each other and with you and toward you.

And Lord, we just thank you that you're here with us and you are within us. We thank you that you've given us your word, this eternal book from a place outside of time and you brought it into time and space for us and preserved it.

Thank you so much. And Lord, we love your word. We ask you to open our eyes to everything you wanna teach us today.

And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. We're in Roman chapter 16, verse one.

And I will read it in case you weren't here when we started. I think one Sunday before Easter, we started on this chapter and this verse.

And then the next time on Easter, we did an Easter message and then came back to this the next time.

So let's read it. Roman 16, one, I commend unto you, Phoebe, our sister, the apostle

Paul says, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is a servant of the church, which is in Sancria.

Now, we started this before Easter, then took a break and then came back to it.

And when we look at Phoebe here, it says that she is a servant of the

Lord. She's commended by the apostle Paul. Did you know that in this chapter, there are 34 other people commended by Paul in this one chapter?

In fact, mostly what the chapter is about is his commendation of these people. And they're all servants of God who

Paul has appreciated their service. And in some way they helped him in his ministry. And it's kind of interesting when you're preaching verse by verse through the

Bible, it's interesting when you come to a passage, it's got to say a genealogy that goes all the way from Genesis to the birth of Jesus.

Do you go verse by verse through that and you cover every single, this one begat that one, this one begat that, or do you skip it?

And when you come to a chapter like this, which is simply a list of 35 people that served the

Lord with Paul and he names them and talks about them, are you gonna talk about each one of the 35 people for about 35 weeks?

Well, you could do that, or you could just skip it. How many of you would be honest with me and tell me when you get to a passage like this, you normally just skip it and move on to something that'll sort of feed your soul a little bit more?

Anybody? Okay, well, I do that too. And I can fondly remember certain passages that Brother Otis would always skip.

I can't mention what they were, but some of you that were here know, and it's kind of funny, but he would skip certain passages every time on purpose and move to the next, and that's great.

Now, he wouldn't always skip the genealogies though, because sometimes he would find interesting things in there. And what occurred to me when

I looked at this chapter months ago in preparation for being here today is that I thought about this.

I said, okay, now wait a minute though. The Bible is a very concise book. I mean, it's only this thick, right?

And it's an eternal book that has everything in it, not missing one thing, everything in it that God wanted us to know about Him and us, all in this very concise book.

So I'm thinking in this concise book, if he takes an entire chapter of the

Bible to talk about 35 people, should we just ignore them? And I think, well, maybe there's something that we can learn about ourselves or about each other or about the church service that we could learn if we actually looked into these people to see what they did, what they contributed, or even to see how people in the past, brothers and sisters in Christ have preached on these very passages to see, well, did they just skip these passages or what did they do with it?

So I've kind of decided to do a mix. We're not gonna talk about all 35 people.

How many of you say amen to that? Okay. But we are gonna talk about a few of them because now

I'm going to study all 35 of them and have long since begun that study.

And I'm going to just take a few of the most, what I think the Lord, the ones that the Lord wants me to talk to you about this time, maybe

I mean a year from now, two, three years from now, come back and talk about some of the others. But that's the approach that I want to take.

Well, we're in this verse one and we're not just gonna talk about the people because there are other issues in the chapter other than talking about these commendations.

Paul says some interesting things under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And so there's some other important information too.

So we'll talk about, we don't want to leave any of that out, obviously. So here in verse one, if you remember when we covered it the first time,

I told you that we will be talking about Phoebe because Phoebe is commended by Paul. And there's quite a bit to say about how many women, in fact,

I mentioned this last Sunday, how many women that not only Paul, but Jesus commended.

And they were both surrounded by women who serve the Lord and they talk about women a lot.

And so there's a lot of positive to say about the role of women in the church and in the

Lord's work and with the Lord and with the Apostle Paul. In fact, most of what you would say is positive.

In fact, there's nothing negative to say about women because what we did do is we, as we read through this verse, the first time we spoke on it,

I pointed out something kind of interesting here where it says, Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant to the church.

Did you know that most great English translations of the

Bible put the word servant right there? Almost, I would say a good majority of them do, but there are many that don't.

And so we talked about that because there are many modern translations in the

English Bible that put the word prophetess right there. Now there's a reason for that when you look at the

Greek word, but there is no right reason for putting that word there in a good solid translation, which we'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute, but it's a very bad translation to put the word prophetess there.

Now, the problem with it is that if you go out and you look at what the church is talking about today, many of the mainline denominations, if not most, and the

Baptist are maybe one of the last, but almost all the others are now ordaining women to ministers, preachers, and ministers of all kinds in the church.

And I'm talking about like called pastors, associate pastors, things like that.

The Bible forbids this as we discussed the first time we talked about this verse.

God says, I permit not a woman to teach the man or to usurp authority over the man.

So in church service, it's not allowed. And yet, in fact, if you go back in history, you don't see any of these mainline denominations, not one allowing women to be the preachers ever until the last, say, 50 years.

And Jesus said in the end times, we'll have many false prophets. And that's a fact. So we see this uprising here.

In fact, there are really three major untruths that have been attacking the church in my ministry time, which is,

I guess, 40 years or so. And those three are number one, the rise of women being put in places that are not the proper

God -given biblical role that God does give them, but put in other roles that they should not have.

The second is the modern tongues and faith healing movement. And I call it the counterfeit tongues and faith healing movement.

And then third would be a huge misunderstanding of when the rapture happens. All right, so those are three of the biggest problems in the church in my lifetime.

And so what pastors tend to do, if you study any, if you read pastors much or missionaries in history, which we ought to do so that we don't have a private interpretation of scripture, we're supposed to look to see what our brothers and sisters have thought for the last 2000 years.

Very important part of what we do in our study. All of us should be doing that together. But what we see is that they have kind of a unified voice on these issues if you just go and study.

And so I think it's very important because one of the jobs of me, my main job as your pastor is to equip you to do the work of the ministry.

That means when you meet with your family at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and when you meet people on the job like you used to have to do, and you come tell me so often, and I'd give you a little ammunition, stuff like that, and I hate to even mention

Brother Verge and his job. But my job is to give you ammunition and help you find it faster than maybe you would have found it on your own.

And so that's the bigger part of what a pastor is supposed to do in his preaching ministry. So with this regard, this particular word where it calls

Phoebe a prophetess, it is not Phoebe's fault. She was a servant, and we're gonna talk about her, and we're gonna talk about her service and why

God put her in the Bible. But I'm gonna preach the entire verse, one, if that's okay with you.

So we're still on this word servant and looking at why is it that people wanna change that to the word prophetess, and what has come out of that in the last couple of hundred years.

And I'm not quite done with that yet, so I think you'll find some very interesting points as we get to these.

I just went through a lot of my notes, I noticed, without looking at them. Let me figure out where I stopped.

Okay, all right, that's pretty good. Didn't need the notes for that first part.

Okay, now, as we look at this word servant for a moment, and the

King James Bible uses the word servant here. It's an excellent translation.

I think it is the best translation in English you could come up with for the actual Greek word in this place.

And I say that for two reasons. Number one, it fits the context, because in the immediate context of chapter 16, the

Apostle Paul is speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about 35 servants of the

Lord. None of the rest of those are called deacons or deaconesses, they're called servants.

And so why would she be the only one that's actually where the word should be translated deacon, or deaconess?

So it's out of context. Secondly, a second great rule of Bible interpretation, you got about 10, depending on how you group them, 10 great rules of properly interpreting

Scripture. The second biggest one is that whatever passage you're studying or phrase you're studying or sentence or verse, it has to fit the whole of the

Bible or you're interpreting it incorrectly. And we studied already,

I believe it was the Sunday prior to Easter, which that goes back a ways now, quite a few weeks ago, but I believe we went in and showed the

Scripture where God forbids women to have authority over men and to teach men doctrine in the church.

You can't take this verse and say that she is a deaconess, which means a church leader, even though it does mean a servant of the church, the deacon has a slightly different role than the pastors, but you can't both say that God says a woman cannot have authority over men in the church and at the same time, she has a position of authority in the church.

So it doesn't fit the context, the immediate context, nor does it fit the whole of the

Bible, unless you interpret it servant. Many, many times this Greek word is translated servant throughout the

New Testament. Occasionally it's translated deacon or deaconess when it's obvious from the context that it's talking about the office of the deacon, which is a church office.

So it's not that difficult to tell from the context which way it should be translated.

And it is from the same Greek word. So that's where the difficulty comes in.

But people that walk with the Lord and know the Lord and study his word and are students and theologians, they don't have a problem knowing which word this should be.

So normally when they mistranslate it, it's on purpose. It's to be able to change something in the churches that they don't like.

And I'm not for that. I think that's cheating and I think God hates it.

And so we need to know where these issues are. That's why we can't skip something like that in this particular passage.

Now, when we translate this word into the word deaconess, what we find is in the

NIV, how many of you are familiar with the New International Version? NIV, a lot of people use that.

It's very popular. I'm gonna give you a few of the versions that translate it deaconess, just so you'll know that these have on purpose mistranslated this word.

NIV is one. The ESV, which is the English Standard Version, very popular, especially in Britain, but here too, also.

And this is an interesting, the Darby translation. If you go back and you study Darby, which was a mega preacher, one of the first mega preachers in, you know, like late 1800s, early 1900s, that time period in England.

He was a very, very popular preacher. He has his own version of the

Bible and it translates this deaconess, but he also has some other interesting beliefs. He was one of the first to make the pre -tribulation rapture theory popular.

It did not exist in history much before he brought it up. Now, he learned it from another person that I'm gonna talk to you about in just a second.

So he had some interesting things about his beliefs that he taught at his mega church that were incorrect.

And one of the things is he retranslated the Bible so that it would kind of teach what he wanted to teach.

So I feel like he probably enjoyed women having roles in the church that the scripture says they should not have for whatever his reasons were.

So then you have the Darby translation. There's one called the God's Word translation that translates it deaconess.

There's one called the New Living, and I'm thinking that's a newer version of the Living Bible that came out when

I was a kid, but it's called the New Living translation translated deaconess. The RSV, the

New RSV, that stands for Revised Standard Version, very popular modern version in England and America.

Both the regular one that came out about when I got saved, maybe in later in the 80s, got popular.

And now they have a new version of the RSV. Both of those translated deaconess. The Douay Catholic Bible translates it deaconess.

And there are others, and they violate both principles we just mentioned.

It's out of context, and it doesn't fit the whole of scripture, but they do it anyway. You know, people like the

Jehovah's Witnesses come up with their own Bible because they don't want to believe that Jesus is

God. So they change every verse in their New Testament that would indicate Jesus is God. They just change the verse.

The Mormons have a book they added to the Bible to cause you to translate the Bible through their lens.

And so this is not new, but it is something that's kind of important that we need to make note of.

Now, the word servant here, where it says what Phoebe is actually, and this is part of the problem, is the word is diakonos.

Don't you think that sounds like deacon? Well, when you see the English word deacon, that's called a transliteration, not a translation.

It means we had no word for this, or they didn't like the word. They didn't want to use the word. We actually had a word for it.

It's called servant, all right? But sometimes when they wanted to make an office, even in the

King James, they transliterated it and just made up the English word deacon. And it sort of makes it easy in the

King James to tell the difference between a regular servant in the church or someone that has the office of deacon, which probably was smart to do, don't you think?

But it created a problem later because now when we hear the word diakonos in Greek, we think that means deacon, but it doesn't.

It means servant. You see my point? So let me give you the exact definition of this word. It comes from someone who needs their reading glasses.

It comes from a smaller Greek word, diakos, which means a person who runs errands, an attendant, a waiter.

Now you say, well, how does that end up being an office of the church? Well, if you study in detail the office of the deacon, it is a very important office, and the deacons are officers of the church, but their main duty is to take care of the church, which sort of sits like they serve as ministers to the church, and they take care.

One of the things they do is if a church member has a problem with the church, they're supposed to go take care of that problem and talk to that person and say, well, let's talk about this.

And the deacons try to work out the problems and smooth them out. That's one of their largest jobs to do.

Very important. And obviously that's more than just a servant in church. That's an office, an officer of the church that has a really important job to do, but they also do things like fix the doorknobs when they break, you know, they fix, you know,

Bobby is, you know, we're about to create some new deacons in the church, and I'm gonna be talking to Bobby about like that if he'd like to be interested in that, because he does the work of a deacon.

Brother Raymond is a deacon, Dave's a deacon right now. And we need one or two more because we've had some people pass away on us and also elders.

So we're gonna be talking about that as well. But that's a little bit of the job of the deacon is to take care of the church, the physical things of the church and the people, the physical people of the church, or any problems in the church to take care of that and find out what the problem is and try to fix it, minister to that person and fix it, things like that.

So it is an office, but the word itself means an attendant or a servant.

It's translated into three words in the King James and most English Bibles, deacon, minister and servant.

And you have to tell by the context which word you use, but the main idea of the word itself is a servant.

So that's what Phoebe is. She is someone who served the church without an office, but because she loved

Jesus. And she did not need to be lifted up above the people.

She didn't do it for that reason. And she did it because she loved the Lord and she loved the Apostle Paul, the servant of God.

So this word became very important in verse one. And I think every pastor should talk about this problem of the modern church wanting to put women outside of their

God -given duties, rather than letting them serve inside of their

God -given duties like Phoebe did is such a great example. Unfortunately, this word is connected to Phoebe and this is the word that's used.

As I look across at the literature, they'll always bring this verse up as a reason why it's okay for women to preach to men in the church.

It's problematic. People need to actually study why that's a bad translation.

Last Sunday, we talked about how many cults have been started by women.

And we mentioned Amy Sample McPherson. If you remember, was one of the last ones with it we mentioned.

And she is the founder of the Four Square Church out on the West Coast. They still have

Four Square Churches in Washington State and all over California and Oregon.

Not that many anywhere else in the country, but they're still there. She is one of the founders of this church.

And she was one of the first celebrity preachers in history, American history, where she moved about on the platform with a microphone and she looked like a movie star.

And so she could pretty much say anything she wanted to say and the people would think, oh, that's great. That must be true.

And that was her method. She made the modern counterfeit tongue speaking movement and faith healing movement popular in this country.

So she is a very key figure if you wanna study where this heresy came from.

And I know if you're like me, all of us have sweet, wonderful Christian friends who believe in that stuff.

They've been led to believe in it by people like Amy Sample McPherson, but that's where it started was with her in this country.

And so, yeah, we just need to pray for them, need to pray that the Lord would help us to remain meek and to instruct them is what our job is to do and that the

Holy Spirit might open their eyes to the truth. That's our job. We cannot convince them or change them.

If you think that's your job, you'll be so frustrated, you'll just give up. Because it's like, they won't listen at all.

Because here's what they'll say. Oh, well, you can't tell me it's not real. I've experienced it. And my answer to that is,

I'm not telling you it's not real. I'm telling you the source is not the Holy Spirit. Then that gets their interest and then sometimes you can talk a little bit more.

But this is where it started. Now, this is one of about three of the fastest growing, most devastating false teachings in the modern church.

Women preachers, the modern counterfeit tongues movement and moving the rapture to the front of the tribulation period so that no

Christian will be prepared for the tribulation because they don't think they'll be here. What a great lie of Satan. And I don't say that without a lot of study.

And I'm well familiar with the other side because I was one. I was pre -trib rapture theory, my whole ministry life until just,

I don't know when it was. Katie, you track time better than your old dad does. When did

Russ Houck challenge me with those two questions? Yeah, you weren't out of college yet.

Yeah, so that goes back quite a number of years. But he challenged me and then for the next year

I studied. And I'd say the year after that, my view completely changed. So most of my ministry,

I was pre -trib rapture believer. So I know the arguments because listen, people would argue with me about that.

And I'm instructed by the scripture to be able to give reason for why I believe what I do, am

I not? So I studied that view and had all the proof texts. So it's not like people can come to me and say, well, let me show you these things,

Brother David, you're just missing this. No, I started there, okay? So now I see that all of the proof texts, and I say 100 % of them are all taken out of context or have some other problem with Bible interpretation methods.

They're cheating to come up with it. There is no doubt in my mind or I would not be this dogmatic about it.

And I don't ask anyone to just take it from me. You should do your own study.

And I'll be quick to say this, even though it's very important because if it is a lie from Satan to cause millions of Christians to be slaughtered during the tribulation because they didn't prepare and didn't do what scripture says we ought to do during that time period, then it's very, very important, isn't it?

But I will say this, it is not important enough to create division in the church and say, well,

I won't fellowship with someone that doesn't agree with me on that. I'll never take that stand. I've got friends that are post -millennial, believe it or not.

I only know two humans that believe that. Although Ben Mitchell told me it's an uprising now, I didn't know that. Even among a lot of the

Presbyterians that believe about sovereignty of God, like we do, there are many of them switching back, especially the young preachers, switching back to post -millennialism, which is too bad, but you don't break fellowship over those things, right?

Is everybody in agreement with me on that or would you break fellowship over it? I wouldn't. Would I break fellowship over women preaching from the pulpit?

Yes. I wouldn't go to church where that happened. Would I break fellowship?

In other words, would I go to church with people that are slapping people in the forehead and they fall down and froth at the mouth on the floor?

Yes, I would not go to church with them, but I could still love them. I could work with them and talk about the

Lord with them at work or somewhere else at the bank, but I wouldn't go to church there,

I don't think. But the rapture, I wouldn't even go that far with that because there are so few people that literally study it on their own.

Honestly, I didn't for years, I wasn't interested in it. I just took my mentor's word for it and believe that because I didn't want to study it.

And if that's true of a minister, I would dare say that most laymen never spend 50 hours studying when the rapture happens.

And since I know that, I wouldn't break fellowship over that with people because they just maybe haven't studied it seriously yet or they're not interested in it.

So anyway, that's just my opinion on how we should deal with these things. But these are the three, I think, biggest problems in the modern church today other than just general lack of study of the word of God.

Now, it's kind of interesting that Amy Semple McPherson helped start two of the problems, two out of the three.

And she's not the only woman preacher who has introduced devastating error into the church. But I have to say this, if we want to look at men, while we look at men like Muhammad or Buddha or Joseph Smith, the men have created far more devastating cult groups that are much huger and more popular than women have.

But I just think it's important to point out that when you do allow women to teach men, they can introduce false doctrine easily because as the scripture said, the reason

God forbade them to teach men is because they were tempted, deceived,

I should say, by Satan and the man was not. That's what God's answer is for why he has that commandment in the scripture.

So we're focusing on this passage here where it talks about Phoebe being a deaconess.

So we're still talking about the women and what they've contributed, unfortunately. We will get past that.

We'll get into the Proverbs 31 and we'll get into the New Testament with Aquila and Priscilla and see what women do when they're in their role and how powerful they are.

We're going to end up with that. But there's another McPherson and this man is named

Dave McPherson. He's not any kinship to Amy Sample McPherson. In fact, the last name is not even spelled the same way.

Just need you to know that. But he wrote a fascinating book, several books.

And I've read all of his books. There's about three of them. The first one he wrote was called the, has a long title.

I think that's why he wrote a couple more so he could shorten the title. But it's the first book that he wrote was called the

Unbelievable Pre -Trib Origin. The recent discovery of a well -known theory's beginning and it's incredible cover up.

I mean, if you think that at least be an interesting read. What do you think? I think it is.

It's a great book. You can get it on Amazon and it may be easier to find a couple of his second, third book, they're more popular.

But he claims to have made a remarkable discovery and his father and grandfather were both pastors and he was an investigative journalist by trade, okay?

So he claims to have made a remarkable discovery in finding and reading works by Robert Norton that Robert Norton published in 1840 and 1861.

You don't need to take a lot of notes on this. This is very important information but I'm going to send this manuscript to everybody.

So you'll have it in your email by tomorrow. And it's not really for publishing. I probably should spell check it before I send it but just don't give it to people.

It's just for you, okay? So that way you don't have to jot these figures down because they're very interesting church history.

Norton's material indicates that a prophetic revelation to a person, a woman named

Margaret MacDonald who lived in Port Glasgow, Scotland in early 1830 reveals the origin of the pre -tribulation rapture theory.

So it was a woman who spoke in tongues, gibberish type tongues, not biblical tongues.

She spoke in tongues, she was a prophetess and she had a dream and she dreamed up the pre -tribulation rapture idea in a dream.

Then she wrote it down. And other things were happening at her house that are very similar to what happened in, what happens today in charismatic meetings where counterfeit miracles are happening, things like that.

So it created some interest in England, all of the British Isles at that time. In fact, large churches like Darby's Church sent ministers to her home and they, she and her family would invite them in and they sent ministers to this woman's home to see and discern if this was of the

Holy Spirit or not. Many, most of them came back and said, no, it's not.

But some of them came back and said, I think it is. And there was one very interesting man, a minister who went and came home thinking it was and then through prayer and walking with the

Lord later, he said, you know what? I've been deceived, it's not. So, I mean, this is a big thing in history, but you don't hear about it very much.

So this book brings this out and some have attempted to throw cold water on MacPherson's finding.

But I find that people that throw cold water on it have not read the books, they haven't read his books.

They've just read what someone said about his books. And I don't think that's fair. But it is interesting to look at the timeline in his book.

So the first person that we know who experienced a supernatural vision or revelation in the period just prior to 1830 in England was a man named

James Grubb. Now, what you may not understand is tongue speaking and faith healing has not always risen up in the church over the last 2000 years.

In fact, somewhere around 350 AD, it ceased and it wasn't happening in the churches.

We have early church fathers who tell us this in their writings, even in their commentaries. They don't even know what it meant to speak in tongues as it wasn't happening anymore.

But then there are some uprisings of charismatic people who have counterfeit tongue speaking going on and that's happened at a few spots in church history, but not very prevalent.

So when this started to happen in 1830 in England, it was a new uprising. It was not something that was already there.

So there are other times in history when you had these little uprisings and church historians, the greatest church historians you'll read will tell you that they're always accompanied by immorality and well, spiritual, very bad doctrine.

Very bad doctrinal teaching together with moral immorality in the churches and among these leaders that bring this to happen.

If you look in church history, when you have these uprisings, you find that with it. Now, as we look at this, he says the first person around the 1830 era in England that brought this thing back into existence was a man named

James Grubb. He died in 1828. He had lived an irreligious life, but on his deathbed, his penitence and faith and communion with God were most remarkable.

There appeared about this time, says a third writer named Edward Irving, in the deathbed experience of certain holy persons, very wonderful instances of the power of God's spirit.

After the death of these persons, their mantle seems to have fallen upon Mary Campbell, a female sort of tongue speaking, faith healing type person in her home.

And so this is not Margaret MacDonald that I mentioned earlier, this is a different person.

So the mantle of James Grubb seemed to fall on Mary Campbell and she was in Furnacary, England.

And the MacDonald family also in Port Glasgow. Now, the

MacDonald family is Mary MacDonald, a Margaret MacDonald that we're speaking about.

So it's those two places where there were this uprising of these types of counterfeit occurrences.

John Darby of the Brethren Church, who made dispensationalism popular along with Scofield, visited this family or at least sent representatives of his church to visit the

MacDonald family who had spoken in tongues and had revelations to try to discern if the

Lord was in it. Here are some of the comments. Now, this is just church history.

Now, I want to remind you that in 2 Timothy 4, 13, when

Paul was in the dungeon, he sent word to Timothy and said, send my cloak because he was cold, but he also said, bring me my books and my parchments.

In the Greek, there's a difference between those two. The parchments are the Bible, Old Testament scriptures, and the books are other books

Paul read. Books about history, books about church history, books about Hebrew history, science, math, all kinds of things.

So we know from that verse that God intends for us when we study to show ourselves approved to not only just study the

Bible. And a lot of times when you get in a debate with a family member and say, oh, don't give me church history, we're supposed to just only study the

Bible. That's not true, you need to show them this verse in 2 Timothy 4, 13, say, no, no, that's not true. Because if the scripture commands us not to have a private interpretation, that demands that we read books that tell us what other brothers and sisters have believed for the last 2000 years.

We have to study books and parchments. Okay, now, with that in mind, I know I told you that a couple of Sundays ago, but I wanted to review that here because we're looking at this historic information.

Now, here are some of the comments of these folks that ventured to this home of McDonald, Margaret McDonald.

But quoting here, but I must here recall some facts and rectify some statements.

At Pentecost, the languages were universally understood by those who spoke them.

In other words, it wasn't gibberish. It was a significant world language that they were speaking that they'd never studied in school.

That was the miracle. And there was also a miracle on the hearing side of it, wasn't there? Because they heard this in their own language.

That's true tongues in the Bible, it's not gibberish. The Irvingite tongues never by any one or notable difference except for the fact that these were not languages.

They were gibberish. And this is so true that after first trying their hand at making

Chinese out of it, it was suggested among them that it might be the tongues of angels.

Delightful idea, this person who went there says. Now, in other words, he came home saying it's not real because it wasn't really languages.

Well, as we look at church history, Philip Schaff is one of the greatest church historians you can read.

If you went to seminary, you would be required to read his church history book.

And he wrote a book called The History of the Christian Church in 1910. And it's still required reading at most seminaries.

And he's the acknowledged Dean of Church Historians. And he says that historically, the gift of tongues passed from the church at least by the time of Chrysostom.

Now, I don't know how many times you've heard me say that. And he lived from 353 to 430

AD. So around by 370 AD, Chrysostom was a minister writing a commentary on 1st and 2nd

Corinthians. He further said, now back to Philip Schaff.

He further said that analogous phenomena of an inferior kind, now listen to that.

He's talking about genuine tongue speaking passed away from the church by the time of Chrysostom, which roughly correlates to the time that the whole

Bible, including the New Testament was canonized and you had the perfect, that which is perfect shall come.

These things shall pass away, Paul said. Tongues shall cease and prophecy shall cease and so forth.

So they did pass away. But Schaff says that analogous phenomenon of an inferior kind to the

New Testament gift of tongues, which means a counterfeit mimicking it and not miraculous, which the true tongues was miraculous, yet serving as illustrations either by approximation or as counterfeits, he says, appeared from time to time in seasons of special religious excitement throughout church history, this great church historian says.

He mentions that this phenomenon has occurred among the Mormons and other non -Christian sects and he is referring to ecstatic utterances or gibberish.

Chrysostom, who wrote in the fourth century, around 360 or 65, 370

AD, was one of the early church fathers in the Eastern church and he testified that the gift of tongues had passed by his time.

In his writings on 1 Corinthians chapter 12, he said this, I quote, this whole place is very obscure, but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation.

He's talking about the passage in 1 Corinthians where it talks about speaking in tongue. He said, we're having a problem writing about this because we don't understand it because it doesn't happen anymore.

We've never seen this happen. Being such as then used to occur, but now it no longer takes place.

Now, if you grew up in a Pentecostal church or charismatic church, how many times did you hear Chrysostom quoted on that right there?

Did you ever hear it? I wish Ron was here today to ask him. You don't hear that, why? Well, we just stick with only the scripture.

Well, wouldn't it be convenient to not bring this into a sermon? Because this is a fact of history.

This whole place is very obscure, but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation.

They have ceased being such as then used to happen, but no longer take place in the church. And so the charismatic movement today has got us thinking that it's been like this for 2000 years, haven't they?

And it's an uprising that started with Amy Sample MacPherson. Now, I believe since we are moving into the end times that Satan was able to replicate her heresy in many, many places in Canada, the

United States, and some in Europe, and it has just built upon her starting of it.

Augustine, who lived earlier than Chrysostom, he lived, he would have been preaching around 370

AD. That's about the same time. He was a leader of the Western church.

And he said this, and Augustine's one of the great church fathers. He said in earliest times, quote, the

Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed and they spake with tongues, which they had not learned.

That shows you it's a language of the world that they could learn in school, but they didn't learn it.

It was a miraculous event. And they spake this as the spirit gave them utterance.

These were signs adapted to that time. And by that he means the transitional time in the book of Acts that it talks about where we went from Jewishness to predominantly a

Gentile church all within the history of the book of Acts. That's why it's not the greatest book to use to base your church methods on because it's transitional.

Some of the stuff would work for the church, but some of the stuff was Jewish and Old Testament oriented. And so this is something that Augustine was referring to when he said these were signs adapted to the time.

They were apostolic signs that happened around the time of the apostles to authenticate the apostles' message.

For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues. Now remember the word tongues in the

Greek means languages. So it shouldn't really be translated tongues because that makes us speaking in tongues.

It makes us think that because we grew up around that. It's not what it means. The actual word means languages.

So when he says it's a betokening of the Holy Spirit in all languages to show that the gospel of God was to run through all languages all over the whole earth.

That thing was done for a betokening and it passed away. The apostle

Paul said that it would cease. He said it would cease when that which is perfect has come.

The Bible was canonized roughly before 300 AD. These two men were preaching some 70 years later and saying it had already passed away.

Isn't that interesting? So we have quotes from early church fathers that testify that as early as AD 347, these gifts were no longer energized by God.

Not that God couldn't do it, but he just stopped doing it. One might also ask if God is often energizing these gifts today, why the men and women of all different denominations who

God used to lead great revivals in England and America, why didn't they speak in miraculous tongues or gibberish for that matter?

People like Charles Spurgeon, John Wesley, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Owen, Matthew Henry, who won millions of people to Christ collectively did not speak in tongues nor claim that they ever did, nor did they practice apostolic gifts or believe in them.

They all believe they had ceased. The greatest missionaries like William Carey who translated the

Bible into over 20 Indian dialects who lost his wife, actually his wife lost her mind because their children died of diseases in India and was in the next room screaming because she lost her mind while he sat there and meticulously translated 20 into 20 languages, the

New Testament in 20 languages. This man could have used the gift of tongues. He wouldn't need to translate. In fact, he was asked, do you have the gift of tongues?

And he said, my gift of translating is my gift of tongues. So if the gift of tongues were still available, why would the

Holy Spirit not give it to this man? Why didn't he give it to any of these that I just listed? It is totally inexplicable that people like Warfield, Adenyrum Judson, one of the great missionaries,

James Boyce, John Brodus, John Bunyan, Basil Manley Sr.,

B .H. Carroll, who started Baylor University back when it was conservative, Basley Manley Jr.,

Andrew Fuller, J .C. Philpott, I almost said that one backwards,

Arthur Pink, John Clark, Luther Rice, John Ryland, John Gill, A .H.

Strong, who wrote Strong's Concordance, J .B. Tidwell, who built, you know, they built the

Tidwell Bible Building at Baylor and named it after this man. These are all great preachers. Francis Whelan, Billy Sunday, Gypsy Smith, Lester Olaf, George Truitt, Criswell, the great pastors, both pastors of First Baptist Church in Dallas.

My mentors, Dr. Erwin Freeman and Brother Otis Fisher, none of these spoke in tongues or practiced apostolic sign gifts, yet they all had gifts of the

Spirit and the power and working of the Holy Spirit in their lives. And these ministers collectively saw millions of people saved, none of them spoke in tongues, none of them did faith healing in the counterfeit method, yet all believed

God could heal as we do here. How do you explain that, that the only ones that can do this are where the church sign says charismatic or Pentecostal on it?

Does God hate the rest of us? Does God just say, well, I'm not gonna give them those gifts?

You know, why, they don't need them. These are all people I have read about.

I didn't just grab a list of names off of Google. These are people I've read their lives. I have them in my libraries, at home mostly, the one in Mahea, some here.

These are people who moved the earth for Christ after the Protestant Reformation until now.

Some of these people I personally knew, like Roloff and I met Chriswell, he was amazing, and obviously

Dr. Freeman. How about Dr. Myron Golden? He doesn't speak in tongues. They were all filled with the

Spirit, but none had sign gifts, which the Apostle Paul said would cease, and it did cease.

So anything left is a counterfeit. Why is it that all the tongue speakers are segregated into the

Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and not found in fundamental Baptist churches or Presbyterian churches or any other believing churches,

Bible churches? Does God not give out his gifts as needed in each local church? One might say, well, the

Baptists don't want tongues. Well, since when were Baptists sovereign? Because God is sovereign, and he dispenses his gifts when he wants to, where he wants to do it.

So it doesn't matter whether you want them or not. If God wants you to have gifts, you will have them if they're from him.

So the whole argument is ridiculous. If they were necessary in one local body, they ought to be necessary in another.

Has this heresy permeated the collective mind of the modern church so much that we cannot see the gifts meant for the lost

Jews, these gifts which were meant for the lost Jews because the Bible says the

Jew requires a sign, and Paul in his inspired writing said this, that the

Gentile does not require a sign but knowledge. So all of our churches are predominantly Gentile, so why do they even need this gift?

They don't. So it's not necessary in the predominantly

Gentile church today. None of it adds up. 1 Corinthians 13, eight says charity never fails, but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.

Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

That's the word of knowledge, word of wisdom that you hear about in these churches, it vanished away. Now they say, well, we don't wanna read other books.

We just want this book. Well, what about this part of this book? Why don't we read this part of this book?

They don't hear these in their churches either. And it shall vanish away. For we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When you look at the grammar on that, on what we call the perfect, the thing he's talking about that would mark the end of these things, it is in the neuter and it calls it perfect.

And there is no perfect thing in this cursed world except one, and I'm holding it right here. It's the canonization of the scripture and having the whole

Bible. And by the time that happened, all of these things have ceased and church history verifies it.

And so there you have it. Now, it's interesting.

We have the complete word of God now. We have the Holy Spirit as our teacher. We have the water and the spirit.

And now today we have some people claiming to be apostles and prophets when they can't be because an apostle had to see

Jesus in person. That's one of the qualifications in the Bible. And we have prophetic preaching, at least in some churches.

Well, they'll come up to you and say, God told me to tell you this. And they just dreamed it or saw a vision of some kind.

Don't ever listen to that, please, because you got to consider the source. Given, so God gives, they're saying that God's giving these words of prophecy, some of them given in gibberish and even in a foreign language.

Sometimes they say, but no one can discern a real language and interpreted by a person who understands that foreign language.

How could that add anything, even if it was real right now today, now that we have the whole of the scripture, how could it add anything to all, add all to the scriptures rightly divided and preached to the congregation?

Now that we have the whole counsel of God, the canon of the scriptures, how could that add anything?

2 Peter 1 18 said, and this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him in the

Holy Mount. Verse 19 says, we have also a more sure word of prophecy, more sure than what?

Than hearing God's voice. When they were at transfiguration and God spoke, they're saying, we've got something that's more sure than that.

And I got to ask you, how could it be more sure than God talking in an audible voice? But they said, it is 2

Peter 1 19 says, we have a more sure word prophecy than that, where unto you do well that you take heed.

This is what they're talking about right here. You do well that you take heed as unto a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arises in your hearts.

So until Jesus comes back, we're supposed to get our prophecy from this, not from hearing voices.

You got too many women today taking the lives of their children, saying God told them to do it, because they were taught in the churches that God still speaks in an audible voice.

If you don't believe that, go check out abnormal psychology books and read about it. So knowing this first, the very next verse says this, we have a more sure word of prophecy.

The very next verse says in 2 Peter 1 20, knowing this first that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

So the more sure prophecy is the Bible, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but by the will of God, through holy men of God speaking as they were moved by the

Holy Ghost. That's where the Bible came from. Hebrews 1 1 says this,

God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake, that's in the past tense in the

Greek, so he used to speak in time past. So there he emphasized that it's time past.

I mean, using the past tense says it, but then he emphasized it, it's like being redundant. He says in sundry times, old times and diverse manners, many different ways,

God used to speak in time past unto the fathers by prophets.

Now, then he says, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.

So you have a contrast between how God speaks to us now and how he did then. In the

Old Testament, he spoke to the fathers through prophets. So you have to ask yourself, how did prophets speak?

Who can name a way a prophet could speak? Lunchtime, who could name how a prophet could speak?

Or how did God speak to the prophets in times past? A dream, what's another way?

Vision, what's another way? A burning bush, what's another way? Still small voice or even a loud audible voice.

Or lightning and stuff from the top of a mountain. Or seeing God's Jesus from the back, right?

Remember that one? All of these ways are the ways God used to speak and it says he doesn't do that now.

What he does now is he speaks to us by his word. Now, it's interesting that in Hebrews chapter two, the same book that we just read that in, where it tells us

God's made a change on how he speaks, the very next chapter, first verse, and remember, there's no real chapters in the real

Bible. It just reads as a letter. So this is still the same thought. It says this, chapter two, verse one, "'Therefore, we ought to give more earnest heed "'to the things which we have heard.'"

From who? The apostles and the preachers and so forth, as they preach God's word. "'For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, "'and every transgression and disobedience "'received a just recompense of reward,'' that's talking about how

God used to do it in the Old Testament, "'how shall we escape,'' who live on this side of the cross, right?

"'How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation "'which at first began to be spoken by the

Lord "'and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him, "'God also bearing witness of them, "'both with signs and wonders and diverse miracles "'and gifts of the

Holy Ghost according to his will, "'to verify their new message.'"

There it is. This is the purpose of these sign gifts. So God gave us the rest of the

Bible from Jesus's words and his apostles and followers who heard his word and penned it.

And that's what we're supposed to be paying attention to now. So that pretty much is a message that I think

America needs to hear because America is out, the American church is so predominantly focusing on false things that it has little time to do what they should be doing, which is studying the word together, praying together, breaking bread together, and witnessing to the lost and being salt and light to the world at large.

You can't do that if you're spending all of your time in church thinking that speaking in gibberish and false faith healing and having a party at church is actually

God coming down and doing all that and that's where your focus is and that's what you want to happen every Sunday. I mean,

Paul even rebuked it in the scripture where he told them that it's better not to speak with foreign languages.

Even if you have an interpreter, it would be better to do that which edifies. Stop doing that and do that which edifies, which means preach the word.

That's in the same scripture in Corinthians. So that's what we're about and this message goes out to not just us, but I don't know, 50 ,000 people in our database and hundreds of thousands of people that used to listen to us on radio and now listen to us on podcast and I hope that it can change

America. That's part of the goal of this little bitty church is to make

America a better place. That's not gonna happen if the churches don't get better. All right, so next week, my notes here said stop, but next it says we're gonna talk about Phoebe and the proper role and the role that she actually played and why she got commended.

So we're gonna do that next Sunday. Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

We ask you, Lord, that you would help us to remember these things and be able to share them with our friends and family and people who need to hear these things.

Lord, we know there are many false prophets in the church today and that there'll be more and more as your return approaches and we're supposed to be a pillar of truth.

We're supposed to be that which protects the church and the word of God, all of us collectively together.

That is our job, to protect the truth. Help us to be bold about it, but also loving, to be meek about it, but also instructive.

And Lord, we ask you to go into our time of fellowship together now and bless the meal we're about to have, in Jesus' name, amen.

We'll see you in a few moments. You can't go around without your parents.

I know. I know you would, unless you get this done right. We'll see.

We'll see. It's really how you said it.

We don't have a set. We don't have a set. That's bad. That is a bad job. That is a bad job.

You said it. Heh heh heh heh. But everybody else said it. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Amen. Amen. Amen, amen. Amen, amen. Are you singing, buddy?

I couldn't hear the guitar today. You turned it up. You did.

It sounded like that. A little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.