What About Tongues, Healing, and Prophecy? | Theocast

Have you ever had somebody walk up to you and say, the Lord told me to tell you. What do you do with that phrase?

That is a powerful statement. How do you process that? And not only that, but what about all these modern prophecies and these miraculous things that seem to be happening?

And how do we process visions and dreams? Really, we're talking about the signed gifts.

How do we as reformed people, conservative Christians, allow ourselves to look at the text and then have an explanation for what's going on?

That is the point of today's podcast. We want to have a meaningful conversation, and it really is related to our assurance and the hope of Christ.

Stay tuned. Hey guys, this is Justin. Maybe you know that you are forgiven because of Jesus Christ, but you're wondering what does

Jesus have to do with my Christian life? How is he involved in my sanctification even?

Or is he concerned at all with the ways that I struggle and the way that my life goes up and down? Is there any comfort for me in Jesus when it comes to all of that?

Well, I've written a book called More Than Forgiven, How Being in Christ Changes Everything that deals with this topic from Romans chapter six.

You can find this book at theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

We have conversations here at Theocast about the Christian life from a confessional and reformed and, we trust, pastoral perspective.

What we try to do here is take the clutter off of the gospel. We don't want Christ to be obscured or hidden from our view.

And in doing that, we understand ourselves to be reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom of Christ. How is it that we live?

What is it that we do? The gospel has everything to do with it. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I am

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Couple of announcers.

We're gonna get right to this. I'm gonna make the first one. John's gonna make the second one. Look at us dividing up the labor.

Labor? Sharing the load and sharing the burden. Everybody's favorite segment, announcement time.

One, we do have a conference coming up. We do have a conference coming up. By the time this podcast releases, it'll be a couple of months out.

Not sure if there will be spots available still or not, but you can go over to theocast .org

and learn all the information that you want to about this conference that takes place April 11 and 12 in Asheville, North Carolina.

This is a conference on the law and the gospel, and in particular, the distinction between the two. And John and I are gonna be speaking at the conference as well as our friends

Chad Byrd and Ken Jones. We have aimed to structure this in a way that will give you not only time to hear talks, but also time to be with each other, get to meet us and get to be encouraged by the fellowship that we plan to have and time to eat and drink and have a good time.

So we hope it's just a good experience overall. We would encourage you to come. We'd love to meet some of you there in Asheville in April.

So register if you haven't, and if you want to come, be sure to register. So there that is. There you go.

At this conference, we are gonna be giving out as a gift to all of those who registered a unique book, but this book is also available for those of you who would like to purchase it.

One of the things that we told you last year that we were raising money for as far as donations and support was that we wanted to print more books.

And so Tealcast, we have a publishing wing that we are slowly getting off the ground.

And one of the first things that we're gonna utilize that for is a book by Justin Perdue that he put together last year, and we finally have it finalized and we are excited to roll this out.

And we're hoping that this is one of many. And this book,

I'm excited for you to learn about it because it is right up the alley of who we are as Tealcast.

So Justin, tell them the title of the book and just give them a little bit of an explanation of what they can expect when they pick this thing up to read.

Title of the book is More Than Forgiven, How Being in Christ Changes Everything. So it's a book about union with Jesus, and it is effectively a treatment of Romans chapter six.

So there's a lot of interaction with Romans six. So I'm not just giving you my opinion, I'm trying to, from the

Apostle Paul, here's what he wrote, and then here's what this means for us, my sort of pastoral observations and thoughts about it.

And the main emphasis, if people get anything from the book, really, it's to know that their sanctification, it is grounded and rests on the same foundation and comes from the same source as their justification does, namely

Jesus. And so it is not about your effort or your faithfulness or lack thereof that will make the difference when it comes to your sanctification, but actually the

Lord Jesus Christ will see to it that you are transformed and conformed to His image and so we really can rest in Him, not just for forgiveness and for justification, but also for sanctification.

And that's not something that we have been taught. And so I hope that it encourages the reader that Jesus is perhaps even better and more sufficient than you have been told that He is.

And so, yeah, get a copy. So go to theocast .org and our brand new website, so we finally updated that dinosaur.

And it's a little behind, we're slowly getting all the material on there, but go check that out, theocast .org, and you can buy multiple copies there or on Amazon, have it shipped to you.

And we're just excited that one, you guys, it's you, the listener and the supporters, you're the ones who made this possible.

It takes money to do this. And I'll promise you right now, we priced that thing at just enough money for us to take those proceeds for the next book.

So we're not expecting to make a lot of money off of that, but I'm excited for it.

It's a great book. I think you're gonna be encouraged by it. So, and then just one other comment before I throw back over to Justin, is that if you wanna participate in great, safe conversations, ask questions and be a part of classes and online classes, we have a community called

Theocast Community and it's growing. We're almost up over 2000 people in there and it is, people ask for prayer requests, they share stories, they ask questions.

It's been a really sweet place. And I dip my head in, Justin and I dip our heads in there once in a while to interact and say hi as much as we can.

But it really, that community is for you, the listener. It's for you to be in there and enjoy each other. So go check it out, theocastcommunity .org

.com, something like that. I don't know, go to the website, Google it. I don't know my own stuff,

Justin. It's okay. Google will never lead you astray. Yeah. All right, I guess let's get into this. And that has something to do, that has something to do with our topic for today.

Oh yeah? How was that? Well, just people claiming to hear things that may or may not be sound and what do we do with this?

And I'm gonna leave it to you to tee this thing up, but what we're gonna try to do in this conversation is what you would probably expect us to do.

We're not gonna land in either extreme. No. We're probably gonna be threading a needle, holding some things in tension.

We hope it's helpful. John, go. So this is a subject that a lot of people have emailed us and sent us comments, asking us to talk about the spiritual gifts and really charismatic theology.

Not really completely in our lane as far as like doing apologetic kind of watchdog ministry, but it is related to,

I would say, where we'd like to end up, which is resting in Christ and sufficiency of Christ and how things get drawn away from, and we can put clutter on the gospel.

So that's kind of where this conversation will be going. But as I was preaching towards the end of 2

Peter chapter one, Peter's dealing with an issue of the church swaying off the gospel and turning back into licentiousness.

And one of it was who was bringing these messages. They were claiming to be prophets, speaking on behalf of the

Lord, and yet teaching things that were contrary to it. And when I started to think about this, even in modern day, we can get really lazy.

And when I point this out, I want to be very clear that I think some of these people are genuine believers. And so I'm not calling into question like these particular, there's,

I think, a difference between the person who says the Lord told me, and it's like a means of encouragement. And then

I'm speaking on behalf of the Lord. This is a new revelation. Everyone needs to follow this new prophecy. We'll kind of delineate the differences that are there.

But Jesus himself even says pretty clearly in Matthew 24, the false prophets will come doing signs and can even lead astray the elect, meaning that even believers can be drawn away by some of these weird, abhorrent teachings that have come from the false teachers.

But the phrase, Justin, that I think is dangerous and it causes a lot of confusion in people's heart because then it's like,

I don't know what to do with this because you're telling me God told you this and I love God and respect him and I follow everything he says.

If he says it, I do it. At least that's my desire, right? I'm a sinner and I fail. But if you tell me this is what the

Lord says, then man, I'm going to do that. And so people walk up and they'll say, the Lord told me to tell you.

Well, my ears perk up because I'm like, that's a big statement. That's a bold statement, right?

So, I mean, go ahead. No, I mean, the reason it's a big statement and even a problematic one is that it carries with it the implication of I am binding you and basically believers everywhere to abide by or live in light of what

I'm about to say. And so you, whether you've meant to do so or not, you are claiming for yourself a kind of authority that God has given you a special word that might not be contained in the scriptures, but he's given you a special word that should be binding on the person that they're about to tell it to and frankly, for any believer any place who might ever hear it.

And if it's true for this person, then it's in theory would be true for Christians elsewhere, right?

And so that's really where this gets murky and we all should feel, I think, like, oh, that's a big deal.

I don't even quite know what to do. You've just said that and you've teed this up in a way where I don't know what to do with this and you haven't even said it yet.

Because, right. Yeah, and this has happened to me personally. I can remember a young lady walked up to my wife and I and she just said, hey, the

Lord wanted me to tell you that whatever you're struggling with, you're gonna make it through. And, you know, I hear that and I'm like, maybe the

Lord did speak to her. There's no way for me to know that. There's no way for me to really verify that.

And then there's no way for me to know how to connect it. Like what part am I struggling with? And what do you even mean by make it through? Because will the

Lord keep us all unto eternal life with him? Yeah, does that mean that, or are you saying that circumstantially in this life, things are gonna get better?

Because that's a different thing. Exactly. So, and it's hard, you know, and there was a college student who was in my office and he was so distraught just trying to think through the spiritual gifts.

And he's like, John, you're not gonna believe what happened to me today. I was walking from one class to another and this guy stopped me and he's like, the

Lord told me that, you know, you're struggling with lust and that I should pray for you. And he was like, how did he know that?

And I was like, well, I'm like, dude, I don't mean to be rude here, but I mean, the chances of stopping a dude, walking from class to one class to another and ask him if he struggles with lust, it's a pretty high probability that he is, because that's just kind of normal for men to struggle with.

Or just even across the human spectrum here, it's like, ah, you know, the Lord told me that you're struggling with pride and that I need to pray for you or whatever, you know?

Or the Lord told me that you're struggling with covetousness, you know, and I need to pray for you.

It's like, yeah, nine out of 10 times, you're gonna be dead on the money because this is so common to all of us, right?

That's right. So that's, and I think we have to be really careful because at times people would consider that would be the gift of prophecy, right?

Like where they can speak these moments of encouragement to people. And now I will say this now,

I'll push pause and step back. There are times where the Lord has impressed on my heart, never heard anything audible, never, like there was never like words that popped in my head, but I've had feelings of affection or concern or like, hey,

I should reach out to this person. And it kind of just came out of nowhere. It was just out of nowhere. Did I tell that person, the

Lord led me to do this? No, I just thought, man, maybe I should do that. And so I don't,

I am not against at all that where the Holy Spirit can convict, can lead, can guide, can, you know, all those.

I mean, Justin, I'm sure you've had those experiences too, but I am very careful to say that I, you know, the

Lord didn't give me actual words of like guaranteed, hey, you need to hear this, this is coming from God as I would say would be true of the

New Testament, which we'll get to here in a minute. I mean, I think the Lord does all kinds of things by His Spirit directly upon the hearts of His people.

And I'm gonna speak to that more in a minute in terms of maybe even some things that I see in our own world that I think are concerning the other direction and make some room for God to press and all the things that you were beginning to outline there, but I'll save the comments for when we get to it.

Sure, so there are brothers, we were on a podcast recently, there are brothers who are in the charismatic movement who

I greatly love and respect. I think they're godly, I think they love Jesus, I think they're trying to do what is right.

I should say they are doing what is right. And this is where we would disagree on a secondary level. That being said, they would agree with me when

I say there are other people in the charismatic movement have caused immense amount of damage, huge damage.

Yeah, totally, I mean, and you and I, I guess this is as good a time as any to say it. I mean, you and I would be where I think the vast majority of reformed folks are,

I mean, in terms of how we view this and that we think the sign gifts of tongues, healing and prophecy were used of God to establish the church.

Like they served a very unique purpose in that era of redemptive history and that we don't see them commonly today, though you and I both leave room for the

Lord to work, which we're gonna get to maybe in a minute. But the reason why I wanted to bring this up and I will get there is that, man, there are people who are trapped and have all kinds of,

I mean, they reach out to us, they've talked to us, there's, I mean, on those like AGTVs, this is kind of why they started their ministry because people are wondering like,

I'm not being healed because I don't have enough faith or I'm not a Christian because I haven't spoken in tongues and it's like, or I don't know what to do, these people over here seem to be raising, prophesying and speaking in tongues and they have this close connection to God and I can't seem to have it, so there's something wrong with me.

And all of that becomes a burden on people, which disconnects, I think, from the original design of the gifts and we'll get to it in a minute.

But, and also it's like, now my conscience is being bound by whatever the statement that you've made and that's different from what

I would say a false prophet. And I think all of this needs to have the scrutiny of scripture and we always need to allow scripture to really guide and direct us.

And I'll say this one thing, I'll throw it to you, Justin. Sometimes people say, well, John, I'm not willing to put God in a box. Like, all right,

I'm with you on that one. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I'm with you. We're not on it. But that phrase,

I used this illustration recently. I said, all right, if my kids are having this conversation and the conversation is about what dad would and would not allow and my youngest kid goes, yeah, well,

I ain't gonna put dad in a box. And the oldest said, you're not putting him in a box. He literally said he's not doing that.

Exactly, exactly. That's kind of where we're saying, hey, the Bible's not unclear here. No, I mean, God is completely free and sovereign.

We, amen. And there are things that the Lord has revealed about himself. Like I will not do

X or I do not do Y, you know? And, or in this, just even the ways that he has set his heart upon his people, you know?

And then there are people that react in our world, they overreact against that because it's like, well, now

God has like bound himself to us. And it's like, well, he said that he did in his word. I mean, like, you know? So again, yeah, like you said, scripture's important.

Briefly, autobiographically, man, this is not this thing that you're, some of the stuff you described is very close to home for me because many that have listened to this show for long know that I have, since I was a young teenager, wrestled with legitimacy and assurance and all those things and like was sincere in my desire to trust

Jesus, follow him. And it's just like, yeah, but I'm plagued by things.

I'm not, I sin too much and I don't love enough. And my faith is sometimes weak and am

I legitimate or is Jesus gonna tell me he never knew me, you know? And then I can remember my church upbringing was so here, there, and everywhere.

I can remember being at a Joyce Meyer conference when I was 18 years old and being devastated by the fact that I could not speak in tongues.

Because, you know, it's the whole like, you know, baptism of the spirit, everything. And like, just here we are, all of us in this arena and we're like asking the

Lord to pour his spirit out. And like, you know, if you've never spoken in tongues, today can be the day if you're, you know, and it's not exactly said this way, but it kind of is implied that like, if you're legit and if you have real faith, you know, and if you're really

God's kinda, then you're gonna receive this gift even now. And there I am, and apparently it's happening for a buku number of people around me and it ain't happening for you, boy.

And so I'm like, I knew it, I knew it. All of my fears are right.

I've not heard that story, it's crazy. All of my fears are right. I knew that I wasn't legitimate.

And it just, it unsettled me even further. Like maybe, like why can't I? There's something wrong with me.

Maybe, you know, Jesus is legitimate. I know he is, but it just didn't take with me or it didn't work for me.

And so I get it. This is something that definitely has robbed people of peace and assurance and comfort that the

Lord means for them to have. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word.

It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?

That you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you?

It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what

Christ has done, but what they're doing. And we have a little book for you, it's free. We want you to download it.

And we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism, Reformed theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

Just go to theocast .org. Yeah, and we're not gonna get a whole conversation into speaking in tongues, but I do wanna mention our position in light of like, okay, well, why would we pick on that and say, hey,

Joyce Myers is off here, or really the charismatic movement when it relates to kind of a second blessing of the

Spirit to where you need to have this outpouring of tongues and gibberish, really, speaking in an unhealing language.

And this is how I'll summarize it. And maybe in the future, we could do a class on it in the community or something like that.

But I'll summarize it in this way. The Bible is very clear when the prophets were prophesying of the coming of the

Messiah, that when he would appear, there would have to be a way for Israel, the followers of Yahweh, to identify who this man is.

Because there were, Jesus said it himself, there were many false Christs, and there will be many false

Christs. We're just not used to it. But back in the day, there were a lot of people claiming to be the

Messiah. And Jesus shows up, and in their mind, they're like, yeah, he's one more dude. And then they're like, whoa, stop.

This guy's different. Wait a minute. And this is why his lineage, and not only that, it says he will perform, this is the prophet

Isaiah and the Psalms, he will perform many signs and wonders. The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will raise.

Well, the moment he starts doing that, those are signs that no other prophet's been able to do, not in consistency.

And so there's these comments that are being made. There's no man who's ever spoke this way. There's no one who's done miracles this way.

Now, Jesus dies, he raises again. His apostles are there. And he says, you need to go out and proclaim the risen

Christ and do so by signs and wonders, confirming my message, right?

So you got the apostles going out and the churches, and as they're expanding to the Jewish culture and the ones who would be aware of this message, the signs and wonders continue as a confirmation.

But as the message continues on to the Gentiles, you'll notice, and as it spreads out from the immediate

Jews who would have been under the Mosaic law, and it spreads out past that, you see that the gifts start to go down.

Why? Because there doesn't need to be a confirmation. These are converts now. There's no confirmation for those who've already believed in God.

These are converts. And how does Paul say to the Romans that those would be converted? It's by the preaching of the gospel, right?

So we don't need signs and wonders because the miracle, the message, God's spell, the spell that comes out by words and hits the heart, that miraculous miracle, which

I think is a miraculous sign, like, whoa, you know, dead soul, alive soul. How did that happen?

Preaching of the gospel. Yeah, that's right. So we, Justin and I, would call ourselves cessationist light, only in that the gifts have ceased because they've fulfilled their prophecy.

Like, they fulfilled their role. Correct. Ceased in that original sense. But we're not convinced from Scripture that you will absolutely, under no circumstance whatsoever, ever, ever see it again.

If it is evident, it's a lie, it's false, it's rejected. We have a hard time embracing that because I know there's the passage about when the perfect will come.

I'm not convinced that necessarily that is Scripture. And I'll throw this back over to you, Justin, because I've been talking a lot. So you can explain, like, what do you mean you guys don't think that they have ceased?

Like, you think you should expect them? All right, so yeah, I agree with you. What we're trying to prevent from happening is a rewinding of the clock to the apostolic era and the founding of the church.

We don't think that the sign gifts of tongues, healing, prophecy operate the way that they did in that era of redemptive history.

Like, full stop. Like, John and I are there completely. You and I share the opinion that when the perfect comes, we think that that's actually speaking of Christ's return.

We're not seeing that as the canon of Scripture being closed. You and I both would hold to a closed canon, just to be super clear.

We don't think the Lord is revealing, like, divinely inspired, binding revelation.

Like, He's not doing that anymore. We have the book, and we can operate and abide by it. We do, you and I, we both would have room for the

Lord to work apart from ordinary measures and ordinary providence at any point in which

He chooses. Our confession says this. And so I've heard many stories from missionaries, for example, going into various contexts where very miraculous things have happened.

And it has resulted in people coming to faith in Jesus Christ, like, as He's revealed in the Gospels and as He's revealed in the

Scripture. And I have no reason to think that the Lord has not worked in that particular way.

This seems like a good time for me to say this. I'm gonna just kind of speak against hyper -cessationism for a minute, if you're cool with that.

Yeah, that's a perfect time. Great. So I think that there is a kind of hyper -cessationism that exists amongst people in our tribe, in our stream, like in the

Reformed or even like Reformation theology camp. And I think that,

I mean, a few things I could say. The Westminster divines, so the framers of the

Westminster Confession of Faith, and I would throw in there, very likely framers of the

Second London Confession, you know, in this era of history, would have had categories for things that would make a lot of our

Reformed friends very nervous, you know, in terms of they thought about the Lord coming to His people and ministering to His people in dreams, angelic visitation, prophetic impulses, as they would call it, unction of God, you know.

So they had categories for all of this. And I think that you bring up any of that kind of stuff.

So we've already spoken about the Lord told me. That's not what we're saying. But we should have a lot of room for the

Lord to press all kinds of things on our hearts. They're gonna be in alignment with His word, of course. That goes without saying.

But for the Lord to press things upon our hearts, for things, you know, dreams. There are ways that angels minister to us that we just don't talk about very much.

We should think about it. We should think about it. We should have categories for this. Not that I'm all the time looking around, like, where is my angelic visitation today?

But that I've got categories for that. That God will give particular unction or a particular burden over something in a particular season because this is really good that I engage this way or that I pursue this individual.

God absolutely does those things. And so I think what exists today is a kind of hyper -cessationism.

To me, John, and we don't have time to flush all this out, but I think it ends up in a kind of rationalism over and against an appropriately, like a supernatural perspective of how the

Lord works. I think it ends up in a kind of, it almost sounds like deism, where like the Lord is kind of distant, you know?

He's not as intimately involved, even though nobody would say it that way. It still sounds like, well,

God ain't gonna get involved like that, and He ain't gonna get, He's not gonna do that. He's kind of gonna sit up there in the heavens and govern things according to His providence, but it's not this.

Or I think you fall into the trap of what I would call like hyper -textualism, meaning if it is not contained, even though Reformed folks, confessional folks, are against biblicism, which we are too, there's a hyper -textualism that can come into this conversation where it's like, well, if it's not a word that's written in the book, then we can't speak it.

You know, in terms of like, the Lord impressed this upon my heart. Well, you can't say that because that's not written in Scripture.

And it's like, well, since when did we, did we wanna go that direction? You know, did

I have to have chapter and verse for everything? So I do think that there are ways that you can fall off the other side of the horse.

And yes, you and I absolutely have room for the Lord to work, even in the kind of prophetic sign, gift, tongues kind of stuff.

Particularly when the gospel's going somewhere where it's never been established before. I think we need to make room for that.

Yeah, I would agree in that. That's why I would call myself a cessation of slight in that I think the normative experience of Christians is that it's just not normal.

And I don't think it's because the spirit has left or because faith has waned. I think that their gospel's been extremely powerfully preached and is in many churches in the

United States. And has gone to the ends of the earth. Yeah. But that being said that, you know, there are times where you hear stories about, you know,

Muslims having dreams of Jesus and they believe, like you talked to them and they're, their faith is not like, it's legit.

You know, you're. I have that in my mind. Yeah. So, you know. Like converted even because it's like, man, I've had this dream about Jesus combined with things that I've been told about him.

And it's like the, what I heard of him. And then like this dream I had, like, I think I trust in Jesus now.

It's like, Lord be praised, you know. Exactly. In a country where it's anti -Christian too. Yeah.

That's, that's, that's important. Last comment, last comment. We get real nervous too, of anything that like smacks of the supernatural.

We've already said that, but we get nervous over anything that sounds mystical. Well, because we don't want to be a Roman Catholic mystic.

And it's like, you know, guys, I really do think that, last I checked, union with Christ is a mystical union.

I mean, we say that, right? And so then what does that mean? That I think that the Lord works via our union with Christ that is mystical and vital, you know, to do things in and through us.

And I don't think anybody objects to that. No. Anyway, keep driving the car, John.

Here we go. Yeah, dude, to your point though, evidentialism has so influenced the conservative Christians that, you know, we want everything to be accepted by the unbeliever and we want to be able to provide evidence for everything.

And that's why Paul has to say like, I'm not ashamed of this. I mean, you know, this is nutty, this is nutty stuff.

I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And why would someone be ashamed of it? Well, because it doesn't line up.

It doesn't line up with the acceptability. I mean, if you were to have a man related, a man created religion, it would look nothing like what we have, nothing, you know?

And so that's where a lot of, where I'm going to push back and say, hey, look, I think there's some damaging things coming out of the charismatic movement.

But guys, let's not swing so far that, you know, we're not allowing any work of the spirit at all.

Right. You know, like, hold on, let's back off here a little bit. The church is one foundation. Love that hymn.

And that line where it says, you know, and mystic, like what is true for us? Mystic sweet communion.

This is true of the church with God, the three in one. It's like, well, if we have mystic sweet communion with God, the three in one,

I think he's going to be working supernaturally, mystically through this communion we have with him to accomplish his purposes in our lives and to grow us.

And this is part of the reason why we think that he does the work of sanctification because this union exists. And anyway.

That being said, we want to kind of move towards the end of the last part of this section and saying, there is a strong warning.

So we think that God can and will move. Scripture absolutely must be without qualification and without question, it has to be our foundation here.

And I'm unwilling at this point to move off of scripture. It's been completed and trusted for 2 ,000, 4 ,000 years.

Exactly, the canon's closed. Yep, word. And so anything that is brought to me has a sniff of anti -Christ, anti -gospel

Trinitarianism. I not only will reject it, but I am commanded to expose it and avoid it.

Like don't, that is not, that is of Satan. That is satanic in nature.

So that being said, I think it's healthy and good for us to be open and cautious about what's going on at the same time where we don't need to be willy nilly and just embrace anything that comes our way.

So I just want to read a couple of passages where we are warned multiple times in the New Testament about false prophets and that in any way, shape or form, something rises up.

Like we, Justin, I honestly think most Christians think, oh, I'll be able to see a false prophet, no problem. Well, I read the

New Testament, it doesn't come across this way. For instance, this is Romans 16, 17. I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.

Avoid them, for such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but they're by their own appetites and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive.

Now that's a huge statement. It's not that all of a sudden, you know, they're forcing them by threat.

It says by smooth talk and flattery, we can see people start to sway the people away.

Jude 4, certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our

God into sensuality and deny even their master, Jesus Christ. So when we have people who are going to start swaying the church and start manipulating the church, it's going to happen in such a way where you have to have a foundation, something to point to and go, wait a minute, what you're saying is not a lie.

No, that's right. You have like 1 John, where there are people clearly saying that John calls the spirit of the antichrist, that people were saying that Jesus didn't come in the flesh, right?

For example, and amongst other things, and that sins commit, effectively sins we commit in the body don't matter, right?

So like the pursuit of righteousness and love of one another and things like this. It's like, if you have people that are saying things like that, that are faults about the

Lord Jesus Christ and that fly in the face of clear biblical witness, then we need to call that what it is.

And - Go ahead. Absolutely. Well, what I'm saying is that sometimes, even within my charismatic brothers,

I want to speak to because we get really excited about someone who's gargareous, who may even have show signs of power.

And Jesus warns us that there will be people who can do this. Paul won't. I mean, look at Simon, the magician, who literally had the entire town wise and rich following him because of his capacity of what he could do.

This is in the book of Acts. But going back to your point of 1 John, 1 John straight up says, 1

John 4, 1, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits. I think this is people who come up and say,

I have the spirit of Christ. I think it's fascinating. He goes, yeah, you know, just because someone claims to be a

Christian, we need to put them to the test because where is their faith, right? Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

For many false prophets have gone out into the world. I don't think that goes away because it's been 2000 years,

Justin. Well, and yeah, I mean, as to whether, you know, don't believe every spirit, test them.

I mean, as to whether these are people that are claiming to be Christians or whether these are people that are claiming to have some kind of authority to speak in the church.

I mean, in terms of the particular context, but he goes on to say, but here's how you're gonna know the spirit of God. And this is big.

Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And so he's writing into a context.

He's writing into a context. Accept them, caress. Exactly, he's writing into a context where people are saying, oh, well,

Jesus actually, he just appeared to be human or he didn't really come as a human being, you know, because there's a lot of,

I hold this view that there's a lot of like proto -gnosticism and docetism and things like that going on in that context in the church, right?

And so docetism meaning to seem, like from the word to seem, like Jesus only seemed human.

He wasn't actually human. And so John is writing against that. And he says, every spirit that does not confess

Jesus, i .e. that he came in the flesh is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and is now in the world already, right?

And so, yeah, absolutely. We have to condemn these things. That's right. Well, yeah, and he goes on to talk about this is how you make the distinction because the person who, what ends up happening is, this is what

John says, they are from the world, therefore they speak of the world. They end up leading you away from the wonder and the glory because worldly thinking is not centered on grace and mercy in the gospel.

It's not. No, it is not. It's gonna draw you away back into the, into worldliness and self -righteousness.

That's right. Yeah, and it's not also gonna be, yeah, it's grace and mercy in the gospel, but it is also not favorable to the cross itself that God the

Son would take on flesh and come and suffer and die so that we might be forgiven and that he would come as a human to be our righteousness.

Like, that is offensive to the world. And we talk a lot about that theology of the cross versus a theology of glory, which a lot of what takes place in charismania, to use that word, is absolutely a theology of glory.

It is all about power and wealth or prosperity or whatever circumstantial good now.

And it is not about Jesus Christ hanging naked on a tree, taking our sins upon himself.

Like, that's not the emphasis, you know? Well, Paul, we know that he uses lots of spiritual warfare language, like Ephesians 6, but I think it's interesting in Galatians 3, he says, well, foolish

Galatians, like, what happened to you? And then he uses this term, this word. He says, who bewitched you?

Like, literally used witchcraft to cause your mind to go off the gospel.

So these people weren't convinced just because like, oh, let's breathe another gospel. They were convinced by signs and wonders.

I mean, I quoted earlier, let me give you the actual quote, Matthew 24, 24. For false

Christ and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.

And this, I think Paul is saying, you have had people who have somehow used signs and wonders to move you off of the gospel, because it says, it was before your very eyes,

Galatians 3 .1, that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Justin, there's a theme that I'm trying to get to, is that these false prophets at every level are coming after Jesus and getting us to move off of Jesus.

One last verse and I'll throw it to you, Hebrews 1 .1. I am sorry if you hear music in the background.

I share an office and all of a sudden, someone's playing the piano right next to me and it's really loud, so I don't know if that's gonna get edited out.

Hebrews 1 .1. If not, you'll have to cast to a soundtrack today. I may have to go in there and say something that is so loud.

Long ago and at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our forefathers by the prophets.

This is so loud. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom

He appointed to heir of all things through whom also He created the world.

So what we're realizing is that this ministry of prophecy, this ministry of gaining new knowledge, it says, but Jesus was the one.

It's through Him and His words. And He's telling us what the final foundation is and the apostles are now confirming that.

So the point of it being is that we need to pay very close attention to anybody who's prophesying or speaking on behalf of God.

And how they talk about Jesus in the gospel is more important than anything else they say because if they can't affirm that, then we need to be done.

All right, so let me pound the desk for a second just in line with what you're saying, John. A couple of examples here.

I agree completely with you, like Hebrews 1, that's an excellent way to frame this conversation in that Jesus is the definitive revelation of God.

And if we are not understanding that Jesus is God the Son, so He is

God who took on flesh, who came to accomplish God's plan of redemption by dying in our place and by fulfilling all righteousness, that He rose from the grave, like that He really died with His body that He had while He was on earth and then

He really rose from the dead. If we do not understand that He is the yes and amen of all of the promises of God and is the fulfillment of everything that came before Him, if we're not getting that right, then we should be hugely concerned about the quote unquote prophecy and the prophet or prophetess that is speaking the words.

A couple of examples of differing severity, I think at least as we would look at it, I think it even is most would.

All right, so Mormonism. So the visions and all of the things that Joseph Smith experienced out in the woods, followed by the writings of Brigham Young.

Let's talk about Joseph Smith. All of the things that he received, they may have been angelic, but they were not angels of God because they were different unholy angels, disguised as angels of light perhaps, but what he got by way of revelation was not from the

Lord. How do we know that? Because he does not affirm, I mean, just most basically does not affirm the divinity, the deity of Jesus of Nazareth.

The fact that He is God the Son. And so it's a non -starter, man. We are not affirming the doctrine of the

Trinity. You're not affirming the person of Jesus in terms of who He is. Then this is not even a conversation.

And what you have heard is not from the Lord. Another one. I mean, you know, even Ellen White in like the Seventh -day

Adventist church, all right, so they're not looked at the same way that Mormons are in that Mormonism is clearly a cult because it's not

Trinitarian, et cetera. Seventh -day Adventists are Trinitarian and preach in one sense the gospel of Jesus, but there is a lot of, to me, problems with their theology in that because of divine revelation that this prophet has received, we're now gonna roll back many of the things that Jesus had fulfilled and abrogated, for example, and we're now weaving works righteousness into what the gospel is to some extent.

And those are huge issues that we're getting Jesus and the gospel wrong because our prophet said so.

This is very concerning, and we should call those things out for what they are, even though one is not like the other in terms of Mormonism and Adventism.

Go ahead. Yeah, or like even one is Pentecostalism, which is. Oh, sure, oh,

I mean, yeah, I agree. So like T .D. Jakes. The thing is, create your foundation, exactly.

Yeah, right. Go ahead, brother, yeah. Like, you know, I mean, again, I'm not trying to just roast individuals here, but like for T .D.

Jakes was wildly popular. I mean, in circles that I ran in for a long time, and it's like, homie, why are we appealing to somebody who doesn't even affirm the doctrine of the

Trinity? Like, this is a big deal. Properly. Like, this is getting God wrong, you know, and which means you're gonna get

Jesus wrong. And so, anyway, yeah, this is stuff that is so pivotal, which is where we absolutely have to hold the line when it comes to doctrine of God, and in particular, the person and work of Jesus and what that then means for the good news.

If we're wrong on this stuff, and if you're clearly denying it, then we need to call you a false prophet.

Yeah, and this is where, you know, I'll end with one of my favorite passages now. I mean, I've been quoting 2 Peter for so many years, but man,

I love this section from 2 Peter 1 .19, and Peter really helps us think about how to live our life.

We have so many people who are intrigued by modern prophecy and what's kind of happening and looking for it.

Like, I wanna see more signs and wonders. I wanna see more prophecy, and Peter says this, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, so past prophecy.

Then even what they saw on the Mount of Transfiguration. That's right, to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place.

So he's saying, if you wanna know how to make it through the darkness of the evil that is in our world, hold on to the fulfillment of who

Christ is, this fully, like, filled -out prophecy, and that's where I wanna end in saying, at the heart of Theocast, we really wanna be emphasizing and focusing on Christ.

We wanna talk about what he is, what he's done for us, and how he will be of the final and fulfillment of our joy in that which is to come.

With that being said, as Christ is ministered throughout the world, I think there's gonna be a lot of things we don't understand, and there are gonna be things that happen we can't fully explain, but we don't have to just throw our hands up and accept everything.

That's dangerous. I fully believe there are false teachers and prophets who wanna hurt me and hurt the church, and so I am going to see what you're saying,

I'm gonna compare it to Scripture, and if you affirm what's going on, then we can have a conversation, but if not, church, listener, pay attention here.

The reason why I'm saying this is that Satan wants more than anything to destroy your vision of the gospel and of Jesus Christ.

He wants you to get distracted by anything and any means possible. He wants to darken and clouden it, and let's take

Peter's advice here. Let's pay well attention to the prophecy of the fulfillment of Christ, and allow that to be our shining light in the darkness, and not be intrigued by the miraculous gifts or things that might be happening around us.

I'm not saying you have to ignore them, but please filter them through what we already know to be true and safe by Scripture.

Yeah, word. Well, with that, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

We are aiming to impale the desk and hold the line. Yeah, yeah. Over Jesus Christ, his sufficiency, as he's revealed in Scripture, and there are many ways that the

Lord does minister to us, but you don't need to be chasing after what you perceive to be some miraculous experience or something that you can point to and hold onto to say,

I'm legitimate. No, you are legitimate via your union with Christ by faith, and the Lord has you in your gifts.

Yeah, amen. All right, with that, we're gonna leave it. This has been a long -ish episode anyway, but we hope it's been encouraging or clarifying.

Yeah, it's had some interruptions, some edit points, pro -podcasting at its finest. We never edit, but we keep having to today.

We never edit, but we're gonna have multiple edit points in this one. You can thank our team that you never get to see.

They're behind the scenes. Thank you guys for your work, and thank you for listening today, and should our

Lord not return, we'll be back in your earbuds or however you listen to us next week. Grace and peace. Amen.

Peace. Hey, guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

Theocast Community, and we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.