The Sufficiency of Scripture with Justin Peters

Introduction to the Session on the Sufficiency of Scripture

So, we have something special for you today. This is going to be a special edition of the Wrap Report. We are going to give to you what we offered for the people who watched the Snatch Them from the Flames Home Edition.

This is Session 1, Justin Peters will be the one speaking. It is the topic of the sufficiency of scriptures. You can still watch the full Snatch Them from the Flames Home Edition, just go to strivingforeternity .org, go to the online events and you can watch it there.

You will not want to miss this session with Justin Peters right now. Welcome to the Wrap Report.

One, two, three. Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community.

For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Opening Banter and Conference Introductions

All right. Well, welcome to Snatch Them from the Flames Home Edition. We're glad that you're watching. This is Justin Peters on that side, if he's on that side on your screen. Maybe he's on this side on your screen.

And I'm Andrew Rapoport. We're glad to be with you. Actually, I could, Justin, I could put our names up. Look, there we go. There's our name. See? All right. We're glad to be able to do this. You know, last year, about a year ago, Justin, you and I, a year ago, actually last week, you and I were in the Philippines doing this seminar.

Yes. Yes, we were.

Yeah, it was a great trip. Just precious, precious people in the Philippines. We both, I think, I can speak for both of us and say we really, really enjoyed it. Yeah. And the Balut was very good. I know you really enjoyed that.

I was watching, I was watching Cash Cab the other night and Balut was one of their questions. They showed a picture.

I was like, I know what that is. For folks who don't know what Balut is, that's probably good for you. I didn't mind it. It tasted good, but Justin wasn't willing to taste it. But we have over 1 ,600 people registered for this seminar.

And just to give you a few, here's Stan. He's in New Jersey. We got Dorothy here. She's from Texas. But we have some folks from the Philippines. We got Trevor here is from South Africa, says, just found out about the conference now and extremely looking forward to it.

Thanks so much, Justin. Leanne is from Southern Indiana, very close to Louisville, Kentucky, which is where the ARC Encounter is and the Creation Museum. We have Les from Northern Indiana, but we also have Iris from South Germany.

Now Nadine, who's from Rhode Island, has a message for you, Justin. I think this is very good. Natalie says, thank you for your guidance, Justin. I'm 15 and you helped me out of new age ways of thinking.

I know God is going to do great things through you. I love you, brother.

Oh, well, I love you too, Nadia. God bless you. Praise the Lord for that.

Natalie says, thanks for amazing ministry, Justin. I also am 15. You really helped me learn more about the truth of the charismatic Pentecostal churches. Thank you, Natalie.

Praise the Lord. That's so encouraging to see young people tuning in. That's great.

We got Mary from Massachusetts. I didn't ask everyone to put their where they're from, but I figured before we get started, we'll put this out. We got Mary from Massachusetts and Connie from Texas. Hopefully I don't get into names I can't pronounce.

Well, I can't pronounce that one, but I don't think it's... I'm going to go with Carol is from Ohio. We also have W from Ohio. He just goes by W. Now here's another. Ethan is 16. He says, thank you for your ministries.

I'm 16. It helped me out a lot. Now I really like Ethan because he also put this up, Justin. Everybody put hashtag JustinIWin in the chat, and he did that. Ethan, two thumbs up. Folks who don't know what JustinIWin is, all I could say is go to the website.

There it is right there, JustinIWin .com. You knew that had to get in there somehow, right? I figured it was coming. People just go to JustinIWin .com. You'll get the joke. There's a video that explains it, but it's my way of bragging and getting him donations.

So you donate to his ministry, put JustinIWin, I get bragging rights. We'll talk about supporting his ministry a bit, but Toronto, I'm not going to be able to get to the rest of these. But let's, you know, we have, I saw there was Michigan, but, so Justin, when we, you know, we talk about this, let me do some, put up just real quick, some information for folks that we have just as way of announcements, but let me share if I can find the PowerPoint.

There we go. All right. So some things we got for folks is Striving Fraternity is having a moving sale. If you want to get 50 off all of our books and syllabuses, just use the code MOVE. That is till June 15th, June 15th, that coupon will work to get you 50 off at our store.

But we have a different thing here, Justin, that is of interest. You got a new website. I do.

I do. Let's talk about that. Yeah. Brand new website. It's just been live for four or five days now, I guess, and much, much improved over the last one. The last one was an old website and that, you know, and you just kind of tell it's dated kind of from the earlier days of the internet.

And so this is a new and updated, a lot of new information. Yeah. Some of the, you know, resources that are available, but videos, interviews that I've done with, say like Jim Osmond on spiritual warfare, some articles that I've written on various things, a link to the podcast, a detailed doctrinal statement is there.

I like detailed doctrinal statements and I have one of those. So a lot of people email me asking, well, what do you believe about this or that? And probably most of that is covered in my doctrinal statement.

So yeah, lots of new stuff, same website or address anyway, but new website.

Yeah. So we got, we got that. One last thing we have is that we are willing to do this conference in your church. And so this is something that Justin and I will come to your church. We'll be happy to come on and do this.

We do either one of two. We could do all day Saturday, like we're doing here today, or if you want a Friday and Saturday, we could add two sessions where we add Anthony, Dr. Anthony Silvestro to cover two sessions on social justice.

So if you're interested, just contact speaker at striving for eternity .org and we can schedule one of those. So with that, Justin, we're going to end up handing this off to you. Now folks who don't know, Justin is super techie.

He lived with tech. You do you, you ride on that scooter all day. So you're living with tech. We'll make more announcements throughout, but what we, the plan is today, Justin is going to talk this first session.

We're going to do a session on, on a sufficiency of scripture. Then we'll take a 10 minute break. I'll deal with interpreting scripture. Then we'll take an hour break for, for a break for lunch or in Justin's case breakfast.

And then we'll, then we'll end up going for a longer session. Justin will do a longer session on discerning false teachers. And then I'm going to go through the entire book of Jude, going through identifying false teachers.

And then after that's a Q and a. Now let me let you know some things about the Q and a you're watching on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Put your questions there. It'd be nice if you put a capital Q and then a colon so that the person who's getting the questions knows it's a question for us, but they're going to be monitoring, looking for questions and put it in for the end.

There is a advantage to you to putting more questions in. Justin and I are both giving away some books and different things. And so those who answer the, who ask questions, we'll be getting those. Now what we're going to do, because we realize there's people in the Philippines that are just getting ready to go to bed and they're not going to be able to watch this live.

They're going to be watching tomorrow or the next day. And so we're going to have three people that we're going to pull out of all those who registered. So even if you're watching on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, you didn't register, go to striving for eternity .org, click on the online events tab, go register there because what we're going to do probably Wednesday or Thursday, give people enough time to go in and register.

Three people are going to be chosen at random and you're going to get a private one hour zoom meeting with both Justin and I. So Justin and I will be, we'll come in, we'll set up a zoom meeting with you and you get an hour of, of being able to ask any question you want.

And Justin, you and I are doing, we really, we started this because you, I didn't get into that. We started this because you called me up and you said, Hey, how's your speaking schedule doing? And I said, it was all clear.

Yep. Yep. Yep. I think all of us have had pretty much cleared schedules for the last few months. So I'm going to start kind of dipping my toes back in the water. I think in June I'm supposed to go to Texas.

So maybe things are starting to kind of loosen up now and get back to some semblance of normalcy of sorts.

Yeah. And I may, I'm still trying to see whether I'm going to make it up your way for July. I haven't, there's a different factor that I should explain this. Some people may be wondering, some people say I don't look as intelligent with empty bookcases behind me.

My books are practical and social distancing. They're packed away in 90 boxes in the garage as I'm making my way out to Pennsylvania to a church plant we have there called the Master's Church of Bucks County.

And we'll talk about that later on. But if you're in that area, want to want to find a good church, you could come, you know, well, I don't know if you want to come hear me preach. I do hear there's rumor that Justin is going to be packing up and moving out to Pennsylvania to, to, to join me in this.

You don't mind leaving the grandchildren, right? I mean, come on. Yeah, I do. I tried, folks. I tried. But yeah, so we're, that's why there's no books on my bookcase. But that's how this started. We started because basically our schedules cleared up and we had, you know, Justin said, Hey, let's, let's try to do some online for everyone who's, who's at home.

And so that's really why we, we came up with this idea of doing this, the seminar that we tried to do in churches online. And I can't remember why I was bringing that up. I'll probably remember later.

I probably should have made a list of the announcements there, Justin. But I mentioned the giveaway. So what I'll do is I'm going to hand this off to you. So here, Justin, let's, let's work on. So start your, your PowerPoint into presenter.

Yeah.

All right. Step slash interview.

We only did like did two trial runs of this folks.

Okay. So command tab, right? Yep. Okay. Share screen, share screen. I'm starting to remember application window. Yep.

PowerPoint slideshow. Yep. See, he's got this down better than I thought. Okay.

There we go. And then I'm going to bow out and I'll see you guys in about an hour. Okay.

All right, dear friends. Well, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity and I'm grateful for the technology. Of course, these are less than ideal circumstances given the pandemic that all of us are going through, but I'm grateful to have the technology that we do so we can at least do these kinds of things.

And so thank you all of you for tuning in all around the world. So encouraging to see people from the Philippines and South Africa and Germany. So all over the world, very honored and grateful to have this time with you.

The Difference Between Revelation and Illumination

Okay. So I'm assuming everybody can see my PowerPoint here. I cannot see any of you. I wish I could, but let us begin. So hearing from heaven, how do we know when God is speaking to us? I'm sure you've heard people say, well, God spoke to me and told me to tell you such and such or God told me this.

God told me that. Have you ever heard someone say that? And it makes you wonder what's wrong with me? You know, I, I don't hear God talk to me like that. Are these people more spiritual than I am? Do they have a closer walk with God than I do?

Is there something wrong with my walk with the Lord? You know, I don't hear God talk to me like that. All these people, they seem to hear God speak to them so regularly and so easily. And I just, I don't hear God talk to me like that.

Am I not even saved? I can't tell you how many people I have talked to over the years and how many people email me on a regular basis with these kinds of questions. And so I want to talk about this, how to know the voice of God.

How do we know when God is speaking to us? Okay. So we have a fair amount of ground to cover here. And let me say too, that in my PowerPoint presentation, I'm going to have a lot of different clips of very varied people.

I'm going to have clips everywhere from Sid Roth and Benny Hinn to more people, people more in kind of a considered more to be more normal, if you will, like Robert Morris and even Charles Stanley and Beth Moore.

Now, I'm showing these clips, the wide variety of individuals here, not to lump them all into the same group, not to equate Charles Stanley with Sid Roth and Sid Roth is just Looney Tunes. But I'm doing this to show you how widespread this belief is that God is speaking to people outside of scripture.

Okay. So let us begin. I want to define a couple of terms. We need to lay a little bit of groundwork here because these are terms that are very widely misunderstood. Revelation. Revelation refers to God revealing new information that up until that point has been previously hidden.

Okay. So God revealing something new that up until this point has not been revealed. Illumination refers to the enabling work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers to understand and to appropriate the truths of scripture.

So in other words, illumination is the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of us as believers. When he helps us to understand God's word as we read and study God's word, the Holy Spirit helps in the process of illumination, helping us to understand the word of God and then to appropriate it, obey it in our lives.

So revelation is not happening anymore. Illumination is. And maybe you've heard somebody say, oh, well, I really got revelation on this. Well, no, you really didn't. You didn't get revelation. Now, what may have happened is illumination, the Holy Spirit illumining the meaning of God's word to our hearts and to our minds.

So we need to keep those two terms distinct and understand what they mean because they're very, very widely misunderstood. So this whole notion of God speaking today outside of scripture, not going to go too in depth in this because it's too much in the weeds.

Pietism, Divine Revelation Knowledge, and Lectio Divina

But this this idea of God speaking outside of scripture can be traced back to a movement known as pietism. This pietism began in the late 1600s, went through the mid 1700s or so. It was a reaction to what many people perceived to be an over intellectualized mindset coming out of the Protestant Reformation.

Reformation. Some people believe that doctrine had become a little bit too heady and a bit too dry, maybe a cold and whoops, there we go. And so pietism was a reaction to that. It began with a man named Philip Spinner, 1635 -1705.

You see his dates there. And Philip Spinner was no heretic, not at all. He just began to deviate just a little bit from the sufficiency of scripture. And he began to put a little bit more emphasis on kind of impressions and things like that from God.

And then it progressed to a guy named August Franck, and he took Spinner's deviations a little bit further. And then you get to count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, and he he was even further than that. And as as is the case, error always begets more error.

Error does not stay localized. And in fact, Paul says, right, that it spreads like gangrene. And and by the time you get to the Nicholas von Zinzendorf, he was he had developed something called the theology of the heart and that he actually emphasized heartfelt convictions above that of scripture.

And so he was really in some very serious error. He was the leader of the Moravians and the Moravians had this practice of and maybe you've done this before. I did it many, many years ago because I saw other people do it.

But say you you need a word from the Lord and you've got something going on in your life. Lord, I really need a word from you. I need to know what you're saying. And so you have your Bible in front of you, close your eyes and you just kind of open your Bible at random and you point and whatever your finger points at, that is God's word for you.

Well, that can be traced back to Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf. It's a very bad thing to do, by the way. That's it's not biblical at all. Divine revelation knowledge. This term was first coined by Essek W. Kenyon.

He was the grandfather of the word of faith movement, Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland, that kind of thing. Kenyon believed in two types of knowledge. The first of these is sensory knowledge, that which we get through our five senses, sight, sound, taste, smell, touch.

And the other is revelation knowledge. And this is supernatural knowledge that comes only from God. Now, according to Kenyon, the catch to this is that these two spheres of knowledge are mutually exclusive.

And what that means is, is that reasoning or logical thought is of no value. So if you really want to go deep with God, when you want to get to the deep things of the Lord, then you need to disengage your mind, put your put your brain in neutral.

You may have heard of a practice called Lectio Divina. This is a modern day version of what Kenyon started. This requires you to empty your mind so that God can speak to you. And Lectio Divina was popularized by Pope Benedict the 16th in 2005.

And now this Lectio Divina has has actually become accepted in Protestant circles. Unfortunately, several years ago, even John Piper and Beth Moore were together up on a stage at a conference practicing Lectio Divina.

This is a profoundly unbiblical thing to do. OK. All right. Speaking of Beth Moore, and I know probably a lot of people watching me right now, your cackles are raised and you're upset that I'm talking about Beth Moore.

Beth Moore's Claims of Private Secrets from God

Well, the fact of the matter is, is that she regularly claims that God speaks to her outside of scripture. I want to this is a quote from her book, Praying God's Word. And on page two, she says this, quote, What little I know, I want others to know.

Before God tells me a secret, he knows up front I'm going to tell it. By and large, that's our deal. Oh, my goodness. How many problems with this? So Beth Moore claims that God is telling her secrets.

Of course, then she says he knows up front I'm going to tell it. Well, if he knows you're going to tell the secret, I don't really know that it's a secret. That doesn't make any sense. But you see this.

She claims a real intimate relationship with God, that God gives Beth Moore secrets, tells her things that he's not telling other people. You know what? That's Gnosticism. This is a modern version of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, and it's profoundly unbiblical.

It's profoundly arrogant to think that God is telling you secrets that he's not telling other people. Like you've got this inside deal with the king of kings and lord of lords. No, that is not that is not true.

That's flies in the face of so many things, a priesthood of the believer, for one. But anyway, she said, that's our deal. You see, Beth Moore has such a close, intimate relationship with God. She has a secret deal with him that that you and I just don't have.

Another book that she wrote, When Godly People Do Ungodly Things. Now, this is just bizarre. Beth Moore writes this. She said, I heard the voice of God speak to my heart and God said, come and play. I love that he said, come, not go.

Come. That meant that he was already there. I also love how I could tell by the sweet tone of his silent voice. I don't even know what that means. The sweet tone of a silent voice. If a voice is silent, doesn't that how does it have a tone?

But anyway, I love how I could tell by the sweet tone of his silent voice that he was smiling so she could see God or Jesus smiling. She said, I could have outlined his expression with my finger. Now, I'm sorry, that's just creepy.

That's just creepy. Beth Moore thinks that she can see Jesus so clearly that she could outline the expression on his face with her finger. That that's creepy. This is a romanticized view of of God, and it's just bizarre and downright creepy.

And then she goes on. She says, I built a snowman. I laughed with God. He laughed with me. I am so in love with him. I am so in love with him. You see that? I mean, Beth Moore has got such a close walk with God, intimate relationship with him, that she goes out and builds snowmen with Jesus.

This is bizarre. This is bizarre. OK, now I want to show you a few clips of some very common teachers who claim that we should be hearing the voice of God regularly outside of Scripture, but it should be a regular, normal part of the Christian life.

Now, I hope that this audio comes through. Andrew, if if there's any technical difficulties, text me. OK. All right.

Hearing God's Voice in Contemporary Teaching

Watch this from Rick Warren. Last week, we began a new miniseries on understanding how to hear the voice of God. Very few things are more important than this, because you can't have a relationship to God if you can't hear God.

If all you do is ever talk to him in prayer and you never hear God speak to you, that's a one way relationship. That isn't much of a relationship.

So if all you ever do is talk to God in prayer, but you never hear God talk to you, then that's no relationship. You don't really have a relationship with God. Watch this from Priscilla Shire.

Hi, I'm Priscilla Shire, and I'm hoping that you'll join me for a six week journey as we talk about how we can hear and discern the voice of God in our lives. Do you really expect and anticipate that the divine voice of God can be heard by you?

Do you really think that he loved you enough to die for you? But that love you and.

Not sure why it quit.

Let's see if so, you're. Are you asking if God speaks specifically? And the answer is, yes, he does. Let me give you two or three examples. Speaking about buying groceries on a particular day, I had a very short period of time, and so I wanted to buy a turkey.

Thanksgiving, my time was really running out. I thought, well, I shouldn't do this now. I said, God, just show me what to do. It's like God said, go to this store, buy the turkey. Now, I guess sort of my will.

I went, I walked right in straight to the right place, the right pound, the turkey walk right out and got back in the car in less than about 25 minutes. Did God tell me to go? Yes, he did.

OK, so here you see three very popular preachers, teachers, Rick Warren, Priscilla Shire in that clip that Priscilla of Priscilla Shire stopped for some reason to play the whole thing. But she says, do you really think that God loves you enough to die for you, but not enough to talk to you?

That is a real affront to the scriptures, to the word of God. What does she think the Bible is that is God speaking to us? And then you hear Charles Stanley, who's not normally considered to be kind of in the charismatic wing of things, but he he very much is, even though he's Southern Baptist.

But Charles Stanley talking about how one day God told him where to go get his Thanksgiving Day turkey. Has God ever told you where to go get your Thanksgiving Day turkey? If not, then Charles Stanley, boy, he's got a much closer relationship with God than do you.

So God is telling him where to go get his turkey. I mean, it's such a such an intimate relationship that Charles Stanley has with God that God even instructs him where to go get his turkey. I might point out that Charles Stanley is divorced.

And I don't say this to be mean, but, you know, it raises serious questions. How is it that God could tell him where to get his turkey? Something so trivial as that, but not apparently how to save his marriage as a pastor.

And so you but you see this. You see the implications of this, that if you're not hearing God speak to you, then you just don't really have a close relationship with God. Now, this is a book entitled Practicing the Power by Sam Storms.

Now, Sam Storms dealing with soteriology, the doctrine of salvation would be where Andrew and I are doctrines of grace, high view of the sovereignty of God and in salvation. And to his credit, Sam Storms has written and taught against some of the extremes of the charismatic movement.

But nonetheless, he is by definition a charismatic. And I want to show you what he says here. He says to be the recipient of prophetic revelation from God, whether in dreams, impressions, trances, visions or words of knowledge and words of wisdom can be nothing short of euphoric.

The experience brings feelings of nearness to God and a heightened sense of spiritual intimacy. That isn't often the case with other of the charismatic. This is a really unfortunate statement, because Sam Storms, you see him emphasizing the importance of dreams, impressions, trances, even visions and words of knowledge above that of the more normative spiritual gifts like teaching, mercy, administration, exhortation, the gift of giving the gift of hospitality.

These gifts, you see, they're just not they don't bring you into an intimate relationship with God, as do dreams and visions and trances and words of knowledge and all that. And that's a very unfortunate division of the spiritual gifts, as if dreams and impressions and visions are more important than teaching, mercy, administration.

Those gifts aren't just as important. They're not as intimate as these other gifts. It's a very unfortunate thing to say. And again, this is a another day of another version of the modern modern day version of Gnosticism.

So if you get dreams and visions and you go into trances, you're a half, you're really close with God. But if you're one of these poor souls and all you have is the Bible and dwelt by the Holy Spirit and you don't get dreams and visions from God, you just have the word of God.

So you have the gift of teaching. Then you have not. That's just not as spiritual as the other gifts. Very unfortunate. Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby, I would submit, is the resource that is singularly most responsible for introducing charismatic theology into at least theoretically non-charismatic circles.

Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby came out, I believe, in 1991 and really introduced this whole notion of God speaking to people outside of Scripture. Before Experiencing God, most non-charismatic churches would have understood that God speaks to us in the Bible.

We speak to God in prayer. Most people in at least non-charismatic churches would have understood that before Experiencing God came out. Now, hardly anybody understands that. Now, the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, which is not known to be charismatic, thanks to Experiencing God, now I would say probably the vast, vast majority, maybe upwards of 95 percent, an educated guess on my part, of Southern Baptists think that God speaks to them outside of Scripture.

And in large part, it comes as some of the fruit of Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. But Henry Blackaby says this in his book on page 87. If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience.

So if you're not hearing God speak to you, you're in trouble at the heart of your Christian experience. This should be something that should be a regular part, they say, of the Christian life. Now, I want to show you a video of a man named Sid Roth.

Sid Roth has a program on TPN entitled It's Supernatural. Sid Roth has the looniest stuff that you could ever imagine. I mean, just last night I was watching Sid Roth and just loony tune stuff. But what I'm about to show you is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on Christian television.

And I'm just going to play this and we'll talk about it. Sid Roth is going to. Well, I'll just let it play. Watch this from Sid Roth.

Hello, Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. I have read of the great men and women of faith. One in particular intrigues me so much. His name, Smith Wigglesworth. He had some of the most outrageous miracles I ever heard of in my life.

Let me give you one example. Some parents had a two month old baby dying in the hospital. The parents kidnapped the child, took the child to a Smith Wigglesworth meeting. And Smith looks at the child, looks at the parents and say, can I do what God tells me to do?

Well, what would you do if you're the parent's child's dying anyway, right? He takes the baby, two month old, throws the baby against the wall. Then the baby's on the floor. Have you ever seen someone play soccer?

Have you ever seen them kick a soccer ball? He does that with the baby. The baby falls into the congregation. No crying. Is it dead? 100 healed.

No crying. There are just no words for how appalling and horrific that is. Smith Wigglesworth was a faith healer, long dead, but his granddaughter was the guest on this program of Sid Roth, Smith Wigglesworth's granddaughter.

And she tells this story. My guess is that this probably never happened. I doubt very much that it happened. If it did, if it did, that baby died. That's what happened to that baby. If it happened, people often say, oh, Justin, you just talk about the fringe of the charismatic movement, the fringe elements.

No, this is the mainstream of the charismatic movement. This was put on worldwide television just a couple of years ago. And one of the charismatic mantras is what God does for one. He'll do for you. In addition to the spiritual dangers of this theology, there are physical dangers to this movement.

Sid Roth putting this on worldwide television and charismatics. Remember what God does for one he'll do for you. And so someone is sitting at home and they're watching this from Sid Roth, who claims to hear God speak to him all the time.