November 3, 2017 Show with Dan Phillips on “Biblical Preaching: Supernatural, Not Magical”

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Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Friday on this third day of November 2017, and I'm delighted to have back on the program a returning guest who blessed many of you the last time, including myself and my co-host, I believe, Reverend Buzz Taylor, I think was with us.

His name is Dan Phillips, and Dan Phillips received his Master of Divinity at Talbot Theological Seminary, and he has taught seminary and college classes in New Testament studies, Hebrew, and Old Testament theology, and has preached and presented seminars on Proverbs and the sovereignty of God, and has written biblical newspaper columns and tracks, has hosted a radio talk show, and has an ongoing conference and pulpit ministry, and he is most broadly known for his writing on the Pyromaniacs blog with Phil Johnson, who is the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, Grace to You, and Frank Turk, and at his own blog, Biblical Christianity, and he's also the pastor of Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, Texas, which thankfully, due to the mercy and grace of our sovereign Lord, was spared any kind of serious damage or the taking of life or the injuring of life during the recent hurricane down there in Houston that was so catastrophic, and today we are going to be discussing biblical preaching, supernatural, not magical, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dan Phillips, and in studio with me is my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor, and it's good to be here also, thank you.

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And by the way, Dan, before we go on to our subject at hand, for our listeners who have not heard you on this program before, why don't you tell our listeners something about Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, Texas, and also let us know any update that you care to share in the aftermath of the recent hurricane.

Down there. Sure, Copperfield, right, I came here, a read room, but it's only hot outside with these dear folks. Had a disaster relief fund and some very generous donation people mailing and we've been using them to help people who were affected by the storm.

Well, and could you.

Be a little bit more detailed about the theological background of the Copperfield.

Bible Church? Sure, I'd be happy to. I don't know the detailed history, but when I got here, credo baptism, approach to baptism and the dispensation. Independently, I got to the same place where John MacArthur is, the same Bible.

Yes, well, one of the.

Key sponsors of Iron Sharpens. Iron Radio is a former adjunct professor at Talbot. His name is Ron Glass and he is currently pastoring and has been pastoring for many years the Wading River Baptist Church in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and he is a dear brother in Christ.

He would share both your Calvinistic and your dispensationalist leanings and he knows that I am not a dispensationalist. He knows that I am a thoroughgoing Calvinist, but not a dispensationalist and yet he still loves this program so much that he is one of the primary people that have not only supported this program financially, but he also has been personally a spiritual and mental and emotional boost to my life and has been a constant source of encouragement to me and was really the primary person that pushed me to relaunch this program after I relocated from New York to Pennsylvania and I was still in the depths of grief after losing my wife and and Pastor Ron Glass was definitely in the forefront of those urging me to get back on the air, get back in the saddle as they say, and I am forever indebted to him.

He's a dear brother in Christ. In fact, Reverend Buzz Taylor and I edit his sermons. We have to break them in half so that they fit in two weeks worth of radio broadcasts because it's a half hour radio broadcast and so we edit.

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Supernatural Word and Magical Religion

Well, you have a very interesting theme that you wanted us to discuss today, biblical preaching, supernatural, not magical, and perhaps a good way to start today would be to have you give a definition of what you mean by supernatural in comparison or contrasted with magical and I know that there are probably going to be those in the Roman Catholic Church and perhaps Eastern Orthodoxy who would find it very offensive to hear some of their practices described as magical, not that we would actually believe that they are magical, but I think that is a more fit description or definition of what they think they are accomplishing during their rituals and rites and ceremonies than what the Bible would define as supernatural.

But anyway, if you could give us a comparison and contrast between supernatural and magical. Sure, I'd be happy to.

Through blogging at Pyromaniacs, but now my articles are appearing at a site called EJ Media and this is a couple of columns that I've got there. Well, actually the Catholic Church itself speaks of its practices, some of its rituals, as being ex operato, which means done by the then it produces a spiritual result.

So obviously a baby who's having water sprinkled on it is not believing anything or committing anything or understanding anything except that it's wet, which happens a lot to babies, and yet to the Roman Catholic Church, partaking of this sort of magic is that the idea of magic, the central idea of magic, is that if you perform the ritual the right way, if you offer the right sacrifices, use the right gestures, use the right words, then you're going to produce a spiritual effect.

That's magic. Magic is the idea of manipulating the gods. The Bible is supernatural, which is to say it's not just the operation of natural laws. It's not just a book. We believe that Hebrews 4 .12 says the Word of God is living and sharp beyond any two-edged sword.

God gives life through His Word. We believe that the Gospel, which is a message, it's news, it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. So we believe the Bible definitely is a book unlike any other in that God breathed the very words of God to us.

What I'm trying to point at, though, is that I think that unintentionally many people who would in no way think of themselves as magic, probably not even read Harry Potter, when it comes to church and to the preaching of the Word, they have an attitude towards the preaching of the Word that is almost magical.

Now, just to retrace a couple of things that you.

Said, there are those who are even amongst the ranks of Reformed Baptists and Calvinistic Presbyterians. In fact, I would say I'm imagining most Presbyterians would be Calvinistic, but there are some that are not.

The Cumberland Presbyterian denomination is actually Arminian. But anyway, there are Calvinists or Sovereign Grace-believing Christians or Reformed Christians who believe that something spiritual is going on in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper.

They don't think that they are only pictures and symbols and memorials and so on. They think that there is some significance, but there is something unique that would far separate the Reformed and Biblical understanding of the ordinances specifically, even though there's disagreement amongst even those under the umbrella of Reformed Faith or Sovereign Grace or Calvinism.

But you have in the Church of Rome the teaching of baptismal regeneration, which some of our Anglican friends believe and our Lutheran friends believe. Lutherans tend to be right on a lot of things, but I think they're dead wrong on that one.

But what becomes even more bizarre with the Roman Catholic Church that even is more descriptive of what might be called magical is their understanding of priestly powers, because the Roman Catholic Church teaches that even if a man is so unrepentant in wickedness and perhaps even heresy, that they find no other way of dealing with the situation other than removing him and stripping him of his orders.

Or perhaps he voluntarily leaves, perhaps even for a good reason, like my friend Richard Bennett, who was born again as a Roman Catholic priest, as a Jesuit, and he immediately, or I shouldn't say immediately, but he in time abandoned the Roman Catholic Church and for decades since the 1970s has been a Reformed Baptist evangelist.

But they would consider those people who have either been excommunicated or who have voluntarily abandoned Roman Catholicism, they would consider those people still in possession of their priestly powers.

And the Roman Catholic Church views these people as very dangerous because they know in their minds, of course, we don't believe that this is actually happening, but they believe in their minds and according to their doctrine, that these individuals can still transform bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ, and they're terrified as to what these, quote-unquote, heretics or apostates will do with those elements.

Do you know the origin?

Yes, that's the Latin phrase for when the hosts and the wine are consecrated.

Right. It's a perfect example of it. Here is, shall not suffer eternal fire.

Right. I remember as a child, my parents would have, my siblings and I wear them, and for some reason, as we grew older, they kind of got out of fashion and you didn't see them much anymore, but I can still remember that you'd go into the shower with it.

I mean, it was...

Well, yeah. Oh, I'd say, and laid the scab magic. What I'm saying is that I think that some see Bible preaching...

And of course, even before we go into that, what they call miraculous medals are distributed by Catholics to both fellow Catholics and non-Catholics alike. They'll give them out and tell people that this will protect them and bless them.

And of course, many people remember the Saint Christopher statues or medals on the dashboards of cars because he was apparently the patron saint of traveling mercies. And after Vatican II, he seems to have fallen out of favor because the Catholic Church was, I think, too embarrassed by the mythological story of Saint Christopher.

So they came to distance themselves from him, rejecting the notion that he was a real person. I'm talking about your more moderate Vatican II Catholics, but Reverend Buzz Taylor...

Yeah, I've never been a Catholic, so you have to define that term for me. What did you mean by scapula?

Scapula. It's like a necklace that's made out of cloth and it's blessed. And anything further you have to add to that, Dan?

No, scapula or something like that. Just regardless, I remember... That's lovely.

And of course, before we move into our own camp, those who would be in many ways theologically sound but unconsciously are imitating error, let's address a bit the heresies that exist within the word of faith movement and some of the fringe elements of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement.

And I have to be very careful not to broad brush because I have dear brothers in Christ who I disagree with on the perpetuity of the sign gifts who some of them otherwise would... If you walked into their places of worship, you would think that you'd entered into a Reformed Baptist or Presbyterian church because some of them are very orderly services.

Some of them are very reserved and using God-glorifying hymnody and so on. And then you have all different varying degrees of the attempt to, in their minds, manifest supernatural experiences in the assembly.

But going back to things like the scapula and the miraculous medals, you will see routinely charlatans on television and you will hear them on the radio offering to, you know, send you blessed handkerchiefs and all kinds of bizarre things that will apparently, according to them, give you a healing or a blessing if you give them money, of course.

I mean, that is very inseparable from, really, indulgences. It's just a modern.

Evangelical version of indulgences, isn't it? Yeah, I can't bring any from memory, but yes, I've seen ads from these big names in the charity. I've got to share this story with you. It's so.

Pertinent to what you're saying. But it was back in the 80s. I received a mailing from Arnold Roberts and it was a kernel of corn, like Indian corn, but, you know, a very large dried kernel of corn. And of course it was representative of seed faith.

And I was supposed to send that, you know, seed back to him, I guess, you know, with the proper check, with the decimal point in the right place and all that stuff. And I would be blessed. I would receive my miracle.

The following month, I got a little flask, like you get the perfume samples in, and it was empty. And the letter said, you send that back with your check and he will fill it with oil that his hands anointed, his personal hands anointed this oil.

And I thought, this is really great. One month they send me the popcorn, next month they send me the oil. But it would take you.

A long time to fill a bucket with that method. But anyway. So it's like the widow's pot of oil. Yes. Yes. So, and of course, these things that you would define as magic, not that you believe that they are really occurring, but the things that, the way that they are defined resemble what is more likely associated with magic than supernatural.

You have really like a magical spell as long as the words are correct. And as long as whatever else, according to the formula of a certain rite or ceremony is performed, you will have this magical spell bringing about whatever the false church, whether it be Rome or anyone else is declaring it will produce.

Human religion in the kingdom of man of works, everything is works. So in this case, you say the words, right? You do the gestures, right? You perform the rituals, right? And you control.

The supernatural. And when we come back from our first break, you're going to go into how we who are in a camp that is very conservative, very committed to biblical inerrancy, typically a cessationist in our understandings of sign gifts, believing that they are not active today.

I mean, even the most ardent cessationist believes that God performs miracles and heals people, but there's a difference between that and modern day healers, human beings that would be healers. But we're going to be going into how unconsciously people in our camp may be seduced or deceived into some kind of a thinking that would resemble magic rather than supernatural.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, for Dan Phillips, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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But otherwise, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and don't go away, God willing, right after these messages we'll be back with Dan Phillips and more of our discussion for the day.

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And by the way, you can also call them toll free at 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com. Well, we are now back to our discussion with our guest, Dan Phillips.

He is the pastor at Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, Texas. He's an author. And we are discussing biblical preaching, supernatural, not magical. If you have a question, please send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA. But you know, some people might be wondering why I keep repeating all of that. You will be surprised how many emails we get that still don't have any city, state, or country.

And they're not even asking personal questions. So we want our listeners to know that there are brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world listening to this program. So we want you to identify where you are located.

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But we would love to hear from you with a question. And going back to our theme, Dan, we were going into before the break how there are unbiblical, even heretical concepts of the supernatural when it is in the hands or minds or pulpits of those in false religions that really is a better description of the magical, perhaps even the dark magic arts or the occult, than it would be the supernatural experiences and occurrences that we read about in the scripture that are actually the result of God operating and functioning in the midst of his people.

But we also, now we are going into more of the area of how people could have very sound theology. They might be in biblically sound churches with biblically sound pastors, and they may write on a lot of things, but they may subconsciously be seduced into an erroneous thinking in this regard.

If you could explain in the area of preaching exactly in detail what you.

Mean. I'd be very happy to. Almost everything bad and certainly are a perversion of at least a grain of truth. The truth of the Bible is a supernatural book. It's living, it's powerful, it's the power of God, the salvation the gospel is, and it's God breathed.

So God speaks that I think unconsciously many are good for the idea that if somebody will just preach the word, I'd reword them because I don't doubt the people who said this, but here's the tweet that defamation was a revival of preaching.

Now let me hear in God's word, all good men will stand in the public, only then can the church experience transcendent worship, authentic godliness, and true evangelism. Stress on preaching that you can get the impression that if that happened, it did it all.

Oh yeah, in fact, I'm sure that you would agree that coupled with that is that the old saying is true that you can't just talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk. And if we have the most brilliant of Bible expositors from behind pulpits who do nothing but teach and their lives do not reflect the love, compassion, and concern for the lost and for the caring of the flock, you're just going to be nothing more than a classroom being lectured, and there's not going to be much else going on but heads being filled with knowledge.

You're going to have people who are going to imitate their own pastors who may be only about teaching and preaching but are not living out what they are all about as far as what.

They're exegeting from the Bible. Well, then let me take what you just said, but I still, let me turn that a little bit. You can have, he lives out what he preaches, he loves his people, he pours out the word of God, but if they don't receive it and the people volunteer it, praise the Lord, there's those two, and there have been many Christians who've written books that give the impression that if you just do parenting right, you are going to point out a number of times, and if that's the case, then why is poverty giving me...

Right, yeah, and of course, we can't forget.

That Jacob and Esau had the same parents, so obviously, there were different results in the lives of those two, and it's a reminder that there are no grandchildren in heaven, or should I say, God has no grandchildren.

I don't mean that if your grandchildren pass away, they won't be in heaven. What I mean is God has no grandchildren was a better way of phrasing it because of the fact that there are elect and reprobate very often found in the same family, as much as some people might think that we can just populate the earth with Christians by breeding, but anyway,.

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Am I hearing you say that we're still dependent on the sovereignty of God?

And on the sovereignty of God, but exhortations to us, I think probably every time that the word obey occurs, listen, hear, and so again and again in the Old Testament, the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord will set you high above all the nations, but they had to hear it.

It was God's very word per se that they heard the word of God, but it didn't do them any good because they didn't unite with faith with those who listen to the word. You've got to listen. What a pressure that puts on pastors.

No wonder so many pastors. Christianity isn't just a spectator sport, I think is what you're saying, and I have.

To be careful in what I'm about to say because I don't want anybody to think again that I'm broad-brushing. I don't even know what philosophy of apologetics that you would adhere to. Perhaps you don't even adhere to just one of those different varying approaches to apologetics.

Perhaps you have a combination, but it seems that what I have witnessed that has been all too often a common thing amongst those who are evidentialists in their apologetics, and like I said, I have to be careful because even some heroes of mine like R .C. Sproul and the late Dr. John Gerstner was an evidentialist, but there are some evidentialists that I've heard who will basically tell a crowd that they are lecturing that if you explain the faith in this way and defend it in this way and if you answer objections in this way, you are definitely going to win people to Christ as a result.

That is going to be the product. If you handle this information correctly, the result is that a lost person that you're talking to with certainty is going to be saved, and that is a very Arminian understanding of humanity.

It totally removes the fact that the Holy Spirit must transform a dead sinner before he even believes. It doesn't even address the fact that Christ has to give lost people new hearts and so on, and there is a group of humanity that we don't know who they are, but there is a group of humanity that are reprobate and who will never come to the truth of the Word of God or never embrace it, and we have to be careful as Calvinists not to think that we know who the elect are and who the reprobate are because the elect are amongst the most pious of pastors and the most perverse of prostitutes.

So, you know, there are people on death row who are of the elect who have come to Christ while they are behind bars awaiting their death sentences. So, I mean, but at the same time, this notion that really, even if somebody doesn't consciously write this on paper as a creedal statement, they are really viewing mankind as being morally neutral, aren't they?

Right, but I've only found that out this time, and I'm going to be hanging up after this answer, but no, I'm a manpillion as well. But you're right, there are a lot of symptoms that are very formulating, particularly as we reform and have a high view of the Word of God, too high of a view of the Word of God.

Well, I do believe that God blesses when He preaches Word, but I'm afraid, and this is, I see it, I was thinking about this morning as I was thinking about talking with you and praying, is a lot of them are left sitting in the pews dying, although, well, you go to Hebrews chapter 3, verses 7, where the right is the voice of the Holy Spirit.

If I'm being addressed, I've got two choices when I'm hearing God's Word, and I'm afraid we've slipped into this magical mentality that just ex-opera operato. If the Word's preached, well, good things are going to happen to me.

I have my verbal rabbit's foot.

Well, before we go to a break, I want to read a scripture to you and have you respond to that when we return. I'll tell you right now, I agree with it. Well, as far as how we apply it to our discussion, because it may seem on the surface like it is in contradiction to what you're saying.

Okay. Isaiah 55, 11, so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth. It will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. If you could address that when we come back from the break, and if anybody would like to join us, this is a longer break than normal because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida requires that we have a 12-minute break in between the two hours, so please be patient with us as we go to this break, and while you are in the middle of this break, please write your questions in and send them to chrisorenzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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Don't go away, God willing we will be right back after these messages.

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Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

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Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid-ground-books .com. That's solid-ground-books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.