WWUTT 2375 Q&A Speaking in Tongues, Private Prayer Language, The History of Charismaticism

What is the gift of speaking in tongues? What is the proper practice of this supernatural, spiritual gift? What is the history of the understanding of this gift in the church? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. I'm flying solo again this week, but I appreciate you tuning in anyway. Let's open with the Word of God. We've been in Proverbs, now in chapter 10, and I'll read the first couple of verses here.

The Proverbs of Solomon, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Is there anyone who can relate to that? Verse two, treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.

And if you are a follower of Christ Jesus, then you have been clothed in his righteousness, which saves you from death. Second Corinthians 521 says, for our sake he became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So clothed in his righteousness, let us live in his righteousness today. On these end-of-the-week episodes, we like to take questions from the listeners, and you can submit those questions to WhenWeUnderstandTheText at gmail .com.

That's the email address. Or go to our website, www .wutt .com. You'll see a voicemail tab there at the top of the page. Click on that and record a voicemail, either through your phone or through your computer.

We would love to hear from you. Today I don't have a specific question I'm responding to, but rather a video that I was made aware of. And let me do a little recap to set this up. Back in the fall of 2023, the documentary Cessationist debuted at the last G3 National Conference.

It was a documentary that I was pleased to take part in, thanks to the invitation of creator David Lovey. I did not have an opportunity then to respond to any interview requests, because we were moving at the time from our home in Texas to where we are now in Arizona, as I'm the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande.

However, charismatic pastor Sam Storms and the guys at Remnant Radio, which is a charismatic podcast, did a series of critical responses to the Cessationist documentary, and I did a three-part rebuttal to select portions of their combined 24-part series.

Remnant Radio did nine episodes, and Sam Storms wrote 15 articles. And you can listen to my three rebuttals in episodes 2020, 2025, and 2030. Now, in the episodes of Remnant Radio that I was able to watch, and in the articles of Sam Storms that I read, I never saw an argument raised against any of what I said in the documentary.

Most of my comments addressed either speaking in tongues or having a private prayer language, and then I gave a presentation of the gospel at the end, along with G3 president Josh Bice. Well, it turns out that Remnant Radio did criticize something that I said in video number nine, the last installment of their nine-part series.

This is a video that, until last week, I didn't even know existed. I did not know the Remnant Radio guys had ever responded to anything I said in the documentary. Apparently, they did. And not to my surprise, they treated my comments the same way that they treated every other comment in the documentary that they responded to.

When I was first responding to Remnant Radio, which was back in October of 2023, it was in episode 2020 of this podcast when I said the following about Remnant Radio's treatment of the documentary cessationist, quote, I'm quoting myself here, OK?

So here's what I said. Their arguments were not very well done. I think they were charitable. I think that they were devoted to the scripture. I think they did their research before they made some of the arguments that they did.

But there were occasions in which it was like they weren't even hearing what was being said. They were responding to an argument that wasn't even being made, unquote. And they did the exact same thing with a snippet of mine that they took out of the documentary.

They responded to something that I said about a private prayer language, as if I was talking about speaking in tongues. But I was not talking about speaking in tongues in that clip. I didn't even use the phrase.

I do not believe that a private prayer language is speaking in tongues. Now to clarify, speaking in tongues, according to the Bible, is a miraculous gifting of the Holy Spirit given to a person to speak another human language they did not previously know.

This is what we read of the disciples doing at Pentecost in Acts 2. Many charismatics practice a form of prayer in which they babble in a sort of private prayer language that they call speaking in tongues.

But I do not believe that's what the Bible calls speaking in tongues, nor does the Bible teach us to pray this way. Let me play that clip where you will hear my voice from the documentary, and then I'll play a brief portion of how the Remnant Radio guys responded to it.

So here we go. This is Gabe Hughes from the 2023 documentary, Cessationist. But I read in Romans 8 that the Spirit speaks with groanings that are too deep for words. Maybe that verse is what is meant by this, I feel this overwhelming urge from the Spirit to utter something, and that's what comes out.

There is no given permission in scripture to speak some gibberish nonsense that no one is going to understand. But think about what Jesus said when he taught us how to pray. In Matthew 6, 7, he said, don't heap up empty phrases like the pagans do.

And then he says, pray then like this. And Jesus taught us to pray clear prayers. He was never praying anything that was some otherly language. And if there was anyone who was going to pray in such a language, it would certainly be the one who was sent down from heaven, Christ himself.

Interesting. Is Matthew 6 telling us not to speak in tongues? Is the fact that Jesus never spoke in tongues evidence that we shouldn't speak in tongues? These seem like bad arguments.

Now, let me stop it right there. We already have a problem here. What is it? The problem is that was not my argument. I was not saying that Matthew 6 is telling us not to speak in tongues. I wasn't even talking about speaking in tongues.

They did not set the clip up well. They played it out of context. They cut out part of it in the middle. You're hearing that that background track with the drums playing. If you notice some jumps in the drums, well, that's where they cut parts of that clip out.

I was addressing a common charismatic belief that we can pray in some kind of heavenly language as a private prayer language. When I was in charismaticism, I heard this all the time. Taking first Corinthians 13, one out of context, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, well, if I can speak in the tongues of angels, then maybe that's what this language is.

When I pray like this,.

Father God, thank you for this heavenly language.

Yeah, that was a brief clip from a what video that I did on this subject. I'll play the full thing here in a bit if I've got the time. But as I explained, we have not been taught anywhere in scripture to pray like that.

Not one verse says anything about a private prayer language. Even the one who came down from heaven did not pray in a private prayer language as if there's another divine, otherworldly language spoken in heaven.

In his teaching on prayer, he taught his disciples to pray clear, meaningful prayers. Praying in nonsense gibberish is not how Jesus taught us to pray. We should pray like Jesus prayed and like he taught us to pray.

That was very simply my point. There was someone in the comments under this video saying that my exegesis was terrible. Well, sure. If I was saying what the remnant radio guys said I was saying, it was such a poor setup of my argument that it was a straw man.

They propped up this easy to knock down dummy so that their arguments would sound better, whether or not they deliberately misrepresented what I said. Now I'm not going to go any further in responding to the arguments that they make against the argument that I wasn't making, at least not today.

I will get deeper into this video another time. I just wanted to play that part now so you could hear what initially caught my attention. What I'd like to do here is what they did not do with me. And that's look at their whole argument in context, especially concerning the way they define and defend the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues.

I'm going to make this a teaching opportunity. So we're going to take a little bit of time with this and it will stretch out over more than one episode. I'll come back and respond to more of this video next week as well.

Let's go back a little further in this episode entitled Responding to the Cessationist Documentary Part Number Nine as it was published on YouTube on December 13, 2023. This will begin with a clip from the documentary featuring an answer given by Nathan Busenitz, professor of historical theology at Masters Seminary.

Now they don't really start this clip in a good spot, nor do they set it up well. However, I don't have the cessationist documentary at the ready, so I can't give you the original. You will hear Joshua Lewis of Remnant Radio cue this clip from Nathan Busenitz, who then explains the Greek term glossolalia, which means to speak in tongues.

And then he gives a brief history of the understanding of speaking in tongues within the charismatic movement. This is unfortunately edited in the Remnant Radio guys. They cut the clip, they speed it up, but whatever.

This at least gives us a starting point. And after Busenitz speaks, host Joshua Lewis throws it to Michael Miller, a pastor from Denver, and Michael Roundtree, a pastor in Oklahoma City, with Miller being the first to respond.

So here we go with Lewis cueing up Nathan Busenitz.

This is a good video. Let's dive into it and watch this clip.

A term that comes from two Greek words, glosa, meaning tongue or language, and laleo, meaning to speak. So when we use those terms together, glossolalia is used to refer to tongue speaking or to speaking in tongues.

The modern charismatic understanding of the term allows for glossolalia to refer to ecstatic spiritual speech that doesn't conform to any known language. Parham was in the newspaper on multiple occasions talking about how now that the gift of tongues has been restored to the church, no one is going to have to go to language school to learn foreign languages and we'll be able to send missionaries all around the world without them having to spend years training and learning a foreign language in order to be effective.

Of course, they all came back utterly disappointed and dejected when they realized that what they were doing in terms of their modern glossolalia did not communicate in terms of a foreign language with the people they were trying to reach.

And so consequently, the Pentecostal movement had to change its understanding of scripture to fit its experience rather than acknowledging that its experience did not fit the clear teaching of scripture.

You don't find the notion that tongue speaking in the Bible is anything other than real human languages until you get to the modern charismatic movement. The modern charismatic movement has invented a new kind of tongues because the tongues that they practice don't match what the scripture reveals as the real gift of tongues.

And as a result, they had to broaden the biblical category to make room for their experience.

Interesting arguments, guys. It is really the reason that we believe and preach about the tongues that we believe and preach today is because of a historical event, because of an experience that has nothing to do with the Bible.

What say you guys?

I mean, no. I started believing in tongues before I actually started speaking in tongues. However, speaking in tongues has certainly helped affirm what I already believed in scripture, which I actually think that's what the gifts should do.

They should affirm what you already believe to be true in scripture. And if they don't, then there's something off in your practice of gifts, not the scriptures. But man, this is, he's really reaching here.

One, Josh, you already proved the fact that they thought that you need to learn languages. However, there probably were some, there was some truth to that. I can't remember the book I read on this about the number of Pentecostal missionaries that went out because of this.

One of the things I think that they failed to mention is how, yeah, well, again, one of the things I think they failed to mention though is how the Pentecostal movement became the fastest growing worldwide denomination on the earth, largely because they felt like they were empowered for ministry, which is interesting because that's what Jesus says, He's going to wait in Jerusalem so that you'd be baptized with spirit and power, right?

Like that's the point of that. So regarding his idea about the gift of tongues being known human languages, prove it. We actually have Paul saying flat out in 1 Corinthians 14, verse, what is it, two, it says, for the one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people, but to God, for no one understands he's speaking mysteries by the spirit.

Well, we have a pretty explicit scripture right there that seems to imply that people could be speaking a language that nobody understands because it says no one understands. Now, the question in my mind is, does that mean no one on the earth or no one through history?

Does the language itself have no actual meaning or is it that it has no meaning to those who are around that person? And I tend to lean towards the second of the two. I think it has meaning. There's no language without meaning, but who it's meaningful to is the question.

And the question is whether it's meaningful to God or some other person on the earth or some other person through history. We're just not told in scripture. And so to pigeonhole the view of tongues into that small confined space is not one the Bible actually explicitly states.

He doesn't have a text to state that.

From here, Lewis jumps back in and he repeats the verse that Miller just gave first Corinthians 14 to as an argument for the gift of speaking in tongues, being an unknown language that is not a real human language.

This is their starting point on the gift of speaking in tongues. First Corinthians 14 to this is the exact same error I committed when I was a charismatic. In my defense of speaking in tongues, I always started with that same verse.

It was it was back in man, this was 10 years ago or something now when I had a conversation in the living room of a friend of mine, and it was not our intention to talk about cessationism versus continuism.

But that's where things went. And in in defending my charismaticism, the gift of speaking in tongues in particular, I started with first Corinthians 14 to now my friend Joe, rightly handling the word of truth, told me you cannot start there.

This is the very last chapter in the New Testament that even mentioned speaking in tongues. It never comes up again after first Corinthians 14. So you cannot start building your doctrine at the end and work backwards.

You must start at the beginning. So let's go back and look at the first occasion of speaking in tongues in Acts two. And after that, in the second half of this broadcast, I want to address their history of charismaticism argument, which I didn't believe they got that right either.

First of all, Miller said regarding Nathan Busenitz, his idea about the gift of tongues being known human languages prove it. And then he said that Busenitz did not have a text to state that. Now, I cannot remember if Busenitz or the cessationist documentary did prove that the remnant radio guys cut these clips up so bad.

It's hardly a fair presentation. But Miller has to prove his point with the text of Scripture, too. He has to be able to prove that speaking in tongues is not only the ability to speak in another real human language, but it can also mean praying gibberish.

And I don't believe that Miller did that. Now, I'm reading here from Acts two, one through four, which says. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a sound of a mighty rushing wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, where the disciples were sitting and divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. And that verse right there, verse four, is the verse that launched the modern charismatic movement.

And you'll see how in the in the next portion of the broadcast, when I get to the history of Charles Parham, it was specifically a desire for the gift of tongues that was on the nose of this rocket that launched this movement.

Now, it's interesting because when I left charismaticism and became convinced of cessationism, speaking in tongues was for me the last domino to fall. I had heard enough false prophecy and seen enough false claims of healing to make to make me a bit skeptical whenever someone said that God told them something or when they witnessed a miraculous healing.

But speaking in tongues was the reason that I could not be a cessationist. I did not believe that the miraculous sign gifts had ceased or diminished. I was a witness to those sign gifts and I could not be convinced that gifting had ceased in regularity, but I had a faulty understanding of what it was.

So going on to verse five here, now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and at this sound, a multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in their own language.

And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.

We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? But others mocking said, they are filled with new wine. In these nine verses, it is said three times in verses six, eight and 11 that speaking in tongues is speaking other real human languages.

Once again, verse 11, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And observe that the people didn't understand what they were saying, they could hear them telling the mighty works of God, but that didn't mean that they knew what it meant.

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, what does this mean? Now, what did first Corinthians 14 to say? For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God. Now, in that context, it's in the corporate gathering of the church, it's not in the open air like what the disciples were doing in Acts two.

So in the corporate gathering of the church, someone speaking another language that's not the native language of everybody there, they're not going to understand what that person is saying. So who's that person talking to?

They're speaking to God, not to men, but to God. For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries of the spirit. And that's the same reaction the people had to the apostle speaking in tongues in Acts two.

There is not one single verse in the New Testament that ever says the gift of speaking in tongues is anything other than a supernatural God given ability to speak another human language that the speaker did not come to know on their own.

If you start with first Corinthians 14 to and you think that verse is talking about unknown mutterings that are not real human languages, you impose that on to the text. The text says no such thing, nor is there anything prior to first Corinthians 14 to that could lead someone to that conclusion.

When Miller quoted that verse, he said, we have a pretty explicit scripture right here that seems to imply that people could be speaking a language that nobody understands because it says no one understands.

Well, that doesn't make any sense. The word explicit means fully revealed or expressed without vagueness, implication or ambiguity. So first Corinthians 14 to cannot be an explicit scripture, as Miller called it.

That seems to imply that it could be about indiscernible mutterings that are not a real tongue in the human language family. Again, it is explicitly stated three times in Acts two, five through 13, that the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues is a supernatural occurrence.

It's it's miraculous whereby the Holy Spirit empowers a person to speak a language that he did not previously know, nor was he studied in. And everybody was amazed by it because they knew what they were seeing was miraculous.

The modern charismatic practice of muttering gibberish is not explicitly described in any verse in the Bible, nor is the practice demonstrably supernatural. It is on the remnant radio guys to prove otherwise.

And to borrow Miller's own phrase, they don't have a text to back it up. Now, when I was convinced that my whole understanding of speaking in tongues was wrong, when my friend Joe walked me through the scriptures and convinced me of that, it took some time, but I had to admit and I ended up leaving my charismaticism behind and I became convinced of cessationism.

And again, to say about cessationism, it doesn't mean that God doesn't do miracles. All cessationists, all true cessationists anyway, unless they're hyper cessationists. But we all believe that God still does miraculous things.

I was just at the hospital recently praying over patients, as a matter of fact, believing that my prayer for this sick person, God would hear and should it be his will, he would heal that person. I do that all the time.

We pray for healing every week in our church. More than once a week in our church. And we pray, believing that God would heal. It's not that we don't believe in miracles. But we do believe those miraculous sign gifts that were specifically for the confirmation of apostolic preaching.

Those gifts have ceased or diminished in regularity to the point that it would be very, very rare to ever see anything like that ever happen. Do I believe the Holy Spirit can act as the Holy Spirit would will?

Oh, absolutely. He will do what he wants. He's God. But again, miracles are rare. They're not something that you see practiced every Sunday morning in every charismatic church in America or around the world.

Now, stepping away from charismaticism, I made the following video, which I think is a pretty good summary of the arguments that we just considered.

Father, God, thank you for this heavenly language.

What you just heard is commonly referred to as speaking in tongues, but it's not. It's just gibberish. Nowhere in the Bible are we told to pray like this. Now, some will reference First Corinthians 14, too, which says for one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God, for no one understands him.

But he utters mysteries of the spirit. But we cannot begin our understanding of speaking in tongues with this verse. We must start where the gift was initially given in Acts two there in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.

The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. And the Jews from every nation under heaven came together and heard the disciples speaking in all of the different human languages that were represented there.

As they testified in verse 11, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. Nowhere else in the New Testament does it say that speaking in tongues is anything other than this, the miraculous ability given by the Holy Spirit to speak another real human language that the person speaking did not previously know.

You have to read First Corinthians in light of Acts two. Speaking in tongues is not a prayer language, and it's especially not incoherent babbling. Jesus said, when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the pagans do, for they think they will be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this. And then Jesus taught his disciples to pray clear prayers. Jesus prayed understandable prayers, and so should we when we understand the text.

Now, as far as exposition goes, I'm going to stop here because there's more to this video that will open up our discussion later. Where I want to go next is responding to the historical claim that Busenitz mentioned in his segment and Miller contended with briefly.

Busenitz mentioned Charles Fox Parham, the father of the modern charismatic movement who lived from 1873 to 1929. This is actually a guy that I know a little something about because I ministered not far from where his school used to be.

And so that's what I'm going to talk about in the next portion of the program. If you listen to the podcast, then there's still more to come. And you can subscribe to the podcast by using whatever podcast app that you like to use.

Pull up WWUTT and you'll get more of this episode as we continue this conversation on speaking in tongues. For those of you who listen on the radio, appreciate you listening in. You can find out more information about our ministry going to WWUTT .com.

I want to thank Grace 91 .1 in Casa Grande, Arizona for adding this program. We're on the air there. And if you know a Christian radio station that airs this program, let us know because we'd like to give them a shout out as well.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. What is a faith healer? A figment of imagination. That's what it is like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

A faith healer is a hoax. You might say, wait a moment. Doesn't the Bible say that some will be given gifts of healing? Yes, but it doesn't say anyone will be a faith healer. But what about Peter or Paul?

They healed people. Sure they did. And sometimes they didn't. Paul could not heal himself when he got sick and had to stop in Galatia, nor did he heal Timothy of his frequent ailments. So what was the purpose of these miracles like speaking other languages, revealing prophecy or healing the sick and even raising the dead?

Hebrews 2, 3 through 4 says that the message of salvation, the gospel was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

So miracles were to affirm that the message of the gospel came from God. Some people had these gifts like the apostles, and some did not like almost everyone else. But even the apostles could only perform miracles according to the will of the spirit.

As God's message spread, eventually the regularity of miracles diminished, as was the case after Moses and Elijah's ministries. Today's faith healers claim to heal by faith. Then why aren't they clearing out hospitals or on the scene after a natural disaster?

Because they know they're liars. It's as clear as the eyeglasses they wear. There are two places faith healers won't go, children's hospitals and heaven, if they don't repent when we understand the text.

In our previous segment, Nathan Busenitz said that Charles Fox Parham taught that we can send missionaries all around the world without having to make them go through years of language training to learn the languages of the people they're being sent to, because there's this new move of the Holy Spirit happening.

And the Holy Spirit is just going to come upon those missionaries and grant them that supernatural ability to speak in tongues like we saw the disciples do in Acts 2. So they'll arrive in those countries and be able to minister to those people by God's will.

And the Remnant Radio guys disagreed with the history of that. But all of that is accurate. That is what Charles Parham taught. As many of you know, I lived in Kansas for almost 30 years, and Charles Parham was someone that I heard a lot about.

And I even witnessed the effects of his former ministry in the places where I ministered. Many people may be unaware that Topeka, which was just an hour away from where I pastored, I was at a church in Junction City, Kansas, what is now Providence Baptist Church, and an hour east of there is Topeka.

And that's where the modern charismatic movement began. When you hear about the history of charismaticism in America, you often hear about the Azusa Street Revival. However, what was dubbed the Topeka Outpouring occurred a few years earlier on literally the first day of the 20th century.

Now, of course, there was plenty of what we might categorize as charismatic practices that were going on way before then. When I warned my congregation and fellow ministers of the practices around the International House of Prayer, I compared them with the second century heresy that was called Montanism.

A teacher by the name of Montanus of Phrygia and two of his prophetesses, Priscia and Maximilla, were not content with the teachings of Jesus. They desired new revelation. And again, this was just the second century.

They were already bored with apostolic teaching, and they wanted something new and more experiential. Montanus believed that he was a prophet of God and that the Holy Spirit spoke through him, whom he called the Paraclete.

His teachings spread to Africa and Gaul, the region of modern day France and Germany, and this lasted for several centuries. However, no Montanist writings from the second century exist. We only know of Montanism through those who spoke against it.

The early church father, Tertullian, was actually a fan of Montanism. He wanted Montanism to be declared orthodox, and some believe that he even joined Montanism toward the end of his life. The Montanists called themselves spirituallis, or spiritual people, is what that means.

And their opponents, they called sacichi, or a natural people. It's kind of like an early form of the continuous versus the cessationist debate. I'm being a bit tongue in cheek there. But anyway, according to what Eusebius wrote, the Montanists would babble in strange utterances.

Sometimes they would throw themselves in kind of a spastic frenzy. And then, Eusebius said, they would prophesy, quote, in a manner contrary to the constant custom of the church handed down by the tradition from the beginning, unquote.

So there would be prophecy, but it would not be like prophecy that we see in the Bible, in other words. Epiphanius of Salamis, writing in his Against Heresies, captured one of these Montanist prophecies, which sounded like this, lo, the man is as a liar, L-Y-R-E, and I fly over him as a pick.

The man sleepeth while I watch. Obviously, that's very vague. What does that mean? Well, it's kind of like a lot of the charismatic prophecies that are popular today, where they just, you know, they say these vagaries that can mean anything.

And somebody in the audience might even say, oh, that was for me. It's been this way for 1 ,800 years. Now, what got Montanist branded a heretic is because he claimed to speak as God, not merely a messenger of God.

In one instance, it is said that Montanist declared, I am the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But again, that's not so terribly unusual to what we might hear in modern day charismaticism. You'll probably remember the controversy that Justin Peters and I responded to a few years back with Stephen Furtick declaring of himself, I am God Almighty.

Now, some debated whether or not it was a gaffe, and I was one of them, but he never recanted it. And there are other instances of him saying such claims. This wasn't the only time. Perhaps you've seen that clip of Paula White, who is the spiritual advisor to President Trump, and she, along with televangelist Larry Hutch, proclaimed that Jesus Christ was not the only begotten son of God.

I'm a son of God and you're a son of God. Listen to this.

We really begin to understand that when Jesus Christ paid the price, the first thing that happened after he said it is finished is the veil was rent from top to bottom, signifying that no man could do that.

But the price that was paid was there's now no separation so that we have direct access in the Holy of Holies. We understand, according to Hebrews, that Jesus is our high priest.

Absolutely.

And he's the first of many brethren, which means I now come into a priestly anointing.

So I now can say that again because I don't get it.

I now come into a priestly anointing.

Jesus is not the only begotten son of God. He is not. I'm a son of God.

He's the first fruit.

He's the first fruit. He's the first born of many.

So you hear what they're doing there. They take words that you find in the Bible and they twist and apply them to mean something they don't. Jesus Christ is the only begotten son of God. Period. John 1 14 verse 18.

John 3 16. If you need references, you and I are children of God adopted by faith in Jesus Christ. First John 3 1. How great the love the father has lavished upon us that we might become the children of God.

And so we are. But that does not mean Jesus is not the only begotten son of God. It doesn't mean that we are sons of God like Jesus is the son of God. And it does not mean that we receive a priestly anointing like his.

So through this, you can see how some of the heresies that we've seen creep into the charismatic movement are nothing new. You go all the way back to the second century with Montanus, and he was saying very similar things and being declared a heretic because of it.

And by the way, I've made some posts recently on social media about Paula White that got a lot of attention. And I had Roman Catholics telling me, well, she's one of yours. She's a result of Protestantism.

No, she's not. Montanism was far before Protestantism. This was when both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox would claim they were the only true church. This kind of stuff is beyond denominational bounds.

Roman Catholics are heavily charismatic. I'll make that point again later. For now, let's jump ahead from the second century all the way up to the 19th century, right in the middle of the second Great Awakening.