December 2, 2020 Show with Paul Viggiano on “One Church’s Journey out of Pentecostalism into Reformed Theology”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on the second day of December, 2020, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program for a second time,

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Pastor Paul Vigiano of Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Torrance, California, and today we're going to be expanding on something that we began just in part during a recent interview we had with Paul and Bill Shishko during a five -part tribute, a five -day tribute to the late

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Dr. Greg L. Bonson, and that was in order to promote the

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Bonson Project, and we'll have Paul reintroduce that ministry to our listeners today as well, but the story of Paul and his not only personal transformation theologically, but the transformation of the congregation where he pastors,

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Branch of Hope, from a Pentecostal church into a theologically

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Reformed church was so fascinating, I wanted to have him back to be more in -depth and more in detail about this, so today we are addressing one church's journey out of Pentecostalism into Reformed theology, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Triple Zion Radio, Pastor Paul Vigiano.

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Thanks, Chris, great to be with you here. Let me give our listeners our email address right away in the event that you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor Paul.

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Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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that's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Well, before we go into the discussion at hand, Pastor Paul, why don't you tell us a little about Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Torrance, California today, just to whet the appetite of those who may either live near Torrance or may be visiting

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Torrance so that they can come pay you a visit. Yeah, that'd be great.

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Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church, we are in the city of Torrance, and our address is 2370

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West Carson Street. We're in a converted business park. We have, currently we have a 930 service going on.

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We have an 11 o 'clock Sunday morning service. We live stream at branchofhope .org

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if you want to live stream. We also have a once -a -month evening service that we do, especially in particular for those who are in the high -risk category, and so we're trying to accommodate as many people as we can during these tricky times.

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And you know, we're a church of about, I think we have 400 members in our church, and I've been there in June.

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It was 30 years, and we have 10 elders, wonderful, godly men.

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We have a great board of deacons, and a lot of families. Kind of a big spectrum,

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Chris. I mean, we have a lot of young people with young families, and yet at the same time, we have, you know, those in their 80s and even older in their 90s.

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But it's a little tough for them right now with the COVID to make it, and so we're trying to accommodate them as well.

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But that's the long and the short of the church, and we'd love to have anybody in the area come by and visit, or you can just look us up at branchofhope .org

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and get involved in the live stream. Great. Now, for those of our listeners who missed any of those five days that we paid tribute for an entire week to the late

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Dr. Greg L. Bonson, why don't you tell our listeners in summary who Dr.

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Bonson was, and tell us about the Bonson Project and your role in it.

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Yeah, we, I received an email, I don't know how long ago it's been now, six months, a year ago, from a gentleman,

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Graham, who just had this idea that Dr.

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Greg Bonson, for those listeners who don't know who he was, he was a pastor in the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He also had a PhD in philosophy at a QSB. Brilliant in the debate field.

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Unbelievably broad in his theological understanding of things. It's not as if he had one thing that he was an expert in.

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He was great in terms of the study of end times, apologetics, obviously, you know, the doctrines revolving around materiality or salvation, and all of this, you know, with a man who the

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Lord took home in his late 40s. And so many of us who had gleaned from him recognized that access to his materials, and there is a lot,

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I mean, he wrote numerous books, articles, lectures, debates, series, on and on and on, but they were all behind a paywall.

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And even though it wasn't terribly expensive, what we found was a paywall is a showstopper for a lot of people, even if it's 99 cents.

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You know, people are like, well, I have to break out my credit card, I got to do this and that. If you're interacting with somebody, you want to send them a link, and then the link sends them to a page where they have to make a payment.

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We just found in this day and age, that's just not working. And so we were able to access that by purchasing, you know, that webpage and all of his materials, which has now happened, and it's really still in the process of transferring all of that.

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But the point here, Chris, is that the Bonson Project, and if you go online, you can go to bonsonproject .com,

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there will be no paywall, and you can access his materials for free.

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You can copy the link and send links of his lectures to your friends for free.

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And one of the things that Dr. Bonson was brilliant at was Christ and culture. You know, to what extent should the

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Christian faith have an impact upon the culture in which we live? And we're at a time,

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I think, in history where there's great value to that. And this thing took off.

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I mean, we thought this was going to be a long, slow, arduous process, but the interest was amazing.

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And also Dr. Bonson's own children were involved in all of this.

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And so it took off. It got legs, and it's moving quite rapidly. And I'm very excited to be part of a project that I think is going to have a very positive impact in our era and years to come, because that's the way these things work.

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You know, they stay. And that's just, it's been a wonderful thing for us. Well, once again, that website is bonsonproject .com,

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bonsonproject .com. If anybody wants to listen later on to the five -day tribute we paid to the late

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Dr. Greg L. Bonson on Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio, which included an interview with today's guest, Pastor Paul Vigiano, and a number of others, just go to irontrumpetsironradio .com,

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irontrumpetsironradio .com. Click on podcasts past shows, and there will be a search engine.

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If you type in B -A -H -N -S -E -N, that five -week, or should

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I say five -day, one -week tribute to Dr. Bonson will appear in addition to an interview that I did with his son,

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David Bonson. But I hope that you all will enjoy those interviews and get to know

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Dr. Bonson better, and begin to make use of the great wealth of resources that he has gifted to the body of Christ, and how he still speaks today in writing and in recording and video to bless the body of Christ with the wisdom that God gave him, even though he has departed from this earth and is now in eternal glory with Christ.

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And again, that's bonsonproject .com, or the website B -A -H -N -S -E -N project .com.

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Let me just say a word of caveat here, before we begin our discussion.

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I just want our listeners to know, especially if you happen to be Pentecostal, or Charismatic, or Continuationists, or Continuous, however you like to describe yourself,

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I am not one of these Christians that may be typically found amongst fundamentalists, but even amongst my fellow

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Reformed brethren, who discounts the genuineness of the regeneration of the

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Christianity of many, many in the body of Christ who are

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Pentecostals, or Charismatics, or Non -Cessationists, or Continuationists, or Continuous, those that believe that the sign gifts are still available to the body of Christ today, those that believe that tongues especially, and perhaps even the gift of healing.

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Of course, Reformed people believe God still heals when it is his will, but typically

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Reformed folk do not believe that people today have the gift to heal. But I just want to say that I do not discount the genuineness of the regeneration or the

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Christianity of our brothers and sisters from those backgrounds, I just happen to strongly disagree with them on these areas of the sign gifts.

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And also, other teachings that typically, but not always, especially not always in the 21st century, there are soteriologically

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Reformed Pentecostals and Charismatics today, but for the most part, I mean even for the most part amongst

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Evangelicals in general, the Pentecostal movement would be dominated by Arminian theology or non -Reformed and sometimes even very anti -Reformed theology, typically full -blown

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Arminianism that would even teach that a truly born -again person can lose his or her salvation.

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So I do believe these are important issues, and I don't shy away from them as anybody who listens to this program knows,

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I don't shy away from controversial issues or issues that divide the body of Christ, but I try to do it with charity whenever possible, and I just wanted to make sure you knew my motives if you are in a

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Pentecostal or Charismatic background. And if you have anything to add to that, Paul, maybe you disagree with some of what

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I said, but I just wanted to make sure that my opinion was known here. Well, I'm glad you said that, because that was going to be kind of my preamble to this entire interview, because I do think it's important for us to interact charitably.

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Chris, I had the opportunity to attend five and really six different seminaries of entirely different flavors, and one of those seminaries was a

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Charismatic seminary, and two of them were dispensational, two of them were

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Reformed, and I did end up someplace in all of this, and I'm not here to say that conflicting views can both be right, but I will say this, that even in my seminaries where I didn't entirely agree with the predominant teaching,

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I had professors with Bibles in their hands seeking to understand what the

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Scriptures taught regarding who God is and what He has done and His call in our lives.

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These weren't nefarious people trying to get away with stuff. Now, that's not to say that there aren't boundaries that end up getting crossed, but you can find that in almost any movement, any, you know, sector of the

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Christian faith. Of course, we even have our hyper -Calvinists among us. Absolutely.

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And so I think I'm really glad you said that, because that mirrors my disposition as well, and that is that I want to consign all

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Charismatics to the ash can of Paganism or something. Nonetheless, these are discussions that have to be had, and I have to say that, again, in any, you know, emphasis or any historical view of the

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Christian faith, there can be abuses. And coming from that more

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Pentecostal Charismatic background, you know, what got to me early on wasn't so much, you know, this is more anecdotal,

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I guess, and pragmatic. It wasn't so much, these are a violation of the text, as much as you begin to see abuses.

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You begin to have interaction with people. I'll just give you one example. Years ago, you know, there was this claim, this lady had cancer, and she had two or three kids,

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I forget now. And there was this other Charismatic visitor who said, you know,

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God has told me that you're going to be healed. And the lady was like, but you know, what

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I'd like to do is write a legacy for my children. They're young now.

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I may never know them. And this person said, that would be an act of faithlessness. God is going to heal you.

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He's told me that He's going to heal you, so don't do that. And the lady actually passed away, and she was never able to do what she had desired to do in terms of a written legacy for her children.

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Now, that might seem extreme, but I have to say, interacting with this community, this has happened quite a bit.

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And so, there is harm that can come. But like you said, you know, you've had other people.

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I think of somebody like a Wayne Grudem, or somebody who's, you know, pretty sound. And so, you know, you don't want to say this about everybody, but there are definitely aspects of that movement that reach people in a very painful place.

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Yes, and some would even say that Wayne Grudem is far more than just pretty sound.

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They would view his works, even those outside of the non -cessationist world.

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There are even cessationists who highly view him and utilize greatly his commentaries and works and so on.

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And as do I. Yes, and that would be the same for C. Samuel Storms, who has written a number of things that are very beneficial to the body of Christ, although I do have my strong differences with him on those views where he defends charismatic teaching, uniquely charismatic teaching.

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And in fact, I would like to have a debate on this program with Dr. Storms at some point, if you have any recommendations for a good opponent for him, because his publisher, probably close to a year ago now,

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I am sad that I dropped the ball on that, but they contacted me asking me. First, they asked me to have

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Dr. Storms just on the program alone to promote his book, which is a promotion of the validity of tongues today.

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And I told them, since I am very opposed to that notion and that teaching or that phenomenon, that I would not have him just come on to promote the book and discuss that in a positive light, but I would have him debate.

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And they seemed very intrigued, but due to the busyness of life, I dropped the ball on that. So I hope to return to that discussion with his publishers and get

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Dr. Storm on. That would be valuable. And by the way, folks,

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I also want to add to this discussion that I have many friends who are Pentecostal, charismatic, and those that choose to call themselves continuists or continuationists or non -cessationists, who have been very valuable brothers and sisters in my life, who have benefited my life greatly, who have taught me very often by their godliness and their

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Christlike example in their lives. They have taught me a great deal of things that I find invaluable and precious, things that I cherish and that I have grown from, and some of them are theologically reformed.

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So I just wanted to make sure I said that. Well, I'm going to have you do a little bit of repetition from our last discussion, because you did give your testimony in an abbreviated form the last time you were on, even though that was not the subject.

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It was Dr. Bonson who was the subject, but we always have first -time guests whenever possible give a summary of their salvation story and how they came to the

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Reformed faith, if indeed they are Reformed. And if you could repeat that story, just so we get some background on you, and then we'll go more deeply into the transformation of your entire congregation.

20:24

Sure, sure, Chris. Yeah, it's funny, I'm in my study right now, and I'm looking at my books on the shelf, my library, and one of them's a

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Bible. It's a King James Bible, and it was given to me when I turned eight.

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Now, if you hear the story, I wasn't raised in a Christian household, and my parents both did make professions of faith before they passed away, but they never brought me to church as a child.

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I lived in Hermosa Beach, which is about two miles from where I live right now. I never really left the

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South Bay area of Southern California, but for some reason, we lived on 4th Street, and I don't remember why

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I walked to 3rd Street, and there was a church there. And we're talking about, you know, the

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Charismatic Movement. It was an assembly of God church, and I went in there. I was seven years old, and for some reason,

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I was just captivated. I think it might have been the flannel, those little flannel board cutouts. Remember those that they used in Sunday school?

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You know, the Moses there on the flannel board. I went there for a year, just on my own.

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I walked around, and there was this little old lady who was a Sunday school teacher, and I'm sure by now, because this is 1962, so I'm sure by now she's gone to be with the

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Lord. But I always thought it would be so wonderful for her to know that teaching that little

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Sunday school class had such an impact upon me. And so I went there for a year.

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When I turned eight, they gave me the Bible. Like I said, I'm looking at it right now. Assembly of God tabernacle, you know.

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And then when you turn eight, you graduate into whatever the next level is. But then when I was nine and a half, we moved from Hermosa Beach to Redondo Beach, which is only the next city.

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But of course, if you're nine years old, you might as well be in another country, because now I couldn't go there anymore.

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But there was implanted in me, and to this day, I couldn't tell you if Lord had saved me at seven or at 17, because the next 10 years or so, eight years,

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I just kind of was a typical Southern California teenager wandering around. I hadn't got into horrible things, but I certainly wasn't going to church or walking in a godly manner.

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The Bible, I still had, but I really never cracked it. It was unread.

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It was more of just kind of a fashion accessory on my wall. And then a buddy of mine, his dad was a pastor in the

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PCUSA church. And his older brother, my friend's older brother, shared the four spiritual laws with me, which

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I'm sure you're familiar with. And again, I'm guessing, being reformed,

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Chris, you would realize that maybe not the soundest presentation. But still a surprise coming from a

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PCUSA member. But for our listeners, that is one of the most liberal denominations that exists in Protestantism.

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It would be perhaps a little bit to the right of United Church of Christ today.

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And there are, though, having said that, still biblically Orthodox, evangelical, scripturally faithful pastors and congregations within that denomination.

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That is the denomination that actually excommunicated J. Gresham Machen, who is the founder of the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church and one of the founders of Westminster Seminary in Pennsylvania.

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But it is interesting to hear that somebody from the PCUSA was presenting the four spiritual laws.

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Yeah, and like you say, some of those PCUSA churches, and this one was one of them, they were trying to toe the line.

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You know, I mean, the PCUSA was going off the rails. They had rewritten the Westminster Confession.

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It wasn't terribly sound, but a lot of the pastors, including this particular pastor,

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Dr. Paul Cox was his name, was trying to hang in there. And, you know, they were entertaining the idea of leaving the denomination and all of that.

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They ended up not doing that, and he has since gone to be with the Lord. But there, at the age of 17,

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I started attending that church, and it was fairly biblically sound.

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I mean, he opened the scriptures every Sunday and preached through the scriptures, and it was certainly sound enough for me to kind of grow in my understanding of the faith, but not reformed.

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I mean, actually, they would say they were reformed, but when you begin to kind of really dial into what it means to be reformed, they really weren't.

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But essentially, Chris, that's my story of how God brought me into his kingdom. It was an assembly of God, church in Hermosa Beach, and a

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PCUSA, four spiritual laws toting church in Redondo Beach.

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And at the age of 17, I started attending church on a regular basis, and I think at that point, you know,

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I understood what I was going and what I was doing. Okay, we're going to pick up where you left off there when we return from our first break.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

25:56

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

26:12

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Paul Vigiano and more on our discussion on a church's journey from Pentecostalism into Reformed Theology.

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That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

35:53

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Call 1 -800 -669 -4878. Welcome back.

38:23

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

38:30

Paul Vigiano, pastor of Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Torrance, California.

38:36

We are addressing the theme, One Church's Journey Out of Pentecostalism into Reformed Theology. If you have a question of your own, you can send it in by email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

38:49

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us, as always, your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

38:56

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. I could readily believe that a subject like this might compel some listeners to send in personal questions, because they are going through a journey of their own, and they don't want to draw attention to their identity at this point in time.

39:20

Perhaps you're still a member of a Pentecostal or charismatic church. You don't want to unnecessarily offend your leaders and your fellow members who you may deeply love.

39:32

Perhaps you're even a pastor, and you are starting to reconsider many of the tenets of Pentecostalism or the charismatic movement.

39:41

And I've known quite a number of pastors who fit that description, some of them who have made the full exodus out of an official

39:51

Pentecostal denomination, or just the charismatic movement in general, and that would include Pastor Paul Vigiano.

39:58

So we would understand a personal and private question like that, but if it's just a general question, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

40:06

So, Paul, we basically came to the point before the break on how you came to truly believe that you had been saved by the grace and mercy of Christ, and if you could pick up the story on how you were called into the ministry and how you actually came to found

40:29

Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Torrance, California, and tell us about that journey as well.

40:37

Yeah, certainly, Chris. So I came to faith as a teenager, to the best of my recollection, and you know, during that time, it was kind of the

40:48

Jesus movement time. I don't know if your listeners are aware of what that was like. It was the Jesus movement.

40:53

It was like the Christian stepbrother to the hippie movement. Right. The Calvary Chapel came out of that.

41:00

Absolutely. They really grew from that, and, you know, people had big beards and big, thick crosses around their neck and dog -eared

41:09

Bibles. I mean, it was, in that respect, I think some great things came out of that, but I do remember at that time being pulled in many directions.

41:20

I mean, both by the Charismatics. I remember going to a Pentecostal church where everybody was speaking in tongues, and it was literally rolling in the aisle, and then, as I had mentioned earlier,

41:32

I had this PCUSA church, which is anything but charismatic, and as well as, you know, the

41:39

Mormons are talking to you, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Roman Catholics, and so forth. But I remember early on, when

41:47

I would ask all these people, why should I go with your tradition, or with your church, or what is it about your church?

41:55

The one thing they all said they believed were the Scriptures, and so at that point,

42:02

I said, well, I guess the Scriptures are where the real answers are, and I dedicated myself to understand the

42:09

Scriptures. And I had a real heart for that, a real desire for that, a passion for that, and even though I wasn't in the ministry,

42:18

I had not been called to the ministry, I was willing to lead a Bible study.

42:23

At that time, I did sports in college, and I got out, and I was kind of teaching credential, and I was teaching high school, and I was leading a

42:32

Bible study, and it really got legs. I mean, we probably had, I don't know, 50, 75 kids in my high school

42:39

Bible study. I was in my early 20s at the time, and it was at that point that that same

42:46

PCUSA church had let go of their youth pastor, and then they offered me a job.

42:51

And I initially said no, I didn't really want to do that, and they kind of made me an offer

42:58

I couldn't refuse, and you know, they basically said, look, you can run this thing any way you want, we just want...

43:05

Basically, what they wanted was they knew if I went there, perhaps those kids would go there, and I could run the program any way

43:12

I wanted, and that kind of suited my disposition at the time, and so I became a youth pastor in the

43:18

PCUSA. Although at that point, I'd been exposed to the doctrines of grace, and by a pastor, actually the original pastor of Branch of Hope, had become a five -point

43:34

Calvinist, and I'd kind of met him and had some conversations, and so Calvinism, the five points of Calvinism, that was about as far as my

43:44

Reformation thinking went, but I was kind of there, and I was a youth pastor of this church for about six or seven years, and things were kind of going fine...

43:56

And this piece of, just not to interrupt you, but the PCUSA congregation that you were in, judging from your description earlier that they were presenting the four spiritual laws,

44:06

I'm assuming that even though they were Presbyterian, they were not Reformed, and I have met some

44:13

PCUSA pastors who are evangelical, even though they're in the tiny minority in that denomination, but some of them, a good number of them, are

44:23

Arminian. Right. Yeah, and that would have been the case here. What you have,

44:29

I think, when you look at the PCUSA, even to this day, is a group of people who, generally speaking, are people who make good neighbors.

44:43

They're good folk. They don't tend to want to dig too far into the theology, but they've become very uncomfortable socially with the advancements of homosexuality in terms of elders and pastors becoming...

45:02

proclaiming their homosexuality, and a lot of the people in the PCUSA, they just couldn't suffer that, and so they started a new denomination that a lot of them went into, but none of that really falls under what we might call the

45:18

Reformed camp. They are socially conservative, but they're just theologically somewhat undefined.

45:27

In fact, a hero of mine, Dr. John Gerstner, remained in the PCUSA for many years until he finally had to make the break over what he felt was just total apostasy regarding the gospel, but it was interesting how long he held on in that denomination.

45:46

Right, and you know, I think Gerstner obviously is a towering theologian in most people's opinion, especially if you asked

45:55

R .C. Stroll, but I think there's something admirable about not immediately jumping ship and kind of going, well, let's fight the fight, until it seems like, you know, they've crossed the

46:06

Rubicon, which I think the PCUSA has, and so I was part of that denomination.

46:13

This would have been in the late 70s, early 80s, and then the

46:20

Branch of Hope, which is where I'm now the pastor, in 1990, their pastor resigned and they asked me to be the pastor of their church, and again,

46:32

I said no. I really didn't feel qualified to be the pastor of a church, even though I had gone to seminary.

46:37

It just seemed to me a daunting office to be the pastor, and this church, now the

46:45

Branch of Hope, going back to the theme of this show, was a branch of a church called

46:51

Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach, which is part of the

46:56

Foursquare denomination. Now, for your listeners, the Foursquare denomination is a charismatic denomination started by Amy Semple McPherson, and probably the most well -known member of this denomination would be

47:11

Jack Hayford. Yeah, who's reasonably sound. Yeah, yeah, but very much in that camp.

47:17

We're talking about people like, you know, Wayne Grudem and others, you know, I mean, it's not as if Hayford had gone off the rails, and as a matter of fact, his seminary,

47:26

King Seminary, was one of the seminaries I went to, so I was quite familiar with, you know, the teachings.

47:32

He authored the Hymn of Majesty. What's that? He's the author of the

47:38

Hymn of Majesty, Worship His Majesty. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's got his own hymn book that tonight, when

47:45

I go to the local rescue mission and preach, is the hymn book they use there.

47:52

Anyway, full circle on that, but so I became the pastor of this church, and so with a background in the charismatic movement.

48:04

By the time I had got there, though, it had already been, well, how can I say this, eclectic.

48:10

So the church had a background of, Pentecostalism. There were still

48:16

Pentecostals who were members of the church, but there were also dispensationalists who were members of the church.

48:23

There were Calvinists. There were Armenians. I mean, it was a full eclectic bag of theology, but I didn't know that going in.

48:34

I just figured, you know, this is a church where they do open the Bible every Sunday. They want me to open the

48:40

Bible every Sunday, and so I eventually took the post, and now here

48:47

I am. At this point, they were a branch of a Pentecostal church, and I'm the pastor, and I didn't realize what kind of trouble

48:59

I was getting myself into, to be honest. So, you know, going to the story of how this all happened,

49:09

I mean, because the journey from Amy Semple McPherson to Jay Gresham Machen would turn you into a

49:16

Darwinist, you know, the evolution that has to take place in order for all that to happen.

49:25

But here's basically, in a nutshell, I take the position, and I'm thinking, all right,

49:32

I want to start off preaching within my boundaries. I want to shoot within my range here.

49:39

I don't want to go fancy. I think what to me would be the easiest book in the Bible to preach through, and so I picked

49:47

John, the Gospel of John, which, you know, a lot of people say that's a good place to start. So I preached

49:53

John. I was in there for about two years, and things were going okay.

49:59

And that is a richly Calvinistic book. Yes, it is, especially in chapters five and six, and you know, the former pastor, you know, he was a

50:10

Charles Spurgeon guy, and so in terms of soteriology, again, I wasn't getting a lot of resistance, but I hadn't gotten into, you know, continuationism or cessationism, and I hadn't really gotten into dispensationalism and covenantal theology and all that.

50:30

To me, those things were foreign languages. I had no idea where I would end up on those things.

50:37

So I preached through John. I finished John, and then I think to myself, okay, what am

50:43

I going to preach through next? What else is John written? You know, I'm kind of familiar with John.

50:51

Maybe I'll preach through the Revelation. I mean, how hard could it be? And so I decide

50:56

I'm going to preach through the Revelation. And I get through about the first three or four, you know, the seven letters, the seven churches, and what have you.

51:05

And then I get into chapters four and five, and all of a sudden I realize, boy, I'm in some deep water here.

51:13

And I remember, I'll never forget this, this was about 28 years ago, but I'll remember it just like it was yesterday.

51:21

I'm preaching, and I'm sure your listeners know what a commentary is.

51:28

And I think commentaries are great. I don't like to go to them first when

51:33

I'm doing my sermon prep. When you're preparing your sermon, what you want to do is, you know, read the context and then maybe do your word study and just kind of examine the immediate context, the wider context, and so forth.

51:51

But then at some point, you know, you start drawing some conclusions, and then you read a commentary.

51:57

Now, a commentary is a book generally written by a theologian on his opinion on what those verses mean.

52:05

It's as simple as that. In fact, you know what I want to do? I want to go to a break right now before I cut into a more crucial part of the discussion, because we have to go to our midway break.

52:15

And I don't want to unnecessarily interrupt you right in a very heated moment. So just remember, you were talking about using the commentary, and we'll pick up right there.

52:26

And folks, this is the longer break in Iron Sherp and Zion Radio in the middle of the show, because Grace Life Radio, who airs this program twice a day in a pre -recorded format, both in morning drive and in the evening, they are required by the

52:41

FCC to air their own public service announcements and other local things in order to localize this show to Lake City, Florida.

52:51

And while they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

52:57

Write down as much of the information as possible for as many of our advertisers as possible so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers, even if that just means reaching out to them to thank them for sponsoring the show.

53:11

That will hopefully result in our advertisers wanting to remain our advertisers and renew their advertising contracts, because we absolutely depend on the advertising dollars that come in from our sponsors in order to exist.

53:25

So please respond to our advertisers as often as you can, and to further ensure you'll do that, write down as much of their information as you can.

53:33

And also write down questions for our guest today, Paul Vigiano, and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:40

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

53:46

We'll be right back after these messages, so please don't go away. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

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I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

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01:11:43

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01:11:49

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01:11:55

I just have a couple of announcements before we return to our guest, Pastor Paul Vigiano, in our discussion on one church's journey out from Pentecostalism into Reformed Theology.

01:12:09

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01:15:15

Paul Vigiano on our discussion on one church's journey out from Pentecostalism into Reformed Theology.

01:15:23

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and right before the break, you were discussing preaching on the gospel of John, and you were discussing commentaries, and you could pick up right where you left off, brother.

01:15:35

Okay, Chris. Yeah, I had preached through John, and then I thought, well, you know, John also wrote the

01:15:41

Revelation, so let's go ahead and go through that, and I was sharing with your listeners, I think, the value of commentaries, and when it gets right down to it, though, a commentary is just somebody's opinion, and I think as valuable as they are, because once I've done my homework, and I've arrived at conclusions regarding a text,

01:16:01

I break the commentaries out as if I'm having a discussion with a group of theologians who've studied that particular passage or book, and I think there's value to it, and are their conclusions similar to my conclusion, or is my conclusion completely isolated, and nobody has my conclusion?

01:16:19

Because if that's the case, I probably made some big mistake someplace. I'm the only guy who's discovered this secret way to understand this verse or that verse.

01:16:29

But you can give commentaries too much, and I had a horrifying experience right in the pulpit, and again, you know, this shows about how we've moved out of kind of a

01:16:41

Pentecostal understanding, but if I were a Pentecostal, I would say, God spoke to me right in the pulpit, and here's what happened.

01:16:50

If you recall correctly, back in the 70s and 80s, the biggest best -selling book in America, actually the number one selling book in 1970, period, not just Christian book, book period, was

01:17:09

The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, and it was one of the top 10 selling books for the entire decade of the 70s, and in terms of the end times, which obviously the

01:17:24

Revelation is kind of addressing, that was the only game in town, this very popular view espoused by Hal Lindsey, and later a series of books came out called

01:17:39

Left Behind, where they made, you know, movies and what have you. Virtually, Chris, every commentary

01:17:47

I had held what we call the premillennial dispensational view of the

01:17:53

Revelation. It's popularized by C .I. Schofield, Dallas Seminary, and probably the majority report right now in Western evangelicalism.

01:18:05

So that's all I'd ever heard. Well, I got to a point in the Revelation where I really kind of had to make a decision.

01:18:16

Do I agree with this, or do I not? And all the commentaries

01:18:22

I had held that view, and even though I did not see it as clearly as some of these commentators did, in the middle of the sermon,

01:18:33

I quoted a commentator in terms of his conclusion in regard to the verse that I was teaching, and then it dawned on me, this is his position, but I don't see it.

01:18:49

See, the value of a commentator is they'll help you see something maybe you didn't see, but once they help you see it, now you see it.

01:18:57

It's like when somebody tells you a riddle, and you don't know the answer, then they finally tell you the answer, and you're like, oh,

01:19:03

I see it. Well, that didn't happen for me, but I quoted him nonetheless. And right when

01:19:10

I quoted him, right when I said, this is what this verse means, I fell under such strong conviction by the

01:19:17

Holy Spirit that I told the whole congregation. I go, you know what? I don't see this at all.

01:19:25

I just quoted a commentator. He may be right, but I certainly don't see it, so I'm going to go ahead and end the sermon right now, because I didn't know where to go.

01:19:36

So I ended the sermon about halfway through. Sadly, nobody complained. The church got out early, but then there were a group of people.

01:19:46

Now, you know, we're talking about Pentecostalism here, but this wasn't so much the Pentecostal people.

01:19:52

These were the people who were very into the end times, very into how they would go to prophecy conferences and these types of things, and they said,

01:20:01

I can't believe you don't see this so clearly. And I remember saying, well, it's not that I'm saying it's wrong,

01:20:06

I just don't see it. I remember I was talking to this couple, and the man was talking to me, and his wife says to me, you don't see it, because you're a blockhead.

01:20:20

Buy a nickel for every time somebody says that to me. And I said, well, that may be true.

01:20:27

I mean, I am a blockhead, but I'm constrained to the limitations of my own blockheadedness, and I'm not going to teach something that I don't see to be true.

01:20:36

And at that point, there was a small group of people who, because we did not hold to the popular eschatological understanding, you know, that was being espoused by the

01:20:48

Left Behind series and Hal Lindsey and Chuck Misler and a number of other people who were very popular, they started telling people in our church that we were a cult, and that I was the cult leader.

01:21:01

Now, this was totally because I held a position. This was because I just didn't see the position, clearly.

01:21:09

And this was, again, about 1992, and some of your listeners will remember that at about that time, there was a cult in Waco, Texas, called the

01:21:20

Branch of Davidian. And my last name is Vigiano, and all of a sudden,

01:21:27

I started hearing, and our church was called the Branch of Hope, and they started saying, well, maybe these are the

01:21:32

Branch Davidians. And I thought that was very clever, yet at the same time, who wants to be called a cult leader, and who wants to be called a cult, and so forth.

01:21:46

So, let me just put something, let me just kind of change the tagline of this show, if I can, because it wasn't so much at that point that we were moving out of Pentecostalism, or even moving out of Distensationalism.

01:22:00

All of a sudden, we started moving toward something, not out of something. Here's how that happened.

01:22:06

We had an elders' meeting. We used to call them elders' meetings before we were Presbyterians, and now we call them session.

01:22:13

And we're sitting around with about, you know, six or seven of the elders, and I go, you know what, we've been accused of being a cult.

01:22:22

I've been accused of being a cult leader, and everybody's exhaling and upset, and thinks it's ridiculous.

01:22:28

And then I ask this question. I go, how do we know we're not? And everybody looked at me like, what in the world are you talking about?

01:22:36

We believe in the virgin birth, we believe in the physical resurrection, we believe, you know, in all those fundamental things that make a church, you know, orthodox.

01:22:45

I go, but look at who we're next to in the phone book. Like, who are we as a church?

01:22:50

Where do we belong in terms of the history of the church? And one of our elders, and he's still an elder to this day, was way ahead of the rest of us, and he said, well, maybe we should think about a confession.

01:23:07

Okay, now here's where I was, Chris. I didn't know what he was talking about. I go, a confession?

01:23:12

Where would we put a confessional in our church? I mean... I'm like, well,

01:23:21

I don't even know the lyrics to that, you know, Our Father I Have Sinned whole thing. And he's like, no, no, no, no.

01:23:29

He's like, what about embracing a confession? I'm like, well, what is that?

01:23:35

What do you mean by that? And, I mean, I'm the pastor of a church, and I don't even know what a confession is.

01:23:42

I go to a bookstore, a Christian bookstore, that had, by the way, a thousand end times books, and I went to the manager, and I said, you have a copy of the

01:23:53

Westminster Confession, and he looked at me, and he says, I've never heard of that. This was the manager of a Christian bookstore.

01:23:59

So anyway, what happened was, I got ahold of, we got ahold of,

01:24:04

G .I. Williamson's commentary on the Westminster Confession. Oh, yeah.

01:24:10

And I started reading that. Now, I've had the wonderful opportunity to actually talk to G .I. on the phone.

01:24:16

He's, I think, in his 90s now. You know, he still was, last time I talked to him, pretty lucid.

01:24:22

But we started reading that, and it was almost as if, in tears, we were rending our garments in terms of, who's been hiding this from us?

01:24:32

I mean, it was just so brilliant, and beautiful, and clear, and succinct, and consistent, and harmonious.

01:24:40

And so we read that, and then we decided, here's what we said.

01:24:48

Branch of Hope Church, we weren't part of the OPC yet, Branch of Hope Church was a general adherence to the

01:24:55

Westminster Confession. And we only said that because we weren't really sure exactly what all this entailed.

01:25:03

But that led us down the journey of becoming covenantal, of becoming, if you will, cessationist, of becoming a

01:25:13

Paedobaptist, you know, because that's obviously a Paedobaptist, of kind of having a different view of the sacraments, a deeper understanding of the sovereignty of God, the decrees of God, and so forth.

01:25:25

And for years, we slowly kind of went through this process, incrementally, step by step, of becoming what now would be called a

01:25:36

Reformed Presbyterian Church. And in that process,

01:25:43

I was exposed to Greg Bonson, because as I'm going, well, what are the other ways to understand eschatology?

01:25:53

And somebody gave me a copy of a book by Greg Bonson, and then

01:25:58

I had another book by Ken Gentry, who pastored the church that Greg Bonson was the pastor of after he passed away.

01:26:06

Yeah, Ken's a brilliant guy. Oh, yes. And it was through that that we began to really find ourselves kind of in a full -orbed understanding of, you know, the beauty and the consistency and the real biblical nature of Reformed theology.

01:26:27

Well, praise God for that. And we do have some listener questions for you.

01:26:35

We have an anonymous listener who says, I am in a

01:26:41

Pentecostal church. It is not one of the more crazy ones, or a fringe group.

01:26:48

It seems to be very solid, and the worship services are reasonably orderly, but I am feeling more and more uncomfortable remaining there because of the fact that the teaching is basically in opposition to the

01:27:04

Reformed faith. I was wondering what your opinion is, judging from what the scriptures teach you, on when it is time to definitely leave a church, whether it be

01:27:16

Pentecostal or not, but please be more specific about when it is time to definitely leave a

01:27:22

Pentecostal or charismatic church. Yeah, that's a great question, and it's not an easy question, because whenever people are asking about boundaries, at what point has this church crossed the boundary?

01:27:39

You know, you look at a church like the church at Corinth, with its incest, and its factions, and its lawsuits, and its defilement of the

01:27:50

Lord's Supper, and on and on, I think to myself, well, I would not want to be the pastor of that church.

01:27:56

And yet still, they're still addressed as the saints of Corinth, you know? I mean, it's still the church.

01:28:03

And so, I'm not sure if this answer is going to be entirely satisfactory, but I would say this.

01:28:10

I would say you never leave a Reforming church. In other words, if that church is moving in the right direction, if there's a humility before the

01:28:21

Word of God, if the pastor, if the elders are going, you know what, if the Word of God moves us in this direction, we're going to move in that direction.

01:28:28

Then I say you go along for the ride. But if you find that that church is digging its heels against biblical

01:28:37

Christianity, and they're moving further and further away from that which the

01:28:43

Scriptures declare, then that's when you really have to rethink whether or not you want to stay there.

01:28:49

You want to raise your family there. You want your kids to be exposed to that teaching all the days of their life, and so forth.

01:28:56

So I don't want to, you know, I mean, the Westminster Confession talks about how all councils and churches are apt to err, and we're going to make errors, and that's one thing.

01:29:05

But it's another thing to obstinately and willfully refuse to submit before the

01:29:15

Scriptures and what they teach. And so I think you really need to kind of take a look at that and go, are we moving in the right direction?

01:29:21

Is this church moving in the right direction? And if it's not, then I think that's when you begin to think whether or not

01:29:28

God wants you to go someplace else. Well, thank you, Anonymous.

01:29:33

And we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, what do you think are the primary dangerous teachings and practices of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement in general?

01:29:51

Yeah, that's also a really good question, because, you know, you don't want to pick the most radical out there examples and build straw men.

01:30:03

You know, there are people, you know, you know, and I'll use this name, I guess you could blot it out later, but somebody like a

01:30:11

Kenneth Copeland or a Kenneth Hagan, who... Right. Oh, you don't have to worry about exposing heretics like that on my show.

01:30:18

Okay, all right. It's your show, and I just wanted to be careful, but those guys are so far off the charts that...

01:30:26

They're in the realm of being satanic, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I mean, it's just horrible, and of course, they are the richest ministries in America, and, you know,

01:30:35

I mean, they have their own private jets and what have you, and, you know, the dangers there of that kind of health, wealth, and prosperity is that they're going to be...

01:30:46

Number one, they're not going to be preaching the gospel. Number two, they're going to be targeting the most vulnerable people in America, or, you know, the weak, the hurt, the sick, promising them things that they are not going to ever be able to deliver.

01:31:05

And, Chris, for 25 years, I worked at a nursing home as a volunteer teaching

01:31:11

Bible studies, mostly to widows, and they would get flyer after flyer after flyer in the mail from these ministries seeking to get part of their fixed income sent to these charlatans who were promising them all sorts of things that simply put the

01:31:34

Bible doesn't promise, again, health and wealth and kind of a worldly prosperity. So I would say that's one of the big dangers.

01:31:42

Another danger, though, is I was... A gentleman called me.

01:31:47

He's an older man, and his wife got sick, and he was got a charismatic church, and they said,

01:31:56

Don't worry. You know, God's going to heal her. She'll be well. She'll be well. And she didn't. She died. Then his...

01:32:02

He had a child get sick, and they did the same thing. And I don't know how he and I ended up getting in that phone call, but the child died, and we got on the...

01:32:12

I think he listened to our radio show, and he called me, and he says, I don't understand what's going on here. And I go, Well, let me explain to you what the

01:32:18

Bible actually does promise. And I just shared the gospel with him. And it was a basic gospel presentation.

01:32:26

You know, Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. We trust in the merits of his victory over death and the cross, and in him we are more than conquerors and so forth.

01:32:36

And this man, who was probably in his 50s, if not 60s, told me he'd gone to church his whole life, and he had never heard that.

01:32:44

And to me, that was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking that he had gone to a church that taught health, wealth, prosperity, and so forth.

01:32:54

He was taught that people that he loved would be healed, when maybe they weren't going to be healed, but he had never heard the gospel.

01:33:02

And I would say, that might be pretty extreme, but it does happen. And I would say, one of the problems

01:33:09

I found in this movement is you have certain people, you know, who are, you know, you and I've already mentioned, who are sound theologically.

01:33:20

But if you don't believe in sola scriptura, if you don't believe that the scriptures are the sole infallible and inerrant message from God to mankind, as, you know, those in the charismatic don't believe because they believe in the word of knowledge, and they believe in prophecy, and they believe that tongues, if interpreted as prophecy, then you're only constrained from going off the rails by an act of your own will, not by the text itself.

01:33:51

And I think that is a dangerous door that is left open in that movement. Yes, and we have

01:33:59

Orny in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says that he personally believes that the belief in new revelation that is divinely inspired and God -breathed is the worst of the heresies that can come out of the

01:34:15

Pentecostal and charismatic movements, do you agree? So he's sort of dovetailing on that. Yeah.

01:34:21

Well, I would say it's a legitimate, it's a legitimate statement by this caller.

01:34:28

If you, when you give up epistemology, by epistemology, I'm talking about theory of knowledge, how we know the things we know, the moment you decide the means by which

01:34:39

I'm going to know what I know in terms of God, who He is, what He has done, and His call in my life, the moment

01:34:46

I've given up the Scriptures in terms of the sole infallible message, you've entered into very dangerous territory.

01:34:55

I mean, you go all the way back to the Fall. When you go back to the Fall, the question that started this whole mess was, has

01:35:03

God indeed said? And then you supplant or alter what

01:35:09

God has said with what you are saying. And I think, so I think your caller is right. I think it becomes a very, very dangerous game to play.

01:35:18

Now, I don't know if you've experienced this, but I have met people who are in actual historic

01:35:26

Pentecostal denominations, as well as those who are in the charismatic movement. And if you could, for a little segue here, would you say

01:35:37

I am correct in differentiating Pentecostalism from the charismatic movement in that Pentecostalism typically involves actual denominations that have some history behind them, and the charismatic movement is a phenomenon where other denominations that historically were not believers in the perpetuity of the sign gifts, started to adopt those gifts.

01:36:11

Like you had Baptists like Pat Robertson, a lot of people don't realize he was a Southern Baptist, or is a perhaps even still today a

01:36:19

Southern Baptist. And you had, I can't remember his name right,

01:36:24

Oral Roberts was actually a United Methodist. And you have others from all different denominations, you have the

01:36:32

Sovereign Grace Ministries movement who are Reformed, Reformed and Baptistic, if I'm not mistaken, who are charismatic.

01:36:40

So you have other denominations, and you have also independent churches that have adopted some of the teachings of the

01:36:50

Pentecostal denominations, but perhaps not all. And the other thing that they usually divide over is not all charismatic churches believe that the gift of tongues is the sign of the baptism of the

01:37:04

Holy Spirit. Am I correct in the way I've described that? I think it's pretty accurate what you're saying.

01:37:09

Here's the deal with, you know, because also you have Roman Catholic charismatics as well, which is wild to me.

01:37:17

But you have the Vineyard movement, you know, that was a very, very active charismatic movement, and that also kind of went off the rails with all the howling and things that were taking place.

01:37:31

But yeah, you do have certain people who were part of a denomination who made these very deliberate moves in a certain direction.

01:37:42

Here's the issue, though, and at least as I see it, you don't often see, you know, earlier

01:37:49

I was talking about confessions, you don't really see charismatic or Pentecostal confessions.

01:37:58

Where all the theologians got together and decided, this is what the Bible teaches, and with unanimity, which is what happened, you know, with the divines of Westminster, where you had 121 divines who all had to agree on the verbiage of the document.

01:38:15

What you find in the charismatic movement is such a diversity of opinions. The idea that you're going to get together and all agree on what the

01:38:24

Scripture is saying when everybody's getting their own individual message from God is almost non -existent.

01:38:31

That's why there are so many splits. All churches split, don't get me wrong, it's not that the charismatics are the only ones who split, but when you have two elders who are getting this message from God, and two other elders are getting an opposing message from God, that is just a recipe for divisiveness.

01:38:50

And so it's very difficult within that movement to find any type of, like, monolithic statement.

01:38:57

I have to say, you know, I went to China a couple years ago and they wanted me to teach on the

01:39:03

Holy Spirit and the misuses of the Holy Spirit in terms of the Church, and this was one of the issues.

01:39:11

If you go to the Assembly of God and you look at their statement of faith,

01:39:17

I think they are probably the soundest in terms of the

01:39:22

Pentecostal denominations expressing what they believe. I do think there are some real issues with that, but all that to say,

01:39:32

Chris, it's very difficult to find a monolithic position among Pentecostals in terms of their

01:39:38

Church affiliation the way you would see in historic Presbyterianism or even among the

01:39:43

Baptists and so forth. And the actual thing I was going to ask you before I went on that segue was,

01:39:49

I have experienced Pentecostals and charismatics who have told me that they do not believe in new extra -biblical revelation and that they would say that tongues is only a prayer language that's angelic and is not anything that is new, that is not included already in the canon of Scripture, and that any kind of prophetic word that anyone would get is something only in the

01:40:27

Scriptures. They are Scriptures that are brought to memory by the Holy Spirit. They're not receiving new teaching or new words.

01:40:38

And I don't know how common that is, but I have met people from both traditional Pentecostal denominations like the

01:40:46

Assembly of God and others and charismatic churches or non -cessationist churches who have taken that opinion.

01:40:54

Have you ever experienced that, and how prevalent is it, in your opinion, or according to your knowledge?

01:41:00

Well, yeah, there are variations of that, because a lot of people who might view themselves as continuationists really balk at the idea that they're getting new revelation equal to the

01:41:14

Scriptures. I mean, if I ask them that, I say, if somebody comes up to me, and this has happened to me numerous times,

01:41:20

God told me to tell you, it would be kind of the way the conversation begins.

01:41:25

And I say, well, if God told you to tell me this, should I actually write this in the blank pages in the back of my

01:41:31

Bible? Should it be added to the canon? And they'll say something like, well, no, no, it's just for you.

01:41:38

And I'm like, well, yeah, but Paul wrote just for Timothy. But, you know, the entire

01:41:44

Church is constrained to regard the authority of that letter. And most of them will back off, and it's almost like the

01:41:54

Word of God -like, or something, where you're like, well, it is the Word of God, but it's not at the same level as the

01:42:01

Scriptures. Now, as far as, you know, the Holy Spirit bringing to mind certain passages that are already in Scripture, well, obviously that's not as dangerous.

01:42:13

But here's one of the problems, is if you're in a conversation with somebody, and the answer to whatever the disagreement is, is a certain passage in Scripture, and the

01:42:25

Holy Spirit brings that passage to bear in the conversation, and your answer is, but that passage doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about.

01:42:34

And they're like, oh, well, God just gave me that passage, so it must. Well, now you've got another problem there. Here's my general thesis on that, is that if it's already in the

01:42:44

Scriptures, then I don't really need that new information.

01:42:50

I just need the Holy Spirit to help me understand it more clearly. And if it's not in the

01:42:55

Scriptures, then how do I check it against the Scriptures in the first place? And so I think the whole thing kind of has some, there are just some faults with the way we approach our faith when we go down that road.

01:43:10

We have Christopher from Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks,

01:43:18

I haven't heard you get around to the point of whether or not you completely shed your views of the sign gifts that you held previously as a

01:43:28

Pentecostal, and I was also wondering if, indeed, when you spoke in tongues as a

01:43:35

Pentecostal, you now believe that you were just faking it, or trying to please everyone around you, or if it was something satanic?

01:43:45

Yeah, that's a good question. I did a radio show years ago with Ken Gentry. I asked him that exact question.

01:43:51

I'm like, well, what's going on? Well, let me be quick to say that in my early Pentecostal experiences,

01:43:57

I went in there and I did everything I could to somehow prime the pump for speaking in tongues, and there's a whole list of things they try to get you to do.

01:44:07

You know, they'll say, start counting backwards from a hundred, or just wait for a warm feeling and go with it, and so forth.

01:44:14

And so I've got to tell your caller that even though I was a pastor of a church with a Pentecostal background,

01:44:20

I never got that gift. And it seemed to me that the means by which they were trying to get me to have it was not something

01:44:28

I found in Scripture. When you look at Acts, nobody's priming the pump to get people to speak in tongues.

01:44:34

The Holy Spirit would fall upon people just out of, as it were, like rain, and then they would start speaking in tongues.

01:44:42

And it had nothing to do with their prior belief that these tongues were real or were expected.

01:44:51

Absolutely. Yeah, it was almost shocking that it would happen. But going back, there were a list of reasons,

01:45:00

Dr. Gentry, as we kind of went down this road. In fact, if you could pick up on that list, because I don't want to interrupt you while you're giving that list, we have to go to our final break right now.

01:45:08

And this is going to be a lot more brief than the last breaks. If you have any questions, send them in now to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:45:15

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01:45:22

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01:53:00

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and Paul Vigiano, you were in a list that Ken Gentry had shared with you involving this phenomenon of tongue speaking, if you could.

01:53:12

The general gist of it was things from, you know, mass hysteria, where you're just in a big room full of people who are being kind of convinced that this is a normal thing to do.

01:53:25

I mean, we see this type of thing. If you like, look at, like, Benny Hinn. Like, I was talking to a former member of our church who fell into the whole

01:53:33

Benny Hinn ministry, and Benny Hinn would blow on the crowd, and he said,

01:53:39

I felt that wind blow from Benny Hinn's mouth, you know, and so, you know, there is this hysteria that can happen.

01:53:48

I think there's also a sense where it's purely psychological, the way, well, the way sometimes

01:53:55

I feel when I'm trying to write a sermon, and I've got, like, a writer's block, and I just pound the keys, and I just hit the keys and hit the keys, and it feels kind of good to hit the keys, but I'm not going to call that, you know, spiritual writing or something like that.

01:54:07

I think there could be the sense in which you're saying things, and you're just blurting stuff out, and there could be a psychological enjoyment to that type of thing, but to kind of spiritualize it and call it something other than what it is,

01:54:23

I think, can be dangerous. I don't immediately assume that, and some people I know said they were essentially faking it.

01:54:31

They're like, oh, well, this is, I'm just going to make it happen somehow. I don't immediately go to satanic, although I don't entirely exclude it, either.

01:54:41

I think that's a possibility, and I think, as you had mentioned earlier, some of the people who have taken advantage of this have gone so far into the synagogue of Satan category that you're wondering if they're really controlled by something very dark.

01:54:58

Yeah. In fact, I remember even seeing many years ago an interview with a rock singer who, he must have been very, very, very briefly filling in for Ozzy Osbourne after Ozzy Osbourne left

01:55:17

Black Sabbath because he claimed to be a lead singer of Black Sabbath, and I don't remember being a very huge Black Sabbath fan when

01:55:24

I was a teenager, and even in my early 20s, I don't remember this person whose name escapes me, but he portrayed the role of Jesus Christ in a

01:55:39

Broadway or at least a theatrical performance of Jesus Christ Superstar, and he, on the 700

01:55:48

Club, even though he was a charismatic, and even though obviously the 700

01:55:54

Club is hosted by charismatics, he said that when he was hanging on the cross in that play that he began speaking in demonic tongues.

01:56:07

This is something that he alleges happened before he was born again, and the fact that the fear or the terror of that is what led him, according to his story, to Christ.

01:56:19

Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know. Yeah, those stories definitely go around.

01:56:26

There are guys who kind of had old ministries based upon how satanic the music industry is, and it's hard to verify or dismiss those kinds of things.

01:56:38

I don't doubt at some level that that's happening. Well, I want you to basically summarize in about two minutes what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today on this subject, and we would be thrilled to have you come back on at some point in the future to continue this subject if you like, but if you could please give us a summary of what you most want our audience to remember today.

01:57:00

I think, Chris, if I could convey something to your listeners that, you know,

01:57:08

God is very protective of His covenant family, and He had committed, therefore,

01:57:16

His Word to writing, and when it got right down to it, you know, our

01:57:21

Church, in whatever positive direction we're moving as a

01:57:27

Church, and I hope that we're still moving in that direction, it's contingent upon a

01:57:33

Spirit -given humility before the Word of God. And we could have gone any number of directions, but it was, you know, the elders in our

01:57:43

Church, and here, by the way, is why I feel a lot of these denominations or sects of Christianity, there's hope there, and that is because they still open their

01:57:53

Bibles, and they still regard the Bible as the Word of God. And if I'm going to convey anything to your listeners, it's that you want to be in a

01:58:03

Church where on Sunday morning, the pastor opens up the scriptures, he reads something, and then he begins, to the best of his ability, by the

01:58:13

Word of God, by the Spirit of God, to preach that Word to you. And then, you need to test all things, and hold to what is true, and just because they're saying they're preaching the

01:58:24

Word of God doesn't necessarily mean that that's really happening, and I think you need to be a noble -minded brand, and be willing to make those hard choices, because we have to contend for the faith, and my dad was a boxer, so that word, contend, always makes me think of a fight.

01:58:43

You know, there's a contender. You've got to be willing to fight, and I think the fight is to always stay in the

01:58:48

Word of God. Praise God. Well, I want to remind our listeners about the

01:58:54

Branch of Hope in Torrance, California, and their website.

01:59:00

It's branchofhope .org, branchofhope .org. And once again, the

01:59:07

Bonson Project that our guest has been a part of launching and maintaining, that website is bonsonproject .com,

01:59:17

B -A -H -N -S -E -N, project .com. Thank you so much,

01:59:23

Pastor Paul Vigiano. I was thrilled with our discussion today. You had exactly the spirit and knowledge

01:59:30

I was hoping for, and I look forward to you coming back on this program many times, and in fact, even continuing our discussion on this topic, if you'd like.

01:59:40

That's my pleasure. My pleasure, Chris. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater