F4F | Remnant Radio Rebuttal

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. So, several weeks ago,

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I was on Justin Peter's YouTube channel and we were discussing Jeremiah 31 verse 8.

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And I pointed out that, yeah, if you know Hebrew, then there's no way you can come up with this idea that Jeremiah 32 verse 8 teaches us that Jeremiah was uncertain that he had received a prophecy of the

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Lord until Hadamah El had showed up. That was an interpretation put forward by Michael Roundtree of the

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Remnant Radio guys. And you know, I will make no bones about it. I think these guys are legitimately dangerous.

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They are teaching false doctrine and they're completely lawless. And what they were doing was reading in, and isogeting their bad theology about fallible prophets into this text to try to turn it into a proof text to make it look like it teaches their wackadoodle theology.

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And yep, I'm doubling, tripling down on that statement. So we put that out and then

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Remnant Radio was really quick. I mean, they should have slowed down, but they didn't.

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They were really quick to come up with a response video to the video that I did with Justin Peters.

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And as a result of it, I've decided I was going to take my time and just work out a long rebuttal.

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And this is the fruit of that labor. So what you're about to see is the longest episode of Fighting for the

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Faith that we have ever done. It is upwards of three hours long and it needs to be.

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And the whole point of this is to show that not only was their scholarship originally what they said, completely wackadoodle and not tenable, we've gone and we've gotten some expert opinions on some things as well.

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And we're going to clear up some of the false rhetoric that the Remnant Radio guys have put out there. And then there's even a bonus at the end.

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In fact, let me do this. I'm going to whirl up my desktop. And in whirling up my desktop,

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I need to walk you through the chapters that that is this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith. So here's how this is going to break down. Chapter number one, I'm going to be interviewing

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Phil Johnson, right hand man of Dr. John MacArthur.

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You'll note that Phil Johnson and I, we get along really well, even though I ain't a Calvinist and I'm not a

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Baptist, I'm a confessional Lutheran. And yet we have deep respect for each other and our positions and the work that we're doing in the body of Christ.

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So since he came up in one of the cessationist response videos that they put up,

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I decided to invite him on and talk about some things. And you're going to note then in chapter two,

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I talk with Dr. Reed Lessing, who is an eminent Hebrew scholar, who is author of five different commentaries on Old Testament books himself, by himself, the guy who has forgotten more

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Hebrew than I've ever learned. And I have a degree in biblical languages. And so we're going to be talking about Jeremiah 32, 8.

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I'm also going to then in chapter two, read a statement given to me by Dr.

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Andrew Steinman, who is also a Hebrew scholar regarding Jeremiah 32, 8.

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And I'm going to read out my emails to Drs. Lessing and Dr.

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Steinman. Then in chapter three, I'm going to play for you my interview with Justin Peters.

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That one runs long. And here's what you're going to note is that in that interview with Justin Peters, some of the material that I covered with Phil Johnson is also going to be covered.

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That is intentional. And here's the reason why is because when you're doing a rebuttal, it's important to have corroborating testimony, corroborating evidence.

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And so although I have a slightly different focus with Phil Johnson than I do with Justin Peters, there's going to be some overlap in the questions that I ask and the topics that I bring up and the biblical texts that I bring up.

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And that is intentional. It's not that I'm just into the Department of Redundancy Department. No, what we're trying to do is drive something home really hard here.

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Chapter four, we're going to answer the question, is Chris Roseboro hypocritical for being in the

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AALC? And I will remind you of the context of this and the misinformation that the remnant radio guys are putting forward.

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And to help us out with that, I've got an official statement that I received from Dr. Kerry Larson, who is the present presiding pastor of the

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American Association of Lutheran Churches. And he was I actually emailed him the question.

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I talked with him on the phone and kind of filled him in as to what it is the remnant radio guys were saying about the

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AALC and my hypocrisy. And he was all too willing to help out to give me an official statement that I can read here at Fighting for the

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Faith to clear up the misinformation and the misrepresentation of the AALC that the remnant radio guys have been engaging in.

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This is not the first video that they've done that. This is the second. And then at the end of all of that, you have to stay for the end.

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There is a bonus chapter, and this bonus chapter is specifically for the remnant radio guys because of their love of Homestar Runner and Joshua Lewis's ability to do a decent, a decent interpretation of Strong Bad.

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That's all I'm going to say about it. But you have to wait until the end to watch it. So that's the order of business for this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith. If you can't watch it in one setting, totally understandable.

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So what we're going to do is we're going to have down below, you know how they do that thing on YouTube where you can set the sections.

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And so we've put this in chapters. So if you want to if you want to watch this episode over the course of a few days, you can you can remember, oh,

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I finished chapter two and then come back and watch chapter three and so on and so forth. You get the idea because, you know,

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I'm not trying to make it long for the sake of being long, but I wanted to be thorough. So with that, here is chapter number one, my interview with Phil Johnson.

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So with me today, I have Phil Johnson, right hand man of John MacArthur.

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You you appeared in the cessationist documentary, Phil, and I invited you on Fighting for the

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Faith for this particular chapter in my rebuttal to the Remnant Radio guys, because I figured if if there was anybody who knew what

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Calvin taught or believed, it would be Phil Johnson. Plus, you and I have some unfinished business to deal with these

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Remnant Radio guys in offering a rebuttal regarding their claims to the supernatural and prophecy and things of this nature.

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So I want to play something for you, and then I'll explain what they did in their video.

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And and then we'll take a look at what Calvin said, and then we'll jump into the other bits. But this was a short that was put out by Remnant Radio, and they claim that in Jeremiah chapter 32, verses six through eight, specifically one of the sentences in verse eight, shows that Jeremiah wasn't really sure that he had received a prophecy from God.

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And let me play the original offending soundbite, and then we'll interact with it.

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I'm sure you would agree. Sometimes it would come in a vision. Sometimes it would come in a dream. Sometimes it might come in sentence structure.

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You know, so like when they say the word of the Lord came to me, it probably did come in some kind of, we don't really know.

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It actually doesn't tell us how it came. Does that mean that they saw sentences? Does that mean that God audibly spoke it and they conveyed it?

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We don't know. But to your point, even when such a firm statement as the word of the Lord came to me is used in Jeremiah 32,

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Jeremiah doesn't know that he knows that he knows that it's the word of the Lord until Hananel offers to buy that field, which is how the story plays out.

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I don't know how they get around that. Yeah. The very clear statement, then

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I knew it was the Lord. All right. So that's their original statement.

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Now, I went on Justin Peter's YouTube channel, and I just looked at it in the

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Hebrew and said, this doesn't work in the Hebrew. And by the way, in this particular episode of Fighting for the

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Faith, one of the chapters, I'm going to be having a very small discussion with a very notable

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Hebrew scholar. And I have a written statement from another Hebrew scholar. But, you know, I won't discuss that here because I don't know how the chapters are going to work out.

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But let's just say it may not work out so well for them regarding their claims regarding the Hebrew. Mine will actually be vindicated.

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But all that being said, when they said, well, because Justin said that this was a novel interpretation of Jeremiah 32, an interpretation that says that Jeremiah wasn't 100 percent sure that he had received a prophecy from God.

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And the first commentary they went to was Calvin, John Calvin, the reformer.

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And so they claimed that John Calvin agrees with them and that John Calvin absolutely agrees that Jeremiah was uncertain about whether or not he had received a prophecy until Hananiel had shown up.

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Phil Johnson, is that really the case? Did they actually read Calvin? They read part of it.

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They did read part of it. There are a couple of things about that. Before I get to Calvin, there are a couple of things about what he said that I want to respond to.

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Notice when he said, I don't know how they get around that. And then he put all the stress on the word then, then, then he knew.

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Well, that's a common expression in the Hebrew Old Testament where the Lord says, you know, I'm going to lead you out of Egypt and then you shall know that I am the

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Lord, your God. He's not saying for the first time now, you're going to know that I'm God.

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Yeah, he's saying this will confirm your faith. And that's what that expression means.

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Then you will know or then I knew. What Jeremiah is saying is that his faith was confirmed by that fact.

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So let's see what Calvin says about it. I have happened to have Calvin here from his commentary from Jeremiah 32 so that people can follow along.

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And we'll put a link down below to this in the in the show description so that you can see this for yourself.

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But please share with us the important highlights here. All right. Go to the top line of what you're showing there.

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I'll read this. No, you moved it now. Oh, OK. Where do you want it? Right here?

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Down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Right. All right. It's now it's the third line of that of that full first full paragraph towards the end.

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I'm going to start with the word if if he before doubted. Well, let's start with that sentence in line two of that paragraph.

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It may seem strange that the prophet says that he now knew that the word came from God.

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For if he before doubted, where would be the certainty of the prophetic spirit?

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He had already received a vision. He ought to have embraced what he knew had been foretold to him from above.

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So Calvin tacitly says there he knew that this had been foretold to him from above, even without any hesitation.

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But it appears that he was in suspense and perplexity. It then seems an evidence of unbelief that he did not put a full and all entire trust in God's testimony.

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The question isn't, did God say this? The question is, does he really believe this is going to come to pass?

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That's what Calvin is saying. And, you know, it's it's a parallel to that guy.

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And I think Mark nine who says, Lord, I believe help my unbelief. That's that's where we all stand in faith before God.

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We have faith, but it's not that our faith is never besieged by doubts or questions.

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And that's what was happening to Jeremiah in this case. And he goes on to say, let's see, it then seems an evidence of unbelief that he did not put a full and entire trust in God's testimony was not fully persuaded as to the heavenly oracle, meaning as to the truth of it until he saw the whole thing really accomplished.

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But it is right to distinguish between the knowledge received from the revelation of the spirit and experimental knowledge, which experimentally means by experience, as they say.

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And then I'll listen to the next sentence. The prophet therefore did not then learn for the first time that God had spoken.

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But as he was confirmed in the certainty of his faith and in the thing itself, there is no inconsistency.

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So Calvin expressly says that when this prophecy came to pass, Jeremiah did not then for the first time learn that God had spoken.

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He was confident God had spoken. Otherwise, he wouldn't be a prophet. And otherwise, Jeremiah, knowing the requirements of an

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Old Testament prophet, would not have spoken the word if he wasn't absolutely certain it came from God.

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So what they're making there is a foolish and careless argument that's designed primarily to bolster the contemporary charismatic abuse of prophecy and their accommodation of so many false prophecies, this argument that they're making would be abominable to Jeremiah himself.

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And it's contrary to everything Scripture says about prophets and those who claim to speak for God.

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Continue reading, though. Continue reading this quote. It's just absolutely fantastic when you actually see what

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Calvin really said in context. Okay, so I'll go back to the beginning of that last sentence that I read.

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The prophet, therefore, did not then for the first time learn that God had spoken.

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But as he was confirmed in the certainty of his faith and in the thing itself, there is no inconsistency, for nothing is taken away from the credit and authority of God's word when the reality and experience confirm us.

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And thus, God often has a regard to the weakness of his people. Good stuff.

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Yeah. Calvin's right on. He's saying—I'm working with Bible software here, so I have access to several commentaries.

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Calvin is saying in extended language what James and Fawcett Brown say in a really pithy way.

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Here's James and Fawcett Brown on that statement. They say, not that Jeremiah previously doubted the reality of the divine communication, but the effect of following it and the prophets experimentally knowing it confirmed his faith and was the seal to the vision.

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So they're all saying the same thing, that it wasn't that Jeremiah doubted that this came from God. It's that the weakness of his human faith wasn't absolutely certain he would see it come to pass until it actually did.

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Right on. And I like what you said about the fact that the reason why they're making this argument is in order to make room for their abuse of prophecy, which brings us to a little bit of our history together.

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A couple years ago, you and I did an episode of Fighting for the Faith where we took on the prophetic standards statement that Michael Brown had worked on.

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And this was the section where you and I spent a lot of time discussing the problems with this particular document.

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And this is the original version of it. And this sentence says, We reject the notion that a contemporary prophetic word is on the same level of inspiration or authority as scripture, or that God always speaks inherently through prophets today, since the

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Bible says we only know in part and prophesy in part. So you and I, two years ago, it was

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May of 21 when we responded to this, we noted that this language was poorly written because it makes it appear as if God is the one speaking errantly.

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And that would actually be of, that would create, that would, that makes, this is a different God because the

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God of the Bible doesn't speak errantly. The God of the Bible always, when he speaks, it comes true. And so we spent a lot of time talking about that.

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But I would note that quietly, they made a change, an update to this document back in August of 22.

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It is noted at the bottom of the document. And here's what the sentence now reads.

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The notion that a contemporary prophetic word is on the same level of inspiration or authority as scripture, or that God's inerrant speech is always communicated perfectly by prophets today, since the

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Bible says we only know in part and prophesy in part, it is the written word alone that can lay claim to being the word of God.

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Prophecies are at best a word from the Lord to be tested by the word of God. Finally, while we believe in holding prophets accountable for their words in accordance with scriptures, we do not believe that a sincere prophet who delivers an inaccurate message is therefore a false prophet.

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Instead, as Jesus explained, and as the Old Testament emphasized, false prophets are wolves in sheep's clothing in contrast to true believers who might speak inaccurately.

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Thus, a false prophet is someone who operates under a false spirit masquerading as the

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Holy Spirit. We therefore recognize distinctions between a believer who gives an inaccurate prophecy, in which case they should acknowledge their error, a believer who consistently prophesies inaccurately, in which case we recognize that this person is not a prophet and we urge them to stop prophesying, and a false prophet whom we recognize as a false believer, a lost soul, calling them to repent and to be saved.

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Because God's gifts and calling are irrevocable, we understand that a person who has been prophetically gifted might be able to function in that gifting even though they are no longer in right relationship with God.

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That is why it is imperative that we judge a prophet by the fruit of their life and ministry rather than by their gift, also recognizing that there are some who started right but will be rejected in the end.

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And I would note here that when Michael Brown was part of that group that did the investigation on Todd Bentley, Michael Brown went out of his way to make it very clear that although Todd Bentley was disqualified from ministry moving forward, but he made a big point about the fact that that does not mean that he did not have a legitimate supernatural gift.

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Let me ask you a question, Phil. Do you believe that Todd Bentley ever had a healing gift?

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No, I don't. In fact, I don't know how you would recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing if you can't look at Todd Bentley, the fruit of his ministry, the fruit of his lips, the testimony he himself gives.

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If you can't evaluate that and conclude this man has never been converted, then I don't know how you'd ever recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing.

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But one of the ways Scripture tells us is how to recognize a false prophet is he prophesies falsely.

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So what they're trying to accommodate here, the language is interesting.

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They're claiming that the problem with modern prophecy is that the people who are doing the prophesying are communicating imperfectly.

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And so they've taken the language out that seemed to say that the error began with God, that God communicated the wrong thing.

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But nevertheless, this is what the prophets claim. It's not that they've stated some—they were trying to say something, and they said it in a confusing or an ambiguous way.

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What is actually happening is that the prophets are saying, God told me this, and it turns out to be untrue.

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Now, someone can consistently claim that God said things that he never said.

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I don't know how you can avoid the conclusion that this man is a false prophet. And we're going to take a look at the biblical case for that here, and we're going to look at the inconsistency of the remnant radio guys.

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So what I wanted to do was show you from—they've been doing a series against the cessationist documentary, and you came up.

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And I wanted to show you what was said about you and how they argued against the point that you were making.

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And let's see if we can roll this back a little bit and see if you're guilty of the ad hominem attack that they claim that you're guilty of, or if you are legitimately sticking to the biblical standard.

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So here, this is from the cessationist documentary part seven with guest Dr. Michael Brown.

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And let's just tune in as they're going to bring you into focus.

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Yes, sir. Let's do it. Clip number two. The problem with the charismatic movement today is that they don't have a single prophet who has been 100 % accurate.

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The honest charismatics will admit that, that they are wrong far more often than they are right. If you used a magic eight ball to make all of your choices, you'd be right at least half the time.

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And charismatic prophets are wrong more often than that. That's a quick clip. I don't know why that makes me laugh so hard.

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It does make me laugh too, just the way that the eight ball shakes a little bit. It's kind of comical. It is a cartoon. So how do we engage with that, guys?

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And here's the thing. I just want to maybe appeal to the audience for a second. This is what we call an ad hominem argument.

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OK, this has nothing to do with the text of scripture. This is nothing to do with what the Bible says about the gift of prophecy. It's only saying, well, you know, there are bad stuff that's happening out there.

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So we shouldn't believe anything that's associated with that bad stuff. I just remind you that there are tons of cessationist leaders. We've talked about them in the show throughout history who have fallen into horrible sexual sins.

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Does that mean that we shouldn't believe reformed theology or that we shouldn't believe in typical cessationist doctrines because there are some bad apples in the bunch?

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No, because that's an argument against someone's character, not against what the Bible actually says. This argument. All right.

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So that's his claim that. Wow, he totally misunderstands the argument because I didn't make any argument about character or it wasn't ad hominem at all.

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It's a statistical argument. They are wrong more often than they are right. No, they don't even dispute that claim.

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And in fact, doesn't the Bible say something about that? Does the Bible say something about that?

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It definitely does. The only place that Scripture gives us a standard by which to evaluate whether a person is a false prophet or not is

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Deuteronomy chapter 18. It's very explicit there saying that to falsely prophesy, that's a capital crime.

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And how do you know if a man is a false prophet? Because he prophesies falsely. Right. So they claim that this doesn't apply today, by the way.

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So let me kind of back up a little bit here because over and again, when

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I bring this up to charismatics and Pentecostals and people in the NAR, they will sit there and say, this doesn't apply today.

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And I would note that the guys at Remnant Radio, they have been known to go after some of the big high level national prophecies that show up every year on social media and YouTube and other places, and they do so.

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And when they do so, they claim that they're following the biblical standard. And this is kind of how I want to build my case here.

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Listen to what Michael Roundtree said in the 2023 prophetic words published by Charisma when they said they were testing him.

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Listen to how he says why they're going to do what they're going to do. And Miller, you did touch on this a little bit earlier, but the

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Scripture commands us in 1 Thessalonians 5 to test prophecy. So that is what we're doing.

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And we're testing the prophecies that are the most relevant to anyone that believes in prophecy and even those that don't, because these are national level prophecies.

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These are prophecies that are being heard by thousands, if not millions of people that we're reviewing. So we're reviewing them because the

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Scripture commands us to. And we're reviewing specifically these because certainly collectively, these prophecies are affecting millions of believers.

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All right. Now, I would note, I got to give them credit because they're partly correct in what they're saying that we must test prophecies.

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But here's where they avoid what the fuller body of Scripture teaches. So the text that he was quoting was 1

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Thessalonians 5, 20 and 21. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold fast to what is good.

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Okay. So we are commanded by God to test everything. The passage that they avoid like the plague is 1

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John 4, 1, which explains what we're supposed to be testing for. 1

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John 4, 1 says, beloved, do not believe every spirit. In fact, the do not believe the, you know, this, this pustuata here, that's the imperative.

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God is commanding us through the apostle John to not believe every spirit, but we are to test the spirits.

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And what are we to test for? To see whether they are from God for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

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So we have to determine whether or not a prophecy is from God or whether it is not from God.

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The test requires us to determine the source. And these guys never do that.

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They say they're testing prophecies, but they never test the source, which is why

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Deuteronomy 18 becomes a passage that still applies to this day, because the test then here is telling us how we may know a word that God hasn't spoken.

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That's the point. So let me put this back in its context. So in this context, Deuteronomy 18,

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God says that he's going to raise up a prophet like Moses. And this is, so this is a prophecy regarding Christ.

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And there's implications of this that are, that are huge regarding eternity. Yahweh, your

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God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen, just as you desired of Yahweh, your

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God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, let me not hear again the voice of Yahweh, my God, or see this great fire anymore, lest I die.

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And Yahweh said to me, they're right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.

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I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name,

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I myself are required of him. So, God is saying you are required to listen to this prophet that God's going to raise up.

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But then he says this, the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.

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So, this is, so the moral law is broken. The commandment that says you shall not take the name of the

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Lord your God in vain, that's the command that's being broken here. And the civil penalty for breaking that moral law is death.

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And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that Yahweh has not spoken? So, this is a test to see whether or not

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Yahweh has spoken or not. When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that Yahweh has not spoken, the prophet has spoken presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him.

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In other words, kill him. Okay? So, the test, the New Testament test requires us to determine where the source of the prophecy is.

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And if the source is not God, then it's a false prophet who is speaking. The Deuteronomy 18 explicitly teaches us that a way of determining a word that God hasn't spoken is when somebody says something's going to happen and it doesn't come to pass.

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That means that they have spoken presumptuously. Yahweh hasn't spoken that. Let me ask you this question,

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Phil. How does that not continue to apply today? Did God say to Jeremiah Johnson back in 2020 that Trump was going to win the election?

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Obviously not. No. So, according to the

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New Testament standard, to see whether they are from God, if God didn't tell

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Jeremiah Johnson that Trump was going to win the election, that means that he's a false prophet because he's speaking words from God that God hasn't given him to speak.

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Right, Chris. And by the way, in the Old Testament, this was so strictly enforced that if a prophet spoke one time falsely, you weren't to listen to him ever again.

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Mm -hmm. This wasn't expected to be a pattern, and nobody said, well, he messed up the prophecy.

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He got it mistaken. No, he prophesied falsely, meaning he put words in God's mouth that God didn't speak, and that's a capital crime.

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There's no way back from that into the prophetic office. Yep. And I would note this is a clear breaking of one of the

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Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20, verse 7, it says, you shall not take, or you can actually translate the

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Nasa here as, you shall not carry the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

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And here's where just a little bit of Hebrew also helps because the Hebrew word that's the one that gets translated vain, listen to its potential translations.

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It's talking about emptiness, nothingness, or vanity. The second one is emptiness of speech or false or empty prophecy.

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So, you'll note then that nobody can say, thus saith the Lord, and then have it not come to pass without breaking this commandment.

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And what I find fascinating is that these guys never address this fact. They just gloss over it.

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Well, it's all different in the New Testament. No, it's not. In fact, I would note that Christ gives a very stern warning in the

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Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7 when he says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my

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Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

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I would note this doesn't sound like anything going on at your guys' church or at Kongsvinger. This sounds exactly the kind of stuff that's going on in the charismatic movements today.

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And then Christ will say to them, I will declare them, I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

32:14

And so I would note that anybody who is claiming that you can give prophecies in the name of Yahweh, in the name of the

32:22

Lord, and have them not come to pass as no big deal. All that matters is that they're sincere and they may have erred here and there, but you can't do that without breaking the commandment.

32:35

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. So what these guys are legitimately doing is teaching a form of lawlessness by teaching people that they're not guilty of breaking that commandment, even when they get prophecies wrong.

32:51

That, have I overstated my case? No, no. I think that's the sum of the argument they're trying to construct here is that it's okay to claim a gift of prophecy or to claim that you have actually heard privately from God and then impute to him words that he never said.

33:11

And you can do that somehow without having sinned. And the way scripture portrays that, it's such a gross sin, a sin that's worthy of death.

33:22

It makes me tremble to think the account these guys are going to have to give when they stand before God.

33:29

Right. Now, I'm going to note here, I want to show you a part of their critique of Chuck Pierce's 2023 prophecy, which

33:39

I describe as a complete word salad of non -lucidity. I mean, there's nothing in here that makes a lick of sense.

33:47

And I want you to see their reaction to this, because rather than going with the biblical standard that is laid out for us in 1

33:54

John 4 and saying, this is not a word that God spoke, they do something very different.

34:01

And so we'll hear part of Chuck Pierce's prophecy, just for context. Recovery. And actually Gamal was a camel that was coming.

34:06

And therefore this year is about opening up new supply lines. So we're in this war over the supply for our future. But you want to understand

34:13

God's already giving you authority to multiply either what you have or to find new sources to multiply.

34:19

And so this year, the warfare comes, how will we fill the house with a supply that will sustain us in years to come?

34:25

So I want to encourage all of you, think multiplication, think creativity. Don't let the world produce fear in you because that creates an unsound mind.

34:32

You've got to keep thinking creatively. So you keep expanding your thought processes and keep walking through the tumultuous times we're in.

34:39

All right, so can I just say his shirt is a perfect metaphor for his prophecy.

34:48

You're not wrong. You're not wrong. I think that's a good way to put it.

34:54

Okay, so first up is Michael Roundtree. And let's see, fellas, your thoughts.

35:00

Golly, let me just read off the notes I jotted down. Okay, so this whole decade that we're in is a decade of hearing the voice, but not just the voice of God.

35:08

This part was confusing to me. The political voices, just voices that we need to listen to to get a strategy.

35:15

So if I'm getting a strategy from some kind of voice, I hope it's a voice of God. What is hilarious is watching him try to make sense of the double talk of Chuck Pierce.

35:26

So he's taking a yeoman's effort here. He's really giving it a good college try, but what he's not doing is what the

35:36

Scripture commands. And that is we have to test to see whether this is from God. And my claim is that if that was

35:43

God speaking through Chuck Pierce, the universe is doomed because God is suffering from a mental illness.

35:50

So it's funny kind of watching how they're doing this. But I want to get to Joshua Lewis's, his response, because it's super telling.

36:00

So let's keep going here. And I don't know, it's it's it's the same stuff, man.

36:08

It is the same stuff, man. It's and that's why it's like, hey, there's Joshua Lewis. Josh, go find some prophecy review videos.

36:14

It's like I could play three years ago's prophecy reviews and they'd be the exact same thing as this year's prophecy reviews.

36:19

Like it's hard to even want to go find prophetic words given for the year. Like he's if you haven't been paying attention, there's this whole literature now.

36:25

There's this whole ecosystem of prophecies. He's like talking about the mouth. He's talking about the house. All of this stuff has to do with the numerology found in the

36:33

Jewish calendar system or the Gregorian calendar system. And they're making these like extravagant prophetic words based off of numbers.

36:39

And that's not how prophecy works. So he acknowledges that what he just heard from Chuck Pierce, this is not how prophecy works.

36:50

But this is in a video where they're testing a prophecy, but they're not doing what

36:56

Christ commands, what the Holy Spirit commands to test to see whether that's from God. The question for you, Josh, did

37:02

God give those words to Chuck Pierce? And he's not addressing that. So let's keep going.

37:08

It's unfortunate. Like there was nothing there of substance. He's been prophesying vague words and words that do not come to pass for years.

37:17

OK, but Josh didn't. Now, someone might say, well, he prophesied. What was it?

37:23

Massive plague like conditions coming. I went on a video to 19. Yeah, yeah. He predicted it alongside 30 other things that didn't happen.

37:31

Chuck Pierce predicts so many things. So he's just admitted that Chuck Pierce is as unreliable as all get out.

37:39

In fact, he's he's legitimately making the argument you made in the video that they critiqued.

37:46

I was going to say the same thing. If he prophesied 19 things and only one of them came to pass, he is far less accurate than the magic eight ball.

37:57

That's not an ad hominem argument. That is an argument from sheer statistics.

38:02

Just the number of prophecies he's given. And he says he's been doing it for years.

38:08

How does that not make him a false prophet? Right. And the thing is, is that the standard, again, is we have to test to see whether they are from God.

38:19

And Deuteronomy 18 makes it clear. Those are words that God hasn't spoken. Those false prophecies that he's given, which makes him a false prophet, according to First John four one.

38:32

So I think your argument was sound, but he's making the same argument.

38:38

You know, yes, he made it. He just made it earlier this year that he'll eventually get it right and be able to clip a video and put it out there.

38:45

But the 600 other things that he predicted that were that were going to happen didn't happen. It's like if I just make a list of things and start predicting geopolitical events that take place, and I only bring to surface the events that actually happened, then that I mean, hooray,

38:58

I hit a group of people who said they went and found all of the prophetic words that match in 2020. We went back and dug up all of that source material and found all of the full quotations.

39:07

And he was for every one thing that seemed to be true. It was buried under a mountain of things that were so vague or things that just factually did not happen.

39:16

Go watch our 2020 prophecy review video. So, Josh, say it. Chuck Pierce is a false prophet.

39:25

You know, if he if he just consistently judges the prophetic movement of the charismatic movement by the standard he just laid out, he's not going to be a charismatic for long.

39:38

Yeah, there's more to this, but I want to hear a little bit more of his comment. And then we're going to test one of Joshua Lewis's prophecies.

39:46

You'll see all of the content there. I mean, it was three years ago. I can't, I can't put it all up. How many hits does this video on YouTube have?

39:53

44 ,000 views. 44 ,000. And it's been out for probably a couple days, two days.

39:59

Yep. Yeah. It has 44 ,000 views. I'm like, I'm shocked because it means that there's a, this is what

40:07

I said. Is there a need for a reformation? Yes. This is the charismatic church today.

40:13

It's this kind of stuff that, there's a reason why the cessationist has camp has so much strength behind and so much force behind what they say is because this stuff lends them credibility.

40:23

Actually, they're lending him credibility by refusing to stick to the biblical standard, you know, and, and, and this prophetic standard state, which basically says, well, you know, he, he, he probably doesn't have a gift of prophecy, but he's a well -meaning sincere brother.

40:41

No, he's a false prophet. This isn't helping. And I look, man, I would be happy to eat my own words on this.

40:47

Is this put out by charisma? Like the organization charisma magazine charisma? Correct. Okay. We know the publisher for that.

40:54

Don't we? Strand. Do we know the publisher? One of the guys that works for charisma that's on the publishing, right?

41:01

Don't we? Oh, I think you're thinking of dusty image. Okay. Maybe not. Well, I can say this.

41:07

If there's somebody out there from charisma that hears this, I would be happy to eat my words on this. If you can show me how this is actually helpful.

41:15

How is this helping the body of Christ? And how is this making the charismatic church look any more credible as a witness, a prophetic witness to the body of Christ at large?

41:23

Please, I'll be happy to eat my words. Please show me something. So they recognize that Chuck Pierce's prophecies are false, but he's not a false prophet.

41:35

It's, it's, it's unbelievable. And I would be happy to print all of those words off on eight and a half by 11 pieces of paper and eat them right alongside

41:42

Miller. Um, I just, I don't think you can do it. Like I just, I will, I will eat physical paper if I have to.

41:48

I'll put my money where my mouth is, if you will. I just, yeah, I, the, the, the strongest cessationist argument is poorly practiced charismatics.

41:58

And I just feel like a third fuel on the fire at this point. Okay. 51 minutes, guys. It's not poorly practiced charismatics.

42:06

It's charismatics that refuse to stay within the bounds of scripture and, and acknowledge that the

42:14

Bible condemns these people as false prophets. So your, your thoughts on that before I show you the next thing.

42:24

Yeah, I'm, I'm wondering who he thinks are not the poorly practiced charismatics, the prophets at least.

42:30

I, I don't know of a single prophet who is reliable on any scale that's worth paying attention to.

42:38

All the famous ones are consistently wrong. Yeah. And I would note that even

42:44

Joshua Lewis in his response to the cessationist documentary part seven, he admitted that he's given a false prophecy.

42:54

Let's listen to his, uh, his explanation of that. That maybe I'll say one last thing, um, for every, for every, so here's, here's a good one.

43:02

Um, this is a, an example in Anaheim. Uh, I don't exercise the gift of prophecy frequently. Uh, it's one of those things that can happen sparingly.

43:10

Uh, but, but when I was in Anaheim, I probably gave six or seven different words. All of them landed, but one. So I'm going to give you,

43:15

I'm going to give you, and the one wasn't quite sure if it landed or not, but, but here's, here's the thing. One guy was in the room. I got a picture for him.

43:21

Um, I told him, hey man, I felt like, uh, I got this picture. I got this word. Um, it's, I have to kind of explain it all a little bit, but it had to do with a dragon scorching the earth.

43:29

And I heard the phrase decimation of smog. And I said, I felt like God, uh, he heard the phrase decimation of smog.

43:36

Are we, we're in Bethel territory. Now you shall not pass.

43:42

Okay. And, and by his own admission, this prophecy quote, didn't hit kind of delivered you out of the hand of a kind of greedy leader.

43:50

Who's kind of scorching the earth around you and you're kind of looking around and there was something, uh, something growing like a small, almost like a blade of grass, very, very small plant.

43:58

Uh, and you just asked the Lord, could this ever grow? I just told him like, I feel like God is, is, is calling you. He's telling you it will grow.

44:03

He is empowering you to do this. This individual, um, had, uh, just been fired from a church. Um, from what he was telling me, the pastor was really intimidated about his gift and kind of scorched earth around him, ruined his reputation.

44:13

He went out to go play in a church. He was asking the question if God would ever bless his church, if it would ever grow. Now here's the thing. Was that guy, was that guy, um, did that guy care that I missed one word?

44:22

I gave, I gave, you know, uh, like, like I said, six or seven, seven or eight words. And they all seemed to land except for one.

44:28

This lady was like, ah, you know, I don't know. That doesn't, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Uh, but this, this guy, he didn't care that I missed that word because the word that I gave him, it gave him courage.

44:36

It encouraged him. That's what prophecy is supposed to do. It's supposed to give you courage for the mission that's in front of you. Where in scripture does it say that prophecy is supposed to give you courage?

44:45

Are you familiar with that passage, sir? No, no. And I think, I think if you want to encourage people, fine, encourage them.

44:51

You don't have to claim that you're getting private revelation from God in order to do that. Yeah. So did, did

44:59

Joshua Lewis just out himself as a false prophet? In my judgment, yes, because I think the biblical standard for someone who claims to speak for God, someone who claims they have heard the literal voice of God and that they have a word, meaning the, an inerrant, uh, expression of God's truth in his own words, you claim that one time and get it wrong.

45:25

You're a false prophet. Right. You know, cause I go back to the standard, the standard in scripture in the new

45:32

Testament is not merely to test and hold fast to what's good, but we're to test the content to see whether the content is from God.

45:42

And we know from Deuteronomy 18, that when somebody doesn't, when one of their prophecies falls to the ground, it doesn't land that that's not, that's not a word that God has spoken.

45:54

And so I don't care how many other things Joshua Lewis has gotten right. He's admitted tacitly that he's a false prophet by, and he denies the standard of scripture when it comes to actually testing.

46:07

So, I mean, this was a little more than talking about Calvin, by the way.

46:14

By the way, when, when he claims, and this is not an ad hominem argument, I'm not questioning his fundamental integrity, but I am saying when he claims that he made multiple prophecies and several of them hit, but since he doesn't describe what that is,

46:30

I don't, I don't see how we're obliged to take his word for it. Yeah. Because what he's describing, the desolation of smog and all that, is not only fanciful, it's the sort of vague, not really a prophecy, but a kind of horoscope saying that these are carefully crafted and put in the newspaper every day.

46:55

So that if you, if you're one of these superstitious people who reads the horoscope, you should be probably amazed at how often these seem to apply to you because they take, they take words and expressions from the human experience that we've all had and generalize it in such a way that, you know, it could apply to any number of people in any number of instances.

47:17

That's the kind of prophecies that he would claim they hit. And, and I would say that's not a prophecy on the, on the biblical standard.

47:26

A prophecy from God is, is a revelation of some truth that otherwise you wouldn't know.

47:32

It's not just a vague, moralistic expression about, you know, how your day is going to go or whatever, whatever the content of those prophecies that hit.

47:43

I'd be interested in knowing that because I doubt very seriously that they were substantial prophecies.

47:51

And if his goal is to encourage people, you can do that. And, and all of us do without claiming that you're giving a message from God.

48:00

Well, actually, I like to encourage people with messages from God. It's just that they can follow along in this book called the

48:06

Bible. So, well, Phil, thank you for your time. I appreciate you showing up in one of our chapters in my rebuttal to the, the

48:16

Remnant Radio guys. And I, I, I assume that you would join me in my prayers for them, that, that, that God would open their eyes and that they bring them to repentance because they are legitimately inciting lawlessness against God by, by ignoring his command that you cannot take his name in vain.

48:34

And by teaching people that they can prophesy falsely and still not be a false prophet. So, yeah,

48:40

I do pray for them and to encourage them, I would say, continue in this vein with a heart of honesty, evaluating these prophecies that your charismatic brethren claim.

48:54

And I think your eyes are going to be open to the reality that there is nothing edifying in this movement.

49:00

No, just not a thing. I've been covering this movement for decades, and I still have yet to see a one, even one true prophecy from this group.

49:11

So, all right. Well, Phil, thank you for your time, and I'll let you get back to your work.

49:17

Thanks. Good to talk to you always. Good to talk to you too. So, hopefully you found that chapter, chapter one, my interview with Phil Johnson to be helpful and informative.

49:28

It's now time for chapter two. This deals with the guts of the Hebrew text there in Jeremiah 32.

49:34

And for this, I have interviewed Dr. Reed Lessing, and I'm sure you will find this conversation to be very helpful.

49:47

I would like to welcome on to Fighting for the Faith, Dr. Reed Lessing. Thank you for coming on on such short notice.

49:55

I appreciate your willingness to come on to Fighting for the Faith to discuss this Jeremiah passage.

50:01

And I want to give a little bit of an introduction about what you have done. Dr. Reed Lessing is an avid author over at Concordia Publishing House, and he's got five

50:13

Old Testament commentaries to his name, as well as a whole host of other books that he's written.

50:20

Quite a prolific author. Dr. Lessing, thank you for coming on Fighting for the Faith. My pleasure,

50:25

Chris. All right. So, I can tell that you've forgotten more Hebrew than I've ever learned.

50:31

So, I am not an Old Testament scholar or Hebrew scholar.

50:38

I'm proficient in translating the Old Testament. However, you know,

50:43

I would never say that my translation somehow rises to the level of high scholarship.

50:50

But I wanted to show you what was said regarding Jeremiah, and Jeremiah 32, specifically verse 8, by a group called

51:02

Remnant Radio. There's three guys together that put out regular video podcasts there.

51:08

And I reacted to it and noted that in the Hebrew, it doesn't say anything like that.

51:16

I'll talk about my argument, and then I'd like to get your insights into this.

51:23

And after this, after my interview with you, I'm going to actually read out

51:28

Dr. Steinman's comment that he sent me regarding this particular passage.

51:35

But let me show you the video byte in question.

51:41

So, this is Michael Roundtree from the Remnant Radio, and he's going to be talking about, and he's a charismatic.

51:47

He believes that God speaks to people still today, kind of like the way he did prophets of old.

51:53

However, he believes that prophets can get it wrong, which is a weird position.

51:59

But here's what he said. I'm sure you would agree. Sometimes it would come in a vision. Sometimes it would come in a dream.

52:06

Sometimes it might come in sentence structure, you know? Right. So, like when they say, the word of the

52:13

Lord came to me, it probably did come in some kind of—we don't really know. It actually doesn't tell us how it came.

52:19

Does that mean that they saw sentences? Does that mean that God audibly spoke it and then they conveyed it?

52:24

We don't know. But to your point, even when such a firm statement as the word of the Lord came to me is used, in Jeremiah 32,

52:33

Jeremiah doesn't know that he knows that he knows that it's the word of the Lord until Panenel offers to buy that field, which is how the story plays out.

52:42

I don't know how they get around that. The very clear statement, then

52:48

I knew it was the Lord. All right, that's not exactly what the text says.

52:54

And so, here's the text. I've got the Hebrew on the far left. I got the

53:00

ESV in the middle. And I would note here. So, after hearing this,

53:05

I went and just pulled up the text and read it, cross -referenced it in Hebrew, made a couple of notations, you know, kind of did some highlights in the

53:13

Hebrew. And there was a couple of things that really kind of stood out. Number one,

53:19

I noticed here that at the very end of the sentence in verse 8,

53:25

Yahweh who, the who is this. Okay, that's the word, this, and it has to be referring to something.

53:32

And based on where it is in this paragraph, there's no way it's referring to the initial vision and he was questioning it.

53:40

Instead, the this here is referring to Hannah Ma 'el. And that's how I read it and said, well, it can't be that.

53:48

Now, one of the things I didn't comment on was another part of this.

53:53

And here you got, you know, up here, you got Ki Debar Yahweh, and that gets translated in the

54:00

ESV as in accordance with the word of the Lord. And so, if we read this out, you know, just kind of looking at these obvious things, but there's more to it than this.

54:11

It said, Jeremiah said, the word of Yahweh came to me, behold, Hannah Ma 'el, the son of Shalom, your uncle will come to you and say, by my field that is at Anathoth for the right of redemption, but the right of redemption by purchase is yours.

54:27

And so, pretty straightforward here. This is a highly detailed prophecy. And, you know, and there's no reason to believe that this is any different than any of the previous ways in which the word of the

54:37

Lord came to Jeremiah, which seems to be quite very strong because Jeremiah is always able to say, thus says

54:45

Yahweh. And then it says, then Hannah Ma 'el, my cousin came to me in the court of the guard in accordance with the word of the

54:51

Lord. There's the key to bar Yahweh bit. And so, he tells what the word of the Lord is. And then in accordance with the word of the

54:59

Lord, Hannah Ma 'el shows up. So, there's nothing in here that says that he had doubt, that he was uncertain.

55:07

And the sentence then, then I knew that it was the word of Yahweh is not at all expressing any kind of doubt whatsoever.

55:16

And it doesn't make any sense. Even with my rudimentary translation skills in Hebrew, there's like, there's like no textual indicators to show any kind of doubt on this part.

55:29

And I, you know, since you're actually the expert here in Hebrew and, you know, and a published author, five

55:35

Old Testament commentaries to your name, am I missing something, Dr.

55:40

Les? No, not at all, Chris. And I would step back, as we often do, to get a greater context.

55:50

And I would suggest we get at least two contexts here. The first would be the book of the prophet

55:57

Jeremiah. And as we look at Jeremiah, I've got some numbers for you.

56:04

Okay. So, we have, declares Yahweh, or an oracle of Yahweh, 167 times in Jeremiah, accounting for over 60 % of all occurrences in the

56:17

Old Testament. And the word word appears 90 times, devar, in Jeremiah, by far the greatest usage of the term in any book of the

56:27

Bible. If there's any prophet you don't want to pick a fight on, in terms of knowing the word of the

56:35

Lord, it would be Jeremiah. Already in chapter 1, verse 9,

56:41

God puts his words into the prophet's mouth. And then when you go to chapter 15, 16,

56:48

Jeremiah said, When your words came, I ate them. They were the joy and delight of my heart.

56:54

So, Jeremiah not only has the external word coming to him, vis -a -vis the oracle of Yahweh, he also has internalized the word.

57:08

And this is actually the heart and soul, no pun intended, of chapter 31, 31 through 34, where in the renewed covenant,

57:17

God says, I'm going to place my Torah, right, in your gut.

57:24

So, for anyone to argue that Jeremiah, in any place in his book, is going to have some doubt, some hesitation, ah, shucks, darn,

57:35

I didn't quite pick that one up, has to somehow reconcile with the larger narrative of the book and the emphasis on the certainty of the devar

57:51

Yahweh when it comes to Jeremiah. I would also add that he has a lot to say about false prophets, right?

58:01

And in chapter 23, he's going to talk about standing in the counsel of Yahweh.

58:08

That's 23, verse 18. And the implication is that the false prophets have not stood in Yahweh's counsel, and Jeremiah has.

58:21

If we would go rather quickly to Amos chapter 3, verse 7, Amos uses the same idea that Yahweh doesn't do anything, this

58:32

Amos 3, 7, unless he reveals it to his prophets who stand in the divine counsel.

58:40

So that's the first big step back we need to take before we, you know, get into the weeds in chapter 32.

58:49

There's another step, but I'll pause here for a moment. All right,

58:54

I'm completely on board at this point, you know. I recently did an entire

59:02

Sunday School series on the book of Jeremiah, and with the folks at Kongsvinger, we actually walked through the entire book of Jeremiah, and it was, it's an amazing book, and it's fresh on my mind, having taught through it.

59:19

And I don't recall anywhere in here where he was just doubting whether or not that was his word.

59:25

So I agree with you, the overall context doesn't fit. So the question then is that how then should we understand this phrase, then

59:34

I knew it was the word of Yahweh. Let me explain how I took it. So, you know, you'll note that when you're working through Hebrew text, there's all kinds of different idioms that just don't translate well into English.

59:48

Now, although this wasn't exactly an idiom, in fact, I would note this is probably not an idiom at all,

59:54

I translated it more paraphrastically or more idiomatically. And my translation is that then

01:00:01

I knew this is what the Lord was talking about, or what he told me, something along those lines.

01:00:08

Because, you know, the fact that Hanuman El shows up in accordance with the word of the

01:00:14

Lord, again, showing certainty as to what he knew what the oracle was. So then he knew that, then

01:00:21

I knew that this was the word of the Lord. I just translated it more idiomatically. Am I coming up with my own private interpretation by doing so?

01:00:29

No, no, not at all. See, the second contextual issue we need to discuss is, this is a prophetic sign act, right?

01:00:41

Which Jeremiah loves to do. Ezekiel on steroids, right?

01:00:49

Yeah, indeed. Yeah, so like Hosea, you know, go marry Gomer. And that's a metaphor for Yahweh marrying the northern king of Israel.

01:00:58

So we understand this. And so this is a narrative of a prophetic sign act, all of which is to say, any interpreter of any document needs to realize that there are prescriptive and descriptive statements.

01:01:20

And that's certainly true in the Bible. So is this prescribing how prophets are going to operate biblically or even in the 21st century?

01:01:32

No, it's not prescribing that. It's describing an event in Jeremiah's life that is part of a prophetic sign act.

01:01:44

And so that would be another argument to marshal against people who want to make this verse in 32a somewhat normative, or this is the way it always goes for Jeremiah and prophets today.

01:02:02

But the real crux of the matter, now we can kind of get down into the details here, is this.

01:02:12

Wow. Okay, yeah. Adah. See, and so obviously, the

01:02:20

Hebrew word that is going to be translated most of the time.

01:02:26

And okay, the ESV is going to do then. And it's very elastic.

01:02:33

It's very contextual. And so what you're doing is you are using it as,

01:02:40

I believe, an explanatory wow. Let me explain what was happening.

01:02:47

I knew that this was the word of Yahweh. And the Greek word chi, also often translated and, functions this way as well.

01:02:58

Now, I would want to caution that these two conjunctive words in Hebrew and Greek don't often have this meaning.

01:03:13

But certainly, at the end of this section in Jeremiah chapter 32, it's somewhat of a pivot.

01:03:22

He's saying, that is to say, so it's explanatory. If you like fancy linguistic terms, it's exegetical, right?

01:03:32

That is to say, I knew, see, that this was the word of Yahweh. So the word that gets translated in the

01:03:41

ESV is then. So I have it highlighted. It's the single letter here. And a lot of people who are not familiar with Hebrew don't understand how it works like Legos.

01:03:51

You know, you can kind of tack things on to, you know, you got these things you throw on stuff you tack on the end, and then the main word is stuck in the middle.

01:04:01

I would note that Dr. Steinman, in his comment, noted that the Ada here from Yadah is probably better understood as realized.

01:04:13

That's his translation of this. So that which then adds more weight to this idea that what we're dealing with here is an explanatory.

01:04:22

Wow, you know, and so, you know, which I think makes, you know, that's why

01:04:28

I translated it the way I did. So I would note here, kind of ironically, that they kind of fell back and said, well, you know, there's other commentaries that agree with us.

01:04:43

And they then quoted John Calvin as agreeing with them. But in an interview

01:04:48

I did with Phil Johnson, he went back into Calvin's commentaries, and Calvin made it very clear that at no point was

01:04:55

Jeremiah in doubt regarding having received the word of the Lord. In his view,

01:05:03

Jeremiah may have been having a lack of faith regarding the circumstances of what was going on, which kind of gets you into the more immediate context.

01:05:12

Because Zedekiah is about to have his reign come to a cataclysmic end, and this is no time to be buying property, especially property that's already under the control of Nebuchadnezzar.

01:05:28

So, no, exactly. I know we talked about this a little bit on, like, Saturday night, but I believe that theologically that's exactly what's going on.

01:05:40

That is to say that Jeremiah could say that I knew this was

01:05:48

Yahweh's word for any number of reasons, some of which we've already discussed.

01:05:54

I won't repeat. But certainly being completely immersed in Israel's earlier text, he realizes that Yahweh is going to work with barren women and state slaves and eighth -born sons.

01:06:12

That would be David, Gideon, whose clan is the weakest in Manasseh.

01:06:17

He's the least in the family. So this confirms the major storyline of the

01:06:24

Bible that we often term the theology of the cross, that God's ways are not our ways.

01:06:30

His thoughts are not our thoughts. So within a greater biblical narrative,

01:06:36

I think that's exactly part of what's going on here. Yeah, and I would note, when you kind of look at the context here, just backing up a little bit, there was a very clear word of the

01:06:48

Lord regarding the fact that Nebuchadnezzar was on his way to dethrone

01:06:54

Zedekiah. And what's fascinating is that Jeremiah and Ezekiel are contemporaries at this point, and both of them receive words from God, prophecies that are action -related.

01:07:08

So Ezekiel at this exact same time gets a prophecy that he's supposed to act out. He's to take his baggage, baggage for exile, and he's to dig a hole in a wall and crawl through it.

01:07:22

And the explanation for this is that Zedekiah was going to do that same thing.

01:07:29

He was going to escape through a breach in the wall, and that he was going to, this is all in Ezekiel 12, and that he was going to then flee but be captured.

01:07:40

And then he was going to be taken off to Babylon, but he will never see it with his own eyes. And I find it fascinating that you can actually kind of synchronize

01:07:48

Jeremiah 32 with Ezekiel 12. And it says this, Zedekiah the king of Judah had imprisoned him saying, why do you prophesy and say, thus saith the

01:07:57

Lord, for behold, I am giving the city into the hand of the king of Babylon and he shall capture it.

01:08:03

Zedekiah the king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon and shall speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye.

01:08:13

And he shall take Zedekiah to Babylon and there he shall remain until I visit him, declares Yahweh, though you fight against the

01:08:19

Chaldeans, you shall not succeed. So all of this, this is kind of giving more of the context and the

01:08:27

Chaldeans and Nebuchadnezzar are already in Judah.

01:08:34

And so in the midst of all of that insanity, I mean, so you have Jeremiah being locked up, you have

01:08:41

Zedekiah getting his face. Why do you always prophesy these terrible things? And then he's still doubling down.

01:08:47

And in the midst of all of this, then you've got Yahweh telling him that, oh, by the way,

01:08:54

I want you to purchase a field that is an anathema. This isn't a time to be doing, you know, to be buying real estate, you know?

01:09:04

So all of that being said that, you know, when you kind of put all the pieces together, there is no doubt in Jeremiah's mind at all that he had received this word of the

01:09:15

Lord. And if anything, there may have been, and there's not really much of a hint of this at all in the text, a hint of his not really believing like this makes any sense.

01:09:26

Why would I be buying a piece of property now? But although that's a little bit of a stretch to kind of pull that out of the text, because I don't see any exegetical clues that even show that he had a lack of faith.

01:09:38

So I would disagree with Calvin that he lacked faith at this point. But Calvin's very clear.

01:09:44

He had no doubt regarding what the word of the Lord was. So I want to make something really clear here then,

01:09:52

Dr. Lessing. And that is, is that does my ability to read

01:09:58

Hebrew and to exegete a text using actual biblical languages, does that make me arrogant?

01:10:06

Does that make me coming up with my own interpretation? Am I somehow just saying,

01:10:14

I'm better than other people because I can read the Hebrew language? Dr.

01:10:19

Lessing Well, there are at least nine ways to say no in Hebrew. Wow.

01:10:30

Yeah. So if someone has ever accused you of that, then that's just a voice to ignore and dismiss.

01:10:40

Certainly we want to handle God's Word with humility and thanksgiving and awe and wonder.

01:10:48

But the reason why we study to show ourselves approved by God is so we can do exactly that.

01:10:55

Look at the Greek. Look at the Hebrew. Look at the Aramaic and be able to properly discern biblical doctrine.

01:11:04

Yeah. Now, I think it was Luther who said this, and if I'm wrong, you can correct me. But Luther may have pointed out that the one who errs regarding grammar will necessarily err in his theology and doctrine.

01:11:17

Is that true? Dr. Lessing Oh, no doubt. And then what Luther is famous for saying, right, is that once we lose the languages, the gospel, which is a draconian statement, right?

01:11:32

Dr. Peter Yeah, right. Dr. Lessing And yet people like us, thanks be to God, they don't say that glibly or lightly.

01:11:39

We've been given the opportunities to study these languages and treasure them and realize that, you know, within these words are life and light.

01:11:53

Dr. Peter One of the things I tell my students, and I actually teach a class on Koine Greek, and one of the things

01:12:02

I tell my students going into the class is that once you have a command of the biblical languages, you're actually proficient in translating.

01:12:10

What you're going to find is that every English translation has really strong weaknesses, is the best way

01:12:19

I can put it. There's so much nuance that is lost in translation because there's no equivalent to pull it into English.

01:12:29

And so I like to describe the ability to read the Bible in the original language is this way.

01:12:36

I see when I was growing up, we actually had televisions that were black and white and color was still kind of coming in.

01:12:42

And you remember the rabbit ears? So in order for us to watch television, you know, sometimes we'd have to rearrange the rabbit ear antenna so that we can watch it.

01:12:54

And so you're watching it on an old television screen. It's fuzzy. It wasn't high definition.

01:13:01

I look back at video from the old television saying, how did anybody think this was entertaining? But all that being said, like if you watch

01:13:08

I Love Lucy, you know, you're still able to get the, you understand what the storyline is, you understand what the plot is, but you lose all of the color information.

01:13:18

And the ability to read the Bible in the original languages is like watching on an 8K high def television where there are colors and contrasts and nuances that you just never knew existed.

01:13:34

And so, which then informs you as to somebody like a pastor, you need to know those nuances because if you rely on just one

01:13:45

English translation without ever consulting, you know, the original languages or worse, you know, you just, you have the one translation that you go to and that's the only thing that you do.

01:13:56

You have no concept of any of these things. And you're not even checking how different translators have handled some of these more difficult texts.

01:14:04

You lose it altogether. You know, you might actually make a comical blunder because you're just not aware of these things.

01:14:14

And somebody who knows the languages always has the ability to point that out. Am I overstating the case here?

01:14:20

And no, I think that's a wonderful analogy. And yeah,

01:14:26

I've used something similar along the lines of the Wizard of Oz, right? You've got the black and white and the color.

01:14:35

So within, you know, 16th century Reformation theology from Wittenberg, right?

01:14:44

This is like our heart and soul. This is what drives us. This is our new potatoes. It's such a great delight to lean strongly into these languages.

01:14:57

Yeah. Let me just give one example. Let's see if I can tee this up for you.

01:15:03

You remember when Moses asked to see God's glory and God said, and it says,

01:15:10

I'm going to put you on the cleft of the rock and put my hand over it and my glory is going to pass by. So Moses didn't get to see

01:15:17

God's glory. He got to hear it. And so in the English, in that chapter in Exodus, it says,

01:15:23

Yahweh, Yahweh, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. Can you tell me a little bit about the

01:15:30

Hebrew there? Because it might mention God's nose. Oh, exactly. So that's, you know,

01:15:36

Exodus 34, six and seven. It's Israel's creed. It comes 17 more times in the

01:15:42

Old Testament with slight variations. But yeah. So it's the only time you have Yahweh, Yahweh repeated in the

01:15:50

Old Testament. So this is who Yahweh is. This is his name, right? He's Canun, gracious,

01:15:56

Raccum, merciful. And then, of course, Erech Afayim, right? Slow of two nostrils.

01:16:03

Right. He's got a big old nose. What is this? So I like to point this out.

01:16:09

It's talking about Yahweh's nose. What are we supposed to, how are we supposed to translate that?

01:16:14

Because if you were just to literally translate it, Yahweh with two nostrils, I mean, and it always gets translated idiomatically, slow to anger.

01:16:23

Can you explain why that is? Yeah, I really don't know why that is.

01:16:29

It's just because, well, I can only guess, right? Okay. That generally the translational interpretation for people dealing with the

01:16:42

Old Testament, going back to the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, is we don't like anthropomorphisms.

01:16:50

See, we don't like God somehow looking like us.

01:16:56

And yet, right, if you have a robust incarnational theology already in the

01:17:03

Old Testament, you would say these are hints. These are the signposts that, yes,

01:17:10

Yahweh in the fullness of time will have nostrils and eyelids and a spleen and a heart and certainly blood, right?

01:17:22

So you kind of lose these anthropomorphisms and you begin to understand that, well, perhaps

01:17:31

God is completely different than us. And yet,

01:17:37

He is, but He's not, right? He's a true God, finally true man. Yeah, I like to explain it to people that, you know, so we'll keep the anthropomorphism.

01:17:49

I like to say He has a long nose, you know, with two nostrils, you know, is that there's kind of a picture there that sin is a stench in God's nose, and the slow to anger aspect of it picks up the idea that God, you know, it's like I said, have you ever been driving down the highway and gone by, you know, like a, you know, a beef farm or something, you know, the smell is just awful, right?

01:18:14

And so the fact that God is slow to anger, this is how people have then idiomatically translated that text, shows that He takes a long time,

01:18:24

He's got a long fuse, and that He can handle the stench of our sin for a long time before He eventually will act in judgment.

01:18:33

But yeah, but I like your emphasis on the incarnation, because you're right, people don't know what to do with the fact.

01:18:39

Here you got God walking, you got God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

01:18:46

And then one of the prophets, it says that the Lord came to me and He stood, you know, it's like,

01:18:52

God can stand? What are you talking about here? Yeah, and then don't even get me started on the three visitors that visited

01:19:00

Abraham. Right, right. You know, so, but, well, you know, this is just one more thought that came to mind, going back to Jeremiah 3, 2 and Jeremiah, but the prophet's first vision in chapter 1, verses 11 and 12, certainly, yeah, you can scroll down there, that He sees, right?

01:19:29

What does He see? He sees an almond tree, right? And the punch is that Yahweh's watching over my word to perform it.

01:19:40

So there's another kind of nail in the coffin for anyone who wants to doubt that Jeremiah, you know, doesn't quite get it, or he's hesitant.

01:19:51

No, Yahweh is watching over His word to perform it.

01:19:57

So an almond is a shakad, all right, in Hebrew, and shokad is watching over it, as you kind of highlighted there.

01:20:09

So it's a wonderful wordplay, right? Yeah. So Yahweh will actually do what

01:20:16

He says He will do. So going back to the initial, you know, verses in chapter 32,

01:20:24

Jeremiah's got this vision, right? The word of Yahweh came to him, do this. Well, God knows that He's given

01:20:31

Jeremiah this vision that He will do it. There's not any wiggle room for the prophet to kind of hesitate or wonder.

01:20:41

Yeah, because this is front and center in the book, this first vision. And there's no mention of Him wondering or hesitating.

01:20:49

There's not even a mention of it in the text. And so if you're going to come up with an interpretation like that, then you're running contrary to the actual context clues that are there grammatically for us.

01:21:00

Right, right. And that is to necessarily err. Well, Dr.

01:21:07

Lessing, I appreciate you coming on. I know that you're a busy man. But I appreciate you at least giving me the ability to fact check my own assumptions regarding the

01:21:17

Hebrew text, because I am not above an error. And I have no problem admitting that.

01:21:23

I may not have got that right, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. How do they say?

01:21:29

I'm doubling down. And doubling down because the text requires me to do so.

01:21:36

It does. Yeah, yeah. Jeremiah says in chapter 20 that he's weary of holding

01:21:42

God's Word in, right? It's like fire in his bones. It's all right there.

01:21:51

It's all right there. Poor Jeremiah. He had such a tough gig, man. I don't think he really wanted to do this.

01:21:57

I'm a young man. I can't. I'm not good at speech. Don't worry. I'll take care of all of that. All right.

01:22:05

Well, Dr. Lessing, again, thank you for your time. Thank you, Chris. Yeah. And if I ever come up on a thorny

01:22:11

Hebrew question, I'll be sure to give you a call again. Do that, because I mean this sincerely,

01:22:17

Chris. I so appreciate your ministry and anything I can do to help, I'm here, okay?

01:22:23

I appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Bye -bye.

01:22:29

Now, as promised, as part of this chapter, and now that I've finished my interview with Dr. Lessing, I would like to bring you up to speed onto how

01:22:36

Dr. Lessing came to be on Fighting for the Faith, but also read to you an email response, a statement that I received from Dr.

01:22:44

Andrew Steinman, and we'll explain who he is momentarily. But let me re -whirl up the desktop here.

01:22:50

December 1st, 2023. Drs. Lessing and Steinman. There is a highly influential charismatic

01:22:57

YouTube channel claiming that Jeremiah 32 -8 is proof that Jeremiah received a prophecy from God, but was uncertain that it was a prophecy.

01:23:05

The sentence in question is highlighted in yellow. And so I sent them the

01:23:10

Hebrew because they can read it like I can read it. All right. So, and then here's the remainder of my initial email.

01:23:17

I see no grammatical evidence to believe Jeremiah was uncertain that he'd received a prophecy from God. Instead, the two parts that I've highlighted in pink argue against that uncertainty.

01:23:27

See above here. Plus, Kael and Dalich note that this was not because Jeremiah was unsure that he'd received a prophecy, but that merely that he knew that the matter was appointed by God.

01:23:38

Again, here's what Kael and Dalich says. Jeremiah 32 -8, what had been announced to the prophet by God took place.

01:23:45

Hananiel came to him and offered him his field for sale. From this, Jeremiah perceived that the proposed sale was the word of the

01:23:52

Lord, i .e. that the matter was appointed by the Lord. I would like for one of you to come on fighting for the faith to discuss the

01:24:00

Hebrew in this text. Kairos kairareni, kairos kairareni, soy

01:24:07

Chris Roseborough. All right, which basically means grace and peace to you. And next part.

01:24:13

So this was Dr. Steinman's response. And I think it was short and to the point.

01:24:19

Pastor Roseborough, the idea that based on the English translation of the Hebrew, wow, translated here as then,

01:24:26

Jeremiah was uncertain about the divine revelation is actually coming from God is silly beyond belief.

01:24:33

The point is simply that when Hananiel arrived with his request,

01:24:39

Jeremiah realized, probably a better translation of the verb yadeh in this case, that it matched what

01:24:45

God had predicted. This is obviously an unfounded interpretation from someone reading the

01:24:51

English text with no knowledge of Hebrew, or perhaps only a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew.

01:24:57

Dr. Andrew Steinman, distinguished professor emeritus of theology in Hebrew, Concordia University, Chicago.

01:25:04

And I would note Dr. Steinman has written several notable commentaries on Old Testament books all by himself because he is a eminent theological and Hebrew scholar.

01:25:16

And so I appreciate his input. All of that being said, you can see then that, yeah, what the

01:25:24

Remnant Radio guys came up with as a response doesn't fly and far from it.

01:25:30

Jeremiah never had any doubt that he had received a revelation from God. And even when they quoted

01:25:36

Calvin, Calvin, Calvin didn't say the things that they said because they omitted part of what he said.

01:25:42

You get the idea. So it is now time for chapter three of this very long episode of Fighting for the

01:25:50

Faith. And so for chapter three, we're going to be interviewing Justin Peters. Just a reminder, some of the topics that I've covered with Phil Johnson, I'm also going to cover with Justin Peters.

01:26:01

Again, this is not for redundancy sake. It is to build the case using corroborating evidence and testimony that what

01:26:09

I'm saying is not merely my opinion. It's what the scripture says. So here's my interview with Justin Peters.

01:26:20

Justin Peters, you're the guy that started all this mess. Thanks for coming on Fighting for the

01:26:29

Faith. I got to let everybody know, I held this conversation with Justin Peters off to the last chapter of this very long response rebuttal video to the

01:26:40

Remnant Radio guys. And Justin, you're the one who caused all the kerfuffle in the first place.

01:26:48

I remember you sent me a text with the short that Michael Roundtree had said and asked me what

01:26:55

I thought on it. And I got back to you pretty quick and said, yeah, it doesn't fit with the Hebrew.

01:27:00

Cale Dalich completely disagrees. And so we did our response video, and they were quick on the draw to get a rebuttal video out to the video you and I put out on your channel.

01:27:14

And so I wanted to come back and circle back with you and talk about some of their responses. Because in the course of putting this video together, man, have

01:27:23

I found that their arguments are full of holes. I mean, legitimately full of holes. And I want your reaction.

01:27:31

So aside from the fact that they were basically calling me a meanie poopy head who has come up with my own interpretation because I read

01:27:39

Hebrew, and that means I have my own, you know, I'm coming up with my own private interpretation of things. We already put that to bed with a

01:27:46

Hebrew scholar and a response from another Hebrew scholar. But all that being said, I wanted you to hear one of their responses.

01:27:54

So to kind of refresh everybody here, the issue at hand is the question.

01:28:00

This is the whole thing comes back to Jeremiah chapter 32. Jeremiah. Hang on a second.

01:28:07

Let me pull this up. Jeremiah 32 and verses six through eight.

01:28:12

And let me just read this. Okay. Jeremiah said, the word of Yahweh came to me.

01:28:17

Behold, Hannamael, the son of Shalom, your uncle, will come to you and say, buy my field that is at Anathoth for the right of redemption by purchases yours.

01:28:26

Then Hannamael, my cousin, came to me in the court of the guard in accordance with the word of Yahweh and said to me, buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin for the right of possession and redemption is yours.

01:28:39

Buy it for yourself. And then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. So their interpretation was from Michael Rowntree is that, well, you know, when

01:28:51

God speaks to us, you know, sometimes it's fuzzy. Sometimes he speaks to us in sentence form. Sometimes it's in a dream.

01:28:57

Sometimes it's this way and sometimes it's that way. And so they basically read into this text that idea and accused

01:29:05

Jeremiah of not being sure, not knowing that he knew that he knew that it was really a word of God until it was fulfilled and confirmed.

01:29:14

And so, you know, we talked about the Hebrew. I've since doubled down on the

01:29:20

Hebrew here and tripled down with other Hebrew scholars helping me to that effect.

01:29:26

But so this idea that Jeremiah had doubts that he wasn't even sure if he had heard the word of the

01:29:34

Lord. Number one, it's not in the text. It doesn't say that. And number two, the question is, what does it mean here?

01:29:40

But what I found fascinating, and I think you'll find this interesting, is that Michael Rowntree, you know, he says he's a

01:29:48

Calvinist. And so he made an appeal to John Calvin's commentary on Jeremiah 32.

01:29:54

And I want to hear his response, look at Calvin's commentary on Jeremiah 32, and get your thoughts on what he said.

01:30:05

So let's listen in to Michael Rowntree. And so the point that I was making in this short that he mentioned was the significance of that final statement.

01:30:13

Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord in verse 8, because in verse 6 he begins by, the word of the Lord came to me.

01:30:19

And so it seems as though, I think the language I used in the clip was that after the experience played out,

01:30:24

I said, then he knew that he knew that he knew that he knew that he knew that this was the word of the Lord. Or, to put it another way, it was his prophetic intimation or impression, if you want to use that language.

01:30:38

Prophetic impression. So real quick, Justin, do you know of any biblical prophet that had prophetic impressions?

01:30:48

No, no, and this is something that I've said in my teaching, in my seminar, Clouds Without Water for years.

01:30:54

In fact, if I remember correctly in this video that you're playing a clip of, I think they even seeded that point that I make that there's nowhere in the

01:31:03

Bible, Old or New Testament, where you see someone saying something to the effect of,

01:31:08

I think the Lord is trying to tell us such and such, or I feel like the

01:31:13

Lord is trying to tell us such and such. That is language that is foreign to the scriptures.

01:31:19

It is a new construct. It is something that the charismatic movement has had to create, honestly, out of whole cloth to accommodate their view of errant prophecy.

01:31:34

It's just, it's not found in the Bible. What you do see over and over in the

01:31:39

Bible, well, Old and New Testament, but the word of the Lord came to Isaiah.

01:31:45

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. In fact, in this text, even Jeremiah 32, the word of the

01:31:51

Lord came to Ezekiel. The word of the Lord came to Abram. There's no confusion.

01:31:59

There's no uncertainty. When God spoke, his prophets knew exactly who it was that was speaking and what it was that he was saying.

01:32:08

Okay, now we're going to make an important distinction here. You said that it was his prophets who knew. But so, for instance, when

01:32:15

God sent two dreams to Pharaoh, did Pharaoh know that it was

01:32:21

God who was speaking to him? I mean, is there any reason to believe Pharaoh knew that? Yeah, I mean, when

01:32:28

God spoke, even unbelievers knew that it was God. Okay, so he didn't know the interpretation of it.

01:32:36

In Daniel chapter two, you have Nebuchadnezzar who dreamed a dream, and it doesn't say anything in Daniel two about Nebuchadnezzar knowing it was from God, but he wanted to know the interpretation of it.

01:32:47

And he refused to actually tell the details of the dream to anybody.

01:32:52

And he said that, I will know that you know the interpretation if you tell me what my dream was, as well as its interpretation.

01:33:01

And it was Daniel then who informed Nebuchadnezzar that it was a great God who had given him that dream.

01:33:08

But Nebuchadnezzar wasn't a prophet of God. He had a dream, and he was perplexed as to the meaning of it.

01:33:16

And so the idea then is that we'll make a distinction between prophets of God and those whom

01:33:25

God has communicated to that they may not have known for sure that that was

01:33:31

God behind it. They had definitely a prophetic dream. It troubled them, it kept them awake, and it puzzled them.

01:33:37

But you know, I'd say there's a difference. But there was no doubt that they were clearly communicated to, and what the details of what they were, what

01:33:45

God communicated to them. The details were crystal clear, Chris. Yeah. Crystal clear.

01:33:51

Yeah, how about Balaam? I mean, which prophetic school did he receive his prophetic activation?

01:33:59

Right, Numbers 22. Yeah, Balaam was an evil, wicked man who ended up dying for his witchcraft.

01:34:07

But when he finally contacted God, God answered the call, and he was quite shocked at that.

01:34:17

And Balaam even gives one of the more notable prophecies regarding the Messiah, but he was as wicked as wicked gets, you know?

01:34:24

Yeah, that's right. So in the words of our friend Jim Osman, you know,

01:34:30

God doesn't whisper, you know? God doesn't whisper, He doesn't stutter,

01:34:35

He doesn't... You know, this is one of the things that vexes me, Chris, is that God spoke the universe into existence.

01:34:45

He upholds all things by the word of His power. The entire universe, every molecule in the entire universe, in galaxies that we haven't even discovered yet, is being held in its appointed place by the constant exertion of God's power.

01:35:05

And yet, God can do that, and yet He somehow struggles in communicating what

01:35:12

He wants to say to His own creation that He Himself is upholding. I mean, none of that makes any sense.

01:35:20

No, it doesn't make any sense. And I've covered quite a few sermons from Charismatic and Pentecostal churches that claim that learning how to hear the voice of God is like learning how to tune in to the right frequency on a radio or something like that.

01:35:35

And it's always on the person's, it's up to the person and His exertion, His piety and stuff like that to be able to rightly connect.

01:35:42

But I would note this idea that God gives impressions. That's not a biblical concept.

01:35:48

That's a concept that comes more from the Star Wars movies than the Jedi, you know? Right. I've detected,

01:35:56

I've felt a great disturbance in the Force, you know? Yes, yes. Alderaan must have blown up.

01:36:03

Right, exactly. Okay, so we already got a problem here because he's doubling down on his bad theology, which he's eisegeting into this text, and then he's going to enlist

01:36:14

Calvin to basically become his ally, and we'll see if Calvin really is his ally. The Revelation was confirmed as the events played out, and so point being that prophecy is not necessarily as crystal clear as, say, events actually playing out.

01:36:33

And so Justin called this a novel interpretation of Jeremiah 32, 8.

01:36:40

Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. But we would contend it's actually not novel.

01:36:47

This has been around for a long time. In fact, someone who Justin Peters and I both respect a lot,

01:36:54

John Calvin, shares the same interpretation, although John Calvin was a cessationist.

01:37:00

But here's what he says about this verse. He says, As to the end of this verse, it may seem strange that the prophet says that he now knew that the word came from God.

01:37:09

For if he before doubted, where would be the certainty as to the prophetic spirit? He had already received a vision.

01:37:14

He ought to have embraced what he knew had been foretold to him from above, even without any hesitation. But it appears that he was in suspense and perplexity.

01:37:24

It then seems an evidence of unbelief that he did not put a full and entire trust in God's testimony and was not fully persuaded as to the heavenly oracle until he saw the whole thing really accomplished.

01:37:37

Gosh, we have a big, long quote there. I'm not going to quote the whole thing. Wait a second. So, Nody said we got a big, long quote there, and he just doesn't want to quote the whole thing.

01:37:46

Well, we happen to have the whole big, long quote. So, this is

01:37:52

Calvin's… Always be suspect when you hear that. I'm one of these guys that is, you know,

01:37:58

I'm noted for, you know, using the three rules for sound biblical exegesis as context, context, and context, right?

01:38:06

So, I would note the part that he was quoting is down here, but he kind of missed the whole buildup in the previous two chapters.

01:38:18

And so, I mean, I got nothing to do right now except for talk to you and maybe read a large part of this out in context.

01:38:24

Maybe we should see what Calvin really said, you know? So, let me read this.

01:38:31

But in the first place, let us see whether this was, as they say, a naked vision or a real transaction.

01:38:37

Some think that it was exhibited to Jeremiah by the prophetic spirit, but it may be easily gathered from the context that the field was actually bought.

01:38:47

It is first said that the word came to Jeremiah, but shortly after is added that after his uncle's son came,

01:38:57

Jeremiah was informed that the whole business was directed by God. God then foretold the prophet what was to be.

01:39:07

Behold, Hannah Me 'el, the son of Shalom, thine uncle, shall come to thee and shall offer to sell his field to thee.

01:39:14

This is what God said to the prophet, and thus far we may say that Jeremiah was informed of what was either to be by a dream or a vision.

01:39:25

But when he afterwards adds that Hannah Me 'el himself came and that Jeremiah testifies that he now knew that it was from the

01:39:33

Lord, there is no doubt that it is a real narrative. So, note here,

01:39:39

Calvin is saying he knew that he had received a prophecy from God. Okay, whether it was a dream or a vision or a direct word of God, Calvin doesn't know the exact medium that God chose to communicate it, but it's very clear that Calvin here is affirming that Jeremiah knew that he had received a prophecy.

01:39:59

So, God then induced Hannah Me 'el to come to Jeremiah and to offer him the field on sale and to ask him to buy it because he was the next heir and therefore had the right of redemption.

01:40:10

We then perceive that it was a communication from above, but then the reality was connected with it for Hannah Me 'el came and sold the field before the witnesses and all this was necessary, not so much on account of Jeremiah as the whole people.

01:40:27

So, Calvin's making the point here is that it wasn't Jeremiah that needed to be convinced this was the word of the

01:40:35

Lord, it was the people. The people. The people who witnessed the purchase, okay?

01:40:41

And especially of the faithful for whom this prophecy was particularly designed. So, Calvin is putting a completely different emphasis on a different syllable than the remnant radio guys.

01:40:53

For God did not intend this to be a common treasure, but laid it up for his chosen people as we may gather from the conclusion.

01:41:00

Now, before Hannah Me 'el then came, the prophet was instructed that nothing was done unadvisedly.

01:41:07

So, again, Calvin is very clear. Jeremiah was instructed and not unadvisedly, but that God had arranged and ordered the whole.

01:41:19

He was then commanded, hard to follow through on a command if you don't know if it's a command.

01:41:26

He was commanded to buy the field and as it were to cast away his money for who would not have said that it was the same thing as to throw it away.

01:41:36

And then we are to notice a circumstance as to the time for the prophet was then in danger of his life.

01:41:41

To what purpose then was the field to him? We also said that he could not have had free access to it had he not been shut up in prison for he could not have ventured to go out of the city.

01:41:55

It was then a strange and ridiculous purchase according to the judgment of the flesh. So, here's where the conflict is, okay?

01:42:03

It makes no sense for Jeremiah to be purchasing property when

01:42:10

Nebuchadnezzar's armies are in the region, right?

01:42:16

And you don't buy something like this during a time of war. For Jeremiah squandered away his money and the possession of the field was only imaginary.

01:42:24

But yet, as God would have him buy it, he spared not his money but purchased the field from his uncle's son.

01:42:31

He then says that Hananmahel, his uncle's son, came as Jehovah had spoken, that he came into the court of the prison, and that he spoke to him as God had foretold.

01:42:42

Again, certainty regarding the vision. Everything is happening exactly the way God foretold it. As to the end of the verse, it may seem strange that the prophet says that he now knew that the word came from God.

01:42:54

For if he before doubted, where would be the certainty as to the prophetic spirit?

01:43:00

And that's a question, Mark, by the way. That's a question. He had already received a vision. He ought to have embraced what he knew had been foretold him from above.

01:43:10

Note here, Calvin says he already received the vision and Jeremiah should have embraced what he knew he had been foretold from above, even without any hesitation.

01:43:21

But it appears that he was in suspense and perplexity. It then seems an evidence of unbelief that he did not put a full and entire trust in God's testimony and was not fully persuaded as to the heavenly oracle until he saw the whole thing really accomplished.

01:43:39

But is it right to distinguish between the knowledge received from the revelation of the spirit and experimental knowledge, as they say?

01:43:47

And so Calvin is making a distinction between what he knew he'd seen in the revelation or heard in the revelation and what he experienced.

01:43:55

And so this is where Calvin is going to fault Jeremiah. The prophet therefore did not then for the first time learn that God had spoken.

01:44:03

And this is the most important sentence. And this is the part that Michael Roundtree left out.

01:44:10

Calvin specifically says the prophet therefore did not then for the first time learn that God had spoken.

01:44:17

But as he was confirmed in the certainty of his faith and in the thing itself, there is no inconsistency for nothing is taken away from the credit and authority of God's word when the reality and experience confirm us.

01:44:31

And thus God often has a regard to the weakness of his people. Jeremiah then relied on God's oracle and was fully persuaded that he was directed from above to buy the field.

01:44:41

But afterwards, when Hanuman El came to him, the event was, as it were, the sealing of the vision.

01:44:48

Then the truth of God was more and more confirmed in the heart of the prophet. This is as this, as I have said, was experimental knowledge or experiential knowledge, which detracts nothing from the credibility of the word, but is rather a help and a comfort to human infirmity.

01:45:05

In this sense, it was that he said that he now knew, and thus he intended also to make others believe the prophecy.

01:45:13

For when the faithful compare a vision with its accomplishment, this consent and harmony, so to speak, avails not a little to confirm their faith, but as when in one part they hear that God has spoken, and when in another they see what the prophet had been taught was really fulfilled.

01:45:30

So, having read out the longer context of this, and the bits that Michael Roundtree kind of left out, and the exact words, the prophet therefore did not then for the first time learn that God had spoken, does it sound to you like John Calvin agrees with the

01:45:50

Remnant Radio guys? Not so much. Not so much.

01:45:57

No, no, and you know, I mean, the first tip, and Michael Roundtree said it,

01:46:05

Calvin was a cessationist. So, it would be incongruous with cessationist theology and convictions to then say that Calvin, excuse me, yeah, to say that Calvin, no, that Calvin, yeah,

01:46:21

Calvin would believe that Jeremiah was somehow unsure of what God had spoken to him.

01:46:27

That's incongruous with cessationist theology, and Calvin was very much a cessationist.

01:46:34

So, you know, why Michael did not read the full context there,

01:46:40

I mean, I can only speculate, but yeah, when you read the full thing, you see quite clearly that Calvin did not believe what the

01:46:48

Remnant Radio guys would have you think that he believed. Right, and then two of the commentaries that they quoted immediately after that were in the same stream that were obviously influenced by what

01:47:00

Calvin had said, and one has to wonder if they even quoted them correctly. So, you know, so we've got a big problem.

01:47:08

The key guy that they brought in to support their understanding of Jeremiah 32 .8,

01:47:14

John Calvin, upon further review, John Calvin is not an ally of theirs.

01:47:21

No, no, he's not. He's not an ally of theirs. I mean, no, no cessationist is really theologically speaking in this regard.

01:47:29

And, you know, and I think of kind of in a similar vein, even Gideon, you know, and Gideon putting out his fleece and a lot of Christians say, oh,

01:47:36

I need to, I need to put out a fleece. Well, I think the Lord is saying, is telling me to,

01:47:42

I don't know, I think the Lord is telling me to take this job instead of the other job.

01:47:47

And so I'm going to put out a fleece per Gideon's example to see if this is really what the

01:47:53

Lord wants me to do. And so you put out your fleece of, you know, Lord, if this is what you want me to do, let me see a shooting star tonight or something like that.

01:48:03

That's your version of putting out a fleece. Right. Turning a descriptive text into a prescription, which gives no guarantee of the results.

01:48:10

Exactly. Exactly. And but Gideon's action was not something to be emulated. I mean, his putting out a fleece was an act of disobedience.

01:48:20

He was testing God. Gideon already knew what God told him to do. He was just reluctant to obey it.

01:48:26

And so he put out these fleeces. So it's, yeah, putting out fleeces as it were, it's not something to be commended.

01:48:33

Right. So Gideon, I mean, he had no doubt as to what it is that God told him, but God accommodated his weakness.

01:48:41

That's right. And in fact, right when Gideon was, you know, the night of the attack,

01:48:48

God even encouraged him, if you're having doubts, go and sneak up and listen to what's going on inside of the camp and you will hear something that will give you courage.

01:48:56

And he did, you know. And so at no point did Gideon ever like sit there and go,

01:49:02

I'm not sure if that was really from God. You know, instead he was, it's like, okay, God, if this is really what you want me to do, please show me that this.

01:49:10

So he was actually testing God's word, but he never questioned that it was the word he had.

01:49:16

He had a problem trusting it. And so I think based upon the longer reading here by Calvin, it sounds like he's putting

01:49:25

Jeremiah kind of in the same category as Gideon. But there was, like Calvin said, though, the prophet therefore did not then for the first time learn that God had spoken.

01:49:36

He knew full well that God was talking. All right, so that kind of takes that away.

01:49:45

And since I had you on, I thought, you know, maybe we could talk about some of their other arguments, which

01:49:51

I think are awful, by the way. But before we get to their argument, I have to ask you a question, okay?

01:49:58

And we're going to go to Exodus chapter 20, where we find the 10 commandments.

01:50:04

And in verse 7, it says this, Is it possible to give a prophecy that is not true without breaking this commandment?

01:50:23

No. No, it's not. Why not? This is something else that I teach in my seminar,

01:50:30

Clouds Without Water. Taking the Lord's name in vain, taking Yahweh's name in vain, it's a lot more than just saying

01:50:37

OMG or, you know, some profanity, GD, you know, all the derivatives of that.

01:50:44

It's a lot more than that. We take God's name in vain, both in word and in deed.

01:50:51

And putting words in God's mouth that He did not say, you could say is really the height of taking

01:51:01

His name in vain. That is absolutely breaking that commandment. And Chris, I say this with not,

01:51:08

I don't say this with any ill will towards charismatics.

01:51:17

I say it as a warning to them. It seems to me that they have no idea the seriousness of taking

01:51:27

God's name in vain, of putting words in God's mouth that He did not say. This is their bread and butter.

01:51:35

This is what they do literally all the time. They are constantly putting words in God's mouth that He did not say.

01:51:45

And so they are constantly taking His name in vain. You know, it's interesting to me,

01:51:51

Chris, and I think you and I've talked about this. I know Jim Osmond and I have. You know, if you want to get one of the well -known charismatics riled up and get them really exercised, it is when they perceive that you or I or some other cessationist have somehow misrepresented something that they teach.

01:52:18

That gets their cackles up real fast, and they take real offense at it, and they are quick to accuse us of slander.

01:52:29

I've heard Michael Brown do this and others. I know you have as well. Oh, yeah. But it doesn't seem they get, they are

01:52:37

Johnny on the spot with pointing that out. They get real angry at that, but it does not seem to bother them nearly as much, if at all, depending upon who you're talking about in the charismatic movement.

01:52:50

When you misrepresent God, that doesn't seem to bother them nearly as much.

01:52:57

They have way more leeway for people putting words in God's mouth that He does not say than they do someone like you or me or Jim Osmond or John MacArthur saying something that they at least perceive to be inaccurate about something that they have said or something they believe.

01:53:14

And that grieves me. That grieves me for them and what it says about where they are and how they view

01:53:24

God. Yeah, no, that's a great point, because you get some nuance wrong that they believe in, and then they'll claim that you've misrepresented them, but they have no passion whatsoever for when somebody gives a false prophecy.

01:53:42

I recently did an audit of the 2023 prophecies, the top ones, the national prophecies put out by Charisma magazine, and I noted that the

01:53:54

Remnant Radio guys earlier in the year had actually done something similar, and they said that they were obeying what 1

01:54:01

Thessalonians 5 says to test the scriptures, but I noted that they never tested the source.

01:54:08

And so that's a problem. But let me point something out here. In Exodus 20, verse 7, you shall not take.

01:54:15

So the word nesah here can mean to be carry. You shall not carry or take God's name.

01:54:21

And then the word in vain is how it gets translated in English. But in Hebrew, the Hebrew word is shah.

01:54:27

You shall not carry God's name to emptiness or vanity. And when you look at the semantic domains of possibilities of what the word shah means, emptiness, nothingness, vanity, but watch this.

01:54:39

Definition two, emptiness of speech of false or empty prophecy.

01:54:45

That's legitimately what's being covered here. And so I would note that we have a command in Scripture in the

01:54:55

New Testament, 1 John 4, verse 1, that says that we are not to believe every spirit, but we must test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

01:55:09

I would note the New Testament standard for determining if somebody is a false prophet is if they prophesy via a different source than God himself.

01:55:21

Yes, that's right. So if they could prophesy from their own heart, they could prophesy from a demonic source, they can prophesy because they're looney tunes.

01:55:32

But the thing is, is that the test of the New Testament requires us to determine the source, the paternity, if you would, of all prophecies.

01:55:43

Wouldn't that mean that Deuteronomy 18 is still in play today? Absolutely. Deuteronomy 18,

01:55:51

Deuteronomy 13, yeah, all of the Old Testament warnings and qualifications of how to—warnings for a false prophet and how to tell who a false prophet is.

01:56:02

Absolutely. I believe that that is congruous with the New Testament. I believe that standard absolutely carries over into the

01:56:11

New Testament. There's nothing in the New Testament, Chris, that in any way suggests that the gift of prophecy has somehow changed from the

01:56:21

Old Testament or been degraded from the Old Testament. You know, it's interesting that charismatics will say, well, you can't point to a verse that says that the miraculous gifts have ceased.

01:56:37

It just has to be inferred. Well, I mean, that is true, and there's good reasons for inferring it.

01:56:42

There's not a silver bullet verse that says, okay, the miraculous gifts ceased on this day, granted, but the theology of cessationism is inferred.

01:56:51

And so they use that as an argument against cessationism. Well, I can turn that right back on them and say, what verse says that the gift of prophecy has been fundamentally changed or degraded from the

01:57:06

Old Testament to the New Testament? You don't have a verse for that either. It has to be inferred.

01:57:12

I mean, if you're going to believe that, that the gift has somehow changed, you're inferring that because there's no verse that says it.

01:57:21

So what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Yeah. So, you know, for instance, one of the prophecies

01:57:27

I covered from 2023, put out by Charisma Magazine, Kurt Landry said that in the year 2023, that God was going to finally fulfill the promise of the great transfer of wealth.

01:57:40

And we're not talking about money going from your pocket to the oil companies or to the government. We're talking about pagans showing up at your door and writing you a check to basically cash out their 401k and giving it to Christians.

01:57:53

And that didn't happen in 2023. So because that didn't happen, doesn't that mean according to the standard that we're, you know, the

01:58:03

New Testament standard of 1 John 4, 1 is that we have to test to see whether the spirit is from God, that the prophecy is actually from God.

01:58:11

And so Deuteronomy 18 still is in play. The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.

01:58:22

And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that Yahweh has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that Yahweh has not spoken.

01:58:34

The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. In other words, kill him because he, you know, the death penalty is in play.

01:58:42

But so I can legitimately say that when Curt Landry said, thus sayeth the

01:58:47

Lord in 2023, the great wealth transfer is going to take place. Since it didn't happen, that means that Yahweh wasn't the source of that prophecy.

01:58:55

Am I wrong in saying that? Nope, nope, you're not wrong. Therefore, Curt Landry is a false prophet, right?

01:59:02

Yes, yes. Okay, by this standard. Okay, so we got a problem and that is that these guys are legitimately teaching lawlessness.

01:59:12

They're teaching people to break a commandment. And the commandment is you shall not take the name of the Lord your

01:59:17

God in vain, which is one of the 10 commandments. And I would note, you're not sinning against your neighbor.

01:59:23

You're not sinning against your spouse. You're sinning against God when you do that. And which is part of the reason why

01:59:30

God says that God's not going to hold him guiltless, the one who takes his name in vain. So were you aware of, you know,

01:59:39

I'm going to cover some of the same ground I covered with Phil Johnson, but were you aware that Michael Roundtree, not

01:59:48

Michael Roundtree, Joshua Lewis gave a false prophecy and admitted it? All right, give me a second here.

01:59:55

I'm on their channel. And we're going to go to their videos. And actually,

02:00:01

I want to go to their playlists. I'm going to go to their playlist on cessationists. And we are going to go to number seven, which is with Michael Brown.

02:00:13

And I want you to hear what Joshua Lewis said. You could speak into that a little bit.

02:00:20

Can I just request, because I'm thinking the very next video, we're gonna be talking about 2020 prophets.

02:00:25

And I feel like that question might be fit really well there. Can I take a pause,

02:00:31

Michael, to show that next clip? Yeah, show the video. Share the video. And then like we've already commented on the contents of the next video.

02:00:38

Yeah, let's watch this next one. I'll save my commentary on this clip. Other than the fact that maybe

02:00:45

I'll say one last thing. For every, for every, so here's a good one.

02:00:51

This is an example in Anaheim. I don't exercise the gift of prophecy frequently.

02:00:57

It's one of those things that can happen sparingly. But when I was in Anaheim, I probably gave six or seven different words.

02:01:04

All of them landed, but one. So I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you, and the one wasn't quite sure if it landed or not.

02:01:10

But here's, here's the thing. One guy was in the room. I got a picture for him. I told him, hey, man,

02:01:16

I felt like I got this picture. I got this word. I have to kind of explain it all a little bit, but it had to do with a dragon scorching the earth.

02:01:24

And I heard the phrase decimation of smog. And I said, I feel like God kind of delivered you out of the hand of a kind of greedy leader who's kind of scorching the earth around you.

02:01:32

Decimation of smog. Okay. So notice what he just said. He says he gave six prophecies.

02:01:37

One of them didn't hit. And, and, and so is there any reason why

02:01:44

I should believe that God is saying things like the decimation of smog? You know, you know.

02:01:50

From the Lord of the Rings? From the Lord of the Rings. We've wandered into Bethel territory at this point.

02:01:55

Yeah. I was about to say that's like, oh my goodness. Okay. You know,

02:02:01

I'm, I'm pretty confident God is not connecting his, his prophetic words that he gives to people to Hollywood movies.

02:02:11

I'm, I'm pretty sure God's passed anything like any kind of childish behavior like that.

02:02:17

I mean, it's just decimation of smog. Really? Let me, I'm going to have him explain a little bit more here.

02:02:24

And you're kind of looking around and there was a something, something growing like a small, almost like a blade of grass, a very, very small plant.

02:02:32

And you just asked the Lord, could this ever grow? I just told him, like, I feel like God is, is, is calling you.

02:02:37

He's telling you it will grow. He is empowering you to do this. This individual had just been fired from a church.

02:02:45

From what he was telling me, the pastor was really intimidated about his gift and kind of scorched earth around him, ruined his reputation.

02:02:51

And he went out to go plant a church. He was asking the question if God would ever bless his church, if it would ever grow. Now, here's the thing.

02:02:56

Was that guy, was that guy, did that guy care that I missed one word?

02:03:03

I gave, I gave, you know, like, like I said, six or seven, seven or eight words. And they all seemed to land, except for one.

02:03:10

This lady was like, you know, I don't know. That doesn't, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. But this, this guy, he didn't care that I missed that word.

02:03:17

Because the word that I gave him, it gave him courage. It encouraged him. That's what prophecy is supposed to do.

02:03:32

It's supposed to give you courage for the mission that's in front of you, empowering you for ministry. So do you know which biblical text says that prophecy is for the purpose of encouragement?

02:03:42

Because when I read the Old Testament prophets, they weren't very encouraging. You know, has he read

02:03:47

Amos? You know, like, yeah, yeah. Amos 3, yeah.

02:03:54

Oh, my goodness, Chris, this grieves me. I mean, it really grieves me.

02:04:00

You know, when Joshua Lewis says, does this guy really care if I miss one word? Well, I don't know this guy.

02:04:07

I don't know whether he cares or not, but I can tell you who does care. God cares. Yep. He cares.

02:04:14

And, and I would just implore my heart. I mean, there's righteous indignation for putting words in God's mouth that he did not say.

02:04:23

But there's also a pleading. And Chris, you've seen this from my videos. I'm sure these guys have seen it. When I do a video on Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland or Osteen or whatever, you know,

02:04:34

Duplantis, any of them, I plead with them at the end to repent because they don't understand the danger that they're in.

02:04:42

And putting words, I don't, I don't, I want to see these, these guys repent because putting words in God's mouth that he did not say is, you don't seem to grasp how extraordinarily serious that is.

02:05:02

I tremble every time I get behind the pulpit and I'm not prophesying like, thus saith the

02:05:07

Lord, the Lord told me I'm just doing my best to exposit his word. I tremble every, every single time

02:05:14

I do that. But I cannot even fathom, I can't even wrap my mind around saying

02:05:20

God spoke to me or God told me such and such when he didn't.

02:05:25

I can't even wrap my mind around that. Yep. And he fails, he fails the Deuteronomy 18 test.

02:05:31

He's outed himself as a false prophet. And what's fascinating to me is that these guys, they legitimately believe that prophecy tanked in the

02:05:42

New Testament and they are twisting up portions of the book of Acts to justify their, their practicing these sloppy prophecies that don't hit.

02:05:52

Okay. So for example, in the book of Acts chapter 20, the apostle

02:05:57

Paul says, now behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained by the spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except the

02:06:06

Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.

02:06:11

But I do not account my life of any value or nor as precious to myself. If only

02:06:16

I may finish the course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

02:06:23

So here you got the apostle Paul making it clear that he's going to Jerusalem and that the

02:06:29

Holy Spirit has informed him that imprisonment and afflictions await him. And he's getting that word from every true

02:06:37

Christian prophet that existed at the time as he's going from city to city. That being said, they then, these, these guys, uh, the remnant radio guys, they go to chapter 21 and Roundtree argues this and Joshua Lewis affirms this argument that, uh, that what happened here in 21 is, is that the people there in, uh, in this next city that they, they received a prophecy from God, but they misinterpreted it.

02:07:07

And as a result of it, they gave a prophecy that was conflicting with what Paul said in Acts 20.

02:07:14

And here's, here's the verse in question. So, uh, and having sought out the disciples, uh, we stayed there for seven days and through the spirit, they were telling

02:07:23

Paul not to go to Jerusalem. So here, when you compare this to what I just read in Acts 20, uh,

02:07:30

Paul says that, you know, he's, that the imprisonment awaits him. And that because the text says through the spirit, they were telling

02:07:36

Paul not to go to Jerusalem. That means that they heard from the Lord, but they misinterpreted the vision and that they weren't false prophets.

02:07:46

But the, but the, the vision, the, the, the prophecy that they gave conflicted with what the prophecy that Paul had given.

02:07:52

That's their claim. And we've got a problem. If the scripture contradicts itself, then the whole thing could come unwound.

02:08:00

And so I did a little bit of research in my library and, uh, I've got four commentaries here that I think might be helpful.

02:08:09

Um, and so the first one is, this is the Acts commentary put out by Broadman and Holman. And, uh, this one, it says, all right, the best understanding, okay.

02:08:19

So let me, let me back up. The believers appeal to Paul, both touches and confuses us.

02:08:24

If the spirit was leading Paul back to Jerusalem, as he had perceived previously asserted, why would the same spirit lead these people to try to stop him?

02:08:33

We will encounter that problem again in verse 14. The best understanding reflects their awareness of the suffering, which lay ahead.

02:08:41

They apparently decided that, that this was a sufficient reason for Paul not to carry out his plan.

02:08:48

Luke goes, gives so little attention to it here. We should not make any rash judgments such as disobedience on the part of Paul or theological confusion among the disciples.

02:09:00

So the best commentators note that there, there's an apparent contradiction, but they don't actually go so far as to say that the people there prophesied falsely.

02:09:11

The next commentary, this is from the Acts commentary on the book of Acts.

02:09:17

This is put out by Fortress Press. The second half of the verse is presumably telescoped.

02:09:22

The revelations generalized to the entire community did not order Paul to change his plans, but forecast danger as in 2023, the believers out of concern for Paul urged him to desist.

02:09:34

This interpretation is at least as old as Christosom. So Christosom, you know, saw the conflict and said that what was really going on is that they saw the danger that lay ahead.

02:09:44

And they basically pleaded with, pleaded with him to not go because they knew what awaited him, but they didn't give a prophecy that contradicted.

02:09:53

The, uh, the NICNT, uh, this is, uh, this is FF Bruce's, uh, contribution to it from William, uh, from Urban's back in 88.

02:10:03

FF Bruce writes among those Christians were some who had the gift of prophecy as they foresaw by its means that grave danger awaited

02:10:12

Paul in Jerusalem. They warned him to abandon his plan of going there, but Paul's mind was already made up and he was not to be diverted from his purpose by such predictions.

02:10:22

Tyre was not the first place in which indications of this kind have been given him of what lay in store for him.

02:10:28

See Acts 20, 23, it should be concluded that this, his determination to go, uh, it should not be concluded that his determination to go was disobedience to the guidance of the spirit of God.

02:10:40

It was under the constraint of that spirit that he was bound for Jerusalem with such determination.

02:10:46

It was natural that his friends who by the prophetic spirit were able to foresee his tribulation and imprisonment should try to dissuade him from going on, but with a complete lack of concern for his own safety.

02:10:58

So as long as he could fulfill the sacred stewardship, Paul, like his master, set his face to go to Jerusalem. So you'll note good commentators, they recognize that there is an apparent contradiction, but they resolve the contradiction in a way that doesn't break the scriptures.

02:11:13

What these guys are saying is that, uh, that they, the people in Tyre prophesied and they, they misinterpreted, therefore they gave a false prophecy that contradicted what

02:11:23

Paul said earlier. That actually breaks the scripture and breaks prophecy altogether. Then we've got, um, uh, the, uh, uh, the new

02:11:31

American commentary on the book of Acts put up by Broadman and Holman in 1992. This one is a little more direct to the point.

02:11:39

So the seeming conflict in the spirit's direction is an even more pronounced, is even more pronounced here with a note that the

02:11:45

Tyrians under the influence of the spirit urged Paul not to go. Obviously the spirit would not be giving

02:11:51

Paul two contradictory messages at the same time. The most likely solution to see

02:11:57

Paul's, uh, resolution to go to Jerusalem as the primary emphasis, Paul as absolutely convinced that God was leading him to the city.

02:12:06

On the other, uh, on the other hand, the warnings along the way prepared Paul from the imprisonment and hardship that did indeed befall him there, fortified him for the experience and convinced him that God was in it all.

02:12:19

This was not at all difficult for Paul to accept. Paul certainly never sought out difficulty.

02:12:25

He had no martyr complex. On the other hand, he accepted suffering as part of his witness and often alluded to this in his letters.

02:12:32

So here, you know, I, you know, just major commentaries, none of them agree with the remnant radio guys that these, that the people in Tyre prophesied falsely or prophesied a prophecy that contradicted what

02:12:44

Paul was hearing and, and laid out in Acts chapter 20. And all of them are reasonable.

02:12:49

And what's really fun in all of this is that Calvin also agrees, right?

02:12:56

You know, it was funny. I'm a, I'm a Lutheran. I'm pointing out with glee that Calvin disagrees with him too.

02:13:03

Yeah, well, you know, I, I, I've looked at, oh, I don't even know how many commentaries I looked at, um, the ones that you, you'd put up just there and they all say basically the same thing.

02:13:14

This, I mean, this is kind of hermeneutics 101. The Holy Spirit is not going to tell Paul one thing in Acts 20 and, and then tell other believers in Acts 21, something totally different.

02:13:28

That's the Holy Spirit is not schizophrenic. He's not confused. That is just, um,

02:13:34

I mean, this is, this is ground level stuff. So the Holy Spirit told Paul that chains and afflictions awaited him in Jerusalem.

02:13:44

The Holy Spirit told the believers entire the exact same thing. And based upon that knowledge that chains and afflictions awaited

02:13:55

Paul in Jerusalem, based upon that knowledge, they begged him not to go because they didn't want to see

02:14:02

Paul chained and afflicted. In fact, Chris, um, in verse 12, uh, in verse 12, we see the same thing there in Acts 21.

02:14:14

And this is right after Agabus that I think we're about to talk about. But anyway, after Agabus prophesied the arrest and afflictions, uh, that, that awaited

02:14:22

Paul in Jerusalem, those who heard Agabus say that they also begged Paul not to go.

02:14:28

Yeah. Right. Verse 12, uh, says, let me pull it up. And when they, and when we had heard this, we, of course,

02:14:36

Luke is including himself. And when we had heard this, we as well, as the local residents began begging

02:14:43

Paul not to go to Jerusalem. Yeah. So, uh, Luke included himself in that.

02:14:48

Yeah. So when you hear, you know, if, um, if, if my wife were to say, you know, uh, uh,

02:14:56

I think I'm going to go to, I don't know. I think I'm going to, which she would never do this, but let's just say my wife said, you know,

02:15:03

I think I'm going to take a flight to the Gaza Strip right now. I'd say, no, don't do that. Afflictions await you.

02:15:09

Don't go there. It's dangerous. It's a, it's the same, it's the same thing. And, and Chris, to point out something else, it's that I think is interesting.

02:15:18

So according to the, to the remnant radio position regarding Acts 21, if they're saying that the

02:15:28

Holy Spirit told those disciples in Tyre to tell Paul not to go to Jerusalem, we already talked about the incongruity of, of that with Acts 20, but if that were the case, then how do you square that with Acts chapter 16?

02:15:46

Because this is, uh, in Acts 16, the Holy Spirit actually did forbid

02:15:52

Paul to get from preaching in Asia and Bithynia. So we have a precedent already from previous chapters of the

02:16:01

Holy Spirit preventing Paul from going somewhere that he wanted to go, but the

02:16:06

Holy Spirit did not want him to go. The Holy Spirit prevented him from going to Asia and Bithynia.

02:16:11

And so Paul didn't go. So if you see what I'm saying, if the Holy Spirit really wanted to prevent Paul from going to Jerusalem, he would have had no problem doing so.

02:16:20

And we see that from Acts chapter 16. Well, you, you mentioned the fact that this is actually dealing with hermeneutics 101.

02:16:27

So, uh, you know, when I was in seminary and I took classes on hermeneutics and exegesis, uh, one of the, one of the general rules of, of, uh, like exegesis is that clear passages always govern unclear.

02:16:42

And so there's actually a hierarchy of interpretation in the scripture. When you come across an unclear text, you cannot obliterate a clear text with an unclear.

02:16:52

So, or an off topic text. So, so for instance, you know, the, uh, the people who are egalitarian, they'll, they'll sit there and go, well, the scripture says that in Christ, there is neither

02:17:02

Jew nor Greek. There is neither male nor female, there's neither slave nor free. Therefore we can have women pastors.

02:17:09

And you sit there and go, yeah, not so fast, right? Because you're taking a text out of context.

02:17:15

And that passage is not dealing with the question of who is qualified to be a pastor or an elder in Christ's church.

02:17:23

That's a, that's an off topic passage. And so, and then they'll say, well, then there's what, what about the list of apostles that lists

02:17:30

Junia? Huh? Okay. And so, and you sit there and go, all right, well, even if I were to grant you that maybe there's a 60 % chance we're dealing with an actual woman here, uh, we're most likely not.

02:17:45

Uh, when you look at the language of the verse, it's unclear as to what's being specified there.

02:17:50

What does it mean that Junia was well known among the apostles? Does that mean she was known well, really well by the apostles or that she was one of the apostles and well known as being one of them?

02:18:01

The, the language is vague. And so you have to let the clear passage govern the unclear. What these guys are doing is they're playing that same game.

02:18:09

They're taking a text, the, the, uh, like, uh, acts 21 and, uh, in verse four and saying through the spirit, they were telling

02:18:17

Paul not to go to Jerusalem and there that's an unclear text. And they're trying to make that the standard.

02:18:24

And their interpretation is, is that the, the people, their entire, because it says DIA, uh,

02:18:29

DIA HANU, uh, PANUMA via, via the spirit that they were telling Paul not to go to Jerusalem.

02:18:35

Therefore, that means that they, they received a true prophecy from God, but they misunderstood it or misinterpreted and therefore spoke falsely.

02:18:44

Uh, but the, but the, but the, the, that it was still from God. That's reading a lot of stuff into it.

02:18:49

And that's taking an unclear passage and obliterating all the clear. Okay.

02:18:54

So, so at this point, you know, this has to be interpreted by the clear text. And I would note that the verse that you brought up, uh, you know, back in here in verse 14, where, uh, then the, you know, they, they try to persuade him not to go, you know, that, that, that's in your, in your minute, that's in your immediate context here.

02:19:14

And, uh, and not only that, if we have them giving a false prophecy because they misinterpreted it, then we've got the undoing of scripture itself.

02:19:25

Okay. You have, and the, and the complete undoing of prophecy altogether. And, uh, and so what they're trying to do is basically take their non prophecies, their presumptuous prophecies.

02:19:37

They're not really hearing from God, the Holy Spirit. And as a result of it, you know, like a, you know, like an old analog clock, they're only right twice, you know, twice a day, uh, and try to take, take that standard and shove it in here.

02:19:50

And so they're looking for any kind of proof texts to back up their stuff. But the reality is, is that this is an unclear text that has to be governed by the clear passages and you cannot have a script.

02:20:00

You cannot have this then contradict the clear teachings regarding who's a prophet and what, and the accuracy, which with prophets speak.

02:20:07

Now, all of that being said, I wanted to talk about Agabus and, uh, and they do the same thing with Agabus.

02:20:13

They accuse Agabus of giving a prophecy that was generally correct, but still factually wrong.

02:20:21

And, um, there's a resource we're going to make available. We'll put a link down to it below. This was put out by Nathan Busenitz out on the

02:20:29

Cripplegate blog back in 2012. And I still think this is like the definitive nail in the coffin against any of this idea that, uh, that, um, that Agabus gave a false prophecy.

02:20:43

And so in this, uh, in this blog post, uh, you'll note, uh, that, you know, people like D .A.

02:20:50

Carson, Wayne Grudem, uh, who are notable, uh, continuationists that they, they tried to argue that, that it was

02:20:58

Agabus gave a false prophecy. And so you'll note here, when we take a look at the details of the prophecy itself, let me, in fact, let me go back here.

02:21:07

Um, we are going to go right there. All right. Let me, let me read the prophecies, the prophecy itself.

02:21:14

Uh, he had four, four unmarried daughters. This is talking about Philip the evangelist. And they prophesied, while we were staying for many days, a prophet named

02:21:21

Agabus came down from Judea and coming to us, he took Paul's belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, thus says the

02:21:28

Holy Spirit. This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the

02:21:36

Gentiles. When we heard this, we, and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem.

02:21:42

That's the verse 12 is the one you were referring to. And then Paul answered, what are you doing? Weeping and breaking my heart for I'm ready not to only be imprisoned, but, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the

02:21:54

Lord Jesus. And so their claim is that when you read the account that Luke gives of Paul's arrest, that because he wasn't bound hand and foot, uh, and, and then, you know, and, and this didn't happen properly.

02:22:09

Therefore, he gave, he gave a factually, uh, accurate, but incorrect prophecy.

02:22:15

And this therefore justifies so -called fallible prophets today. Right. You familiar with the argument?

02:22:22

I am. Yes, I am. And in fact, um, I can, I can read from Wayne Grudem on Agabus.

02:22:28

He says, Agabus has entered. This is from his book, uh, the gift of prophecy in the new Testament.

02:22:34

And today page 77, he says Agabus is introductory phrase. Thus says the

02:22:39

Holy Spirit suggest an attempt to speak like the old Testament prophets. He's right about that. That is how the old

02:22:45

Testament prophet spoke. Thus saith the Lord. The events of the narrative itself do not coincide with the kind of accuracy that the old

02:22:53

Testament requires for those who speak God's word. In fact, by old Testament standards,

02:22:59

Agabus would have been condemned as a false prophet because in Acts 21, 27 through 35, neither of his predictions are fulfilled specifically that, um, when

02:23:12

Agabus said that the Jews would bind Paul and would, uh, deliver him.

02:23:17

And, and Wayne Grudem says that Agabus, the overall point was that Paul would be, uh, arrested, delivered, uh, to the

02:23:27

Jew, uh, to rather to the Romans. But, um, he got the details of the binding and the delivering wrong.

02:23:34

But he's, he's, he's got to, he's got to do that.

02:23:41

He's got to make these claims, uh, to accommodate for fallible

02:23:46

New Testament prophecy. Yep. Yeah. Which eliminates the primary test for how we would know whether God was speaking or not.

02:23:56

Okay. They want that out of the way. So I, so in, in Boussinesq's article,

02:24:02

Throwing Prophecy Under the Agabus, which by the way, I think is one of the best named articles I've ever read.

02:24:08

It's like, it's like, I am so jealous. I didn't think of something like that. It's, it's so clever, but he's, he's, he argues really well in his main points against it.

02:24:19

Number one, nothing in the text states that Agabus got this prophecy wrong. Nothing. Neither Luke nor Paul nor anyone else in scripture criticizes the accuracy of Agabus' prediction or says that he erred.

02:24:31

Thus, at best, the continuation approach to Agabus is based on an argument from silence. Great argument, by the way.

02:24:37

Two, Luke's description of what happened to Paul in Jerusalem implies that the Jews bound him in some way.

02:24:43

Later in Acts 21, Luke explains what happened to the apostle shortly after he arrived in Jerusalem.

02:24:49

The Jews laid hands on him. The text says, verse 21, seized him, verse 30, dragged him out of the temple, verse 30, sought to kill him, verse 31, and were beating him when the

02:25:03

Roman soldiers finally arrived. I would note, if you haven't bound me and you were doing that to me,

02:25:08

I'd be fighting back the whole way, right? So the point is, is that he didn't need to repeat

02:25:14

Agabus' prophecy because it's clear by the details that he legitimately was bound in some way.

02:25:21

So in Acts 26, 21, Paul reiterates before Agrippa that the

02:25:26

Jews, quote, seized him in the temple and tried to kill him. Since Paul did not willingly go with the

02:25:33

Jewish mob, a point implied by the verses like seized and dragged, they would have had to restrain him in some way as they forcibly removed him from the temple, using whatever was immediately available to bind him.

02:25:47

Luke did not need to repeat that detail since Agabus had already told us that Paul would be bound with something like a belt, okay?

02:25:56

It can mean to arrest or to imprison, the Greek word deo, to bind, but it also can mean to tie up with ropes or to wrap with rags, okay?

02:26:06

Not only did the text not state that Agabus' prophecy was wrong, it gives us good reason to believe that his prediction that Paul would be bound by the

02:26:14

Jews was exactly right. Thomas Edgar, here's what he says, there was no logical reason to assume that because the

02:26:20

Romans bound Paul in verse 33, this somehow means that the Jews could not have bound him previously.

02:26:26

Certainly, Paul did not voluntarily go with the Jewish mob. He must have been bound in some sense since the

02:26:31

Greek word deo, to bind, can have several broader meanings, including the meaning to take captive, which the

02:26:38

Jews obviously did to Paul. It is illogical to state that the Jews did not bind as Paul, as Agabus said.

02:26:45

However, there is no reason to assume that the Jews did not actually bind Paul with some physical restraints, okay?

02:26:51

So, note here, I mean, just when you actually read the details, these guys are making a horrible argument that Agabus had given a false prophecy.

02:27:03

Continuation is then claimed, Paul's number three, Paul's later testimony confirms that the

02:27:09

Jews delivered him over to the Romans. I think this is one of the better arguments too. Continuation is claimed that Agabus also erred when he predicted that the

02:27:15

Jews would give Paul over to the Romans, but is such an error demanded by the text? In Acts 21, 32,

02:27:22

Paul is being beaten when the Roman cohort arrives. The Jews, upon seeing the soldiers, stop assaulting

02:27:27

Paul. The bloodied apostle is then arrested by the Romans. The implication of the text is that the

02:27:33

Jews backed away and willingly relinquished Paul into the hands of the Romans. Once the soldiers arrived, such accords perfectly with Agabus's prediction.

02:27:42

And then watch this. The accuracy of Agabus's statement is further strengthened by the testimony of Paul himself in Acts 28, verses 16 and 17.

02:27:51

And I want to point this out. This is, I think is brilliant on his part.

02:27:57

And a lot of the continuationists today, which by the way, they're misnomered, by the way. I'm sorry.

02:28:06

They're restorationists. We believe that the spirit was working somehow in some places, somewhere throughout history.

02:28:14

Yeah. Continuationists claim that that's the normal thing that God, the Holy Spirit does, right?

02:28:21

Why were the earliest Pentecostals restorationists, not continuationists?

02:28:26

That's what they claim for themselves. The miraculous gifts are being restored.

02:28:32

Their own God's generals, that's what they claim for themselves. That's right.

02:28:38

You read the early Pentecostals. They were all restorationists. I recently read a history of the

02:28:47

Pentecostal movement. I can't remember the guy's last name. I'll have to look it up.

02:28:54

But all of that being said, he does a wonderful job of doing the history of the centuries leading up to the early 20th century and Azusa Street.

02:29:05

And there were only these tiny little pockets of outbreaks of holy laughter or speaking in tongues and stuff like this.

02:29:15

And there were hundreds of years between these outbreaks. And almost always, almost always, even the tiny little outbreaks, they were connected with fringe, kooky, heretical groups.

02:29:30

And here's the funny part, fringe, kooky, heretical group that also had these same things were the

02:29:36

Mormons and Brigham Young. So let me read from Acts 28, which

02:29:47

I think this is one of the stronger arguments. The accuracy of Agabus' statement is further strengthened by the testimony of Paul himself in Acts 28, 16 through 17.

02:29:56

Let me read the text. It says, And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him.

02:30:04

After three days, he called together the local leaders of the Jews. And when they had gathered, he said to them,

02:30:10

Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the

02:30:21

Romans. Same word too. I know,

02:30:28

I know. It's the same word that Agabus used. It's the same word.

02:30:33

Yep. It's the same word that Agabus uses in chapter 21. So I would note that, you know,

02:30:42

D .A. Carson, Wayne Grudem, and the Remnant radio guys have some explaining to do when they're throwing prophecy under the

02:30:49

Agabus and claiming that Agabus got it wrong. This one verse blows up their whole narrative.

02:30:56

Because it just, it, Paul and say, They delivered me as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the

02:31:04

Romans. Yeah. And who was it that delivered him? It wasn't the Hare Krishnas. Nope. It was the

02:31:10

Jews. So I would note Agabus seems to have gotten it right.

02:31:17

You know, it's like all true prophets do. Yeah. So, and then, you know, there's more to the argument that he gives and talk, you know, he even goes on and quotes some of the early church fathers and stuff like that.

02:31:29

There's no mention, not even a single whiff within the church fathers or any

02:31:34

Christian writing up until the recent last few decades that anyone ever accused

02:31:41

Agabus of prophesying falsely. That's right. Okay. That's right. That's a modern invention.

02:31:47

Like the modern, you know, charismatic view of tongues. That's post 1901.

02:31:55

Yeah. Could have bought a Hyundai, should have bought a Kia. But all that being said, when tongues, when

02:32:02

Parham, you know, when tongues was restored to the church in Parham's church, what was that lady's name?

02:32:09

Osmond, right? Agnes Osmond. Agnes Osmond. She was speaking Chinese, right?

02:32:15

Fluent, Chris. No, and for three days, she lost the ability to speak in English and could only speak in Chinese.

02:32:23

And she could even write in Chinese. Have you seen, have you seen a picture of her writings in Chinese? I have.

02:32:29

In fact, what we'll do right now using the magic of editing, we'll insert right here. Here's, here's

02:32:35

Agnes Osmond's Chinese. And, and are you, I'm not impressed with her, her

02:32:40

Chinese abilities. Are you? I tell people, I show this, I said, you do not have to know

02:32:47

Chinese. You do not have to be Chinese to know that that is not Chinese.

02:32:52

That is chicken scratch. That's chicken. And not to go off on too much of a rabbit trail here,

02:32:59

Chris, but I'm sure you know this. The early Pentecostals, Charles Parham's group, you know, they sent a bunch of their missionaries, students as missionaries over on boats to Japan, China, and India, expecting that once they got there, that they would have conferred upon them the gift of languages, the gift of tongues.

02:33:21

And those early Pentecostals actually rightly understood that the genuine gift of tongues was to speak in a known human language, just not known to the one speaking it.

02:33:32

And so they thought that once they got off the boats in the Japan, China, and India, that they would miraculously be given this ability to confer with the natives there in their own tongue.

02:33:43

And well, it didn't take very long before they figured out, I can't understand these folks. They can't understand me.

02:33:50

And so they got back on the ships, sailed back across the ocean blue, and came back in complete failure.

02:33:55

And it was only then that these early Pentecostal charismatics had to rethink their view of tongues.

02:34:03

And that's when it became, oh, oh, wait a minute. Sorry, we got that wrong. So the gift of tongues is actually speaking in unintelligible, ecstatic gibberish.

02:34:13

And that's been the predominant view of the charismatic movement ever since. And they only changed it because of these early

02:34:20

Pentecostal missionaries that came back in complete and embarrassing failure. Yeah, which then leads, you know, kind of our concluding thoughts here.

02:34:30

Matthew 7, Jesus says, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

02:34:37

And I would note based upon 1 John 4, 1, anybody who comes to me speaking a word from God that isn't from God fits this qualification as a false prophet.

02:34:47

Listen, you'll recognize them by their fruits, are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

02:34:56

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

02:35:06

Is the charismatic Pentecostal tree a good tree or a bad tree, Justin? No, it's a bad tree,

02:35:13

Chris. It's a bad tree. And I've said before that I'm not one to say that all charismatics are lost.

02:35:19

I don't believe that. I believe there are genuine believers in that movement, but they are wrong.

02:35:27

I think the vast majority of the charismatic movement, the fringe of the charismatic movement,

02:35:33

Chris, is not Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen. That's the mainstream of the charismatic movement.

02:35:41

The fringe of the movement is men like Wayne Grudem and D .A. Carson and Sam Storms.

02:35:47

They're the fringe, the mainstream. But even the fringe, sadly, are extraordinarily reluctant to call out known false teachers.

02:35:58

In fact, the Remnant Radio guys, Michael Roundtree said that he believes that Benny Hinn has the gift of healing.

02:36:06

Yeah, that's nuts. No, he doesn't. He's not a believer. He's not even regenerate. So there is no charismatic distinctive.

02:36:16

There is no charismatic theological distinctive. That, in my view, in any shape, form, or fashion, furthers the spread of the gospel.

02:36:26

There's nothing distinctive about the charismatic movement that aids the fulfillment of the

02:36:32

Great Commission. It notoriously bears a lot of bad fruit.

02:36:40

Yeah. So from Parham, which the guy's just a mess,

02:36:46

Amy Semple McPherson. Clearly somebody who is morally corrupt and suspect.

02:36:54

To Benny Hinn, to Paul and Jan Crouch, to Kenneth Copeland.

02:37:00

The list goes on. To Todd Bentley. I mean, when I started Fighting for the Faith as a podcast, the

02:37:06

Lakeland Revival was up and running. And that whole thing was a train wreck.

02:37:11

I remember when Michael Brown, a few years ago, was part of a group that independently investigated

02:37:18

Todd Bentley regarding even more sexual misconduct, and said that all of it was true, and that he's disqualified from being in ministry.

02:37:27

But they said he always had a healing gift. He never had a healing gift.

02:37:34

Did Katherine Kuhlman have a healing gift? No, no. All of these people,

02:37:40

Kuhlman, John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, all of these people,

02:37:45

Chris, all of them, to a man, to a woman, were theological heretics.

02:37:51

They were false prophets, con artists, and most, if not all, but certainly most of them were sexually immoral.

02:38:02

I mean, all of their generals, God's generals, as they call them, they were all absolute train wrecks, theologically and morally.

02:38:10

And so how is it that this supposed new move of the

02:38:16

Holy Spirit in the last 120 years or so, this great move of the

02:38:21

Holy Spirit, how is it that the very generals of this movement are so unholy?

02:38:27

And that makes no sense. And there is an extraordinary and almost inexplicable reluctance for even the most careful of charismatics to call out the most obvious charlatans and false prophets for what they are.

02:38:45

Yeah, and all three of the Kansas City prophets now are in the sexually immoral category.

02:38:52

Yeah, I mean, I'm not even surprised anymore when

02:38:58

I hear stuff coming. And the Remnant Radio guys did a video some months ago, are charismatics more immoral or something like that?

02:39:08

You know, granted, as a Cessatius, we have moral failings in our camp, too, but the difference is, yeah, 100 percent.

02:39:15

But the difference is, in our camp, in my theological circles, and yours, too, when one of our preachers fails in that kind of a way, in a sexual way, when they disqualify themselves, they're actually disqualified.

02:39:29

And we actually do church discipline. They're not going to be behind the pulpit anymore.

02:39:35

They're going to have to work a secular job. Doesn't mean they can't be restored to fellowship within the local body, but they're never again stepping behind the pulpit, ever.

02:39:44

Todd Bentley's still preaching to this day. And it took up until a couple years ago for this report to come out to finally say, oh,

02:39:55

Todd Bentley, he has a gifting, but he's not qualified to be in ministry.

02:40:01

You and I, we could have said that 15 years ago. Okay, Todd Bentley is a drunk, he's an alcoholic, he's sexually immoral, and he claims that God told him to kick an elderly woman in the face with his biker boot.

02:40:15

No, he's not qualified to be in ministry. What else do you want to talk about? And it took him over a decade to finally come out and say that.

02:40:23

And Bill Johnson endorsed him even after his fall back in 2008, endorsed him again.

02:40:30

So did Rick Joyner. There's just a stunning, stunning lack of discernment and toleration for gross sin.

02:40:39

Yeah. And then the lionizing of Bob Jones, even after his sexual perverse abuse of using his office as the prophet to undress women, after that all became known, he still is lionized by people.

02:41:02

And people look at his prophecies as if they still have some kind of weight in it. Some of the ones that haven't happened yet are going to come true any day now, you know?

02:41:11

I know. The same thing with Paul. Same thing with Paul Cain. Cain, yep. Paul Cain was a homosexual.

02:41:18

Yeah. And he's still lionized. In fact, not just a few days ago, I think on Daystar, Joni Lamb, you know, the now widow of Marcus Lamb, the head of Daystar, they did a whole thing on Paul Cain.

02:41:31

They had Jeremiah Johnson. I think it was Jeremiah Johnson they had to come in and talk about Paul Cain. I mean, it's just, it's a train wreck.

02:41:38

I mean, and the list goes on. Lonnie Frisbee and others, you know. Yes. And the thing is, is that Christ here is describing this tree.

02:41:48

But note, he says that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. And the theology of this movement is legitimately undermining sound biblical doctrine.

02:42:00

And the remnant radio guys are participating in the obfuscation to make, to basically mainstream the blaspheming of God's name by attributing him words that he hasn't spoken and trying to come up with clever arguments that ignore sound biblical exegesis and clear text all to justify prophets that prophesy falsely.

02:42:24

Here's what Christ continues. He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

02:42:32

It's God's will that you do not blaspheme his name. See Exodus 20 verse seven. If you're confused on that, on that day, the day of judgment, many will say to me,

02:42:41

Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

02:42:47

This sounds like today's charismatic movement and the demon slayers and all those people, but watch

02:42:53

Christ's words. Then I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from you workers of lawlessness.

02:43:00

And I would note that, you know, that within the main line denominations, you know, so, you know, the

02:43:07

Presbyterian church and the Lutheran churches and the Anglican churches, they have succumbed many of many, many versions of have succumbed to postmodern liberalism.

02:43:17

And they're just cesspools of moral nonsense. You think of the ELCA and, and, and their rainbow, you know, and the rainbow coalition and, and their, their sparkle creed and, and their affirming of, you know, of every life adverent sexual lifestyle.

02:43:32

But the thing is, is that everybody can point to that and say, they are disobeying God's commands, but the charismatic movement, although they're politically conservative, they are teaching people to lawlessly blaspheme

02:43:46

God's name. And they're just as immoral as the ELCA by teaching people that they can give a false prophecy and still be a true prophet, rather than giving it saying, if you give a false prophecy, you have broken one of God's commandments and you need to repent and you're a false prophet.

02:44:02

They, they can't even bring themselves to do that. Back to what I had said earlier, when the remnant radio guys gave a critique of the 2023 prophecies put out by charisma magazine, not a single prophecy.

02:44:14

Did they say, oh, that one really is from the Lord. Every single one of them, they said, this was unhelpful.

02:44:20

This is really not help. This is not clear. This is not really sounding like this is really from God.

02:44:26

But at no point did they even say that even one of them was a false prophet, including

02:44:32

Chuck Pierce. Right. Who prophesies a bunch of nonsense who would make

02:44:38

Kamala Harris look erudite. Yeah. I mean, you're right, Chris, you're, you're right.

02:44:44

At what point do you call a spade a spade? The Bible is not unclear as to how to tell false prophets, how to discern them.

02:44:53

It's very clear. It's crystal clear. And that, unfortunately, I think that's the problem for them. It is so clear, but it doesn't fit their theology.

02:45:01

And if they were to stick to it, and I say they in the broad charismatic sense, then it would, it would completely discredit their entire movement.

02:45:09

Yeah. And it does. Yeah, and it does. They need to soberly go back through these passages of Christ, because I'll be blunt, is that when

02:45:18

I see Jesus's description, you know, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, do many mighty works in your name?

02:45:26

That's today's charismatic NAR churches. I know. That's not describing anybody in the

02:45:32

AALC. No, it's not describing cessationists. Now, granted, there will be cessationists in hell, people who profess to know

02:45:40

Christ but that specifically, prophesying in your name, casting out demons, performing mighty works, signs and wonders.

02:45:49

He ain't talking about cessationists there. That sounds a whole lot like what we see today in the charismatic movement.

02:45:55

I don't know what they do with that. It would absolutely, if I had any fear of God as a charismatic, that text would absolutely terrify me.

02:46:05

Yep. Yeah, this is describing Pagani and Signorelli and Isaiah Saldivar and a whole host of others,

02:46:12

Greg Locke and all these people. We will stand by our obfuscation and our re -reading of these texts to allow for fallible prophets.

02:46:25

Dude, there's no such thing. Chris, I can honestly tell you, in all my search and all my study of this movement,

02:46:37

I have never seen a single compelling prophecy that actually came true in an undeniable, like this is the real

02:46:47

McCoy prophecy. There's no way to explain this other than this guy's a real prophet.

02:46:54

Never. I know the ones that do come true are so general and nebulous that,

02:47:01

I mean, but there's no specific, nothing specific. Yep.

02:47:07

I've been covering this movement for almost two decades. I was in this movement. I was in the latter rain, and I can legitimately say the same thing.

02:47:14

As somebody who's been an outside critic of this stuff and has documented in my daily podcasts and weekly video blogs what this movement has been doing, in the moment,

02:47:27

I can legitimately say I've never seen a single true prophet among them, not one.

02:47:33

Instead, I have seen the same wingnut, wackerdoodle false prophecies of nebulous nothingness and cosmic word salad that it's blasphemous to attribute those words to God.

02:47:46

That's the only thing I've ever seen, and I've never seen it. Nope.

02:47:51

Nor have I. I've never seen a true prophet, but you and I, we've seen thousands of examples of false prophecies given.

02:47:59

I think in the cessationist film, Phil Johnson mentioned a magic eight ball, and I think he kind of lifted that from me because I made that statement back at the

02:48:11

Truth Matters conference a couple of years ago, but I even have one here because it's kind of a prop.

02:48:19

I tell people there is more prophetic power in a magic eight ball. I would sooner trust a prophecy from this thing than I would from any, any, and I do mean any, so -called prophet today.

02:48:37

Justin, thank you for your time. We went a little long, and I know that this episode of Fighting for the

02:48:43

Faith is three plus hours. Who cares? It's my Christmas gift to the internet because I'm going to take the week after Christmas off, and I'm turning off the heresy for a week so that I can clean out my brain.

02:49:01

I'm deeply concerned for the Remnant Radio guys, deeply concerned for the path that they're on, and they keep trying to make this about the argument between what they call continuationism and cessationism.

02:49:15

That's ultimately not what this is about, because you don't have to be a cessationist to know that what these people, what the movement is producing is bad fruit, and that it doesn't accord with God's word, and as a result of it, what

02:49:31

I fear for them is that they're going to take the role of Michael Brown. Michael Brown, we call him the apostle of obfuscation because he is the guy for the few decades who has been running cover for the worst of the worst false prophets.

02:49:46

He can't even bring himself to say that Ken Copeland is a heretical prosperity preacher, can't even bring himself to say it.

02:49:54

As a result of it, he's always running into the fray to discredit the hypercritics, which is apparently that's what

02:50:02

I am, and basically say, no, no, no, no, this doesn't apply to them or whatever.

02:50:07

But the reality is that the standard of Scripture does apply, and we need to be careful, and Scripture commands us to not listen to every voice, but to test the voices to see where they are from God.

02:50:20

And I can legitimately say I'm not hearing the voice of God in the charismatic movement. The only time I ever hear it is when they inadvertently read a passage of Scripture out, and that's where the voice of God begins and ends, and that's it.

02:50:33

That's right. That's right. And Chris, if I may, just a couple real quick things.

02:50:38

In 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, Paul says, Pray without ceasing in everything. Give thanks, for this is a will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

02:50:46

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Of course, this was written in a time when all those gifts were still operative.

02:50:53

Do not despise prophecies, but examine all things. Hold fast to that which is good.

02:50:59

Abstain from every form of evil. Now, in context, he's talking about prophecy.

02:51:05

So he actually calls false prophecies or taking

02:51:10

God's name in vain, putting words in God's mouth that He did not say evil.

02:51:17

This is evil. This is not neutral. This is not oopsie.

02:51:22

Yeah, we got that. This is evil. False prophecies are evil. They do a lot of harm to people.

02:51:28

They bring a lot of reproach upon the name of Christ, untold reproach. I echo your sentiments.

02:51:35

I would love to see the Remnant Radio guys and all of them write the ship.

02:51:43

I want the best for them. But it's not going to be found in this theological system.

02:51:50

No, it's not, because this theological system, the whole tree is just rotten. The whole tree.

02:51:55

From the moment that it showed up, it was rotten. And it's produced nothing but rotten fruit. No, it's borne no good fruit.

02:52:02

I mean, no charismatic distinctive has borne good fruit, only bad. Indeed.

02:52:08

Well, my friend, thank you for coming on Fighting for the Faith for my extended rebuttal.

02:52:14

And I pray that you have a blessed Christmas. I understand that you are in the process of moving your studio to a different space altogether.

02:52:24

So big days ahead for you, huh? Indeed, indeed. Lord willing. Thank you,

02:52:29

Chris. Merry Christmas to you as well. All right. Peace, brother. All right. You as well. Thank you. So hopefully you found that interview with Justin Peters to be helpful.

02:52:39

Helpful and insightful, because again, the Remnant Radio guys are teaching falsely.

02:52:46

And that people can prophesy falsely and not be false prophets. That is absolutely contrary to what the

02:52:53

Bible teaches and what the biblical standard is. And what these guys have failed to do is legitimately determine the source of these prophecies that even they test.

02:53:05

And they refuse when finding that the source isn't God to actually call the person out as a false prophet, which is exactly what they are.

02:53:13

And the reason why they don't do it is because they themselves are false prophets. Now, this leads then to the next part of this.

02:53:19

And we're going to answer the question, am I hypocritical for being part of the

02:53:24

American Association of Lutheran Churches? And let me give you a little bit of the background of this.

02:53:44

And so the background of this is quite insightful, if you were to think about it. And that is that there was a controversy back a while ago.

02:53:53

I mentioned it with Phil Johnson, and it had to do with the prophetic standard statement that was put out initially by Dr.

02:54:01

Michael Brown and the people working with him. And so back a couple of years ago is when we addressed this.

02:54:08

But let me pull up the language that was initially published. They've modified it.

02:54:15

Again, see chapter one to see the modifications. But when I made the statement against the Remnant Radio guys and Michael Roundtree, specifically, who signed on to this,

02:54:24

I said that he was an idolater and that he was not worshiping the God of the Bible. I stand by it.

02:54:30

And here's the reason why. Because listen to the statement. We reject, this is from the prophetic standard statement, we reject the notion, notion that a contemporary prophetic word is on the same level of inspiration or authority as Scripture or that God always speaks inerrantly through prophets today, since the

02:54:48

Bible says we only know in part and prophesy in part. It is the written word alone that can lay claim to being the word of God.

02:54:56

Prophecies at best are a word from the Lord to be tested by the word of God. And so here was my issue.

02:55:04

The document, as it was originally put out, said that they reject the notion that God always speaks inerrantly.

02:55:11

If God doesn't speak inerrantly, then, well, that's a different God altogether.

02:55:17

If you sign the statement, you're believing in a God who speaks errantly.

02:55:22

And I stand by what I said, Roundtree signed on to this. And as a result of it, I would say that that's a statement of faith.

02:55:30

And therefore, he signed on to this idea that he believed that God speaks errantly.

02:55:35

Now, this document was later modified for clarification. And so if Michael Roundtree would like to modify what he says and admit that he doesn't believe that God can speak errantly, well, then

02:55:50

I will rescind my claim that he worships a different God. But until then, I will stand by that.

02:55:56

But all that being said, what ended up happening in their video where they responded to me and Phil Johnson talking about this document, they responded to it.

02:56:09

They went and did some digging and found something that they thought was one of those gotcha kind of moments.

02:56:16

Because on the AALC's website, and it's a statement regarding the Holy Spirit, it says something that they read their theology into rather than sought to understand properly.

02:56:28

And I'll explain that in a second. But let's take a look at what in their second response video to me, what they had to say, at least

02:56:37

Joshua Lewis had to say about me. And then we'll address this straight up. I wish Chris was consistent.

02:56:43

I wish he was consistent and he would start going after all of the Lutherans in the AALC. I wish he would go after his own denomination who states publicly on their website, on their statement of faith and their beliefs that God speaks today, that they believe in the gift of prophecy, his denomination, the one that he belongs to, the one that says that God still speaks today.

02:57:04

But the only infallible revelation is the scriptures. So his own denomination claims the one that he signed up with.

02:57:12

He could have joined the Missouri Synod. He could have joined another denomination. He could have joined another

02:57:18

Lutheran branch. But no, he chooses to join with a group of continuationists, a group of people who believe that prophecy is still happening today and that prophecy is not infallible.

02:57:29

He disagrees with his own denomination. And why is it that he wants to do response videos to, you know, the remnant radio guys?

02:57:37

Why doesn't he start in his own house? Right, right. Why don't I start in my own house? Now, let's do a little bit of research, shall we?

02:57:44

T -A -A -L -C .org is the website for the

02:57:50

American Association of Lutheran Churches. And if you go into their about section, you have their statement of faith and they have a statement as it relates to the

02:58:00

Holy Spirit. Let me show you what they think is this gotcha moment here.

02:58:07

And that is paragraph two. And here's what it says. We affirm that the Scriptures are the only inerrant, infallible

02:58:13

Word of God and the only rule and norm by which teachers and teachings are judged. All Scripture is

02:58:19

God breathed. It therefore stands as judge of all contemporary movements and theologies.

02:58:25

God's Word judges experiences and not vice versa because the Bible encourages to understand spiritual gifts and to desire them.

02:58:33

We reject any kind of dispensationalism, which says that the gifts of the Spirit are not for today. While we have been seen abuse of the gifts, we would correct it not with rejection, but by proper reception and stewardship.

02:58:46

We heed the balanced admonition of St. Paul, who writes, do not quench the Spirit, do not despise the prophetic utterances, but examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good.

02:58:56

The only prophecy that can claim inerrancy is the prophecy of Scripture itself. The gifts of prophecy is rightly received today, neither supersedes nor contradicts the

02:59:04

Word of God. It uplifts it. And so what the Remnant Radio guys have done is they have engaged in eisegesis yet again.

02:59:13

They see this statement as synonymous with the statement that was initially put out by the, you know, the

02:59:23

Prophetic Standards website, and they see the two as being absolutely synonymous and the same.

02:59:29

And therefore, the AALC believes in fallible prophets or a

02:59:34

God who speaks errantly and things like this. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this shows that they are quick to look for evidence that they think supports them, but they don't seek to understand it.

02:59:50

So what I did to put this to rest is I sent an email to Dr.

02:59:56

Kerry Larson. Important to note here is that even the Missouri Synod is confessionally bound by the

03:00:02

Book of Concord to not be hard cessationists. In fact, I describe confessional

03:00:07

Lutheranism as soft cessationists because we kind of look at prophecy differently than the charismatic movement, and Dr.

03:00:17

Larson will explain that. So if you were to push come to shove, you know, someone were asking, are you a continuationist?

03:00:23

Are you a cessationist? I would say, well, I'm confessionally bound to be a continuationist.

03:00:30

I'm not a cessationist. Not in the hard sense. Now, I do believe the sign gifts have ended, but that's a whole other discussion.

03:00:37

So let's talk about this then. So I sent on December 4th an email to Dr. Kerry Larson, who is the presiding pastor of the

03:00:45

American Association of Lutheran Churches. I also sent him a copy of this statement, and I sent him a video short of Joshua Lewis claiming that I'm a hypocrite, which

03:00:57

I'm not, but you'll see this as this unfolds, okay? So here's what I said to Dr. Larson.

03:01:03

I said, Dr. Larson, in the ALC's online doctrinal statement regarding the Holy Spirit, Thesis 2 states, by the way,

03:01:10

I just read it out, so I'm not going to reread it, okay? I'll just focus on this last part. The only prophecy that can claim inerrancy is the prophecy of Scripture itself, 2

03:01:20

Peter 1, 20 through 21. The gift of prophecy as rightly received today, neither supersedes nor contradicts the word of God, it uplifts it.

03:01:27

That's from the ALC website. And so here's what I've said. There are a few people who've interpreted the last sentence to mean that the

03:01:35

ALC permits fallible prophets among our ranks. If a pastor in the ALC were to set up a prophetic ministry and regularly gave predictive prophecies that did not come true, would the

03:01:47

ALC permit this or would the ALC bring him up on charges based upon Deuteronomy 18?

03:01:54

Pastor Chris Roseville, Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, Oslo, Minnesota, don't you know? All right.

03:01:59

So that was the email I sent and Dr. Larson took some time and he answered my question.

03:02:07

And the Remnant Radio guys are not going to like his answer. That's all

03:02:12

I got to say. Spoiler alert. But if I seem a little happy, these guys don't do their homework.

03:02:20

They are not good biblical scholars. They're not even good contemporary scholars. So let's see here.

03:02:28

Dated December 7th, 2023. Pastor Roseborough, thank you for the opportunity to address an interesting misunderstanding of the

03:02:37

American Association of Lutheran Churches. The short answer to your question, quote, if a pastor in the

03:02:43

ALC were to set up a prophetic ministry and regularly gave predictive prophecies that did not come true, would the

03:02:48

ALC permit this or would the ALC bring him up on charges based on Deuteronomy 18?

03:02:55

It is, this is the short answer, is that the pastor would be reprimanded and if not repentant, the pastor would be expelled from our ministerium immediately.

03:03:05

Out of the box, Lutheranism is not Christianity. Plus or minus certain ideas of the

03:03:11

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther. Lutheranism is not adding to or subtracting from the teachings or doctrines of the

03:03:17

Holy Scripture. Lutheranism is simply consistent Christianity, neither more or less.

03:03:23

Therefore, the Lutheran Church is not a new growth, but a restoration of the original

03:03:29

Christian Church founded by Christ Jesus, what Luther called the Apostolic Evangelical Church.

03:03:36

This is based upon two particular doctrines that we subscribe to without exception.

03:03:41

The first is that the Word of God is inerrant, infallible, and inspired. The ALC believes and confesses that the

03:03:49

Bible as a whole and in all of its parts is the inspired Word of God.

03:03:54

In theological terminology, the ALC believes in the plenary inspiration or full inspiration of Scripture.

03:04:01

This is based on the Bible's clear testimony regarding itself. Passages are listed here.

03:04:07

Because the Bible is fully inspired, the ALC believes and confesses that the

03:04:13

Bible is inerrant with respect to its nature and infallible as respecting to its authority.

03:04:21

Second is the doctrine that this Word of God, which is inerrant, infallible, and inspired, in which

03:04:28

God reveals his law and his gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ, is the norma or the norm of norms for Christian doctrine.

03:04:37

See, 1 Timothy 3 .16 simply stated, everything is interpreted through the

03:04:42

Word of God. Everything within Lutheranism must pass through these two tenets with no exceptions.

03:04:49

That which disagrees with Holy Scripture is immediately rejected, and that which adds to the

03:04:55

Holy Scripture is immediately under suspicion, tested by the Word, by the

03:05:00

Holy Scriptures, and would be considered in rebellion to God and his Holy Word if the addition is a novel idea to God's Word.

03:05:09

And he continues, therefore, Lutheranism walks the narrow way.

03:05:15

We reject the idea that the Holy Spirit has ceased to work since the apostolic age. We are not cestationists, in that we are emphatically clear regarding the work of the

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Holy Spirit. And here's where the remnant radio guys fail to make proper distinctions.

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Confessional Lutherans, whether in Missouri or in the ALC or anywhere around the world, they are not hard cessationists, okay?

03:05:40

So we're not cessationists, but this has to be nuanced, in that we are emphatically clear regarding the work of the

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Holy Spirit. We believe the Holy Spirit is active. He creates a saving faith through Word and sacrament, baptism.

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He calls by the gospel. He enlightens Christians with his gifts and sanctifies and keeps the

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Christian in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole

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Christian church on earth, keeping it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. We also subscribe to the belief that the

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Holy Spirit daily and richly forgives the sins of all believers. And on the last day, he will raise all the dead and give eternal life to all believers in Christ.

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That's from Luther's small catechism. Simply put, we believe that the Holy Spirit indwells every

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Christian by the waters of regeneration and is active in every Christian's life.

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However, we reject the idea that the Holy Spirit works outside of God's Word.

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We soundly reject the belief that the Holy Spirit is doing something new outside of Scripture in any era.

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With that said, God has and certainly can provide direct revelation to an individual believer.

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However, he has bound himself to his inerrant and infallible Word so that we will find him there.

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Throughout the New Testament, God has made it emphatically clear that his Word alone is sufficient.

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The Apostle Paul was quick to admonish those who would add anything to God's Word and considered them accursed.

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The teachings of the American Association of Lutheran Churches, which are clearly articulated in the

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Lutheran Confessions, take the matter rather seriously that no one has the authority to add or subtract to God's inerrant and infallible

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Word and that God's Word is eternal and continues to be sufficient to teach, admonish, and keep people in the true faith.

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Therefore, we firmly believe there is no reason to have additional prophecies other than the direct revelation from God through his

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Word. This is the presiding pastor of the

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AALC, right? So, with that being said, faithful Lutheran pastors speak prophetically.

03:08:02

And here's where this is the nuance they miss, is that when I go into the pulpit at Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, I speak prophetically.

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My sermons are prophetic, not because I'm prophetic, but because I'm preaching the prophetic

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Word of God. So, here's where the Remnant Radio guys, they just don't know these distinctives.

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So, that being said, faithful Lutheran pastors, they speak prophetically all the time. Nevertheless, their prophetic utterances are exclusively based on and bound to the

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Holy Scriptures. Therefore, when a pastor preaches that Christ will come again to judge both the living and the dead, this prophetic

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Word is based solely on the Holy Scriptures. When a pastor stands in a pulpit at a funeral service and prophetically declares that the deceased beloved will bodily rise again and dwell eternally in the kingdom of God forever, this prophecy, and that's what it is, is solely based upon that which is already proclaimed in the

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Holy Scriptures. When a pastor stands before a repentant body of Christians who have confessed their sins publicly and declares that their sins are forgiven, this prophetic

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Word is grounded solely upon that which Jesus proclaimed as found in the

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Gospels. Are you starting to see the nuance here, right? However, and here's where it really goes bad for the

03:09:30

Remnant Radio guys. However, if the pastor supposedly spoke prophetically about anything not found in the

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Holy Scriptures, we would be greatly concerned. This pastor has no authority to speak in such a way by his divine orders and the

03:09:45

Holy Word of God. Yeah, all Lutheran pastors are bound by their ordination vows to only preach the

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Word. Not only that, they're bound by the Word of God to do so as well.

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In my office as presiding pastor, should such an activity be brought to my attention,

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I would be required to immediately reach out to this pastor and lovingly reprimand him to cease this false teaching and call for his repentance.

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I'm reminded of an account from the latter years of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther.

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There was a pastor named Michael Stiefel, who became fascinated with mathematics and applied various cryptic mathematical processes to various Bible passages.

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From such formulations, Stiefel thought that he could predict the future, especially the date

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Christ Jesus would return. And he published his calculations. Luther immediately condemned his friend's prophetic calculation as fanaticism.

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Despite Luther's reprimand, Stiefel held fast to his prophecy until the predicted date and time for Christ's return had transpired.

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Stiefel was brought to Wittenberg before theological inquiry and removed as a pastor.

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When we say, and now he's quoting from the AALC website, the only prophecy that can claim inerrancy is the prophecy of scripture itself, 2

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Peter 1, 20 and 21, the gift of prophecy as rightly received today neither supersedes nor contradicts the

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Word of God, it uplifts it. We believe that God's Word is prophetic, and our pastors, as they preach the full counsel of God, are to use that prophetic message from scripture to offer hope and relief to anxious consciences through Christ alone.

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However, nowhere within the scriptures and the confessions of the Lutheran church do we have any tolerance for one who would boast to be a prophet and speak errantly.

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Should such a practice be permitted, it would not relieve anxious consciences and even cause believers to doubt the certainty of their redemption through Christ Jesus and their possession of the promise of eternal life.

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The bottom line is that if a pastor believes that he has been given a direct revelation from God to speak a prophetic message, we will immediately hold him suspect and test this message by Holy Scripture.

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If his message violated Holy Scripture, he is to be rebuked, and if he is unrepentant, we would remove him from our roster without hesitation.

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I pray this is helpful. I am your servant in Christ Jesus, Rev. Dr. Kerry G.

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Larson, Presiding Pastor of the American Association of Lutheran Churches. So am

03:12:35

I a hypocrite? Should I be going after all the false prophets of the ALC? There aren't any.

03:12:44

The Revenant Radio guys, I kid you not, their scholarship is abysmal, and they engage in all kinds of Bible -twisting techniques, from eisegesis to quoting half -quotes, and the whole point of this super long episode of Fighting for the

03:13:05

Faith is to demonstrate that their responses and their defending and their doubling down on their twisting of Scripture, their errant prophecies, and all this nonsense.

03:13:17

Let me put it this way. If Joshua Lewis were to ask to be considered to be a pastor in the

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American Association of Lutheran Churches, he wouldn't pass. He wouldn't make it, because by his own admission, he's given false prophecies.

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He wouldn't be welcomed. He would be reprimanded and called into account. If he were a pastor in the

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ALC, who then was offering these false prophecies that he's given, he would be reprimanded and removed.

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So, again, these guys are cherry -picking quotes to try to make it look like, oh, the

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ALC, they're in complete agreement with our prophetic standard statement that says that God doesn't always speak errantly.

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No, the ALC is not, and it's slanderous to say so. And I have no less of an authority than the presiding pastor of the

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ALC. So, am I hypocritical? No.

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Completely consistent. All right. We are up on our last chapter, and this is the bonus chapter of this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith. And this is one designed specifically for the

03:14:31

Remnant Radio guys and Joshua Lewis, who has a pretty darn good impersonation of Strong Bad.

03:14:37

Here we go. Remnant Radio Girl Squad!

03:14:45

False Prophet! Wackadoodle! Sidekick! The Obfuscator! Hey, gals, are you ready to propose that?

03:14:52

So good! Wait! I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

03:14:58

Oh, doggobs. I want to be just like you when I grow up. I can neither confirm nor deny that I'm grown up.

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Or that I'm this supposed doggobs. Anyway, we're in a bit of a jam here, gullies.

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There have been some hardcore meanie butts who are calling us names on the internets. Oh no! And unless we can think of a really good prophecy, they're never gonna stop.

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Like what? Like something about your season having a Saturday followed by a well -transfer harvest.

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Maybe even a decimation of smog. No, I mean the names they're calling us. Well... Hypocritics!

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Hypocritics! They're all hypocritics! All right, break it up.

03:15:40

Hey, this is our show. Not anymore. You and your little band of obfuscating wackadoodle misfits have really cheesed me off with your false prophecy shtick.

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And now you're gonna have to hear about it. What if we don't want to listen? I can always call up the editor and have him stick

03:15:56

Care Bear Jesus on you. Okay, fine, we'll listen. Good. Okay, children, today we're gonna learn about God's strict criteria for prophecy.

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But I don't wanna. I'm sorry, who are you again? Anyway, please open your

03:16:15

Bibles to Deuteronomy 18 verse 20. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.

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And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the

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Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken.

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The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. But don't you understand?

03:16:50

Humans are fallible and can totally get God's message wrong. Wrong? As clearly shown in the book of Numbers chapters 22 through 24,

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God uses the known Shastra Balaam to be his mouthpiece and has zero problems getting his message across to King Balak.

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I see zero room for your argument given the clear text of scripture. But the words we're getting are clearly from God.

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Are they though? For realsies? Well, the people who prophesy are at least men of God.

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That is rich. Did any of you even apply the minimum level of scrutiny to those prophecies or the men who uttered them?

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I don't proclaim to know any of the prophecies you claim are false, but I know based on the word of a friend's friend's second cousin's housekeeper's cat that those are good men.

03:17:38

I'm giving you an F minus minus, Doc Ops. Anyway, what I'm talking about is the clear text of 1

03:17:45

John chapter 4 verse 1 that says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

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What? You're gonna force me to spell this one out, aren't you? All right. In the simplest possible terms, believing a voice in your head claiming to be from the

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Lord without any kind of vetting process is like getting injected with an experimental jab at 3 a .m.

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in the parking lot of an inner city Taco Bell. I'll have two number nines. But that's not...

03:18:17

Better yet, that's like getting a paternity test without providing any of the potential father's DNA. There's just no way to know for certain.

03:18:25

Okay, fine. We don't have messages just pop into our heads. We get called on this phone.

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Give me that. Hello? Are you seriously trying to feed me forbidden pudding?

03:18:41

This call is coming from a 666 area code. You're all getting F minus minuses. Class is dismissed.

03:18:55

That's weird. Hello? How do I end this stupid cartoon bit and segue into the next chapter?

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Um, maybe we could, I don't know, try breaking the fourth wall? Nobody told me we had a fourth wall.

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I'm not entirely certain we do. So hopefully you found this super long episode of fighting for the faith to be helpful, to be insightful, to be biblical, and to clear up a lot of the misinformation put out by the

03:19:24

Remnant Radio guys. And I pray for their repentance. I pray that they would abandon this endeavor of theirs to prove that prophets can speak fallibly and still be true prophets.

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They're not. What they're doing is they're teaching lawlessness. They are teaching people to break one of the

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Ten Commandments. One of the Ten Commandments is you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

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And by their false teaching and teaching that people can speak fallibly for God, they are teaching people to lawlessly break one of the

03:19:57

Ten Commandments, specifically that one. As a result of it, they need to repent, and they need to embrace the true standard of God, which would require them all to confess that they are indeed already false prophets.

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That's exactly what the Remnant Radio guys are. So hopefully you found this helpful. If so, all the information on how you can share the video is down below.

03:20:20

And I pray that you have a blessed Merry Christmas. And may God give you blessing this holiday season as you consider the vicarious atonement of Christ who was sent to us at this time as a tiny little baby as we celebrate his birth in the incarnation of our

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Lord. So may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.