Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Understanding Spiritual Gifts, Pt. 4 (10/24/202)

All right, so, last time, right at the end, we

talked about how, actually, you got the word of God

talking about the topic that we're on here, which is which of the sign gifts

still operate today and which ones have ceased in the church, all right?

And if a church doesn't understand that, there'll be division over it.

There just always has, through all the history of the church, there'll be division over that sort of thing.

So, what do you go to to find the right answers?

Two things, you go to scripture, which is the highest authority that we have, that's God speaking to us, and then you

go and you look at 2 ,000 years of church history and see what our brothers and sisters have thought and said about the

passages of scripture that deal with it and what they've observed in the church through those years.

A lot of people skip that step because they say, we just go by the Bible, but we're gonna talk about that a little bit today, too.

But if you do look at church history, which is the scripture comes first, then you look at church history.

If you look at the church history, the huge majority of conservative, godly Bible scholars, missionaries, evangelists,

pastors from every century, including the 20th century, agree that the sign gifts ceased to be

operative early in the life of the church.

So, that's a fact if you study church history.

If anybody's gone, if you go to seminary, you study church history.

If you don't go to seminary like me and you're self -taught, nobody's self -taught, but I had Dr. Freeman,

yes, she got him without the braids.

If you're wondering, guys, we had an intrusion of a fly flying around here, he's gone now, hallelujah.

Thank you, sister.

So, you know, you look at church history, if you're self

-taught, you try to read a lot.

And so, I've read quite a few church history books written from different denominations

and even some of the Catholic material.

And this is a fact that the huge majority think that the certain gifts that we've already talked

about in the previous messages, if you didn't hear them, you can go back and look at the archives on the website and listen to those.

And we will show you in the previous messages which ones Paul said would cease and

when he said they would cease.

And now what we're looking at is a little bit of history to see if church history says they ceased or not.

That'll be interesting.

We're gonna look at more scripture on it too, we're not done with the scripture part either.

So there's the two parts, the word of God and church history, in other words, what our brothers and sisters have

said about it.

He's up here now, Ashton, would you come with your, sit right here with your flyswatter and

hit me right in the head, man.

Oh, here he is, here, wait, wait, wait, boy, bring me the flyswatter, he's right there on the stool.

We might need, I used to keep a can of Raid right back there by my equipment so that I

could spray bugs when they interfere with the thing.

We need to get another bottle, can of Raid.

I'll just keep it right here, because he's right here.

I mean, I know what he'll do, he'll fly around me so that you can't listen to what I'm saying.

Yeah, bring me the bat,

thank you.

I'd rather have you sit here with it, though, than me do it.

You don't wanna, make sure you get this one recorded, this will

be historic.

I'm not gonna be able to use it, but I might, if he lands on that stool again, I'll get him.

So this is not gonna distract me in the least, I hope it doesn't distract you.

All right, now last time we mentioned all of those books of the New Testament, right

down at the bottom, see them, boom, boom, boom.

Most of the New Testament, which these are the books that were written after 60 AD,

none of them talk about tongue speaking, faith healing, or any of the apostolic gifts,

unless they refer to it as having happened in the past.

So, and there's only one mention of that.

So they don't mention it.

Now, don't you think that if they were prominent gifts in the early church, that those books of the Bible,

such as Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, would talk about it, but none of them do.

So you have 1 Corinthians, written in AD 59, you got 1 Thessalonians, one of the earliest books,

other than the Gospels, I suppose, written AD 54, they mention it.

And the book of Acts mentions languages, people speaking languages without having studied them in college.

It does not mention gibberish, which is spoken in a lot of the charismatic Pentecostal churches.

And so it's interesting to me that the scriptures beyond 60 AD in the early church,

it seems to have already waned.

I'm not saying it was totally gone, but it was not an important thing that they talked about after 60 AD.

Why would you suppose that might be if you just want to use some, there he goes, see, he don't like

that.

He's got a little demon, a tiny little demon in that fly.

So anyway, why do you suppose that God would begin to remove

these sorts of sign gifts?

Well, first of all, their purpose was done because their purpose was to

authenticate.

Dave, do not let people laugh at me with that thing flying around me.

If you see him, you come up here and get him.

You got that?

That's a good son.

I don't care what you have to do to kill the fly.

I'm brave.

I can handle it.

Anyway, the purpose was to authenticate the messengers.

And that was finished very early on.

And certainly by the time the apostles had all passed away, another generation goes by.

You have men like Polycarp, who was one of the great pastors of the time, who knew John and

learned from John and so forth.

And then the next generation, all of a sudden there was no longer a need to authenticate the message because the

messengers were gone.

They'd already given the message.

And now we have the word of God.

We have the New Testament too.

And not too long after that, you had all of the books of the New Testament finished.

They had been penned by the humans that the Holy Spirit used and they were in the world.

And not too long after that, they were in one book.

And by that time, we know that these sign gifts had ceased and thank you,

bless you, missed him.

That's all right.

You scared him.

He knows we don't like him.

I think there may be more than one or two in here is what I'm thinking.

Were those kids having that big party in this church with the doors open, brother Paul, or what?

I think they were.

Because kids have flies.

You know that, right?

I mean, they draw flies.

Anyway, whatever.

You're gonna be laughing because it's me that draws the flies.

I think it's my shampoo that they like it a whole lot.

Or my lack thereof, who knows?

Anyway, so, oh, there's another one.

It's gonna be an interesting service today.

We're swatting demons today.

It's very appropriate.

Okay, so the problem is that if we have indication from scripture where

Paul says here that these gifts will pass away and we have indication from church

history that they did, and we see in Hebrews chapter one, one through three, that God says he will not

operate like he did in the Old Testament through prophets, visions, dreams, things like that, but he'll do it in a different way

in the future, which would be through his son, Jesus, which he is the word.

And we now have the written word with Jesus.

When he left, he said, I will tell you things you weren't ready to hear when I was there.

The Holy Spirit will tell you the rest of it.

And now we have it.

And that's what the perfect is.

It's the only perfect thing.

It's in the neuter in the Greek.

So it's not a person.

It's not Jesus coming back.

It's not the second coming.

It would make no sense at all for the scripture to say it's going to leave

if it didn't leave till the church age was over, because this is written to the church.

It'd make no sense at all.

It's just logic.

So it has to be a message that at some point prior to the second coming, these particular gifts go away.

Now, if the Holy Spirit says they go away and then people say the Holy Spirit is causing these in our church,

then you have the Holy Spirit lying.

And I don't believe he'll do that.

You have the Holy Spirit contradicting himself.

And I don't believe he'll do that.

If he says, I won't do that until the last three and a half years of the tribulation, which is exactly what the Holy

Spirit says.

If you read what the scripture says about these gifts, they don't come back until the last three and a half

years of the tribulation period.

They can't come back if they didn't leave.

You've heard all the logic.

It's sound logic.

And so they have to be created by other spirits.

Now that's a problem in the church.

If it's not the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul said, there are other Jesus's, other spirits in other gospels.

If it's other spirits mimicking the Holy Spirit, and I am not saying that those gifts aren't real

and don't happen, I'm saying it's not God causing them.

Now, it's not just me saying it, it's logic that I use based on what the scripture says.

And God said, come, let us reason together.

We have to use our minds.

If we don't, we end up following false spirits.

If we don't test and try the spirits, we end up being deceived by demons who are

mimicking the Holy Spirit.

If you don't think that happens, we'll look in scripture in a moment and see the highest authority we have.

And we will see if it has already happened.

But God says in 1 Corinthians 13, eight through 10, that tongue speaking

and prophesying and words of knowledge would cease.

We call these sign gifts.

The Bible doesn't call them that.

That's what theologians call them.

And I happen to agree with those theologians.

I think it's a great term.

Sign gifts because they were there to authenticate the speakers of the New Testament to the

Jews who weren't gonna believe it because the Jew requires a sign.

And so it was predominantly for the sake of the Jewish people in the first century that these signs were even

given.

And it's happened a few times through Bible history, even in the Old Testament.

During the era of Moses, it happened.

During the era of the prophets, it happened to authenticate the prophets.

And then when Jesus came, signs happened all around that first advent.

And guess what?

They're going to happen again after his second advent.

And that's why they turn back on at the end, the second three and a half years of the tribulation because he's coming again.

And that has to be authenticated, believe it or not.

You would think when they see him come as lightning from the East to the West, that would authenticate itself.

But you gotta remember, you've had an antichrist on the earth for three and a half years doing signs and miracles through

the power of Satan.

Now, if he can do signs and miracles, then don't you think people in churches can do signs and miracles through the

power of Satan?

Now, how would I think it's Satan?

Well, because I don't think the Holy Spirit would lie and say, I'm going to stop doing these things

and then do them.

So to me, that's a lying spirit doing that.

Now, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I mean, you can't get better logic than that.

And I've read the reputations of what other people who want to believe in it try to say,

it just doesn't hold water.

It would only hold water to a people who don't study or who don't study correctly.

They take things out of context willfully to use the Bible to preach something, to teach something

that's false.

That kind of, and I'm going to give you an example of that in a minute.

And the only reason the example's in here is because one of our students online

mentioned the name to me as saying, well, some of this stuff is still happening.

And I want to be, you know, I'm zealous when I preach, I'm zealous for the truth, but I don't like being

taken as if I'm being mean.

I don't want to be mean about it.

I just want to be truthful about it.

I'm going to give facts, okay?

And I don't even know the gentleman that they mentioned, never heard of him in my life.

He's apparently a big preacher now in this nation, which doesn't surprise me.

He's a Trump supporter, which so am I.

That's not the problem.

The problem is he rests scripture to make it say what he wants it to say.

And that's a problem with me.

If any one of you did it, it would be a problem with me.

And I would hope that if I did it, you would come to me and say, hey, what do you do with this over here?

What do you do if you go up here in the context, isn't talking about what you said it's talking about.

What do you do with that, brother David?

I would hope you'd be kind enough to do that.

Now, I understand if we do that today, which we're going to do, we're going to expose this error.

And if the gentleman happens to hear this or watch it or see it, I would hope that if perchance the

Lord would open his heart and let him repent, which means to change the mind about how he's resting the scripture,

that he would come to be a powerful human being for good in this country.

But I'm afraid right now that he's being deceived by lying spirits, thinking he's more powerful than he should be

and doing things or at least okaying people that are doing these things.

I don't know if he doesn't, because I don't even know him, but I know he supports people that claim to be prophets, particularly people

who prophesied that Trump would win the election.

How many of you believe Trump won the election?

Okay, all right.

Why isn't he president?

Because he lost the election, okay?

Now, was there cheating going on?

Probably, but that same way Kennedy became president, but how many of you think he didn't get elected?

History will prove to you, President Kennedy was actually real and he was elected.

He was president of the United States and so is Biden.

So the prophets who prophesied that President Trump would be the next president are

now saying, well, but he did get elected, but the cheating kept him out.

And it was God's original plan for him to be president, but humans kept that from happening.

And we're gonna deal with that kind of thinking here in a minute too, because most of what happens is

when you do see these signed gifts reappear a few times throughout church history, not

that often, but a few times, they are always surrounded by false doctrine and by

people who rest the scriptures to make it say what it does not say.

That's a fact.

I've studied church history enough to tell you that is a fact.

You won't find someone who is doing those gifts who's not also preaching false doctrine

that clearly can be shown with scripture correctly interpreted in its context.

It's just a fact and all historians agree with it that except charismatic

historians, right?

You know, that's interesting, isn't it?

But they don't line up with any of the church history going back 2000 years.

So now, unless it's a church historian who is also preaching

false doctrine that's clearly and easily shown.

So I don't know about you, but if I see somebody that's resting the scripture and teaching false doctrine, am I actually gonna

say that that is a good church historian or a good pastor or a good evangelist or

not?

I think the scripture says we're supposed to mark them and avoid them.

That's what I think scripture says.

You mark them, which means you point out to everybody where they're wrong in the scripture and how they're resting the scripture and

you avoid them.

But no, today we've already taught a gospel that God loves everybody and we gotta love everybody and we embrace everybody

and we don't wanna cause division.

Jesus said, look, you think that I came to be a priest, you think that I came to bring peace and I tell

you, nay, but a sword and I will divide mother and father and daughter and

father and so forth.

Because the truth, when you put the truth out there, people that are deceived by lying spirits that will never come to

that light, they will reject it, move away from it.

And the ones who see it as truth cannot fellowship with them and vice versa.

It always brings division.

So what I'm trying to talk about is that Roman chapter 12 is a way to avoid division in the church.

And one of the sixth point that we've come up with is that if you understand which

gifts the Holy Spirit said would stop and why they would stop and when they would stop and you agree with that, then you won't

have that division.

So I'm not trying to create division, the division is already there.

What I'm praying is that people who don't see this, that God per adventure would open their

eyes where they just look at history and be honest with it and just look at the scripture and be honest with that.

And I could care less what you think about me because all I'm here is to make you study.

In fact, if you disagree with me, that's fantastic because you'll be the one that'll go study for three weeks, try to prove me wrong.

If you'll just do that, study for three weeks, try to prove me wrong and do it

keeping the scripture in context and history accurate, then you will have gained

something.

And so will I, because that means I'm a good teacher.

If I got you to go study, that's what it's all about.

So here we see the scripture saying it goes away.

So you have scripture that says it and then you have the history of the church indicates that the signed gifts,

that little black thing, is that not saying that it's not being recorded?

Is it being recorded?

Okay, there's a little.

Oh, great, I didn't know I could see that.

It's probably not supposed to be on that screen, but anyway, answer him with scripture, brother.

And love, but zeal also.

But anyway, all right.

So not only does scripture talk about this issue of these signed gifts, but so does the history

of the church.

In fact, it indicates that the signed gifts ceased until the end times when

they will reappear during the last three and a half years of the tribulation period.

We see even in the Old Testament, it indicates this in the book of Joel chapter two, can't reappear if it didn't disappear.

Just logic.

Wouldn't hurt for you guys to go online and audit a college course on logic

and take the course.

God says, come, let us reason together.

If you don't know logic, you don't reason properly.

You have all these fallacious arguments that are not allowed in true logic because they're not logical and

they're wrong, but you won't know it if you don't study logic sometimes.

So, I mean, if you've got a lot of common sense, you usually get it right.

But let me say this.

I'll say it as kindly as I can.

If you want to believe a lie and you own it as if you made it up, listen, nobody listening to me

made up this idea of tongue speaking and telling the future and all these things.

You didn't make it up.

So, it's not your theory, right?

So, why do we own it?

Same thing is so true of thinking that the rapture happened seven years prior to the coming of Christ.

Bible doesn't teach that, but we own it, right?

So, then we get emotional and upset when someone points out that's not a fact.

So, don't own things like this.

Seek the truth.

It's not about winning an argument.

It's about seeking the truth and the truth is there.

God is the God of truth.

He puts it there for us to see.

He says it'll set us free.

So, here we go.

Church history, they ceased, but they're coming back.

These sign gifts, they are coming back.

Our sons and our daughters shall prophesy and we know from scripture exactly when it comes back,

three and a half years into the seven years, they return.

Not a minute before that, by the way.

2 Timothy 4 .3, let's read this together.

"'For the time will come.'".

When this was written sort of early in the epistle, in the letters, one of the earlier letters,

it's actually called a pastoral epistle because it is Paul teaching young

Timothy how the church should be, how he should be as a pastor, how deacons should be

and all these kinds of things.

Titus is considered part of that as well.

So, this is looking forward into the future of the church.

Someday, Paul said, someday in the life existence of church history and Paul thought it was

gonna happen in his lifetime, the rapture and all that.

Every generation has believed that it would.

Not every generation has had enough signs of it for it to really have happened, but

they just hoped that it would.

It's always been the great hope of every generation of Christians.

That's a good thing.

It's a genius.

I mean, if you talk about the wisdom, the amazing wisdom of God, imagine being able to write a book in such a way

that it gives the signs of when something will happen and a lot of those signs have not happened yet and yet each

generation hoped it would happen in theirs.

That's awesome because it's good to have that hope.

Did you know if you hope Jesus come back soon, you will live a better, cleaner life?

Because you don't want to be found sinning when he comes back.

And that's always been powerful in the preacher's handbook.

The handbook of a preacher says once or twice a year, preach on the book of Revelation so your people will be more holy.

I mean, it's just kind of all every generation.

But look at this, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.

Who is they?

You have to read the prior verses to figure out who they is.

Those, they is church members.

That's good Southern preaching.

They is church members, all right?

The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but after their own lusts shall they heap to

themselves teachers having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and

shall be turned to fables.

Somebody tell me what a fable is.

Well, it's usually something we'd tell children, right?

Little stories.

You know, when we grow up, we stop believing those fables, don't we?

We're not children anymore.

And the same is true in the church.

When you can have any preacher come in that has a little bit of zeal, a little bit of flair in how he dresses, like me, of course,

and I'd never make it as a false preacher.

I just don't look good enough to be a false preacher.

I'm not friendly enough.

I'm not, you know, you gotta have the zeal.

You gotta have the magnetism.

Just like anybody that sells something that's not real.

You gotta be that way.

You gotta be loved by the people.

And so this speaks of a time when the church will look for men like that and the church will bring them

in because that's who they want to hear because they don't want to hear the truth because truth doesn't fit with what the fable is they want to believe.

So they will bring in fable tellers.

And they'll sit there like little children and listen to everything as if they're mesmerized to that man of

God.

And they are mesmerizing because they do have spirits that help them have power but it's not

the Holy Spirit.

I've seen the real Holy Spirit power happen.

That happens in this church and our lives.

We just mentioned in the prayer list today, young woman who half of her heart was not working.

Last Sunday, this church prayed for her and I'll bet you there were some other churches and I wouldn't be surprised

if many of those churches don't have a lot of tongue speaking going on in them.

This one doesn't have it.

Don't have a lot of words of wisdom going on because we use the word of God as the word of wisdom.

We have the canon now.

God has spoken.

We have it.

It's finished.

It's complete.

It's the perfect, all right?

But God heard our prayers and God made her heart work again by this Sunday.

The top half of her heart is now working if I got the story about which half it is, but it's working.

Answered prayer.

Please don't think that this church believes God doesn't do miracles.

But what this church also believes is that men do not.

Whereas apostles and early church prophets could because God gave them the ability to

do those to authenticate their message.

That doesn't mean that that continued throughout church history.

And you're about to see that the historians, the greatest historians of church history say it didn't.

It ceased.

Just like the scripture said it wouldn't, 1 Corinthians 13, eight through 10.

So people confuse the issue.

So, well, you don't believe in miracles.

Oh, we see miracles here weekly, practically.

We see answered prayers weekly.

We see God doing amazing things all the time in this church, but you don't see this pastor touching you on the head claiming that I

did it.

You don't see me.

And we deal with demonic issues, not usually with our small group, but we have folks that come in and have needs

and we'll deal with that.

My mentor was an exorcist.

He was a Southern Baptist exorcist, not really an exorcist, but he was a person who knew how to deal with demons

from scripture and from having read the history of missionaries overseas and how they dealt with it.

And he was well -schooled in that.

And he taught me that and I've dealt with it.

But you know what?

I never once in my life have ever said, leave that person, I rebuke you, leave them now.

And I don't see people in the Bible doing it unless it was an apostle or a prophet.

And even they usually ask the Lord to do it.

If you read carefully, it'll say the Lord rebuke you.

That's how it's done.

Same way as when you pray for the top part of this woman's heart to work,

you say, Lord, make it work.

I don't touch her and say, be healed.

I don't lay on top of a dead corpse.

There's no other kind of corpse is there?

It's a little redundant.

And then cause them to rise from the grave because I'm not an apostle.

Okay, now I would love to have those gifts.

I've dreamed before that I had them.

I've dreamed that we had 500 people in this little room and I was healing everybody in the room.

Everybody went home well and I felt so good.

It would be awesome.

I covet that gift in a sense, but I know I won't get it until three and a half years into the tribulation.

And I might be one that gets it or I might not because God doesn't give those gifts to everybody.

He is sovereign and he gives it to who he wants to.

And that's another problem with the modern day charismatic movement is they try to teach everybody to do this stuff.

That's never been done in the real church.

It's never been done that way in church.

You can't teach a gift.

So there's so much falseness.

I can't touch on all of it.

It's just like you, listen, my prayer for you, if you're listening to me today is that you're just at least open

enough to want to see the truth for what it is and see the falseness and the deception that's been used.

And you may love it and want to believe it.

I'll love it and want to believe it, but I can't believe it if it contradicts scripture and the true Holy Spirit.

And so I, you know, I'm not into that.

We're not into that, not yet.

Now we don't know where we are on the timeline.

I don't think we're into the seven years yet, but we might've been the day Biden got elected, the

day they called the people seeking to express their freedom of speech in this country

on January 6th, and they called them rioters.

And what else did they call them?

Insurrection, yes, which probably is punishable by death.

I don't know, but it's ridiculous.

So maybe it started then.

I don't think so, do you?

I just think it's just a sign of how it's coming.

I think COVID is a sign of God saying, look, I'm getting you used to this.

Besides that America, you need to be spanked because you're killing babies still.

So I'm going to spank you.

And you do know when Israel got spanked, even the good prophets got taken captive too, didn't they?

So some of this affects us too, when we live in a nation that begins to hate God in God's

ways.

And there comes a point when God says, come out from her.

So think about that.

I don't know when that point is, but I think when we know, I think God let us know when the point is, if we

seek truth.

All right, so the time will come though when the church will not endure sound doctrine, where churches

that have sound doctrine are small and giant gatherings in football

stadiums with preachers preaching and healing people will be large because they bring these

people because they have itching ears wanting to hear this false stuff because it feels good to them.

It makes them feel good that they have more faith than everyone else, which in itself is pride.

And it all works together and Satan just loves it because it divides the church.

We ought to all be together.

We ought to all be brothers and sisters together, seemingly from a human viewpoint.

But God in his wisdom and his sovereign plan did not bring it to pass that way because he said,

I tell you, I did not come to bring peace.

I came to divide as with a sword because the truth will divide.

So it's not a bad thing that we have a small little church with unity and we

understand how and the rules of how to read the scripture, how to get to the truth.

And we desire the truth so much that if anyone points out we're wrong, we will change it.

That's the kind of people you want to hang out with.

I don't mean just people like us, but I mean, people like that.

If you can find them, that's who you want, is you want somebody who cares about the truth.

But people, so many people today, and I think that day is now, we're in the day he was referring to, the great

falling away of the truth.

The apostasy is upon us.

And they will, you know, after their own lust because of the stuff their emotions want to feel

and sense and see with their eyes, it's not a faith -based thing.

I mean, we're supposed to be in a faith dispensation, the church age, but no, we need to have sight.

You know, we've got to have sight.

We want to see something.

So we're lusting to see these things.

So we heap to ourselves these kinds of teachers.

Tell me that's not going on.

All right, they shall turn away their ears from the truth and they will turn to fables.

Anytime a man stands up, I don't care if he looks like an angel of God and he speaks as an

angel of light.

And he tells you things that clearly contradict the scripture.

And he wrestles with that scripture and make it say what he wants it to say.

You are listening to fables and you're liking it.

Okay, so if that's you, repent from that today, please.

Repent from it.

Change your mind about it, that you would prefer truth even if it doesn't feel as good.

You would prefer truth even if God does not turn out to be at all like God was portrayed to you.

Because there are other Jesuses, other gospels, other spirits.

Have you invented a Jesus that's not even the Jesus of the Bible?

Because I will tell you what he would do if he came into a temple with that stuff going on is he would turn the tables over

with a whip and he would run those people out so that the ones that stayed could be in truth and unity

together.

That's what Jesus would do.

Is that the Jesus you believe in or you believe one just loves everybody and just wants peace in the room, wants us all to be happy together even with

error and truth mixed together, a mixed multitude just like Israel had in the wilderness.

Is that what you want?

I don't want that.

But the Holy Spirit said there will come a day when the church wants that.

We're there.

Then the whole reason I had this up here is because I wanted verse 13.

But I like to show context when I try to teach something from a verse.

So let's look at verse 13.

Paul says, the cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when you come,

bring it with you and also bring the books and especially the parchments.

Now that's important for our message because we're talking about church history.

And I have met friends that when I try to go into church history, no, no, no.

We just need to stick with scripture.

It's the only authority.

It is not the only authority.

It's the highest authority.

There are many other authorities.

God, as brother Otis said, wrote two books at least.

He wrote the word of God and he wrote nature and the universe.

And it shows him just as clearly as the word of God does to people.

That shows that he exists just as clearly as the Bible does.

And the university created, the creation shows his existence as much.

So he wrote those two books, but there are many other great things that we can read by our brothers and sisters who live

before us, especially if they observe that these sign language had stopped

even before 300 AD.

So you take the rest of those thousands of years from then till now, what is happening if they ceased back then?

And if Paul said they would cease and they did cease, then what are we seeing?

We're seeing people pulling in these people with having itching ears.

They want to hear what they want to hear.

So they hire those kinds of preachers or bring them in to speak to them and they turn away from truth and they

would rather hear the fables.

That's what we're seeing.

Well, he asked for two things, not one.

He didn't just say, bring my Bible.

If you look at the word parchments over here, bring me the books and especially the parchments.

The word parchment, and I like the fact he said, especially, because the word parchment comes from the Greek

word membrana.

And what it actually means is something written on sheepskin, which was very expensive.

If you can imagine having, you know, 900 pages of

information written on sheepskin, whereas the word for books

is biblion, which that might fool you and make you think that means Bible.

That's not what it means.

What it means is actually he's talking about the type of material that

came from little shoots that grow up near the water and they would flatten those out

and call it, what is it, papyrus?

Is that, did I say it right?

That's how you say it in college.

I hope I was saying it right, because I don't say it every day, but you know the word,

papyrus.

That's how Texan says it anyway.

It's cheap.

It's cheap paper that they made by rolling out these reeds and writing on them.

And sometimes they would actually bind them between two pieces of wood, like a book.

And that's what Paul's talking about when he says the books.

Those were usually secular writings because they saved the expensive sheepskins for the Old

Testament scriptures.

And when you go to the Dead Sea Scrolls, you see a lot of them written on membrana, the

scrolls.

So Paul said, bring me two things, bring me the scrolls, which is the scriptures and bring me the books I've

been studying, which could have been mathematics, could have been history,

could have been writings of other men and women of God, could have

been something that, who knows?

Whoever wrote the book of Hebrews, maybe it wasn't Paul.

I kind of think it was, but what if it wasn't?

Might've been the book of Hebrews.

So that would have been the books.

So he had books that dealt with all manner of educational material, interesting

things he was reading and historical facts that he was reading by historians.

And then he had the scriptures.

So he didn't just have the scriptures.

Now here, we bring this up again, Hebrews 1, 1 -2, where it shows that God used to

speak unto the fathers by prophets.

And remember the word prophet has two meanings in the Greek.

So this is talking about the kind of prophet that can tell the future, because he's had a vision or a dream or God spoke verbally to

them.

You see all those kinds of examples in the Old Testament and you still see it in the New Testament in the part

of the early church where you still had apostles living and New Testament prophets could do this also.

But by the time the book of Hebrews was written, that was already ceasing in the church.

Do you see this?

Because God used to speak that way, but he says in these last days has spoken unto us by his son.

And there's where the change was listed by the Holy Spirit along with what Paul said about these certain sign

gifts ceasing.

So the Holy Spirit says, I'm not gonna do it the same way in the church.

The church is gonna be an age of faith, not sight.

I have authenticated the message and you now have it by the time Hebrew was written, you

have it.

And you'll certainly have it all even in one book in just a few years from now.

And the fact is I don't need to authenticate it anymore.

Therefore, I'm not speaking that way anymore.

Now we still had prophets who could speak forth the word of God from the written word.

That's a preacher, but you don't have this meaning for prophet anymore because God said right

there, I won't do it that way anymore.

Study that scripture and seek the truth in it.

It's very important, but that's not all.

There's this, 2 Peter 1 18 says, and this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him

in the Holy Mount.

So how many of you think it would have been cool if the transfiguration had been there and you hear the voice of God speaking an

audible voice?

This is my son, hear him.

You don't need to think about Moses so much.

Think about him.

How many of you thought that if you heard that and you knew that was not natural, that was a supernatural

event where God intervened into time and space and let us hear his voice and he gave an instruction,

how many of you think that would be awesome?

Raise your hand.

Okay.

How many of you kind of wish I could make that?

Your preacher had enough power to make that happen in this service today.

Raise your hand.

Nobody, because you don't want to fall on your face and crawl up under the pew, do you?

I'd be this, I can fit in this.

We need to clean it out a little.

I could get in here if I need to, because that's not going to happen

because God said it's not happening now.

Do you see it?

He used to speak that way.

But now he speaks through his son.

And his son, when he went to heaven, he said, I'm going to give you the rest of the word because you couldn't handle them all while I was there.

Now you have it.

And he told how he would give it.

All of that's in scripture.

But you do agree.

It would have been nice to be hiding behind a tree and watching and hear that, wouldn't it?

Be pretty cool.

To hear God tell you clearly what to do.

Now, I think all of us would raise our hand on that and say, man, that would be nice.

Because how many times are we seeking God's will and we just don't seem to know exactly what he wants us to do.

Which of these two houses does he want me to buy?

There's a good example.

Well, what if he just, you're driving down the road and he just speaks to you?

Well, number one, if he did, you should try the spirits because the Holy Spirit said he won't do

that.

So you reject that voice you think you heard and you don't listen to it.

Then you go to the scriptures and you begin to read and you ask the Holy Spirit as I read scripture, would you reveal to me

which of these two houses you want me to buy?

You say, oh, well, you can't do that.

God doesn't talk about that.

Oh God, listen, God speaks to every issue of life in the Bible.

And the Holy Spirit can magnify it in your mind and use it to let you know and have a peace about which direction to go.

And the greatest way God speaks to us in this age of faith where we don't hear his voice is by closing doors in

front of you and then opening the one over here and you walk through it.

Like someone buys the house, the one of the two, it's gone, you can't get it.

So you buy that one.

God, listen, don't ever look at a closed door as a bad thing.

It's God speaking to you in the way he does it today.

He's speaking to you by circumstance.

He's always done that in every era.

So this voice, which came from heaven.

So now Peter here, who by the way, said that Paul's

writings, some of them were hard to understand.

So he considered Paul's writings to be scripture.

But this is Peter writing this and he says, okay, so some of us

heard that voice.

And do you know what he's about to do if you're not fresh on this passage I'm about to pop up there?

Do you know what he's about to say?

He's gonna say, but we have a better revelation than hearing God's

voice.

Do you hear me?

We have a better revelation than actually hearing a voice from heaven.

Now, why do you think we could have a better revelation than that?

Why would it be better?

Well, because I'll tell you this.

If one person says I heard God's voice and another one didn't hear it, then that's subjective, isn't it?

You can't prove it.

You don't know if it really happened or not.

Somebody walks up and he says, God told me to tell you this.

I don't listen to it anymore.

I just say, I don't care to hear it.

But if they did tell me and they just swore they heard a voice while under a bush somewhere out in their yard,

that is subjective and I can't prove they didn't hear it, right?

And even if they heard it, I can't prove it was God.

It could have been, does that fly get me?

I felt something.

It could have been a demon spirit mimicking God.

It could have been too many onions the night before.

We don't know what it is, but it's subjective.

So there might be a better form of revelation that is objective and that all of us

can look at with the 10 commandments of proper Bible interpretation and not cheat and we

would see the same truth.

That's objective and that's why it's better.

So let's just see.

We have also a more sure word of prophecy than God speaking with a voice.

What does more sure mean?

More certain that God said it.

Do you see the point?

Wow.

More certain that God actually said it.

So we have a more sure word of prophecy where until you do well, that you take heed.

Whatever this revelation is, he said, you do well to take heed to it, not voices you're hearing.

Do you get that?

This is scripture.

This is the highest authority that we have saying this.

Where until you do well, that you take heed as unto a light that shines in a dark place.

That's this earth we live in.

Why is it dark?

Because it's full of demons that mimic the Holy Spirit and fool God's people into doing things they're not even supposed to be doing

so that they fret away their time on useless, untrue things that don't change the world at

all.

In fact, it causes the world to mock Christianity.

And grow out arms.

Really?

Well, you know, I believe Peter could have done that.

I believe Paul could have done it.

I believe Jesus could have done it.

But I believe that the demon that's telling you that that's happening, they don't know you.

They don't even know who you are.

So come on.

How many people are you gonna bring to Christ if the people you witness to believe that they've got to believe you're doing that in order

to be a good Christian and they got to go all the time to be a good Christian or they don't have the blessing.

They really gonna wanna be like you?

Isn't a witness someone that like it's someone who has influence on people?

Do you see how the Holy Spirit has got you to a place where they will mock you?

They will not listen to your message.

Someone else will have to lead them to Christ if they're gonna be saved.

It won't be you.

You say, well, I've led a lot of people to Christ.

Well, maybe let's see where they are in two years.

See if they're still coming to church.

I don't believe coming to church saves people, but I believe that when there's a true cause, there are always effects.

You have to listen to previous sermons to understand what I'm talking about there.

But if you don't get it, but we have a more sure word of prophecy.

You do well to heed that one when you're living in a dark place full of deceit

until the day dawn and the day star rises in your hearts.

This is where God can bring light into your life is with this prophecy.

And here it's gonna tell us what it is.

And it's not hearing a voice.

Here's what it is.

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

Men are not allowed to tell you, God told me to tell you this and add that to the scripture that we already have.

They're not allowed to do that.

Neither add to it or take away from the words of this book.

It's said in the New Testament.

It's also said in the Old Testament.

Throughout scripture, that's the rule.

You can't do it.

That's a private interpretation.

Or even if you look at a passage and you say, well, I think it means this, but no one for 2000 years ever thought it meant that.

You're the only one that ever thought it meant that.

That's a private interpretation.

We're not allowed to do that.

So no scripture comes from that.

Okay, no voice of God comes from that.

For the prophecy came not in the old time, Old Testament, for example, by the will of man.

So you cannot take scripture and make it say what you want it to say.

You're not allowed to do that.

You can't say something and add it to the scripture because you want the Bible to say, but you can't find it.

So you say, well, God told me this.

You're not allowed to do that.

No brother or sister for 2000 years has been allowed to do that, except for these groups that are doing it.

And they think, oh, it's always been this way.

No, it's because they look at the apostles and say, well, they could do it.

Yeah, but they were apostles.

If you want to get my study on what the Bible says, the list of requirements is to be an apostle,

you can get that.

Just let Ben know, he'll send it to you and you'll find out you'll be disqualified.

There's no one alive in this generation that will fit the qualifications to be an apostle.

So you don't get to do these things, all right?

And when you see people doing them, they're false.

They're fake.

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, even the true prophets that wrote scripture didn't do

it because they wanted to.

In fact, some of them died for the stuff they said and did.

They were killed by the Jews many times.

Jesus said, you've killed the prophets in every generation, didn't he?

So he said, because I tell you the truth, you want to kill me?

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

That's called inspiration.

That's how we get scripture.

There are places where it says that the Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David.

And that's how we got the Psalms.

So yeah, David was speaking, but it was the Holy Spirit speaking through his mouth.

So the Holy Spirit is the author of all scripture.

Men are just the penman.

But this is how, this is obviously speaking of the written word of God.

And it's saying it is a better testimony of what God wants you to do than if you heard a voice.

Do you see that?

I mean, scripture says that, and this was written 2000 years ago.

It's been this way the whole church age.

Now look what the next verse says in the context of this.

The very next verse says, but there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false

teachers among you who secretly shall bring in damnable

heresies.

I mean, these are false teaching that from a human viewpoint can cause people to go the wrong way

and end up in hell.

Damnable heresies.

They secretly sneak in and they bring damnable heresies into the church, even denying the Lord that bought

them and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

You say, well, they're not denying Jesus.

They're talking about him all the time.

But Paul said there are other Jesuses.

So listen to what they say about Jesus and then go and look at Jesus in the scripture and see if they're talking about the same Jesus.

How can we use up that much time with two slides?

I'll do one more.

I can see you're worn out.

Me too.

Because it's hot in here for one thing.

Okay.

Jude one says, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to them that are

sanctified by God and the Father.

So who's this book written to?

The world at large or who to?

To the elect.

It's written to the elect.

To them that are sanctified by God, the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called.

Does that look like he can lose your salvation if you're preserved?

Okay.

Many of the tongue speakers and faith healers and people doing these false

signs believe you can lose your salvation.

Their doctrine is bad.

Unscriptural doctrine always, always, always goes hand in hand with the false

sign gifts.

Always has for 2000 years.

All good church historians have noticed it, written about it.

It's out there.

You can go read it.

It's fact.

It's a fact of history.

And it's true today.

And man, I need another hour and a half, but we'll just come back next Sunday, the Lord willing.

And I'm gonna show you more church history.

I didn't even, the whole day today is supposed to be on that.

I'm still in the scripture, but so he's writing this to

Christians who are sanctified by God.

They are saved and they're preserved forever, which means they don't lose their salvation.

That's who he's writing this to.

And they've been called, which means they got regenerated because the Holy Ghost called them, not

because of some preacher told them to do.

Well, pray this little prayer.

No, they got saved and sanctified and preserved because the Holy Ghost regenerated them.

And everything that happened after that is an effect.

All right.

So mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied.

He says, beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common

salvation, which is the gospel message, the whole message of the New

Testament, I've written to you about it before, Jude says, it was

needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith,

and that's a little word formula that means the genuine, true Christian faith

that was taught in the first century.

And it was taught by Christ and the apostles and the writers of the New Testament and the preachers

like Polycarp in the first century, that faith, the Christian faith.

So he said, you should earnestly contend for the faith, which was once delivered unto

the saints.

Now, if you look at that word once in the Greek, it means once and it's already finished and it's done.

So the faith, by the time Jude wrote, the different books

and epistles of the New Testament had been written somewhere on the earth.

They just maybe had not been all put into one book yet, but they had been written.

And certainly it might be that the book of Revelation was yet to be written,

but with regard to the faith, how the Christian church is supposed to operate, the first, second Timothy's, first,

second Thessalonians, which are already written before the time this was, one of the earliest books written, all of it had been laid

out about how the church was supposed to operate.

First Corinthians, where it says that the sign gifts will cease, that had already been written.

All the things that you would need to operate a church, run a church and know the gospel and how to tell it to people and how God

saves people had already been written.

And he said, it's been once delivered.

It's not going to keep getting delivered.

And if you look at it in the Greek, it's very clear.

It is done, it is finished.

It's not something that's continual where he's going to keep adding scripture to it by telling prophets, well, tell the people

I said this, that is false.

And here's scripture that proves it if you care to look at it in the Greek, which most people don't.

You don't even need it.

In the English, it's clear.

Do you see it?

So scripture bears it out.

Now, just like the other one in 1 Peter, where it said that about there's a better revelation and it's the word of God, the written

word is better than a voice.

The next verse said, there are many false prophets still creep in though.

Now, why do you think it puts that after that?

Because that one truth is the one that will be attacked the most is the authority of the written word of God will be

attacked more than anything throughout the ages of the church.

And it always, when it shows that the written word is the authority, the next verse says, but there will be many

false prophets who will teach differently than that.

And look at this one.

The word of God is finished.

It's complete.

It was once given to the saints already in the past tense, but there are certain men

crept in unawares.

That's exactly what the other one said, privily, which means secretly unawares who were before of old

ordained to this condemnation.

That means hell.

Ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness.

I want you to think about this a minute.

You know what you're probably not gonna see in this church is we're not gonna have the young girls and young women put on

a little sheer gowns and come up here with ribbons and dance in front of us.

You know, when the Jews dance, it was the men dancing.

They'd let the women get up and dance in front of people at assemblies.

Because, you know, guys, we think different than women, don't we?

And it can turn into lasciviousness.

So as I have gone across the country with Dr. Freeman when he was, you know, a Bible conference

speaker all over the world, and I traveled with him for some months seeking God's will on what I was

supposed to do, whether I was supposed to do that or be a pastor or whatever, and he let me go with him.

And we went, now he would preach in any church that would invite him as long as they wouldn't tell him what to preach or not to preach.

So we went into some charismatic churches, or Pentecostal mostly, but they loved the

doctrine back in those days.

And no one doubted him.

You didn't have anything breaking out in tongues while he was speaking.

You didn't have any of that.

But we went predominantly to Bible -believing churches that believe that these signed gifts have ceased.

And they just didn't have that going on.

And that's predominantly what we saw.

But you go into, if you just get on YouTube and just search for like mega church services, and you

watch the people, how they look, how they act in that service, and you won't know the

difference between that and a rock concert.

Even the clothing is lascivious.

It's sexually oriented.

And the scripture 2000 years ago said, there will be certain false prophets that creep in.

The church will think they're men of God.

That's what unawares mean.

They'll think they're great men of God who were before of all ordained to be condemned to hell

and to teach the false doctrine.

Why?

Because God's way of making you study is to let this happen sometimes.

It will force you to study, ordained to this condemnation

ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.

Like Paul says in the scripture, all things are lawful to me.

They'll leave out the part that says, but not all things are expedient.

Like they're not all things are good for us.

They leave that out, which means now you can dress any way.

You can say anything.

You can do anything in a church service.

You can handle music any way you want.

It can be just entertainment.

It doesn't have to be Holy Spirit filled people like our pianist is every Sunday here, Glenda.

Doesn't have to be like that.

It can just be like, just get up and entertain like a rock star.

It's lascivious.

Tell me you don't see this happening in the American church.

Why is it we don't believe that it's in conjunction with ungodly men pretending to be

pastors?

Like the Bible says, oh, they can't be, they're powerful.

Oh, really?

Were the magicians powerful in Moses day?

Have false preachers and prophets always been powerful?

I wish I could show you everything I've got in this for today, but we're way out of time.

I can show you things from scripture, show you things from history that bear this out again and again.

And yet you want to believe what you want to believe.

It's just sad.

Let's get to the place where we want to believe the truth and search for it rather than prove a falsehood.

Resting with scripture to make it prove a falsehood.

There's nothing really in the church.

There's nothing much worse than that.

And that's what these men do that creep in unawares.

And because we think they're men of God, they claim to be, and actually God put them here

to test us because what we ought to do is kick them out.

We should kick, send them away and not let them preach to our people again.

Ungodly men turning the grace of God, the truth of God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord

God and our Lord Jesus Christ sounds just like the other one we just read a minute ago.

Oh no, they don't deny Jesus.

Talk about him all the time.

Which Jesus?

Jesus of the Bible or some figment of their modern imagination?

So I don't know.

So here we're to the place I wanted to talk about today and we're out of time.

So next time we'll talk about the church history but I think it's good to tie it in with

scripture because God said, watch, here's what's gonna happen.

And so now we can take church history and show how it actually happened just like God said it would.

All right.

So, you know, you say, well, it's not an encouraging message.

Well, not every message can be encouraging.

Some messages have to shoo away falsehood.

The scripture says we ought to, that their mouths ought to be stopped by us.

And that's not a fun day when you have to do that.

We have other fun days.

We can talk about other stuff but it looks like we got at least one more day for church history, the Lord willing next Sunday.

So let's stand and pray together and we'll be dismissed.

If you're out there on the internet and I don't know you as well, you disagree with me.

It's okay.

Just prove me wrong.

Spend hours and hours that I've spent.

You spend those hours studying and you prove me wrong and we'll sit down and I will change.

If you're correct, I promise.

But you need to be able to promise me you'll change if I'm correct and it disagrees with what you're doing.

That's fair game.

Pray that the Lord will show you the truth.

That's what we need.

Lord, we thank you so much that you've given us a better word,

a better revelation than even your voice.

And that is your word.

And you've lifted your word higher than even your name.

And that's remarkable.

And it's a more sure word of prophecy because it's objective and we can all see it and study it.

Using the proper rules of Bible interpretations that every legitimate

denomination in the world agrees to and has agreed to for 2000 years.

And so thank you, Lord, that you've given us your objective truth in the word of God, that you wrote it,

that your Holy Spirit laid it down as speaking through the mouths of these prophets.

And you gave it to us and it's written and it's all in one canon of scripture.

The perfect has come.

Thank you for that.

And Lord, we just ask that if we have any brothers or sisters out here today that would disagree,

that they would do it in love.

And we do it in love though also with zeal, but Lord, that they would search the scriptures,

even go back and study some of these that we've listed today.

And then as we get into the church history, if it's your will to do that next time, Lord, that they would understand

that there are brothers and sisters who have been powerfully used by God that say these

things are not legitimate in the church anymore and haven't been for almost 2000 years.

That should cause us to think and to study.

So Lord, my prayer is that it will.

And that if per adventure, you would open the eyes of those who don't see this thing, that they might see it, that

you would accomplish that and give them a change of mind.

Lord, for those of us who have seen these things, please use this reminder in our

hearts as a tool to use to help other people to be pulled out of the snare of Satan and

to be about the things that God wants us to be about doing in this day and time.

We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship.

Bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus name, amen.