Session 2: Justin Peters - The Modern Charismatic Resurgence

Kootenai Church

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All right. If you come on in and find your place again, we're going to get started with Session 2. All right.

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Before we begin the second session, I would like to have all of the speakers for the conference come up here onto the stage, as well as one non -speaker.

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Come on up. Yeah, just in a line here.

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And I've asked each of these guys to just briefly tonight tell you their name, where they're at, where they minister, what they're doing, you know, your wife, your grandchildren or children, what your ministry is, if you want to, a little something about you that nobody knows.

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All right. Oh, first up, for those of you who don't know, I'm Jim Osmond. I'm one of the pastors of Kootenai Community Church. I've been here for 25 years.

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I'm married to my wife, Deidre, who took your registration, and I have four kids and two grandkids. So that's me. And I got roped into this in a real weird way, so I think

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I've already told that story. That's me. Justin, you want to go next?

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Sure. My name is Justin Peters, and used to be a member here at Kootenai Community Church until grandchildren pulled us back to Montana.

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Now he's under the discipline of God. Now I'm under the discipline of, you know, what step of church discipline is,

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I'm not sure, but I'm an evangelist. I'm married to a wonderful lady named Kathy, and so I travel and preach and teach and do apologetics work.

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All right. And the next one is not a speaker at the conference, but he is here to be interviewed for the movie. That's right.

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My name is Andreas. I come from all the way from Switzerland for the conference and for the movie.

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It's very exciting to be here. What can I say? I do have an online ministry on YouTube, so you can search for Digging Deeper or for my own name,

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Andreas Wieget, which is spelled W -I -G -E -T. So this channel is all about the charismatic movement,

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Word of Faith, and DNIR. My name is Andrew Rappaport.

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I think many of you from Kootenai know who I am. I'm with Striving for Eternity Ministries. My beautiful bride,

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Yim, is in the back. And so I think most of you know who I am, so I'll just pass it on to you.

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My name is Kevin Hay, and my wife, Alicia, is here with me this evening. We are pregnant with our eighth baby, and we are 18 weeks along, so we're very excited for our fifth baby girl, and we have three boys at home as well.

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I enjoy preaching God's Word and also ministering through the written word, and so I write for G3 on a monthly basis and also expository parenting, so you can find articles on there.

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And then as it was mentioned, I recently edited a book on the work of Thomas Goodwin on the assurance of salvation in Christ.

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My name is John Sampson. I'm originally from England, but I'm now a pastor in the

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Phoenix, Arizona area, a suburb called Peoria. King's Church is the name of it.

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I believe I'm here because I was deeply involved in the charismatic movement, even as a host on TBN.

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Is it okay to say that? Yeah, it's okay. Justin's going to talk about TBN. In the past tense, yes.

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I have ceased. And so glad to be here.

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I have a beautiful wife, Linda, and I have four kids, and just a joy to be with these men of God and amongst you today.

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There's this guy called John the Baptist. My name's John. I am a Baptist, and my job,

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I believe, is to be sent to America to prepare Americans for heaven.

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Because it's going to be a real shock when you stand before the Lord and he says, well done, good and faithful servant.

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And meeting Isaiah is going to really be a shock too. I'm Dan Phillips.

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I come from almost as far away as Andreas. I come from Houston, Texas. If you picture

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America as a square and you're up here, Houston is down here. I pastored

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Copperfield Bible Church for 10 years there. You might know me from co -writing on Pyromaniacs with Bill Johnson and Frank Turk, which we did a few years back, which is a wonderful thing.

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Written a couple of books, The World Hoping Gospel, setting the gospel in the biblical framework, which is the only way to understand it, against the worldview that the

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Bible presents and God's wisdom in poppers. I have an amazing, wonderful wife,

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Valerie, and four children. And I am just so, so very happy and grateful to be here with you. My name is

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John Ruther. I'm originally from New York. And I was converted by God's grace when

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I was 19 years of age, my first year of college, from Roman Catholicism. I was, shortly after that, attended a

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Bible college, and then seminary, met my wife, Wendy, in Bible college. And we've been married 45 years, and I'm so blessed with Wendy, my wife, and five children and 12 grandchildren.

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And I've been pastoring the Covenant Baptist Church for 37 years in Lumberton, New Jersey, which is just northeast of Philadelphia.

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And I love my work, I love pastoring, and probably will be leaving there in 2025 to start a new chapter in our lives, my wife and me.

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And sort of a semi -retirement. But I'm also thankful to God for the opportunity that I've had since 1994 to be teaching a class on the

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Holy Spirit regularly to seminary students online, and also I've been able to teach that class in the

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Far East, in China, Nepal, and South America, many places. So I'm very thankful to God for the ministries that he's given me, and I count it a real privilege to be here and to now have so many new friends.

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And so I praise God for all of you. Good. Thank you, gentlemen. With that, we'll turn it over to Justin Peters. Please welcome

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Justin. Good evening.

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Good evening. I hope everyone is doing well tonight. What a joy to be with you. Thank you so much for the invitation to come.

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Okay, so my assignment tonight is to give you an overview, very much a bird's eye overview of the history of the

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Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement. It really helps in understanding a movement if you can have just kind of at least a working knowledge of the origins of that movement.

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And so I want to begin by talking about that practice for which the

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Charismatic Movement is probably most well -known, and that is the gift of tongues, and give you just kind of a brief overview here of the history of the gift of tongues.

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The biblical gift of tongues is mentioned only in the earliest of the New Testament books, Acts and 1

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Corinthians. Peter, James, John, nor Jude ever mentioned this gift.

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1 2 Peter, 1 2 3 John, not mentioned. James, Jude, it's not mentioned. Even Paul, when he wrote the book of Romans and in chapter 12 dealt with the spiritual gifts, did not mention the gift of tongues.

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So the gift of tongues faded away rather quickly when you look through the chronology of the New Testament.

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The early church fathers, most of them anyway, Chrysostom, Origen, and Augustine affirmed the cessation of the gift of tongues.

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And then after the Apostolic Age, the only time you see the gift of tongues exercised, it's always with some outside, fringy, heretical, kooky, quite honestly, groups.

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The first of which would have been the Montanists. This was a 2nd century group built upon new prophecy, and they were known for losing control of their bodies.

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They would have ecstatic gibberish, they would shake, they would flop around on the ground.

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So it's just a very fringe group, and they spoke in tongues. And then after the

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Montanists, the gift of tongues completely vanished, or any exercise rather of the gift of tongues, anything that purported to be tongues, vanished until the early 1700s when you see a group known as the

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Camisards. This was a militant Protestant group that rebelled against what was known as the

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Edict of Fontainebleau. This was an edict by Louis XIV that rescinded the religious freedom of the

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Protestants. And so they were a very militant group, known much more for their militancy than any theology, but they claimed to be able to speak in tongues.

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And then you have the Jansenists, this is kind of like the flip side of the Camisards. This was a militant

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Roman Catholic group, very violent, and they claimed to be able to speak in tongues, but just gibberish.

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And then you have the Shakers. Some of you might remember the Shakers in your history books. This was an

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American sect founded in 1747 by a woman named Anne Lee, came to be known as Mother Anne, Mother Anne Lee, and she believed, as the

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Shakers did, she founded this group of the Shakers, they believed that God could be found, not externally, but within themselves.

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In fact, let me show you a picture of Mother Anne Lee. Now I'm sorry, that's just what the pictures show.

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Now you look at that person, Mother Anne Lee there, and quite honest, it looks like a dude. That looks like a man, but supposedly this is what

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Mother Anne Lee looked like. And there's a picture of the Shakers there, but Mother Anne Lee, assuming this actually was a female, claimed to be a reincarnation, basically, of Jesus Christ himself.

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She claimed to be a female version of Jesus. The Shakers were very, very odd.

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As their name implies, they shook in their worship, they would tremble, they would speak in tongues in unintelligible ecstatic gibberish, but they were also very heretical.

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They denied the Trinity, and that is kind of a common theme in what will become later

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Pentecostal groups, but they denied the Trinity. They believed that Christ was a spirit, and the

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Holy Spirit was not a person, but rather was just the presence of God's power on earth.

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So thoroughly heretical, and they also abstained from sex, even within marriage.

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So they said sex is immoral, and so you might imagine if they outlawed sex, even within marriage, that recruitment for the

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Shakers was a bit of a challenge for them. So they perpetuated strictly by supposed conversions into the

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Shakers, and by adoption. So yeah, it was very, very odd. They talked to dead people, spoke in tongues, so very, very heretical group.

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And of course, the Mormons also claimed to be able to speak in tongues. This is a photocopy from the

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Pittsburgh Dispatch, dated April 12, 1892, and the title of this article is,

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Awaiting a Revelation, Mormons Listen to Elders Speaking in Unknown Tongues.

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And so these Mormons claimed physical healings, and they also spoke in tongues. And so you see quite clearly that groups that are well outside of Orthodox Christianity, any semblance of Biblical Christianity, spoke in tongues, and they did it in the exact same way that Charismatics do today.

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So what does that tell you? That tells you that just because someone is speaking in tongues is not an indication that that ability is coming from God.

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Pagans did it, too. Now let's talk a little bit about the

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Holiness Movement, because this is the movement from which the modern Charismatic Movement truly sprung.

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John Wesley, founder of Methodism, the Methodist Church, John Wesley was no heretic, of course.

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He was very much Orthodox in his understanding of the Gospel, more Arminian than what most of us would be in here.

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So he was basically right on the Gospel, but he did have a very distorted view of sanctification.

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In that, he believed in something called entire sanctification. He believed that after your conversion, you get a second blessing or a second experience with the

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Holy Spirit, and then you are fully and completely sanctified. So that was very much in error.

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Now this lady, Phoebe Palmer, she was a woman who, as a young woman, had two children, both of whom died just a few months after their birth.

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And because she had two babies die, she believed that that was God's rebuke, that was

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God's punishment, for her not living a life that was holy enough.

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And so she took Charles Wesley's teaching on entire sanctification, and she made it even worse, and she believed in absolute, sinless perfection.

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She founded the Holiness Movement and began to preach, initially only to women, but as time went on, she began to preach to men as well.

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And as such, of course, that goes against biblical parameters, and so that did injury to her own supposed holiness.

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Excuse me, I need a little swig of water. But this

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Holiness Movement, this sinless perfectionism, you find quite frequently in the modern

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Charismatic Movement. I'll give you a couple examples of this. Listen to this from Joyce Meyer.

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I am not poor, I am not miserable, and I am not a sinner that is alive from the pit of hell, that is what

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I were, and if I still was, then Jesus died in vain. I'm going to tell you something folks,

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I didn't stop sinning until I finally got it through my sick head, I wasn't a sinner anymore. And the religious world thinks that's heresy, and they want to hang you for it.

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But the Bible says that I'm righteous, and I can't be righteous and be a sinner at the same time.

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Joyce Meyer believes that she has attained sinless perfection as well. Watch this from Todd White.

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Todd White is the guy that you see on YouTube with the dreadlocks, goes out on the street healing people, lengthening people's legs.

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Watch this from Todd White. He came and gave me this blank canvas. He came and gave me this pure heart, and I've never violated it with anything.

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You can actually have the word so strong inside of your heart that you never have to slip. People are like, well that's false, that's not true.

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Well you're wrong, I live with me. So for 13 years, I've been free from that.

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I've never looked lustily, with lust at a woman, ever. I live with me, my kids will tell you that I'm a man of God, I'm a father.

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Because God doesn't say he wants you 97 % pure. I mean, was Jesus 97 % pure?

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I'm not holier than thou, I just love Jesus 24 -7. If he does say so himself.

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It has been said that spiritual growth is a growth downward. It is only when we have a lower view of ourselves that we will have a higher view of God.

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The more highly we think of ourselves, the more lowly we will think about God. And that is a man who does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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But this sinless perfectionism, that is, you don't find it in every charismatic church, but you do find it pretty frequently.

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Now I want us to look at some of the movers and shakers, some of the founders, some of the generals of the charismatic movement.

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This is a book entitled God's Generals. It was written by a man named Robert Learden. And in this book, he details, he gives biographies of some of the great charismatic generals of yesteryear.

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And we're going to look at John Alexander Dowie, Charles Parham, Amy Semple McPherson, Catherine Kuhlman, all of whom are detailed in this book.

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And he holds these people up as, well, generals of God. Holy men and holy women through whom

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God moved mightily to bring about the charismatic movement. Well, I'm going to tell you some things and show you some things about God's generals that Robert Learden will not tell you.

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This is a very whitewashed version of the charismatic early leaders.

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So let's begin by looking at John Alexander Dowie. Where does he do his shopping?

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He was born in Scotland, moved to Australia, developed an interest in faith healing in the 1880s, moved to the

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United States in 1888. Very colorful individual, to say the least.

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He formed the International Divine Healing Association in San Francisco. He prayed for the healing only of paid members of his cult.

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He was sued by two women for fraud, but it was very much a pay -to -pray situation.

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If you were not a paying member of his cult, no prayers for you. He formed the

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Zion Tabernacle in Chicago. Founded the City of Zion, which banned all practice of medicine.

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He spoke against doctors, telling people to rely solely upon their faith. That is a prominent theme in the vast majority of charismatic churches today, word -faith churches today.

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Medicine is looked down upon. It is frowned upon. Because if you go see a doctor, then that's a sign that you really don't have enough faith.

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Because if you really believed that God was going to heal you, then you wouldn't need to go see a doctor.

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The best way to portray in yourself a lack of faith is to go see a doctor, to take your medicine.

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Because if you go see a doctor and take your medicine, then you don't believe that God's really going to heal you, and that is the fastest way to lose your miracle of healing, according to word -faith theology.

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He had healing rooms. Bethel Church in Redding, California is known for this, having healing rooms.

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Well, he is the one who began these healing rooms. He lived in opulent luxury while his followers lived in poverty.

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He forced his followers to give to him basically all or most of their money.

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Many, many people died under his supposed care, including children.

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The newspaper reports of John Alexander Dowie are quite honestly shocking in their details.

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Dowie could rightly be called a murderer. He denied sick people basic medical treatment.

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In fact, there was one woman who was one of his followers, a lady named Anita Flanders, and she was dying of an illness, and as she was dying, she requested simply a bowl of broth.

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And he denied her a bowl of broth because the reason she was sick, you see, was her lack of faith.

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And so he withheld this broth from a dying woman. She died.

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Of course, the reason she died was her lack of faith, according to John Alexander Dowie. He was a forerunner of American Pentecostalism, a forerunner of the

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Pentecostal movement. According to the Sunday Interocean, Chicago, Illinois, 1899, they record this in their article.

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John Alexander Dowie says, and I quote, Don't be stingy with your money. If you do, the Lord may be stingy with his cures.

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No better today, sir, Dowie would thunder at a debilitated cancer subject or a person with epilepsy.

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Well, sir, if you are not better, it is your own fault. You either don't trust in the Lord or you are concealing some infamous crime.

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So if you're sick, it's your fault. It is standard doctrine in the vast majority of the charismatic movement, all of word of faith, that it is always

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God's will for you to be healed. Well, if it's always God's will for a person to be healed, and a person prays for that healing for days, weeks, months, years, some people for decades, and the healing does not come, then the question must be asked, whose fault is it?

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By definition, of course, it cannot be God's fault because he's perfect. So guess who's left? It's your fault.

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It's your lack of faith. It's your lack of giving. Maybe you're not even saved. John Alexander Dowie, however, died in 1907 from a massive stroke.

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And John Alexander Dowie claimed to be Elijah, claimed to be a reincarnation of the prophet

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Elijah. Frank Sanford, another one of God's generals.

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He was a native of Maine, went to a missions trip, performed an exorcism on one of his friends, and then went for a walk in the woods.

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And as he was walking in the woods, he heard a voice from heaven say, Armageddon. If you're walking in the woods and you hear an audible voice from heaven saying

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Armageddon, ain't nothing good coming after that. He opened a religious compound named

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Shiloh, also referred to as the Kingdom and the Legion of God, which is a very interesting name, the

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Legion of God. Given Mark chapter 5, Jesus asked the demoniac, what is your name? My name is

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Legion for we are many. That's a very interesting name. At his zenith, he had about a thousand followers, and he forced, like John Alexander Dowie, he forced all of his followers to give him all of their possessions, and they were not allowed to leave this compound.

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He forced extended fasts upon his followers, including upon children. Sickness was a sign that your soul was sick.

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And even sick kids were forced to fast further to get right with God. And if they did not get right with God by their recovery, then they were physically beaten.

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He was a wicked, wicked man, as was John Alexander Dowie. One girl in his compound was punished for the sin of vanity.

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How did she display a sin of vanity? She was caught looking in a mirror. And so that's clearly the sin of vanity, and that child was beaten.

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Wicked. Many people died following him, including at least one child.

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He was actually arrested for manslaughter. And believe it or not, there are still to this day six of these Shiloh churches in existence.

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They are now known as Kingdom Christian Ministries. I would assume they are not as extreme as he was back then, but who knows.

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And also, like John Alexander Dowie, Frank Sanford claimed to be Elijah.

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Charles Fox Parham. Charles Fox Parham. He was fascinated with Frank Sanford, spent time with him, learned a lot from him.

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He is widely regarded to be the father of the American Pentecostal movement. Charles Fox Parham.

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Parham taught that the Old Testament character Job suffered because he was living in sin.

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Had nothing to do with the sovereignty of God, of course. It was Job's fault. And many of today's modern faith preachers, they claim that the reason that Job suffered was because of his sin.

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He formed the Bethel Healing School. Does that sound familiar? Bethel Church, Redding, California. He had a healing school and school of prophecy.

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He held that preachers who do not preach, quote, the gospel of healing will face utter condemnation before God.

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You see, physical healing, according to Charles Fox Parham, was just as much an integral part of the gospel as was redemption and being saved from our sins.

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He derided Christians for going to doctors. You see a common theme here.

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Derided Christians for going to doctors. And quite honestly, he was a complete charlatan and fraud.

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He had a couple of different scams that he used to raise money. One of which was the Ark of the

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Covenant scam. He claimed to know the exact location of the

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Ark of the Covenant and he got people to give him money to form an exposition to go to the

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Holy Land to find the Ark of the Covenant. He did this on two different occasions, raised a ton of money.

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Indeed, went over to find the Ark of the Covenant and he claimed to have the exact location to, but obviously he didn't find it.

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Indiana Jones found it. He was involved in another scam and he actually, believe it or not, this is real, but he claimed to have, or at least he was partnered with another guy who claimed to have a device that would turn rocks into gold.

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And of course, you could have your rocks turned into gold if you would just give him money to fund his scam.

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And Charles Fox Parham was actually arrested for sodomy back when such things were actually punishable crimes.

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Now we celebrate them, but back 100 years ago, not so much. So Charles Fox Parham, like John Alexander Dowie, like Frank Sanford, was an absolute scoundrel.

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But his Bethel School of Prophecy, oh, and by the way, Charles Fox Parham also claimed to be

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Elijah. Will the real Elijah please stand up? So Charles Fox Parham's students, his

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Bethel School, was known for speaking in tongues. Now interestingly, initially, these early

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Pentecostals actually more or less had the right theology of the gift of tongues in that they believed that the genuine gift of tongues was speaking in a known human language, just not known to the one who was speaking it.

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It would be like me, all of a sudden, being able to speak fluent Swahili. That's a known human language, it's just not known to me.

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So they actually kind of had the right theology on that, at least in that general sense. And believing that to be the case, they sent, or Charles Fox Parham sent some of his followers, his students, out to China, India, and Japan on boats, just put them on boats, sailed them across the ocean blue, believing that once they got there, they would be able to speak in the native tongues of these different people in different nations.

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Charles Fox Parham says this, as he's quoted in the Topeka State Journal, he says, the Lord will give us the power of speech to talk to the people of the various nations without having to study them in schools.

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Hawaiian Gazette article, Parham says, there is no doubt that at this time they, his students, they will have conferred on them the gift of tongues, if they are worthy, believing they will thus be made able to talk to the people whom they choose to work among in their own language.

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The students of Bethel College do not need to study in the old way to learn the languages.

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They just believe that when they got off the boats in whatever country they were in, they would be given that gift of languages and could speak in those native tongues.

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But Robert M. Anderson, in his book, Vision of the Disinherited, says this,

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S .C. Todd of the Bible Missionary Society investigated 18 of these early

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Pentecostals who went to Japan, China, and India, quote, expecting to preach to the natives in those countries in their own tongue and found by their own admission, quote, in no single instance have they been able to do so.

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As these and other missionaries returned to disappointment and failure, Pentecostals were compelled to rethink their original view of speaking in tongues.

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It was only after these 18 Pentecostals came back in complete failure that they said, oh, wait, sorry, we got that wrong.

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Okay, so the gift of tongues is not actually speaking in a known human language that's not known to the one speaking it. It's actually speaking in unintelligible, ecstatic gibberish.

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Baby talk. Nonsense. And that has remained and is to this day the standard belief, standard practice in all charismatic churches.

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You will not go to a charismatic church today when you find people speaking in a known human language but one not known to them.

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What do they do? They speak in gibberish. Baby talk. And that belief began when these 18

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Pentecostals came back in complete failure on their expeditions. There was one woman, however.

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There was one woman. A follower, a student of Charles Parham. Name was Agnes Osmond. No relation to the pastor of this church.

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At least not that he would admit. But no, no relation. But she did claim to have the real

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McCoy, the real gift of languages. In fact, the claim was that for a period of time, she was actually unable to speak in English at all.

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She could only speak in Chinese. It's amazing. Not only could she speak in Chinese but she could even write in Chinese.

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And we actually have a photocopy of some of her writings in Chinese. Would you like to see it?

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Now, you do not have to be Chinese nor do you have to know Chinese to know that that is not

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Chinese. That's chicken scratch. But that was a claim.

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Agnes Osmond. Okay, William Seymour in the

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Azusa Street Revival. By the way, all that with Charles Fox Parham happened around 1901, 1902, so fast forward a few years.

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William Seymour was actually a student of Charles Parham's. Charles Parham was a blatant racist.

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He only reluctantly allowed William Seymour as you can see, he was a black man. He only reluctantly allowed

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William Seymour to be one of his students, but even at that he made William Seymour sit outside of the classroom and William Seymour had to listen simply through the door.

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Charles Parham was a blatant racist. But William Seymour started a church and they rented out this building as it grew a little bit, they rented out this building on Azusa Street in California.

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This was 1906. And that is when the Azusa Street Revival broke out and people began to speak in tongues, they were shaking, they were gyrating, flopping around on the floor, all kinds of bizarre behavior.

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But the real charismatics point to the Azusa Street Revival as the beginning in earnest of their movement.

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So Charles Parham was a scoundrel, he was a heretic, he was a false prophet, he was a racist.

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William Seymour founded the Azusa Street movement there, but Seymour was no saint either.

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Seymour, William Seymour, rarely preached bizarrely in many of the meetings he would sit behind the pulpit with his head hidden by a crate.

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I don't know why he did that, that's what's reported, it's just really bizarre. And he would be seen from time to time walking up and down the aisles of his congregation with $5 and $10 bills that had been stuffed into his pockets.

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His pockets were literally full of cash that his followers would stuff into his pockets.

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So he was no saint either. But there's about 26 different denominations that trace their origins back to the

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Azusa Street Revival. And William Seymour is revered in the charismatic movement today.

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So, give you just a bird's eye view here of the three waves. You might have heard of this, the three waves of the

32:56

Pentecostal movement. The first of these in earnest was the Azusa Street Revival. But one of the odd and inconvenient truths about the

33:07

Azusa Street Revival in the early Pentecostal movement is that some of these

33:12

Pentecostal denominations, groups rejected the Trinity. They were oneness.

33:18

And yet they would speak in tongues. Now, how is it that if you reject the

33:24

Trinity, was it a fundamental doctrine of historical Christianity? If you reject the Trinity, you're clearly not a

33:30

Christian. And yet they spoke in tongues in exactly the same way that the other

33:36

Pentecostals did who did affirm the Trinity. Awkward. So how are these heretics supposedly indwelt by the same

33:45

Holy Spirit given the same gift as these more orthodox Pentecostals? There's a problem for them.

33:52

Then the second wave is what is known as the charismatic renewal. This was begun in the 1960s, technically 1959.

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There was an Episcopal church led by a priest named Dennis Bennett. And he claimed to receive the baptism of the

34:07

Holy Spirit and he began to speak in tongues. Now the distinctive of the charismatic renewal as apart from Azusa, Azusa was strictly

34:15

Pentecostal, different shades of Pentecostal. But the charismatic renewal was more ecumenical.

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So in other words, you would have charismatic Anglicans, charismatic Methodists, charismatic

34:28

Roman Catholics. So the charismatic renewal kind of went across denominational boundaries and it was also then that you have the birth of the modern

34:38

Word of Faith movement with people like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagen and their emphasis on health and wealth.

34:46

Prosperity theology. The third wave of the Pentecostal movement began in the 1980s by C.

34:56

Peter Wagner. And Wagner largely kept the prosperity teachings of the

35:01

Word of Faith movement that came out of the second stage, second wave, the charismatic renewal.

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But he began to place an even greater emphasis on modern day apostles, new apostolic reformation and signs and wonders and power evangelism.

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You've heard of the Vineyard movement. The Vineyard movement came out of this as did the Toronto outpouring and the

35:24

Brownsville revival. So that was the third wave and now the most prominent of the signs and wonders,

35:32

I guess, movement would be Bethel Church pastored by Bill Johnson. And so we're still in that, well not we, but they are still in the third wave.

35:43

John G. Lake, another one of the great generals of God in the charismatic movement.

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John G. Lake was a disciple of John Alexander Dowie. He founded the church at Portland, also had healing rooms, claimed over 100 ,000 people were healed in his ministry.

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None of these, however, were truly documented. The only kind of healing that you see in the charismatic movement is psychosomatic healing, mind over body.

36:13

And there's any number of ailments that you can get temporary relief from just through a temporary rush of adrenaline, rush of endorphins, heightened emotion, back pain, ringing in your ears, bursitis in your shoulder.

36:32

You can get temporary relief from a lot of illnesses just by a rush of adrenaline.

36:38

Those are psychosomatic healings and they happen all the time in the charismatic movement. But what you never see in the charismatic movement are organic healings, healings that cannot be explained simply by a rush of adrenaline.

36:52

An amputee, you never see an amputee in the charismatic movement grow a new limb.

36:58

Someone with cerebral palsy, something like what I've got. If I'm standing up on my crutches, no matter how happy I am, no matter how good of a mood

37:08

I'm in, you take my crutches away from me and down goes Frazier. That would be an organic healing.

37:16

You never see organic healings in the charismatic movement. None of these were documented.

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The newspapers of the day roundly debunked his claims of just psychosomatic healings. His wife died of a fever six months after they arrived in South Africa in 1908 to do some missions work.

37:35

After she died, he got engaged to a lady and his fiance. She also died of malaria just a year later, 1909.

37:47

He could only get engaged to her after he got in contact with his dead wife through a séance.

37:55

He talked to dead people. This is demonic. This is occultic. This is activity that is explicitly condemned by Scripture.

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He's one of God's great generals. He faced criminal charges and was actually arrested for securities and stock fraud in Portland, Oregon.

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Now this is kind of interesting. The Sunday Oregonian, 1921, says this.

38:18

Kenneth G. Olson, former overseer of Lake's Church at Sandpoint, Idaho. I bet you didn't expect to see your hometown mentioned tonight.

38:27

Sandpoint, Idaho, subscribed to an affidavit now in the hands of Corporation Commissioner Hanley, charging that the healer, quote, used his church work to promote his various mining schemes with the idea of first gaining the confidence of people through the common ground of religion and then selling to the members of the congregation stock in which he was interested.

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And he was arrested for this. Now here is an excerpt from a letter that he wrote. This is from the hand of John G.

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Lake. Dear brother and sister in Christ, I did not feel like discussing with you yesterday the subject of mining stock and so decided that I had rather write you.

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In my conversation with you, Mrs. Eastman, you told me that it was your plan and purpose to pay $500 tithes this year.

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And I have it in my heart to say to you that if you will pay the $500, if possible in one installment, by October 4th,

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I would make you a gift of the note for $200 that you gave to Otto, that was John G. Lake's son.

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Trusting that you will see the advantage of this offering regarded as the fulfillment of God's promise to him who faithfully and honestly keeps covenant with God in tithing.

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Of course you understand that to do this, it will be necessary for your tithes to be paid to me for this work.

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Let this letter be a matter of confidence between ourselves. Will you kindly sign the enclosed paper and have one or more witnesses sign also your brother in Christ, John G.

39:50

Lake. He's a fraud. He's a scam artist.

39:56

But he is revered. In fact one of the tales that is told about John G.

40:01

Lake is that when John G. Lake went to South Africa, that was right at the time the bubonic plague was raging.

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And the story is told that some foam from some of the bodies of the dead that died of the bubonic plague,

40:19

John G. Lake challenged someone to take that foam and put it on his hand full of this nasty bacteria, fatal, and to look at it under a microscope.

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And the claim is that when they did that the bacteria died upon contact with John G.

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Lake's skin. Watch. Lake stayed in such constant communion with the

40:40

Lord that it seemed not even a deadly plague could survive when coming into contact with him. He once took the fluids from a dead person's body filled with living bacteria and the doctors told him he's going to die by touching this stuff.

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And he said, put this under a microscope. You'll notice it's dead. And it's because he was confident that the resurrectional life in him flowing from him was greater than any disease attaching itself to him.

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And they did. They subjected it to a microscope and they saw he was exactly right. Everything died.

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The disease died when it touched him. You don't do that unless you know who you are, whose you are, and what he's commissioned you to do.

41:26

So you see Bill Johnson recanting this, recalling this story and promoting it as true.

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And watch this from Andrew Womack. Now this was recorded in March of 2020.

41:39

So COVID was just getting ramped up, right? March of 2020. And listen carefully to what

41:44

Andrew Womack says here. Because see, there are some people like me who know that no plague is going to come nigh my dwelling.

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If a germ touches me, it's going to die. And I believe that 100%. Andrew Womack says, if a germ touches me, it's going to die.

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So forget the Fauci ouchie. There's your cure for COVID right there, apparently.

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Andrew Womack. Well, he says that because that is what is told of John G.

42:15

Lake and Charismatics to this day. Believe that lie. And it is a lie.

42:20

It absolutely is a lie. Now looking at this, by the way, Andrew Womack's college,

42:26

Karis Bible College, they had to shut down because of COVID. So many of their students got sick. Now, the claim is that the bacteria died upon contact with John G.

42:37

Lake's skin. And he challenged them to look at the foam, look at the bacteria under a microscope.

42:45

Two problems with this story. A hundred years ago, there were no electron microscopes. All you had was a basic microscope, a light microscope that many of us use, you know, back in when we were in school.

42:57

And pretty basic, right? So you've got this base, you've got the little mirror under there, you've got the platform with the little clips that hold the slide, and the objective lens, and then your eyepiece.

43:08

So now I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a smart man, but the way this works is light comes in, right, comes in this way, hits the mirror, right, and is reflected up through the little clear piece there on the stage, and up into the objective lens, and you look down, and that's how whatever you're looking at is illuminated.

43:34

What's going to happen if you put a man's hand on top of that platform?

43:41

Any light getting through there? No. No. I mean, it's just absurd on its face.

43:47

And the only way, and I don't, I had to do the research on this, but I actually watched a video on a lady with a background of science was talking about this very story.

43:57

The only way to see the bacteria that cause the bubonic plague, and I guess probably most bacteria, is to stain the bacteria.

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Funny thing happens when you stain the bacteria, they die. So this is just fabricated, it's not true.

44:13

He was a fraud. There's a picture of John G. Lake in his car. John G. Lake, miracle healing power.

44:19

He traveled around with this sign claiming to be able to heal people. Now the picture on the left, that is also

44:26

John G. Lake, a picture of him. One day he decided, he got this harebrained idea, that he was going to portray himself as an

44:33

Arab mystic. And he came out dressed like an Arab, called himself

44:38

Abdul bin Shinnadar. Complete fraud. Complete fraud.

44:48

Lake had an affair with a 17 year old girl named Carol Goodnow from South Africa who moved to the

44:55

United States to be with him. He was a pedophile. He was 38 years old, she was 17.

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And, like John Alexander Dowie, like Charles Fox Parham, like Frank Sanford, John G.

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Lake also claimed to be Elijah. Smith Wigglesworth.

45:14

Smith Wigglesworth, now this is a British fella, from John Samson's old stomping grounds, I guess.

45:20

Smith Wigglesworth was a British evangelist. He's known for distributing prayer claws.

45:26

He took the account in Acts chapter 19 of handkerchiefs and prayer claws going from the Apostle Paul, and made that a normative thing, and that's a again, that's something common that you'll see today in the charismatic movement.

45:38

Some of these televangelists, TV preachers, they'll send you an anointed prayer cloth. Of course, if you send the money first, but if you send the money, then they'll send you an anointed prayer cloth, and that will heal what ails you.

45:50

Just keep the money coming. Smith Wigglesworth said this, quote,

45:55

It is a disgrace for a believer to go to a doctor. You see this recurring theme here.

46:04

I'll only pray for you once, said Smith Wigglesworth, to pray twice is unbelief. To one sick person who returned a second night, he said,

46:12

Didn't I pray for you last night? You were full of unbelief. Get off this platform. Smith Wigglesworth's distinctive, the thing for which he was most well known, is that he claimed to be able to see the demon of whatever sickness you had.

46:30

So if you had cancer, he could see the demon of cancer that was attached to your body. If you had arthritis, he could see the demon of arthritis.

46:37

And he believed that the only way to dislodge said demon from the person was to punch it off or kick it off.

46:47

So he would literally go up to people, sick people, and punch them and kick them. Just like we see

46:55

Jesus and the Apostles doing in the New Testament. And he said,

47:01

I don't hit them, I hit the devil. This, Smith Wigglesworth, was the inspiration for Todd Bentley, who was known for kicking and punching people.

47:13

But watch this, I want to show you a clip from the Sid Roth program. Sid Roth is talking about one of the tales that is told of Smith Wigglesworth.

47:22

Watch this. Welcome to my world, where it's naturally supernatural.

47:33

I have read of the great men and women of faith. One in particular intrigues me so much.

47:40

His name, Smith Wigglesworth. He had some of the most outrageous miracles

47:48

I ever heard of in my life. Let me give you one example. Some parents had a two -month -old baby, dying in the hospital.

47:59

The parents kidnapped the child, took the child to a Smith Wigglesworth meeting, and Smith looks at the child, looks at the parents, and says,

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Can I do what God tells me to do? Well, what would you do if you were the parents? The child's dying anyway, right?

48:14

He takes the baby, two -month -old, throws the baby against the wall!

48:22

The baby! Then, the baby's on the floor. Have you ever seen someone play soccer?

48:30

Have you ever seen them kick a soccer ball? He does that with the baby.

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The baby falls into the congregation. No crying.

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Is it dead? One hundred percent healed.

48:53

No crying. Is that not shocking?

49:03

That's demonic. That is demonic. One of the charismatic mantras that you hear all the time today in the charismatic movement, what

49:14

God does for one, He'll do for you. And so people hear about this story, they see

49:23

Sid Roth reenacting it on his program, and they're at home and they're like, Well, my kid is sick.

49:32

My neighbor's kid is sick. What God does for one, He'll do for you.

49:40

And lest you think that there are not people in this world dumb enough, stupid enough, to believe this kind of stuff, the very fact that he put it on his program and aired it all around the world, the very fact that this program remains on his

49:59

YouTube channel to this very day is inherent, self -evident proof that there are people dumb enough to believe this.

50:11

But he's one of God's greatest generals. A man who allegedly threw a baby against a wall and then kicked it.

50:24

Sid Roth and Dr. Michael Brown, good close personal friends. Good close personal friends for almost 40 years now.

50:36

And Dr. Michael Brown will not renounce this story. Amy Simple McPherson.

50:49

Sister Amy. Another one of the great generals of the charismatic movement.

50:55

Amy Simple McPherson is known as the Queen of Pentecostalism. She always wanted to be in theater as a kid.

51:02

She just had dreams of being an actress, being in theater. She married a man named Robert Simple. Robert Simple.

51:09

Shortly after they got married, they went to China believing that they would be given the gift of tongues upon getting there.

51:15

Of course, that did not work out. But her husband died just two months after they arrived in China.

51:21

Got sick and died. Amy came back to the United States and gave birth to their firstborn child just a month later after arriving back in New York.

51:31

Then she married a man named Harold McPherson and they moved to Chicago. Now, Amy began preaching multiple nights per week leaving her husband

51:42

Harold at home to care for the children. She decided that God called her to preach and so she went out and did so multiple nights per week and she believed that the

51:55

Holy Spirit wanted her to preach to do this work despite the very clear teachings of 1

52:02

Timothy chapter 2 and 3 that preachers, elders are to be men.

52:08

But that didn't matter to her. So she ignored that biblical parameter. She also ignored the biblical parameter found in Titus chapter 2 where the older women are to teach the younger women to do what?

52:21

To be workers where? At home. Being subject to their own husbands.

52:26

No, she didn't care about that either. She left her children with her husband at home and she went out gallivanting around the countryside preaching.

52:39

Left her husband with the kids. Dear friends, if a woman cannot abide by the biblical parameters 1

52:46

Timothy chapter 2, 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus chapter 2, then it doesn't matter anything else.

52:54

I care nothing to hear about anything else they would say about the Bible if they can't follow those biblical parameters.

53:04

Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, she was a street preacher.

53:10

She was very odd, but she would go out in the street and she would literally do this. She would stand in the middle of the street corner staring up at the sky and she would just stare there for the longest time staring up at the sky blankly, sometimes with her hand raised up, just staring into the sky.

53:28

And of course that drew a crowd, right? Because people were like, what is this woman doing? And so it drew a crowd. And once a crowd came, then she started doing her thing and started preaching.

53:37

She went on preaching tours all around the United States and performed healing meetings.

53:43

And then she actually started a church. She opened the Angeles Temple. That's not a typo.

53:49

It is a U .S. Angeles Temple. This was the largest quote -unquote church in the United States.

53:55

Absolutely massive. Amy Semple McPherson was a rock star in her day.

54:01

She was a household name. Everybody knew about Amy Semple McPherson.

54:06

She was an evangelical equivalent of a movie star.

54:12

Wildly, wildly popular. There you see, that's a picture of her preaching inside of the

54:18

Angeles Temple and you can see the massive number of people there. And she was very theatrical.

54:23

Remember, she always wanted to be in theater. Very theatrical. This is a picture of her one particular service.

54:31

She rode in the church on a motorcycle, dressed as a female police officer. Very theatrical.

54:36

So she was hyper -seeker sensitive. She was the Ed Young Jr. of her day.

54:43

The Steven Furtick of her day. Female version of that. So she was seeker sensitive before seeker sensitive was cool.

54:51

Very odd incident, though, in Amy Semple McPherson's life. So she disappeared one day, allegedly disappeared on the beach and just vanished and nobody knew where she was.

55:04

Well, the claim was she disappeared while out on the beach and so thousands of people, about 5 ,000 people, civilians, police officers, even scuba divers converged trying to find the body of Amy Semple McPherson.

55:18

She just vanished, but they never did find her body. A number of days passed. Interestingly, another person was reported missing at just about the same exact time.

55:28

Almost to the day. A guy named Kenneth Ormiston. Kenneth Ormiston worked for Amy Semple McPherson and they both vanished at the exact same time.

55:37

Isn't that interesting? Kenneth Ormiston was married, you see. They both vanished at the same time.

55:44

And the claim was that, well, after a number of days over a week, then finally all of a sudden,

55:53

Amy Semple McPherson called her mother on the telephone and said, Mother, it's okay, I'm alive.

55:59

Apparently called her from Mexico, the claim was. Called her from Mexico, said I'm alive, but I've been kidnapped.

56:06

She claimed that she was pushed into the car by this couple that asked her to pray for their sick baby.

56:12

So she said that this couple, I went over to pray for their baby and they shoved me into their car, drove me off into Mexico and put me in a cabin kidnapped her and tied her up.

56:23

When they left the cabin one day, she managed to free herself. She said that she was able to cut the bonds, cloth bonds, with a tin can that she found in the cabin and she escaped and left the cabin and made her way back up to California.

56:40

Well, it's interesting. The police really got involved in this and they started investigating because things just didn't quite add up with Sister Amy's story because they looked at her shoes and the clothes that she was wearing and they were basically pristine.

56:55

They weren't dirty, they weren't ragged. Didn't really match up with someone who claimed to have been kidnapped, thrown into a car, tied up in a cabin and managed to escape by using a tin can.

57:05

So what obviously happened, Amy Semple McPherson and Kenneth Ormiston had an affair and they faked, they made up the whole story.

57:15

It's a charlatan. William Branham. William Branham is the father of the post -World

57:21

War II healing revival movement. Branham taught that only those who accepted his teachings would be saved.

57:29

He prophesied that all of the world's denominations would be consumed by the Roman Catholic controlled

57:34

World Council of Churches and Branham said that this would happen just before the rapture and the destruction of the world, which he prophesied would happen in the year 1977.

57:45

Well, we're a few years past 1977, aren't we? And yet we're still here. He denounced the

57:52

Trinity as a demonic doctrine. I've actually got audio of William Branham saying this and he said, and I quote,

57:58

Trinitarianism is of the devil, thus saith the Lord. It's oneness theology.

58:06

What T .D. Jakes is to this day. Modalism. He proclaimed himself to be the angel of Revelation 3 verse 14 and he also claimed to be, and I'll give you two guesses and three guesses to them.

58:21

Elijah. Elijah. These people were fascinated with Elijah.

58:28

So, false prophet, charlatan. Catherine Kuhlman.

58:34

Catherine Kuhlman. Along with Amy Semple McPherson, the most famous female evangelist,

58:42

Catherine Kuhlman was the inspiration for Benny Hinn to do what he is doing today.

58:47

Watch this short clip of Catherine Kuhlman. The church is precious.

58:53

Oh, if you only knew how precious is the church. How precious is the bride of Christ in glorious.

59:09

How precious is the bride of Christ. It's the father's gift to his son.

59:20

You can't love without giving. The greatest gift that is possible for him to give.

59:30

He shall receive power. Just in case you've been sleeping a little too well at night,

59:42

I wanted to I wanted to show you that. So, Catherine Kuhlman, world's most famous female faith healer.

59:55

1933, she settled in Denver, Colorado and started the Denver Revival Tabernacle and served as the pastor there.

01:00:03

By the way, of course, if you see a church with a female pastor, you have neither a pastor nor do you have a church.

01:00:10

She pastored another church in Pennsylvania. She once invited a man named Burroughs Waltrip to preach at her church.

01:00:17

Burroughs Waltrip, though, had a wife and two children that he left to be with Catherine Kuhlman.

01:00:24

They got married. The marriage only lasted about seven years. She later, shockingly, denied ever having married

01:00:32

Burroughs Waltrip. She was actually asked about it because that was a problem back then when she got divorced for her ministry and so she was asked about it by a reporter and she said that she never actually married

01:00:44

Burroughs Waltrip. She said they never took the vow. She said, we were going to but she said I passed out before the vows were said.

01:00:51

Well, that's a lie because there's actually a photograph of her marriage certificate. She was just a liar, homewrecker, false prophet.

01:01:00

But she was Benny Hinn's inspiration. You look at old video clips of Catherine Kuhlman and look at video clips of Benny Hinn today and they're the same person.

01:01:09

Benny Hinn has aped a lot of her mannerisms, the way she did things and Catherine Kuhlman wore a white dress,

01:01:16

Benny Hinn wears a white suit. So they're basically the same person. Oral Roberts, many of you remember him.

01:01:26

He is the one who really began to bring into the evangelical mainstream the prosperity gospel, prosperity theology.

01:01:37

He was reading one day in his Bible, 3 John 2, Beloved I pray that in all things you may prosper and be in good health even as your soul prospers.

01:01:44

And he had an epiphany and his light bulb came on, even though he completely misinterpreted that verse.

01:01:52

Bad hermeneutics. But it just like, here it is, right here, God wants us to be wealthy and he showed it to his wife and look, look, look, look at what

01:02:03

I found. And the prosperity theology was then just made mainstream in the evangelical world.

01:02:10

Kenneth Hagin is referred to, rightly, I believe, as the father of the modern word -faith movement.

01:02:18

They sometimes refer to Kenneth Hagin as Dad Hagin. Kenneth Hagin was known for claiming visions of Jesus, claims that he got saved after he supposedly died and went to hell, just very bizarre.

01:02:33

Andreas has done some good videos on that, by the way, on his YouTube channel. Kenneth Hagin was, he was also a plagiarist.

01:02:39

He extensively plagiarized several different people. Kenneth Copeland is the grand poobah of the word -faith movement, the prosperity gospel today.

01:02:54

He is the kingpin of it, really. He began as a pilot for Kenneth Hagin and listened to a lot of Kenneth Hagin's tapes and then formed his own ministry.

01:03:05

And I believe, I can say this, and I say it without any hyperbole, I genuinely believe that Kenneth Copeland is demon -possessed.

01:03:15

I genuinely believe that. He has uttered some of the most jaw -dropping, blood -curdling heresies that any depraved mind could ever come up with.

01:03:25

Just a rank, rank heretic, prolific false prophet. Now, I want to bring your attention to this passage of Scripture to set up my next video clip.

01:03:36

Acts chapter 3, 1 through 6. You're familiar with this, and as we read through this, look at the two phrases that I have highlighted here because it's going to be pertinent to our next video.

01:03:47

Now, Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called

01:03:59

Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple. Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked an alms.

01:04:07

And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us.

01:04:15

And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have

01:04:22

I none, but such as I have give

01:04:28

I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Look on us.

01:04:34

Silver and gold have I none. Now watch this video clip from the 1980s of Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland.

01:04:44

Brother Copeland, would you come and stand in my place? Lori, would you come and stand in Evan's place?

01:04:56

Evan, would you come stand by me? Now, Brother Copeland and your dear wife

01:05:13

Lori, would you look at us? Look on us. Silver and gold have we plenty.

01:05:37

Look on us. Silver and gold have we plenty. And they get a standing ovation.

01:05:50

False teachers are in and of themselves part of God's judgment. People want to have their ears tickled.

01:05:58

They will not endure sound doctrine. And so as a sign and an act of God's judgment against these people who will not endure sound doctrine, who will heap to themselves teachers who tickle the ears,

01:06:11

God gives them what they want. He gives them what they want.

01:06:18

As I conclude, I want to just do a kind of an interesting contrast here.

01:06:26

Think back through some of the people that we've been looking at, some of the generals of the charismatic movement, and I want to contrast some of the generals of the charismatic movement with some of the, and I hate to use this term, but some of the more well -known leaders in the cessationist movement.

01:06:45

Now, I don't like to refer to any man as a general or one man above another because we are all indwelt by the same

01:06:51

Holy Spirit. So I don't lift up well -known big -name preachers over anyone else.

01:06:58

In fact, many of you have heard me say this, and I'll say it again because I believe it with every fiber of my being.

01:07:06

All of the faithful shepherds out there, the faithful pastors out there who labor away in anonymity, who are known only to their local church and only to the

01:07:17

Good Shepherd himself, but these faithful men one day are going to be at the front of the line. Okay?

01:07:23

They're going to be the ones at the front of the line. But just to, for purposes of contrast here,

01:07:29

I want to show you some people, some men that all of us would be familiar with.

01:07:35

Contrast some of the more well -known charismatic generals with some of the more well -known cessationist preachers.

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Charismatics have John Alexander Dowie. As cessationists, we got

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John Calvin. Charismatics got John G. Lake. Cessationists have

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Jonathan Edwards. Charismatics have Charles Fox Parham. Cessationists have

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon. More modern days?

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Charismatics have Kenneth Copeland. We got Phil Johnson. Charismatics have

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Creflo Dollar. We got Votie Balcom. Charismatics have

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Joel Osteen. We got John MacArthur. I know which side

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I'm on. I know which side, of which side I would be more proud in a godly kind of a way.

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Not an arrogant way. Not a sinful way. But it's a contrast, is it not? It's a contrast.

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And it's notable. Riddle me this, Batman. Why is it that the movement that claims to have the most intimate relationship with God, the movement that claims dreams and visions from God and signs and wonders, the movement that claims to have the highest view of the

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Holy Spirit, why is it that it is that movement, the charismatic movement, that is the welcome home to the most brazen heretics, the most prolific false prophets, and the most obvious charlatans and hucksters ever to disgrace the name of Christ?

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Why is it that those people find a welcoming home in the charismatic movement, the very movement that claims to have the highest view of an intimate relationship with God and of the

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Holy Spirit? As a cessationist, I cede no ground to the charismatics in my pneumatology, in my doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit. As cessationists, you and I should cede no ground to the charismatics in our view of the

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Holy Spirit. It is not we who have a low view of the Holy Spirit. It is they who have a low view of the

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Holy Spirit of God. As a cessationist, I do not believe that someone can be indwelt by the third person of the triune

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God and teach the things they teach, utter the heresies they utter, exploit the poor and the sick and the desperate and the widows for personal financial gain, offer thousands of false prophecies, put words in God's mouth that He never said, and be indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit. That's not possible. If the Holy Spirit is strong enough to save us,

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He is strong enough to deliver us out of deception. And if these generals of God in the charismatic movement, so revered by the charismatic movement, if they were truly indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit of God would have dropped them to their knees under heavy conviction.

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But it never happened. And it doesn't happen with today's charismatic generals, either.

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It is they who have a low view of the Holy Spirit of God. Not us. Let's close in order of prayer.

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Father, it grieves all of us who are truly indwelt by Your Holy Spirit to see

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Your Holy Spirit so defamed, so maligned, so used by these wolves in sheep's clothing.

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This is not something that should surprise us because Your Word tells us that this would happen and it would get worse, and it is getting worse.

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But Father, we pray that for all of us who are Yours, all of the lost sheep that You have called to Yourself, who have come to and heeded the voice of the

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Good Shepherd, Father, we pray that we would be equipped in Your Word, sanctified in the truth of Your Word, to both teach sound doctrine and refute those who contradict it.

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For the health of Your Church, for the glory of Christ our King. It's in His name we pray. Amen.

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If somebody has the gift of miraculous healing, surely all he needs to do is to prove it.

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But let's face it, we've been battling with COVID and the so -called miracle workers went into hiding together with us.

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Cessationism is the view that certain miraculous gifts that stood as signs of an apostle, speaking in tongues, healing, prophecies, interpretation of tongues, gifts like that, ceased with the apostles.

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Cessationism has fallen out of favor because commitment to the authority of Scripture has fallen out of favor.

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When you turn on Christian TV, you don't see expositors of Scripture. John MacArthur or Steve Lawson, you see

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Joel Osteen, Joseph Prince, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Paula White. That's who you see because that's the mainstream.

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Speaking in tongues. You're going to speak out of your spirit. Don't worry about what it sounds like.

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Our understanding of speaking in tongues must be guided by the Scriptures, not our feelings.

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They were known languages that were capable of interpretation and not everybody speaks in tongues.

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If God speaks, it must be infallible, inerrant, and authoritative. And the

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Lord said to me, will you howl for me? I said, don't ask me to do that,

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Lord. There's no longer the need for the gift of prophecy speaking forth divine revelation from God.

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We have now the whole counsel of God. This word is the final word.

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The apostolic gifts have gone. They were never intended for our generation. We have everything that we need from the

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Holy Spirit today. It's hard to get anyone who's gone through that to come back and take a serious look at faith in Christ focused on the gospel rather than focused on these phony miracles.