The Cessationist Movie: Les Lanphere Interview

Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Reformed Rookie video channel. My name is Anthony Vigneault and I'm your

Reformed Rookie host, bringing you all things Reformed today. The goal of this channel and this podcast is to take the deep -rooted truths of the

Reformed tradition and help you see the beauty in them and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better.

Understanding these truths will help us better know the God of the Scriptures and better help us appreciate

His plan of salvation. Well, I'm very excited today with the guest that I have on. His name is

Les Lanphier. He's a director and a filmmaker and also a Christian man of God. He's made movies for Hollywood and movies on theological topics like Calvinism, Spirit and Truth, which is about the

Holy Spirit, and his latest one, which is called Cessationist, and it's causing quite a stir on social media and elsewhere.

Les, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. Oh, my pleasure.

What else can you tell us about yourself so that we can get to know you a little bit better? Well, like you said,

I got just a very providential opportunity to work in Hollywood films when this millionaire in West Palm Beach, Florida, purchased an existing visual effects studio and just sort of fell out of the sky in Port St.

Lucie for some weird reason where I live. And, you know, I had my new

Photoshop and I was a designer and stuff like that. And he he gave this sort of like open call to the city.

Like anybody who knows anything, come try out for this this job. And so like 25 young people came and they hired us.

And they like the first movie I was working on was Transformers three. And then the

Smurfs and these sort of CG mixed with live action movies that were coming out.

And so that was just this amazing opportunity. And then I got opportunities after that.

And then I started a podcast. Podcast was very successful for what it was.

It was Reform Theology and we would drink beer, craft beer on every episode. So it was these these two very popular or sort of like trendy things that were happening at the same time that we were that we were a part of.

And so that got kind of popular. And because. I had this sort of podcast audience and I had some experience in filmmaking,

I came up, you know, I had the idea, hey, would people like to see a movie about Calvinism?

And I ended up doing a Kickstarter because people seemed pretty excited. And then the rest is history.

So the the the the Kickstarter was successful, raised some money and made

Calvinist and then went from there. Yeah. In fact, that's how I heard about the the cessationist movie.

In fact, I just got to represent show you a little. Yeah. We were part of the Kickstarter program.

So you had no formal training in film or anything like that? Not before.

Not before, you know, this film studio falling out of the sky. Yeah.

We were taught. But yeah. Yeah. The stuff that you've put out is phenomenal. I mean, artistically and, you know, photographically, it's it's beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I my whole goal, you know, there's lots of theology documentaries and stuff that are sort of out there.

And my whole goal is to just, like, make it really fun to watch and, you know, be able to keep the attention of even younger audiences and not be dry.

Because obviously, you think about theology, teaching theology is, you know, sounds like it's going to be very boring. So I think theologies are exciting.

So I try to express that in the movies that I make. Well, if that was your goal, home run.

I mean, I love you. So I love the broken heart. I mean, that is just I love to see those in all the movies that it's so well done.

I can't I can't tell my audience enough to to go watch these movies. We're going to be watching Calvinist and Spirit and Truth, probably a church in later on in the month at the end of Fellowship Sunday.

We're we're there till like four o 'clock. So, you know, we watch a movie at the end. We'll watch half and continue with the next week.

But with that. So tell me, how did you come to come to know the Lord less? Well, I grew up in a pretty,

I wouldn't say agnostic. I think my parents both believed in Christianity to some level, but we never went to church or anything.

It was very, very. I wouldn't even say we were nominally Christians. It was just sort of like, yeah, there's probably a

God, but, you know, we don't we don't do anything about it. When I was 19,

I was basically, you know, not going to overplay the drama, but I was sort of a druggie and sort of like had no purpose or direction in my life.

And a friend that I grew up with, he had just sort of rediscovered the gospel and was excited about it.

And I was very, very depressed. Just, you know, my life was going nowhere. And he shared the gospel with me one day.

We're driving back to State College, Pennsylvania, Penn State campus. I wasn't going to school there, but I was drinking like I was going to school there.

And he shared the gospel with me. And, you know,

I all I could tell him before that is that I wanted to be a good person.

I knew that I wasn't. I knew that I was, you know, going nowhere and things were bad. So he shared the gospel with me.

And I remember repeating over and over again in the car because he had just so clearly expressed it.

He said, Jesus, he said, you're a sinner and you deserve to die. Jesus never sinned and he didn't deserve to die.

So when he died, he was dying for your sins. And I just sat there repeating he died for my sins.

So he died for them. So, I mean, I had heard that phrase a million times in my life, but I didn't really understand what it meant.

And so it was that idea of substitution that I just it never had made sense to me.

And it clicked in that moment. And, you know, that conversation is like I got in that broken down, crappy green

Jeep and one kind of person. And I got out. I remember stepping out of the

Jeep and it was just like like like what what just happened? Like everything is different now.

Like I know that my life has just changed. You know, I couldn't describe it. So that night I read the gospel of Matthew on a computer in my roommate, my roommate's computer on some

Web site. And because I didn't even own a Bible. And so for the next week,

I would stare at the ceiling as I'm going to sleep. With just this stupid smile on my face, saying like, you're you're real, like you're really it had just like it.

It just overwhelmed me so much that I went from being, you know, now I know the words for it.

But I was a dead sinner who had no life in me. And I was in that in that in an instant

I was made alive. So I have one of the you know, I have a very dramatic testimony. And so I quit all the drugs and I got away from all those friends.

And, you know, the Lord delivered me from my cigarette addiction and like every, you know, a lot of things changed.

Obviously, I had a long way to go, but a lot of things change very dramatically, very quickly.

And so, yes, it was it was a pretty dramatic testimony. That's great. So did you start going to church right away or did it take a little time?

I well, I didn't have one. So my buddy, immediately after that happened, his grandparents made him move to Florida, which is where I live now.

That was in we were in Pennsylvania. And I didn't know I didn't know anything about churches.

So on this campus, I just walked to the nearest church that I knew about. It was they call it the

Dorito Church because it's like shaped like a giant triangle. And I went inside and they recited the

Lord's Prayer. And I had just read the Lord's Prayer. And I was like, this is so cool. They're like saying the thing that I just read about.

And they take this seriously. Turned out to be a Catholic church. But then we then

I ended up moving with my buddy down to Florida shortly after that. And then we started going to an international house of prayer as a prayer.

So it was the most in the most insane Pentecostal charismatic like experience.

It was like all women. They were rolling on the floor, laughing most of the time. People, it was absolute chaos.

They spoke in tongues more than they spoke in English. It was it was just an insane free for all.

But I, I at least knew that these were people that that love

Jesus. They talked about the Bible and when they spoke in English, they talked about the Bible.

And it was. Yeah, a lot of yeah, a lot of things needed to be improved from there.

But yes, I started going to church sort of kind of shortly after.

So we can safely say that church wasn't reformed, right? That was very much not reformed.

So how did you now move from being coming a Christian and go into a

Pentecostal church? I hopped church into reform theology. How'd that happen? So so there was that church.

And then my wife and I got together and we got married and it was probably like three or four churches later.

We were slowly getting better theology, slowly. Just I think

I was just drawn to like we should probably take this a little more seriously. And then I ended up in a

Calvary Chapel. Yeah. Which is pretty, you know, seemed pretty solid. And they were teaching the

Bible. And I was learning the Bible and I was going to Bible studies and, you know, making Christian friends. This this movement started within the

Calvary Chapel. And there were these young guys that had a Bible study and they started talking about this thing called

Calvinism. And it was not good. That's all I knew is that this

Calvinism thing is not good. And all those guys got kicked out of the church shortly after because they were they were doing something very dark and dangerous in the corners of the church.

They were talking about Calvinism. And so it became an issue and the pastor started preaching against it.

And I was in the young adults ministry. We started teaching against it. I had this

DVD called that somebody sort of handed it to me as contraband to to get me convinced.

And it was called Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism.

Yes. The director of that movie has also now become a Roman Catholic, I found out.

Very sad. Yeah. Bummer. But anyway, it was a helpful resource.

But it opened up talking about the history of it and where it came from.

And they talked about Pelagianism and how you're born a clean slate and this heresy called Pelagianism.

And as I'm watching it, I'm like, yeah, that's it. Pelagianism, we're born clean slates.

That's how you defeat Calvinism. But it took the absolute wrong lesson. And I started teaching these kids that were essentially

Pelagianism. And I was applauded by the young adults minister at the time because I was doing a good job of answering the

Calvinism questions. So anyway, shortly after that, I in order to really defeat this

Calvinism thing, because I was a fanboy of Calvary Chapel, I really started to study it and some

Paul Washer videos and, you know, kind of the same journey that you see in Calvinist.

That was those are the kinds of things that were awakening me to realize, like, oh, oh,

God, I did choose me. And that experience that I had in the Jeep that one day that I was like, it wasn't a choice that I made.

It was like I was running from God and he finally caught up to me and he he took hold of me, you know, so I saw the beauty in it.

And, you know, just did you see that? Did you watch the George Bryson debate with James White?

Was that no, no, no. Yeah, I I've seen it now. But, yeah, it wasn't that time because he was a

Calvary Chapel guy. Right. Yeah. So now that you came to embrace

Calvinism and the doctrines of grace, how did that change your perspective on your

Christianity? I mean, it just completely changed the way, you know, people say big

God, right? Big God theology. And that's really it just became that the absolute focus was no longer how does

God serve people? You know what? The focus isn't like you right right before I became a

Calvinist. My focus was was I had just become really confident with evangelism and I would go around and share the gospel.

I think it was I don't really remember much, but I think it was a pretty OK -ish gospel. But the sinner's prayer was like key.

And that's how I got the notches on my belt. So I would pray the sinner's prayer with people that there's no way that they understood who

Christ was by the end of those conversations looking back. But so so that's when it all sort of shifted.

And then I started I just immediately realized that like what I'm doing is essentially a sales pitch.

And I'm trying to convince people based on their own emotions and their own wants and needs that to give

Jesus a try. And then I just realized that that that's not the gospel for one.

But even more than that, that clearly communicating the gospel is the most important thing.

If we actually believe that God's word is powerful and it's the thing that changes people's hearts.

So it's my gospel. Immediately, I just realized that I needed to get the gospel right at all times.

And you don't mess with this message. You don't water it down. You give it as clearly as you possibly can.

So that was a big thing. And then over the years, I started to see how important reformed worship was and how

God actually cares about how we approach him in worship. And it's not just like he'll take whatever you can give him.

And and yeah, so yes. Amen. Amen. So the way you present the gospel is different now than when back way back when.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. At least in practice.

I'm not sure. I definitely I would say that my my emphasis on certain things changed.

But, you know, I I did understand the gospel and I think that I understood and I was communicating the basics.

I think it was enough to save a person even when I was an Armenian. But yes, the way that I communicate the gospel definitely changed.

Right. So most people like to say God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And then when

I, you know, I was I was taught by a particular teacher. He said, go through the book of Acts, because this is where the apostles and the disciples are bringing the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the outer parts of the world and count how many times they use the word love.

So I went from chapter one to chapter twenty eight and the word love doesn't appear in the book of Acts at all.

Well, what what appears in the book of Acts over and over is repent, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. God commands all men everywhere to repent, repent, repent. The word repent is used a dozen times.

The word love is never used. So they never they never use the love of God as the impetus to get someone to to pick

Jesus. Right. It was always the sinfulness of humanity to break you down.

You know, so you you fall to your knees in repentance and then you cling to the only thing or the only one who can save you.

So that revolutionized, you know, the way the way I I explain the gospel. I mean,

I don't shy away from God's love. I mean, we we hear about God's love all the time, but it's a particular love.

Right. It's not this indiscriminate. God loves everybody the same type of love.

It's the kind of love that a husband has for his wife. And I usually ask, you know, do you think a husband should love his wife the same way he loves every other woman?

Right. That's a special covenantal love. And again, when you come to an understanding of Reformed theology, you understand that that is a marital covenant that we're in.

And he's he's never going to divorce us, you know, because Christ has has accomplished the perfect work on the cross.

So nothing to the cross I bring simply to the cross I cling. Yeah. Yeah. I went on a missions trip right after when

I was still in Calvary Chapel, sort of hanging on by a thread, figuring out if I should leave or not. I went on this mission trip and it was the most like it was just I came face to face with the difference.

It was a we were in Peru. So all these people spoke Spanish. We were we went into one of these villages, you know, we're helping them build a church or whatever.

And they set up this way to share the gospel with all these kids. So all these white, you know, white

Americans come in, everybody's excited. The kids are excited. They run out. We're giving them candy and stuff. So it's fun or whatever.

And then they put them all up on this little bleacher thing they had set up in their little village. So all these kids are sitting up there and then they did this skit and it was

David and Goliath. So they had one of the smaller dudes come out and he played

David and then they had Goliath come out and they did a little skit. And it was like, oh, they get to learn about how

David defeated Goliath. And then they had somebody there translating to Spanish. So they do this whole skit.

They teach the story of David and Goliath. And then this woman comes over and she says, now, who would like to accept

Jesus into their heart today? And all these little kids start raising their hands and they're excited and they pray the sinner's prayer.

It was I'm just like in absolutely, you know, I'm in my cage stage for one, like by everything, it's not

Calvinism. But I mean, there is absolutely no way these kids they don't know anything about Jesus.

You didn't tell them anything about their sin. They felt like because they did something

Jesus -y, that was all they needed to do. And now you can just ask, do you want to accept

Jesus into your heart? And it was just like, man, like you don't understand that it has to like you have to present the problem that needs to be solved and then present the solution to that problem.

And you let God's word penetrate their hearts and, you know, all of that. So that was probably the last month that I was there at that church.

Yeah, so the church has a lot of work to do. We got to get the gospel right, especially considering that we're the creature, not the creator, you know.

That's right. All right. So the reason I had you on the show is this movie, Cessationist.

Why this movie and why now less? And before you answer, I'm going to take a little prophetic guess as to why you did this movie.

You were in your prayer closet, praying in tongues, and God gave you this vision and spoke to you directly and said, make this movie

Cessationist. Am I right? Nope. It actually wasn't even the movie wasn't even my idea.

So I made Calvinist Spirit and Truth totally just products of the things that I'm passionate about.

And then some guys approached me probably a year before we made the movie.

And they said, hey, we want to make a movie about cessationism. And I'm like, I don't really care about this topic much.

But if you guys can put some footage together, maybe I'll help you edit it or something, you know, whatever. Because people do that.

People like come to me with ideas every once in a while and ask if I'd be willing to help. And I'm usually like, show me something, you know, maybe, maybe.

But these guys called like six months later, and they had shots and footage at G3.

And it looked they they found a very good cinematographer who they were. He was just sort of learning.

So he was he was cheap. And we ended up using him for the whole movie. And he's he is his name's

Josh Vandermeer. He's amazing. So they they sent me this footage and a trailer that they had made this little teaser trailer.

And the footage looked great. The trailer was so boring. It was just it was just talking heads with like violin music, you know, talking about this, you know, stationism.

So I was like, um, send me this. Send me the trailer without the music. And so I cut together like, you know, hard hitting like controversy, inspiring trailer out of what they had made.

And they were like, oh, yeah, this is so exciting. And as I went through that process, I'm like,

OK, this could be this could be really fun. And like I said, it's not really a subject

I was really into. I knew I was a cessationist, but I didn't really study it.

I wasn't super excited about the subject matter. And then so we did a Kickstarter. We got it funded.

And then as I sort of got into the content, I was like, I kind of became more and more angry at the existence of this movement.

And really just the scandal of how it all started and how like how it's been treated with kid gloves like the entire time it's existed.

And we've just sort of allowed it to spread into the entire church. No real pushback.

Nobody's calling it like blasphemous. And the movie is not not, you know, if the things that I'm saying right now sound a little harsh to people, the movie is very even keel.

It's not it's not hitting anybody too hard. It's just sort of presenting a primer on on the subject of cessationism and especially over against charismaticism and Pentecostalism.

But I personally like I think this is a way bigger deal than people understand.

And history is not on the side of this movement. And if this movement had popped up in any earlier time in history, it would have been met with with some serious consequences within the church.

And these people would be called heretics if it was if it was any other time. Especially in today's day and age where people think that goosebumps means it's exciting and stuff.

So, you know, with the tongues movement and, you know, the prophecy movement, it actually feeds into the sinful, prideful nature of man to want to stand out, you know, in front of everybody out, you know, be highlighted, you know, when tongues is the least of the gifts.

And we're not supposed to make a name for ourselves. It's about the name of Jesus. So before we move on, what what exactly is a cessationist for those people who are out there who may not know what cessationist means?

Yeah, so cessationism is like, technically, it's a response to the the movement that began in the 1900s, early 1900s, which was called

Pentecostalism. And then as things sort of evolved over time, this other movement, technically, it's kind of the same thing, though, called charismaticism.

So we have charismatics, we have Pentecostals in the church. And eventually a response started to come about where the argument was being made that, like, no, the gifts that you're claiming to have, they ceased, they came to an end in, there's sort of different answers and different, like, absolute reasons for why people think that cessation, that the gifts have ceased.

But basically, the claim is that the gifts have ceased around the end of the canonization of the

New Testament, or with the last apostle, or shortly after the death of the last apostle.

But in any case, around the year 100, maybe 150, something in that area, but around the apostolic age.

And the idea is the gifts of prophecy, tongues, and healing, these miraculous gifts that can't be faked, can't be manufactured, they were given specifically to the apostles and the early church that was associated with those apostles.

And those gifts had a purpose, and the purpose was to validate the message of the apostles and the prophets that were within the early church.

So if they have a purpose, and that purpose has come to an end, then the gifts themselves ended because they were successfully retired, you can say.

And so, that would mean that everything that Pentecostals and Charismatics are doing today, it's fake.

It isn't even, it doesn't even reflect what the New Testament says these gifts are, and so all they're doing is faking it.

So are you saying that nothing supernatural happens anymore? No healings at all?

Yeah, so that's the good question. I said yeah, but I mean, no, that's not what

I'm saying. That is the obvious next question, of course. No, we absolutely believe that God heals.

God is a God of miracles. God can do whatever he wants.

We're not putting God in a box. We're just saying that miracle workers, specifically the miracle workers who were able to prophesy, speak in tongues, heal on command, which some of these things we can go into more detail on, that God gave those gifts to individual people in order to validate that they were special.

And so, what we're saying essentially has ceased is that God gives those offices or those giftings to individual people so that they can now walk around with the ability to do these things.

Like, I'm a prophet, and I can speak on behalf of God whenever I choose to, or often, or it's something that I'm known for.

There were people in New Testament who actually had that gift, the ability to speak in tongues.

We see in 1 Corinthians that a lot of people had this ability to speak in foreign languages, and so much so that they were abusing it.

So, that's how free they were to just use this gift as they saw fit.

They actually needed guidance from the Apostle Paul on how to properly use the gift.

And then healing, yes, God heals, and we're told to pray for people to be healed, but nobody walking around today has the ability to walk up to somebody and say, cancer, be gone.

And it actually successfully goes away because of that.

The apostles had that power. It seems that some people in 1

Corinthians had that power, which would make it seem like the church in general had people who could do this.

And yeah, I am very confident that nobody has that ability today.

And on your Facebook page, you have a Facebook page on cessationist movie, correct?

That's what it is. Usually, in fact, I chime in there every once in a while when people are talking about this, and I say, can you give me the name of someone who has the gift?

Because it'd be real easy to contact that person and bring them to a hospital, the

PQ unit at a hospital, the veterans home, and let's see what you have.

But no one's ever given me a name. And I basically explain to them because they'll push back and say, well, you don't believe that God heals.

That's not even close to Christianity. And I say, look, I do believe that God heals. But what

I have and what you have are identical in that we can go to an all powerful

God. We pray and God can heal. So I pray for people to be healed. And in the past, people have been healed.

And it's God the one. God is the one who's doing it. But it's not that I have a gift or you have a gift.

We both have access to the same God who can heal. So, you know, nobody's given me a name.

Yeah, they're very offended at the request for them to prove these claims, which,

I mean, it's just incredibly ironic. They're making the claim that they know people that can do these things, but then they don't want to have to prove it.

And they'll say that that's testing God or they'll, you know, they'll just there's that you are the one who's the wicked generation that's seeking for a sign like Jesus condemned.

But that's not at all what's happening. Jesus was condemning those who, in order to believe in Jesus, requested a sign.

So, oh, you're the Messiah. Show me. Prove it. Prove it with a sign. But I already believe in Jesus.

I don't need a sign to believe in Jesus. I need a sign. I need proof that what you're claiming to be able to do, you can actually do it because anybody can make a claim.

And so to say that it's sinful or arrogant or whatever, to just say, prove to me that you're able to do an extraordinary thing that you're claiming to be able to do before I believe you.

In other words, I'm not just going to be gullible and believe every single claim anybody makes.

And, you know, like I I'm a cessationist. But if I see somebody speaking in tongues, like like the

Bible says, if I see somebody able to like a Christian who's got good fruit as a

Christian and is actually able to walk up to somebody and and heal them of like a missing limb or something.

Their limb grows back or or cure them of blindness or cancer or leprosy or something, you know, something extraordinary that there's absolutely no explanation for.

If I see that, then I just stop being a cessationist. And that's

OK. I'm not so wed to this position that I that I have to have it and I'm going to deny this miracle

I just witnessed. I am absolutely open to witnessing miracles. But if you can't show it to me, then what am

I supposed to believe? I believe in something I can't see. And that's a big part of their their issue, too, is they they think they say that we're supposed to live by faith and not by sight, which is which is true.

Obviously, we're supposed to live by faith, not by sight. So if if somebody if I read in the

Bible that Jesus is now at the right hand of the father in heaven interceding on my behalf, there's no way for me to see that.

I can't I can't visibly see Jesus in heaven right now. So I have to take that by faith.

The nature of that claim is something that must be taken by faith. And I don't need a sign to prove it to me.

But the gifts, miracles in general, these aren't secret, invisible things that you're supposed to take by faith and say, even though I've never witnessed it,

I've never seen it. Every single claim I've ever heard about it was clearly demonstrated to be fake.

I'm supposed to just take that on faith that it's happening, even though.

So so the nature of miracles, the nature of healings, the nature of tongues, the nature of prophecy being predicted and coming true.

These things are all experienced. And that's that's OK. You're not supposed to take them by faith.

You're supposed to actually witness them. And what's the purpose to to make you in awe?

It's, you know, to to to be a signpost that points to Jesus. These are wonders.

These are signs. These are miracles. That's the whole purpose of them. Why would we think they're supposed to be taken by faith and not actually experienced?

Right. Isn't it odd that that they're they're upset that you're asking them to show you yet they'll fill a stadium full of people and that's

OK as long as they pay to get in. Yeah. Yeah. Not so good. And then and then if you do any investigation, you can it's you can find out that these people were paid to, you know, to show up and have their disease or whatever.

Or now the big thing is casting out demons. And guess why casting out demons is the popular thing, because there's no way to prove it.

You cannot you can't prove it. You can. OK, so somebody was acting really weird and now they're not.

You can't prove to me that a demon came out of this person. Isn't that convenient? The movie did a great job of showing that throughout the course of biblical history, there was three epochs of time that miracles were given.

Could you just flesh that out a quick. Yeah. So as the there's sort of a changing of the guard that happens throughout biblical history.

And the first big miracle worker was when God appeared to Moses and he gives him power to perform miracles to demonstrate, especially to the

Israelites. That was the main thing he needed to go back to Egypt and he had to show them all these miracles.

And so he was just God empowered him to do all these miracles to show that Moses is special.

Moses is chosen. He has an anointing on him. And and God is saying, look at what this man can do.

This is only possible because I've given him this ability. Listen to him. That's the whole point.

So he God is it's a signpost to point to Moses and say, this is an important man.

And then the same thing is true. Moses takes that takes those same powers and miracles to Pharaoh.

So it's it's all a demonstration that Moses is important. And then we see scripture being written by Moses.

And so as this this very important. Redemptive moment is happening.

God is pouring out into this man and after him would come Joshua. And Joshua does very similar miracles to Moses.

So and that's an interesting thing. We didn't really explore too much in the movie, but it's very interesting. There's there's the the master figure.

And then there's the disciple or the apostle figure. And so Moses has all these miracles.

And then he has an apostle that comes after him. And then after that, essentially, the miracles sort of dwindle. So that's what that's the first big epoch of miracle work of miracle working.

And it coincides with scripture being written. And that's not to say that all scripture has miracles going along with it.

But as as this general sort of like overview of scripture, these miracles, miracle worker is focused on Moses and then scriptures written.

And then the next big epoch is the prophets. And so.

Elijah and Elisha are also Elijah is the master.

And he has all these miracles that he's able to do. Elisha asks for to be able to do twice as many miracles, twice the blessing.

And that's passed on to him. But there's a changing of the guard there that happens with the prophets. And so something new and important is happening in a redemptive history.

And so God gives men the ability to work miracles, to point to them and say, now, now this is important.

Now you have to listen to these men because something very important is happening in redemptive history. And so the same pattern happens there.

And then one more time, that happens when the master arrives, who is filled with the

Holy Spirit and is anointed above anybody else. And that's Jesus Christ. And he's able to perform miracles like nobody else.

He's able to do things that that nobody else could do. And he just has command over nature in a way that nobody else ever had.

And then he passes those powers on to his apostles, to his disciples, and then they're able to do these things.

And the reason they were able to do these things is to, as a signpost appointed these men to say, these are the anointed chosen men of God and something big is happening.

Something is changing. Listen to them. This is important. So miracle workers, not, and that's not to say miracles, like creation itself is a miracle and regeneration is a miracle.

All of these things are miracles, but miracle workers, men who are able to do these things, those are reserved for very specific times in history, in biblical history.

That's a great distinction. Miracles still happen, but there are no miracle workers. It's all from God. And I think it's interesting, like you pointed out the three epochs of time.

The Exodus was a one -time event that was never duplicated. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is a one -time event, never duplicated.

You see Pentecost, that's a one -time event never to be duplicated, yet they try to repeat it over and over and over again.

And that's not what it's meant for. In fact, R .C. Sproul did a talk about that at MacArthur's Strange Fire Conference, when he talked about the permanency of Pentecost, it was a one -time event.

So the epochs of time coincide right with that. It's not something to be repeated over and over again.

So when a cessation says, I have all the evidence,

I can point to people who have been healed and who actually speak in tongues, what do you say to someone like that?

Well, I just want to see it. You can make any claim that you want to make.

So part of the way that you have actually witnessed what

Charismatics are doing, that's really the big thing, is what are they doing? They say that they're doing what the

New Testament church was doing. But once you start to define what those things were, what is prophecy, biblically speaking?

What is tongues? I think that's just the linchpin of the entire thing, tongues.

And then what is the gift of healing? And then there's actually two different ways that Charismatics blaspheme,

I would say, healing. But if you look at what the Bible actually defines those things as, and then you compare that to what the

Charismatics and Pentecostals are doing today, they're not doing the actual things that those who had those gifts were actually doing in the

New Testament. And tongues is easily the clearest, easiest one to demonstrate that.

But this tradition has been so allowed to infiltrate the church that they read 1

Corinthians 14. There's Acts, the book of Acts. Tongues shows up three different times in the book of Acts, maybe four if you count one of them.

And then 1 Corinthians chapter 14, there's a description. And one verse in chapter 13 about the tongues of angels.

But chapter 14, there's this prohibition or this reform that Paul is trying to give to the church on the way that they're using the gift of tongues.

And nobody in church history ever read that chapter and thought

Paul was describing two or three or even four different kinds of tongues.

Some charismatics say he's talking about four different kinds of tongues within just a few verses because they're just getting around the very clear explanation.

There's a very simple explanation to what Paul's saying in 1 Corinthians 14, and that's that these

Christians had the ability to speak in foreign languages and they were able to do it at will.

And they were standing up in front of the congregation and they were speaking in languages that the congregation didn't understand.

And Paul is just saying, there's no value to this. Why would you do this?

Why would you stand up in front of these people and talk in a language that they don't know?

And in that chapter, he points out the only reason you're doing that is to build yourself up, which is another way of saying to show off.

And charismatics, again, so all throughout history, it was always understood what

Paul was saying. They never thought he was talking about a secret prayer language. They never thought he was talking about anything else until this new interpretation comes in the early 1900s.

And now these charismatics read every single line in 1 Corinthians 14 wrong. They think that building yourself up is a good thing.

They think that speaking in mysteries is a good thing. Paul says that when you speak in tongues, you don't speak to men, but you speak to God.

And he's actually condemning that. He's saying, why would you publicly have a conversation just between you and God?

It's not helpful. And they think that's a good thing. Oh, it's good to just talk.

And then the whole prayer thing, Paul talks about speaking in tongues in prayer. And he says that your spirit prays.

He's like, yeah, on some level you're praying, but your mind is unfruitful. You don't even know what you're saying. The people around you don't know what you're saying.

So he's saying this is useless. There's nothing good about this. And if you understand what

Paul is talking about, that it's just foreign languages, then that all makes perfect sense. There's no reason to reach for some other kind of tongues that he's describing.

But because they've come up with this totally foreign idea of gibberish that anybody can do, you don't need the

Holy Spirit to speak gibberish. I can do it right now. It's not impressive. But what they were doing was incredibly impressive and impossible for any normal person to do.

And it's just the shameful reality of everything that charismatics are doing is they see the miraculous things that were happening in the

New Testament, and then they make fleshly versions of those things that literally anybody can do.

Anybody can prophesy the way they prophesy. Anybody can speak in tongues the way they speak in tongues.

Anybody can either pretend to heal people and they'd not be healed or to pray for healing.

Anybody can do that. So there's nothing miraculous about what they're doing, but they're claiming to have a gift from the

Holy Spirit. So you did a video on Facebook on 1 Corinthians 14, and it was excellent.

You stepped through each of the verses. So just real quick, when Paul says, for one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God, for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the

Spirit. Charismatics usually say, well, mysteries in the Spirit, these are deep spiritual truths. Why is that wrong,

Les? What is Paul really saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's comparing prophecy to tongues.

If you see how 1 Corinthians 14 opens up, he is telling them to pursue these gifts, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

But there's no break between verse 1 and verse 2. He says, especially that you may prophesy for the one who speaks in tongues speaks not to men but to God.

So he's trying to get them to focus on prophecy because prophecy is clear communication, either from God or from the scriptures, but you're talking in the common language.

So prophecy is better. It's an uplifting message from God or from the scriptures, and it's good for the congregation.

So Paul is saying, pursue prophecy because when you speak in a tongue, you speak not to men but to God.

And then he even clarifies that for no one understands him. So the reason that he says that tongues are less valuable than prophecy is because no one understands him.

The way you're using this gift is showing off by speaking a foreign language that you don't know.

That's not helpful for you. It's not helpful for them. But it is a real thing. That's the whole irony of what they're doing.

They have an actual gift. They actually can speak in a foreign language they don't know. And God, of course

God understands them because it is a real language. I mean, it's a very strange concept for us to wrap our minds around, but that's what they were doing.

And Paul is saying, this is so dumb, basically. You're using this amazing gift that God has given you in such a weird way that's not helpful to people.

It's not helpful to you. Only God can understand you. The people around you don't understand. And you're uttering mysteries.

So uttering mysteries, they take it as like, oh, that's so great. We're taking the mysteries from heaven and we're just saying them.

That's not at all what he means. He's saying you're speaking mysteriously when you should be speaking clearly to these people.

They should know what you're saying, but instead you're like speaking in riddles. It's all a condemnation.

He's saying what you're doing is so useless. And then, you know, in verse five, he says,

I do want you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. And that's because tongues are super useful.

If you understand it to be a foreign language that you yourself don't understand, then you're able to miraculously speak with people that you normally couldn't speak with.

What an amazing gift to be able to have. But if you use it with like people that speak your language and who have a common tongue, and then you're speaking in languages that they don't know, you're just completely abusing this gift.

And the only purpose, Paul says, that prophecy builds up the church, but the one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself.

So again, even that part, the reason you're here in this worship service is to build up the body.

And prophecy does that because you're speaking to the people. But if you get up in front of these people and you speak in tongues, you're building them up.

You're building yourself up, which is another way of saying you're puffing yourself up. You're showing off.

You're like, hey, everybody, look at me. Look at this amazing thing I can do that's useless to you.

But look at me. Look how cool I am. The whole thing is him saying all of these ways that you're using this gift is useless.

But of course there is a reason for it. Yeah, when you had gone through that and pointed out the fact that when he speaks a tongue not to men but to God, no one understands him, you said that's a negative thing.

And you showed how each one of you, this is not a positive thing that Paul's telling you to do.

This is a negative thing. It really clicked as I started looking through it again. I'm like, wow. That just completely changes the whole thrust of this portion of Scripture.

I mean, you really helped me and so many other people. I hope they watch that video on Facebook because you just go through it.

You took about 20 minutes and went through the whole thing. Now I look at it and I'm like, how can

I not see that anymore? Yeah, and the amazing thing is if you look at any commentary before the 1900s and most of them into the early 1900s before these people really got their claws into popular

Christianity, nobody thought this was good. They all understood that Paul was condemning this abuse that the

Corinthians were doing in the church. So it's not even like,

I didn't come up with it. It's what all of church history understood and then all of a sudden we have this brand new interpretation and then we have four different kinds of tongues being described within like 10 verses.

Wow. All right. So if tongues are negative here and prophecy is the thing that Paul wants us to do, don't you think less people still hear from God today?

Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice. Yeah. So people certainly are led by the

Lord. We hear Jesus's voice. We are his sheep. But in what way do we hear his voice?

Well, we hear the spirit crying Abba Father from within us, not audibly.

We don't hear those words of Abba Father, but we have this connection to our father.

We have this comfort through the Holy Spirit. We read the scriptures and we can understand them.

There's the actual internal calling that comes when we hear the gospel and understand it and we're regenerated.

There's this calling of Christ. So we hear Christ's voice in many different ways and we submit to our

Lord. So in every way that we want to describe submitting to Christ as our Lord and listening to him, in those ways we hear his voice.

But the audible voice of God is something that uniquely happened to people as they were as information was being revealed to them.

And so that only makes sense in the context of a prophet who's bringing information to God's people, whether that be in the

Old Testament or the New Testament. And we don't know exactly what that looked like in most cases.

Like if they heard an audible voice or if it was just sort of like just an understanding that they were overcome with and they knew that this was thus sayeth the

Lord. But I think people have been deceived into thinking that they're hearing

God audibly. But no, there's no reason to think that people are hearing

God's audible voice today. But we have his, we can hear his voice.

We can hear his voice by opening his word. We can hear his voice by it being read to us in church.

That's how you hear God's audible voice. He speaks to us every Sunday from a pulpit.

Amen. Amen. And it's interesting because when you go to John chapter 10, you know,

John is saying, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

a stranger they will not follow but they will flee from him for they do not know the voice of the strangers. And then

John says this, this figure of speech Jesus used with them. This wasn't supposed to be a literal hearing their voice, his voice type of situation.

This is a metaphor, a figure of speech for how, like you just said, the

Holy Spirit calls us and draws us to Jesus Christ. And when we see false teachers, we identify, we recognize that immediately because that's not in the scriptures.

You know, it's, it's very much different than what Jesus has taught us to do. So, you know, it's, it's not that still small voice or the voice from heaven or that internal, you know, dreams, visions type of thing.

So, yeah, it's, it's, it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. And I think that's, you know, if you look at Christianism, go, go hand in hand, like if you don't really appreciate that God is sovereignly operating in your life, he's leading you, he's guiding you, he's protecting you from false teachers, from false teaching.

Then, you know, if I believe those things, then I, then

I know exactly what it means to know Jesus's voice over against the voice of false shepherds, false teachers, because the

Lord is working in me and the Holy Spirit is making sure that I never get led astray or finally fall away or anything like that.

So if you're more Arminian, if you, if you, you know, hate the idea of God being sovereign in those kinds of ways, then, yeah, you're going to, it can't be like, if God is orchestrating your life and carrying you along, it has to be about your own free will and all those things.

And so now it makes a lot of sense that you would need to hear an audible voice and all those other things.

So charismaticism lives very comfortably with bad theology.

So the baffling thing is people like Sam Storms and John Piper and D .A.

Carson, the guys who are like mostly reformed and then embrace this stuff.

Like that's, that's just so confusing. Right. Right. So what do you, what do you say to someone with regards to those guys who are excellent theologians?

Right. But within this one particular area, it's like, wow, how do, how do they, how do they stray from the scriptures?

I mean, I don't know. I don't know what it is that causes them to stray. That part I, I cannot figure out.

But there's, it's hard because people, you want to say that they're not as bad as the

Benny Hinn's and the, you know, the crazy like whack job guys that even most charismatics would look at and think are crazy.

And on some level, they're not as bad because they don't go to the extremes and the excesses of those guys.

So that part's true. But, but on another level, they're validating this stuff.

They're, they're making it seem academic. They're making it seem respectable. And for that,

I actually think they're more dangerous. You know, in, in John Piper, he's a hard one to pick on because like, as far as his charismaticism goes, it's really, he just says, yeah,

I think that tongues could also be the tongues of angels. I've never done it. He says himself,

I've never done it. I've never spoken in tongues. I prayed that I'd be able to, but I can't do it. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

So Piper isn't even like involved in it. He doesn't prophesy or anything like that, but he sort of encourages people to seek it.

He, he validates that it's real. So, you know, I love John Piper. It's, you know, picking on him is, is the hardest, but Sam Storms, he is, he loves this stuff.

Like he's sold out. He practices all of it. And, but he also says he's a

Calvinist. So it's like, he writes all these blog articles and, you know, people make it seem like he's so, he's so smart about this stuff, but like in one of the, the articles that he responded to our movie, he wrote this, just what

I thought was insane. He wrote this whole thing about how we don't know how many angels there are.

He says, there's probably, if there's one guardian angel for everybody who's alive, then there's, there's at least 8 billion angels.

And you have to imagine that there's different jobs that they have in heaven and there's different sort of, you know, sects of them.

And so they, they probably have different dialects and different, different ways of talking.

And so there's any number of, so that's why you don't find patterns when people speak in, in tongues and like a certain dialect because there's, there's probably millions of different dialects of, of angelic.

So it's just like, dude, like this is the craziest speculation I've ever heard.

And this is how you're defending gibberish. And then someone like Michael Brown will say, if you say like, why don't you guys do foreign languages anymore?

Why do you just do gibberish? Michael Brown will say, well, what do you mean gibberish?

If you heard a language that you didn't know, wouldn't it sound like gibberish to you? Which is like, no, people are actually convinced of this.

I don't think they're actually convinced, but it's something that they say. And it is the weakest, craziest argument

I've ever heard that you're actually claiming that the gibberish that you hear come out of charismatics is a human language that you just don't know.

And it's, so it sounds like gibberish to you. It's like, I'm sorry, but when I hear a language, I don't have to know what the language is, but I can tell

I'm hearing a foreign language. There's certain cadence. There's certain repeatable aspects of it.

There's, there's some versus just plain gibberish, gibberish, like random sounds.

I can tell the difference. I'm not saying I'm like, like every single time I'm going to be perfectly know the difference, but charismaticism is clearly gibberish.

Like, come on, we're going to keep, we're going to keep pretending this is the tongues of angels and the tongues of foreign languages that died off hundreds of years ago.

Like, no, what's funny is in the, in the few times that angels did speak to people in the scriptures, nobody had a problem understanding them.

It seemed to be in their own language. That was understandable to the, to the recipient. That's right.

That's exactly. It doesn't make quite sense that there's this whole new language. And you, you pointed this out in the movie, how it's hyperbole.

Could you just unpack that real quick? Yeah. So that's first Corinthians 13.

Paul says that if I speak in the tongues of men,

And of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. So Paul is trying to extol love as the thing that you should seek after, not get caught up in these, these gifts, what you're able to do and yada, yada, yada.

So he starts, he's, he's saying that if I had even the highest of gifts, it doesn't way bigger than the things you can do or the things

Paul can do. If I had even those gifts, but I have not loved it's useless.

That's that's his point. So in verse two, he says, if I have prophetic powers and understand all the mysteries and all knowledge, but I have not faith.

But, and if I have faith as remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. So there, he says, if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge.

So is Paul claiming that that's something that he has all knowledge?

Is he, is he God? Is he omniscient? And then verse three, he says, if I give away all

I have, and I, if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love,

I gain nothing. So all he's, he's just saying, if I go to the absolute extreme, the biggest thing you could even imagine, but I don't have love, then, then

I have, I have nothing. And so when he says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love.

I'm a, I'm a noisy gong clanging symbol. So all he's saying there is, is

Paul himself had the ability to speak in tongues. And he spoke in tongues more than all of them.

And he's saying, if I could speak in every tongue of every man, and then

I can even speak in the tongues of the angels. It's he's, he's making this hyperbolic statement.

If I had it, like the greatest, this gift could ever possibly be, but I didn't have love.

Then I, I would be wasting my time. That's, that's his entire point, but this entire section is just a hyperbolic revving up of all these things to show that even if you had, you know, these gifts on a level that, that nobody has then, but you didn't have love, then it would just be a waste.

So he's making a point. He's not saying that he speaks in the tongues of angels. It's very clear.

Once you start laying it out and explaining it the way you just did, I really appreciate it and really appreciate the movie. I, I can't wring it, but recommend it highly enough.

Everybody should absolutely sit down and watch this. Whether you're reformed, charismatic

Pentecostal, everybody needs to see this movie. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. So let me ask you this, and I hate to put you to work, but what, what's next on the agenda?

What, what topic are we tackling next? Well, I definitely have an idea for another documentary.

We're we're. I'm making a study series for cessationist, and that's going to come out at the cessationist conference.

The G3 is putting on this year. Okay. So that's the next thing that I'm doing, but I do have a,

I think I know what theological documentary I want to make next. The sovereignty of God is something that I've really been excited about.

I think it could be a really, really great movie. And I can picture it being handed, you know, people hand out the sovereignty of God by A .W.

Pink. Yes. Like that's a big, a big thing in reform movement. And I just picture like a movie version of, of that, that, you know, you pass around to this, you got to watch the sovereignty of God.

But we have something else really big that we're, that we're working on. Maybe.

Let me know about the Kickstarter. I want to be a part of that. Yeah. Maybe, maybe venturing into not something that's not a documentary, maybe something dramatic, maybe something that could be like really a really big deal.

But none of that's official yet. So we'll keep that under wraps. Hey, what'd you on a completely separate topic?

What'd you think of the movie nefarious? I haven't seen it. All the scenes that I've seen.

That's a really good movie. Yeah. Oh yeah. The guy again, it's basically two actors.

The whole movie's centered on these two guys in a prison. And it, it definitely captured my attention.

It has a screw tape letters vibe to it. The guy who, who played the prisoner, he's a no name actor, but he was absolutely phenomenal.

I highly recommend you watch that. I think, I think I saw the, like the big scene, like the, the most, maybe the most important scene in the movie, but it was very impressive.

It looked, it looked pretty awesome. It's so, it's so refreshing to see guys like you.

And I don't remember who, who made that movie, but to put out quality stuff that we as Christians can say, go see that.

Now I know there's a lot of well -meaning Christians that have put out movies and they just end up being extremely sappy.

And you're kind of like embarrassed to tell somebody go watch it because you know, it's this, you know, overloading of emotions to get you to recognize that God is real type of thing.

And you know, your, your stuff that you put out is, is just cinematically incredible.

And this movie nefarious is just, it's a, it's a movie that whether you're a Christian or not, you would be captivated by the story and we should be the most creative people on the planet.

Yeah. Yeah. We used to be, that was one time. Well, I really think you're the right guy for the right time.

Cause everybody's, you know, visually oriented and internet centered. So the stuff that you're putting out is out there.

And I can, again, I can't recommend it highly enough. I, I really appreciate what you've done and I appreciate you taking your time out to be on the show today.

Well, man, thank you. It was a very encouraging. Thank you for all the good, encouraging comments. I'm glad.

I'm glad that people are appreciating the work that goes into it. We certainly are.

Thanks very much. So with that, let me close the show. Friends, a life reform is a life conformed to the

Jesus of the scriptures and to God, be the glory. So Semper Reformanda, always be reforming. If you like this video, please check out our

YouTube channel. We have over 20 playlists that will help teach you reform theology, go through the doctrines of grace, the five solers.

We also have series on biblical hermeneutics and apologetics, logical fallacies and books of the

Bible like Daniel, Jude and Proverbs. We have interviews with theologians like Tony Costa and Bruce Gore, apologists like Anthony Rogers and Eli Allah is a lot of content there and is always something for everyone.

So please check, please check us out and let us know how we're doing in the comments. Once again, let's thank you so much for taking your time out to do this.