Justin Peters Interview (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth here, glad to have

Justin Peters back on for another show. Justin, welcome back to No Compromise Radio.

Thank you, Mike, it's good to be with you. Now the first show, we got to know you and your ministry, and now

I want to ask some more particular questions. Our slogan here at the radio station is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

So let's go for some of the provocative stuff. What was the weirdest faith healing experience you ever had?

I know you've been to a lot of these before you were converted. What was one of the weirdest ones? Looking back, thinking that was just crazy.

Mike, I probably have to say the weirdest one, the two weirdest, one was the first one

I went to when I was a teenager at age 16. That was the first time I'd ever seen people being slain in the spirit, you know, falling out on the floor, and I was just bug -eyed.

So that kind of stands out in my mind because it was my very first exposure to it. But undoubtedly, the weirdest one

I ever went to was Todd Bentley in Lakeland, Florida. This was about 2008.

And Todd Bentley, he would make Benny Hinn look like John MacArthur by comparison.

I mean, Todd Bentley is, I mean, this guy ought to be in a padded room. Very bizarre.

And he, there was all kinds of shouting and jumping up and down.

People were just absolutely worked up into emotional frenzies, claims of people being raised from the dead.

And I saw people down on all fours. I saw one person barking like a dog.

I mean, it was just absolute bedlam. And it just, truly, truly, that Todd Bentley is the most bizarre

I've ever seen. I mean, that guy is not, he's mentally unbalanced,

I would say. So very extreme. Justin, this is kind of a setup question, but did

God tell you to be on No Compromise Radio today, and if so, how? No, Mike, he did not.

I did not hear that still small voice saying, Justin, I want you to go on No Compromise Radio.

And funny thing is, is I have never heard that still small voice. And that is, that's actually one of the things that I teach about in my seminar, how

God does and does not speak to us today. And I think this is an area of massive, massive confusion in the church, that people think like, think they've got to hear this still small voice, this voice in their head.

And that's how God speaks to us. And we have introduced, and I would say the thing that has really been the thing that is singularly most responsible for introducing this kind of soft charismaticism, even into non -charismatic churches, is experiencing

God by Henry Blackaby, because he talks about hearing this voice, and he says, if you have trouble hearing the voice of God, you're in trouble at the heart of your

Christian experience. And that is just profoundly unbiblical. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2 makes it pretty clear that the writer of Hebrews says, in these last days,

God has spoken to us in his Son. Jesus is the final speaking of God.

And you don't need to be hearing these, you know, the voices in your head, you know, and then you wonder, well, was that you,

Lord? Or was that me? You know, how do you know? And I think there's just some massive confusion about this.

But what I tell people, if you want to hear God speak to you, read your

Bible. If you want to hear God speak to you audibly, read it out loud. That is one way

I can guarantee you, 100 % guaranteed, you will hear God speak.

Does God lead us? Yes. Does he direct our paths? Of course he does.

Can he give us burdens or unctions? Sure, I would affirm those things.

But when people say, God has spoken to me, and he said, quote, these exact words, da, da, da, da, da, then you've entered some very, very deep waters.

And God is just not speaking that way today. He speaks to us through his word.

Justin - He directs our paths, but not this mystical kind of experience that so many people are looking for.

Justin, I'm wondering, maybe you can comment on this statement slash question.

It seemed like in the old days, the Charismatics who said they heard God speak, and there were words there and grammar and sentences, they tended to know the least of their, they didn't know their

Bibles well at all. And I just would say to myself, well, God's not speaking through them. They don't even have a good anthropology.

They have bad soteriology. They don't even know what eschatology is. But today, there seems to be so many people who know the scriptures well, from John Piper, and then you filter your way down to the

Francis Chans and the Beth Moores or the Michael Browns or I'm trying to think of others,

Wayne Grudem. I think I'd probably put Grudem and Piper at the top of the list of men who know their Bibles well, but they talk this way.

So what explains this drive towards subjective mysticism, even with some heavy hitters, if you will?

Yes, Mike, I think one of the things is that we are, as humans, we are so oriented around our experiences.

We want to experience something. We wanna feel something. And I think for many people, it just seems like there's got to be more.

There's got to be more than just the Bible. And I tell people that the battle today is not so much over the inerrancy of God's word.

In theory, at least we've won those battles, but the battle today is more over the sufficiency of God's word.

Is God's word enough? And for most people, most professing

Christians, sadly, the answer to that is no. It's just, it's not enough. You've got to, there's got to be something more.

You've got to have this mystical experience. And I'm not against experiences or emotions, but those experiences and emotions are not the arbiters of truth.

They've got to be within biblical parameters, not outside of biblical parameters. And no matter how real an experience may seem to us, and I don't doubt that people have experiences,

Muslims and Hindus have experiences, but no matter how real those experiences may seem, we cannot interpret the

Bible by what we experience. We must interpret our experiences by the

Bible. And tragically, most people have it reversed today.

So now sometimes, Mike, I think it can be an issue of our terminology.

I think sometimes we get a little loose with our terminology and people sometimes say, well,

God told me such and such, or God told me that I needed to do this. Maybe they don't actually mean

God said in exact, quotable words, I want you to do this on such and such day.

Sometimes we just get a little loose with our terminology, but there's no doubt about it. This mystical element has really taken hold in mainstream evangelicalism today.

And it's a very, very dangerous thing because it begins slowly, but surely, it begins to divorce people from their total reliance upon the word of God.

Illumined to us by the Holy Spirit, people slowly but surely begin to be divorced from their reliance upon the objective written word of God.

Justin, you were a speaker at the Strange Fire Conference held not too long ago at Grace Church, led by John MacArthur.

Tell our listeners how you were invited, any backstage interesting things that happened, something interesting at the

Strange Fire Conference? I'll tell you, Mike, the Strange Fire Conference was great, really enjoyed it.

Got an email from Phil Johnson. Phil and I met a few times before the Strange Conference, and he was aware of the work that I do, and so he invited me to come and speak.

And it was just a great time, it really was. One of the things that really impressed me is

I shared a couple of meals with the other speakers, with MacArthur and Phil Johnson and Steve Lawson and Tom Pennington and those guys, and Conrad and Bayway.

I'll tell you, all of them just really struck me as genuinely humble men, and MacArthur included, just humble guys who have a burden for the truth, who have a jealousy for God's holiness, and who have a love for people and want people to know the truth and want to try to protect people, guard people against the wolves in sheep's clothing.

So I was just really struck by the humility of these men, and more broadly speaking, the conference itself,

I loved talking to people at the conference. There was, I think, some 4 ,000 people there, and I talked to, oh,

I don't know, I mean, hundreds of folks and just really loved it. I loved hearing their stories.

So many people told me about how God had delivered them out of the

Word of Faith movement, the charismatic movement. They used to be in it, they were raised in it.

Some people even told me they used to preach it and teach it and then God delivered them out of it.

And it was just so neat to hear their testimonies. And the sufficiency of God's Word about how

He illumined the true meaning of the gospel to their hearts and minds and brought them out of the deception.

And so I just thoroughly enjoyed talking to the folks. People seemed so appreciative of the teaching.

They were so enthusiastic. And it was like the sense you got when you're there, it's like, boy, it's about time we had something like this.

This is so needed, so necessary and so thankful. It's like, finally, we've got something like this.

And so it was a great time. It's something I'll never forget for sure. Justin, I'm jealous of you because I've never spoken to Grace Community Church except at midnight in front of three other custodians.

That's the only time I've got to preach at Grace Church. On the eve of the conference, and you wrote an article about this and on this at justinpeters .org,

January 7th, Ignorance is Not an Option, an excellent article. And you say that on the eve of the conference,

Michael Brown writes the open letter to MacArthur stating, quote, he attributes the extreme errors that MacArthur attributes the extreme errors of a tiny minority to countless hundreds of thousands of godly leaders worldwide.

Basically, you're painting everybody with a broad brush. You take the wackiest charismatic teaching and you say, we all teach that.

And then just months later, Brown invites, is invited to Benny Hinn's show and he does five wonderful TV shows with him.

What's your response to that? Well, Mike, it was just so ironic in that one of Brown's chief criticisms against the

Strange Fire Conferences that, like you just read, quoted him saying that we painted everybody with a broad brush and you take a tiny minority of the extreme examples of a tiny minority.

But then Michael Brown accepts an invitation by the world's most prominent false prophet,

Benny Hinn, who has been in ministry for over 35 years and has a long track record of jaw -dropping heresies, false prophecies, and to this very day continues to exploit poor and sick people for personal financial gain.

And Michael Brown, one of the supposed clear -thinking charismatics, goes on his program and has fellowship with him.

And so he unwittingly proves one of the basic tenets of the

Strange Fire Conferences that there is a stunning lack of discernment among the charismatic movement as a whole, not just Word of Faith, but the charismatic movement as a whole.

There's a stunning lack of discernment. There is a troubling reluctance to call out false teachers, call them as false teachers.

And one of the points that I make in my article is that if you can't call Benny Hinn a false teacher, a false prophet, then the term really has no meaning.

I don't know what one is. If Benny Hinn's not one, I don't know what one is. And so Michael Brown is certainly not, he does not at all strike me as one of the greedy prosperity preachers, but it's a good example of how there's just a systemic lack of discernment in that movement.

And it's kind of interesting too, when those programs aired with Benny Hinn and Michael Brown, when they aired, the first four was

Monday through Thursday, and then Friday, Benny Hinn has on his program, Steve Muncy, and Steve Muncy is not as well known as some of the others, but I've seen him quite a bit on television.

Steve Muncy is a charlatan if there ever was one. I mean, he's like a greasy used car salesman, theologically speaking.

I mean, he's just, he's one of the lowest of the low. And so there you go again, proof the point of the

Strange Fire Conference made yet again. And so it's, and Michael Brown was on Sid Roth's program recently, and Sid Roth has every whack job under the sun on his program.

It's just a systemic lack of discernment. So it's a huge issue, it really is.

Justin, I'm wondering what the rationale is. For instance, I think we as cessationists, if there's someone teaching something in our camp or from our camp that isn't any good, we will go after that.

Let's say it's something about these childhood conversions or moralism or some,

I don't know, King James only attitude. I don't know, we would go after them. But for whatever reason, the charismatics will not take care of their own.

They won't go against their own. Is it because they don't want to quench the spirit or why the reluctance?

I just, I'm not trying to find out psychologically why, but is there a theological reason?

What's your take on it? Micah, I think that there is. I think one of the fundamental flaws that charismatics make in their reasoning, and I believe

Michael Brown even made this argument in one of his early articles dealing with the

Strange Fire Conference, is that basically what they do is they follow

Gamaliel's advice. In Acts 5, Gamaliel was a Pharisee and he was

Saul's instructor before Saul was converted. So Acts 5, we're dealing pre -Saul's conversion there.

But in Acts 5, you have Peter and the apostles, and they were, long story short, they're in Jerusalem, they're preaching the gospel, and they'd been ordered not to, but they did so anyway.

They were thrown into prison. God delivered them out of prison, so causing quite a stir there in Jerusalem.

And so the Pharisees get together and they have a council and they discuss what they're going to do with Peter and the apostles.

And so initially they had Peter and the apostles in with them, but then they put them outside so they could talk about them.

And Gamaliel stood up, we read this in Acts 5, Gamaliel stood up and he said, men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men.

And he goes on, he cites a couple of people, he says, Thutis rose up, this was a teacher, he said this guy named

Thutis rose up claiming to be somebody, but he gained some followers, but he died and his followers are scattered.

So he names a couple of teachers that had come up on the scene, they were kind of shooting stars, they were a flash in the pan, they made quite a splash initially, but they did not last.

And so what Gamaliel says regarding these, regarding Peter and the apostles, he says, if these men are not of God, basically saying, if these men are not of God, they will not last, they won't last.

But if they are of God, then we should not oppose them because in so doing, we would be found fighting against God.

So in other words, let's just kind of have a hands -off approach. If they're not of God, if any of them's really not of God, he's not gonna last.

God will take care of them. But if he is, then we should never oppose him because in doing so, we'd be found fighting against God.

And I think a lot of charismatics have this approach, but when you look at it biblically,

Gamaliel's advice was not good advice. Number one, because Gamaliel was not converted.

He was, we had no indication that he ever came to a saving knowledge of Christ. So to follow the advice of Gamaliel is to follow the advice of a lost person.

And also Gamaliel's advice doesn't even pass the common sense test. Because if Gamaliel's advice were good advice, why do we still have

Mormonism? Why do we still have Jehovah's Witnesses? Why do we still have Islam or Buddhism?

I mean, you know, go down the line, name your favorite false religion. Clearly they're not of God and yet they're still here.

So that may be a little bit more than what you're asking for, but I really think that is one of the flaws in charismatic logic and their theology in dealing with false teachers.

Great answer. We're talking to Justin Peters today. Justin, would you go on TBN if asked, and why or why not?

And what would you say if you did go? Yes, I would, Mike. If I was asked to go on to TBN, I would go in a heartbeat.

But it would be my first and last invitation. Hey, there wouldn't be five shows. No, no, no.

I'd be doing good to get through half of one show because I would take that opportunity very quickly to call out

TBN for what it is, to call them out for their false teaching, for their blasphemy, to call them out for their distortion of the gospel, to call them out for their promotion of false teachers, and to call them out for exploiting poor and sick people.

I mean, all you have to do, watch a praise -a -thon on TBN. They have two every year, one in spring, one in fall.

Watch one of their praise -a -thons, and they make their money off of promising poor and sick people that if they will just send in, send in their seed, sow their seed, send their money in, that God will heal them.

He will heal their sick children. He will save their marriages. He'll get them out of debt. If you're in debt, what's the answer to getting out of debt?

Well, send money to TBN, of course. And so I would call them out on all of these things.

And so it would be my first and last invitation. But would I go? Yeah, you better believe

I would. If I got your iPod or iPad and scrolled down to Preachers, who does

Justin Peters listen to on a regular basis and why? Well, I listen,

I love John MacArthur and Steve Lawson. And there's another, a man that not many people have heard of,

Brian Hughes. He's a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Bozeman, Montana. Brian Hughes is a friend of mine.

He's a great, great preacher, very humble guy. I've got some other friends of mine that are really good preachers,

Jim Osmond in San Juan, Idaho and some others. What I look for, Mike, is men who exposit the word, who go verse by verse and they exposit the word of God.

And they rightly divide the word of truth. You can tell from, you know, they don't get up and tell funny stories.

They don't try to entertain people. They just take the word of God and they teach it. And that's what

I look for. And I look for men who will not soften the gospel, who are not afraid to tackle the weighty things of Scripture and some of the difficult things of Scripture.

And I'll look for that. So I see that in these men. Justin, we have about -

Go ahead. No, that's all right. Go ahead. We have about two minutes left. 1 Peter 2, verses 24 and 25 say, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds, you have been healed. For you were strained like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

I know we only have like a minute and a half left, but is there healing in the atonement? And to what degree, when, where, why, how, why?

To Isen. Yes, Mike. Great question. In short, yes, there is healing in the atonement.

The reason I'm crippled and the reason people get cancer and we have arthritis, it is a result of sin.

And so when Jesus died on the cross, he paid for our sins. He also paid for all of the consequences of those sins, one of which is sickness and disease.

So yes, healing is provided for in the atonement. However, however, not all of the benefits of the atonement are promised to be realized this side of heaven.

And healing is one of those benefits. Another example of this to illustrate it is a glorified body is also provided for in the atonement.

But I have yet to see anybody walking around with their glorified bodies. Why not?

Well, it's provided for in the atonement, but it's not promised to be realized here. So yes, it's provided for, but God is under no obligation to heal us this side of heaven.

It's the theological term, it's an over -realized eschatology. It's kind of getting the cart before the horse a little bit.

So does God heal today? Yes, he does. But only when it is his sovereign will to do so.

Talking to Justin Peters today. Sorry to cut you off, Justin. I look forward to spending time with you in person,

I think in Missouri this April. Yes, yes. Looking forward to that, the Worldview Weekend Conference.

People can go to justinpeters .org if they'd like more information. Justin, thank you for your ministry. Thank you so much,

Mike. I appreciate it. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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