Cessationist Conference with Multiple Guest Speakers | Day 1

Kootenai Church

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All right, good evening, everyone. Finished finding your place here?

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All right, welcome to our cessationist conference. We were going to have some songs here tonight, but that didn't work out, so we're just going to go straight into our announcements.

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I want to give you a note about the schedule of events that you have in front of you. That's kind of a loose schedule of events.

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We're starting right on time. We plan to do that again tomorrow. But as the sessions unfold, we may not hold to that.

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We're hoping to put in a couple of things, like some introductions of the speakers, as well as introducing the filmmakers who are here with us this evening and for this weekend.

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We're going to do that tomorrow. So we're going to be dropping in a couple of unnoted events on your schedule there.

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We are providing lunch tomorrow, as well as snacks in the morning and throughout the day tomorrow.

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And so I think that there is an offering box out somewhere if you would like to contribute to the cost of the meals.

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Any money that is generated over and above what it costs to put on this conference is going to go toward providing some of the incidentals for the speakers and the filmmakers, like meals between some of our activities.

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There's a book table in the back, and you'll see on your table that there is a book list there. The authors that are listed there in italics at the top, most of those authors have provided a resource that is at cost or substantially discounted.

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So the ones in italics are actually, those authors are bringing their books here to give them to you at their cost. They ship them here.

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So if you would like to, when you're purchasing books, at that book table, give something over and above to those authors that will go to them, and it would be a great blessing to them.

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You'll notice that my books are listed on there at cost as well. Don't give any donation to me, and I mean that seriously, because most of you come to Kootenai Community Church.

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You don't need to give me a donation for those books. Save your generosity for the other guys who are speakers here. I believe that that is it, so I'm going to introduce our first speaker.

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He said to me before I stepped up here, he said, I said, are you ready to go? And he said, yeah, that's right, this is the continuationist conference, right?

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And I said, yes, you have 30 seconds to make your case. Kevin is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Canova, West Virginia.

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He received a Master's of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is currently working on a

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Doctor of Ministry in expository preaching from the Master's Seminary. Kevin is married to Alicia, who is here as well, and they have eight children.

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Please welcome Kevin Hay. It is a privilege.

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For your hospitality and Jim Ostman for hosting this event, and of course the makers of the film,

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Cessationist, not Continuationist, I know where I'm at. Just for putting this conference together, it's already been a great blessing to me and my wife and just looking forward to seeing how the

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Lord is going to use our time together and also how he's going to use this movie to strengthen and edify the body of Christ.

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So with that said, this evening, I have been tasked with the responsibility of defining cessationism, defining cessationism.

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And so with that in mind, I want to invite and encourage you to grab your copy of God's Word and open it with me, if you will, to the book of Ephesians chapter 2, the

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Apostle Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. And we're going to begin in Ephesians chapter 2 for context.

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Up to this point in Paul's letter, he has expounded upon the robust richness of the gospel and the glorious grace of God that has been lavished upon those who have trusted in Christ for salvation.

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And now our text begins in chapter 2 verse 11. And so for those who are able,

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I'll ask that you stand with me for the reading of God's Word. Ephesians chapter 2, we'll begin in verse 11 and read through verse 22.

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And there God's Word reads. Therefore, remember that at one time you

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Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.

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Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

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But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

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For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

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And he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who were near.

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For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father.

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So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the

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Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the

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Spirit. And with that, you can be seated as we ask God to bless the reading and the preaching of his word.

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Father, Father, we come to you this evening in the name, the perfect name and the perfect work of your son,

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Jesus Christ. Father, what a privilege we have to gather together in this place for this purpose above all to worship you, to ascribe to you the richness and the majesty and the splendor of your greatness, to open your word and to see the excellencies of Christ and the glory of your work through the power of your spirit in your church.

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I thank you for this church and I thank you for their great love for you and for your word.

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I'm excited, Lord, within myself to think of all that you're doing in our midst, how you have providentially orchestrated this event, this conference, this weekend.

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We pray your blessings upon the cessationist film and our time together.

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As we open your word, Father, I pray that you would anoint the preaching of your word, that your spirit would move among us and that you would be honored and glorified.

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I pray that you help me to preach with confidence and conviction and clarity and compassion.

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As we hear your word, I pray, Lord, that we would be transformed and changed by it.

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Help us to see with eyes of faith what you're doing throughout redemptive history, both in the past, at the beginning of the church's life, but also today.

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I pray, Father, that you will give us a spirit -empowered increase of affection for your word and for your

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Christ. Help us to love the church well and help us to celebrate all that you are doing in our midst.

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And we pray this in the powerful and precious name of Christ, amen. Well, if you were to walk into my office at the church where I pastor, you would see sitting in the corner leaning against my bookshelf a tall cylinder -shaped set of papers that are bound together with a rubber band.

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And if you were to unroll that set of papers, you would find the blueprints to the house that my wife and I are prayerfully seeking to build.

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Included in those blueprints, of course, are the specific measurements and the dimensions for the foundation of our house.

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Now, my wife and my children and I, we know where we want to lay the foundation.

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Actually, we already own the land and we've visited the property many times. We've taken pictures and had picnics, and we can't wait to see the day when we finally are able to break ground.

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At the same time, I know how important the foundation is to the overall structure of our future home.

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In fact, my dad is a carpenter who builds houses for a living. And so throughout my life, from childhood into young adulthood,

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I have both seen and helped build a number of houses with my dad. And when

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I look back at the multitude of homes that were constructed, I can say with absolute confidence that there was never a single time when anyone was upset with the completion of the foundation.

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Never happened. The homeowners were always ecstatic to see the foundation laid because that meant that progress on their house was being made.

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My dad was always excited because with the completion of the foundation, that meant that he could begin to build the floor and the walls and then the roof.

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And even the concrete workers were happy because with the foundation finished, it meant another job well done.

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So my friends, throughout this conference, we are going to be examining the nature of the

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Holy Spirit's work in and through the church. And in that process, we are going to be celebrating the completion of the church's foundation and the ongoing ways in which

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Christ is building his church according to the sovereign supernatural power of the

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Holy Spirit today. So to that end, as we begin to look this evening at our text from Ephesians chapter two, the first thing

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I want us to notice is the overarching progression of the passage. Speaking specifically to the

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Gentiles, Paul begins by reminding them of who they used to be. As unbelieving

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Gentiles, not only were they spiritually separated from Christ, but they were completely alienated from the knowledge of God that had been revealed to the

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Jews. In Christ, though, they've now been brought near, Paul says, and through the cross,

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God has eliminated the hostility that existed between Jews and Gentiles. And signifying that is the reference we see in verse 14.

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He speaks there of Christ being our peace and of, quote, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility.

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It's worth noting that at that time in the Jewish temple, there was an outer area that the

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Gentiles could enter into, but then there was a literal wall that actually divided and physically prevented the

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Gentiles from entering in to the inner courts of the temple. In fact, there were warning signs, which have been discovered years later, which say, no foreigner is allowed to enter within the barricades surrounding the sanctuary and the court.

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Whoever is caught will be personally responsible for his ensuing death.

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And so Paul here is using a play on words to communicate to these Gentiles that there is no longer a distinction, they're no longer prevented or separated.

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God has given to them the same privileges that are possessed by believing

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Jews. But then from there, Paul uses three metaphors that I want us to notice to demonstrate that reality.

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The first one is found at the beginning of verse 19. Christ, who is our peace, has preached peace to both

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Jews and Gentiles through his death on the cross. Those who are both near and far who believe upon him for salvation, he says, are no longer strangers or foreigners, but rather they are now fellow citizens.

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So it's this metaphor of citizenship with Christ as king. But then

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Paul, to see the progression of our passage, brings us even further. At the end of verse 19, he uses the metaphor of a family, saying that through the gospel, we're not just fellow citizens of Christ's kingdom, but we're actually members of the household of God.

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We're sons and daughters of the living God. But then, not to stop there,

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Paul brings us even further still. Going back to the imagery of the temple that he mentioned earlier, the apostle now makes the transition in verses 20 through 22 to say that we're not just fellow citizens of Christ's kingdom, we're not just spiritual siblings in the household of God, no, we are actually the very temple of God himself.

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We are being built together as the very place where God dwells, which is the church of Jesus Christ.

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And it's all accomplished by the supernatural power of God's spirit.

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And so it's this description of the church that I want us to use as a framework this evening to help guide us in our definition of cessationism.

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And I want to do that in the form of three affirmations. So if you'll look with me at the beginning of verse 20, the first thing

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I want us to recognize this evening is that cessationism affirms and celebrates the foundational completion of the church.

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Cessationism affirms and celebrates the foundational completion of the church.

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Now, this is not a trick question, but let me ask you this evening, when building a structure, how many foundations are there?

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I said it's not a trick question. One, thank you. That's right, one foundation.

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You do not build a foundation, construct the first floor, and then build another foundation on the second story.

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No, by its very definition, the foundation of a structure is only built one time.

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Even massive skyscrapers towering thousands of feet into the air still have just a single foundation.

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The Apostle Paul will make this very point in his first epistle to the Corinthians in chapter 3, verses 10 and 11, when he writes, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder,

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I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is

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Jesus Christ. And so not only as a general principle, but also specifically as it pertains to the church, there is only one foundation.

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As the opening stanza to that great hymn proclaims, the church's one foundation is

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Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water and the word.

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From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

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And of course, all true believers will triumphantly declare that Christ is the church's foundation.

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Just as the end of verse 20 tells us that Christ is the cornerstone, and just so we understand and thinking about Paul's metaphor of a temple, the cornerstone was the strongest, most significant part of the temple's foundation.

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It was the first stone to be laid and it set the trajectory for the rest of the structure.

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So all genuine believers, regardless of where they stand on the gifts, joyfully agree on Christ as the centrality of the foundation.

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But when it comes to the completion of the foundation, this is where cessationists and continuationists disagree.

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As cessationists, we affirm that the foundation of the church has been beautifully, gloriously, objectively finished.

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There is no ongoing work to be done to the foundation. There is no subjectiveness or speculation because Christ is the cornerstone.

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There is no need for renovation. There are no cracks that need to be repaired, missing pieces that need to be added, or areas that need to be leveled.

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No, as cessationists, we stand unapologetically upon the rock -solid foundation with absolute confidence.

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For continuationists, although they may not admit it, in order to be consistent, they would have to acknowledge that they believe the foundation of the church is incomplete, not as it pertained, keep in mind, to the finished work of Christ, but particularly in the area that we find described in the next part of verse 20.

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If you look there with me, Paul continues writing there, stating that this foundation is, quote, of the apostles and prophets.

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So the next thing I want us to recognize this evening is that cessationism affirms and celebrates the foundational role of the apostles and prophets.

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Cessationism affirms and celebrates the foundational role of the apostles and prophets.

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So first of all, it's important to note here that it's not that these individuals themselves are the substance of the foundation.

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It's not what Paul is saying, that place belongs to Christ and Christ alone. But rather, the idea is that God has called certain individuals to play a pivotal role in establishing the church's foundation.

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Once again, to use Paul's own testimony from 1 Corinthians 3, 10, and 11, he says, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder,

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I laid a foundation. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is

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Jesus Christ. So we can think of the apostles and prophets then who were called and empowered by God's grace in the earliest days of the church's existence as foundation builders.

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That's what they were. God was establishing the foundation of the church through these apostles and prophets.

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We're going to spend most of our time this evening focusing on the apostles, but I do want to take just a few minutes to identify these prophets.

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Most often, of course, when we think of the term prophet, we think of Old Testament prophets.

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But when we interpret this in its proper context, what we come to realize is that Paul is actually referring to New Testament prophets.

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In fact, in the very next chapter, referring to the mystery of the gospel, which is that believing

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Gentiles and believing Jews are now fellow heirs and members of Christ's church,

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Paul will say in verses 4 and 5, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the

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Spirit. Again, in chapter 4, referring to the gifts of Christ to the church at its inception,

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Paul will write in verse 11 saying, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers.

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So, what then was the role of a New Testament prophet, and how is that related to the establishment of the church's foundation?

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Well, like the prophets before them, their role was to speak the word of God to the people of God, and that word carried with it the very authority of God.

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But for the New Testament prophet, their purpose and their calling had an expiration date because they were only serving in that role until the canon of Scripture was closed and complete.

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That's why in the book of Hebrews, which is one of the final writings inspired by God, the author begins by saying this, long ago at many times and in many ways,

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God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his

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Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

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So the role then of the New Testament prophet was to speak the words that God put into his mouth, and that role was instrumental in the establishment of the church until the

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New Testament was completed and the canon of Scripture was closed. But then that brings us to the role of the apostle.

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The term apostle simply means to be sent out.

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There are two ways that Scripture uses this term. In the Greek, it's apostolos.

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First, Scripture uses the term apostle, lowercase a, in a general way, for anyone who is sent to carry out a task, similar to the concept of an ambassador, someone who represents the will or the wishes of another.

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For example, in John 13, 16, Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger, apostolos, greater than the one who sent him.

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But then the second way Scripture uses this term is the way Paul is using it here in our text, and that is as an official office of the early church.

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And so in the case of the office of apostle, that is to say, capital A, we only find a small number of men who are identified by that title in Scripture.

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And what we discover from God's Word is that in order for a man to serve in the office of apostle, he had to meet three very specific qualifications.

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First, he had to be personally appointed by Jesus Christ himself.

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That's number one. We see that in places like 1 Corinthians 12, verse 28,

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Paul says there, and God has appointed in the church, first, apostles, second, prophets, and so forth.

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We also read it earlier in Ephesians 4, 11, when it said that Christ gave to the church apostles, prophets, et cetera.

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So to be an official apostle of Christ, you had to be appointed by Christ.

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Second, you had to be able to work signs and miracles. That's number two. In 2

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Corinthians 12, 12, the apostle Paul says, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with the utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

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We see a description of some of these miracles in the gospel of Matthew chapter 10.

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While Christ is still with his original 12, it says there, and he called to him his 12 disciples, and he gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and heal every disease and every affliction.

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And then in verse 7, listen to the instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples.

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He says this, and proclaim as you go, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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And directly after that, it says this, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

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And so that points us then to the fundamental purpose for why Jesus' true apostles were given the ability to perform miracles.

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The miraculous works they performed validated the words they spoke. Just as Christ did when he walked upon the earth, the apostles were called to declare with power and authority, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

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And in order to prove that the words they spoke were actually coming from Christ, the Lord empowered them with the supernatural power to perform miracles.

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It validated the claims they were making. And so the question is, why was that important for the establishment of the church?

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What was God's purpose in all of this? The answer is because those miracles were signs pointing to the authenticity of the truth of the gospel they were declaring, which would be the very foundation of Christ's church.

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Then from there though, the third criteria for a genuine apostle was that he had to be a witness to the resurrected

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Christ. We often mention this qualification for apostles without putting much thought into it.

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They had to witness the resurrected Christ. We know that if we know this topic that we're talking about.

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But what I want us to see is the profound continuity for why this was an essential condition for apostleship.

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Why was that a necessary criteria for a man who was called to be an apostle?

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Scripture of course tells us that Jesus is the word made flesh. Throughout Christ's ministry again and again, we find our

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Lord testifying to the reality that he only spoke and did what was told to him by the

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Father. John 7, 16. Jesus says, my teaching is not mine, but him who sent me.

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John 8, 26. He who sent me is true and I declare to the world what

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I have heard from him. John 12, 49 and 50. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the

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Father who sent me has given himself or has himself, excuse me, given me a commandment.

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What to say and what to speak and I know that his commandment is eternal life.

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What I say therefore, I say as the Father has told me. John 14, 10.

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Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you,

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I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

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And finally, John 14, 24. The word you hear is not mine, but it's from the

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Father who sent me. In other words, Jesus was claiming that when he spoke,

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God was speaking. At every turn, with every syllable and every word, when

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Christ spoke, God was speaking. And although he performed many signs and miracles pointing to his identity as the

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Messiah, in fact, the gospel of John is often laid out according to that structure, these signposts pointing to the

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Messiah. The question is, how did he respond to those who asked for a sign?

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We see it in the gospel of Matthew chapter 12. It says there in verses 38 through 40, then some of the scribes and the

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Pharisees answered him saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. But he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet

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Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

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So, what then was the ultimate sign validating the claims of Christ? What was the preeminent miracle performed by Jesus that proved that his words were true?

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It was his resurrection from the dead. By raising Christ from the dead and conquering death in our place,

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God was declaring that the words of Jesus were true and that his sacrificial death upon the cross was accepted as the satisfaction for God's wrath on our behalf.

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And just listen to how the apostle Paul demonstrates the connection of his own apostleship and role in establishing the foundation of the church with the reality of Christ's resurrection.

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We often gloss over this at the very beginning of the introductory greeting to Romans, but it's actually there at the very beginning in that monumental letter that he says this,

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Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets and the holy scriptures concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

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Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to do what?

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To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,

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Paul says. It's a glorious reality. And so this is why witnessing the resurrected

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Christ was an essential qualification of apostleship. In the same way that the miraculous sign of Christ's resurrection demonstrated that his words were true, the miraculous sign gifts of the apostles validated that they were speaking truth and that those words were authoritative and were referring to the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself.

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Therefore, not only could their words be trusted, this is one we often forget, their words must be obeyed.

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They're coming from God. We as his image bearers and his creation are commanded to obey them.

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This is precisely what we see happening in that well -known passage from Acts chapter two.

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On the day of Pentecost as the Holy Spirit is poured out and the church is born, the miraculous sign gifts of tongues validate the occasion in fulfillment of the words spoken by the prophet

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Joel and of Jesus's promise of the coming spirit. But then notice what the apostle

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Peter, now emboldened and empowered by the Holy Spirit says. Beginning in verse 22 of Acts two, he says this, men of Israel, hear these words.

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Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst.

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As you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

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God raised him up, loosing the pains of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

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And then down to verse 32, this Jesus God raised up and of that we all are witnesses.

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Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the father the promise of the

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Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

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And then down to verse 36, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both

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Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. And then notice how these people respond to what they're hearing.

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It says, now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

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Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the

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Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the

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Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

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And so here, what I want us to notice is that we have a very practical example of why the apostles played a pivotal role in establishing the church's foundation.

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These men have witnessed the resurrected Christ. They have been appointed by Christ and their appointment along with the words they are proclaiming have been validated by signs and wonders.

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So then what is the practical result of that authoritative proclamation of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

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Well, we see it beginning in verse 41, one of the most beautiful passages of all of scripture.

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It says, so those who received his word and were baptized and there were added that day about 3 ,000 souls.

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Think of that. And they devoted themselves to what? The apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

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And all came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through, we'll just ask the question, who?

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The apostles. The apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common, the unity around the gospel and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

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And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, both hospitality and generosity abound.

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Verse 47, praising God and having favor with all the people, and I love this last verse, and the

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Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. My friends, not only do cessationists affirm the foundational role of the apostles and prophets in the establishment of the church, which was attested by signs and miracles, but we also joyfully affirm that every time

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God sovereignly saves a sinner, we are witnessing a miracle right before our eyes.

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Contrary to the accusations made by many continuationists, cessationists wholeheartedly believe in the miraculous power of God.

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In fact, that's how the text in Ephesians chapter two actually begins. Paul says there, beginning in verse one, and you were dead and the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace, you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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So by his sovereign grace, God is still performing miracles today.

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He's still graciously transforming rebellious sinners and resurrecting the spiritually dead, of which we all attest to the reality of.

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Like he did when Lazarus lay lifeless in the tomb, Christ through the gospel is still proclaiming with both divine power and authority, come out from the grave and live.

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As he pleases, God can heal whomever he desires to heal. God is sovereign, and he can do anything he chooses to.

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As Psalm 115 .3 says, our God is in heaven, he does as he pleases.

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What he has revealed in scripture, however, is that he no longer is doing signs and wonders through the apostles and the prophets, because the church's foundation has been firmly established.

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Once the foundation of the church was completed, the purpose of the apostles and prophets was fulfilled, and so too were the miraculous sign gifts that they performed.

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No longer are the miraculous gifts of apostleship, prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, or healing part of the work of God's spirit in the church today.

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That is what makes us cessationists, because we believe those have ceased.

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The spirit of God still gives spiritual gifts to believers, but those particular sign gifts have ceased because they fulfilled their purpose.

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And yet, what we see in our text from Ephesians 2, as we finish out this chapter, is that although those gifts are no longer given, and the foundation of the church is now complete,

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God is not finished adding to the church by the power of the spirit, for the hope of the gospel is found.

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If you look with me at verses 21 and 22, Paul continues there saying, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the

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Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.

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And so now that the foundation of the church is complete, the question is, how is God speaking to his people and continuing to build and grow the church?

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Well, that answer leads us to the final aspect. I want us to recognize this evening, which is that cessationism affirms and celebrates the foundational authority of Scripture.

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Cessationism affirms and celebrates the foundational authority of Scripture.

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And in order for us to understand this rightly, I want us to think about the continuity of Christ's authority.

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So first, we see Christ in the Scriptures, as we've said, during his earthly ministry speaking with great authority, testifying that the words he spoke were from the

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Father. Then not only do we see Christ performing signs and miracles which validated that his words were true, but we also see the greatest confirmation that Christ was who he said he was through the resurrection from the dead by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. From there, as we've said, Christ appointed apostles, and part of their apostolic calling included the criteria of being a witness to the resurrected

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Christ. And with that calling came the gifting of signs and wonders by the power of God's Spirit to validate the words they spoke.

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But then from there, finally, we come to the inspiration of Scripture. And who is it that God used to write down the words that he was inspiring by the power of his

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Spirit? It is none other than the apostles and those who were authorized by them.

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This was the apostle Peter's point in chapter 1, verses 19 through 21 of his second epistle when he said, and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. Brothers and sisters, it is not a coincidence that the last remaining apostle in the apostle

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John is the one God used to write down the last gospel account, the last epistle, and the final book of prophecy in the book of Revelation.

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And so what then is the nature of this God -breathed word? What the apostle

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Paul tells us in his second letter to Timothy, chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, saying, all

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Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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My friends, not only does God complete the man through the inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, but it is through the completion of the canon that he completes the church's foundation.

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Therefore, as cessationists, we can unashamedly declare that we do not need any further revelation from God because Scripture is sufficient.

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We need not believe anyone who claims to have a word from the Lord unless he's reading from his

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Bible because Scripture is sufficient. And we can stand with absolute confidence upon the finished foundation of the church as it is revealed in God's word because Scripture is sufficient.

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So with our feet firmly planted upon the sufficiency of Scripture, I want us to conclude this evening with the words of 1

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Peter chapter 2, beginning in verse 1, Peter writes the following.

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So put away all malice, and all deceit, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander.

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Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.

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If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, for it stands in Scripture, behold.

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I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

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Pray with me. Father God, we thank you for the greatness of who you are.

01:00:18

Lord, we know that in your incomprehensibility, Father, we are unable to fully articulate and ascribe to you the majesty and the splendor that you so richly deserve.

01:00:40

I pray, Father, as we begin this conference, that you will help us, oh

01:00:45

God, to see your greatness. Help us to see the great love that you have for us, and that you have revealed to us through your word and through the gospel.

01:00:58

Thank you for sending to us your son. Thank you for his sacrificial death upon the cross.

01:01:07

Thank you for his resurrection from the dead, and thank you, oh God, that your justice has been satisfied through Christ in our place, and that we are credited with the righteousness of Christ by believing in your gospel.

01:01:27

Help us, oh God, throughout this weekend to seek you, to worship you.

01:01:38

Help us, God, to see your word and understand it clearly. Be with the rest of the men who will be speaking at this conference, and I pray that you'll be honored and glorified through every sermon and message delivered.

01:01:54

And be with us as a group as we walk together during this time. May you be glorified, exalted, and honored, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

01:02:06

Amen. Well, thank you, brother.

01:02:14

That was a good word, good way to start our conference together. We're going to take at least a 15 -minute break while we set up and get

01:02:21

Justin ready for his session coming up here. Take a moment to visit the book table at the back. There is a book on assurance that Kevin is the editor of, so check that book out, and also get a refill on the snacks that are available back there, and we will start again in about 15 minutes.

01:14:39

All right, if you come on in and find your place again, we're going to get started with session two. And I need to announce that if you have a blue and white

01:14:49

Dodge truck, license plate 7B -5999U in the parking lot, please see

01:14:56

Thomas Leo. He's standing in the back there. All right, before we begin this second session,

01:15:03

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

01:15:09

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

01:15:19

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.

01:15:37

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.

01:15:44

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

01:15:55

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

01:16:02

My name is... Am I on? Yep. Am I on? Am I on? Hello. Are we on?

01:16:08

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

01:16:19

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

01:16:24

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.

01:16:35

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.

01:16:40

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

01:16:46

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,

01:16:56

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

01:17:03

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

01:17:09

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

01:17:15

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.

01:17:23

My name is Kevin Hay, and my wife, Alicia, is here with me this evening. And 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.

01:17:42

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.

01:17:54

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

01:18:04

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

01:18:09

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

01:18:15

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

01:18:25

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

01:18:31

I have ceased. I'm so glad to be here.

01:18:37

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.

01:18:45

Now, before you pass that off, John, yeah, I need you to demonstrate something for us.

01:18:51

John has a special gift that he can turn on and off like a faucet. Can you show us what that is?

01:18:57

I'm not sure what gift you're… Gift of tongues. Sorry, that ceased, but…

01:19:08

Oh, you want an English accent? Yeah, well, that's one tongue. I'd like to hear you speak in the tongues that you used to speak in.

01:19:16

Well, I believe… I don't know. I could pass.

01:19:23

I'd rather just prepare Americans for heaven. There's this guy called

01:19:28

John the Baptist. My name's John. I am a Baptist, and my job,

01:19:34

I believe, is to be sent to America to prepare Americans for heaven, because it's going to be a real shock when you stand before the

01:19:42

Lord and he says, well done, good and faithful servant. And meeting

01:19:51

Isaiah is going to really be a shock, too. I'm Dan Phillips. I come from almost as far away as Andreas.

01:19:59

I come from Houston, Texas. If you picture America as a square, and you're up here, Houston is down here.

01:20:06

I pastored 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.

01:20:17

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

01:20:26

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

01:20:32

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

01:20:40

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

01:20:46

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

01:20:52

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.

01:21:05

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

01:21:14

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, and sort of a semi -retirement.

01:21:26

But I'm also thankful to God for the opportunity that I've had since 1994 to be teaching a class on the

01:21:32

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

01:21:39

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.

01:21:52

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

01:21:57

Justin. Good evening.

01:22:07

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

01:22:14

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

01:22:24

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.

01:22:34

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

01:22:39

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.

01:22:49

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

01:22:55

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

01:23:01

1 2 Peter, 1 2 3 John not mentioned. James, Jude is not mentioned.

01:23:07

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.

01:23:15

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

01:23:22

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

01:23:31

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.

01:23:44

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

01:23:55

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

01:24:01

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

01:24:07

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

01:24:18

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

01:24:26

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

01:24:35

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.

01:24:44

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

01:24:50

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

01:24:57

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

01:25:02

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

01:25:12

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

01:25:20

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

01:25:28

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

01:25:37

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.

01:25:53

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

01:25:59

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

01:26:10

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

01:26:15

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

01:26:20

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

01:26:26

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

01:26:36

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

01:26:47

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

01:26:59

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

01:27:09

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

01:27:15

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

01:27:21

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

01:27:27

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

01:27:41

Christianity, spoke in tongues. And they did it in the exact same way that Charismatics do today.

01:27:47

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.

01:27:55

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

01:28:01

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

01:28:09

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

01:28:15

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

01:28:23

So he was basically right on the Gospel, but he did have a very distorted view of sanctification in that he believed in something called entire sanctification.

01:28:34

He believed that after your conversion, you get a second blessing or a second experience with the

01:28:42

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

01:28:51

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.

01:29:02

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

01:29:08

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

01:29:14

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

01:29:27

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.

01:29:39

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

01:29:48

Excuse me, I need a little swig of water. But this holiness movement, this sinless perfectionism, you find quite frequently in the modern charismatic movement.

01:30:01

I'll give you a couple examples of this. Listen to this from Joyce Meyer. I am not poor,

01:30:10

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

01:30:16

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

01:30:22

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

01:30:32

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

01:30:40

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

01:30:46

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

01:30:53

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.

01:31:00

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.

01:31:08

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

01:31:13

I've never looked lusty 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.

01:31:22

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

01:31:28

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

01:31:37

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.

01:31:47

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.

01:31:56

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

01:32:03

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.

01:32:13

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.

01:32:26

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.

01:32:36

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

01:32:44

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.

01:32:55

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

01:33:02

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

01:33:09

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

01:33:17

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

01:33:23

He formed the International Divine Healing Association in San Francisco.

01:33:29

He prayed for the healing only of paid members of his cult. He was sued by two women for fraud, but it was very much a pay -to -pray situation.

01:33:40

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

01:33:45

Zion Tabernacle in Chicago, founded the city of Zion, which banned all practice of medicine.

01:33:53

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.

01:34:09

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.

01:34:17

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

01:34:24

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

01:34:31

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.

01:34:40

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

01:34:47

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

01:34:56

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

01:35:03

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

01:35:09

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

01:35:16

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

01:35:23

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

01:35:30

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

01:35:44

And so he withheld this broth from a dying woman. She died. Of course, the reason she died was her lack of faith, according to John Alexander Dowie.

01:35:55

He was a forerunner of American Pentecostalism, the forerunner of the Pentecostal movement.

01:36:04

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

01:36:12

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.

01:36:19

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

01:36:25

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.

01:36:34

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

01:36:44

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?

01:36:59

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

01:37:06

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.

01:37:18

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

01:37:25

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

01:37:39

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

01:37:48

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

01:37:54

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

01:38:01

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

01:38:06

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.

01:38:22

He forced extended fasts upon his followers, including upon children. Sickness was a sign that your soul was sick, and even sick kids were forced to fast further to get right with God.

01:38:35

And if they did not get right with God by their recovery, then they were physically beaten. He was a wicked, wicked man, as was

01:38:44

John Alexander Dowie. One girl in his compound was punished for the sin of vanity.

01:38:52

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.

01:39:03

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

01:39:09

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

01:39:16

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

01:39:24

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

01:39:32

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

01:39:41

He is widely regarded to be the father of the American Pentecostal movement,

01:39:47

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

01:39:55

It 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.

01:40:08

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

01:40:18

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

01:40:25

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.

01:40:35

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

01:40:41

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

01:40:48

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

01:40:53

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

01:40:58

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

01:41:03

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

01:41:12

Ark of the Covenant, and he claimed to have the exact location too, but obviously he didn't find it. Indiana Jones found it.

01:41:21

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.

01:41:34

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

01:41:41

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

01:41:49

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

01:42:01

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

01:42:08

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

01:42:16

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

01:42:25

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.

01:42:41

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.

01:42:48

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.

01:43:14

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.

01:43:26

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.

01:43:42

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

01:43:48

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.

01:43:58

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

01:44:04

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

01:44:10

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.

01:44:24

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

01:44:34

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

01:44:44

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

01:44:55

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

01:45:04

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.

01:45:10

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

01:45:17

Pentecostals came back in complete failure on their expeditions. There was one woman, however, there was one woman, a follower, a student of Charles Parham.

01:45:28

Her name was Agnes Osmond. No relation to the pastor of this church, at least not that he would admit, but no, no relation.

01:45:40

But she did claim to have the real McCoy, the real gift of languages.

01:45:46

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

01:45:52

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

01:46:01

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

01:46:12

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

01:46:17

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

01:46:26

Agnes Osmond. Okay, William Seymour and the

01:46:31

Azusa Street Revival. By the way, all that with Charles Fox Parham happened around 1901, 1902.

01:46:37

So fast forward a few years. William Seymour was actually a student of Charles Parham's.

01:46:43

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

01:46:50

He only reluctantly allowed 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.

01:47:01

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

01:47:11

They rented out this building on Azusa Street in California. This was 1906, and that is when the

01:47:19

Azusa Street Revival broke out, and people began to speak in tongues. They were shaking.

01:47:25

They were gyrating, flopping around on the floor, all kinds of bizarre behavior. But the real charismatics point to the

01:47:35

Azusa Street Revival as the beginning in earnest of their movement.

01:47:41

So Charles Parham was a scoundrel. He was a heretic. He was a false prophet. He was a racist.

01:47:48

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

01:47:55

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

01:48:04

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.

01:48:17

His pockets were literally full of cash that his followers would stuff into his pockets. So he was no saint either.

01:48:24

But there's about 26 different denominations that trace their origins back to the

01:48:30

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

01:48:36

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

01:48:42

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

01:48:53

Azusa Street Revival and the early Pentecostal Movement is that some of these

01:48:58

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

01:49:04

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

01:49:10

Trinity, which is a fundamental doctrine of historical Christianity, if you reject the Trinity, you're clearly not a

01:49:16

Christian, and yet they spoke in tongues in exactly the same way that the other

01:49:23

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

01:49:31

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

01:49:38

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

01:49:47

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

01:49:54

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

01:50:02

Pentecostal, different shades of Pentecostal, but the Charismatic Renewal was more ecumenical.

01:50:07

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

01:50:14

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

01:50:25

Word of Faith movement with people like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin and their emphasis on health and wealth, prosperity theology.

01:50:35

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

01:50:42

Peter Wagner, and Wagner largely kept the prosperity teachings of the

01:50:48

Word of Faith movement that came out of the second stage, second wave, the Charismatic Renewal.

01:50:53

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

01:51:04

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

01:51:11

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

01:51:19

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.

01:51:29

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

01:51:35

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.

01:51:49

None of these, however, were truly documented. The only kind of healing that you see in the

01:51:55

Charismatic movement is psychosomatic healing, mind over body. 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.

01:52:18

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

01:52:24

Those are psychosomatic healings, and they happen all the time in the Charismatic movement. But what you never see in the

01:52:31

Charismatic movement are organic healings, healings that cannot be explained simply by a rush of adrenaline.

01:52:39

An amputee, you never see an amputee in the Charismatic movement grow a new limb. Someone with cerebral palsy, something like what

01:52:47

I've got. If I'm standing up on my crutches, no matter how happy I am, no matter how good of a mood

01:52:54

I'm in, you take my crutches away from me, and down goes Frazier, right?

01:53:00

So that would be an organic healing. You never see organic healings in the

01:53:05

Charismatic movement. So none of these were documented. The newspapers of the day roundly debunked his claims of just psychosomatic healings.

01:53:14

His wife died of a fever six months after they arrived in South Africa in 1908 to do some missions work.

01:53:21

And after she died, he got engaged to a lady and his fiancée.

01:53:27

She also died of malaria just a year later, 1909.

01:53:32

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

01:53:41

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

01:53:49

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

01:53:59

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

01:54:05

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

01:54:13

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.

01:54:35

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.

01:54:42

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.

01:54:50

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

01:55:04

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

01:55:19

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

01:55:26

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?

01:55:33

Your brother in Christ, John G. Lake, he's a fraud, he's a scam artist, but he is revered.

01:55:44

In fact, one of the tales that is told about John G. Lake is that when

01:55:50

John G. Lake went to South Africa, that was right at the time the bubonic plague was raging. And the story is told that some foam from some of the bodies of the dead that died of the bubonic plague,

01:56:05

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.

01:56:15

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

01:56:21

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

01:56:29

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 the living bacteria and the doctors told him he's going to die by touching this stuff.

01:56:48

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

01:57:00

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

01:57:07

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.

01:57:15

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

01:57:22

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

01:57:28

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

01:57:34

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

01:57:41

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.

01:57:51

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

01:57:58

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

01:58:06

Lake and charismatics to this day believe that lie. And it is a lie. It absolutely is a lie.

01:58:13

Now looking at this, by the way, Andrew Womack's college, Karis Bible College, they had to shut down because of COVID.

01:58:20

So many of their students got sick. So now the claim is that the bacteria died upon contact with John G.

01:58:28

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

01:58:36

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 used, you know, back when we were in school.

01:58:48

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.

01:58:59

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.

01:59:25

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

01:59:32

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

01:59:38

And the only way, and 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.

01:59:48

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

01:59:56

Funny thing happens when you stain the bacteria, they die. So this is just fabricated.

02:00:02

It's not true. He was a fraud. There's a picture of John G. Lake in his car. John G.

02:00:08

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

02:00:17

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

02:00:24

Arab mystic, and he came out dressed like an Arab, called himself

02:00:29

Abdul bin Shenandar. Complete fraud. Complete fraud.

02:00:39

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

02:00:46

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

02:00:52

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

02:00:59

Lake also claimed to be Elijah, Smith Wigglesworth.

02:01:05

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

02:01:12

British evangelist. He's known for distributing prayer claws. He took the account in Acts chapter 19 of handkerchiefs and prayer claws going from the

02:01:21

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.

02:01:29

Some of these televangelists, TV preachers, they'll send you an anointed prayer cloth. Of course, if you send the money first.

02:01:35

But if you send the money, then they'll send you an anointed prayer cloth and that will heal what ails you. But just keep the money coming.

02:01:44

Smith Wigglesworth said this, quote, It is a disgrace for a believer to go to a doctor.

02:01:51

You see this recurring theme here. I'll only pray for you once, said

02:01:57

Smith Wigglesworth, to pray twice is unbelief. To one sick person who returned a second night, he said,

02:02:03

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.

02:02:20

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.

02:02:28

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

02:02:37

So he would literally go up to people, sick people, and punch them and kick them.

02:02:45

Just like we see Jesus and the apostles doing in the New Testament. And he said,

02:02:51

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

02:03:03

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.

02:03:13

Watch this. Hello, Sid Roth here.

02:03:20

Welcome to my world, where it's naturally supernatural. I have read of the great men and women of faith.

02:03:29

One in particular intrigues me so much. His name, Smith Wigglesworth.

02:03:35

He had some of the most outrageous miracles I ever heard of in my life.

02:03:43

Let me give you one example. Some parents had a two -month -old baby dying in the hospital.

02:03:51

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, can

02:04:00

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

02:04:06

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

02:04:14

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

02:04:22

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

02:04:29

The baby falls into the congregation. No crying.

02:04:37

Is it dead? 100 % healed.

02:04:45

No crying. Is that not shocking?

02:04:55

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

02:05:07

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

02:05:15

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

02:05:24

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

02:05:32

Unless 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

02:05:51

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

02:06:03

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

02:06:17

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

02:06:28

And Dr. Michael Brown will not renounce this story. Amy Semple McPherson, Sister Amy, another one of the great generals of the charismatic movement.

02:06:47

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

02:06:54

She just had dreams of being an actress, being in theater. She married a man named Robert Semple. And shortly after they got married, they went to China, believing that they would be given the gift of tongues.

02:07:06

Upon getting there, of course, that did not work out. But her husband died just two months after they arrived in China, got sick and died.

02:07:15

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

02:07:24

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

02:07:35

Harold at home to care for the children. She decided that God called her to preach.

02:07:40

And so she went out and did so multiple nights per week. And she believed that the

02:07:47

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

02:07:54

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

02:08:00

But that didn't matter to her. And 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?

02:08:13

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

02:08:19

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.

02:08:31

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

02:08:38

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

02:08:46

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

02:08:56

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

02:09:02

She was very odd, but she would go out in the street, and she would literally do this.

02:09:07

She would stand in the middle of the street corner, staring up at the sky. And she would just stand there for the longest time, staring up into the sky blankly, sometimes with her hand raised up, just staring into the sky.

02:09:20

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.

02:09:29

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

02:09:35

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

02:09:41

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

02:09:47

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

02:09:53

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

02:09:58

She was an evangelical equivalent of a movie star.

02:10:05

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

02:10:10

Angelus Temple, and you can see the massive number of people there. And she was very theatrical. Remember, she always wanted to be in theater.

02:10:17

Very theatrical. This is a picture of her, one particular service.

02:10:23

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

02:10:28

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

02:10:35

Stephen Furtick of her day, female version of that. So she was seeker sensitive before seeker sensitive was cool.

02:10:43

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.

02:10:56

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.

02:11:10

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, almost to the day, a guy named

02:11:22

Kenneth Ormiston. Kenneth Ormiston worked for Amy Semple McPherson, and they both vanished at the exact same time.

02:11:29

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

02:11:37

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

02:11:45

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

02:11:51

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

02:11:57

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

02:12:04

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.

02:12:16

And 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.

02:12:26

And she escaped and left the cabin and made her way back up to California.

02:12:32

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.

02:12:47

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.

02:12:57

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

02:13:09

William Branham. William Branham is the father of the post -World War II healing revival movement.

02:13:17

Branham taught that only those who accepted his teachings would be saved. He prophesied that all of the world's denominations would be consumed by the

02:13:25

Roman Catholic -controlled 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.

02:13:37

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

02:13:44

Trinity as a demonic doctrine. I've actually got audio of William Branham saying this, and he said, and I quote, "'Trinitarianism is of the devil, thus saith the

02:13:53

Lord.'" It's oneness theology, what

02:13:58

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,

02:14:13

Elijah, Elijah. These people were fascinated with Elijah.

02:14:20

So false prophet, Charlotten. Katherine Kuhlman, Katherine Kuhlman.

02:14:28

Along with Amy Semple McPherson, the most famous female evangelist,

02:14:34

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

02:14:39

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

02:14:45

Oh, if you only knew how precious is the bride of Christ.

02:14:55

How precious. How precious is the bride of Christ.

02:15:06

It's the father's gift to his son. You can't love without giving.

02:15:18

The greatest gift that is possible for him to give. Ye shall receive power.

02:15:33

Just in case you've been sleeping a little too well at night, I wanted to show you that.

02:15:43

So Katherine Kuhlman, world's most famous female faith healer.

02:15:49

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

02:16:03

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

02:16:11

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

02:16:18

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

02:16:26

Burroughs Waltrip. She was actually asked about it because that was a problem back then when she got divorced for her ministry.

02:16:33

So she was asked about it by a reporter, and she said that she never actually married Burroughs Waltrip. She said they never took the vow.

02:16:39

She said, we were going to, but she said, I passed out before the vows were said. Well, that's a lie because there's actually a photograph of her marriage certificate.

02:16:49

She was just a liar, homewrecker, false prophet. But she was Benny Hinn's inspiration.

02:16:55

You look at old video clips of Katherine Kuhlman and look at video clips of Benny Hinn today, and they're the same person.

02:17:03

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

02:17:09

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

02:17:19

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

02:17:30

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.

02:17:38

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

02:17:46

But it just like, ah, 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

02:17:57

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

02:18:04

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

02:18:12

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

02:18:26

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

02:18:33

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

02:18:48

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

02:18:59

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

02:19:08

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.

02:19:19

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.

02:19:29

Acts 3, 1 -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.

02:19:41

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

02:19:53

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.

02:20:01

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

02:20:09

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

02:20:16

I none, but such as I have, give

02:20:21

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

02:20:28

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

02:20:41

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

02:20:53

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

02:21:10

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

02:21:34

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

02:21:47

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

02:21:55

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,

02:22:08

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

02:22:15

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

02:22:23

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.

02:22:43

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

02:22:48

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

02:22:55

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.

02:23:03

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 good shepherd himself, but these faithful men one day are going to be at the front of the line.

02:23:20

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

02:23:26

I want to show you some people, some men that all of us would be familiar with, contrast some of the more well -known charismatic generals with some of the more well -known cessationist preachers.

02:23:42

Charismatics have John Alexander Dowie. As cessationists, we got

02:23:48

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

02:23:55

Jonathan Edwards. Charismatics have Charles Fox Parham. Cessationists have

02:24:02

Charles Haddon Spurgeon. More modern days.

02:24:10

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

02:24:17

Creflo Dollar. We got Votie Bauckham. Charismatics have

02:24:22

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

02:24:31

I'm on. I know which side, of which side I would be more proud in a godly kind of a way, not an arrogant way, not a sinful way.

02:24:42

But it's a contrast, is it not? It's a contrast, and it's notable.

02:24:50

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

02:25:11

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?

02:25:32

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

02:25:45

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

02:25:56

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

02:26:05

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

02:26:14

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

02:26:20

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

02:26:41

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

02:26:47

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

02:26:58

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

02:27:06

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

02:27:16

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

02:27:27

Father, it grieves all of us who are truly indwelt by your

02:27:34

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

02:27:45

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.

02:27:55

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

02:28:04

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

02:28:16

For the health of your church, for the glory of Christ our King. It's in his name we pray. Amen.

02:28:27

Justin has made some disturbing connections between someone with the last name of Osmond in Sandpoint, Idaho. I'm not sure what to do with that.

02:28:33

I thought we were friends. All right, you are welcome to leave your items on the table.

02:28:42

Please take your valuables with you. We will be back in here tomorrow morning. Doors will open at 8 o 'clock, and we will start promptly again at 8 .30