Hearing the Voice of God with Jim Osman

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Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapoport. We have going to have a special guest on later.

Maybe we'll see. I don't know if we could trust the guest to come on. Sure, you can trust this guest.

Absolutely. But I'm glad that you came in. You're the guest. Oh, thanks. Discount what

I just said. Never mind. You know, actually, what is very fitting right now is a post that I saw from you on Facebook.

From a Thomas Fuller. It says, quote, He that knows nothing will believe anything, unquote.

Yeah, yeah. That's very fitting. It's the spirit of the age. Yeah, you know, I love what, I don't know if you know

Mike Riddle, but from Christian training. I have to remember if it's Institute.

I forget what the I stands for, but CTI. But Mike always has this thing that he'll do in one of his talks where he says,

Okay, I want you to give me the right answer. Now, there's some qualifications to it. The question is, what is three plus four?

However, you can't say seven. You can't spell seven. You can't have an, you know, you can't do seven in binary.

You can't give me seven in, you know, with some, you know, you know, like calculations.

So you can't, whatever you do, you cannot give me an answer that means seven. What's the answer of three plus four?

And he just sits there. People look dumbfounded. Someone will just shout out 11. He goes, right. You know, you get 24.

Yes, you're right. And his whole point is, if you're going to ignore the truth, anything becomes truth.

You know, Jim Wallace does it. And this is J. Warner Wallace. It's a problem when you have a name like Jim Wallace.

It's common, but... Yes, I was about to say we're quoting sojourners now. Yeah, like the conservative. J. Warner Wallace, you know, he does a thing where he says, you know, because he's a, you know, 20 year police detective, right?

So he says, you know, you go into a room and you see a guy that's, that, you know, has been shot, but there's no gun in the apartment.

But someone says, it's suicide. The captain says, this is suicide. Or, you know, like, or the guy has a gun, shot himself.

And, you know, the, you know, and the guy says, no, black guy did this. You got to go find the black guy.

You know, like in either one of those scenarios, the problem is, he goes, when you already start with the conclusion, that's now the truth.

You just are going to do whatever to make that, to make that fit. Boy, we live in those times now.

You know, it was, I think, tolerance was supposed to be the prime virtue of postmodernism.

But I think gullibility has overwhelmed it since. Well, yeah, we've, we've gotten into, you know,

I think, I think what's becoming really popular again is the book 1984. I mean,

I look at when I remember reading that in high school, and the thing that I thought was the stupidest thing was this whole thing of newspeak.

That the government would actually change the language, and people would go, oh, yes, this is the new way.

Like, they'd ignore what the word meant yesterday, and just buy into a new definition. I said, that's so stupid.

That would never work. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I mean, we have a gentleman who claims he's a girl that is running for governor now of California.

You know, goes by the name of Caitlyn Jenner, but that's not really his name, is it?

No, Bruce Jenner. Which, by the way, actually, I mentioned Mike Riddle in a funny story with Mike Riddle and Bruce Jenner.

It's a funny thing that I always like to bring up to Mike is I asked Mike if he ever lost a dicathlon to a girl, and he's quick to say no, he lost to a man,

Bruce Jenner at the time. So, Bruce Jenner beat out Mike Riddle to go to the Olympics.

Yes, that's how good Mike is. You know, he was next in line to go to the

Olympics that year. So, yeah, I like to bust on Mike and say he lost to a girl.

It's the only time I actually want to refer to Mike, refer to Bruce Jenner as a girl. So, we got a review in this week, and so let me read the review now.

I'm going to start, Bud, by letting you know, this review has no stars.

So, this is one where we just got a review with no stars, which is kind of interesting. I did take a look, and I was looking at this, and we got several very, very brave, very brave reviewers.

We have two reviews with no stars, no rating at all.

They just left a comment. But then we have four very brave people. They left a one -star rating with no review.

In other words, I guess they don't want us to actually engage with why they think this show is bad. They just wanted to knock it down.

If you're going to leave us a one -star rating, at least give us a review so we can engage with you and find out why you don't like us.

It's probably that postmodernism again. They felt like it was a one -star, but they didn't have any reason for it.

But it's also interesting to see where this is coming from. I don't know that I could pronounce the name, but this person writes from Nigeria, but it's like Adebukula Esther Iroh.

I probably butchered your name. Forgive me. Someone will have to pronounce that properly for me. But here's the review.

This review comes on a specific episode. It's the episode that was talked about,

God Doesn't Whisper. That was with Pastor Jim Osmond from Kootenai Community Church. He wrote the book,

I'll hold it up, God Doesn't Whisper. See, I'm only that far into it.

Actually, to be honest, I put the bookmark in Chapter 8 there just so that I could claim...

I've told Jim I'll never read a book of his. I was going to write a review that just said, best book

I never read. But I thought you said the reason you stopped where you did is because you had a dream that told you all the rest of it.

That's true. Maybe that was a different text. The reason I really didn't want to read this one is

I was very offended by Pastor Osmond, the author, because when we first talked, he talked and asked whether I would write something up.

I mean, you can see on the back that character, Justin Peters, he got his review right on the back.

I was asked if I would write something, and I was really kind of bummed because I got bumped.

Look at who he bumped me for. He bumped me for... Who's that guy, John MacArthur? How would

I ever read this book? I got bumped for John MacArthur. He's a bigger name than me.

Well, okay, yeah. But here's the review, and we got some questions that maybe we can engage with here that this review asks.

So this comes from Nigeria, but as we know, in Africa, this whole idea of hearing

God's voice in the prosperity gospel is rampant throughout. And so here's what we got.

It says, at first, when I listened to this, I was upset.

Like, why shouldn't I expect to hear from God audibly? I had to ask God, please help me keep an open heart and teach me what

I need to know, which he did. I still have questions, by the way, but at the end of this podcast,

I can truly say I have learned something fresh. I don't know if I agree with all that he said, all that was said, but I definitely see why

I need to work on my, need to work on, sorry, what

I need to work on in my walk with Christ. I've had to ask myself, is the word truly sufficient for me?

Why exactly do I desire to hear God's voice? I do have a question or two that I need answered.

I was disappointed it was not really talked about, or perhaps I missed it when it was discussed.

Question one is, does God speak audibly in this day and age? Two, is it wrong to desire to hear from God audibly, even knowing that it is not a compulsory part of the

Christian walk and shouldn't be expected? But are you saying, don't even think about it?

Thank you. So he's got a couple questions, he or she, because I don't know if this is, I just don't know the name, if it's male or female, but so he or she has some questions, but we should try to answer it.

I mean, it would have been good if we could have gotten Jim Osmond just to come in here. You know, it would be good if he could, if he would be able to come in and just answer, but.

Yeah, because I'm sure he's got, he's probably not got a great answer to this. It's probably black and white, so.

Yeah, I just wish he would come in and, but we couldn't get him. I can call him and see if he's available.

Ah, there he is. Oh, wow. It's almost like he got a word from the Lord that he should show up here.

I had a dream last night, show up on Andrew's podcast. So Jim, it's good to have you back.

And, you know, we did this because we wanted to, we wanted to get your, you know, we could answer this easily, but we needed an excuse to get you back on.

Sure. You know, I recently came on to the Apologetics Live, all because, and, but I don't know if you saw that Apologetics Live, but, you know, there was something that Jim had in one of his sermons.

It was his Resurrection Sunday sermon, and he mentioned something that I was like, wait, what?

I had to go back and re -listen. And, you know, I said, Jim, you got to come on and to Apologetics Live, let's talk about this.

He made a comment about talking about the resurrection and why that points to premillennialism.

And it's the first time I had heard the argument. I was like, oh, come on in. So we talked about that on Apologetics Live, which

Matter of Theology has now responded to that, Jim, Drew has, and so we're going to try to get you and Drew together on Apologetics Live to talk about that.

But the funny thing was, Jim was like, you know, he's like, oh, that was just a throwaway comment. So, and I said, even

Jim's throwaway comments are gold. That's the whole thing. So, folks, if you don't listen to Jim's preaching, you can, if you go to christianpodcastcommunity .org,

look in the podcast shows, you'll see Kootenai Community Church Morning Worship Service.

And then you can listen to each of his sermons. He's going through Hebrews. How long have you been going through Hebrews?

Was Paul still writing it when you started? It was close. Paul, Paul didn't write it.

I think it's probably been three years now, at least. I need to go back and check and see when it was that I started that series.

Yeah, so, you know, at least, Jim, you know, that I do listen to your sermons. I even pick up your throwaway comments.

Yeah, I know. So, I encourage folks to listen to that.

But let's engage with this. There's a couple things that I saw right off the bat with this comment.

One is the teachable spirit. This actually surprised me, Jim. You've probably seen this a lot.

When we talk about things like this, it's very rare that we get someone that is willing to even listen.

I mean, I was speaking to a guy. He wants to try to partner with the Christian podcast community on a project he's doing.

And, you know, doing the research, I was like, you know, okay, I'm kind of having concerns with what I'm seeing with where he goes to church and stuff like that and who he's associated with.

And then I start talking to him and he's like, yeah, you know, we started this project because someone came to me and said,

God told them to give us this money so we could start this project. And, you know,

I'm like, look, you know, clearly at this point, I'm like, I'm not going to partner with the guy, but I'm going to at least try to teach him.

And I start saying, well, you know, I really don't believe God did that. You know, God didn't speak to that guy. And God, you're doing all this stuff saying

God's leading you, but unless you have book, chapter, and verse, I'm not buying it. And I was actually like going, okay,

I'm going to get into this long debate where I'm going to have to defend what I say. And the guy actually was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd like to get together with you more. You really taught me some things. I need to grow in my Christian walk and maybe we can continue discussing this.

I was like, wow, okay. But that seems to be an oddity. Do you experience that as well?

Do you see that people are, when we talk about not hearing God speaking to us, that people are, do they take that with open ears?

I'll put it that way. Are they ready to hear what you might have to say? No, not typically, simply because of the emotional attachment that people have to these experiences and because the experience seems so real to them.

And so, you know, it's their connection to God. It's their feeling that their walk with God is real, genuine, intimate, close.

And then you suggest to them that these things that you claim that you're experiencing are really not the way that God speaks to us.

Then they feel as if you've robbed them of their intimacy with God and taken that away. And one of the challenges is getting people to realize that your intimacy with God comes in knowing scripture, reading scripture, and absorbing that, and walking with God in scripture and not in these subjective experiences of nudgings and promptings and all the other stuff that they associate with the voice of God.

People typically are not real open to having their intimacy with God challenged on that level.

And I think that's really a product of our age, right, is this. I mean, we see this clearly in the political realm that people are feeling their way through issues and not thinking their way through issues.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about a Caitlyn Jenner and people like actually demanding that we refer to this gentleman as a girl just because they feel like it today.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and I think that we'll get it, maybe get into more of a discussion.

I think the dangers of that when we look at just the church, but, you know, this person, you know, was questioning the fact of, should we expect to hear

God speak audibly? And so let me ask you the first question that they said, you know, does

God speak audibly in this day and age? Audibly, no, but that doesn't mean that God is not still speaking through his word, that he is not communicating to his people, that people don't hear

God speaking in Scripture. And we have to clarify what we mean by that, because when we talk about God speaking through Scripture, we're not talking about reading a verse of Scripture and having, reading a passage of Scripture and having a verse or a phrase jump off the page with some new meaning, something that means to us that it didn't mean to the original writer or the original audience.

What we mean is that when we read Scripture and we understand Scripture and we hear the meaning of that passage as intended by the author and the

Holy Spirit and as understood by the original audience, then we are hearing the voice of God in that sense.

We are receiving the same message, the same communication that God gives to his people.

And so we, he is speaking, but he uses his word to speak to his people and to instruct his people, to teach them for their edification and equipping, but he doesn't give us private messages that are unconnected from the original meaning of the text.

So does he speak audibly today? No, we have no reason. That's not to say that God could not, if he desired to or he intended to, he could,

God could do whatever he wants, but we have no reason in Scripture to believe that God needs to speak audibly today or that we should expect to hear

God speak audibly today or that we should expect to hear or that we need to hear God speak in any way outside of Scripture.

We simply don't need that because Scripture is sufficient. You know, let me check this. There's a guy that is on the back of your book that wrote a review that I think disagrees with you.

This guy, Justin Peters, he's got a t -shirt. Yeah, I hired him off of Fiverr, five bucks to get somebody to write almost anything for you.

But you know, Justin Peters has a famous quote that I like, and maybe it disagrees with what you're saying, but no, he always says, if you want to hear

God speak, read the Bible. If you want to hear God speak audibly, read it out loud.

Yeah, that's a play on words that he's using there. But that's really the only way we should expect to hear

God speak audibly is through his Word, if you're reading it out loud. But it really is, that is how he speaks to us in this day and age.

Yeah, and the Reformers had such a high view of preaching that they would say that God speaks audibly through the mouthpiece of the preacher, that when the preacher gets up and communicates

God's Word and teaches God's Word, that God is in that moment through the lips of the speaker preaching and speaking to his people in doing that.

And anybody who is an expositor of Scripture and knows how the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of people who listen to the preaching of the

Word, then they would affirm that, that yes, when people understand what God's Word means, the

Spirit of God is working there to speak through the lips of the proclaimer of God's Word. So how does this, because even the reviewer tied this as we did in the episode to the sufficiency of Scripture, what is the connection here that we make about the sufficiency of Scripture and why we shouldn't be looking for dreams and visions and audible voices telling us what to do?

Yeah, because if Scripture truly gives me everything I need for life and godliness, then that means that God has provided in his

Word everything I need for every decision I will ever make. It doesn't tell me which woman to marry or which house to buy or which job to take, but it does lay out for me all the principles that I need, the moral will of God and the wisdom of God that is in the examples, illustrations, good and bad, so that if I'm understanding what

Scripture teaches on how it is that I glorify God and how I should live my life, then I'm free to make whatever decision

I want in that regard without fearing that I have disobeyed God. So if God's Word communicates to us everything we need to live a

God -honoring and obedient life, then I don't need to have God say anything outside of Scripture because I need no further information.

Now, God having provided everything I need, he leaves the choice up to me, and I'm free to make that choice.

Yeah, and I think that if I had to pick what I would think would be the number one problem in the church today, it would probably be this issue, the sufficiency of Scripture.

Oh, definitely. It just seems like people are looking for answers to life and godliness in everything else but the

Scripture. In dreams, in visions, in preachers, in culture.

All the fads that run their way through the church, that blow through the church with every stiff wind, you know, whether it's the prayer of Jabez or the 40 days of purpose or the

Daniel Diet or whatever it is that just the constant churning out of fads by the

Christian publishing community that grips the church, all of that is nothing more than a desire to find some answer to how to grow the church, how to strengthen the church, how to strengthen relationships within church, how to help marriages, how to increase giving and everything else in some other way other than just with Scripture.

And it betrays a lack of belief in the sufficiency of Scripture. The whole approach to preaching where we put video clips up on the screens behind the preacher and exegete the latest

Marvel blockbuster, that's just an indication that they don't believe Scripture is sufficient to do that work of transforming the hearts and lives of people.

Well, you said it quickly, but I think you nailed where the problem is. It's in the publishing, right?

Because that's really where you get all this nonsense that comes out, it's the publishers. And what people don't know is most of the

Christian publishers are owned by secular companies. So they're just looking to churn things out to make money.

They're not caring about its content. And they're perfectly happy with debate in Christian circles and people tearing each other down just for the sake of selling books.

I first became aware of that when MacArthur's book, Gospel According to Jesus came out.

And I remember all the publishers, the same publisher that I think that did that book was doing either

Ryrie's or I forget who the other guy was. But the publisher, like even when you saw, they would sell those books right next to each other to try to get you to buy both or all three if you did.

I forget who was the other person, Zane Hodges. That's who I thought, okay. So yeah, so publishing is,

I think, really where a lot of these fads really did come from. And it's so funny, you're mentioning the different things and I'm just going, oh yeah, we forgot about the

Daniel Diet and the Prayer of Jabez. Like that was really big and then just gone. It's gone, yeah.

You know, and it is so much of it is this thing of where it just seems like people are just, oh,

I'm going to jump on this. I'm going to jump on that for whatever. And they're looking for, and I think

Prayer of Jabez is a good example because with that one, it really was this thing where people were like, oh, if I just do this prayer,

God's going to give me bigger territory. And my guess was like everyone realized it didn't work or maybe the

Daniel Diet quit because people weren't losing the weight that Daniel did and gave up on it.

But there's so many of these fads that do go through the church and so much of it is, you could look at either the

Daniel Diet or Prayer of Jabez, neither one of them are really rooted in scripture, not a proper understanding of scripture.

That's the thing you see with these is so much of it is, okay, Daniel did this diet. They ripped that out of its context of why

Daniel was dieting. You know, it didn't have to do with the diet itself and it wasn't that he was doing it to lose weight.

No. He was doing it to honor God and the whole thing that, you know, of him losing, it's not just that he lost weight, but he looked better, you know?

Yeah. And so people rip that out of that context and go, oh, this is a diet that's going to help you lose weight.

That really isn't from scripture then. You know, this is part of what I end up seeing so much with, you know, with a lot of these fads.

And I think the latest fad, although it's not so new, but everyone's jumping onto it is hearing from God, you know?

Yeah. That's a long lasting fad. I mean, that's been going through the church for at least a better part of almost two generations now that that has been creeping its way slowly but surely out of charismaticism and into evangelicalism writ large.

The reason I think that this is so dangerous though, and I want to get your feedback on this, my view is that the whole idea of hearing from God having a dream or vision is not just a lack of sufficiency of scripture, but I think what it also ends up doing is for many, they're not trusting the scripture.

They're trusting their dream. I think that it shifts the trust and leads people to,

I mean, I've actually had a guy in prayer meeting that claimed that God, you know, he was following God's will because God told him to lie to his boss so that he could protect a fellow employee and witness to him.

And I was like, the guy you're trying to witness to now knows you're a liar, like he's going to believe you, you know?

But this is what I end up seeing is that people feel justified, and if you, because they say it's of the

Lord, you cannot, they don't listen to anything you say to try to correct them. No, you can't disabuse them of that because the source of authority then becomes

God himself and not the vision of the dream. And so why would I, why would

I consult a book and go through the effort of studying and reading and exegeting a book to find out God's mind revealed to somebody who lived 3 ,500 years ago?

If I can just wait and God's going to download it immediately into my heart and mind, some new fresh revelation, you know, it's, why would

I want the old revelation if I can have the fresh new thing that's custom designed for me? And so people end up expecting that and trusting of that.

And in the end, the Bible gets the short shrift. And really what it is, it's, it's their own desires.

I mean, it's not that this comes from nowhere. Typically. It's, it's, it's either their own desires or I'll say a lot of it, you know, it could be demonic, but God is going to speak through his word.

Right. Yeah. More often than not, the personal revelation ends up being nothing more than an expression of what the person wanted to do to begin with.

More often than not. Yeah. I remember in college, young gentleman who really liked a young lady.

She happened to be engaged at the time, but he got a word from the Lord during a prayer meeting.

God spoke to him audibly and told her through him to marry him.

Quite convenient. And, and so she, she broke off the engagement and did marry the guy.

And the, you know, the fact that they got married was the proof for them for many years that God did speak.

Of course they're divorced now. So I don't know what, what you do with that. But, but yeah,

I've seen, this is what I've seen with people that have this. It's really their own desire, but it's, it, but Jim, it sounds so spiritual and it's gotta be right if it's coming from God, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's what they assume that it, that they have this connection with God. And if he's speaking it, then, then they have a connection with God that nobody else has.

And it ends up becoming a, almost a form of Gnosticism in some ways, because you're believing that you're getting revelation, private revelation from God that is not available to anybody else.

Whereas scriptures available to you and me, we both have copies of it. We can both read it and understand it and, uh, and, and see, and know the mind of God revealed on the pages of Holy scripture.

But the person who's getting their own private revelations, well, they have a connection with God that you don't have. They have a way of receiving information that is not available, but only to them.

And then, then that they write books like Priscilla Schreier and Charles Stanley and Mark Batterson, the rest of them, they write books that talk about how you too can hear this voice.

If you'll follow their steps, you know, these, these are the steps is the way that God speaks. And if you follow this system, you follow this pattern, then you'll hear the voice of God for yourself as well.

But see the common response I get, I'm sure you do too, Jim is when you challenge them and they're, they feel so spiritual about it.

They then will push back and say, but this is from God, right? So how do you respond to that? That's a form of question begging, because they're assuming that God is going to speak this way that he needs to, or that they can expect to.

And so then when they have the experience, it becomes a form of confirmation bias where they, they say, well, I was expecting

God to speak. And then I got this prompting and nudge, and I followed the prompting and nudge, and it turned out well, so it must've been

God speaking. And so that's just a, it's a method of circular reasoning, which is why in the book, I, at the beginning,

I lay out three assumptions that I need to hear from God outside of scripture, that I can expect to hear from God outside scripture, and that I can learn to hear from God outside scripture.

And you deal with those three assumptions and that show that scripture does not teach this in any of the passage that they quote to, to try and prove that point.

Then you remove the foundation, you remove the presupposition that goes into that argument. Because really what

I'm driving at is God has no need to speak to you outside of scripture. There's nothing that he needs to tell you that he has not already told you, and you don't need to hear from him outside of scripture, because there is nothing that is not in scripture that you need to hear or know in order to walk with God in obedience.

And so therefore, God has not promised to speak to you outside of scripture, so you should have no expectation to hear his voice.

And when you deal with those, then people, then what are we left with? Well, we're left with scripture. John Ligato Yes, and if we're trying to bring scripture to them, and they have their emotions, and that becomes their authority, a lot of times it's hard to deal with because you're trying to lay out a logical argument, and they're going, but I have this experience.

So much they trust in the experience over anything that you bring to them. Yeah, I mean,

Justin Peters did a seminar in a church here that's about 45 minutes south of us, and unfortunately it was one that I lined him up to speak in, thinking that the pastor and leadership was on board with him.

But during one of the Q &As, somebody asked him about this hearing from God outside scripture. So Justin gave the standard answer that God speaks in scripture, and scripture alone, we shouldn't be listening for still small voices, etc.

And one of the elders of the church got up and said, I audibly heard God tell me to marry my wife, that this is the woman

I was supposed to marry. And no matter what Justin said, he could not disabuse the man of that notion, because he had experienced it.

So whether scripture was sufficient or not is irrelevant to the conversation as far as he's concerned.

But the only thing that matters is that he experienced this. He heard this. He knows that God spoke to him, and therefore you can't convince him otherwise.

Bud, what do you think? You look like you're going to say something. I have so many thoughts about all of this, and agree with everything that you guys have said.

The one fundamental thing that always surprises me is that when you engage with someone like this, and you ask them about the sufficiency of scripture, they are never going to deny that.

I've not at least had anybody say, oh no, scripture is sufficient. But then you recognize, well, wait a minute, in practice, you're doing something completely contrary to that.

And the other division, the distinction that I see that people don't, it's like we've got this category of scripture over here.

We've got this category of our experiences over here. And then we have this other category, which really should be our focus, which is

Christ. Well, if you're by practice denying the sufficiency of scripture by your emotionalism and your experientialism, if you're denying that sufficiency of scripture there, what you are effectively doing is denying the sufficiency of Christ.

You can't divide these two things. I mean, it's mysterious. It's as mysterious as the concept of the

Trinity, which is in scripture. But the mystery of Christ is the

Logos. He is the word of God. What does this mean? We have to really be cautious when we tread on this kind of ground.

Because what you would ultimately end up doing by practicing this emotionalism, moving things from the objective standard of God's word to the subjective experience you think you've had, and maybe you did have some kind of experience, when you move that, you are attacking the sufficiency of Christ himself, not merely a book that you read things in.

It's the word of God. And Christ is that word, the way, the truth, and the life. So this kind of thing concerns me.

And I think, just one other brief comment, back to the first thing that you started with, Andrew, with the guy who said he has a teachable spirit.

As you engage with people like this, and maybe it takes a little bit of time, but you will be able to distinguish a disciple by their willingness to learn.

And if they don't have that, if they just want to contend for a position and not be willing to learn from the word, you may be dealing with a nominal believer, however fiercely they may defend their position.

Yeah, that's true. So, Jim, the second question that they asked, I think we sufficiently answered that no,

God doesn't speak audibly in this age. The second question that was asked is, is it wrong to desire to hear from God audibly?

That's a bit more, that's a bit of a tougher question, because we've got to nuance this a little bit. If the desire is to hear from God audibly because they're not trusting in Scripture, because they don't believe that Scripture has answered or given them enough information, then yes, that's a sinful desire, because you're desiring something that is illicit, something that is actually undermining

Scripture. But somebody might desire to hear from God audibly simply because they long for this relationship, but they believe that this is the symbol of intimacy, and so what they really want is a feeling of intimacy and to draw near to God.

So if they're thinking that this is the means by which I draw near to God and draw close to Him and experience

God, like Henry Blackaby would say, this is how we experience God in our day -to -day life, if that's their desire, that they want to experience

God and draw near to Him and they think that that's how they do that, then no, that desire may not be sinful, simply because what they're desiring is based upon an ignorance.

They're really ignorant of how it is that God speaks to us and what they should be expecting and where they should be hearing

God's voice. So that might not in itself be a sinful desire. So if what they mean by desiring to hear

God intimately or personally and audibly is, I desire to be closer to God and I desire to feel

Him more and experience Him more and draw near to Him and be intimate, that's not a sinful desire. But if what they're desiring is information outside of Scripture, then that's an illicit desire, and then they are desiring something that is wrong.

Darrell Bock Well, I know that, you know, when I was trying to get my wife to say yes to marrying me, that she was saying she wanted, she was waiting, she didn't know if it was

God's will. And I remember her saying, you know, I said, what would it take for you to know that it's

God's will for you to marry me? And she said an audible voice would be nice. And so I just went, marry the jerk.

And, you know, she got the audible voice. It just, I didn't say it was from God. But that's the thing.

I mean, like, we're really saying when we're seeking that audible voice, to me,

I think it seems that, do we not trust the Scriptures? Now, if Scripture has an answer, but this is part of the thing as well,

Jim, is this is hard work to determine God's will through Scripture with some things. I mean, some things are really clear, right?

It's really clear when you have someone trying to argue for a woman preacher. Like, okay,

Scripture's really clear, 1 Timothy 2, 12 -14, a woman shouldn't be a pastor. She shouldn't be teaching or having authority over men.

Whether we like it or not, that's what God says. When people try to go, oh, no, this is a cultural issue. No, it's based in creation.

It's the creation order that we have that. And so when people do that, anytime

I see that, I see people saying, no, culture is going to interpret Scripture. And so now culture, anything that you use to interpret

Scripture, whether it's culture, the Catholic Church, the Watchtower, any of those groups, when you put them as the ones to interpret

Scripture, that becomes a higher authority than Scripture. And I think the same with dreams and visions and wanting to hear an audible voice,

I think that that feeling of having heard God's voice, that ends up being something that we use to then interpret

Scripture. But isn't it hard work to determine God's will by looking at all the principles?

Because, I mean, who to marry we don't have in Scripture. You have two job opportunities.

Which one to take? That's not going to be in Scripture explicitly. But there may be principles if one job is taking you away from family and one job is going to keep you with the family, you know, things like that.

We can see principles, but it takes more work to do that, doesn't it? Yeah, it takes a lot of work because you've got to exegete

Scripture. You've got to know Scripture. You have to read Scripture and understand it in its context and make sure that you're walking in obedience to it and searching the

Word of God. And fortunately, he has not given us a revelation the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So it's not like we have 42 volumes that we have to go through.

It's one book that you can easily read through in a year's time with about 15 minutes a day. So you can process all of Scripture every year.

You can read through the entire Revelation every year in the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee every morning.

So it's not a lot to go through in that sense, but it is a lot to go through because it's so deep, it's so profound, it's so interwoven together.

And the revelation is so divine that there's a lot there to swim through, but you've got to take the time and the effort, and that's far more difficult than just, you know, waiting in stillness to hear a nudging or a prompting or getting an impression.

Yeah, and I think that's why people prefer this experiential thing because it's easy, and it makes them feel more spiritual at the same time.

Yep, yep, it is. So, you know, the last thing that in this review was he or she says, but are you saying don't even think about it?

So, you know, should we not even think about hearing from God audibly? Uh, my answer would be you should not expect it, no.

I don't, I never, I never at one moment in my day -to -day life at not one moment do

I ever think, I wonder if I'm going to hear from God audibly today. I don't expect it. I don't anticipate it. Now, God could, because we're not talking now about what

God does, not what God can do. God could speak to me if he wanted to, but I don't think he needs to, and I'm not expecting him to.

But I do sit down every morning and read my Bible. I open up scripture, and I read it consistently, trying to go through it once a year, go through all the scripture once a year in my morning time.

So that is what I do expect. So I don't, I don't go through my day wanting or longing or expecting

God to hear at all. I shouldn't, I don't think about it. It's not that you, it's not that you shouldn't think about it. It is that if you believe in the sufficiency of scripture and you're spending time reading that and meditating on that, you won't be thinking about hearing

God audibly outside scripture. So when you read through the Bible once a year, are you using the Jim Osmond study

Bible? I mean, should we be expecting that out soon? I don't have one of those. You should never expect that out. You'll never see one of those.

Okay, so let's deal with one of the arguments that people will make. And let's deal with something in your book. I mean, had I read your book,

I should say. Had I read your book, I would know that you mentioned something about Charles Stanley and he, you know, the incident he had when he was, he needed a turkey for Thanksgiving and he prayed and God answered because he had a turkey, just was able to get that turkey just in time.

And the whole story that he gives for that. This is one of the things I see is people look for, you know, the expectation that God is going to do something, get me a parking spot real close to the door or whatever it is and look, it happened.

Therefore, that's confirmation that I heard from God. Is that really confirmation? Well, again, it's the confirmation bias that we're talking about.

Is there anything miraculous or supernatural about finding a good parking space? No, I find them all the time, but that doesn't mean that that's the voice of God.

What does scripture say that the voice of God looks like? This is the thing that hearing the voice of God teachers will often do is they'll say,

God is speaking today, just like he did in the Old Testament, just like he did in the New Testament. God is speaking

God. So what he did back then, he will do for you to them. He will do for you today. And their assumption is that the hearing from God and receiving revelation is exactly like it was the

Old and New Testament. Then they'll go on to promote a methodology for hearing from God that is nothing like what we find in the

Old and the New Testament. And I begin the second portion of my book on dealing with the false methodologies with basically kind of a more modern take on Moses hearing the voice of God in the burning bush.

And I say that if God were to speak the way that hearing the voice of God teachers say that he would speak, here's what it would look like.

You know, Moses would get an impression. A word would pop into his mind. He would be reading something from the book of Job, and it would pop off of the page.

He would feel it confirmed in an impression and something that his wife would say. And all of these symbols and signs.

And of course, that's what they say that we should be expecting today. But that's nothing like what Scripture says when God speaks. So they do these two things when they say that God speaks just like he did in the

Old Testament. Then they promote a methodology that is nothing like what God did in the Old Testament. Nothing at all. Darrell Bock Yeah. One of the things

I do, and granted, as you know, I have a little bit of a playful streak. But one of the things

I love to do when I get some people like when I'm on the streets evangelizing, I get someone that's making arguments like this.

I'll say, you know, I give them two accounts. These are true accounts of people I've spoken to.

One person who told me he heard from God. He was outside playing basketball, and he had been asking

God while he was outside playing basketball, he was trying to make a decision whether he should go on a missions trip.

And he didn't know. And he looked up at the sky, and there was clouds, and it just suddenly kind of opened up, and like the rays of light came down.

And his mother came outside to let him know that the phone had rang, and it was the people inviting him on the missions trip.

So God had confirmed he should go on the missions trip. Another time, again, with someone that was praying about going on a missions, and they were trying to make that decision.

They were sitting in prayer and trying to decide, you know, Lord, do I go? Do I not go?

Is this really what you want for me? And just then, someone had come into their room and said, you should really think about going on the missions.

Now, why? And people look at that and go, that's, yeah, that's confirmation. I go, yeah, the problem is the first one was

Roman Catholic, and the second was LDS. Yeah. So they're,

I mean, it's perfect. It's exactly what we hear from these people. But if pagans, unbelievers, false religions, cults are all getting the same nudging, the same experience, how could you say this is uniquely from God?

Yeah. I mean, the person who has a strong intuition or feeling that they might have left the house wrong and did something wrong before they left the house, they got to come back in and see, why do

I just feel uneasy about leaving? And they see that they left the iron on the ironing board. Well, that could have caused a fire while they were gone.

And they say, well, that God spoke to me and told me to go back in and check things. So I'm back in and check things and look how it turned out.

Well, that happens to unbelievers too. And so again, we have this contradiction where hearing from voice, hearing the voice of God, teachers will say that in order to hear

God's voice, you have to be a Christian and you have to, you have to be still and you have to listen. You have to learn to hear that voice and you will hear that voice.

And then once you learn how to interpret it and check it, you'll, you'll sense the nudging as well. Well, unbelievers have this happen too.

So whatever it is that you're experiencing, intuition, a hunch, a nudge, whatever it is, if unbelievers are having it, then it can't be the voice of God.

Because on the one hand, you're telling me that I have to be drawn near to God in order to hear that voice. On the other hand, you're telling me that a pagan rank, unbelieving atheist will have the exact same experience.

And so it's either the voice of God or it's not. Yeah. I mean, last, last night we came home, my wife and I went out to dinner with friends, came home.

I left the garage door open. Okay. I didn't, didn't even realize it. I only realized that when some other friends came over for, we have a fire pit and they came over for a fire and I realized, oh,

I have something in the back of my car to give them. So I went out to the car and went to open the garage door so I can get to the back of the car and went, oh, it's already open.

Now I, I came in, I didn't say, oh, the Lord put it on my heart to give, to leave this in the car so that when you got here,

I would remember that the garage door was open. No, it was just coincidence that, and that's exactly how

I took it. I said, oh, it's a good thing that we went to give this to him today because I would, I would have left the guard door open, the garage door open.

Yeah. It was just coincidence. That happens all the time. Yeah. A coincidence or we do believe that God orders our steps and guides our steps.

So can God cause something to happen that would make me go and do something that turns out really well and ends up protecting me?

Yeah, he can. I don't have any problem. I don't have any problem with believing that God is intimately and intricately involved in all the decisions that we make and all the things that we do, guiding our steps to accomplish his will.

But if you had left the garage door open to somebody to come in and ripped off your drill set, that I believe is the hand of God as well.

I mean, I, I one time left all my tools in the back of my truck and the back seat of my truck and my son's truck was parked next door, both of them right next to each other.

And both of the doors were unlocked. Somebody came and took about $2 ,500 of the power tools out of the back of our two trucks, drills and saws and cordless drills and, and, and nail guns and all kinds of stuff.

Ripped us off for about $2 ,500. Well, did I not hear the voice of God? Is there a promise in scripture that says that anytime something bad might happen that I'm going to hear

God's voice? And was I just too busy and not tuned in enough to hear God's voice? Was he trying to tell me that I should go lock my doors or in the providence of God?

Did I, did I leave those doors open? Both of us leave our doors unlocked on our trucks and something bad happened.

Well, something bad happened in the providence of God. I believe that that was his will. And I believe that for whatever reason, he's working out his perfect plan, even when bad things happen.

So I don't, I don't look at things when, when things turn out well, and I happen to stumble into something,

I say, wow, that was, man, I'm thankful that the Lord allowed my steps to fall in that way that this,

I was protected from this. That's not the voice of God. That's providence. And that's different than revelation. We don't call that the voice of God.

We might call it providence. We might even call it extraordinary providence or God working out his plan or guarding our steps or guiding our paths or whatever it is.

God can work those things out, but we don't call that revelation. That's not the voice of God. You know, this is an important thing that I wanted to bring up.

So, and I'm glad you did is the, the thing that when we see, when people are looking to hear from God, when they're, they're wanting to have dreams, visions, nudgings, audible voice, the one thing that always seems is it's, it's always to confirm something that they want.

I tell this story, I think I did, I told the story when we had you on talking about your book, God Doesn't Whisper.

I remember a pastor who, he thought he got a great deal on a car and he got a great price for what he thought he got.

And he came and was like, see, God has really blessed me because I've just been so faithful to me. This is,

God has blessed me. And I remember turning to him and saying, even if this car turns out to be a lemon, God still blessed you.

And he, he had to stop and think about that and was like, yeah, you're right. Because God is sovereign in everything. So even if we get something we don't like, that's still

God's sovereign will. And it turned out the car actually was a lemon. It just took a couple of weeks for everything to fall apart.

And when it started falling apart, he looked at me, he goes, this is still God's blessing. But this is the thing that I think so many don't think about.

It's God's blessing if things go my way. And if they don't, then, well, I wasn't hearing,

God was desperately trying to protect me from this, but I wasn't hearing him. I wasn't picking up the breadcrumbs and following the clues and tuning in to the right frequency.

And so things didn't turn out well, it must have been because God wasn't able to get through to me. And that,

I think, is a wrong view of God and an inadequate view of God. Yeah. So let me just let folks know, if you want to get a copy of God Doesn't Whisper, which is a great book, though,

I won't admit that I've read it. I just... Both halves are good. The part you read and the other half that you didn't.

Yeah, where did I stick that? I just... Chapter 8, yeah, everything before and after chapter 8.

If you're just going to read half, you should just read every other page. That way, at least you get some sense of what's going all the way through the whole thing.

Well, hey... Just read the even numbered pages. Look, I just happened to open to a chapter 9 that says,

God, give me a sign. It must have been a sign that I should read chapter 9. But a great way to get not only that book, but Jim's other books,

Truth or Territory, Selling the Stairway to Heaven, or The Prosperity of the

Wicked. And that last one is a work from Psalm 73. All of those you can get at jimosman .com.

So that's J -I -M -O -S -M -A -N. There's no

D at the end of that. I always thought you were related to the Osmonds. No relation to the Osmonds. So jimosman .com

and there you can get all of his books. But I do encourage, God doesn't whisper, but the other thing is, so I encourage everyone to go out there.

Also to let you guys know what we're doing for April and May. If you are listening in April and May, this is one of the things why you want to keep up to date on these.

You know, a lot of people binge and they get things backlogged. But any orders from Striving for Eternity, anyone that orders anything from Striving for Eternity, we're going to be giving a free booklet called

What Does It Mean to Me? This is kind of in line with what we're talking about. It's a small little book by Josiah Nichols.

It's easy to get through. Little booklet. His subtitle is A Pocketbook Guide to Biblical Interpretation.

So it is 20 pages and so it is basically just a small little booklet that you can give to someone to give them the basics of how to interpret.

The reason we're having all these issues like Jim is talking about is the fact that people don't know how to interpret scripture.

And that's why they rely on feelings and things like that. So this is a little pocket guide. Any order, no matter what.

I think we sell these for, I think, two dollars. I don't know that they're on the website yet. But any order, order anything you want from strivingforternity .org

and you will get a free copy of that. The other thing is, you know, that up where Jim lives in, you know, in northern

Idaho, it gets cold up there. And so Jim, I think that one of the things you need to make sure is that you have good blankets and sheets for your beds.

And so, I'm looking at Bud's head shaking. Bud always loves... I'm wondering where this is going.

Yeah, just keep wondering. Bud now knows where this is going because I just love to see how

I could get Bud every week with a transition. But see, the thing you need to do, Jim, to make sure you get a restful night's sleep in cold

Idaho is you need to go to MyPillow and use promo code SFA.

Because if you do that, you get a discount on not only your pillows, but you should get a

MySlippers. You know, get nice slippers and the robe. And you could walk around with your coffee cup in MyPillow slippers and robe with your coffee cup.

Do you sleep with your pillows and your slippers and your robe as well? Well, you know, after you get up early in the morning when you make your coffee, you can walk around with that so that you have...

After you get off of MyPillow. Yeah. Well, you get off of the MyPillow and the MyPillow topper, you know, out of your

MyPillow sheets and all. So, yeah. Then you could take a shower with your MyPillow towels.

So, they got you completely covered. And the thing I know you like about MyPillow, Jim, the thing I know you would like the most about it is it's made right here in the

USA. I know that you like that aspect of it. I would like that, yes. So, folks, if you would like to sleep as well as Jim needs to, you could go to MyPillow .com,

click on the radio listeners square and use the promo code SFE. That stands for Striving For Eternity.

The other thing you can do is call 1 -800 -873 -0176.

That's a special number that they set up with us. So, if you call that number 1 -800 -873 -0176, use the promo code

SFE to get your discounts and that way you can get a good night's sleep. Maybe if Jim slept better, he'd have that beauty sleep that many of us get to enjoy.

It's why he has the face for radio. He doesn't get a good sleep.

Some of y 'all need beauty sleep. Some of us don't. So, Jim, one of the things that I do want to talk about,

I mentioned this, you know, as we could transition into talking about the importance of local church.

Now, you are, you know, Justin Peter says you're the best preacher that he knows of.

You should not trust Justin's discernment. Well, I think we do. He's got a discernment ministry, so we should trust it.

And you can't disagree with that. You are on the board of directors of that discernment ministry, are you not? I am, yeah.

That's called a gotcha. Yeah, let me rephrase this. But one of the things is, you know, you are a premier pastor, preacher.

Your sermons are outstanding. That's why I encourage people to go to, you know, subscribe to the Kootenai Community Church morning worship service.

If you want to find it, you could just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, go to the shows, that's where that podcast is listed, along with like 39 others.

But here's the thing that, you know, I've always been impressed with you, and the thing that I focus on here is you could be one of these guys, you know, like Justin, who travels the world, speaks at all the big conferences, be able to have this huge platform.

Your preaching is, I would put, up there with the

John MacArthur's and men like that. I know you disagree, but, you know, your preaching is at that level, and you could have a big platform, and yet you're at a church in a town that no one can pronounce.

It took a long time to pronounce Kootenai. I actually do enjoy people hearing how people pronounce

Kootenai. Kootenai, someone actually was like, what church? There's someone that listens to your sermons, and he's like, what's the name of that church?

Kootenai? It is weird. But you've been the pastor there for quite some time.

In fact, one of the things that I've always been impressed with, that is the only church you've ever been a member of, correct?

Correct, yeah. So, you know, you could have a large platform.

Why don't you? Why don't you try to build with your books, you know, even the books, the money doesn't go to you.

Why don't you try to build this big platform? Why are you just being a pastor of this local church?

I don't know. I love my people, and I love the church, and I love doing what

I do, and I love the men that I serve with as my fellow elders and the deacons there.

And I just have no desire to travel. Traveling for me, it's an onerous thing, and I don't like to be away from my own local church on a

Sunday morning. I would rather be there than anywhere else. And I don't just, the idea of building a platform,

I don't even know what that would look like, or why, or how I would do that. So I guess it's difficult for me to answer because it's just not on my radar.

I just believe so strongly in the ministry of the local church, and John MacArthur, I heard John MacArthur say something when

I first started pastoring. He said, you worry about the depth of your ministry, and God worry about the breadth of your ministry.

And I think that that is one of the most beautiful and profound things that any pastor could hear and to take to heart.

And I just took that to heart, and I just figured when I started pastoring here, I have no desire to move anywhere else.

I have no desire to go anywhere else or have a bigger platform or to go to another pond or a bigger pond.

I just want to serve faithfully with where I'm at and the people that are here. And I think that people who seek after bigger platforms are also seeking after more accountability, and I'm not sure that I want that.

I just would like to have, I'd just like to have the Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. And I believe that he will give me what he has equipped me to handle and nothing more.

So I don't want to pursue anything that's outside of that. And that's the thing that I don't hear from people these days, is that you, what you said in there, that you just love your church, the people.

There's so many people that I see, especially if they're at your caliber of preaching, that they just are looking for, well, maybe

I should move to a bigger church because they can get more people. And, you know, one of the things that I remember you saying to me was, you have no desire to leave

Kootenai Community Church. And I know with what you're doing there with the building, which is, maybe we should just have you back just to talk about that.

But the thing that we end up seeing is that you had said to me that you're trying with that building to set it up for the guy that's going to come after you when you die.

You have no intention of leaving that church, and you want to set that church up for who follows you.

Yeah, when we first started, when I first started pastoring, I took over from two other faithful men who had gone before me, a father and then his son.

And the church had been about, let's see, almost 15 years old by the time

I ended up taking it over. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 years old, I guess. And we were in a small church building, like a little country church, you know, with the steeple and everything.

And it was a beautiful little church building, but it would seat about 80 people. And the Lord blessed the ministry, and we ended up outgrowing that building.

And I never had expected that I would go outside of that building or we'd ever have another building. But then when it became obvious that we just were not going to be able to run a ministry and meet people's needs in this little tiny building, we started looking at what to do to get some space.

And my vision was never to build a building for the sake of building a building or just so you could have something new.

That was never on my radar. My radar was just to build a building and to establish a ministry, sound in doctrine, and to train men for the next generation so that when

I leave, there's a light in Kootenai, Idaho, a light in this area, and it will be a gospel preaching, a

Bible expositing church that values the Word of God and serves people. And that's what

I think God has called pastors to do. So I don't think that even in doing what I did that I did anything extraordinary.

You know, it's not that it's extraordinary, except for the times that we live in with social media.

Yes, it's unique. And your focus is really on the importance of your local church over what

God, you know, people would say God could do with you. And this is the thing that I guess bothers me when

I hear people say this and why I love men like you and others. I think specifically of two men, you and Steve Hamm, because for folks who don't know

Steve Hamm, you actually, I set you up to get to meet Steve. I just met him when

I was down in Cincinnati at the Creation Museum a few weeks back. I got to meet Steve, and man, what a delight that was.

And then to find out that he was the pastor of a small church in Cincinnati. And his story is very similar to mine 10, 15 years ago, in that he started off with a small church that really needed some correction, and it had been established in sound doctrine.

And now he's experiencing this growth that God has blessed him with, and they're looking at expanding and buying a new facility or renting a new facility or whatever.

And I was really encouraged by that. I thought that's good to see that happening. And I love to see faithful men whom the

Lord blesses. And I think that one thing we need to keep away from is this notion that if you're faithful and you're obedient, then

God's going to bless you with numbers for that God will increase your church. That's not necessarily the case. And there's a lot of men who labor faithfully, and their churches are 40, 50, 60 people.

And they labor faithfully for decades, even in that situation. And there are men who labor faithfully and are obedient and whom the

Lord shrinks their work and removes them from that for a specific purpose. And we have to be open to that too, that sometimes

God's shutting down a congregation is not because of the unfaithfulness of its pastor or God keeping a group small is not because of the unfaithfulness of its pastor.

And it might be no reflection at all upon his giftedness or the spirit's work or anything like that.

Just we can't measure a congregation or measure a work or a man's ministry by the size of his church because that in the grand scheme of things is one of the least significant things that we can point to.

Joel Osteen's ministry is enormous, but I don't believe that it has even a modicum of the Holy Spirit involved in it.

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, for folks who don't know who Steve is, I mean, they may know the last name

Ham, and it's because it's Ken Ham's brother. And, you know, he had, I mean, you talk about an opportunity to have a big platform.

I mean, he was working for Answers in Genesis with his brother for years, maybe even from the beginning.

And he left that to pastor a church. And the thing that I see with both you and Steve that always impresses me so much is the fact that there's no desire to try to make something happen.

And this is what I see. You're right. It's unique in our day and age. And it goes to what

I think is lacking so much is people having an understanding of the importance of the local church versus trying to build a big platform.

You know, you're on the board with Justin's ministry, but Justin and I have the similar policy that we only want to travel half the year because we want to be in a local church.

Yes, we have to travel to speak, but we need to be rooted in a local church. And so many of these people that travel, they don't have a church because they're traveling every week.

No, you saw that with Ravi Zacharias, didn't you? Yeah. I mean, there was a man who traveled most of the year and what his relationship was or accountability was to a local church governing body of elders and deacons, we don't know.

It doesn't seem to be strong, even though he was ordained in a denomination. It doesn't look like his connection to a local church was all that vital.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the thing that I think that's always, you know, when

I think about you and what you're doing there at Kootenay Community Church, I'm always just impressed because your desire is for those people not to try to make something other than what

God might do. And you hit on something that I think far too many people don't understand.

This gets back to what we said about hearing God's voice. It's that a lot of times it's people's desires.

They want to have a big church. They want to have name recognition, things like that. And I'll tell you something.

Name recognition is not all it's cracked up to be. Jim, you could speak to this as well. We travel with Justin.

How tired does he get at the end of the day, like after meeting all these people?

It's a tiring experience. You're walking at Shepherd's Conference because that's typically the type of people that are most familiar with Justin and his ministry.

At Shepherd's Conference, you cannot walk, and this is not an exaggeration, you cannot walk more than 20 feet without somebody stopping you to tell you about how

Justin's ministry has impacted their lives or how they've been blessed or how their family member came out of the

New Apostolic Reformation because of Justin's videos or how thankful they are for Justin or to get a picture or an autograph or to give him something.

It's just getting him, my job at Shepherd's Conference is to get Justin from one event to the next, from one place to the next.

And sometimes I have to say, all right, buddy, let's go. We got to get going. Hey, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for chatting with Justin. It's been great meeting you.

I appreciate that. You know, I'll usually offer to take a picture with him because that's kind of the last thing they do. You know, you'd like to take a picture, and I snap the picture, and then

I stand beside Justin, and let's go. It's almost impossible, and so that is a blessing in that he has had such a wide ministry and such a powerful ministry, but it's also a curse that you just,

I would never want to be as well -known as Justin Peters. You can't live life. Yeah, I mean, literally, with Shepherd's Conference, I remember, because I do the exact same thing that you do, right, for him in Shepherd's Conference, he actually said at one time, he's like, okay,

MacArthur was preaching, and because MacArthur was preaching, he was like, maybe I can get through the book tent because most people are going to want to go hear

MacArthur. So he actually, to get to the books, he's got to try and plan. It took us like 35 minutes just to get to the book tent.

I mean, MacArthur was half done at this point, and just because, like you said, every 20 feet, someone's stopping, and they're telling, you know, and you have to let them express that, but you do kind of move them on at some point, even in the book tent.

I mean, he couldn't get past one tent. It got to a point where I just said, Justin, are there any books you specifically want? And I ran around and found the books he wanted and collected them and brought them up to the cashier, just said, because he stopped talking.

So people think, like, name recognition, that'd be really good, and it's a neat experience.

I mean, look, we're just in Boston. Now, granted, granted, Jim, there may be, and Bud, you're going to appreciate this, but there's a reason that someone recognized me when we were in the

Museum of Science in Boston. It might be because I wasn't covering my face with something that someone was, but yeah, that happens.

I mean, we're up in Boston, and there's a guy who is in New York, just in Boston visiting family.

You know, I'm there with my daughter and son -in -law, and all of a sudden I'm here, you know, Andrew Rappaport? You know, now that does not happen nearly as much as Justin has it.

I mean, I'll get it, you know, wherever I go, you know, I'll get one or two people, maybe, but maybe it's because I don't have the cool scooter to ride around in.

It makes it kind of, you know, it makes it more noticeable. It also means he can't, you know, get away from people because he'd have to run them over to...

But the thing is, I look at all of that. People think, like, having a big platform would be a blessing, and it's also, there's a lot of aspects people don't think about with it.

The thing that I love about you is you're not, you're someone who I believe could have that, but yet your focus is all on your local congregation, the people that you're pouring into.

And unfortunately, what I see in our culture is people belittling that. Like, a small -town pastor, now you've got more than 45 people, but you think the average church in America, I think, is 25.

So it means that there's, when you look at the, when they say church, they're just, they're including everyone. So you look at the

Joelsteins with 10 ,000, that means there's a whole lot of more churches that are like 10 or 15 to have, you know,

I think it's like 25 to 40 is the average size in America. It means there's a more, most of the churches are very, very small.

And many of those pastors are very faithful and people belittle that.

And yet you have some guy that's pouring into his people everything he has. That man is more faithful than the guys who are traveling the world.

You know, especially if you're going to look at, like a Ravi Zacharias or Joelstein, yeah, they could travel everywhere and everyone knows their name.

But some small -town pastor, a pastor's 10 people, may be far more faithful. And on that judgment day, it's going to get far more rewards.

And, you know, I think that it's good to hear a pastor's heart that is just wanting to be with his people.

Yeah, that's why the, I mean, you've said very kind words about me, but that's why the question he asked at the beginning is just an awkward one.

Like, why don't you seek a platform? And I just don't, it's not something that, I don't think anybody should seek a platform.

I don't know what the benefit of a platform is. I mean, God hasn't called us to seek platforms.

He's just called us to be faithful and to be obedient. Yeah, your job is to be faithful. The results are up to God.

That's right. Yeah, that's it. You know, being in New Jersey so much of my life, it's this common thing we get.

We get these guys that come into New Jersey in a very affluent area and they come in and I've probably heard this a half dozen, two dozen times, you know,

I'm going to be the John MacArthur of the East. We're going to set up a seminary. We're going to, they have these big dreams.

And my one comment to each of these guys when I hear it, I mean, it was funny because in the pastor's fellowship that we had, it's just, we'd laugh because we'd always get these guys that they come in and they're like,

I'm going to be the next John MacArthur. And we actually would sit, like most of us would get together and go, how long do you think he's going to last?

Two years, five years, you know? And it's, I mean, they would be gone in just a few years. And what you have is they,

I would just turn to each one of these guys when they'd make comments like that, I'd go, you realize that John MacArthur never planned on being

John MacArthur? No. He didn't plan the platform he has. He read me and Murray's biography of John MacArthur.

You'll notice that. And then you walk around Grace Community Church and you'll recognize that John MacArthur did not make himself

John MacArthur. The Lord brought Phil Johnson, Clayton Earp, these men, Dick Mayhew, the

Lord brought these men across his paths and the Lord built that, which is why nothing is, you know, the campus, the buildings are not named after John MacArthur.

It's not John MacArthur's campus. It's just John MacArthur just happens to be the most visible elder there. But there are a lot of gifted men and the people that are around the music ministry and the seminary and the college and the kids ministry and the publishing industry those gifted men like Phil Johnson, Clayton Earp, and others who make that run, those men have been brought there by the

Spirit of God. John MacArthur didn't seek any of that, which makes him so unique and so different than other people who do seek those platforms.

Yeah, and I mean, this is the thing, is that he wasn't seeking the platform. He was just seeking to be a pastor.

And this is what I think more churches and more pastors need to recognize.

I think we have far too many men trying to build platforms for themselves rather than trying to shepherd the flock that God has given them.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, well, that's it. Well, as a guy that just sits on the back row in my church with regards to name recognition,

I can only cite that popular quip, which has a lot of truth in it. The regret over what

I have missed is swallowed up and the relief over what I've escaped. I mean, ponder that.

Yes, you must be Baptist that you're in the back row. Why don't you move up? Yeah, yeah, I'm not sitting in the back, yeah.

I know, I've seen you, when I was there, you weren't really in the back. You were kind of mid. Yeah, yeah, there's nowhere to hide from you.

But listen, you know, just one real quick comment, particularly with what the Lord is doing right now, it's going to be churches that are pastored by men like Jim and other men.

As the Lord does what he's doing in the visible church right now, there are going to be faithful sheep who will recognize the superficial from the true.

And he's going to move those faithful sheep to places where faithfulness in the pulpit with the word of God is paramount and is the focus, because they will come to recognize they need that.

They don't need a man with a platform. They need a man with an understanding of the word of God and the boldness to preach it faithfully and continually.

And I think the Lord is going to do that. So platform isn't measured, you know, a church isn't measured by the population in the pews, but by the purity in the pews.

And that starts with what happens in the pulpit. Yeah, very well said. No, I think that's the important thing there.

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