Arguments Against Cessationism

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Not just to think about, well, my freedom is being kind of disturbed here.

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No! Screw your freedom! What's wrong with you people? I'm serious.

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I mean, this is what's wrong with the Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are.

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This is Apologetics Live! To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

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We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions about God and the

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Bible. In fact, we can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible. And if you doubt me, well, just come on in, go to ApologeticsLive .com,

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and from there you will see a link to join us. It's the little duck icon, the

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StreamYard link, but you can join us live at StrivingForEternity .com

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is where it'll take you to. This is Administrative Striving Fraternity. By the way, I should say that those two quotes were totally out of totally different context, but when

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I was going through some different things I had in my audio files, I was like, oh, those two kind of fit well together.

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Yeah. But so there was no context there of, you know, R .C.

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Sproul was not speaking about what Arnold Schwarzenegger was saying there. So just want to welcome you all.

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If you want to come in, what we're going to talk about tonight is some arguments against cessationism. These are arguments that were made by Remnant Radio.

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And the reason we're doing this is, well, a lot of folks challenged me, told me

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I was running scared from the guys at Remnant Radio. And so I reached out every way that I could find to say, since they said they were open to having a debate or discussion on the spiritual gifts,

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I said, I'm here, I'll do it. And I heard crickets, nothing.

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And so we figured, well, since they won't actually have the discussion, we will.

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We will take their arguments. And unlike where they were just reading arguments that they came up with, not sure where, we're actually engaging with what they exactly say.

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So let me bring in our special guest or just regular guest here,

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Mr. Drew Vonita. How are you? Howdy, howdy. Regular, one time, all the time, guest, repeat.

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Drew asked me if we have any special guests. And I said, yes, a man named Drew Vonita. He's the special guest.

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And I heard that guy was a killer preacher and teacher and just all around nice guy.

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I think the word you used was dynamite preacher. Dynamite, if you know the

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Good Times show, JJ Johnson. I think that guy died young, right?

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That was a real thin guy. He's like super thin. I don't think he died young though. I think he died pretty old.

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I don't know, I remember it was in my childhood, but I thought he died like of a drug overdose or something. But I could be wrong.

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Although that time in the 70s, moving into the 80s, probably right.

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Let's see. What was his name? You got me curious. It was JJ what? JJ Johnson.

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I'm trying to think, I think that was his character. No, there's some

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JJ Johnson chef. So I don't know what his real name is. Let's see.

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Good times. I'll type in good times. Good times. This is what happened live, live radio.

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Nope, chef JJ Johnson. So Jimmy Walker.

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That's his name. Yeah. Jimmy Walker. Okay. So you got his name, but did you find out how he died?

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How did he die? I don't know. Let's find out. Jimmy Walker. Good times. Died. Let's see.

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Can we trust Wikipedia? Not this one.

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Well, he died at the age of 76. Nope. Yeah. In Brooklyn. There you go. Yeah.

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All right. Let's see the things you can learn on this show. So look,

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Melissa already had it. JJ Walker right there. Jimmy Walker. Yeah. Well, I guess

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I should bring it up. It might help. Yeah. For people to see. So now

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I see, I see someone backstage. You want to put your camera on, then we'll know that you're, you want to come in or if not, you don't want to be on camera.

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You want to just put a thing in the private chat and we can, we can bring you in. Hold on.

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I'm, I'm sitting in front of the dish thing and my wife went to sleep. Drew's has been kicked out of his studio into the kitchen to do recording.

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What spoon do you need? This spoon. This one. A spoon is a spoon.

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I don't get it. We're live, ladies and gentlemen. Well, hey, we finally get to see your face, or the back of her.

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We won't, we won't tell her. All right. So in the news section, this is actually a little bit concerning to me that I wanted to bring up before we get into the whole issue of tongues, glasses, glasses,

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Celia, yeah. So, and then after the end of the news section, we're going to bring someone in that I think has a question.

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And so let me address this question real quick from brother John. He says, Drew looking good.

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Looks like you've lost some weight and health. Are you working out? Actually I had the flu last week, so I have lost weight for sure.

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I had the flu. Let me just say, so it started out with our youngest, right, Rhett, he's two.

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He got the flu. Then I got the flu. Then our four -year -old got the flu.

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Then my wife got the flu. And we all had the flu and it was terrible. So essentially, you guys were sharing the love.

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Oh yeah. All of the nice flu miserable. You lost weight the way you don't want to lose weight.

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So in other words, next week we're going to see you and brother John's going to be saying, Drew, you look like you gained weight.

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Gained weight, yeah. Well, I just now started getting an appetite back and it's been a week.

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Yeah. So, all right. So this is, I am going to preface this with,

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I'm not 100 % sure how I feel about this case. So in the news, there was a case where a 15 -year -old went to school, shot up four people and he had a trial.

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In his trial, he was tried as an adult. Now this part I do feel strongly about, but the issue was that they now have gone after both the mother and the father's cases coming up.

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The mother was found guilty of four counts of basically 15 years each sentence of being involved in the son's murder.

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And the reason is basically they said, well, she was too focused on an affair she was having with a, an affair she was having with some firemen.

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So basically it's her fault for not paying attention to the child. The father who bought the, the son, the gun is being charged.

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His case will be coming up. So here's the, here's my view with this. The court has tried the child, the 15 -year -old as an adult and now charging the parents because he's a child.

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I see an inconsistency right there off the bat. There's many people who are saying that this is all about the fact that it's because of a gun.

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So they want to basically make parents scared of buying guns for their kids. The one thing that I find interesting with this case though, is they actually admitted one thing we've known all along with these mask shootings, that they're always involved one common trait.

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The person has a mental illness. I mean, that's the thing. Well, they said the parents should have known better.

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Now it's interesting because they, the school called the parents in, they were triggered because he drew a picture of a gun and, you know, said something like blood everywhere or like made some threatening comments.

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But before the parents saw, now this is a big thing because the mother was found guilty because of this picture he drew in school and they didn't think it's so serious.

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But the thing that's interesting with it is that the picture, if you see the picture before and after, in other words, the picture that they took a picture of what he drew and then they crossed out things like, you know,

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I think the worst things he said like blood everywhere, everyone die, you know, things like this. And then they wrote in thing they, someone wrote in, you know, love to play video games.

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And so the parents saw this edited one, no gun, the guns all scribbled out. And so when you see the two pictures, all of a sudden you're like, ah, so the school changes the picture, brings parents in and say, we're very concerned about this, demanded that he have counseling.

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And because the parents didn't take him out of school, I guess an hour later, he shot people and they're holding the parents responsible.

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So where should we as Christians view this? I mean, there's a sense where do parents have responsibility for their children?

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Their children? Yes. To an extent. How far is that? Well, when you're, when you,

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I would argue when you claim, when a court claims that the child is understanding what he did enough that he could be tried as an adult, then you can't go to the parents and say, well, he was just a minor.

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You can't have it both ways in the court. And like, I think I would have argued that if it was me as a parent to say, uh, you tried him as an adult, you felt he was an adult.

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I'm no longer, you don't think that I'm responsible, right? I think where my concern is, where does this stop now?

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If you're going to say that parents are responsible for everything their children do, and at the same time tell the schools that they have the right to hide information from parents, like being transgender stuff.

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But then if the children act out and we drew, we may end up dealing with this in a future episode is this article that came out in the epic times that was linking violent crimes to transgenders.

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Right. And therefore that's something where they don't want to talk about that, but that's starting to become more and more of an issue.

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And you know, the, the transgenders are arguing that 33, now get, hold on to this number there,

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Drew. You're good. It's going to blow your mind. 33 transgenders supposedly were killed because they're transgender, uh, in, in over a year now, 33 out of 350 million people, really, really, really small percentage, but more than 33 people died by the hands of transgenders when they were doing mass shootings.

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And by the way, one thing to just note those 33 that, that died, it wasn't that they died because they were transgender.

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They were transgender who happened to be killed because of drug deals and other behavior that they were doing that put them in a position where they got killed.

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It wasn't that they, they make it sound like, oh, they're killed because they're transgender. They weren't killed because they were transgender. Well, I mean, also think about the suicide rate amongst transgenders because one, the drugs that they're on, right.

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And the article talks about once you start getting into the drugs and changing the mind and changing the chemistry and the hormones, it changes the behavior, which it throws everything all out of whack.

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But when you start getting someone who thinks they should be something else, and then they try to transition into that, and then they come to the realization, they're never going to actually be that.

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Now what do they do? And then everyone that was around them supported them and encouraged them to do this thing.

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And now they can't go back. So now what do they do? They take their own life. Yeah. And so, you know, like when you look at this stuff,

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I, I, I really, I find it very irresponsible that the, you know, the courts want to say that the schools have the right to hide information from parents, but then they're going to say parents are responsible for everything that children do.

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Now, I mean, part of me says, yes, when, when, when parents fail in their responsibility, there is a certain level of blame they have for the children living in their home that are non -adult children.

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But then we look at the way things are happening going, but you can't have it both ways. And that's the thing I have a concern.

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So I want to get to Jodi's question, even though she came out, she backed out of backstage, she left her question here for us.

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And I should mention, I wanted to mention this, Drew. I have, in over the last two weeks,

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I have gotten a number of emails and messages thanking us here for having a very well balanced view with the whole situation with Alistair Begg.

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If you folks haven't listened, if you don't follow our Theology Throwdown podcast, that's one that all of the podcasters, the

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Christian podcast community do, we dealt with that in detail on that one as well. And I really was surprised to see how many of our podcasters had a similar balanced view to say that, yes, what

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Alistair said was wrong. Don't agree with that counsel, but all the people jumping on them are equally as wrong.

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I mean, you know, one of the things I brought up in that one that I didn't bring up on this show was to ask the question, did Alistair Begg sin?

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Everyone's calling him to repentance, but was there sin? And when people think about, well, not really.

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Okay. Then what's he repenting of? Just bad advice doesn't equal sin. It just equals bad advice.

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Exactly. And I think that was something that got me as we were discussing it.

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And then I used an argument that my wife brought up, and it was interesting to see the reaction. And I just want to throw this out in case you guys haven't listened to Theology Throwdown.

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I encourage you to go follow that podcast. It's where all the Christian podcast community podcasters get together.

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We talk different topics. But my wife had a really interesting argument. Do you go to a christening in a

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Catholic church? I mean, they totally destroy the meaning of baptism. They argue it removes original sin so that you could save yourself.

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Do you go to something like that that totally, totally butcherizes what biblical baptism is?

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Interesting discussion there. And so just putting that out there, you guys could go listen to see what we said, but you could think your thoughts.

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So do you want to read Jodi's question that she put in the chat before she left the backstage? Yeah. Yeah.

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She's actually now in, I think she's watching through Facebook. She just put a comment there, but she says, off of tonight's topic, so that she's getting off topic.

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Can someone please explain the difference between a Christian who sincerely is questioning their beliefs and faith versus a deconstructionalist, or we would just say a deconstructionist?

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And this is why I want to address this before we get into a main topic, so because it was off topic.

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So let me answer it this way, Jodi, is let me first say that there's a difference between the assurance of salvation and eternal security.

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So let me first define that. We have, once we are saved, genuinely born again, we cannot lose that salvation.

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And if people disagree with me, we can join us, we'll spend some time going through what the scriptures actually say, because a proper understanding of what salvation is and who saved who leads you to realize if God saved us, we can't take it away from him.

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We're just not that strong, just saying. So once you're saved, you may be in a position, positionally right with God, but there's times in our life where we sin, and what ends up happening is that you don't feel like you're saved.

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That's assurance of salvation. So the assurance is more feeling thing, eternal security is more a positional thing.

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So there's times where maybe we haven't been, we haven't been going to church, we haven't been reading our Bible, we haven't been in prayer, and we don't feel saved.

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That happens. So in that case, what happens sometimes is we start doubting our salvation.

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Now, I think there is a clear difference between doubting our salvation or even challenging our own faith and deconstructing our faith.

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Deconstruction is where you are outwardly rebelling against the faith and want to prove it wrong.

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So you're outwardly saying that this is false, it's not true, it's, you know, you may argue you once were a

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Christian, but now you know, you know better things that, well, that is deconstruction where they want to deny the faith that they once claimed is even true.

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Questioning your faith is totally different. I mean, when I first became a Christian, not knowing any other

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Christians, not knowing the Bible, I actually went through the Bible looking to say, okay, someone told me about this, but can

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I prove it to be true? And you know, can

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I, can I, because I didn't want to believe in something that was false. And so here's what I ended up doing. I realized that, and if you guys think about it, how, how would people maybe make mistakes if the

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Bible is not true? I'll give you a, for instance, with the Book of Mormon, one of the things I did when I was studying the

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Book of Mormon was I wrote a computer program to calculate the birth rate and the death rate.

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And I use that to show the number of people that died in the Book of Mormon means that for the

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Book of Mormon to be true, you have to have someone who, or a birth rate that was 15 times the birth rate that it was in the 1990s when

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I did this research. That's kind of hard to believe that you had a birth rate 15 times the number back thousands of years ago.

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I mean, this is supposedly 2000 years ago that the Book of Mormon claims these events happened. When people were dying younger, they didn't have the medicine we have there.

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We live much longer. Yes, they had more children, but very few of them made it to adulthood to be able to reproduce.

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And so the birth rate was much less back then. Well, that was the way I was able to mathematically prove that the

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Book of Mormon is wrong. So I looked at the same thing. I actually went through all those genealogies that we often skip when reading through the

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Bible in a year, like, oh, so -and -so begot so -and -so, and they were this age and begot so -and -so. What I did was

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I actually built a chart and went through all of those genealogies to figure out if anyone, what

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I was looking for, did anyone live beyond the Flood? Because if I could prove that anybody lived a couple of years after the

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Flood other than Noah's family, those eight people, then I would be able to show that the

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Bible was wrong and that what I was believing wasn't true. Now, did I believe it? Yes. But did I still try to want to reinforce my faith?

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Yes. And I thought this was a good way because when someone's putting down all these numbers, they're not going to do the calculations.

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That's the problem with the Book of Mormon. They were doing the calculations of people dying in warfare that were common for the 1800s, not common for 1

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AD, or actually 33 AD. And so the number of people that die in warfare are much greater.

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So, that's what I ended up doing. Now, was that deconstruction? No, that was just challenging, right?

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So what I ended up discovering, by the way, I'll give you the answer. The answer is no one lived past the Flood. Actually Methuselah would have died the same year of the

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Flood. So he's the oldest person.

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He might have died in the Flood, I don't know. No evidence on that. But I couldn't, so doing things like that is, when you're just doubting,

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I wish that we had recorded Wednesday night I was teaching through 1 Peter, and if we had that recorded, I could have just directed you to that,

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Jody. It was a thing where what I talked about there was the fact that when we look at 1

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Peter and what he's saying there, the more we go through trials, not go around them, not avoid trials, the more we go through trials and we come through the trial, our faith is tested, it's assumed to be more genuine.

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By doing that over and over and over again, we then can look back and see where God has brought us, and that gives us more of the assurance that we're saved because we see how

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God has carried us through. It's actually a really good thing to ask questions of what you believe, right?

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And so when I tell people about doing apologetics, I tell them that basically apologetics is knowing what you believe, knowing why you believe it, and then being able to relay that or communicate that, because it's good to ask, why do

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I believe this? Which is different than the deconstructionist, because if you look at the deconstructionists that we've seen that have made themselves known, typically there's some kind of sin that they want to live in, right?

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There's something they don't like about biblical Christianity, and they go, I want to dismantle that,

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I want to get away from that, therefore that can't be historic Christianity, so I'm going to deconstruct it,

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I'm going to break it down, I no longer believe that way anymore, it's a new day, I'm my own person, and I'm just going to build up a

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Jesus, basically, in my own image that gives me what I want. So Jodi put another comment there that you marked, if you want to bring that one up, why don't you read that one?

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Yeah, so she says, so the person isn't just trying to figure their own faith out, wow, no, they're not trying to figure it out, they're trying to dismantle it so that they can live a version of Christianity that they want that doesn't call for personal holiness or personal accountability to a holy

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God. Yeah, I remember someone that was claiming they were a

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Christian, that they walked away from the faith, that they were a Christian, and it was interesting because as she's sharing things, she's trying to make the case that she was genuinely a

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Christian, but the reason she walked away and denies the faith was because she couldn't have sex with her boyfriend.

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Oop. Or no, actually, the way she actually wrote it, I can't continue having sex with my boyfriend.

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So the reality is, she had sex, she went to college, had sex with a boyfriend, she wanted to continue that, but she knew scripture said that she couldn't, so what does she do?

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Throw out the Bible rather than the sexual relations. Yeah, she posted another comment, which is a really good one, and it's good for us to This is why people should come in, by the way, and ask the questions so we can have the dialogue.

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I know she dropped out, but that's okay. But she says, next question to piggyback the first question of mine, the artists, meaning the singers and songwriters and past pastors who have deconstructed their faith have just been trying to avoid giving up their sin.

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Yeah, because if you look at their life now, if you look at, or even what they were hiding then, they were what?

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They were having affairs, or they were living these secret lives of sin, or now they can dabble in whatever it is that they want.

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Yeah, that's absolutely it. All right, so let's, let us get to,

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I just want to see which ones you, okay, so we have a couple things that came up that you posted here, or that you grabbed that were related to.

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I didn't grab these. Oh, maybe I grabbed, I grabbed the first one. I thought, oh, maybe

26:45

I grabbed the second one. All right, so let's, these are at least in line with what we're talking about. So Melissa said this, why are continuationists so crabby?

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Every discussion I see online is crazy with them.

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Now here's the thing, Melissa, I think they would make the same argument with us. They would probably say we're crabby and we're crazy.

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They would say we deny scripture and the Holy Spirit. That is true. John ends up saying here, arguments against cessationism,

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I find one problem is everyone has a different interpretation of cessationism.

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I think this is the thing. I don't really think so though, because when we had Les on,

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I tried to bring this up with Les and he asked a question and I was like, you know, that's a good point. I don't know anyone that actually believes this kind of extreme view that's talked about that just believes every single gift or everything like that has ceased outright.

27:47

But it's the belief that the apostolic gifts, the sign gifts have ceased.

27:54

And when we say cease, we mean they're no longer normative, right? It doesn't mean that God can't, you can't be in a place and God can't use say the gift of tongues where you're speaking in a different language and someone understands you in a different language.

28:09

It's just not normative. I've even heard MacArthur say that it's it, but there's no need for them today because we're not laying the foundation of the church.

28:19

We're not giving new revelation. They're unnecessary. Okay. So, so we might have differences then, right?

28:28

But right. So let's see. So let me give you, Justin Peters would be really clear. He'd say, if you believe that the gifts of these things continue your continuation.

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So he'd say John Piper's continuation. So the caution, cautious, open, but cautious, he says, are continuationists because they say they could continue.

28:47

The cessationists believe they stopped. Not just that they're not normative now.

28:52

Can God heal? Yes. Can God do these things? That's not a sign gift either, though.

28:58

Correct. Well, that's not, that's, that's not a gift, right? This is like, let's, let's not fall into the trap because if, if, if the

29:07

Redmond radio was to listen to this, they would stop us and say, Hey, there's no such thing as sign gift.

29:14

And that would be a fair point. The word sign doesn't appear there. It doesn't appear. Right. So it's a gift.

29:20

Well, well, technically, I mean, cause it does speak of signs and wonders, but those signs are accompanied through what, or, or manifest through what?

29:30

Through the giftings. Yeah. Now it's, it's, you know, it's a thing where, and we've talked about this last time that we dealt with their arguments.

29:40

I would argue that these gifts that we're going to talk about are revelatory gifts and miraculous gifts, uh, opposed to, and, and I think everyone would agree these gifts are miraculous versus teaching is something that's natural.

29:57

Speaking a language you don't know is not right. So I think we could all agree that there were certain gifts that were miraculous in nature and some that were natural in nature.

30:10

Okay. And we're speaking to those that are the, I do not call them, um, I'll get to this, the apostolic gifts where I'll explain why in a moment, cause that's going to be one of their arguments.

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And so when we look at this, we just have to be, to recognize that when it comes to the definition,

30:30

I'm going to say that a cessationist is someone who believes that these gifts ceased.

30:35

So the Holy Spirit does not give this gifting to a new believer.

30:45

Right. Right. Now, by the definition you kind of gave, Matt Stoeck and I would both be cessationists.

30:53

And yet Matt believes that prophecy continues, but he doesn't believe it's normative. Okay. Right.

31:00

And that's - See, I wouldn't even say prophecy itself continues because of the nature of what prophecy was.

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It was the, uh, giving of the revelation of Christ and we have no need for any new prophecy ever.

31:17

Yeah. So let me, let me bring up James's, let me bring up James's, uh, comment here.

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So James Russo says, I tried talking with my Pentecostal pastor dad about this.

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He refused to accept the idea that the apostles had the gifts in a unique way.

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Even when I limited the statement, uh, to them giving scripture.

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So the issue there is the, and this is where some people say, well, they're apostolic gifts because the apostles had them.

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And so the, the issue is not whether we have these gifts or didn't have these gifts because of the apostles, but, and I think that what

31:59

James is getting to is what my argument that I'm trying to make is that the purpose of them is for the giving of scripture.

32:05

So when scripture is complete, we don't need them. Correct. Yeah. That's fitting with the text of first Corinthians 13.

32:12

It's fitting with history throughout the Bible. Only three times in history that we have these miraculous works that in Hebrew says that would vindicate the

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Bible. The scripture is miracles, signs and wonders. And we have three times in history and all three times are within, you know, the years before the writing of scripture.

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So Moses, then he's got like 40 years of miracles with some writing of scripture. Then you have

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Elijah and Elisha following them. There's new scripture being written, Jesus Christ and the disciples and new scripture being written.

32:48

And so what we end up seeing is, I just got distracted by brother, brother

32:57

John. I saw. Yeah. The only way I would win a debate with Andrew is if, if we have it in Spanish, I just happen to see that one.

33:08

Sorry about that, folks. But what you end up seeing, though, is that when we look at these gifts, the question really isn't, you know, whether the apostles had them or it's what was the purpose for them.

33:23

And the Bible say they would cease. Well, the Bible says they would cease. Now the question is when? Well, I'm going to say with the closing of the canon, that they aren't needed anymore.

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And that's why it says that they're going to cease the. But what we're going to see is that if we're going to say that it's not the closing canon, you're going to say that they're they need to continue for today because they were done that way.

33:48

Well, historically, it doesn't support it. You only have about seven miracles done by human beings outside of those three times in history that I mentioned with the writing of Scripture.

34:00

And if you want to check those out, just go to striving for eternity dot org slash miracles, striving for eternity dot org slash miracles.

34:08

I have a paper out there that I was my message at the cessationist conference and at that message.

34:18

Basically, I went through the all the different miracles to show that we only have them in those times of history and there's new scripture.

34:32

All right. So before we get to the arguments, anything else you want to bring up, Drew? Nope. OK.

34:39

I want to start with argument three before we get to argument two. And I'm going to tell you why

34:46

I want to do this. Argument three is really quick because they didn't address it. They kind of just brushed it off.

34:55

But the reason I want to start with article three is because their answer against cessationists like myself,

35:04

I think throughout the rest of argument two, we're going to see that they're guilty of what they accuse us of doing.

35:12

OK. So for that sake, I want to play argument three. This is about 40, 41 seconds, 42 seconds.

35:19

So here we go. So question number three, what biblical or theological evidence is there that tongues have ceased?

35:27

First, the gift of tongues was a miraculous revelatory gift and the age of miracles and revelation ended with the apostles.

35:35

There actually has to be a an isogenesis of categories. And that's our primary discomfort with this understanding is that we have to go outside of the scripture, create a category called apostolic sign gifts, and then read that into every biblical passage.

35:52

The Bible calls them gifts and puts them all together. There's no reason to separate them out in separate categories to say these gifts ceased and these gifts have continued.

36:01

By and large, that's what I'd say. OK, so he accuses us of isogenesis because we say they're apostolic gifts.

36:08

Which is interesting because I believe two weeks ago we pointed out their isogenesis when they began this entire show.

36:18

Well, we're going to point it out in this next question. I think we're going to keep going back to argument answer to argument three, because, you know, one of the things that you heard in that is not just that the isogenesis.

36:33

But you know, I'm going to play this again so we can hear it. Isogenesis of categories, and that's our primary discomfort with this understanding is that we.

36:43

OK. An isogenesis of categories. I have a problem when he says that, because there's so many things that naturally when we're when we're doing hermeneutics or we're teaching something, we split things up into categories so that they're better understood.

37:00

He does it too. I mean, is he going to do it like speaking of two different words he's going to use for the word languages, languages?

37:11

Yeah. And yeah, you know, insert things that aren't in the Bible. Let's see.

37:17

So that's why I wanted to play number three first, because I mean, they said, oh, we dealt with this on previous things.

37:23

We'll just we'll just direct you to old episodes. OK. And I didn't want to go back and grab those old episodes and be, you know, because we're going through it.

37:31

But I just the reason I'm doing this is I think that one of the things

37:37

I think those of you who are regular listeners here know is that I try very hard to be fair on both sides of an issue.

37:44

I'm trained to be able to in debate to understand my opponent's position well enough that I can argue their position.

37:55

That's my goal. And so. I'm trying to be fair with any opponent that I'm listening to, and that's why

38:03

I don't want to make statements as if these guys do that, but I never do that if I'm if I'm doing that.

38:10

Right. So you got we got to be careful with that. So their their claim is that we are isogeting.

38:18

That means to put a meaning into the text, not to take it out of text. We have something. We have a belief.

38:24

We read it into the text. OK, I say that because, again,

38:30

I'm going to I want to give the context, the entire book of First Corinthians, every chapter.

38:38

Let's look at every chapter outside of like First Corinthians 12, 13, 14, every other chapter.

38:43

He is criticizing them. He's correcting them for wrong behavior. And we are to suddenly expect that after 11 chapters of correction, he's suddenly going to go to, hey, you're doing this wonderfully.

38:58

You're doing it all right. Let me give you instructions on how to do things because you're doing it so well. That's not fitting with the context of the book, a sudden shift like that.

39:10

I think, you know, and they're going to admit to some of the the sarcasm of they're going to call it hyperbole, but there's sarcasm from Paul throughout this book, throughout the book.

39:25

And if you ignore that sarcasm that he has throughout the book, you end up coming to a wrong understanding of this book or these chapters,

39:35

I should say, OK? And so you want to you want to bring up that one comment there?

39:46

You're muted, though, yeah, I'm becoming

39:52

Anthony, just muting my mic and then forgetting about it. Yeah, we can bring this up. So this is both

39:58

Cephas Murtaugh, because he's put it he's put this comment basically in here twice. So he wants to make sure that it gets read.

40:05

I know, that's why. But he says church history is replete with accounts of the continuation of the gifts.

40:14

The Book of Acts does not chronicle everything that was going on inside the churches. We have writings of the church fathers to draw from.

40:22

And I think that's pretty interesting that he makes that claim, because if we look at, let's say, the apostolic fathers, which are the group of church fathers that came right after the apostles,

40:34

OK? You have the letter of Clement. Now, Clement wrote to the church in Corinth, ironically enough, the book that we're in that we're discussing,

40:44

First Corinthians. He wrote to Corinth 40 years after Paul.

40:51

And Paul was addressing the misuses of this gift, the gift of tongues in his letter.

40:57

Forty years later, Clement doesn't make any mention of it, OK? So he's silent about it.

41:04

Ignatius of Antioch, silent about the gift of tongues. The Didache, which is our earliest extra biblical teaching that has survived, right?

41:14

The Didache makes no mention of it. Now, let's go into the early church fathers like John Christosom, who lived from 349 to 407.

41:24

This is what John Christosom says in his commentary on First Corinthians. He says, this whole place is very obscure.

41:34

He's talking of chapters 12 through 14. This whole place is very obscure. But the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, meaning the gift of the ceasing of the gifts.

41:49

Being such as then used to occur, but now no longer take place.

41:57

And you can go into other church fathers like Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine.

42:05

You have places all over. Merle Unger has actually written a book tracing early church or not just early church fathers, but church history in general and what church history has to say about the gift of tongues.

42:19

And what you find is that for just about 1800 years, it actually wasn't church history, wasn't replete with teachings of the gift of tongues and things like this.

42:31

It just wasn't. And those are just a few sources that I just pulled out, right? John Christosom, very well known early church father says they ceased.

42:40

Yeah, but we do see it in history from heretics, like the modernists, they taught it.

42:48

We see it in the cult and the occult. I mean, before Azusa Street, before there were...

42:53

Like, it's amazing because here's the thing to consider for his thing about church history.

43:00

Most charismatics realize that something changed with Azusa Street in 1905.

43:08

I'm pausing for effect. Let that sink in. Everyone knows the charismatic movement started in 1905 with Azusa Street, which means it wasn't always going on.

43:24

This was something new, something different. If it was always going on, no one would make any difference with what happened with Azusa Street.

43:32

But what was going on before Azusa Street? Well, the Mormons were practicing this.

43:39

We mentioned the modernists, the Mormons, the Shakers, Quakers, and also the

43:46

Hindus. And so this is going to come up later because this is going to be an answer to some of the questions later.

43:52

But I'll bring it up now since we can't. The issue is, is you have to realize that unbelievers supposedly have the same gift.

44:03

They practice in the same manner. How do you know it's of the Spirit then? Oh, because I'm a

44:11

Christian? How do you know they're a Christian? Because they say so?

44:18

I mean, the thing is, is that we have to look at the history and not try to read, do eisegesis, to read into history something that just isn't there.

44:30

Do we have people throughout history claiming that they are speaking a prophecy or that they do a healing or they speak a tongue?

44:38

Yes. But if the gift continues like the claim is, that it continued from the first century to today in the same way, then we should see it practiced all through history the way we see it today.

44:54

Not a person claiming it here and a person claiming it there. See, what we see in history is little blips of people who claim that they have that.

45:06

Right. And so, and you know, if, and I don't know how to pronounce his name.

45:13

I'm just going to highlight. Bosephus. Bosephus? Okay. That's how you pronounce it.

45:19

Bosephus. Bosephus. If you want to come in sometime, we could have a good dialogue. I know he's, he mashes the keyboard with things there.

45:29

I mean, just long lengthy things here. He probably cut and paste. He's probably prepared for it.

45:35

But so let's get to these arguments and play some of these. Now, this first one is where he's going to explain what argument number two is.

45:43

Argument number two is basically going to be that there's a difference between the Old Testament gifts and the gifts of tongues today.

45:50

So we're going to hear the first. We're going to let him give us the, what he claims is the cessationist argument and the first response.

45:59

This will be a little bit longer because it's almost two minutes for that reason. So here we go. Biblical tongues are always known human languages and not a personal prayer language.

46:09

Therefore, any modern personal practice of tongues cannot be an authentic gift of tongues.

46:15

That when you're looking at the tongues in the New Testament versus when you look at tongues today, they're very, very different.

46:23

The argumentation would probably go a little bit like this. The Pentecostal tradition that sprang up in Azusa had an encounter with tongues.

46:32

They believed they were speaking in known languages, which is what all of the churches always believed tongues was.

46:38

They were actually being shipped out to different countries, missionaries. They were going to these different countries and speaking in tongues, thinking that they would be practicing evangelism.

46:47

However, they all came back kind of with their tail tucked between their legs, defeated because these people groups in these different countries who spoke different languages could not understand them when they began to speak in tongues.

47:00

And then an interpretation emerged in light of their experience because their tongues were not known human languages.

47:07

They found an exhort in First Corinthians chapter 14 that says that we're building ourself up in our most holy faith and that God, the man who speaks in a tongue, speaks mysteries unto

47:19

God and no man understands him. So they then begin to understand a difference between what is xenolalia, known human languages, and glossolalia, which is basically translated as gibberish, an unknown language, a mysterious, a mysterious language.

47:36

So they would make the accusation that the classical Pentecostal traditions are not experiencing authentic tongues because authentic tongues has always been known human languages.

47:48

And when they realized that they weren't speaking known human languages, they changed their interpretation of scripture.

47:55

That's typically the cessationist argument for glossolalia and xenolalia. Okay. What was the answer that he gave to number three, that we're guilty of what was that?

48:07

Isodating categories? I didn't know there were two different categories, intelligible and inintelligible.

48:16

I know I see you speaking, but you are muted. Yeah. Glossolalia and xenolalia.

48:23

So glossolalia, which he classified the tongues of angels and then xenolalia, which would be considered known human languages.

48:35

Yeah. So they make a category. They do make a category. The problem is the Bible doesn't make that category.

48:42

And neither does any lexicon before like a hundred some years ago.

48:48

Right. Okay. Because you might be able to find it. I can't quite find xenolalia anywhere.

48:57

I couldn't find it. Yeah. So the thing is, because everywhere where we see tongues, where we get the list of languages, it's always glossolalia.

49:07

It's a form of the word glossa. And glossa has really just two definitions, two meanings, depending on how you use it.

49:16

It can mean the tongue, the physical tongue, or it just means to speak.

49:22

So it can be a noun referring to the tongue or a verb, an action word, just mean speak, language, speaking language, tongue speech, or some other ways that you would say it.

49:36

So, you know, to give, you know, this is from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

49:43

Basically, there's three general uses for this word. The physical organ of the tongue is the first meaning.

49:51

Second meaning would be we then have speech or a manner of speech or language.

49:59

And the third is an expression which is strange or obscure and needs explanation in a third sense.

50:07

And this is the one that they're going to say, oh, see, that's gibberish. No, gibberish is not an expression that requires explanation.

50:16

It's gibberish. It's meaningless. And so in the, you know, here in the use, in the use of the

50:23

New Testament, the tongue means a gift. The gift of tongues, it has the meaning of a language.

50:32

So in the third use that you reference there, something that needs explanation, does it give a reference as to what it could be referring to, like a

50:43

Bible verse where that might? No, no, no. So the reason I went to the

50:49

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is because the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, for those who are not familiar with it, this is the purpose of that book is it looks for the

50:58

Greek words and how they're used in general, outside of Scripture, and then within Scripture.

51:08

So it shows the progression a lot of times of a word, you know, look, in our

51:13

English, we have words that change over time. And this is why I go to a reference like this is because they want to show how words have changed over time.

51:21

So they give the general use, and then they're going to give the more detailed use in different time periods.

51:28

And so that what I read there is the general use of the word. And so the citations there are to Aristotle, you know,

51:43

I'm trying to see what else, what other we have. That's Aristotle as well.

51:53

That's another Aristotle. So most of it that we have with that is being referenced to Aristotle. So the idea here is that this is something that is in the

52:11

New Testament, the way it's used is a language, or it could be used figuratively as a nation,

52:19

Revelation 5, 9, 7, 9, and 10, 11. You do see that kind of in Acts 2 as well, because people are grouped together by where they come from.

52:35

And then it's also, but those people are also referred to as having their own dialectus, right, their own dialect or tongue.

52:43

Now, here's the thing that I want to address with the thing they brought up. First off, they acknowledge in this that something changed at Azusa Street.

52:53

So let's get the history right, because what they referenced was actually, in the argument we make, is actually prior to Azusa Street.

53:00

Because before that you had James Farm, I always get his last name wrong.

53:07

Charles Fox Parham. I always get the name wrong. There was a guy before him,

53:15

Justin talks about it, I can never remember his name. But he was a couple of years before Fox Parham.

53:23

But I usually, whenever I'm doing a teaching, I always start with Charles Fox Parham. I think the thing is, the reason they avoid these guys, even though they'll call them the generals, is all of them were spoundrels.

53:37

So, you know, they start with Azusa Street, but it was after Parham that he had a student, disciple, whatever,

53:50

Angus Osmond, who is related to Jim Osmond, somehow, because they got the same last name.

53:57

I think it's spelled differently. Yeah, but we like to make fun of Jim for that.

54:04

Yeah, Jim's quick to say, no relation. So, but she believed she had the gift of speaking

54:14

Chinese. Now, here's the thing. When these people started, they all at that time, when you look at the history at that time, they all saw that what they were doing was something new.

54:29

Let that sink in. If this has been going on throughout history, and pronounce his name again for me.

54:37

Bocifas. Bocifas. If what Bocifas is saying, that this has always been the case, then why do they think something new happened?

54:47

Why do they say something different? They're not agreeing with the argument, this has always been history.

54:54

They're saying, hey, this hasn't been happening, and we think it should be happening.

55:00

And oh, look, now it is happening because we're doing it. She believes, and all of them believed, that they had a known human language.

55:12

That's one of the things that we see. They all believed it. Not one of them believed that they had an angelic language, a gibberish language, a language no man can understand.

55:21

None of them claimed that. They claimed exactly what the Bible says. That it was a known human language.

55:31

Yeah, I'm glad you started this here, what Bocifas is saying, because I just need to clarify, just for him.

55:39

Why don't you pick one up, because there's a number of them that I... Well, it's a rebuke. Paul is rebuking the

55:46

Corinthians. He's not celebrating what they're doing, and what they're talking about. Just that...

55:53

I'll put this one. 1 Corinthians 14, 2, for anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people, but to God.

56:01

Indeed, no one understands them. They utter mysteries by the Spirit. He's not celebrating that.

56:06

He's actually calling them very selfish. He's saying, you're speaking a tongue? You think you're speaking a tongue?

56:13

You don't even know what you're... all you're doing is you're speaking to God, because the purpose of the gift is to edify the body.

56:20

If you're only speaking to God, you can't edify the body. It's a revelatory gift that is meant to proclaim the truths of Christ.

56:30

So Paul is not encouraging them to speak mysteries. He's rebuking them for doing this, in this manner.

56:39

And that's why I said from the very beginning, we have to start with the fact that throughout this book, Paul is rebuking them.

56:46

In every one he's saying. And suddenly he's changing gears with no context shift.

56:53

Right? So we're supposedly ones that are isageating. But just look at what the whole book, right?

57:01

And also we should be assuming that something just changed without any explanation. And so...

57:09

Which is also why he says, if you're doing this, stop doing it, because you're doing it wrong and you must do it this way.

57:16

If you're going to do tongues, do it this way. And he gives instruction on how to do that.

57:22

So what we have is, we have the example of Agnes Osmond.

57:30

She goes off to China. She finds out, as the others when they went out, that they couldn't speak those languages.

57:35

And they come back. Now, they come back. And what do they do? Do they deny that they had the gift of languages?

57:44

No. They say they had a gift of a spiritual language.

57:50

And not it wasn't Chinese. They thought it was Chinese. But she wasn't really speaking Chinese. So the reality is, is what she claimed from God was false.

58:02

It was proven false. And instead of recognizing that she was wrong, she basically says,

58:11

God is wrong. Because he's the one that told her it was Chinese and gave her this gift.

58:19

So... Okay. But... Now, the argument that the gentleman makes is that we claim, they come back, that we claim that this is like a fictional thing that happened.

58:34

But we're going to see in the first response here that they're going to acknowledge the very thing that he's kind of saying is a bad argument on our part.

58:45

And that is that these early Charismatics did believe in known

58:50

English languages. And they went to places, you know, to go and do that.

58:56

But I want you to notice what he's going to say, how he's going to justify it. Because here's the thing.

59:02

He's going to say that what we claim historically happened, actually did happen.

59:11

But don't worry, because we know God's doing something different. Yeah. And, you know, you can actually look at the time period of Azusa, or not

59:22

Azusa, but Topeka, Kansas, and what was going on. With Agnes Osman, there's newspaper clippings.

59:29

And Charles Parham being interviewed about this phenomenon of tongues that has come to Topeka, Kansas.

59:38

And it was something new. And even in the, I don't know if I can grab the exact spot.

59:45

Let me try this. Where he admits that there's a difference between what is done in the

59:51

Bible times versus now. Let me see. So they would make the accusation that the classical Pentecostal traditions are not experiencing authentic tongues because authentic tongues has always been known human languages.

01:00:04

And when they realized that they weren't speaking known human languages, they changed their interpretation of Scripture.

01:00:12

That's typically the cessationist argument for Glossolalia and Zenolelia. And to that extent, we are saying that, and this is the thing.

01:00:19

If there's a difference between what was done in the New Testament versus now, then it's not the same gift.

01:00:28

Let's look and hear their response to that. Okay. There's a lot there. So I would affirm that at Azusa Street in the 1900s, they did believe that there were known languages.

01:00:40

And it actually started a worldwide missions movement. I would disagree in saying that they all came back with their tail tucked between their legs.

01:00:48

Actually, the Pentecostal denomination is the fastest growing church in the world.

01:00:54

And it's because of what happened at Azusa Street. It doesn't make it right. People, when they went out on the mission field, because they realized that the tongue that they thought they were speaking, and when they went to that country, nobody understood it.

01:01:06

That did happen. One correction there. Okay. So he's admitting it did happen.

01:01:12

They went claiming to know languages and came home not knowing those languages. But it's okay because, look, it created a worldwide mission.

01:01:22

So it must be good. It's no different than, I can't get,

01:01:28

Bosephus. Did I say it right? What Bosephus is saying here. He says, cults preach a false gospel that has nothing to do with to discredit the gospel.

01:01:38

The whole thing is when they argue that they're the true gospel because they have these gifts, and charismatics say, we have the true gospel because we have the same gifts as the false teachers.

01:01:50

How do you know it's the true one when your proof is the gift? The fact that he's saying is, yes, this did happen, but it wasn't that they had their tail between their legs because they created a worldwide missions organization, missions movement.

01:02:07

And, Drew, as you said, the one has nothing to do with the other. So here you have a logical fallacy.

01:02:13

Okay. It's a red herring argument. The one has nothing to do with the other. It's a distraction from the argument.

01:02:20

So if it's a red herring, if it's a fallacy, it's not logically valid. It's not a good argument.

01:02:25

It's not an argument God would make. Okay. The fact is they did return home, not having claimed that they were going to go and do a great big mission, but they came back in complete and utter failure because they didn't know the language.

01:02:45

And yes, there was a worldwide movement that came out of it. A movement of emotionalism that made people feel good, but that doesn't make any more than you could say what

01:02:58

Finney did. Finney who denied core doctrines of the gospel, like original sin.

01:03:05

I don't think Finney's in heaven based on what he taught. I mean, he could have repented, but he taught the emotionalism, the feel goodism.

01:03:16

You have plenty of people out there. Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn teaching a false gospel, but they speak these same gifts.

01:03:25

How can you discern when you say, well, look, this worldwide mission.

01:03:31

Well, Benny Hinn has had a much bigger movement than these early charismatics did.

01:03:39

And yet he and others like him teach that you're God. Where did we first hear that?

01:03:46

Oh, from the mouth of Satan in Genesis three. And they have the exact same gifts that someone like Bosephus is saying he has and the way he knows it.

01:03:58

And the way these guys were in the room, they don't know it is because they have the gift. Trust me. You're going to hear later that you're going to prove that the gifts are true because they experience it.

01:04:10

We can't execute your experience, but we can compare your experience to scripture.

01:04:16

Your experience is not authoritative, but scripture is. You know, there's one of these newspaper clippings is from January 7th, 1901.

01:04:31

S .J. Riggins withdraws from Parham School. Take no stock in recent gift of tongues.

01:04:38

Strange gibberish. Students talk, but no one understands them. In this newspaper article, he calls the institution a fake.

01:04:49

But he also goes down and it quotes Finney. Not Finney, but see, look, you said

01:04:58

Finney, and it made me think of Charles Finney. It quotes Parham as saying these are the tongues that came about in Acts 2, and it's the same wonderful working movement of the spirit.

01:05:10

The problem is what were they doing in Acts 2? It says very clearly each person heard them in their own language.

01:05:21

Correct. Not the same. We're going to see how they explain that. So in his argument that we're wrong in our belief, he actually says we're right, but it doesn't matter because they did a worldwide missions.

01:05:36

Okay? That has nothing to do with it. So the core part of the argument is correct. They did believe it was human languages.

01:05:45

They did think it was something new. They acknowledge it wasn't happening in history.

01:05:51

They think it's something new. They think it's human languages. They didn't know those human languages.

01:05:57

They came back having to admit they didn't know those languages. The fact that there's some worldwide movement doesn't justify it any more than you could say that it justifies

01:06:08

Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, Islam, Roman Catholicism. All those are a much bigger worldwide movement.

01:06:16

So let's see what his next. Here they're going to talk about the differences between known and unknown languages.

01:06:22

The idea that there is a difference between a prayer language or a known tongue versus an unknown tongue,

01:06:32

I don't find it clearly spelled out in Scripture. There's one word used every single time, and it's the word glossolalia.

01:06:38

So when Paul says that he prays in tongues, does that mean he's praying in gibberish? If by their argument, that's what the word glossolalia means,

01:06:47

I don't understand that. Okay, so with this, I will admit

01:06:52

I'm a little confused with it because it's not the cessationists that make a distinction between two terms, glossolalia and xenolalia.

01:07:04

Thank you. The charismatics make that argument, not us.

01:07:10

They say there's only one tongue, and it's known languages. Yeah, which is what he admits that the

01:07:18

Scripture 50 times. There's two uses of tongues, of the word that's translated as tongues.

01:07:26

Okay, 50 times it is glossolalia. There's only one other use, and I'm going to have to go look it up off because I just drew a blank on it.

01:07:38

So let me just quickly look up the other. I should have had that up, but I didn't plan to get into it.

01:07:48

So the other use, let's see.

01:07:54

So let's pull this up. So it's, my pronunciation won't be too good.

01:08:05

Heteroglossia. It's used in one verse, and that is 1

01:08:10

Corinthians 14, verse 12. Sorry, verse 21, where it says,

01:08:17

In the law it is written by men of strange tongues, and by the lips of the strangers

01:08:25

I will speak of a people. So in this case, it's more the idea of probably a nation, a foreign tongue, okay?

01:08:37

Sometimes translated as strange tongue. Speaking of a foreign, but still it's a known language.

01:08:44

But that's the only use. What's that verse again? This is 1

01:08:49

Corinthians 14, verse 21. And now, what do you notice with that?

01:08:56

It's doing what? It's quoting the Old Testament, okay?

01:09:02

And when we look at the word that we could see there, we end up seeing that that word that we would look at is going to be something that is, again, in the

01:09:21

Hebrew, a known language, okay? So as we go through this, we want to recognize that there's only one word that we would see.

01:09:40

A charismatic has to have two words, because they have to have one to explain the known language and one to explain the gibberish.

01:09:48

So he's saying it makes no sense to him. It makes no sense to us either. But we're not the ones trying to say, you know, xenonelia is a biblical word to be using, right?

01:10:03

So that becomes the issue. This is something, again, you don't see this in any lexicon, basically any work that is going to deal with the

01:10:17

Greek language prior to this movement, only after. So here's going to be the next part of this, where they're going to claim that, now this is an interesting argument, because they're going to claim that the scripture has to be clear on something.

01:10:34

I want you to listen to this. It's about 42 seconds. Paul even acknowledges that when he speaks in tongues, if there's nobody there to interpret, then no one understands him.

01:10:43

So he keeps silent to himself, and that's what he encourages the Corinthian church to do. I think the problem that we have here is, you have an example of people speaking in tongues in Acts 2, where clearly people do understand what they're saying.

01:10:57

I think that the problem that I have with this whole argument is that the scriptures are not clear, that it's always and only a known language.

01:11:05

Maybe it's known by someone in the world, but not anybody in the room with you at that moment in time.

01:11:11

Maybe it's known somewhere in the cosmos, but maybe not somewhere here on the earth.

01:11:18

The scriptures just aren't that specific. Okay, so he's saying the scriptures aren't that specific, even though he acknowledged

01:11:25

Acts 2 is very specific. Yeah, so it could be known by someone, could not, maybe some part of the world.

01:11:33

Hey, maybe an alien, maybe somewhere out in the galaxy. Who knows, you know? Well, okay, but here's the thing, and I know we want to be careful not to be mocking.

01:11:42

I know you're just... True. But here's the thing. This is why

01:11:51

I played the argument three before two. What's he doing? It doesn't make sense to him, and he wants a clear...

01:12:00

He wants it to be this clear thing in scripture that it is always and only a known language, but there's no reason to make that statement if it is only a known language, right?

01:12:16

I mean, the only reason why there'd have to be a statement is if there was something other than a known language, but everywhere we see, as he admits, is a known language.

01:12:27

It's because he's reading into it a belief that comes centuries later.

01:12:36

If you don't have the belief, if you have the belief that as you go through all scripture, that this is language...

01:12:44

This is actually, by the way, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, they updated it for this very reason.

01:12:51

What they did was translate the word here as language, and it was a problem because it clarified the issue.

01:13:00

That's why they always want to talk tongues. I speak of it as language because that's what it means in our day.

01:13:07

By using the word tongue, it allows for a gibberish in the

01:13:14

English, but when we go back to the Greek or even the Hebrew, the word never refers to a gibberish.

01:13:23

Now, they're going to try to make that case in 1 Corinthians 14, but Drew, as you already said,

01:13:30

Paul is not celebrating it. He's condemning them for that behavior. Yes, they did.

01:13:36

I believe what you see in Corinth, they did exactly what happened in the late 1800s, early 1900s with Agnes Osmond.

01:13:49

She goes off claiming she has a gift. She doesn't have the gift. She returns and then just says, well, it's a secret prayer language.

01:13:58

It's an angelic language. It's a special language. We can't understand it, and Paul's addressing that very behavior.

01:14:08

How do we know that that could have happened in Corinth? We have the history of the early 1900s where we have the newspaper articles to look at to show this is what happened in just a few years, just over a dozen years it took from Agnes Osmond saying she could speak

01:14:29

Chinese to an angelic language. Here's really the problem with that. Once you start redefining things, the way they have done with tongues, if you look all the way back at the beginning of 1

01:14:44

Corinthians, Paul is basically trying to establish church order. He's trying to bring everything back into a structured order.

01:14:54

Once you start redefining things and you start saying, well, tongues doesn't mean languages.

01:14:59

It can mean this gibberish and whatnot. You kind of have to release any kind of regulation on it.

01:15:06

Now it becomes what? What we see in charismatic movements all the time. The flow of the spirit.

01:15:12

We just let the spirit take over. Whatever the spirit comes upon you, just let him do whatever it is that he's going to do.

01:15:18

He just takes off and you just don't know what he's saying or what he's doing, but he's just doing it and he's flowing it.

01:15:23

Well, that completely negates everything Paul's trying to do with bringing everything back in order.

01:15:31

Yeah, and we're going to see some of that because they're going to talk about order in a bit. The thing is, is that the reason he's saying that the scripture is not clear is not because the scripture is not clear.

01:15:46

It's because the scripture is not clear on his position. I think the

01:15:52

Bible is crystal clear on the position that it's always a known language. We have to say known language because of what they've done with the claims of this gift.

01:16:04

Yeah, and I've said this here before and this is not original with me. I got this from R .C.

01:16:09

Sproul, but if we look at when the books were written, Paul is writing 1

01:16:18

Corinthians. This is one of the earliest writings of Paul, but the writing of 1

01:16:23

Corinthians comes way before the writing of the book of Acts. But what do we see in the book of Acts, which came later, how is tongues described?

01:16:33

It's described as a known language. But yet, we have 1

01:16:38

Corinthians that was written first. So even though the events of Acts took place first, we can say that what was going on in Corinth was the same event of Acts in known languages.

01:16:53

They weren't that far removed from when the events took place to when the writing of 1

01:17:00

Corinthians took place. But it's just documented in the writing of Acts later.

01:17:06

Yeah, and here's going to be a thing because you mentioned about the definitions and redefinitions.

01:17:12

And with this next part of their argument, you're going to hear this because what are they doing? Again, eisegesis, they're going to read into the scripture the way people interpret these gifts and you're going to see here a multitude of interpretations of a gift of languages and a gift of interpretation.

01:17:32

And when we look at this, you're going to see how they're going to try to fit this into what happened in Acts. Acts was really clear.

01:17:38

You had people speaking and everyone heard in their own language. So that is saying that the speakers were speaking their language.

01:17:48

But throughout this, we're now going to see, oh, they're going to have a lot of different explanations. Why? The explanations are because people are not doing what they did in the first century.

01:17:58

They're doing something different. So if this is not the same gift as the first century, as they've already kind of referred to, well, then guess what?

01:18:09

It's not the same gift, period. And again, how can you sit here and say that, well, because I speak in tongues, that's the proof, because, hey, so does

01:18:19

Benny Hinn and he thinks he's a god. You know? So let's listen to this.

01:18:25

This one's going to be really, really good. I also do think that there are times when tongues are very much a known language.

01:18:32

And I know that by personal experience. I've had people understand me speaking fluent Portuguese more times than I can count.

01:18:39

Like I have numerous stories of me speaking in tongues, a gift I do have, and people actually understanding what

01:18:47

I'm saying. And it's pretty remarkable when that happens. And then I've also had times where nobody in the room naturally knew the language

01:18:54

I was speaking, but someone had a gift of interpretation. And they were able to explain what

01:19:00

I was saying to others because of it. So everybody was built up in faith there. So I don't think it's a one or the other.

01:19:08

And I think it's a really hard known, a hard thing to prove one way or the other. And then this idea that it's not practiced that way today.

01:19:18

Well, it's like, okay, maybe, but that's because nobody in the room understands that language.

01:19:23

And I would encourage people, if there's no one with a gift of interpretation or nobody who naturally knows what the language is, yeah, they shouldn't do it in a public setting where there's unbelievers or people uninformed about gifts because people will think that you're crazy.

01:19:36

And Paul's pretty clear about that in 1 Corinthians 14. I'm really confused. So you have to walk into a room and know, because remember, you know, you must, you don't even know the language you're able to speak.

01:19:50

You just, you can speak Portuguese. You don't know you speak Portuguese, but they know you speak

01:19:55

Portuguese. How do you walk into a room? Do you walk around? Anyone here know Portuguese? Okay.

01:20:01

Now I can speak in tongues. How do you know someone has the gift of interpretation? Anyone here have the gift of interpretations? Because I want to speak in tongues.

01:20:08

I want to speak in languages. I got to make sure someone's here to interpret. I mean, he's claiming he did what he says the scripture says he shouldn't do.

01:20:17

Right. So he's saying he did this, but he's not even doing it in the way that scripture says you should do it.

01:20:23

Right. So he spoke and someone heard him. Right. Correct. That's not what scripture says. You speak and then let the interpreter interpret for you.

01:20:35

So what he's saying he did isn't what the scripture is saying you should do. And he acknowledged that.

01:20:41

He says you shouldn't do this if you don't have someone there to interpret, which is quite interesting. Yeah. Because how do you know someone, if you are going to speak in a gibberish language, how do you know there's someone that's going to be able to interpret it?

01:20:54

Right. Which is also interesting with some of the comments that we see, right?

01:21:01

The speaking mysteries and all this stuff. Mysteries is not a known language and all this stuff. Okay, but Paul is giving a prescriptive text, yes, that says when you do this in the church, it must be done in this way.

01:21:16

Right. Let two or three who speak in a tongue speak and let an interpreter interpret.

01:21:24

If you're not doing that, you're not abiding by the scriptures. Yeah. And that's not what's going on in charismatic churches.

01:21:31

You need two people that have to say the same thing in the same language. Two or at most three.

01:21:40

Why two or three? Because, well, if you understand the Old Testament, you know why. That's a biblical way of showing to be a witness to something.

01:21:49

Yes, yes. So that's even standard practice. Well, it's supposed to be standard practice in law, which is where that comes from, the judicial law of the

01:22:00

Old Testament. But we don't practice that much in our law system anymore. Now, I want you to hear this.

01:22:07

What does he say is the thing? Because supposedly we're the ones that do eisegesis. Just let's hear this again.

01:22:13

And I also do think that there are times when tongues are very much a known language. And I know that by personal experience.

01:22:20

Ah! I know that from the Bible. Right. Nope, that's not what he said.

01:22:26

Not what he said. He doesn't know it from the Bible. He's reading it into the Bible, and he knows it from personal experience because of what he...

01:22:35

Well, I can't execute your experience, but by that definition, here's the thing. By what he just said, every

01:22:40

Mormon that has the same exact claim... Because I've heard plenty of Mormons make the same claims. They must be right.

01:22:47

They must have a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit, and what they claim must be just as authoritative.

01:22:56

It must be true. And if you deny that, then you have to deny the gift that he's claiming.

01:23:06

Right? You can't say, oh, it's because I have a biblical gospel. Well, but see, the others make the same claim that the way they know they have a biblical gospel is because of the fact that they do this.

01:23:19

The speaking of this language is the proof that they have a biblical gospel. But, you know, here's the other thing that shocked me in what he said.

01:23:27

Let me play this part. It's pretty remarkable when that happens. It's pretty remarkable when that happens.

01:23:33

Really? Because if this is so commonplace that this happens to you countless times, more times than you can count,

01:23:41

I think is how he phrased it, why is it remarkable? It shouldn't be remarkable.

01:23:47

You should be able to come with me. Let's go down to Brazil, and you can be my translator.

01:23:57

We'll have you ask for everything. You can be the one to stand up and share the gospel. I'm willing to guess that if I bought him a ticket to Brazil with cameras, we get some film crew down there, and I'm going to ask him to stand up on the street corner and preach the gospel so that all the

01:24:17

Portuguese speakers can hear, I'm willing to guess that he's not going to take me up on that.

01:24:25

Free trip to Brazil. We'll get some good food. Why wouldn't he? Because with the cameras running?

01:24:32

Yeah, I'm guessing he's not going to want to do that. Why? Well, because of the simple fact that he probably doesn't speak

01:24:40

Portuguese. I can't explain his experiences. Could someone be claiming that?

01:24:48

Very well could be, because we're going to hear another example he's going to give in a moment. But what you end up seeing here is he ended up saying that yes, they're known languages, but his experience tells him that the gifts can be different than the way we see it in Scripture.

01:25:08

The thing about experience is my experiences aren't a bad thing to share.

01:25:16

But at the end of the day, my experience when compared to Scripture doesn't mean anything.

01:25:23

Because I have to have an ultimate standard. Because what he's doing is he's now bringing his experience on par with what

01:25:32

Scripture says. And Scripture is saying one thing and he's saying, but my experience says another. And we see this all the time in the charismatic movement.

01:25:38

But my experience. Which is sufficient? Is it

01:25:44

Scripture or is it your experience? You know, back many years ago when

01:25:50

I was doing LSD I had an experience of a pink elephant that was coming out of the wall. And everything told me that that was really happening.

01:26:00

Guess what? It wasn't. It wasn't happening. So my experience doesn't make it true.

01:26:11

Alright? So at this point I'm going to bring in Cole. He wants to talk.

01:26:18

He's backstage. He wants to talk a little bit about go back a bit to 1 Corinthians 12.

01:26:24

Yeah, I just saw that. Hey guys. Good evening.

01:26:31

Good evening. I think, Andrew, you and Anthony had been in our church to preach us through parts of Corinthians.

01:26:41

Because we just did 1 and 2. And I don't remember who was preaching that weekend because we have a rotating roster right now.

01:26:50

But 2 Corinthians 12, Paul opens this up and it's right on point with what you guys were just saying about experiences.

01:26:59

He says, I must go on boasting though there is nothing to be gained by it. I will go on to visions and revelations of the

01:27:07

Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body,

01:27:13

I do not know. God knows. And then he goes on about it. And he says things about things that cannot he heard things that cannot be told or seen things that he can't talk about.

01:27:25

And eventually he goes on here to say oh yeah, it's in verse 6.

01:27:31

I would not be a fool or I would be speaking the truth but I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.

01:27:43

What he's saying here is this experience takes away from the truth of what needs to be taught on the ground here.

01:27:52

He's saying look, I have all of these experiences I could go on about but what's it do? Right? We had this conversation at one point before about you know,

01:28:00

I had lots of spiritual things in my past the stuff that I saw but I know you guys have the thing of saying can't exegete experience.

01:28:08

Well, right, here's the perfect way to do it is this example. It may have happened but whether or not it's profitable even

01:28:16

Paul, he says actually having seen the third heaven he wouldn't even say it was him. He distances himself from those experiences in a modest way of saying

01:28:27

I know a guy it's like the phrase asking for a friend.

01:28:33

Yeah. So I figured I'd contribute that much to it.

01:28:39

No, I appreciate it. Thanks. Not a problem. Let's continue on with the arguments they're making.

01:28:45

Let me bring this next one up. This is a little bit longer. It's over a minute. I would give a caveat to that though.

01:28:52

Okay. So yes, there's no one there to interpret but we're talking about what kind of meeting.

01:28:57

A meeting where there are unbelievers or people uninformed about gifts present as literally what he says in there.

01:29:06

That's when they're going to think you're mad. Now, if me and a few friends who are all very informed about gifts and one of us prayed out in tongues and there was no interpreter.

01:29:15

I don't think that would cause the kind of problems that Paul is trying to avoid. Yeah, it may not build up others but that's not necessarily what that meeting is about.

01:29:22

That meeting is about praying together. And I think it's even more beneficial when you have the interpretation. The real concern for Paul is how tongues functions in an environment where you don't know everybody in the room.

01:29:34

And that I think is destructive. And that's something I saw in my old church. And one of the ways they used to sort of justify it was by saying, well, they're not talking to you.

01:29:42

They're talking to God. It's prayer. I'm like, well, it's still a language nobody understands and even Paul addresses that.

01:29:48

How can anybody say the amen? And it still causes people to think you're mad and crazy.

01:29:53

And so I would just as much oppose the practice of that gift in a place where there's unbelievers or people uninformed about the gifts as much as I would oppose people forbidding speaking in tongues in a general sense.

01:30:06

And so I get back to the same thing that I said before with how do you know that someone knows the language? Someone knows, you gotta know there's the interpreter.

01:30:13

You gotta know everyone's heart now. You gotta know that there's, that people aren't false converts.

01:30:19

That they're not unbelievers. Okay. So because he said, he said he thinks

01:30:26

Paul is more concerned, not with the church gathering, but with a type of gathering where there might be unbelievers present.

01:30:36

And yet he's speaking to how to do it in church. Right. Yeah. So, so I completely disagree with what this guy is saying.

01:30:45

So, and the reason being, so let's go back to chapter 11. Okay. Now, when we talked about head coverings in our episode of Matter of Theology, I said there probably could be a case where head coverings, the section about head coverings, those first 15, 16 verses could be tied into chapter 10 of first Corinthians, which is,

01:31:09

I would believe is outside, could be, could be possibly outside of the church because Paul then moves into talking about the

01:31:17

Lord's supper. And this is what you do inside the church. He now moves into what you do inside the church.

01:31:25

And so, but, and talking about what you do inside the church, the

01:31:31

Lord's supper is for believers or non -believers, Andrew? Believers.

01:31:37

Believers, only believers. But he continues, and this is where chapter and verse divisions do us a disservice, right?

01:31:44

He continues the end of chapter 11, talking about the Lord's supper, right into chapter 12, 13, and 14 in how to properly use the gifts.

01:31:56

What is the context? Is it still in the local church? Yes, it's still in the local church.

01:32:02

We haven't gone anywhere yet where there could be non -believers. He's still under the umbrella of the local church from when he started talking about the

01:32:13

Lord's supper and gathering together to partake of the Lord's supper, which is only for believers.

01:32:20

But see, the thing is that he's putting this in, he's answering chapter 14 in the context of a church setting.

01:32:28

So, for him to say, oh, he's not concerned about a church setting, yet that's where he's giving the instructions for.

01:32:34

Right. And then he says, oh, but what about unbelievers? Okay, are there going to be unbelievers who come into churches?

01:32:40

Yes. Why are they there? They could be there for a whole host of reasons. I would, I want to say they're there because the

01:32:47

Holy Spirit has drawn them there. Yeah, but here's the thing. Okay, let's look at the context.

01:32:54

Because, right, the eisegesis, this passage he's referring to is written to the church where it gives this instruction.

01:33:02

Right. Right? Where do we see it with the languages that are mentioned? Acts chapter 2, outside of the church.

01:33:10

Outside of the church, yes. He's got it backwards. If Paul's whole concern was for the unbelievers, then why is it that we see in Acts that they're speaking languages and everyone gets it?

01:33:22

I see what you're saying. Yeah. He's got them reversed. He's got them reversed. Right?

01:33:28

Because here in chapter 14 is the instructions to the church. But we actually see in Acts chapter 2, outside the church, they're doing this and there wasn't the, oh, hey guys, whoops.

01:33:40

Holy Spirit, hold back on that. Right? So now this gets us now to where they start making this distinction between the two

01:33:48

Greek words. All right? And so I'm thinking we could get through the rest of these, even though this is like a minute and a half.

01:33:56

We got some longer quotes coming up, but I think we can get it done within the timeframe we have left. So let's see. We don't want to pretend as if experts haven't studied

01:34:05

Colossal Alia and said this is not a known human language that they've studied. That's the syntax. It doesn't even seem, in many cases, to have the same kind of speech structure that known languages would have.

01:34:20

And when it comes to xenolalia, I'm right alongside you. I was raised in a Pentecostal tradition where tongues was practiced in corporate settings.

01:34:28

I would say that was out of bounds today. And to that same note, in a private prayer meeting, when we were speaking in tongues, a young woman from Croatia came up to me speaking in Croatian, thinking that I could speak her language.

01:34:43

I was a bit baffled and was like, I have no clue what you're saying. I was thinking that she was speaking in tongues because that's what was happening.

01:34:51

And then she began to speak in English saying, you know, you don't speak Croatian. You're not Croatian. I'm saying, no,

01:34:56

I'm not Croatian. And she's told me that I was speaking in her language and in the accent of her language.

01:35:02

So not only was I as if I was speaking from, you know, speaking English, but speaking with a West Texas draw because that's my region.

01:35:10

It was very understandable for her. Now, J. Robin Williams, who says that the miracle is actually performed in the hearing and not in the speaking, that the language that is being spoken is glossolalia, unknown language, but the miracle is actually performed in the hearing of those who hear them speaking in their known language, even though they're actually speaking a mysterious language.

01:35:36

So here's one of the things that, right? These categories that they say we're guilty of, but what you notice is they don't have, there's not consistency of, oh, it could be this, and it could be that, and it could be this, and it could be that because we got to make it fit what we are saying is happening, right?

01:35:54

So it's not like, see, I'm really clear. I believe that what those gifts were was someone who didn't know a language of Portuguese suddenly understands

01:36:04

Portuguese and can speak Portuguese. You know how he knows when he walks in a room if there's an interpreter?

01:36:11

Because he knows what he's speaking is Portuguese and he knows that person speaks Portuguese. Right, and you know, we didn't introduce the category of hearer.

01:36:23

We didn't introduce that one. No, and as you look at this, the

01:36:29

Greek word here that I'm saying 50 times is used, you know, I have it up here on the screen, and you look at it, he's going to claim that, does it always mean a known human language?

01:36:43

Well, Matthew 7, 33 is the first time we see it in our Bible, not chronologically, but Matthew 7, 33 just says

01:36:52

Jesus took him aside from the crowd by himself and put his fingers in his ear, and after he spit, he touched his tongue.

01:37:08

Is that a language? He touched his tongue with saliva. No, that sounds like it's actually the organ.

01:37:17

Huh. Has nothing to do with the language. So, like, they're making this distinction of these two

01:37:26

Greek words where there's only one that we see. The whole thing, though, is that as you look at it, it's, oh, well, now it could be the hearer who hears it in a miraculous way.

01:37:38

I'm speaking in English, but they're hearing it in, I forget what language he said, Croatian.

01:37:44

She hears it in Croatian. So he knows he's speaking English. So now you have two different gifts.

01:37:52

You have the gift of the hearer. Where is that listed in Scripture? It says the person hears in a miraculous way, the gift of hearing.

01:38:04

Now, it can't be the gift of interpretation, right? They'll claim that one later we're going to hear, but if it was the gift of interpretation, then she wouldn't know

01:38:12

Croatian. She just understands it, right? She would be able to interpret. So, you know, now you have seemingly a different gift.

01:38:24

I'm just asking the questions here. I mean, if we were to have the dialogue, have a debate, these are some of the questions

01:38:30

I would love to ask to see what they're going to come up with. Because what you're seeing is, yes, they're looking at these scholars who are making these arguments, but what are these scholars doing?

01:38:43

They're trying to retrofit what they're doing into the Bible. That's eisegesis.

01:38:48

They're trying to say, well, this is what this could mean. It could mean this, and it could mean this, and you could have it this way, and you could have it that way.

01:38:54

Because there's so many different claims by the charismatics today, how do you explain them all? You just got to take a little of everything.

01:39:03

You know, just grab everything and make it work. Yeah, we had a comment that I started a while ago by Matthew Sweet, and he says,

01:39:13

I'm only seeing glossa for tongues, dialectus for tongue and language, laleo for speak, which is where you get the compound word glossolalia.

01:39:30

Xenoglossy, xenolalia shows up in 1905. So this is the first time it shows up, he's saying.

01:39:37

1905 by a French parapsychologist, Charles Richet. Yeah, and this is the thing that I said, you know, there's a book.

01:39:48

I'll put it up here, and then I'll give you the title. But it is called Speaking in Tongues, a

01:39:53

Critical Historical Examination. It is by Bloster and Sullivan. They go in through this, and they point out that you don't find this in any of the early, you know, lexicons.

01:40:08

It's just it's not there. They don't have this explanation. So the explanation, if this is after these gifts occur, it's to explain what now people are experiencing.

01:40:24

Rather than getting the doctrine from the Bible, it's we're going to redefine the Bible to our experience.

01:40:31

And this is exactly what we saw with, you know, Agnes Osman. Same behavior.

01:40:41

So why could we not expect that that's what the Corinthians were doing? And that's why Paul would be condemning this.

01:40:47

And they take it as, look, some of you folks remember I said, when I was in the charismatic movement,

01:40:52

I heard someone talking. I wasn't even involved in the conversation. One person talking to another, and the person says, well, not everyone, not all of us believe the gifts continued for today.

01:41:00

And I said, what? I thought that's what the only way to understand that. And so the person said, some people, you know, he the guy says,

01:41:08

I believe that these gifts ceased. And I sat down and I read first Corinthians 12, 13 and 14, not with the view of saying this was teaching to speak in tongues, but asking the question, take the step back, understand the context of Corinthians.

01:41:23

Is this actually teaching tongues or is he condemning the behavior? And when you, when you step back and look at it that way, you suddenly realize he's condemning the very same behavior that's practiced today.

01:41:34

And the people who take it today, look at that, take the passages out of context so that they can make it seem like Paul is commending the behavior that he's actually condemning.

01:41:44

You know, and a question that we also have to ask, right. And I ask it of prophecy, what prophecy outside of the

01:41:50

Bible do you need today? Right. Well, let's ask the same thing of tongues. What do, why do

01:41:57

I need to speak in a tongue for what purpose? Well, if you're, I would,

01:42:02

I would say if you're a missionary, right. If you're going to an unchurched area and, and this is the thing, we don't see that.

01:42:11

Like we have all these missionaries who are going to areas where they're creating languages, right.

01:42:16

Or they're creating like a written language. Go, go to the museum of the Bible. There's a room full of just, well, they're not really, some are

01:42:24

Bibles. And then they have these little plastic things that represent Bibles, languages that are being translated.

01:42:31

And then they have ones where there is no written language and they're creating a written language for the

01:42:36

Bible. And all these places you have, all these missionaries are going all over the world. Why did they have to try to live with people to learn the language?

01:42:47

If God could just give them a language, you know, there's a, there's a story. Okay. One of the, uh, one of the first Puritans in America, uh, his name was

01:43:01

Joe's Joseph Elliot, John Elliot, Joseph, John Elliot, Mr.

01:43:07

Elliot, Mr. Elliot. Okay. He, uh, he became a missionary to the

01:43:12

Algonquin Indians. Okay. And the Algonquin Indians, they had their own language, right?

01:43:19

Well, he didn't speak the language. He didn't write the language. He spent time with the tribes of the

01:43:27

Algonquin Indians, learned their language so that he could translate the Bible from English into Algonquin so that he could teach them the

01:43:36

Bible in Algonquin. And the very first book, Jim Elliot, thank you.

01:43:43

Uh, the very first book published in America was the Bible written in Algonquin by Jim Elliot.

01:43:51

There you go. He just needed the gift of tongues. I mean, that's the thing I find amazing. Why didn't he, uh, you know, so, so let's listen to this.

01:44:01

Now this is about a minute long. There are charismatic religions who hold that, but we're,

01:44:07

I don't think that we were willing to talk about it. Yeah. One way or the other, because I would imagine in Acts chapter two when the spirit gets poured out, it said they were from all those different tribes and they were hearing these people talk about the, um, the, the works of God, but it says that various kinds of tongues.

01:44:25

So I don't know. I don't think it's that they were all speaking a similar language, but the hearers were suddenly hearing something different.

01:44:31

I think the languages themselves are probably different though. I would imagine that both are possible that a person, and I've heard this happen.

01:44:39

I've heard of a person giving a sermon in a foreign country in English, but people understood that person speaking in their own language.

01:44:47

And so, and then asking them, Oh, I didn't know you knew this language. And he's like, I didn't, I was giving the sermon in English, but yet they were all hearing a different language.

01:44:55

Now, whether it was the speaker and he was speaking a language without realizing it a different language or whether it was the miracle was taking place in the years, it's like,

01:45:02

I don't know if it really matters that much. And I don't know if you could prove it one way, physically or the other.

01:45:08

But one thing I can prove is that in all the cases we see in the Bible, when people spoke in this supernatural gift of languages, they knew they were doing it because that's what we see.

01:45:20

Because here's the interesting thing. You have three cases starting in acts two, right?

01:45:26

And in acts you have, you have several different times this happens. What's different with each one of them. Well, if you go to the beginning of acts, what is it?

01:45:33

You're going to preach the gospel in where? Jerusalem. Where's the first place we see the guests of languages, Jerusalem.

01:45:41

Then Judea, outer parts of the earth. What do you see? You end up seeing where's the last one

01:45:46

Gentiles. How do they know that they have the Holy spirit? Because they had the same gift that fell upon them in Jerusalem.

01:45:54

They knew what they were doing. It wasn't this thing where, Oh, it just happened. I didn't even know what I was doing.

01:45:59

And it's not this thing where, Oh, it could be this gift or that gift. They, the thing is, is they don't have a clue.

01:46:06

They want to say, Hey, we're doing the same thing. The first century is doing. And yet we can't define it clearly because all of our experiences are different.

01:46:17

So what's, what's defining the experience? Well, I think he said it best. And I also do think that there are times when tongues are very much a known language.

01:46:25

And I know that by personal experience, he knows it by personal experience. What was the comment you put up?

01:46:33

Yeah. Jody put up this comment, uh, just listening to that clip. I, they say, I think,

01:46:39

I imagine, I believe possible, you know, it, it, it, it, it, nothing is that's no scripture.

01:46:47

Yeah. See, and that's what we're hearing consistent throughout this answer is my experience and this guy's experience and that person's experience and that person's experience, we got it.

01:46:57

We got to bring them all together. Somehow we have to unite all these and make it sound biblical.

01:47:03

Well, I'm not having to do that. Yeah. See, I think this, um, I think this speaks to where we are as a people, as a society, right.

01:47:12

And how we communicate with one another, because it's almost like now, uh,

01:47:18

I can't teach anything unless I have a personal experience I can then add on in order to make my point.

01:47:26

Right. But, but then not just me, if I can add this person and that person, and I can add two or three people who have the same experience that validates my experience, that then validates my point that I'm trying to relay to you.

01:47:40

And instead of just saying, this is what it says. And, and, and we believe what it says.

01:47:47

So let me tell you something about experience. Experiences can be manufactured.

01:47:55

Experiences can be planted. I did a social experiment in, in high school with a friend of mine.

01:48:02

We went to New York city. We had a plan. We want to see if we could pull this off. This is just, we're experimenting.

01:48:09

We decided that we were going to go to a tall building and we were, we had gone ahead of time with a plan.

01:48:17

We were going to say that there was a guy on a ledge getting ready to jump. We already decided what he was wearing.

01:48:24

We decided, I mean, details of what he was going to do that, you know, at one point we were going to say that he put his leg over the rail and he leaned forward and like, we had all these very specific details and we sat on like either ends of the spot looking up and we waited till other people started looking up and I, and I turned to the person next to me,

01:48:45

I said, do you see the guy up there and look at the guy with the yellow right up there? And I don't see anything. And then my friend's like, yeah, no,

01:48:51

I see him. I see him. Yeah. He's got the hat on. Yeah. You look, he's leaning over and we just sat there.

01:48:58

There were about 25 people that start trying to convince others in that group that they saw something that wasn't there.

01:49:05

Me and my buddy, Matt walked out of the group and just sat there like this, just staring at these people. They were like, wow, that was way easier than we thought it could be.

01:49:13

We convinced now, not everyone. There was about 25 people, but there were like 10 of them that were trying to convince the others that there was a guy dressed in yellow with a hat on that was leaning over an edge and there was no one up there.

01:49:28

Crazy that, that they thought they actually believed because a bunch of people were saying it, they thought, yeah, this is it.

01:49:37

So, and you know, there are people that, that, well, let's be real specific.

01:49:43

There are people that do investigations that are trained in how to ask questions that could plant ideas in people's heads and they start to think that's their experience.

01:49:55

Yeah. I was, I was going to mention something along those lines. When you think about people who, uh, uh, that kind of illusionists.

01:50:02

Right. Um, the, where they have an ability to manipulate someone's experience, right.

01:50:09

They may experience one thing, but then through maybe the power of suggestion or just like you're talking about the ability to ask questions, to implant something in someone's mind, to make you think something differently.

01:50:22

Right. You have the ability to change and alter someone's experience. So this is why experiences are completely invalid.

01:50:31

Now, if this guy from the remnant radio would have called in, we got David here. He's saying hello from Brazil. And I know

01:50:36

David, he actually translated my book. What do we believe into Portuguese? And he would be able to translate if this guy really had the gift of Portuguese.

01:50:44

By the way, I will give a word. If anyone out there is fluent in Portuguese, please contact me info at striving for eternity .com.

01:50:51

Uh, David did a great job. I'm sure in translating my book into Portuguese, but we're looking for someone to confirm it.

01:50:58

I went out on, on Facebook. Hey, anyone speak Portuguese? I need someone to, to verify, you know, validate translation.

01:51:05

And everyone gave me David's name. Like David did it for me. So, all right, we got, we got three more clips to get through before the end of the show and 10 and nine minutes.

01:51:16

So let's see. Sorry. Something John Davis had just mentioned. I want to address as well. He said, if the unbeliever has the gift of interpretation that would give the unbeliever the gift seems like a slippery slope on that one.

01:51:27

Um, you know, John, I think God can give even unbelievers a temporary gifts or supernatural thing that would actually allow them to understand things as quite possible.

01:51:36

Um, and I think, but I mean, uh, you know, he spoke to Nebuchadnezzar who is as pagan as it gets.

01:51:43

Okay. So he's saying, so what is a spiritual gift? A spiritual gift is a gift given to believers at the time that they get saved.

01:51:53

And he's saying an unbeliever can have a temporary gift. It's temporary for him, but he can get a spiritual gift.

01:52:01

And he says, because he spoke to Nebuchadnezzar, it's like, well, wait, speaking to Nebuchadnezzar is that's not a gift.

01:52:10

And who do you speak to? Like, how do you speak to Nebuchadnezzar? Uh, well, he gave a dream and Daniel, a believer interpreted it.

01:52:20

So, you know, like the, again, a red herring speaking to Nebuchadnezzar has nothing to do with God in the new

01:52:28

Testament, giving a gift to an unbeliever, because now think about it.

01:52:33

Think about what he said earlier in his arguments that you shouldn't use this gift in front of unbelievers because they're going to think you're crazy.

01:52:42

And so you should never do that. But now the unbeliever might have it. Right. I'm just saying, so this next clip is a little over a minute.

01:52:53

Regarding the, uh, angelic thing. Um, that's difficult because the kind of, uh, language that Paul is employing in first Corinthians 13, where it mentions the tongues of angels is hyperbole throughout the whole thing.

01:53:08

He's saying, if I speak with not just the tongues of men, but the tongues of angels, if I know not just a few mysteries, but I know all mysteries.

01:53:17

Um, and the point has more to do with love than it does with the potential of us to speak in angelic tongue.

01:53:23

Now, do people speak in angelic tongues? Maybe, why not? Um, I just don't know if you can prove that all tongues are angelic or not, or, you know,

01:53:33

I just, if anything, that text, if anything, that text almost proves the opposite in that no one has all knowledge, no one has all wisdom is the point, um, that, that if I had all of these gifts to the nth degree, but didn't have love, it would be pointless.

01:53:50

So, um, it seems to be, he's, he's making this case that it's not about your gifting, it's about love and makes that gift to almost an intangible measure.

01:54:00

So you could actually almost make the case that the text is, there's not, um, the language of angels.

01:54:07

Now here's where I would agree with them. Right. Um, round of applause. Yeah. This, this, in, in this case,

01:54:14

I am, I'm agreeing with what they're saying, because that's been a major part of my argument with first Corinthians chapter 13, when it speaks of the, the, the gift of the language of angels, which everyone says they speak.

01:54:30

It's hyperbole because the very next verse, you have to be God to have all knowledge and all wisdom, and they recognize that this is why

01:54:38

I, I, and I said this when we started this, I, you know, not the first of the series, two weeks ago,

01:54:44

I, I really liked these guys. Uh, I think they try to be fair with things. I think there's some blind spots they have.

01:54:50

Guess what? I got blind spots too. Everyone does. Uh, I pointed out some of the blind spots I think they have tonight, but here,

01:54:56

I think they're being honest where most, most charismatics won't be honest with this passage, they use this to say,

01:55:02

I speak an angelic language. These guys can recognize the sarcasm, even the way he said it, you know,

01:55:09

Oh, the language, right. I mean, he, he was being more sarcastic than I would ever be with it, but I, you know, he's being honest with the text here.

01:55:18

And I think though, what he's not doing is taking the fact that that's what Paul is doing throughout this whole section.

01:55:25

He's being sarcastic. So, you know, that's where, if he, if he would step back and realize, oh, that's consistent, he,

01:55:35

I think he would come to a different conclusion with this stuff. But again, why I think he's letting his experience interpret form and that's the thing.

01:55:43

Yeah, I think, um, so, so I think the reason a lot of people like really, really like the remnant radio guys is because I think they try, they, they do try really hard to be balanced and fair, but like you're saying,

01:55:59

I think they kind of let their experience, you know, kind of take, take the reign a little bit.

01:56:05

Um, but here, they just interrupted say, that's why I think that if we were to get together with them, it would be,

01:56:13

I think a really good, healthy conversation because I think they do try to be balanced.

01:56:18

I try to be balanced. I try to understand the other side. I think they're trying to some extent to, to understand the other side, but they,

01:56:27

I think they brush it off too quickly. Now they would, they, I think would think that I brushed their arguments off too quickly.

01:56:34

I think it'd be fair to say that. Yeah. Now, now the place that I would disagree is when, when they say, are there tongues of angels?

01:56:42

Maybe. I mean, okay, here's, here's what, what we can't do. We can't go beyond scripture.

01:56:49

Okay. Because every time we see angels speak in scripture, they're speaking in a known language.

01:56:56

There's no human language. A known human language, but even, even still what, when

01:57:02

John is writing revelation and he has the vision in heaven and he sees the angel singing.

01:57:09

He's, he's hearing them sing in a human language. He's hearing them sing and praise and worship the holy triune

01:57:16

God. You know, the holy, holy, holy. He's hearing that in a human language.

01:57:23

So, so is there a human, I mean, I don't think, I don't think so, but I can only go by what scripture says.

01:57:29

But the thing is the way to interpret that is the point was not about the angelic language and those that make it about that, that's the mistake.

01:57:40

This is about love. That's the, that's the primary thing he's making the point of love over these gifts and the current charismatic, the very thing that Corinthians were doing, making the gifts over love.

01:57:53

So this, this last thing, it's, it's like a minute long, but I think this is where I'm going to, again,

01:58:00

I'm going to agree with these guys and I think that this is where I think they try to show their balance and they can show the errors within their, some of the errors within their own movement.

01:58:09

Let's listen. We acknowledge that one of the strongest arguments for cessationism is the abuse of the gifts.

01:58:16

So we are not saying by, Hey, these are, we don't like this argument for cessationism to say that we are therefore endorsing all practices of the gift of tongues any more than we are saying,

01:58:29

Hey, just because we don't like that teaching, we don't like all teaching.

01:58:35

Right? So we want to make very clear that these arguments to say that tongues have ceased on these grounds, on the grounds that the perfect has come, we would both deny on the grounds that it's modern day revelation and therefore equal to scripture and we don't need scripture on these various grounds.

01:58:53

We're saying that's just not sufficient to say that tongues has ceased. Um, as we believe the gifts of the spirit are given to the church to edify, to equip, to encourage, to build up.

01:59:03

Um, and if that's what the gifts are for, then there's no reason to suggest that they are not still doing that today.

01:59:09

Okay. So first off two things, one, I agree wholeheartedly with them that the strongest argument we have is the abuses.

01:59:17

Okay. I agree. But then listen to how he defined what a gift is, because that went against everything they were saying earlier, where like gifts are for myself, but prayer language, he said it's for the church.

01:59:29

So, um, now we're going to wrap up, but I, HAPS put this out. And so HAPS, the challenge is to you.

01:59:36

He says, this is HAPS. It says Facebook user. Cause HAPS still has. Okay. When I get to the open air theology conference,

01:59:42

I think I'm going to take HAPS to the apologetics live .com. And we're going to go through it.

01:59:48

And all he's got to do is click a button to allow Facebook to, to, you know, show his name, but he says,

01:59:54

I can hook you up to talk with Josh and Miller from remnant. Hey, let's do it

01:59:59

HAPS because I've had about four or five others say that they could do the same thing and we haven't heard from them.

02:00:07

So I would, I would relish if you can do that. Let's set that up. Uh, but I am going to,

02:00:13

I'm trying to make sure we end on time. Um, and so we, we got through all the, the, the clips of that argument.

02:00:21

Uh, we'll maybe pick up number argument number four next time. But I do want to, I do want to, uh, you know,

02:00:28

Oh, he's saying, I just got off the phone with Miller tonight. Okay, good. Well, let's see if we could put that together.

02:00:34

Uh, I think it would be good to do some, some, you know, even if we do joint shows, if they want to do that.

02:00:39

Um, but it would be good to have the, the discussions. I think it would be good for the, the body of Christ to be, to clarify these things, uh, much better than a monologue, you know, much better than a monologue.

02:00:54

It's like the, the folks who've been chatting, I can't even capture all the, the chats, but, uh, uh, but both

02:01:01

CFS who has been putting in long posts, well, come on in, man, let's not have the monologue.

02:01:08

So, um, it takes time to read everything and stop and, you know, it's also very hard for folks who may not realize it when

02:01:16

Drew and I are doing this, we're having to think through our thoughts, respond to one another, respond to what's being said, and we're trying to keep up with the, the comments and we have, if you don't watch live,

02:01:27

I mean, I know there's, there's thousands of people that listen to the podcast, but if you're not listening live, you're missing the chat because there's more that goes on than we can, like,

02:01:38

I can't even catch everything, you know, but obviously something happened in there tonight where someone was like, Hey, you misunderstood me.

02:01:44

I'm a troll. And then someone apologized and said, you were right. Misunderstood. Like, I don't even know what I have to go back after.

02:01:49

I go back after the show to go, what did I, what was, what happened? But, uh, you know, the comment, you know, chat gets lively.

02:01:57

It's hard to keep up with it all. We try to, so we can answer questions. That's one of the reasons we don't get to all the questions.

02:02:02

I see our eight things started. Um, you know, it's much better to come on in.

02:02:08

If you can, we would appreciate, I always appreciate the dialogue that way. I don't misrepresent your position in answering it.

02:02:14

That's something I don't want to do. Cause then I've just wasted everyone's time. So coming in is, is always best. Even if you don't want to be on camera, you don't have to be.

02:02:21

Um, you could just ask the question. So, uh, with that, uh, we'll be back.

02:02:27

Actually, uh, I'm just trying to see is next week. No, we will be around next week, but the week after I'll be at the open air theology conference, looking forward to seeing all of you there.

02:02:38

So just search online for open air theology conference, get your tickets. Uh, there is limited seating.

02:02:44

I don't know how many tickets are there now, but, uh, you do not want to miss this conference. So I do encourage you to check it out.

02:02:51

And so next week we'll probably either continue some of this. Maybe we'll talk about that article that we talked about with transgenderism and violence and take a look at some of that stuff.

02:02:59

But until then, just strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and we'll see you next time.