SNATCH THEM FROM THE FLAMES – DISCERNMENT SEMINAR – #2, “Sufficiency of Scriptures” by Justin Peters

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Andrew Rappaport, and this is The Rapp Report. On this episode of The Rapp Report, we have another episode from the

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Snatch Them From the Flames conference that we did down there in Beulah Baptist Church in Winter Garden of Florida in the

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Orlando area. This is Justin Peters. He is going to be preaching. His topic is on the sufficiency of scripture, a very important topic, and one you want to listen to, and it's coming your way right now on The Rapp Report.

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One, two, three. Welcome to The Rapp Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Hope everyone is doing well tonight. It is a joy to be with you. It truly is.

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And I'm very, very grateful to have this opportunity to come and share

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God's word with you over these next few days. Let us go to the

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Lord in a word of prayer, and we will begin. Father, we're so grateful for the opportunity that we have to gather together as believers, those that you have adopted into your family through the merits of Christ.

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We thank you that we have access to your throne of grace, not through anything that we have done, but for what

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Christ has done for us on the cross. We pray now that your Holy Spirit would go and he would illumine the meaning of your word to our hearts, to our minds, and we would live lives of obedience, all for the glory of Christ our

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King. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Amen. There have been battles fought in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and I was a Southern Baptist for the first 37 years of my life.

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I'm 48 now, so I've been in it way more than I've been out of it. I'm just kind of a non -denominational part of a non -denominational church now,

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I suppose you could say. But battles were fought in the SPC in the early mid-'80s over inerrancy, whether or not

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God's word is inerrant. And at least theoretically, those battles were won.

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The conservatives won. The inerrantists won. And for that, I am grateful. But what you are seeing today in the

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Southern Baptist Convention and in much of evangelicalism at large is what it looks like when you at least theoretically affirm inerrancy, but you say nothing about sufficiency, whether or not

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God's word is sufficient. And dear ones, we are losing that battle, big time.

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Big time losing that battle in today's evangelical world. And the one area that I would say is probably one of the best examples of an abandonment of the sufficiency of Scripture is this notion of hearing

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God speak to us outside of Scripture. And so I want us to look at that today.

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And we're going to be talking about sufficiency as we kind of go through this. But undoubtedly, you have heard people say,

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God spoke to me. God spoke to me and he told me to tell you that you need to do such and such.

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A pastor, God spoke to me and he told me to tell you that our church needs to go this direction.

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Lots of people claim that God speaks to them. God told me this. God told me that. Have you ever heard that?

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And it's made you wonder, what's wrong with me? You know,

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I don't hear God speak to me like that. Is there something wrong with my walk with the

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Lord? Are these people more spiritual than I am? Do they have a closer walk with God than I do?

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Am I not even saved? So if you have ever had those questions, I hope that this next hour or so will be a help to you as we walk through this issue.

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Now, as we begin, we need to define some terms. The first of these is revelation.

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The term revelation refers to God revealing new information that up until that point of revelation has been previously hidden.

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So God revealing something new that up to that point has never been revealed before.

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Dear friends, revelation is not happening anymore today. There is no more revelation.

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Did we lose the? There is no more revelation. God is not revealing anything new today.

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So when you hear someone say, oh, well, I really got revelation on this. Well, no, you didn't. Now, what may have happened is this.

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Illumination. Illumination refers to the enabling work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers to help us understand and appropriate the truths of Scripture.

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All of us as believers, we can give testimony to the fact that at various points in our

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Christian life, we've been reading the Bible. And maybe we're reading a verse that we've read 100 times before.

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But all of a sudden, what happens? The light comes on, right? And you're like, oh, that's what that means.

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That's illumination. So illumination should be happening regularly in the lives of us as believers.

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So illumination, yes. Revelation, no. All right. So we need to rightly understand those terms.

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Now, this notion of hearing God outside of Scripture, often referred to as divine revelation knowledge, this is a term that was first coined by Essek W.

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Kenyon. Kenyon is, we can call, the great -grandfather of the word -faith movement. The word -faith movement is the proper term given to a movement that's more commonly known as the name and acclaim it gospel, the health and wealth gospel, the prosperity gospel, the doctrine that says it is always

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God's will for a Christian to be wealthy. It's always God's will for a Christian to be physically healed. We should never be sick.

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Or if we do get sick, that physical healing is guaranteed, provided that we have enough faith. We've seen some clips from some of these folks already tonight.

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Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Todd White, Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Joseph Prince, Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis.

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Undoubtedly, you've heard these names. And also, New Apostolic Reformation.

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And NAR is a twin movement to word -of -faith. It's basically, it's everything word -of -faith is even worse.

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It has even more of an emphasis on modern -day miracles, signs and wonders, and modern -day apostles.

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With New Apostolic Reformation, you would have Todd White. We've seen some of him tonight.

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You would have Rick Joyner. You would have Stacey Campbell. You would have

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Lou Engle. You would have Mike Bickle. And you would have Bill Johnson. Bill Johnson, the pastor of Bethel Church.

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And I should say the quote -unquote pastor of quote -unquote Bethel Church. Because he's not a real pastor, and that's not a real church.

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When you sing Bethel music, you need to understand that you're singing music that comes directly from a cult.

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Bethel and Hillsong music, those are cults. And we'll talk more about that tomorrow.

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But Essek W. Kenyon was the grandfather of this movement that we see today.

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And Kenyon believed in two types of knowledge. The first of these is sensory knowledge, that which we get through our five senses.

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Sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. And the other, according to Kenyon, is revelation knowledge.

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And this is supernatural knowledge that comes only from God. But according to Kenyon, these two spheres of knowledge are mutually exclusive.

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And what that means is, is that reasoning or logical thought is of no value. So according to Kenyon, and according to Charismatics today,

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Word, Faith, NAR folks, if you really want to go deep with God, if you want to get to the deep, secret, hidden things of God, you've got to disengage your mind.

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Put the old noodle up here and park. But is that what the Bible tells us to do? No, we are to love the

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Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. He gave us a mind for a reason.

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He wants us to use it. Now, this belief that reasoning or logical thought is of no value, that can be traced back to the ancient heresy known as Gnosticism.

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Gnostics, they derived their name from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And the Gnostics believed that they acquired this divine knowledge, but they could only acquire it by disengaging their minds.

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And so what you see today in the modern Word of Faith movement, NAR, Charismatic movement in general, is a warmed -over version of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.

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And that is a false philosophy that the New Testament directly and repeatedly warns us against.

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Now, let me give you a little bit of a warning before we get any further into this.

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In all likelihood, I am going to name some names that might surprise you. I'm going to show some video clips of some people that are very popular in the evangelical world.

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And some of the clips I'm going to show you tonight are from heretics, flat -out doctrinal heretics.

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Other folks you might not consider to be heretics, and I would not necessarily, some of them

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I would not call an outright heretic. So I'm going to show you a broad range of people in this presentation.

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Outright heretics and others that I believe are in very, very serious error. But my point in showing you such a broad range of folks in this presentation is to show you how widespread and how ubiquitous this belief is that God speaks to us outside of Scripture.

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I'm just going to show you how broad this belief is, okay? So let us dive in.

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Beth Moore. Beth Moore writes in her book, Praying God's Word, she says,

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What little I know, I want others to know. Before God tells me a secret, He knows up front that I'm going to tell it.

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Does that make any sense? Before God tells her a secret, He knows that she's going to tell it.

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So is it even really a secret if that's the case? And two, notice this term secret.

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That's Gnosticism. You see, Beth Moore says, By and large, that's our deal. Beth Moore has her own special little deal with the alpha and omega.

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That's their deal. That's Gnosticism. This is a modern version of the ancient heresy known as Gnosticism.

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Beth Moore writes in another book, When Godly People Do Ungodly Things, she says,

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I heard the voice of God speak to my heart, come and play. I love that he said, come, not go, come.

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That meant he was already there. I also love how I could tell by the sweet tone of his silent voice.

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What does that even mean? The sweet tone of his silent voice.

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If a voice is, for one thing, if a voice is silent, it's not a voice. And if it's for, but let's just play along here for kicks and giggles.

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If it's a silent voice, how does it have a tone? That doesn't make any sense. Thank you, brothers.

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All right. I could tell by the sweet tone of his silent voice that he was smiling. I could have outlined his expression with my finger.

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Ooh. I mean, I'm sorry. That's just creepy.

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Beth Moore says she could outline the expression of Jesus' face with her finger.

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That's creepy. That is a very romanticized view of Christ. And that's something that you'll notice with a lot of these popular female

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Bible teachers. They have a very romantic view of Jesus. She says,

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I built a snowman. I laughed with God. He laughed with me. I am so in love with him. I am so in love with him.

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You see how romanticized that is? And lest you think I'll overstate that, later on the same page in this book, she calls this relationship that she has with Jesus a, quote, immortal romance.

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Her words. But have you ever made a snowman with Jesus?

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If you've never made a snowman with Jesus, then you just don't have as close a relationship with Beth Moore, I mean, with God as does

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Beth Moore. Hearing the voice of God is apparently very, very important.

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Henry Blackaby. I would submit to you that Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby is singularly most responsible for introducing charismatic theology into at least theoretically non -charismatic churches.

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Before Experiencing God came along, almost every non -charismatic evangelical would have understood that we talk to God in prayer and God speaks to us in the

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Bible. Almost all of us would have understood that. But Experiencing God comes along, now hardly anybody understands that.

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Blackaby says, if you have trouble hearing God speak, you're in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience.

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So hearing God speak to you apparently is monumentally important. And if you're having trouble hearing

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God speak, you're in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience. So these are some high stakes.

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And it's not just Henry Blackaby that says these kinds of things. Watch this from Rick Warren.

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He says, another video message. He said, that isn't much of a relationship. So if you don't hear

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God speak to you, then you just don't have much of a relationship with God. Let's see if this works.

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This from Priscilla Shire. So she says, do you think that he loves you enough to die for you, but doesn't love you enough to talk to you?

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What does she think the Bible is? What does she think the Bible is? And watch this from, and I know

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I'm about to probably ruffle some feathers here. Again, I'm showing you a broad range of speakers to show you how ubiquitous this teaching is.

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Okay, watch this from Charles Stanley. Speaking about buying groceries.

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On a particular day, I had a very short period of time. And so I wanted to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving.

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My time was running out. I thought, well, I shouldn't do this now. I said, God, just show me what to do.

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So I said, go to this store, buy the turkey now. Against my will,

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I went. I walked right in, straight to the right place, to the right pound of turkey, walked right out, paid, got back in the car in less than about 25 minutes.

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Did God tell me to go? Yes, he did. So such a close relationship has

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Charles Stanley with God that God even tells him where to go get his Thanksgiving day turkey. Has God ever told you where to go get your

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Thanksgiving day turkey? Well, if not, then you apparently do not have as close a relationship with God as does

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Charles Stanley. You see, these folks have a very close, very intimate relationship with God that the rest of us common folk just don't have.

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I want to show you now this, a clip from this man who is an outright heretic.

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This is a man from, a man named Sid Roth. Sid Roth has his own program on TVN, Daystar, his own

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YouTube channel that has 1 .27 million subscribers.

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1 .27 million subscribers. Sid Roth has the looniest of the loony.

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I promise you, I say this with no hyperbole. If someone were to come up to me and put a gun to my head and say,

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Justin, I want you to come up with something that is crazier and more outlandish than the previous guest on Sid Roth's program,

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I'd say, pull the trigger. I got nothing. I got,

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I mean, honestly, this guy claims that he had a guest on not too long ago, this woman, and she claims that her violin playing is so anointed that when people, that when she plays her violin, people actually age in reverse.

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You would think that would be a best -selling album, wouldn't you? But, I mean, it's the kind of stuff that, it's the kind of stuff that he regularly has on his program.

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It's loony tunes, loony tunes what he has. Sid Roth is very good friends, by the way, with Dr.

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Michael Brown, who is considered to be a clear -thinking charismatic. And yet, Michael Brown has been close personal friends, by his own admission, with Sid Roth for nearly 40 years.

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So there's just, there really is zero discernment in the charismatic movement, none. But watch this from Sid Roth.

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He is going to, he's going to be interviewing the granddaughter of a man named

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Smith Wigglesworth. Smith Wigglesworth was a famed faith healer in the first half of the 20th century, you know, in the 1900s.

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And Smith Wigglesworth was known for punching people and kicking people. That's what he was known for.

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Because he claimed, like, if you had arthritis, he could see the demon of arthritis attached to you.

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Or if you had cancer, or if you were an alcoholic, he could see the demon of alcohol attached to you.

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And of course, the only way to dislodge said demon is to punch it off of people or to kick it off of people.

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You know, just like we see Jesus and the apostles doing, right? In the New Testament, right? So watch this.

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This is Smith Wigglesworth's granddaughter. Watch what she says. Or that Sid Roth reports her is saying.

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Welcome to my world, where it's naturally supernatural.

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I have read of the great men and women of faith. One in particular intrigues me so much.

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His name, Smith Wigglesworth. He had some of the most outrageous miracles

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I ever heard of in my life. Let me give you one example. Some parents had a two -month -old baby die in a hospital.

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The parents kidnap the child, took the child to a Smith Wigglesworth meeting, and Smith looks at the child, looks at the parents, and says, can

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

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

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

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

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The baby falls into the congregation. No crying.

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It's dead. And 100 % healed.

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Is that not shocking? Is that not shocking? And lest you think that there surely are not people out there dumb enough to believe this, the very fact that he put it on his television program is inherent proof that there are people out there dumb enough to believe this.

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That video remains on his YouTube channel to this very day. Shocking.

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And let us remember that one of the charismatic mantras is this, what

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God does for one, he'll do for you. And so someone is watching this at home and Smith Wigglesworth, I mean, a great famed faith healer, one of the charismatic generals, and they're at home and they're thinking, my kid is sick.

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

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And again, the very fact that this was aired around the world is self -evident proof that there are millions of people around the world dumb enough to believe this.

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So what's the difference between Sid Roth and Smith Wigglesworth, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, and Beth Moore and Rick Warren and Charles Stanley?

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It's the same basic error. It's just a difference of degrees. But it's the same basic error.

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God speaks to us today outside of the scriptures. And by the way,

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Joseph Smith claimed the same thing. Muhammad claimed the same thing.

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It's the same basic error. It's just packaged differently for different audiences. And we've all been told that prayer is a two -way street.

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You've heard this, right? Prayer is a two -way street. This is what Henry Blackaby teaches. That we pray to God and then we get real quiet for him to talk back to us.

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And we listen for him to talk back to us. And so maybe you've done this before. And I don't mock, okay, because years gone by I did this too because I was taught that it was true.

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So you've got something going on in your life and you have some big decision to make and you really need to know God's will for it.

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And so you go to the Lord and you talk to the Lord. You pray to him and you say, Lord, this is what's going on in my life.

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And I really don't know what to do. I need you to tell me. I need your wisdom, Lord. What is your will?

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I'm listening. And you get real quiet and you listen real hard. And then after a few seconds, inevitably, what happens?

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A thought, right, just kind of passes through our mind. You know, we have these shooter thoughts.

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And we think we hear some voices and some words in our head, right? And then we wonder, was that you,

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Lord? Or was that me? Was that God?

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Or was that the pizza I ate tonight? I mean, how do you know? How do you know when it's God speaking to you?

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But that's what we're taught to do. Prayer is this two -way street. Watch this from Robert Morris. You know, if we said, we're going to have a class on prayer, you said,

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I need that. And even the disciples said, teach us to pray. But let me remind you that hearing

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God is the second half of prayer. Because if you can't hear

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God, why would you pray? Now, one reason is to make our requests and petitions be known to God.

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But God never intended prayer to be a giving of a to -do list to him every morning.

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He intended prayer to be communication from the Father and his children.

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And if you'll just take some time and start to listen, you'll be amazed that he'll speak.

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So prayer is this two -way street. We pray to God and then we listen for him to talk back to us.

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Dear friends, there is not a single instruction anywhere in the Bible, Old or New Testament, that gives us any hint that prayer is a two -way street.

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Nowhere. In fact, in Luke chapter 11, the disciples asked Jesus, they said,

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Lord, teach us to pray. Now, hey, the stage is set.

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If prayer is supposed to be a two -way street, what a great opportunity for Jesus to say, hey, fellas,

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I'm so glad you asked this. Here's how prayer works. You pray to God and then you get real quiet and you listen for that still small voice for him to talk back to you, right?

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Great opportunity. I mean, the ball is sitting on the prayer two -way street tee waiting for Jesus to knock it out of the park.

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Is that what Jesus said? No, he said nothing of the sort. He said, pray in this way, our

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Father who is in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Nothing at all about prayer being a two -way street.

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No instruction in the Bible anywhere about this. It is an entire theology that has been completely fabricated out of thin air.

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It's not biblical. It's not. Well, what about the still small voice?

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I mean, God speaks to us in a still small voice, right? This is from Beth Moore. I know you probably can't read that, but she says, there is a time to give up and a time to keep trying.

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Sometimes the time to keep trying feels a whole lot like the time to give up. The only difference is the still small voice of the

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Holy Spirit within you saying, try again. Still small voice. We hear this all the time.

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God speaks to us in a still small voice. Now, is this biblical, the still small voice?

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Well, yes, it's biblical in the sense that it's in the Bible, but we need to look at what does it actually mean?

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It is taken from 1 Kings chapter 19, but it's only found in the

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King James translation, the still small voice. That's the only translation that renders it that way. Okay, but it's 1

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Kings chapter 19. You might remember Elijah, right? He had, there was a showdown with the false prophets of Baal or Baal, and Elijah called down fire from heaven, destroyed the false prophets, destroyed the offering and the sacrifices and everything that they had made, dried up the water that they had poured, a very dramatic scene, great victory.

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And then Jezebel threatened Elijah, and then he got scared, which is kind of odd, after he had such a dramatic victory over the false prophets of Baal, and this woman gets after him, and he gets out of dodge.

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And so he flees into the wilderness, and he ends up in a cave, inside of a cave.

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And that's where we pick it up. 1 Kings chapter 19, verse 11, and he said,

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Go forth and stand upon the mount before the Lord, before Yahweh. And behold, the

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Lord passed by in a great and strong wind, rent the mountains and break in pieces again, this is

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King James. Break in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the

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Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

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And after the fire, a still, small voice. There it is, right there.

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Only place in the Bible that has it, it's only the King James, in this one verse out of 1

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Kings chapter 19, a still, small voice. And this entire theology has been created off of that.

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But what was the still, small voice? The next verse tells us. And it was so, when

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Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entering in, the entrance of the cave.

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And behold, there came a voice unto him and said, What doest thou hear, Elijah?

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What are you doing here, Elijah? So you see, Elijah was in the back of this cave.

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And he heard what the King James renders as a still, small voice, New American Standard sound of a quiet whisper.

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Some version of that's an odd construction in the Hebrew, but it basically means kind of a quiet whisper of sorts.

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So he heard this still, small voice. And notice what it says. It says he walked out to the entrance of the cave, wrapped his face in his mantle, walked out to the entrance of the cave.

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So he could hear this voice more clearly. And when he got to the entrance of the cave, then he heard

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God clearly. What are you doing here, Elijah? So you see, dear ones, this still, small voice was not some inner impression inside of his head.

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This was not an internal voice. It was an external voice, not an internal subjective voice inside of his noggin.

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It was an external audible voice, just like you're hearing my voice right now.

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It is external to you and it is audible. So can we please do away with the whole still, small voice thing?

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It's been taken out of context. It's been twisted to mean something it never, ever meant. It never meant.

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Well, what about my sheep hear my voice? I mean, that's definitive proof that God speaks to us outside of the

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Bible. Watch this. All right. So John chapter 10, look at verse one.

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We're talking about the sheep and we can hear God. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not hear the sheep fall by the door, but climbs up some of the way, the same as a thief and a robber.

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But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him, the doorkeeper opens.

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Now watch this carefully. And the sheep, watch, hear his voice.

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Can you say those three words? Hear. He is said to me is the most concise and comprehensive verse in scripture about hearing

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God. It's when Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me.

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So bada boom, bada bing. I mean, John 10, 27, it could not be any more clear, right?

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My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. This is the gold standard verse to substantiate this entire belief in theology that God speaks to us today outside of scripture in some still small voice.

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John 10, 27, the bookshelves in Christian bookstores sag under the weight of books about how to hear the voice of God.

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10 steps to hear the voice of God. Five steps, how to know the voice of God, discerning the voice of God. I mean, there's dozens and dozens and dozens of books written on this.

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And the gold standard text is John 10, 27. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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So how do you argue with that? Well, it's not hard. All we have to do is look at the context.

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Jesus is engaging the false teachers. He's engaging the Pharisees. Let's look at verse 26.

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Let's start there. Jesus says to them, you do not believe, why? Because you're not of my sheep.

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That's why you don't believe in me. You're not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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So just by reading the verse in front of it, one verse, we see very clearly that there's a very different meaning here, a very different context.

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My sheep know my voice and I know them and they follow me. And look at verse 28. And I give eternal life to them.

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And they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Dear ones, this is talking about salvation.

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This is regeneration. This is the new birth. This is not about God telling you where to go to have lunch one day.

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Do you know, Christian, if you are here and you know Jesus as Savior and Lord, do you know what you were before your conversion?

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You weren't a goat. You were not a goat. You were a sheep.

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But you were a lost sheep. And before we come to Christ, for those of us who are

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Christians, before we came to Christ, we were lost sheep. And we were wandering out there in the pasture of life with our heads down, grazing, minding our own business.

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But all of a sudden we hear a voice and we perk our heads up and we see the shepherd and we go to him because he called us by name.

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This is the effectual call of the gospel. This is regeneration.

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This is when we pass from death to life. And this is a terrible trivialization of such a beautiful, majestic passage of Scripture.

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It's beautiful. It's profound. And what a terrible trivialization to reduce it to something as menial and trivial as telling you where to go to have lunch one day or to tell you, oh,

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I just, I heard the Lord tell me to take a left turn instead of a right turn because my sheep hear my voice.

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Are you kidding me? You don't have to be a Greek scholar to know the plain meaning of John chapter 10.

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You just read it in English. It's very clear. And anyone who would take

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John 10, 27 and twist it to that degree and reduce it to something so trivial has absolutely no business getting up in front of anyone teaching the

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Bible. If you can't figure out John 10, 27, if you do that to it, you have no business being a

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Bible teacher. And if you've ever wondered about eternal security, if you've ever wondered, can

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I lose my salvation? Spend a little time in John chapter 10. Jesus says, no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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Dear ones, when the shepherd calls you to himself, you walk into his hand only because he has called you there and he holds you and no one's going to snatch you out of his hand.

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But then look at the next verse, verse 29. My father who has given them to me, pause, you know what you are?

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You are a gift from the father to the son. You were given by the father to the son in eternity past.

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And that gift was made effectual when God called you to himself, when the shepherd called you to himself.

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The father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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So as if Jesus' hand were not strong enough to hold us and it is. But in verse 29, he takes the hand of the father and he wraps it as it were around that of his own.

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And friends, ain't nobody getting out of that. This is a beautiful passage of scripture and to reduce it to something so meaningless and trivial.

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Anybody that would do that has no business behind the pulpit. They need to be in front of the pulpit, learning.

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Uh -oh, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. This is the hottest selling devotional book anywhere on the market.

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It is light years ahead of everything else that is out there. I mean, has sold multiple tens of millions of copies.

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And anytime something like this does real well in the Christian publishing world, there's all the spinoffs.

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You know, it started with Jesus Calling and that sold tens of millions of copies. So now there's all these spinoffs and there's

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Jesus Calling teenagers and Jesus Calling single moms and Jesus Calling, you know, dads.

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And I'm just waiting for my Jesus Calling little white cripple boy so I can get my copy of Jesus Calling for me.

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But I'm gonna show you some excerpts. This is no ordinary devotional book. And I'm gonna show you some excerpts copied and pasted directly out of Jesus Calling.

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No edits on my part at all. Sarah Young says this, during the same year in 1992,

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I began reading God Calling, a devotional book by two anonymous listeners. These women practice waiting quietly in God's presence, pencils and papers in hand, recording the messages they receive from him.

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God Calling is a book that was written back in the 1930s by two anonymous female mystics.

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We don't know the names of these ladies best we can tell. They were probably Roman Catholic mystics.

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I have a copy of God Calling myself. And these two ladies, almost 100 years ago now, they wanted to hear the voice of God.

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And so they practiced. They practiced and practiced. And it's finally like they finally tuned in to just the right frequency.

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And when they hit just the right frequency, God started calling them. And with pencils and papers in hand, they wrote down the messages.

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They received from God. This was the inspiration for Sarah Young to write God Calling.

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I mean, Jesus Calling. She says, I knew that God communicated with me through the

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Bible, but I yearned for more. You see, the Bible just was not enough for Sarah Young.

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Oh, she won't deny that the Bible is the word of God, but it wasn't enough for her. And sadly, it is not enough for the vast majority of people who profess to be

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Christians today. Please do note my use of the term profess to be Christians. In fact, we heard it in Andrew's presentation from Beth Moore talking about her dreams.

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She said, maybe you're satisfied with just some words on a page. Guilty. Yeah, I am.

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But the Bible wasn't enough for Sarah Young. She yearned for more. There had to be something more than the

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Bible. Here's my question. For all those people who say that they yearn for more, they need something more than this book.

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Here's my question. Have you completely mastered this book? From Genesis 1 -1 to Revelation 22 -21, you have mastered it.

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You have squeezed every drop of truth there is to be squeezed from these pages.

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You have mastered it all start to finish. There's nothing else you can learn. If the answer to that question is no, and it is, because dear ones, every person in this room, we could spend a thousand lifetimes studying this book, combine our knowledge, and we would just scratch the surface of what's in this book.

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So if the answer to that question is no, please don't tell me that you need something more.

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You don't even understand what you have in black and white right in front of you. What do you mean you need something more?

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What an insult to the word of God. Sarah Young says, I decided to listen to God with pen in hand writing down whatever

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I believed he was saying. Houston, we have a problem. Just like the ladies who wrote

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God Calling, and they wrote down what God was saying, Sarah Young tuned into just the right frequency, and Jesus started calling her, and with pen in hand, she began to write down what he was saying.

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And when you read Jesus Calling, 365 little devotionals in the book, all of them are written in the first person for Jesus.

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I, Jesus, will do such and such. I am this. I am that. They're all written in the first person for Christ.

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So do you know what she's doing? If Jesus is really calling Sarah Young, and she's really writing down what

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Jesus is saying to her, you know what she's doing? She's writing scripture. That's what she's doing.

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She's writing scripture. And you carry this out to its logical conclusion.

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When people say, well, God spoke to me, and he said, quote, da -da -da -da -da, then whatever he says should be just as authoritative as any verse in the

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Bible. Just as authoritative as any verse in the Bible. So whatever God is saying to people, we should add to this book.

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There's just one problem with that. This book says do not add to this book. Dear friends,

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God cannot speak less authoritatively on one occasion than he does on another. If God is speaking,

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God is speaking. God cannot speak in the Bible and really, really, really mean it.

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But when he speaks to us today outside of the Bible, you know, in this still small voice that we've already dealt with, he still means it, but he doesn't mean it quite as much as he meant it here.

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How does that work? He just sort of meant it? He had his fingers crossed?

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I mean, friends, if God is speaking, God is speaking. And whatever he says is authoritative, just as authoritative as any verse in Scripture.

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So we have an open canon of Scripture today. That's what this theology leads you to, an open canon of Scripture.

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Very problematic. Beth Moore writes this.

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She says, I am being as honest as I know how to be when I say that I did not write these pages by simple preference.

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I wrote them because had I not, the rocks in my yard would have cried out. Nothing like taking that verse and applying it to yourself.

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Unbelievable. What God does with what he has promised is his business.

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I entrust this message entirely to the one who delivered it while I sat bug -eyed. So Beth Moore was just this passive recipient.

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She just sat there bug -eyed as God downloaded information to her. Well, whatever

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God downloaded to her, that's canonical. That's authoritative. Watch this from Beth Moore.

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When God began to say to me about five years ago, and I'm telling you, it sent me off such a trip again that my head is still whirling over it.

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He began to say to me, I'm going to tell you something right now, Beth. And boy, you brought this one down. And you say it as often as I give you evidence to say it.

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My bride is paralyzed by unbelief. My bride is paralyzed by unbelief.

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So God told her, my bride is paralyzed by unbelief. And she said, and God said, write this one down.

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All right, well, then that's Scripture. Did you know that the bride of Christ, his church, is paralyzed by unbelief?

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Did you know that? I didn't know that. Well, the Bible doesn't say anything of the sort. In fact, my

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Bible says of the church that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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Doesn't sound very paralyzed to me. But God told her that, so it must be true.

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Now, this is Sam Storms. Now, Sam Storms is a man who has the gospel right but he is a charismatic.

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He believes that the apostolic gifts, the sign gifts, tongues, interpretation of tongues, miracles, and physical healing continue to be in operation in the church today.

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I do not believe that. I'm a cessationist. I believe that those gifts have ceased but only those gifts have ceased.

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Gifts of teaching, mercy, administration, exhortation, hospitality, giving, all those gifts very much in operation in the church today.

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Only the apostolic gifts have ceased. But Sam Storms writes this. He says, dramatic pronouncements aren't helpful.

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Avoid saying things like, thus saith the Lord, or this is the word of the Lord for your life. They aren't helpful. We have found that it is better to interview prophetic utterances with statements such as,

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I have a strong inner impression that I believe is from the Lord. I had a sense from the

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Holy Spirit. I had a dream which involved several of you. So I had an impression, an inner impression that God told me to tell you something.

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I had a sense, I had a dream. I feel like the

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Lord said to me. You know, I just really feel like, I've got this strong impression,

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I really feel strongly that the Lord is trying to tell us, said nobody in the

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Bible ever. You will not find that language anywhere in the

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Bible, Old or New Testament. Nobody in the Bible said that. Nothing of the sort.

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The word of the Lord came to Abram. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.

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The word of the Lord came to Elijah. Even in the New Testament, when the Holy Spirit spoke, he spoke with crystal clear clarity.

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Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Crystal clear.

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Nowhere in the Bible you find anybody saying, I just really feel like the Lord said. That is terminology that is foreign to the word of God.

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When God spoke, it was crystal clear exactly what he said. So, how does

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God speak to us today? Well, let's go to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter one. The writer of Hebrews says this,

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God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the world.

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The writer of Hebrews says that in the old days, in the Old Testament, God spoke in a lot of different ways.

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Many different portions and in many different ways. Indeed, God spoke to Moses through the burning bush.

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God spoke to Moses up on the mountain through a storm and thunder. God spoke to Elijah through that still small voice.

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Again, an audible external voice. In Numbers chapter 22, God even made a donkey talk.

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So, God did indeed speak in many different portions and in many different ways. But in these last days, says the writer of Hebrews, he has spoken to us in his son.

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Friends, Jesus is the final speaking of God. The final speaking of God.

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Everything that God has to say to us, he has said in his son, Jesus Christ. And we have a perfect, inerrant, infallible, all -sufficient record of that in his word.

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Jesus is the final speaking of God. There's nothing more to be said.

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And people will say, well, you know, I don't know, Justin. I understand what you're saying, but you know, 10 years ago,

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I woke up in the middle of the night, three o 'clock in the morning, and I just, I was thinking, I was thinking about my friend, and I had this strong impression to pray for my friend.

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I didn't know why, so I prayed for my friend. Turned out that at that very time, my friend had a car accident, you know, 500 miles away.

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How do you explain that? Stories like that, you know. How to explain it?

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Well, a couple things. Number one, I cannot exegete what you experienced.

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I can only exegete scripture. I can't exegete your experience. I will say this, though.

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Lots of people have unusual experiences, and not just Christians. Buddhists have them.

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Mormons have them. Muslims have them. Lots of people claim unusual experiences.

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Dear friends, you cannot interpret the Bible by what you experience. You must interpret your experiences by the

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Bible. No matter how real your experience may seem to you, if your experience does not plumb with the word of God, then you must reject it.

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The Bible says we are not to exceed what is written, 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 6. Do not exceed what is written.

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When we exceed what is written, when we exceed biblical parameters, we open ourselves up to demonic influence and demonic suggestion.

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You don't interpret the Bible by what you experience. You interpret what you experience by the Bible. Now, could it be that God in his providence woke you up in the middle of the night and somehow caused you to pray for your friend who had the car accident?

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Sure. Sure. Very well may have been. I don't know. Maybe it was.

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I give this illustration a lot of times. I am originally from Mississippi. You can probably tell, even though I live in Montana, I don't sound like I'm from Montana.

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I'm not from Montana. I'm from Mississippi. One of my best childhood friends is a guy named

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Chad Stewart. And Chad and I grew up together. We've known each other since we were toddlers. I now live in Montana.

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He's still in Mississippi. I hardly ever see Chad anymore. You know, I'm 2 ,000 miles or whatever away from him.

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But from time to time, you know what? I'll think about Chad. Maybe I'll pray for Chad. I'll do pray for Chad.

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Is that, you know, if I think about Chad at 5 .30 in the afternoon when I'm, I don't know, you know, working on the computer or whatever, is that God bringing

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Chad to my remembrance? I don't know. Maybe I just thought about Chad. I don't know.

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You know, so could God bring somebody to our remembrance? Sure, he can. That's not the issue.

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He can do these things. But we have no way of knowing when it may or may not be God. It's not like we've got the spiritual equivalent of the bat phone in our heads.

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And when it's God speaking, it starts flashing. It was like, oh, yeah, yeah, thank you, Lord. We don't have that, okay?

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There's no way of knowing whether it is or isn't. So it really doesn't matter if you think of someone that you want to pray for him, pray for him.

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Is that God doing that? Who knows? So whatever experience you had or think you may have had,

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I would refer to you 2 Peter chapter 1. The apostle Peter writes this beginning of verse 16.

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He says, for we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he,

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Christ, received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory.

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This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Peter is talking about the transfiguration,

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Matthew chapter 17. When Peter, James, and John were with Jesus, and all of a sudden Jesus, before their eyes, was transfigured.

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Along with Moses and Elijah, one on each side, and Jesus in the middle. In Jesus' glory, that glory that he had with the

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Father before the world was, it's almost like that glory, that veil that had been covering that glory was peeled back a little bit.

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And Peter, James, and John could see Jesus transfigured in his glory.

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And they heard the majestic glory. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

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Peter says, and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

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But look at what he says next. For we have the prophetic word made more sure, made more certain.

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What prophetic word? What is Peter talking about? This is what he is talking about.

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He's talking about the scriptures. The written word of God. And he says the written word of God is made more certain.

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It's more certain than what? Than what they experienced at the Mount of Transfiguration.

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Think about that. Think about what he's saying. Peter was there.

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He saw this. He was an eyewitness of this. And if Peter, who was there and saw this, could say of the word of God, the

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Bible, if he could say scripture is more certain than that, dear ones, whatever experience you and I think we may have had,

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I can promise you one thing. It doesn't begin to approach what

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Peter, James, and John had. It doesn't begin to approach that experience. And so if they could say of that experience that the written word is more certain than that,

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I'm not all that impressed. You know, when we wake up in the middle of the night and pray for somebody, might that be, here's where we have to leave it.

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Those kinds of things are a kind providence of God. A kind providence of God.

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Whatever it is, it's just a providence of God and you leave it there. But whatever you think you've experienced, it does not approach that experience.

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That is a powerful testimony to the sufficiency of scripture. Well, Justin, if you're saying

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God doesn't speak to us outside of scripture, how do we know God's will for our lives? How do we know the will of God for our lives?

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For one thing, the Bible tells us God's will for our lives. It is God's will for us that we be saved.

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It is God's will for us that we be sanctified. It is God's will for us that we be sexually pure.

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Those are all God's will for us. Well, but yeah, but I've got a decision to make.

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You know, God, the Bible doesn't tell me where to go to college. The Bible doesn't tell me which job to take.

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The Bible doesn't tell me where to live. The Bible doesn't tell me if I'm supposed to be an accountant or a plumber.

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So how do I know God's will for my life? Dear friends, if you want to know how to know

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God's will for your life, here's how you know God's will for your life. Read, study, and obey God's word.

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Read, study, and obey God's word. If you're not doing that, then nothing else matters anyway. But then if you've got some big decision to make and you're not sure what the right decision is, pray for wisdom.

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Ask God for wisdom. The book of James says if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God and God will give it liberally in abundance.

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Pray for wisdom. Now, if you're not doing step number one, if you're not reading, studying, and obeying God's word, don't bother asking

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God for wisdom. He's not going to give it to you. But if you are, pray for wisdom. And then seek wise, godly counsel.

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The Bible says there's wisdom, there's safety in a multitude of counselors. And I do this in my own life.

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If something comes up in my life or my ministry and I'm not sure the right course of action, then you know what

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I'm going to do? I'm going to seek some wise, godly counsel. The first person I'm going to talk to is my wife, Kathy.

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And if she and I talk about it and the both of us together decide, you know, we probably need some other eyes on this,

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I've got some men in my life that I'll call up. I'll say, hey, this is what's going on.

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Brothers, what do you think? What's your counsel to me? And you know what? That has served me well in doing that.

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There's wisdom in doing that. So seek wise, godly counsel. And then

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Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 it. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not unto your own understanding, but in all of your ways acknowledge him, and he might direct your paths.

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He'll direct your paths if he's got nothing better to do. He will direct your paths.

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How does God do that? I don't have the slightest idea how he does it. I just know he does. Friends, he spoke the universe into existence.

01:00:05

I think he can direct our paths. You don't have to worry, oh, well, if I take this job when

01:00:13

God really wanted me to take this job, then everything's just gonna fall apart and collapse like a house of cards.

01:00:18

No, relax. Relax. He spoke the universe into existence.

01:00:25

He can direct your paths. In fact, it's interesting, even in the New Testament in the apostolic age, and we're no longer in the apostolic age, but even in the apostolic age when

01:00:36

God was speaking to people in a direct quotable sense, you still don't see the apostles praying things like this.

01:00:47

Lord, show me your specific individual will for my life. You don't see the apostles doing that.

01:00:53

It's interesting. You see things like this. Paul writes, I have decided to spend the winter at Nicopolis.

01:01:00

Why did Paul spend the winter at Nicopolis? Because he put out a fleece to see what

01:01:06

God's will was. God told him to spend the winter at Nicopolis? No, he decided to do it, and so he did it.

01:01:14

Paul stayed in Athens by himself, and he sent Timothy because we thought it best. That's why they did it.

01:01:21

We thought it best to do so, and we did it. You don't see the apostles saying to God, Lord, show me your specific individual will for my life right now.

01:01:31

They just did stuff. They just did stuff.

01:01:37

So my counsel to you is just do stuff. Amen. I mean, as long as you're reading and studying

01:01:45

God's word and you're walking with the Lord, just do stuff. Trust in God.

01:01:51

He'll direct your paths. These things cannot coexist as we begin to lay in the plan here.

01:01:59

The belief that God still speaks outside of scripture and a closed canon. Those two things cannot exist.

01:02:07

They cannot coexist. If God is still speaking today, then the canon of scripture is open. The continuous position on the apostolic gifts and the sufficiency of scripture.

01:02:20

If you believe that the apostolic gifts continue to be in operation, in other words, if you are a charismatic, then you cannot hold to the sufficiency of scripture.

01:02:29

Those two positions are mutually exclusive. So if God is still speaking to people outside of scripture, then logically you cannot come to any conclusion other than the scripture is not enough for me.

01:02:47

Every form of theological mischief that plagues the evangelical world today comes down to an abandonment of the sufficiency of scripture.

01:02:58

Every single one, whether it's word faith, New Apostolic Reformation, whether it's a secret sensitive movement, happy clappy churches, social justice, intersectionality, critical race theory.

01:03:17

You've heard those terms. You've probably heard those terms on Fox News. Hey, if you're hearing terms being used by politicians in your church, used as theology, there's a problem.

01:03:33

Remember how I began this session? There is no new revelation today. There's nothing new that God is giving to us today.

01:03:42

Let me tell you something, folks. Social justice, that's new. Critical race theory, that's new.

01:03:50

Intersectionality, that's new. If that was such a vitally important part of being a

01:03:57

Christian today, well, where's it been for the last 2000 years? It's new.

01:04:06

There's no new today. God's not giving any new revelation.

01:04:13

These are worldly philosophies disguising themselves as a theological movement.

01:04:20

And it is ripping the professing church, I should say, the professing church, ripping it to shreds.

01:04:31

As Andrew said in his presentation, I, like Andrew, have been all over the world, and it does not matter what country

01:04:37

I'm in, what culture I'm in. It does not matter what language is spoken.

01:04:43

It does not matter how much the people have or how little they have. You know what else doesn't matter?

01:04:51

How much melanin they have in their skin or how little I might have in mine.

01:04:58

When I am with like -minded believers in Christ, there is an instant bond, an instant kindred spirit, an instant love for these people.

01:05:10

Why? Because they're my family. They're my family.

01:05:20

We've been adopted into the family of God through the merits of Christ. In this godless philosophy out there, social justice is trying to tear us apart because of skin color.

01:05:32

Are you kidding me? I can meet a like -minded believer in Christ somewhere halfway around the world in five minutes with that person.

01:05:41

I love that person. They love me. I'd give my life for them, and they would do the same for me because we're family.

01:05:54

Scripture is sufficient. Charles Spurgeon says this,

01:06:03

I have little confidence in those persons who speak of having direct revelations from the Lord as though he appeared otherwise than by and through the gospel.

01:06:12

His word is so full, so perfect that for God to make any fresh revelation to you or to me is quite needless.

01:06:18

To do so would be to put a dishonor upon the perfection of that word. Dear friends, if you want to hear

01:06:25

God speak to you, there's one way I guarantee you you will hear God speak. Read your

01:06:31

Bible. If you want to hear God speak to you audibly, read it out loud. 100 % guarantee you will hear him speak.

01:06:49

Let's close in order. Father, we thank you for your word.

01:06:56

What a treasure it is. We thank you that it is inerrant.

01:07:01

We thank you that it is authoritative, that it is infallible. We thank you for all these things, but we thank you that it is sufficient, that it is everything that we need pertaining to life and godliness.

01:07:12

It is everything that we need to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we have a renewed confidence in the sufficiency of your word.

01:07:22

It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. COVID -19 vaccine too.

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This message was brought to you by Novavax. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring.

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