F4F | Banning Liebscher Release the Supernatural

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the

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Faith here on YouTube. If you are a Jesus culture person and you think that yeah you know

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Bethel Reading is and you know Jesus culture and all those folks they're just totally filled with the

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Spirit and just biblically solid, go ahead and hit the subscribe button.

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You don't know your Bible and we think it's about time you spent a little bit of time applying yourself to comparing the theology of guys like Banning Liebscher to what

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Scripture actually says. And so you know hit the subscribe button, ring the bell so that you can be notified when we update our channel.

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Now what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be heading over to the QForums. This is kind of like a Christianized TED Talk as we listen to Banning Liebscher of Jesus culture and his lecture titled,

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Release the Supernatural. And we'll note that his theology is not in step with keeping with sound biblical theology, with God's Word rightly taught and rightly exegeted.

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Here we go. Man, it's so good to be with you guys. I gotta tell you how encouraged I am, not just by the people that are on stage which

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I've been challenged and inspired, but the fact that you would take time and invest to come and grow as a leader.

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I am convinced we live in the greatest hour in all of history and what God is doing around the world is unprecedented.

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And so as I sit and meet some of you and see the interaction, the engagement you have, I just, it's so encouraged.

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This is why I so believe that hope is alive. I hear a lot of people who are discouraged about the state of the church.

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I wish they could just come to these type of gatherings and see people that are hungry to make a difference and go after Jesus.

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So good. Yeah, by the way, I say this a lot on my podcast, and that is that the

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Great Commission is not go and make a difference. It's make disciples. And there's a specific thing that we are to be doing that Jesus told us to do.

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If you look at Matthew 28, Matthew 28, which is where you find the

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Great Commission, Jesus says, Go therefore, as you are going, make disciples of all nations, disciples or learners, by the way, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, which it requires you to teach the entire counsel of the

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Word of God. That's kind of a recurring drum that I like to beat on here at Fighting for the

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Faith. But, you know, just so you know that we have a commission, and that's make disciples, and that Christ taught, not just make a difference in the world.

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I was saved at four, genuinely saved at four. I remember getting up on my mom's lap when

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I was four years old, and sitting there, and kind of, you know, I prayed the prayer, believed that Jesus was my

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Savior, and forgave me for my sins, and I got baptized at five. But, you know,

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I remember kind of swimming out to the pastor because the water was too deep, and standing on the melt carton, and doing the thing, but it wasn't really until I was 17 where the

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Lord really grabbed a hold of my heart in a pretty profound way, and I surrendered myself fully to Jesus and His cause in the earth.

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And so, as I kind of— What is Jesus's cause in the earth? I mean, that's a phrase that I just have to ask the question, what do you mean by it?

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Twenties. It was a pretty exciting time for me because I was encountering the truth and the fact that Jesus has a heart for people.

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Jesus has a heart for cities and nations, that God has a plan, and He has a heart for cities and nations.

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Sounds like NAR dominionism to me. Transforms, and I began to hear words like revival, and moves of God, and I began to hear stories of what

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He was doing around— Mm -hmm, yeah, this is Bethel, NAR, and charismatic, you know, stuff here that He's describing.

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The world, both in history and in the Bible, it became alive to me, and not only did

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I begin to encounter that, I began to encounter the fact that God wants to use my life to make a difference, that God wants to use my life to change the world, that He wants to use my life to advance

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His purpose and His cause in the earth. What is His purpose and cause in the earth?

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You haven't really explained that. So I went after that thing, understanding that I have a call in my life, and there's a dream that God has put in my heart that I want to engage, and so—

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God has put a dream in your heart that you want to engage? Which biblical text says that God's gonna place a dream in your heart?

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There's no biblical text that says that. So that, what I very quickly encountered was this, that the dream that God's put in my heart and the call that He's placed on my life is impossible.

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It's impossible. It can't actually be done in the natural, that what God has called me to—

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Yeah, this is all just pious, charismatic, nothing talk. Okay, so the proof that this is a dream that God laid on my heart is that it's impossible for me to do it, so it has to be, you know, it can only be done supernaturally, therefore it must be from God.

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No biblical text teaches us to expect such a thing, or that if it's impossible for you to do that, that's proof that God laid it on your heart.

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What God has called you to is impossible, but as I read stories, as I got into Scripture, and I began to see story after story after story that told me this, this is how

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God operates. His MO is He puts an impossible dream in our heart that apart from Him cannot be done.

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Yeah, no, that's—this is no way to read Scripture, by the way. So you just divine that because certain people had particular callings on their life, you know, maybe like Moses, or maybe

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Jeremiah, or somebody like that, right? That somehow this is God's typical MO, that He's gonna place a dream or a special calling on your life that's impossible to do in the natural.

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Yeah, if this was actually what we're to expect, God's Word would say this clearly and specifically, but it doesn't.

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This is a new doctrine that has come along in the last couple of decades, made popular by Rick Warren and The Purpose -Driven

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Life, which is just an abysmal twisting of Scripture. And note here that Banning just totally buys into all this.

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He's not basing this on exegesis, but I divine that God's normal MO—see, the reason why

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Scripture was written was so I could see that God's gonna lay a dream on my heart. No, the the purpose of Scripture is so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in His name. One of those stories is in 1

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Samuel chapter 14, where the Israelites are engaged in a war with the

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Philistines as they were under the reign of King Saul, and they weren't engaged on a battlefield at this time, but they were encamped against one another, and the

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Israelites were on one hill, and there's a three -mile valley, and the Philistines are on the other hill. And Jonathan, the son of Saul, is sitting there one day, and something begins to come alive in his heart where he just realizes,

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I'm no longer satisfied with just sitting here. I want to engage the Philistines. I don't just want to look at the

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Philistines. I just don't want to look at the plan that God has for my nation. I want to engage it. So he doesn't go and get a bunch of the army.

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He turns to his armor -bearer friend, and he says, hey, you want to go with me? I'm going to go take on the Philistines, the entire army. And he was just as crazy as Jonathan, so he said, yeah, let's go.

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And so they start this three -mile journey to get to the Philistines' hill, and as they're walking, they have no strategy, so they begin to come up with a strategy, and they say, what are we going to do?

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And he says, well, I think the Lord can say by many or by few, so here's the plan. When I get up to the hill,

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I'm going to — if they say, wait, we're going to come down to you, God hasn't given them to us.

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But if they call us up, then God's given them to us. Sure enough, they go, and they stand there, and the

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Philistines, who don't take them serious and are joking and laughing, say, hey, come up here. And Jonathan knew.

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He's given us, the Philistines, and they walk — they get on their hands and knees, put their sword behind them, and they crawl up on their hands and knees to the top, and when they get there,

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God shows up with them. The Bible actually says that the earth begins to tremble, and it begins to shake, and they defeat this group of people in the army, and it ignites courage and rallies the rest of Israel to come — well, actually,

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God is the one who won that victory — and defeat the Philistines. We're all in this room right now because we've had a similar moment in our life.

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We're in this room — no, I assure you, I've never attacked a

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Philistine garrison with only an armor -bearer. It's — no, in fact,

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I haven't even been to the Holy Land, so no, I haven't had a similar experience, like not even close.

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Now, because there comes a moment in your life where your heart becomes alive, and you begin to realize,

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I am not content or satisfied to sit any longer. You mean like that moment where I realized that heresy and false teaching and twisting of God's Word was at an all -time high and getting worse, and it was guys like you that were responsible for that, that I had to get involved and, you know, start a podcast and a radio station and a

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YouTube channel in order to warn the world? Oh, is that what you mean? I want to engage what

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God has called me to. I want to engage the dreams that He's put on my heart. I want to engage the cause of Christ in the nations.

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I see injustice being done, and I see unrighteousness reigning, and I want to go engage these things.

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Yeah, by the way, showing justice for the widow or the oppressed or the poor,

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I don't need a dream put on my heart, I just need to read the Bible. God's Word explicitly talks about mercy and justice and doing good for those who are in capable of defending themselves or caring for themselves financially.

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I don't need a dream or a vision, I just need the written Word of God to do that. ...about them all day long.

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This is what begins to happen. This is why you're here, because God's begun to stir something in your heart.

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But as you begin to pursue this thing, here's what we find very quickly. It's impossible.

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You're gonna find out that whatever this dream... it's impossible. Uh -huh, yeah, and yet,

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I think of texts that guys like this kind of despise. I think of Ephesians 5.

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If you want to know what a good work is, read the tail end of the Epistles, read the back end of Romans, read the back end of Ephesians, where it speaks against sexual immorality and foolish talk and not letting anyone deceive you with empty words because of people who are idolaters or covetous or sexually immoral and then how we're to walk as children of the light and take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness.

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Things like that. And then, of course, look carefully then how you walk. Peripateo here in the

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Greek is a crossover from a Hebrew concept, from the Hebrew word halakh, how you walk or conduct your life.

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So look carefully how then you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best time because the days are evil.

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And then here's the list of good works. So you're ready? It's kind of ordinary stuff. You ready? Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the

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Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its

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Savior, and now as the church submits to Christ. So also, wives should submit in everything to their own husbands.

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Husbands, love your wives as Christ has loved the church, gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with a word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle, in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

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You know, things like that. And then, you know, going into chapter 6, children, obey your parents.

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Honor your father and mother. Bond servants, obey your earthly masters and, you know, people who own slaves or masters, don't do the same.

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Stop threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him.

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You know, things like that. I mean, sounds kind of ordinary, you know, being a good dad, being a good mom, being a good husband, being a good wife, good employee.

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You know, I don't need a direct dream to place on my heart, and you know what? All of this sounds insanely doable.

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Yeah, and yet these are the very good works that Christians are called to do. I don't know what this guy is talking about.

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The Christian life is a life of impossibilities. Choosing to be a leader in the kingdom comes with a life of impossibilities.

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The dream that God places in your heart is impossible in the natural. Yeah, nowhere in scripture am

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I told that God's gonna place a dream in my heart. Not one place. All that he's placed on your life is impossible in the natural.

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I don't care how talented you are. I don't care how gifted you are. I don't care how much money you have, how much experience you have.

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I don't care how many people are with you. The call remains impossible on our lives. This is what we know from reading scripture is this is exactly where God wants you.

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This is exactly where he loves you. Again, I don't know what you're talking about. You're narcegeting historical narratives and ignoring the clear didactic texts, which are teaching texts, in the epistles that lay out what our good works are.

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You know, I don't have a special calling on my life like Gideon or Moses or Jeremiah or, you know, any of those guys at all.

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No, I'm called to make disciples, you know, teach all that Christ has commanded, baptize people in the name of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them all that Christ has commanded. That's pretty easy to do because it's a fixed body of work.

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It's called the Bible. Are you familiar with it? I mean, here's the thing. The good works that we're called to do are explicitly laid out in scripture, and they're like insanely doable.

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Again, I have no idea what you're filling these people's heads with, but it sounds like complete delusions of grandeur, and you're steering them away from the good works that Christ has prepared in advance for us to do.

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Because the impossible call that's on your life will require from you faith.

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This is the big one. You know, my faith is in Christ. Yeah. I trust in Him for the forgiveness of my sins, eternal life, for my daily bread, you know, things like that.

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Faith...faith is what's required to live the Christian life. I would say this if any Christians were in this room. Faith is what's required out of you if you're gonna live the

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Christian life. But especially as leaders in the kingdom, faith is what's required from us.

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Faith absolutely moves mountains. Faith makes impossible things possible.

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But it is not faith in human activity. It is faith in a supernatural

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God who loves to intervene. It is faith in a supernatural

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God, in a gospel of power. Yeah, by the way, I believe God is capable of supernatural stuff.

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I mean, He created the world in six days, spoke it into existence. Jesus walked on the water, raised from the grave on the third day after He was crucified.

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No problem with the fact that God has the power to do all kinds of stuff, but again, trusting

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God that He's gonna give me power to fulfill the dream density thingy that He sticks on my heart, that's not faith that's actually founded on any promise that God has given me.

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It's faith that is misguided and misfocused because no scripture says

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I'm supposed to expect that God's gonna lay a dream on my heart so I can make a difference in the world. That comes and transforms lives and societies.

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Lives and societies. This guy sounds like a seven mountainer to me. Yeah, it sounds like an

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NAR seven mountain dominionist guy. We know this is why Paul, when he's writing the Corinthians, he tells them, he says, he says, when

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I came to you my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the

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Spirit and of power, because I want your faith not to rest on human wisdom,

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I want your faith to rest on the power of God. Yeah, that's because he was an apostle.

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Yeah, and a little bit of a note here, you know, a couple of passages of scripture will help us here. For instance, 2nd

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Corinthians chapter 12, 2nd Corinthians chapter 12, specifically verse 12,

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I think will be very helpful here, where Paul, writing against the so -called super apostles, he's being a little foolish in his writing, on purpose to make a point, he says this,

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I have been a fool, you forced me to it, for I ought to have been commanded by you, commended by you, for I was not at all inferior to these so -called super apostles, even though I am nothing.

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The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

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Note here, the mighty works that Paul did, they were signs that he's an apostle.

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Uh -huh, that's right, so the demonstration with power accompanied him to show that he was actually speaking as one who was authorized to speak on behalf of Christ, because he is an apostle of Jesus Christ, that's who sent him.

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And then you think of Hebrews chapter 2, and Hebrews chapter 2 kind of makes this point very clearly, therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it.

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For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, this is talking about the

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Mosaic Covenant, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

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It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, talking about the eyewitnesses, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the

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Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. Yeah, so the purpose of the sign gifts that we read that the apostle

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Paul operated in, that Peter operated in, and the other apostles, was that God was attesting to them, attesting to the people who were listening to them, that these apostles were sent by God.

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And we still have their message today, and their teaching, and their preaching, and their admonitions, and their warnings in the

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New Testament texts. And so they were attested by signs and wonders to validate their apostolic ministry.

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Paul was not saying that, and so moving forward, the gospel must be demonstrated with signs and wonders.

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Not at all. That's a complete twisting of God's Word, which we would expect from an

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NAR charismatic type like Banning Leibscher. This is the tension that we experience as leaders in the kingdom.

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This is the tension we experience, is that we are called to strategize, and we are called to plan, and we are called to organize.

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We're called to do all of that. We're called to do it well. But our confidence and our faith does not rest in our ability to strategize.

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It does not rest in our ability to organize or plan. Our confidence and faith has nothing to do with our ability, or nothing to do with our wisdom.

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It solely rests on the Spirit and the power of God. Because what we know is this.

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If we want to see the supernatural working of God in our life, then we have to come to a point where we realize it is only the power of God that transforms.

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If we want to see the supernatural power of God, then we've got to. Which biblical text says that if I want to see the supernatural power of God working, then

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I have to do those things? You just created a doctrine and a stipulation that God's Word doesn't make.

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It's only the power of God that transforms. He alone can change hearts. He alone can transform societies.

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He alone can bridge divides and heal wounds. This is what He does. About six years ago,

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I had a young man, a 25 -year -old, write me from a prison in Texas. He was serving a 15 -year sentence, and he wrote me.

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He had read one of my books, and he wrote me, and I wrote him back and sent him a bunch of books and found a pastor to meet with him.

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And we began this exchange of letters, and he began to tell me about what God was doing in this prison. Most of the men that he was serving with, serving a sentence with, were in there for multiple life sentences, had been in for 20, 30 years.

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Some of them, some of the guys weren't coming up for parole until 2045. But he was writing about how

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God was taking these men, some who were so violent, so angry, so hurting and broken, that they spent 13 years in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day in a 5 -by -8 cell.

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They could come out one hour a day in kind of another room, and then they'd go back in. Thirteen years, because they couldn't be in general population because they were so angry and violent.

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He began to write these stories of these men and how God had grabbed ahold of their heart and changed them.

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And I was so, I was so provoked by this, I thought, I have to go, I've got to go meet these guys.

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So a couple of years after we were exchanging letters, I flew out to Texas and went into this prison. And one of the most profound experiences

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I've ever had, top three experience of my life, where I walked in and for just a few hours, I didn't teach, I didn't do anything.

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I literally just sat for a few hours and just one -on -one heard the stories of what God had done in these men's lives.

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Some of the most horrific stories you can ever imagine, some of the most previously broken, angry individuals.

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Many will never get out serving. So how does this experience prove that God's going to lay a dream on my heart that's impossible unless I, you know, unless God supernaturally makes it happen, and that I have to have faith in order to activate

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God so that he'll show up miraculously in my life, which is pretty much what you've taught so far.

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Multiple life sentences. And I just sat there and heard story after story about how

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God had taken and to see the hope in their eyes and the love in their eyes and the joy in their eyes. Unbelievable.

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I sat there with two men who were literally hugging on each other with their arm over their shoulder and their neck and telling each other's story and bragging to each other.

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They began to share. One of them was an African American man who was a former leader in the crypts, had joined the crypts, had been initiated as a teenager.

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He's in his forties now, been in prison for over 20 years. And he was standing next to a

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Caucasian man who was a former Aryan Brotherhood hit man. And they were, they were, it was the most profound thing.

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I just sat there and they were sharing each other's story and worshiping Jesus together. I believed in Jesus before I walked in that prison.

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I left believing in Jesus even more. I don't know how to describe it. And I thought nobody can transform hearts like that.

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Nobody has the power. Now it's true that Christ, through the means of grace, he regenerates us and the

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Holy Spirit sanctifies us and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self -control.

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Yeah, and you'll note that love, you know, you can't love if you're by yourself. You have to love somebody.

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And that we are called to love one another. So it's great that Christ, you know, through the preaching of the gospel and through the reconciliation that we receive from Christ, then extended to others, has reconciled these people to each other.

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But that still doesn't actually prove your thesis of this

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Q -Talk. The power to change hearts at that level. There is no amount of human activity that we could ever put into.

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There's no amount of counseling or anything that could go into to change and transform a heart at that level, to bring hope in the midst of hopelessness, to bring peace in the midst of no peace, in the midst of anger and violence.

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It was so profound. But this is the stories we hear about again and again. The turn of the century in 1904 in Wales and in 1906 in LA at the

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Azusa Street. These are stories... Yeah, the Welsh revival in Azusa Street, they are not revivals of biblical

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Christianity. Those were full -blown revivals of false teaching and false doctrine related to the

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Holy Spirit. And the damage that they've done in the church and continue to do is immeasurable, is the best way

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I could put it. Yeah, so that still doesn't prove your thesis that somehow

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God's gonna lay an impossible dream on my heart, because that's apparently God's MO, and all that kind of stuff that goes with it.

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And of course, if I want to see miracles, then I have to do certain things. Nope. Scripture doesn't teach any of this.

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In fact, Banning Leibscher literally sounds like a complete NAR, dominionist, and in his theology is completely wackerdoodle.

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Not sound at all. Yeah, take your Jesus culture CDs and recordings and get them out of your house.

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These people have been spiritually compromised, and their doctrine comes in their music as well.

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Keep that in mind. Now, if you found this helpful, please share the video. All the information on how to share it, subscribe to our channel, ring the bell, that's all down below.

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And of course, if you are interested in supporting us financially so we can continue to bring resources like this to you and to the world, all the information on how you can support us is also in the description of this video.

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So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.