Hearing the Voice of the Lord - Theology Throw Down of Christian Podcast Community

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Welcome to Theology Throwdown! We, the

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Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

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This is a ministry called Striving for Eternity. Alright, welcome to another edition of Theology Throwdown!

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We're glad to have you with us, and my name is Andrew Rappaport, and I am the host of this podcast and the executive director of the

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Christian podcast community. This is a podcast where the different podcasters from the

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Christian podcast community, we get together, we discuss different theological topics, where we disagree, we try to do so in love and charity.

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So far, this is the third episode, and we haven't had that much disagreement. We'll try to work on that.

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But I'm going to let everyone first introduce themselves before we go and introduce our topic.

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So we'll go in this order. I'm just going to look at the list of how it is on my list.

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So if you guys go in this order so we know. We'll start with Justin Peters, Andy Olson, Colleen Sharp, Eve Franklin, Keith, and then

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Prescribed Truth. Oh, that's Jamal. Alright, so we'll go in that order. Just introduce yourselves and your podcast, and then

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I'll wrap. I'll go last. Okay, my name is Justin Peters, and I host

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Didache, which is the Greek word for doctrine or teaching. A 30 -minute podcast twice a week.

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And so that's me. I'm up.

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I'm Andy Olson. I am with Echo Zoe Radio. I've been doing podcasting for coming up on 14 years, 13 years.

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And I do a monthly show, and usually shoot for about an hour.

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And I always interview somebody different. I've actually had Justin on a number of times, and Andrew's been on a few times.

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And just pick a theological topic and just discuss it for about an hour.

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And I try to let them, my guests, be the expert. I'm really there just to try to draw out, ask some questions, draw out the theology of it all.

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Comes out once a month. I just posted a January episode on the 1st, and shoot for the 1st.

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But any time of the month, I'll put on an episode. You can find that at EchoZoe .com. I'm Colleen Sharp, and I host

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Theology Gals podcast. And we focus on various theological topics in the

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Christian life, and connected primarily to Reformed theology.

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And I'm Eve Franklin, and I host

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Are You Just Watching? with my co -host, Tim Martin. And we discuss movies or television from a

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Christian worldview. Not just doing reviews, but actually getting into the agendas and talking about scripture in relation to the movies.

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This is Keith Heltzley, host of Quests for Truth. We try to address worldviews that are both in the

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Christian worldview and outside the Christian worldview, to see what's true about them, and where some logical fallacies may lie in certain conditions.

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We try to do a podcast every week. It's not always the same thing. Once a month, we do an audio drama, and we have all those parts done.

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And once a month, we try to do a deep dive expository, look at a book of the

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Bible. Keith, did you mention the name of your podcast, or did I miss that? Quests for Truth.

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I thought I did, but maybe I didn't. All right.

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My name is Jamal Bandy. I am the host of the Prescribed Truth podcast. I host a

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YouTube channel as well, Prescribed Truth, and that's where I actually started. And I'm actually coming up in my first year of podcasting.

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It will be in April when I actually started podcasting, so thank you for that.

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And I host a podcast weekly, for the most part. All right.

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And I am Andrew Rapaport, and I host several, actually, podcasts. I have the Rap Report, Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report, which is a weekly show, about roughly an hour sometimes.

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Not the most recent one that just came out, but usually it's about an hour. I have a daily two -minute

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Monday through Friday show called Andrew Rapaport's Daily Rap Report. I do a two -hour live show

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Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern Time. That's called Apologetics Live. You can go to ApologeticsLive .com,

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get the link to join there. Any questions you want, if you have people that want to challenge us, we set up debates, things like that.

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And let's see, Colleen and I both co -host a show called So You Want to Be a Podcaster, which is supposed to at least be every other week, but we've both been kind of out of commission.

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So we're working on that. But that is there. And then there's this one.

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So Colleen is the chief administrator for the Christian Podcast Community.

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And if you want to check out all of our podcasts, the ones mentioned here, but we have over 20 others, or 20 of them.

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And you can go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org to check them all out. So with that, our topic tonight, and I guess we came up with this from last episode based off of Eve's podcast,

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Are You Just Watching?, with talking about the Harriet movie.

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And I haven't seen it. That surprises Eve, I'm sure. For those who don't know,

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Eve busts on me because I don't watch movies much. You bust on yourself. I don't bust on you.

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Oh, that's true. I do have a movie here, though. Hey, I do got a movie. Look, I was watching

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PBS's The Presidents. Does that count? I got it from the library.

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That counts. So tonight's topic is going to be hearing the voice of the

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Lord. That's not how we word it. How do we word that? I've got to look it up. Hearing God's voice?

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Hearing God's voice is how we word it. That's right. Thank you. Because that was, well, before we get into it,

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Eve, why don't you explain with Harriet how that went on in your podcast that brought that up.

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And then we'll get into it. Yeah, well, Harriet Tubman is historically known to have said that she had visions of God and that God was instrumental in helping her escape and bring all of the slaves on the railroad that she was a conductor for through safely.

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She always got warnings when there was danger and God supposedly told her to go down safe paths and escape traps that were laid for her.

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So she gave God the glory for her escaping slavery and bringing others out of slavery.

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Did she, now I'm just curious with that, did anyone know, did she ever run into,

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I mean, because if she was saying that God always led her to safety, was there times where she ran into trouble?

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Does anyone know? From the best I could see, it seemed from, because I didn't just watch the movie,

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I watched a bunch of documentaries about her and those seem to be actual claims that she would fall into like these trances and have visions and she would always say that it was

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God that was keeping her from going down the wrong paths or whatever.

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She had some close calls, but she was never caught. Okay. Because that'd be bad if she credited it all to God and then got into trouble.

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So here's the key verse that we always hear with this. And, um, it, you know, the, in first Kings 1912, it says, and after the earthquake, a fire, but the

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Lord was not in the fire and after the fire, the sound of a low whisper, this is the

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ESV, but in some translations that would say a still small voice.

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And so what a lot of people, uh, and this is this in context is dealing with Elijah and people say, well, they hear a still small voice,

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I guess, like, you know, Harriet in the, in the movie would, would claim.

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So the, the topic we wanted to deal with is how do we hear from God? So, you know, do we hear from, we're going to have some clear ways we hear from God.

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Um, but what are the ways that we can hear from God? I came on here, not knowing that Justin was going to be here and I was just going to plagiarize all of his stuff.

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So you're saying we should just get Justin to give his famous quote, eh? Justin, if we want to hear the word of God, how do we do that?

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Well, you want my, you want my quote unquote famous quote now? Well, I said this one night, it kind of off the cuff at a seminar.

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Um, Oh gosh, I don't 10, 10 or so years ago. And, uh, somebody wrote it down and put it up on the internet and it just kind of took off.

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But anyway, what I say is my only famous quote, if you want to hear

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

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And so, yeah, that is, that is my only famous quote. Uh, but it's, but it's true.

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And I, I stand by that. And there's, uh, all kinds of theological issues that we could go into issues with the canon of why this must be true.

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God speaks to us in his word, period. God is not speaking in a direct quotable sense today outside of scripture.

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Um, now since you brought up first Kings 19, you know, the still small voice, it's the

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King James that renders that that way. The still small voice, uh, literally in the Hebrew, actually the

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ESV gets a pretty close, uh, literal rendering in the Hebrew is that the sound of a quiet whispers, the closest literal rendering in Hebrew.

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But, you know, people take that all the time. There's two, two verses that are most often misquoted, misused, dealing with this issue.

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One of them is a still small voice, first Kings 19. The other one is John 10 27, which hopefully we can get to later on in the, in the program, my sheep, hear my voice, but dealing with this one, uh, notice when you read this passage, okay.

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For context, Elijah had just called down fire, destroyed the prophet, false prophets fled from Jezebel into the wilderness, found himself in a cave.

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This is summarizing, of course. So he's in this cave and, uh, verse 11, it says, there was a great and strong wind that rent the mountains, break the, break the pieces of the rocks before the

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Lord. The Lord was not in the wind after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord was not an earthquake after the earthquake of fire, but the

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Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire is still a small voice and people always take that as this inner impression that we supposedly get from God or the

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Holy spirit, this inner impression, a hunch, a feeling, you know, still small voice in our heads, but just read the next verse, verse 13, it says after, right after the still small voice.

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And it was so when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entering end of the cave.

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In other words, the entrance, I'm reading this from King James, the entrance of the cave and behold, there came a voice to him and says, what doest thou hear

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Elijah? So this still small voice was not some inner impression.

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This was not an internal voice. It was an external voice. Elijah was deep inside this cave.

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He heard this voice coming from outside of the cave. And so as verse 13 says, when he heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and then he went out to the entrance of the cave so he could hear the voice.

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The voice was not internal. It was external. So, um, you know, when

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I, when I teach on this, I ask people, can we please do away with the still small voice thing?

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Let's look at it in context. It's not an inner impression. It's not a hunch. It's not intuition.

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It's not some voices whispering inside your head. The still small voice with Elijah was an external audible voice, not internal.

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And that should put it to rest. Can I say that that's, that's really good to bring out and draw from that passage,

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Justin. I've heard explanations about that, but just to bring out the simpleness of it, the fact that it was a external voice or external sound is, is really good to tear down that argument because, you know,

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I've come from a circle, a background like that where we believe that we can hear God's voice this way.

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And it's, it's this very small voice, you know, just you gotta be quiet so you can listen to it.

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Cause he comes in a still small voice and, um, and man, that just, it seems so simple.

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And when you're reading the passage and you're looking at it, it's like it's clear as day, just even at the, after Elijah came out of the cave that God spoke to him again.

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Now you hear his voice again, audible outside of himself. And just like in other passages where God speaks from heaven, you know, to Jesus saying, this is my beloved son and, and everybody hears it.

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You know, it's not just one person who can testify that God is speaking. So it was, it was just very good to bring out there.

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I just want to say that. I was going to say, I agree with that.

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And I like what you did was cause I'm not personally theological church, theologically trained, but what you did was you showed the simplicity of just reading that verse in context and that you don't need to have fancy seminary degrees, or it'll be a pastor of a mega church to understand what that scripture is saying.

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And you brought up John 10, 27, which is the other big verse that people use. And I've personally dealt with friends that bring that verse out and it's the same kind of thing.

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That's not an audible voice in the case of John 10, 27, but just walking somebody through the context and say, okay, let's not just read

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John 10, 27, let's read John 10 and let's see what's going on there. And it becomes crystal clear within just a few verses, what is going on there and what this voice is that Jesus is speaking about.

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Well, let me, let me disagree with you a little bit there, Andy, cause you, I think you said that it's not an audible voice in John 10, 27.

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And so let me read that verse. It says my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. However, I think that this is actually is an audible voice.

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Let me explain why what he's giving here is a picture of a sheep in a sheep gate.

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And so for folks who may not know how shepherds would care for their sheep and the sheep gate, when you're out in the wilderness, there'd be people would have different areas where they would take their sheep to graze.

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And at night for protection, many of them, you'd have different people bring all their sheep into one sheep gate and they would have their sheep there.

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And the sheep know the shepherd well enough that the shepherd would call them out, call the sheep out.

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They'd hear the voice of the shepherd audibly and follow that voice they know. And that was, there was a common practice.

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So, so I think the refer, I actually, I think it's an illustration, but that illustration on that does happen.

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That would be an audible voice in that case. That's the illustration. But when we, we realized that that really the sheep that Jesus was talking about is his elect, we understand you and I, you know, we're his elect.

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You and I presumably are both saved. And I, I didn't hear an audible voice that of Jesus calling me that when

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I was saved and I presume you didn't either. Yeah, I did. The guy was, Chuck was reading the

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Bible to me. You heard Chuck's voice, right? So according to Justin, I heard the voice of the

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Lord audibly. Okay.

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I agree. I agree with both of you. The illustration behind it.

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Yes. An audible voice when you're dealing with a literal shepherd and literal sheep, of course, we're not four legged animals with wool.

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You know, it's a, it's a, it's a picture of this is the effectual call.

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So as Jesus is using it, when his sheep, us, his elect hear the effectual call, we hear the voice of the shepherd that he is calling us to salvation.

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This is regeneration. This is the new birth. Uh, in verse 28 makes it abundantly just like with first Kings 19.

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All you got to do is read the next verse and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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So that, so the picture here is before our conversion, we are all sheep.

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Now we're lost sheep, but we're sheep. We've been sheep for me. Yeah. Did you, did you see that?

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Did you guys wait, did you guys, little furry thing that really, really small little furry thing behind Justin that was that a lamb or was that a, yeah, no, it was too small for a lamb.

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That may have been a rodent. It takes a, it takes a real man to be secure, to have a dog.

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Like any, any man can have a big German shepherd or a lab, but have a little fruit fruit dog and still be secure in your manhood takes a real man to do that.

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I'm just glad that Andy brought it up this time and not me. That was not a sheep. So, so yeah, this is before our conversion, we are sheep, but we're lost sheep.

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Uh, we've been, our, our election secure from before the foundation of the world, we're lost sheep and we're wandering around out there in the pasture of life, grazing, minding our own business, head down to the ground and all of a sudden we hear a voice.

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We hear the shepherd and we perk our heads up. We see the shepherd and we go to him.

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Uh, that's the picture. This is the new birth. This is regeneration. This is the call becoming effectual

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Jesus, the good shepherd calling his lost sheep to himself in salvation.

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That's the picture here. This is not God whispering in your head telling you where to go to have lunch one day or as Charles Stanley says, where to go get your

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Thanksgiving day Turkey literally. If I may maybe present a different angle is what about when people say, you know,

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I felt God calling me to tell you this, or God is like this on my heart.

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These would be all be internal things, not external voice. Would you say that it's

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God talking to that person because it had this emotional burden. They want to share something with a friend or relative.

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Would that be in this department or not? Let me, let me take your question.

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There's two aspects that I wanted to bring up in this discussion that you brought out. One is that the, the emotional feeling, what is that when we have those, if we want to say premonitions you know,

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Harriet Truman might be in this, this case I'm thinking of a specific instance recently a friend of ours had called and talked to my wife and during the conversation she was saying that she, you know, there's a person in her life that she's having a relationship with and she had a broken heart and she was asking for forgiveness.

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And there was the emotional thing where she just of course wanted to be forgiven and restored.

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And so the language that was used is words to affect that. I felt

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God calling me or talking to me to come to you and, and fix our relationship.

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And that's kind of just the conversation. And that's the second part that I was going to bring up. So one is that, there's two things

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I think that we have in this when we talk about this topic. One is those premonitions or feelings.

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That's one issue. A second is what you just brought up the language. And because in my opinion,

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I'll just speak for myself. I think that there's people who may not mean what they're actually saying or what we think when they say things.

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Cause they, they use the common language that many Christians use and it, you know, we, people think they know what someone is thinking.

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When someone says, well, Lord told me something, I'm going to say, Lord literally told you something. I know that I had a case with one of the guys that used to work for us.

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I met him on the street when I was doing open air evangelism and he heard me. They came out of the

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Whole Foods. They heard me preaching and they walked over when

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I got done. And this one guy, Mitch comes up and just goes, the Lord spoke to my heart and told me

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I should come over here. And I just looked at him and I don't remember saying this, but he tells me, he says that I just said, nah, it's probably heartburn.

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I just totally rejected his spiritual language. It's like burning in the bosom.

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Justin knows about burning in the bosom. He stays at Marriott. The thing there though is it actually bothered him.

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He told me that it bothered him that I rejected his spiritual language and he came back and like week after week, eventually he asked me about it.

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Like, why did I say that? And I'm like, I didn't even remember saying it, but I probably would picture me saying it because I'm just rejecting that spiritual language.

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So there's two aspects to your question. I'd like us to address. One's the emotional.

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What is it when people say, I mean, is it actually God giving people premonitions?

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Can he do that? And then let's deal with that one. And then later I'd like to deal with the language people use.

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So what do you guys think when like in a case like Keith says, does

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God work through giving people emotions, giving people a thought, middle of the night, someone wakes up thinks to pray for somebody and they give them a call and find out they were just in a car accident, you know?

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And, you know, does God do that? What say you? I guess what

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I would say is I believe God would, could do that because I mean the Bible tells us that God directs us.

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There are many thoughts or many plans in the mind of a man, but it's the Lord who directs his way. And so I do believe that the

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Lord could lead someone or press someone's heart to give someone a call at an opportune time that somebody may be going through something.

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Or I remember not too long ago, I was dealing with something and my elder in my church just happened to text me.

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It's like, Hey brother, you're okay. And I was like, man, I'm really going through right now. You know, please pray for me. And he's like,

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I really do feel like the Lord, you know, let me to message you, you know, praise the Lord, you know? And I, and I thought it was,

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I do believe that God do impress on people's heart to contact people. I don't know if I don't know if I'll go as far to say that the guy would be

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Andrew, call Jamal, tell him he's going to be okay. I'm here for you. You know,

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I don't know. That's, I don't think that's the case, but I do believe that there are impressions and, and leadings by the

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Holy spirit. Colleen Eve, you guys have been a little bit quiet.

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Well, I was, Oh, go ahead. Sure. Okay. I had a couple of scriptures that I kind of referred to in our podcast, and I love to have

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Justin's take on this because didn't have him available when I was doing our podcast on Harriet, but it seems to me that there are instances in the new

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Testament where the spirit directs people. And one of them that I'm thinking of is the

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Macedonian call where Paul gets the vision of the, Of the, of the, of the, of the, of the message of the person in Macedonia is asking him to come there.

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And the other one I think of is an ax eight where Philip is told by the spirit to go up and speak to the

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Ethiopian. And, and so I was just thinking, you know, it is, it seems to be scriptural that if we are sensitive and in, in, in God's will, that he can speak to us through the spirit.

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It may not be an audible voice, but, and it will not tell us anything contrary to scripture, which

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I think is our testing ground. But it seems like we, that if, that we should be able to hear the spirit prompting us to even, you know, speak as Jamal was saying, speak to a particular person or something like that.

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Okay. I'm going to maybe disagree a little bit. I think we have to be really careful in saying a lot, a lot of times, at least in my background, people would say,

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I think God is telling me such and such. And Eve, you said as long as it doesn't go against scripture, and I'm going to give an example.

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When I was in Bible college, a young man came and said, you know,

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God told me that I'm supposed to marry you. Okay. Well, there's nothing opposed to scripture in him saying that.

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But then another guy said, I think God's telling me that I'm supposed to marry you. And it's amazing.

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God's telling all these guys, three of them total. I think we have to be really careful because it would be easy if I wake up and I'm thinking of my best friend.

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And she's on my mind and sure the Lord can do anything and maybe bring her to mind.

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But I think we have to be really careful in saying God did this.

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And, you know, I think of Hebrews one, one, and two, long ago at many times and in many ways,

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God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But these last days he has spoken to us by a son whom he appointed the air of all things through whom also he created the world.

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That's one passage I think of, but I just think we need to be really careful unless God has said in his word, certain things.

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I think we have to be really careful attributing that to God in his sovereignty. If I wake up this morning or wake up tomorrow morning, and I'm thinking of my best friend and thinking, you know,

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I really ought to check if she's okay. And I call her and she says, wow, I really am not doing.

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Okay. I'm so glad you called. And in God's sovereignty, I think he may work in those ways, but I think we need to be cautious in what we attribute to the

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Lord. You will notice. I asked that as a question. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

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Yeah. Let me, let me say this before Justin response that real quick is just to say in the content is the danger of it.

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Actually, Colleen is, I remember in college now, granted most people were word of faith back then that I was in college with, but there was someone who is, she was dating someone and he got a word from the

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Lord that she's to marry him. And so she broke up with her boyfriend that she was engaged to and ended up marrying this guy.

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And so the proof, you know, as I was told from someone else, when I, when

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I had disagreed with it was that they got married and that was the proof. But now that couple's divorced.

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So what does that then end up saying about it? You know, did God lead you

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Jamal's Jamal's piping up? Cause he just did an episode on divorce to start in the new year.

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He didn't want a difficult or controversial topic. But actually, and my wife had a similar thing,

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Colleen, he, she had a guy that actually came to her mother's house and told her, told her mother that God said that my wife was to marry him.

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I said, I knew he was wrong cause I married her, but So, so Justin, go ahead.

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You could answer the question. Yeah. A few things here. And I'm glad we're talking about this.

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Cause this is an area that's so misunderstood. I think by so many there can be a lot of harm done to people.

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For one thing, we should clarify that we're not talking about whether or not God can speak or can direct us.

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Of course he has the ability. He has the ability. So that's not really the question.

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The question is, is, is he doing these things? Is he speaking and hunches or feelings and that kind of thing?

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As far as like the, the test that we always hear, well, anytime somebody hears things, they hear

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God say something, always tested by scripture. And if it's okay with scripture, then it's okay. You know, if it contradicts scripture, you got to throw it out.

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Well, as Colleen was saying, that's a, that's really a dangerous position to take because what if I were to go up to a, you know, 20 year old young man and say, young man,

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I've been having this recurring dream about you. And I've had it every night this week that you're supposed to go to Nigeria and be a missionary.

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God really lays this on my heart. And I just really feel like God's telling me to tell you that you need to go to Nigeria and be a missionary.

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Well, that certainly would not contradict scripture, but maybe it's not

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God's will for this young man to go to Nigeria and be a missionary. But if he believes I am a, you know, quote unquote, man of God, and he believes what

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I'm saying, I could ruin this guy's life by giving him, telling him that God is telling me to give him a message when that's not at all what's happening.

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It wouldn't necessarily be unbiblical, but I could ruin that kid's life by doing that. So it's, it's very, very dangerous to say that.

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Hebrews one, one and two, as Colleen just quoted is a go -to text.

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The writer of Hebrews says that God spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in the portions in many different ways.

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You know, he spoke through a burning bush. He spoke through a donkey one time, Numbers chapter 22.

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God spoke in a lot of different ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us in his son.

32:40

Jesus is the final speaking of God. He is, he is the full revelation of God and God is not speaking today in a direct quotable sense outside of scripture.

32:52

He has spoken to us in his son. We have a perfect, inerrant, infallible, sufficient record of that in his word.

32:58

Now, let me say something real quickly. I don't want to hog the show at all, but about like, well,

33:04

I got an impression. I felt the Lord impressing upon me.

33:09

We hear this language. I am not going to say that God cannot, nor will

33:15

I say that God will not give us burdens, impressions, but here's, here's the deal.

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We have no mechanism to know when it may or may not be coming.

33:31

When it comes to God, an illustration that I gave at the truth matters conference, when I was speaking on this, this very issue,

33:37

I gave this illustration. I grew up in Mississippi. I now live in Montana, but one of my best friends, a guy named

33:45

Chad Stewart. I've known Chad ever since I was a toddler. Chad and I grew up together and went to church together, school together.

33:52

But now I live 2000 miles away, hardly ever see Chad anymore. But from time to time, you know,

33:58

I'll think about Chad and sometimes I'll pray for Chad. Is that God bringing

34:04

Chad to my remembrance so I can pray for him? I don't know. Maybe I just thought about Chad, you know, there's no, there's no mechanism to know.

34:13

It's not like we've got a flashing red light that goes off inside of our skulls when it's

34:19

God bringing somebody to our remembrance. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. We have no way of knowing that.

34:25

So it's kind of, it's kind of pointless to say, well,

34:31

God laid this on my heart. Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't, maybe he just thought about it. So I'm very careful to, you know, to stay away from saying, well,

34:40

God told me, or God laid this on my heart. God gave me a burden. When you, when you look through the new

34:47

Testament and we're even dealing of course in the apostolic era, when you look at the apostles,

34:54

Paul and Peter and John going out and doing their thing, you never see them asking for a word from the

35:03

Lord. You never see them praying, Lord, show me where you want me to go putting out a fleece or anything like that.

35:11

They just did stuff. They just did things. Even in the apostolic era, of course, there's a

35:17

Macedonian call and that type thing. Occasionally God sovereignly just redirected them, but you never see them seeking out,

35:27

God, show me your individual specific will for my life. They just did things.

35:33

You know, Paul said, we spent the, we spent the winter at Nicopolis because we thought it was best.

35:38

He didn't put out a fleece. He didn't say, Lord, speak to me, tell me where you want me to spend the winter. He spent the winter there just because he thought it was best to spend the winter there.

35:47

And this was even in the apostolic era. So we're 2 ,000 years past that now.

35:54

And God is no longer. If I may kind of comment. I'm sorry, go ahead. I've kind of been patiently waiting to see what your solution was.

36:05

It is kind of the thought where I was thinking of going is that, so we don't know, we have an impression, we look in the

36:16

Bible. It doesn't always say exactly pray. Pray is a good way to go.

36:24

Everything is, you also alluded to it. There is sometimes out of practicality.

36:29

We just, you know, consult other people. We get advice from other Christians. You know, what job should

36:37

I take? Should I work for McDonald's? Should I work for Laclede? Oh, they're both good jobs. What do you want to do?

36:43

Well, pray about it. Ask people. Investigate the practical pros and cons.

36:49

Because not everything in life is spiritual. When we're looking for a word from God or how to live our life.

36:57

And sometimes we need to have a non -spiritual answer. And sometimes that is the answer.

37:05

Is just a practical, everyday, seeking advice from others who we trust.

37:12

So we should combine all three. We have an impression, check it with Scripture, and check it with other believers.

37:19

That's always the threefold thing. I was raised up in knowing what God wants.

37:25

How about asking God to close doors? Because I know when I was starting out in life,

37:31

I prayed going out of college, it's like, Lord, close all the doors so I know which way you want me to go with my career.

37:39

That's pretty smart, actually. Instead of saying open the door, because there's a lot of open doors. But if God closes the door, he closes it and then shall shut, as it says in the

37:48

Revelations. Were you still saying so,

37:56

Nev? No, that was the point I was trying to make. I asked God to close doors, and he opened a very big door that wasn't the door

38:07

I wanted to go through, but it was the door he opened. And so I ended up someplace I wasn't expecting to end up.

38:13

Oh, I understand that very well. I keep asking the Lord to open a door for me to pastor a church, and he goes, no,

38:20

I want you traveling all around. I really would rather just be in one place.

38:28

But let me tell you about something that did happen this week that for me might highlight some of where we're seeing with what

38:37

Justin just said is a possible danger. I was in a Facebook discussion with someone who's arguing.

38:44

He believes the Charismatic has continued. I believe they haven't. And so we're getting into a discussion.

38:49

The problem I had with his argumentation is he made the same arguments that Brigham Young made in Mormonism to justify

38:58

Mormonism. His proof that Mormonism was true was he spoke in tongues. This guy's argument that the proof that the tongues continue is that he spoke in tongues.

39:08

But by that argument, if I take that argument, you've just proven Mormonism's right. He's like, no,

39:15

Mormonism's wrong. Now, the issue I was trying to convey to him, but he wasn't getting it, was it was the way he was going about the argument.

39:24

He wasn't arguing from a position of scripture. He was arguing from a position of experience.

39:31

So I think that is where at least I run into a lot of difficulties with folks on this because they want to say, well, look, this is my experience.

39:42

I had this what they call premonition feeling, whatever, like Justin's case of saying

39:47

I was thinking of Chad. Was that of the Lord? Now, the way

39:53

Justin said it is it could be and maybe not, maybe, but I don't know. There's others who will say it was.

40:00

They become emphatic because it happened the way their experience lined up with it.

40:12

Do you guys see that? How do you handle those things? What do we say to people that would argue from experience,

40:23

I guess? I have a real -life example. The night I met my husband, which will be 26 years and a few months ago, we spent the whole evening talking at this party.

40:39

And then he wanted me to call when I got home. No cell phones back in 1994.

40:45

And so we talked for three hours on the phone. So at 3 a .m., I crawled in my bed and had to write something in my journal every night.

40:54

And I wrote, tonight I met the man I'm going to marry. And it wasn't because I thought God told me.

41:00

It was probably because I was a silly young girl. And I did marry him. So I could say

41:05

God told me, and look, it came true. I can show you in my journal with the date right here and whatnot.

41:11

And I don't think God told me. I just think I met a guy that I really liked and I clicked with.

41:17

And it's kind of like what Justin was saying, that we don't know necessarily.

41:24

But I'll take that and give you the same example. I knew exactly when I wanted to marry my wife.

41:29

I know right where I was standing, she was asking me whether you can lose your salvation. Folks who don't know, my wife's from Hong Kong.

41:38

She's from a Chinese church. Chinese churches are not strong doctrinally. So I didn't know she believed you could lose your salvation.

41:45

I'm trying to answer her questions. And she turns to me and goes, good, you answered correctly. She was testing me.

41:51

And I decided right then and there, I'm marrying this woman. Was that of the Lord? Maybe not because I was pretty forceful.

41:59

If you ask my wife, she may say that I didn't give her much. She literally, I do remember, we were sitting there outside her parents' house in the car.

42:08

I was dropping her off and I said, what is it going to take for you to marry me?

42:14

To say yes. She said an audible voice would be good. And I just said, okay, marry the jerk.

42:20

There's an audible voice. So there is an aspect where someone can try to make the things happen if they think it's of God.

42:31

You know, if you think, like in the example of my friend from college, where she's being told, this is a word from the

42:37

Lord, that she can marry this guy. Okay, I divorce, or I break up with the guy I'm engaged to and marry this guy because that's of the

42:45

Lord. But did God actually do that? Or was that them who did it because they thought it was of the

42:51

Lord? So a lot of these examples that you guys are giving are people telling other people that God told them to tell them something.

43:01

But what about the spirit -driven conscience that, when you're living in the spirit, you get the conscience that tells you not to do something that you know is, you know, because our human nature wants us to follow a path that's bad for us.

43:19

And, you know, we know from imbibing scripture and from praying and walking with the

43:25

Lord, the conscience, you know, kicks in and says, no, that's not something you should be doing.

43:31

And it's not an audible voice, but it's something that's driven by the spirit because if we didn't have the spirit within us, we wouldn't hear that contrary feeling or whatever to doing something that we shouldn't do.

43:47

We would just do it. Am I making any sense? I'm sorry. Yeah, I think so.

43:54

One thing that you pointed out, I was going to point out that I think it gets crazy when a lot of these things are one person telling another person, like God told me or I had a feeling or he had a burden that, you know, and was

44:08

Justin, was it you that brought up the, you need to go to Nigeria and be a missionary? I mean, that's,

44:14

I mean, does the Lord ever do that in scripture? I can't remember a time where he gives one person a vision for what somebody else should do.

44:23

I mean, if somebody's getting a vision or the Lord's instructing, it's direct.

44:31

He's not going to this guy off to the side and saying, you know, tell him he needs to do

44:36

X. Right. And you asked the question earlier, you know, is

44:42

God able to do this? Of course God is able, but God not only is able, he's able to make it crystal clear.

44:49

There's no question whatsoever. This is God. God's not the author of confusion. Exactly.

44:55

That's right. And a point that I brought out in my presentation at Truth Matters, which

45:00

I've heard those videos are finally supposed to be posted at some point this week, I think, but, but all throughout the scripture, old and new

45:10

Testament, whenever God spoke, and it wasn't nearly as often as a lot of people think, a lot of people think, well,

45:16

God was just speaking to everybody willy nilly all the time. You know, no, there were, there were major characters in the

45:23

Bible who apparently went their entire lives and never heard God say anything. Nehemiah, Ezra, Esther, Ruth, as far as we know, they never heard

45:34

God say anything. So, but when God did speak, it was crystal clear.

45:40

There was no confusion about what was being said or who said it.

45:47

The only exception to that of course would be the boy Samuel. But even then he knew exactly what

45:52

God was saying. He just didn't know exactly who it was saying it, but he still knew his name was being called. And it was, he was being talked to directly.

46:00

It wasn't somebody else coming in and saying, hey Samuel, you know, the Lord suddenly told me to tell you. Yeah. The, the, the word of the

46:08

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

46:13

Lord came to Elijah. Even in the new Testament, when the Holy spirit spoke, he spoke very clearly set apart for me,

46:21

Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them crystal clear. You never, you never see anybody in the

46:29

Bible, old or new Testament saying something like this. Well, I think

46:34

I feel like the Lord may be trying to tell us such and such. That's true. I feel like the

46:40

Lord might be trying to tell us said nobody in the Bible ever. Nobody says anything like that.

46:47

Old or new Testament. When God spoke, it was crystal clear, exactly what he said.

46:54

And I think even something that was really important too, when you're talking about a conscience. I think a conscience is something that's completely separate from, you know, the voice of God and that we all, even unbelievers are given a conscience and that conscience is then as believers are in consciousness informed by scripture.

47:12

And it grows with maturity and it grows with years of reading scripture and being around other believers and seeing how we live out what the

47:23

Lord wants and how the Lord wants us to live out, you know, and, and that grows. And that's just plain old fashioned wisdom that comes through, you know, through age and maturity.

47:35

But the spirit doesn't dwell us. I mean, Christ sent the spirit to us.

47:41

So, I mean, that was kind of the whole point of Pentecost. So, I mean,

47:47

I guess that's kind of my point is, is that our Christian conscience is sponsored by the spirit because we are indwelled by the spirit when we become

47:57

Christians, at least that's my understanding. If I could just jump in real quick.

48:03

I think what Eve is describing here, and it's an excellent point. What Eve's describing is the

48:09

Holy spirit doing his work in the life of the believer, illumining the meaning of what scripture says, helping us to not only understand, but to obey scripture.

48:20

And so what you're describing Eve is our conscience being informed by the word of God.

48:27

When Paul said in Colossians, let the word of Christ dwell richly within you.

48:33

That's what's going on. That's what you're describing. As the word of God dwells richly within us, as we read, study

48:40

God's word, the Holy spirit illumines the meaning of it to us. He enables us to obey it.

48:45

And that informs our conscience. And the more, the more the word of Christ, the written word of God, the more it dwells richly within us, the more our consciences will be naturally informed by the word of God.

49:00

And that's just a natural part of living out what scripture teaches. I think that's what you're describing.

49:07

Yeah, I think so too. When it says in, I'm trying to remember now, which of the epistles it's in, it's the command not to quench the spirit.

49:15

How would you then relate that? You know, how are we quenching the spirit?

49:22

Is that by not reading scripture or not listening when scripture is speaking to us on a topic that we don't want to, don't want to obey or something like that.

49:33

Is that how you would. Yep. That's exactly what it is. Not reading, not studying God's word.

49:39

And oftentimes not obeying what we do know from scripture.

49:45

Disobeying scripture is sin. And that, that quenches the spirit, that the Holy Spirit is a person.

49:51

He can be grieved, not to grieve the Holy Spirit. And so when we, when we're not letting the word of Christ dwell richly within us, when we're not reading and studying to show ourselves approved, when we're not obeying what we know, yes, that quenches, that grieves, that grieves the

50:10

Holy Spirit. Well, the interesting thing about our discussion in Harriet was that Harriet was illiterate.

50:18

She never learned how to read her entire life and her knowledge of God in the scripture was what she'd gotten in the little

50:24

Lutheran church, slave church that she went to when she was a child. And so one of the things that we were discussing when we were talking about the movie was her knowledge of God in scripture was very immature.

50:38

And so when she said that she was getting, you know, a voice or she never, I don't think she ever actually said that God spoke to her, but she would have visions.

50:47

And a lot of people attribute that to a head injury that she'd gotten as a child where something was thrown at her and actually left an indention in her head.

50:55

But I don't know. I just thought that was interesting that she, she was illiterate so she couldn't read scripture.

51:02

And so all she had was what she had learned in church when she was young. Which brings up an interesting thing that we do here now days is all these

51:12

Muslims in the middle East where they don't have the scriptures and they're having all these visions supposedly and things like that.

51:20

And people will always ask me, okay, what do you do with that? Well, I think I'll quote

51:26

Justin Peters. Cause someone should quote Justin Peters here. I don't exegete experiences, right?

51:36

Is that, is that the Lord appearing before people? I did a show a while back.

51:42

It was a year or two ago where a friend of mine is a missionary that was in Ukraine for a long time, but now he's with a missions organization in Colorado Springs and he's kind of more guiding missionaries and supporting missionaries now.

51:55

But he's, he talked about traveling to Middle Eastern countries and, and, and personally seeing people who have had experiences like that.

52:05

And, and he's, you know, he's Eileen reformed and he leans somewhat reformed too. And, and so I was a little bit surprised to hear him talk about that, but he did.

52:15

I do, my memory is kind of fading on it, but he, he did point out that, while we might have some trouble with those stories, at least they always seem to be pointing in the direction of pushing towards scripture.

52:30

Like these people would, would have these visions, but it almost always would lead to somebody providing them with a

52:36

Bible. But one thing I wouldn't do is say that is of God.

52:42

Absolutely. I agree. That's where I think the way Justin explained it was good because, you know,

52:48

I think back to a prayer meeting we had in church once many years ago and we had a guy who he, he stood up and was asking for prayer.

52:59

Basically one of his coworkers had done something, I think either stole from the company or something,

53:06

I forget what. And his boss came to him and literally, and said to him that he came to him because this guy was an, was there and that he was a

53:19

Christian. So, so, I mean, his boss basically was saying, I'm trusting you because you are a

53:25

Christian. The, this guy from church actually lied to his boss about what happened.

53:33

And he, he got up and asked for prayer that we would pray because he said he, he lied to protect his coworker so that he could have an opportunity to share the gospel with him.

53:47

And he was saying that God told him to do that. And I'm like, God did not tell you to do that.

53:54

Give me a chapter and verse where God says you should lie. Like that's really clear. You, you, you, you know,

54:00

I think Eve, I think said it earlier, right? It's not going to go against scripture and God speaks, but you have this where people use this to justify really their own desire.

54:16

He, he, he wanted to share the gospel. It sounds spiritual.

54:21

It sounds like a great reason. When it comes to ethics for people that study ethics,

54:28

I'm was called a nonconforming absolutist. It means I believe that there is always another way out of every situation without sinning.

54:38

And so there's absolutely some way to not conform. So the, the area there is

54:46

I would say, well, God couldn't have said that because God wouldn't have told you to lie.

54:54

And then you end up seeing, see him in that case. I see the danger of it because here, you know, okay, you're saying your testimony to your coworker, what's your testimony to your boss who is going to find out that you lied to protect this guy.

55:09

He came to you because you were a Christian. And people often don't, they don't want to address that.

55:16

So, but when we have these visions that people having, you know, I am curious to see,

55:24

I know Justin's position on it, but what do you, what do you guys think with those things?

55:29

What do you say? And Andy raised your hand. Well, I, I, I'm, as you know, on my show,

55:35

I like to do some pretty thorough podcast show notes. I go through a new an outline or everything.

55:41

So I went back and this, this episode that I was just talking about with my friend who works with missions and it was going to the middle

55:47

East. And I found at least what I wrote from the notes. And cause this show was from, let me see here,

55:55

January, it was two years ago. He says there were, there's a common pattern.

56:00

There's three things that always happen with these Muslim visions that he's seen. And he's going into areas that were

56:09

ISIS controlled. So Northern Iraq, Turkey kind of area.

56:15

I don't think he went into Syria. He wouldn't tell us on the show, but I think it was Northern Iraq.

56:23

They're displaced from their homes by ISIS causing them to question why Allah would allow fellow

56:28

Muslims to mistreat them. And this causes them to seek the truth. That's the first step. The second is that someone gives them a

56:34

Bible. Sometimes the circumstances are miraculous, such as a stranger walking up in the market and handing them a Bible and saying, maybe saying,

56:41

God, God told me to give you this. So here's another one of those. God told me things. Some are more ordinary.

56:47

They're a refugee in a camp and someone is handing out Bible. So they grab one. And then step three of three is after reading their

56:53

Bibles, they have, they all say, have said that they started having dreams or visions of Jesus or some

57:00

Jesus like figure calling to them. But, but it seems that, and, and I'm not going to say all of them are

57:11

God. I'm not going to say none of them are. I think it's clear if they're, you know, if it's not leading to Christ, yeah, that kind of makes it clear.

57:21

If I could jump in here, I think, um, I think we have to be real careful with this too.

57:28

Uh, I've, uh, I've been in some heavily Islamic areas and I've heard a lot of these stories.

57:39

Some of them, a lot of them are very hard to, um, track down, you know, you, well, you know,

57:45

I heard about this Muslim. He got a vision of Jesus and you try to start trying to track it down.

57:51

It's like trying to track down Bigfoot. You know, there's lots of rumors or lots of grainy pictures, but there's no actual proof.

57:58

Um, some of it's like that. Some of these stories I've heard this quote unquote Jesus that appears to them actually sends them to bad churches, either a

58:07

Roman Catholic church or word of faith church. Uh, the real Jesus isn't going to do that.

58:13

So, uh, it goes back to what we were saying earlier. You can't exegete an experience, but here's what I can exegete.

58:19

I can exegete Romans chapter 10, 14 through 15. How then will they call on him and whom they have not believed?

58:28

How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?

58:35

Not a dream, not a vision, a preacher. Uh, so Romans 10, 14 and 15 that, that pretty much seals it with me.

58:47

Uh, Okay. Let me give you, let me give you the pushback though, Justin, that people will give and they're going to say, but these people don't have a preacher and that's why

58:55

God's doing this. Well, uh, we have a great commission go into all the world, not just the

59:05

Western world, not just the, the first world countries. We're supposed to go into all the world.

59:12

Um, you know, and I'm not saying all of us should do that.

59:18

Uh, but we are to take the gospel into all the world. And I don't see any exceptions. Uh, I would say the case in scripture we have, and it was already mentioned where Stephen is sent to, you know, he goes upon to, uh, the eunuch.

59:36

What happens? I mean, the eunuch didn't hear from a dream. God sent someone, you know,

59:43

God directed Stephen to him. And there was a preacher, there was someone to explain the word of God.

59:48

And that's the argument I always give is I think God will send people to his children to hear.

59:55

And that's why I think my friend Mark has some, has some trouble, you know, like when I bring up this story that he relayed,

01:00:02

I'm not saying that I believe these stories, I'm just throwing it out for discussion. Yeah.

01:00:08

And, and I know Mark is the same way where, you know, it, it doesn't sit right, you know, right.

01:00:14

That these visions, but, um, you know, he's, he was over there talking to people who would give first person testimony.

01:00:22

This happened to me. And, um, and, and I think you make valid points, you know, that, that, um, we go to scripture first, first of all, and second of all, you know,

01:00:34

I, I made a point when I read these, wrote these show notes two years ago to say, it was a Jesus like figure, you know, for a reason.

01:00:41

I don't necessarily believe that happens or two, if, if it does happen, that it's, it's

01:00:46

Jesus doing this, but, but it's, it is interesting that I think like Andrew was saying that these people do end up coming to the, the, the missionary groups looking for aid and then finding out, well,

01:01:00

I've been having these questions all along anyway, you know, and, and so it kind of rings sort of like the

01:01:07

Ethiopian eunuch and Stephen story and that, you know, they, they, first of all, they're questioning Islam because the

01:01:13

Muslims are the ones that are kicking them out and killing their people and, and punishing them and being in wicked and stuff.

01:01:19

And it caught, and then they're getting a Bible one way or another. Well, I think there's a way to go ahead.

01:01:24

Jamal keeps cheering to talk and we keep out, you know, Jamal, you can't talk.

01:01:33

I'm doing all the privilege to run out so I can speak. But no, seriously,

01:01:40

I, I just want to bring out some, some points because Justin, you had brought up Samuel earlier and I wanted to share an experience that I have.

01:01:48

I think I mentioned it last on the last throw down we had, I brought it up briefly and also, so firsthand experiences that I had that I had to wrestle with when

01:01:57

I came into the true gospel. So when I was growing up, I used to always hear,

01:02:02

I used to always hear like my dad calling me and I always go up front. I was like, Hey dad, you called me? And he was like, no,

01:02:08

I didn't call you. I was always just hear my name clear as day. Like my dad's, my father called me Jamal and I'm running up, always running up there running up to him and he's always telling me, you know, he's not calling me.

01:02:19

So when I, in 2009, I had joined this church and it turned out to be a cult later on, but he was an apostle.

01:02:25

And I remember him going over Samuel and in the scripture, that's what happened with Samuel. And I identified with Samuel.

01:02:31

And I remember going to my pastor at the time and I was like, Hey, you know, I've had this experience.

01:02:36

And the apostle taught then, when he comes to apostle, he taught then that, that God did that, whatever, whoever was your authority in your life at that time, that's who voice you would hear.

01:02:47

So if you was a child, if he was a child, it would be your father's voice. You know? And if you're in a church, it'd be your pastor's voice.

01:02:54

So it was like, Whoa, I had this experience and he just said, this is what the scripture is saying.

01:03:01

And this is how, how my experience is going to be. This happened to me. So I was super excited. I remember going to him and telling him about my experiences growing up.

01:03:09

And he was like, yep, that was the Lord calling you all this time, son. And I'm like, wow, I'm chosen, you know?

01:03:16

And so, um, I would go and I was like, well, Lord, if I, if I, if I, if I ever hear that again,

01:03:22

I'm going to do like Samuel did and say, yes, Lord, I hear you. And so I, it came to a point where I actually lived with this pastor at the time and I would hear him call and I would hear him call me and he wouldn't be calling me and I would do the same thing.

01:03:35

And I would say, okay, all right, here I am, Lord. And it'd be silence, absolutely silence, nothing.

01:03:41

And I'm like, okay, here I am, Lord. I'm here, God, I'm listening. And there'd be nothing. And I would feel like maybe

01:03:49

I answered too late. It was, it was honestly, guys, it was really stressful and it was discouraging. Cause maybe

01:03:54

I felt like I answered too late maybe, or I miss God, you know, I miss my blessing, the timing and everything else.

01:04:00

And it was, it was really disheartening. And, um, and another experience I've had, um, just sharing this real quick is

01:04:07

I had dreams. I had, I kept a notebook at the time I used to believe in a prop, you know, that we was prophets and stuff like that.

01:04:13

And so I would write down all my dreams. I, and I still have that notebook just to remind me of where I come from.

01:04:18

And, um, it was a dream that I had concerning my father and my, um, my biological father. And, um, he ended up having heart surgery in 2012.

01:04:25

But prior to that, I had a dream that my mother came to me and told me that my father was having heart problems.

01:04:32

And, um, and I was like, okay, I wrote it down. So when he ended up having heart surgery, I wrote it,

01:04:38

I was like, oh, it was his confirmation, you know, and all these things, it was, it was times like that. And I felt like, okay,

01:04:43

God was using me in a prophetic. I should have said something to my mother. I didn't say that to my father, you know what I'm saying? Just things like that.

01:04:49

But the thing, the issue that I had with all that is that I was in a false church.

01:04:55

You know, I, I didn't believe the gospel. Everything that I was under was workspace. I believe that I had to do so many good things in order to make up for the wrong that I did, you know what

01:05:04

I'm saying? And in order to make up for that. And if it was always a continuous cycle, like the hamster on the wheel, always continually running, but going nowhere.

01:05:12

And so when I came to the center of the gospel, I had to reconcile those things. And as I looked through the scripture, it's like all those that God had called and spoke to, they were his people.

01:05:22

Like they were truly his people, truly people that followed him. And so when I look back at my situations and this is how

01:05:28

I, this is how I feel when it comes to people who may say they hear from God or have experiences like visions and stuff like that.

01:05:34

I feel like sometimes those things can be used as a smoke screen to steer us away from what's true.

01:05:40

It's because in a situation like that, where I was going through all those things, I was more focused on the supernatural versus looking into who

01:05:49

Christ really is. And so when I come to understand the gospel, I was like, okay, well, God, how could

01:05:54

I have the, how could I have had these experiences that I can't, I can't explain. I mean, I have more than that, but I'm just for the sake of time.

01:06:00

But like, I can't explain these incidents that I personally went through, you know, but how can I reconcile that when

01:06:06

I didn't even believe the gospel? Like I didn't know nothing about the, you know, Jesus. I knew Jesus.

01:06:11

I know about Jesus. I know he died on a cross, but understanding my sinful nature and understanding my need of redemption and not really understanding any of that, you know, how could that have happened?

01:06:20

And it came down to me. It was like, just like the scripture says, we have itching ears. I believe that those things were, you know, was put in my way as a smokescreen, you know, until the

01:06:31

Lord would have brought me to know the truth. And that's, that's how I reconcile those things. And when I deal with people who've had similar experiences,

01:06:38

I tell them, I was like, well, if it hasn't led you to the truth of the gospel, regardless of your vision that you've had, or, or you may have say, you may have heard something.

01:06:45

If it hasn't led you to the truth of scripture and the truth of the gospel, then it was, it was of the enemy.

01:06:51

It's not of God, you know? And that's just how I had to reconcile my own personal experiences. Yeah. I think,

01:06:57

I think that there is an aspect, like you say, I remember someone in college who was very into horoscopes and she was like, oh, but it's always true.

01:07:07

Every day my horoscope comes true. And it's like a self -fulfilling prophecy.

01:07:12

It was so general that what I did was I actually, I forced her for like a full week to read all of the horoscopes every day, not just hers.

01:07:21

And she realized every one of them came true for her every day because she was looking for it.

01:07:27

Let me give you a, and some of you know, some of y 'all know, you know, Matt Slick, a friend of mine from karm .org.

01:07:34

He tells an account of a quote unquote prophecy he had and he'll, he'll say, what do you do with this?

01:07:44

I mean, he and I've discussed this and I'm like, what do you do with this? Other than the fact that you, I don't exegete experiences, but there's, there's things when you hear him tell that, there's a couple of things that I've said to him.

01:07:55

You have to keep in mind. When the event happened, it didn't, he, he did not sit there and realize that this was a prophecy when it happened.

01:08:06

He supposedly told this girl that she wouldn't go on a missions trip to Australia. She was going to stay here.

01:08:13

She was going to get married to a guy. He, you know, she ended up going on the trip, but she didn't, you know,

01:08:19

I've heard it two ways. She either stopped in England and turned around or got all the way to Australia and turned around, but she came home, married some guy that she met within six months and they had a child.

01:08:30

Now here's the thing with it. Matt, whatever the event happened, didn't remember anything about that.

01:08:36

Now anyone who knows Matt, that's not unusual. Matt will meet you in three seconds later and be like, so who are you?

01:08:42

Okay. But what did happen was this woman came to him with, you know, and she had a child with him and she saw

01:08:51

Matt and she recounted the story to him. And this is the thing that I noticed because there are things you can have people that implant memories.

01:09:01

It's actually quite easy to do, but there has to be enough true memories to attach a false memory to.

01:09:08

There's people that can actually do this very easily. And if they get to know people and they just ask the questions and within a few minutes can do that.

01:09:17

And I'm knowing that that can happen very easily, very quickly for people. Here you have someone that is a real memory where there's some there.

01:09:27

Did she have a false memory? Did she forget things of it? Did he forget things of it or is it that he meets her?

01:09:36

He remembers meeting her, remembers some of the details and between the two of them they get this account that he claims is a prophecy that she claims is a prophecy.

01:09:46

Because he didn't remember the event till she came to him. So is it something where she's saying,

01:09:51

Hey, you said this and he may not remember what he actually said at the time he met her.

01:09:57

Maybe her saying it, he's like, Oh yeah. Because you know, like I've actually seen that happen with him.

01:10:04

You know, I was literally physically present when he had a friend of his that told him, you know, they were out at a, at a swap meet and you know,

01:10:13

Matt, he says to Matt, well, do you remember there was like this globe coming from, you know, and Matt's like,

01:10:19

Oh yeah. Now he didn't remember that a second before. But so I think that one of the things you have with some of these accounts is you have a partial memory that is reinforced by either something that may not have happened or something that they forget some details of it, you know, and that's one of the things when people are relying upon memory,

01:10:47

I think that, you know, it's something where they want to say, well, this is a personal account.

01:10:53

I had this, I had this vision of a Christlike figure and he came and this is what he said. Well, how do, how can we test that?

01:10:59

That's actually what, I mean, it's just what the person remembers and memories can be faked. They can be implanted.

01:11:07

So I think that anytime someone says that they had a vision, even if it's a first person account, I just,

01:11:13

I'm not going to trust it unless God's word says I just gave a vision to somebody, you know, it's, it's, you're, you have no way of verifying even if they're giving you a first person story.

01:11:28

Was there, I'm not sure where it was, but was there a time in scripture,

01:11:33

I want to say it was in Jeremiah, where the King was trying to inquire as far as whether he should go to war or go to battle.

01:11:41

And that he had, he had Jeremiah, and I think it was Jeremiah.

01:11:46

And then there was some other prophets that he inquired from. And that it said in scripture says that the

01:11:52

Lord sent a lying spirit to the false prophets to have the

01:11:57

King go to war, where Jeremiah was telling them not to go. Anybody familiar with that passage of scripture off the top?

01:12:03

Yeah, I'm not familiar with that. And I think it's

01:12:09

Elijah Kings 22, I think it's first Kings 22 and the

01:12:14

Lord said to him, so this is this is with Ahab. No, that's a, he summoned

01:12:22

Micah is who it was. So in verse 21, it says, then a spirit came forward and stood before the

01:12:30

Lord saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, by what means? He said to him,

01:12:36

I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. And he said, you are to entice him and you shall succeed.

01:12:47

Go and do so now, therefore behold, the Lord put a lying spirit in the mouth of all those of these, your prophets, the

01:12:56

Lord has declared disaster for you. And so point is,

01:13:04

I was thinking about that. It's like a situation where people may have these, these visions or they may plan to have heard something, but yet not leading them to the truth is just like, wow.

01:13:16

I was like, it's, I still see it in the providence of the Lord as far as those things happening.

01:13:22

You know, it's not, um, could be to people's destruction versus, you know, to their blessing as they would think it would be.

01:13:29

And I, I could be looking at that wrong, but that's just how I've taken that passage on just that example. Well, in that example, keep in mind the difference of the, these prophets, these are not, these are false prophets.

01:13:43

Okay. So the prophets that have the lying spirit are not prophets of God. That's right.

01:13:50

Right. So God's not putting a lying spirit within a true prophet of God. In other words, these prophets are going to tell the king all will be well, you're going to do great.

01:14:04

That's just this own spirit that's going to want to do that. Right. And it's made me think about like, like false teachers and like who claim to be prophets, you know, and, um, apostles.

01:14:16

And I didn't, I trained up there, they're trained up people under them to be prophets and so on and so forth. And they go forth and they teach like that.

01:14:23

Or they, um, they say prophecies like that probably, you know, say the, what the Lord spoke to me such as such where, you know, like for instance,

01:14:32

I've heard people, um, I had someone come to me before. I was like, man, like this, this lady spoke to me and told me that I'm like,

01:14:38

God is going to bless me. He's bringing me blessings. He's going to, he's going to, um, he's going to have me, you know, uh, get this promotion, this job, something like that.

01:14:45

But I, I know her and I know she was living in sexual sin and she had, she was shacking with her, uh, boyfriend and stuff like that.

01:14:52

And so I was like, well, I don't, I'll, the Lord is not going to tell you that he's going to bring you promotion without telling you to repent of your sin first.

01:14:59

Like that'll be, that'll be the very, if God is going to show anyone, anything concerning your life is going to be your sin and that you need to turn from it.

01:15:07

But, but to have this person come to them and tell them, Oh, everything's good. Everything's well with you. That's why

01:15:12

I was like, I believe there's stuff like this can be like a smoke screen to take us away to bring us away from the truth, you know, to have it go further, further deeper into our sin and our own and our stuff.

01:15:22

So that's why I was, that's what I was drawing from. And this whole notion does introduce a, an element of mysticism to the

01:15:33

Christian life and people start chasing after dreams and visions and words of knowledge and that kind of thing from various folks.

01:15:43

And that detracts from their study of God's word because that's perceived to be dry and boring doctrine, theology.

01:15:54

But if I can get the latest word, if I can get the latest dream or vision, you know, uh, the, the preacher that I listened to, what's

01:16:01

God telling him about the new year, 2020, that kind of thing. You know, all of that stuff, it distracts us from the word of God in anything that distracts us from God's word is not, does not come from the author of God's word that comes from the enemy.

01:16:19

And so all these people that are chasing after the latest dream, the latest vision, the latest word, you know, that's, uh, yeah, it's, it's a deception.

01:16:28

It's, uh, I believe the work of the enemy to keep people away from the one thing that actually will lead them into truth and will grow them in the grace of knowledge of the

01:16:37

Lord Christ. So, um, you know, and then we can get into Gnosticism and the haves and the have nots.

01:16:43

Well, if you get dreams and visions and you hear words and God speaks to you, then you're really spiritual.

01:16:49

You're, you're a have, but if all you've got is, you know, if you're one of these poor knuckleheads and all you have is the word of God and then dwelt by the

01:16:57

Holy spirit, well, that's not very spiritual. You're a have not, well, that's a modern day version of Gnosticism.

01:17:03

It's a Gnosticism repackaged. So, you know, there's just a lot of layers to this.

01:17:10

All this, all this around reading the word, like when, um, my pastor at the time, he used to really down like theological, like theological, uh, study.

01:17:20

Yes. He would down it. He would, he would say it was, um, you know, you get this, you get man's knowledge.

01:17:25

That's man, that's man knowledge. You need, you know, he was like, um, if you really anointed, you hear from God, you know, and stuff like that.

01:17:32

And so, and we would down study. Like if, if you would have told me you had a seminary degree, I was like, Oh, you ain't got nothing.

01:17:38

You ain't got nothing at all. You ain't got the Holy spirit, you know what I'm saying? You ain't trusting in God, you know?

01:17:43

And, but, um, Oh hush. And I remember, I remember like just the anxiety.

01:17:50

I would feel when we would go out of town just to hear from this particular pastor, you know, to have this pastor speak into our lives.

01:17:57

They know something about me that no one else knows. And I'm waiting to, we travel all these hours just to get to this person.

01:18:05

And I remember leaving, I remember at times we would go to those services I'm praying and I'm fasting and we get there and that person don't even come my row.

01:18:15

And I remember leaving. I remember just having those times when I would leave from those conferences, just like, just full of anxiety.

01:18:22

It's like, okay, God, is there nothing for me? You know, I'm seeing people get hands laid on, people like speaking, they speaking to them and it's a

01:18:27

God saying, it's about you. And, and, but nobody said nothing about Jamal and just leaving.

01:18:33

There's like, okay, I don't know what to do. And I got a Bible right in my hand, you know what I'm saying? There's a Bible right in our hand and we carry with us, but I'm, I'm so distraught because this individual who

01:18:43

I believe actually hears from God has nothing to say to me that God ain't even thinking about me.

01:18:50

You know, it's just, man, this conversation, like this, this topic we're dealing with, it's such a, it's such a soft spot for me because it's just, it's, it's so like, oh man, the damage that it causes to an individual when you're underneath that and you really believe in that kind of that stuff, you know, it's, it's, it's wild.

01:19:13

Absolutely. So I have a question and this may end up being something we have to address at a later date because it might draw this conversation into a money trail, but how would you speak to a brother or sister in Christ who gives a testimony where crucial parts of their testimony are miraculous healings or voices from God?

01:19:37

And this is a person that you interact with on a daily basis who walks with the Lord and seems to have a, a good

01:19:44

Christian, you know, philosophy and the way they work their lives and whatever.

01:19:51

But when they give their testimony, almost the beginning and the whole crucial part of their testimony is based on something like that.

01:20:01

Well, I mean, the first thing is to realize that there's a doctrine of concurrence.

01:20:08

God could take Joseph being sold as a slave and use it for his glory.

01:20:13

That's exactly what Joseph realizes at the end of, you know, Genesis, right?

01:20:19

Genesis chapter 50 or 49. He's saying to his brothers, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good to save people today.

01:20:29

Right? So they, there's this doctrine where even though that something evil was happening,

01:20:36

God can use it for his good. Are those miraculous things happening? Again, I don't exegete experience.

01:20:42

I can't say it happened or didn't happen. I can't say that, that their recollection is, is a hundred percent.

01:20:52

So, you know, I don't, I'm not gonna, I guess, question and challenge it so much as much as to say, you know, that it's just not, unless you have chapter and verse,

01:21:04

I'm not going to say it's of God, which gets people upset.

01:21:10

I mean, I, you know, when Matt Slick and I were talking about his thing and he would be like, you know, are you saying the devil did it?

01:21:16

I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying it was God. I'm not saying it was the devil. I'm not saying,

01:21:21

I'm just saying I can't execute your experience and I can't tell you what you're, you're, how accurate your memory is.

01:21:29

Cause I, there's no way to verify the events. And we can create false memories.

01:21:35

All of us can do that even when we don't realize that we're doing it. And, and we, we, we think we're, you know, you begin to tell the story and we think it really happened when in actuality it didn't.

01:21:48

And it's not that we're being dishonest, intentionally dishonest, but we've just, we've created false memories and people do that all the time.

01:21:58

Yeah. All the time. You know, and then this particular person that I'm, I'm thinking of when I speak of this and I'm not going to give identifying information, but I.

01:22:08

Don't do that. Just give his name, address, phone number. I'm most concerned because this person gives this testimony in a, in a kind of like a introduction to people and in an attempt to like share the gospel with them.

01:22:23

And so it's like a testimony that is spoken frequently into people, other people's lives.

01:22:29

And. I cringe. I cringe every time Matt Slick has asked how to prove, you know, that he saved because he'll tell you if you ask him, he's going to say, well, he, he had a physical, you know, or, you know, presence of God of Christ there.

01:22:50

And he says, he just knows it's Christ, you know? And it, I cringe every time.

01:22:55

Cause I'm like, you know, no. Like, how do you know? Because scripture says so, you know, scripture says this is what

01:23:04

God does and this is what changes you to expect. And there's evidence of those changes in life. Scripture also says about the prophets is each of them had a sign.

01:23:14

And this time next year, this is going to happen. Ezekiel, I think it was had all those signs where he had to lay down at one side and lay down on the other side and, and they meant something.

01:23:26

And those signs happened. They were foreshadowing of real events that God said, warn these people about Moses was given signs with the staff and others, the plagues.

01:23:40

Those are all signs. Whenever a prophet, has a word from God, where is their sign?

01:23:48

Because the prophet knows what they heard. The prophet knows their experience, but if he wants to convince others, there needs to be a physical sign.

01:23:58

So that's why the Pharisees are always asking Jesus for a sign, show us your sign. He did the signs all around him, for all his entire ministry.

01:24:07

But I think, you know, I think a lot of modern day people are well -intentioned when they say word from God, but how do

01:24:15

I know? How can I trust that? You tell me or show me something that I can have proof to latch onto to say,

01:24:25

Hey, this guy said that next week I'm going to get a check in the mail. How would he know that unless he was a prophet?

01:24:32

Now, now I'll believe this other stuff is telling me to do it to Africa or whatever, you know, but there needs to be a sign.

01:24:40

Now we have God's word, it's written. I would take God's word over any verbal word that a so -called prophet told me.

01:24:50

I wanted to share a little story. I have a Mormon next door neighbor for whatever reason. We have had a

01:24:57

Mormon live next door to us, different houses at every single point of the last 21 years.

01:25:07

And, and so we have these great theological conversations. I was trying to tell you, you need a

01:25:12

Mormon outreach. Well, Hey, I started that when I was in high school. I used to spend my lunch hours sharing the gospel with Mormons.

01:25:20

So she and I have these great conversations. She, she has the, you know, we've great theological conversations, really great theological conversations, but she told me one day the reason she knew it was true.

01:25:33

Wasn't the burning in the bosom conversation, but because of a prophecy that had come over her that came true.

01:25:40

And that just really hit me because we have a lot of times when somebody says, well, this thing happened and it did come true, but we know that my

01:25:52

Mormon neighbor and her church are not hearing from the voice of God. And I'm going to just add, this will probably be the last thing

01:26:00

I say in this conversation, but I'm going to be a good Presbyterian here and quote from the

01:26:05

Westminster confession. And only I find this to be so helpful the whole time that everyone's been talking and I've been listening here.

01:26:13

I think there's a lot you can look it up. Westminster confession is one, one easy to remember. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and Providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God as to leave men inexcusable yet.

01:26:29

Are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation.

01:26:36

Therefore, please the Lord at sundry times and in diverse manners to reveal himself and declare that his will and to his church and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and malice of Satan and of the world to commit the same

01:26:57

Holy unto writing, which make it the Holy scripture to be the most necessary. Those former ways of God's revealing his will and to his people being now ceased.

01:27:06

And I would love Justin. I want to make sure we get to this important point because I think this is an important point to talk about.

01:27:15

The Canon is now closed. We don't need extra revelation.

01:27:22

That's right. That's exactly right. Colleen. And that's, that's another aspect of this we haven't yet explored is if God is still speaking in a direct quotable sense outside of scripture, then the

01:27:37

Canon of scripture must be open because whatever

01:27:43

God says to people should be just as authoritative as any verse in scripture is

01:27:50

John three 16 as Romans 10, you know, nine and 10, whatever, whatever verse in scripture, it should have the same authority.

01:27:58

And, uh, I hear people do this all the time. They, they, they understand there's a tension there and they say, well,

01:28:04

I'm not saying it's as authoritative as scripture. You know, Beth Moore says this, um,

01:28:12

Sarah Young says this, and Jesus calling all of them say it, all of them. It's not as authoritative as scripture.

01:28:18

And my question is, why isn't it? Why isn't it? So when God speaks in the

01:28:24

Bible, he really, really, really means it. But when he somehow, when he speaks to us outside of the

01:28:30

Bible, he, he still means it, but not quite as much as he meant it in scripture.

01:28:36

How does that work? Did God have his fingers crossed? I mean, he just cut in sort of minute, but not as much

01:28:43

God. God cannot speak less authoritatively on one occasion than he does on another.

01:28:52

If God is speaking, God is speaking. And then whatever he says should be just as authoritative as any verse in the scripture.

01:29:02

So all of these people going around saying, God spoke to me, he told me this, he told me that, okay, then we need to add that to the

01:29:10

Bible. Okay. So just one problem with that. Yeah. The Bible says, do not add to the

01:29:16

Bible. God's word says we are not to add to God's word. So, uh, yeah, you've, you've opened up a huge, huge can of worms.

01:29:26

When, when you start saying thing, well, God spoke to me and said, quote, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Um, then we've got an open canon of scripture again, and there's just no way around that.

01:29:35

So the, the argument that they make though, Justin, is that in the end of the book of John, it says there's many other things he can, he could have written.

01:29:44

Yeah. The books wouldn't contain them. So their argument is going to be, well, the, the, we don't need to add it to scripture, um, because it wasn't meant to be part of the canon.

01:29:54

So the, the question though is, is what makes the canon authoritative?

01:30:01

Well, the, the canon itself says it is. I mean, scripture is, all scripture is inspired by God, profitable for doctrine, for teaching, for reproof, for correction, instruction, righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped, not partially equipped, not mostly equipped, thoroughly equipped unto every good work.

01:30:21

And the, the argument, well, well, Jesus said, and did a lot of things that are not recorded in scripture.

01:30:27

Well, of course he did. That's what, as Andrew says, what scripture records, but whatever

01:30:33

Jesus did say, that is not recorded in scripture. I guarantee you, it would still be authoritative. It's just that God and his providence has chosen not to include it, but it doesn't mean it was not an authoritative.

01:30:45

Uh, I mean, as John said, if we had everything he did with the, all the books in the world, wouldn't contain it.

01:30:53

But so, so those, we don't have everything that he said, but if we did, whatever he did say would be authoritative.

01:31:02

But what people are saying now, Oh, we do have these new words. God is giving us these new words.

01:31:08

Well, okay. Then, then it's authoritative. It's, it's, it's canon. It should be, it should be added to scripture.

01:31:14

It should have the same authority as scripture. And that's the, the thing is what makes the word of God and authority is that it's the word of God, right?

01:31:25

It's, it's God speaking it. That makes it an authority. Therefore, if he speaks anything else, like you said, it is, it is equal in authority because it comes from the same authoritative source, whether it's written down in scripture or not, because their argument that they make is, well, there's other things that Jesus said, not everything he said was written down.

01:31:45

I'll agree with that, but everything he said was equally as authoritative. So I, the one thing to do with people that argue that way is to avoid the writing down part and whether it's added to Canon versus the authority part, because what you end up seeing is that you cannot get around the fact that what makes the

01:32:09

Bible authoritative is that God said it. So if God is saying something else, it's equally as authoritative, whether you write it in the

01:32:17

Canon or not, it's, it's equally authoritative because of the source that it comes from.

01:32:23

Yeah. I think that kind of leads us back to that, that Genesis attack, you know, where, you know,

01:32:29

Satan says in Genesis three, you know, has God really said this because, and then

01:32:34

Eve adds to what God, the command that God had given Adam about what, you know, not to eat of the trees, she said, but not to touch it too.

01:32:42

And so you add things to it and God didn't really say that. So it brings us right back to that, you know, but could

01:32:52

God have said, don't touch it too? Yeah, he might have, but it wasn't recorded in scripture that he didn't say, don't touch it too.

01:33:00

Yeah, but I'm not giving Eve too hard of a time because he, hold on. No, because, because you know, everyone always blames

01:33:07

Eve for adding to the scripture, but we don't know that. Seriously. Think about this.

01:33:15

Go, go back to Genesis three and think about it. All we know is that Satan came to her and, and an interesting ploy, right?

01:33:24

There's, and, and this is something I say when it comes to the women preachers.

01:33:30

And when you have to go, so women can't do anything in church because they, cause you say they can't do one thing.

01:33:36

If you go and you look at Genesis three, Satan comes and says, so you can't eat of any tree when, when there's only one she couldn't eat of.

01:33:44

But what does it say? Keep in mind, when you look at Genesis one and two, Eve wasn't there when the instruction was given to Adam.

01:33:53

Okay. So, Hey, I could picture Adam being the one to tell her, don't even touch it.

01:33:59

Maybe she's just repeating what Adam told her. Yeah. Adam could be in the wrong there. Yeah.

01:34:05

See, so I, you know, Eve has gotten a bad flack for many years, about 6 ,000 of them.

01:34:12

And it could be Adam. I mean, we already know he tried to, you know, blame her and shift the burden onto her once before, you know,

01:34:23

So, sorry. Couldn't, couldn't help that one, but let's, I want to change gears for a second, get into more than a second.

01:34:33

Obviously. I want to deal with this, the language issue. This is one thing that we end up seeing a lot with folks, and this will be the last topic.

01:34:44

I think we'll, we get to, to, to wrap up, you know, what do we do with people that, we're hearing people talk about this language.

01:34:56

The Lord spoke to me. You know, I got a word from the

01:35:01

Lord. Lord put an impression on my heart. We've already used some of these words, phrases, throughout here.

01:35:13

So what do you guys say? What do we, how do we react to those things? you know, I think we've kind of all been in agreement.

01:35:20

They, we wouldn't see them as, as biblical, but what do we do with people that, that use that kind of language?

01:35:28

I'm going to let Justin go first only because I know that he's got, he's got an appointment to get to.

01:35:36

So I'll let him answer. And then I know Andy already had to drop off, but I'll let

01:35:42

Justin go first and then we can talk about him when he's gone. I mean, yeah.

01:35:49

Yeah. And I, I, this is a good point because I recognize a lot of this is kind of the lingo.

01:35:57

I'm not, I know and understand that not everybody who says, you know, kind of casually, well, yeah, the

01:36:03

Lord, Lord laid it on my heart. Lord told me to do such and such. I think a lot of people haven't really thought through the implications of what they're saying.

01:36:12

They just say that kind of flippantly and carelessly. I would just say that we've got to be, we've, we've got to be very careful.

01:36:19

If there's any area of life in which we need care and precision, it is in theology.

01:36:27

So we've got to, I think we've just got to tighten up our lingo and kind of understand what we're saying, what we're conveying to people when we, when we're too, too careless with the language and the terminology that we use.

01:36:42

So a lot of people that say those things, they don't necessarily mean it like Benny Hinn means, means it.

01:36:49

But, but that is the, that is the lingo. And we have to be very careful. Benny Hinn repented.

01:37:03

He's good now. Is he still repented? I haven't heard. Let's talk about that for a while. I think most people are well -intended.

01:37:13

And they, they know what they mean. And I mean, if they were to say something like that in a random crowd, people give them a funny looks like that person's crazy.

01:37:24

But I, I do think that people are, you know, well -intended and sincere.

01:37:30

They feel like, you know, God has placed this in their life. But yeah,

01:37:36

I think the wording could be different. Well, do you think maybe sort of conscious of what they're talking about?

01:37:44

Yeah, well. All right. Thanks, Justin. It was nice having you here.

01:37:51

Yes. God bless. Again. What's that? Join us again. Oh, I'd love to.

01:37:57

I sure will. All right. Take care guys. All right. We'll talk about, you know, okay. Hey, Justin, before you go, before you go,

01:38:07

I got a word from the Lord that you're taking me to a fine sushi place this week.

01:38:12

That's. We're going to see if this happens. I'll let you buy.

01:38:23

Well, I'll, I'll see you tomorrow. Lord willing. See you tomorrow. Tomorrow. So this is one of the things

01:38:31

I guess that I was, you know, you said it, Keith, I think said it was the conscience. One of the things that I think is a struggle with this.

01:38:40

Is the fact that you have people that, that go to churches. Like I said, with the guy who

01:38:46

Mitch, who used to work for us, he didn't know any other language. when he got saved, he was only saved for a few months.

01:38:53

And this is the lingo that they spoke. And so he was like surprised that I rejected that lingo.

01:39:00

But for, for some people, they don't, they may not. And this is where I guess

01:39:06

I want to say we should have a caution. People may not always have the meaning that we think of like the, that a

01:39:12

Benny Hinn would have when he says things like that for, I think for a lot of people, it's just a lingo.

01:39:18

It's just that they mean like, like he said, they mean the conscience or a feeling, but they're attributing it to God without thinking through all of the theological ramifications of what they're saying.

01:39:32

Yeah. I was going to say the way you answer it, I think it really depends on the situation.

01:39:39

Cause Andrew, like you said, people might mean different things. And if somebody is a new Christian, you may need to approach it with some, some really gentleness and wisdom, not yeah,

01:39:51

I can tell you, God didn't tell you that, or, you know, that's not necessarily going to be a fruitful way to respond.

01:39:57

I I've dealt with this because we did an episode called private revelations in the will of God.

01:40:02

And by the way, I have a bunch of resources on this topic. If you go to theology, gals .com and look up that episode, that can be helpful.

01:40:09

And it's actually the resources I give to people when this comes up, but I had several girls message me and say, okay, this

01:40:15

I'm just totally shook about this because in my church, people say all the time, God told me, and now

01:40:21

I'm thinking about this. And, you know, the way that I responded to each of these girls was a lot dependent on where they were in their

01:40:28

Christian walk. One of the girls, very new Christian. And I was just extremely gentle and took a lot of time with her.

01:40:34

So I think it, I think it depends. And I think we should use wisdom and grace and, and be respectful.

01:40:42

It's interesting. I can see a new Christian parroting the language because they want to be like everybody else.

01:40:51

Other people in church, you see these things, you know, I should be saying it too.

01:40:57

And they may not really fully understand. You know what they're saying when they say, you know, the Lord spoke to me, the

01:41:02

Lord said this or, or whatever. And maybe, you know, God could put it on your heart. You may have been, you know, reading scriptures or devotional and something.

01:41:12

There, the Holy spirit touched your heart. Then I can say, yeah, he touched, he spoke to you through the scripture.

01:41:20

And you can point to it and say, right here. I think that should be doing this. So, I mean, there's still, it's still kind of a touchy area.

01:41:30

They just wanted to make sure. You can tell the difference between your emotion and the truth.

01:41:38

Yeah. Maybe like Colin was saying, we should, we deal with it a little bit more tactfully than I do by saying it could be

01:41:45

Harper. Right. Well, I've, I've, I've experienced both sides of that were as far as where I've been a little too, too blunt where I should have been more reserved and more patient.

01:42:00

Like Colin was saying, and then there's been times where I've dialed it back a lot and I've seen the fruit of it as far as just taking your time with individual.

01:42:08

I mean, it was times where someone would come to me and they'll say they heard something. I wouldn't be as tactful as Andrew and say his heartburn, but I would say,

01:42:18

I would just bluntly just say, no, that ain't, that wasn't God. You know, I was like, no, God, or I'd be like,

01:42:24

Oh, Oh, so you can put it in the Bible. And I just say it like that. I come off like that. Like, no, I was like, well, that wasn't

01:42:29

God. And I'm like, you know, and then I would realize like, after you look at their face and you tell like, man, okay,

01:42:36

I could have waited. I could have been a little more patient with that, but that response, because you know, this is people are sincere.

01:42:42

You know, that people are really sincere in what they believe. You know, not everybody's intending on being deceitful and wanting to lead themselves astray or others astray.

01:42:52

They really believe this is the leading of the Lord. And when they, when they come to you, and so I definitely agree with that,

01:42:58

Colleen, that's a good, that's a great point. It's something I've been praying and seeking the Lord and growing, growing in over the years.

01:43:04

You know, when I deal with it, it's like I said, I have a soft spot in this area. So it's like a, it's a, it's a pet peeve of mine.

01:43:10

And so, but I also had to remember. And when times like that, it's like I was there, you know, you know, and you said, you said it's more fruitful.

01:43:20

And so I'll just add to that. Something I've talked about in my podcast that I always taught my children is sometimes my kids would say something and I'd say,

01:43:28

Austin, why are Ian? Ian's my troublemaker. Ian, why did you say that to Austin? And he'd say, but it's true.

01:43:34

And I'd say, well, just because, I mean, any parent knows exactly what I'm talking about here. Right. Just because it's true does not mean you need to say, say that, you know,

01:43:43

Austin's going through a little chunky phase at 12 years old. You don't need to tell him he knows, you know? And so I'd say, but was that wise to say it?

01:43:51

And to say it in that way, was it gracious? Was it going to be fruitful? You know?

01:43:57

And so I, I try to remind myself of those things when I, cause

01:44:02

I feel very strongly about a lot of things, Andrew will tell you, and I have to be careful. No, not at all.

01:44:12

I would say I had an actual experience where I had, I used to teach the high school girls in my class church.

01:44:22

And I had a young man that was in the youth group come up and ask me, it was actually before a service.

01:44:28

It was like between a Sunday school and service. And he asked me whether, you know, if, if somebody had, had told him that God had said that if to be a

01:44:40

Christian, you couldn't. And he said, and this is just an example that you couldn't smoke and be a

01:44:45

Christian. And, or you couldn't drink alcohol and he was using it as an example. He says, would, would that, could you add that to Christianity?

01:44:54

I was like, no, because there's no pre cut preconditions to salvation. You just, it's only what the scripture says.

01:45:02

And if you add things to it, then you're adding to your, you're making it a workspace.

01:45:08

Faith instead of, you know, relying on God to save you. And, and I, and then I chewed on it because the service started and I chewed on it through the entire service.

01:45:15

And then I approached him afterwards and actually had earmarked some parts of scripture and showed him, you know, parts places in scripture where it, it would actually be against scripture for you to take somebody's word of the

01:45:30

Lord over what scripture said. And, and he turned to me, he says, I'm so glad you pointed these scripture things out to me.

01:45:37

He says, I asked the youth minister about this and he, he didn't have an answer like you did. And I was like, well,

01:45:43

So I think it is important to us to be able to take people back to scripture. And explain to them why.

01:45:51

Something like that is not. Usable as a, as a Christian faith or a doctrine.

01:45:57

You have to always be able to point back to scripture. And that always goes back to scripture when you're need to read about somebody like that.

01:46:04

And a lot of times they're very thankful for it. Yeah. It's interesting.

01:46:10

In, in more recent conversations where I've dealt with people who claim to have heard from the Lord or that. Somebody that God has spoke to them or that a pastor spoke to them.

01:46:20

I would take them. I would just say, Hey, you know, read with me on Hebrews one, and I'll just take them to the Hebrews one passage where it says now, now, in these days,

01:46:29

God speaks to us through his son. And I would just, just magnify how

01:46:34

God did use prophets and show them like how God did use prophets to speak to people. But now he's spoken to us through his son, but we have the word of God, the

01:46:42

Logos at this. I won't go all that deep, but I tell them, this is the word of God. This is Jesus speaking to us, you know, through the word.

01:46:49

And I would just, you know, try to bring it that way graciously without telling them. Oh, that all that's, that's, that's, that's a false, you know, and just bring it, just trying to give scripture to back what

01:46:59

I'm saying, you know, just to show them. And I've had people actually read with me and say, it was like,

01:47:05

Oh, so you, okay. So, so what is it then? It would drive a conversation. I'm not going to try to prolong it, but it would drive along a conversation when they were asked questions versus feeling offended because I just opened, just told them not as wrong.

01:47:20

Okay, dude. So I think, I think we covered quite a bit of ground. I don't know if anyone else has any, anything else on this topic.

01:47:31

So we got to come up with something for next throw down next month. I'm thinking maybe

01:47:38

Jamal provided it. I have some ideas. Unless you already have one. No, go ahead and do your ideas. Well, I was going to take the, the

01:47:45

Jamal. Throw yours out there, Coleen. Yours. I want to hear Jamal's first. Mine can always wait.

01:47:51

Not really, but most recent episode was on divorce. And, you know, that could be an interesting discussion, divorce and remarriage.

01:48:01

That, then maybe we'll finally, we would disagree on something. We haven't disagreed on anything yet.

01:48:09

You know, cool. Colleen and I did this before on a, on a, on a different network. There was lots of disagreement.

01:48:15

Yeah. I think there's lots of topics. Divorce and remarriage.

01:48:20

That passes and be considered the man of one wife. Yeah. Divorce person become your pastor.

01:48:28

There's something with your audio, Keith. It's hard to hear you. Can you hear me now?

01:48:34

No, All right. Well, yeah. So that was my thought.

01:48:40

Maybe we could do divorce and remarriage, but only, what did you have for thoughts? You know, maybe my idea doesn't work as well because it's not gonna, it's not going to be a theological throw down.

01:48:53

I do think something like sanctification. That's a good one.

01:48:58

Would be good because since we're, some of us are coming from different theological frameworks.

01:49:05

And so we might approach that differently. I think that would be one that we would have some respectful disagreements on.

01:49:13

We sort of did that in the last throw down, but we could, all right, well, we will get together.

01:49:19

So folks, you'll get to figure out what we do next month, next month. This is a monthly podcast.

01:49:27

We are going to drop the first 30 close together, but we also want to give an announcement that is for folks to know.

01:49:38

If you don't know, you can go to our contest. We're running through the end of February.

01:49:44

It is a Christian podcast community contest. It's to help promote all the different podcasts that we have.

01:49:49

And we have a number of them, 20 plus podcasts. We continue to grow and you could go to the easiest way is just go to bit .ly

01:49:58

.com bit .ly .com. B -I -T -L -Y .com slash

01:50:04

CPC contest. That CPC stands for Christian podcast community. So bit .ly

01:50:09

.com slash CPC contest. And you will be, you'll get to, they'll redirect you to the podcasts.

01:50:20

Striving for eternity .org slash contest. So either way you can go to either one of them. There's, I think like a hundred, 120 there's over a hundred ways to enter like 125 ways to enter ones that have different entry amounts.

01:50:33

And so one person will get picked at random. We're giving away over a thousand dollars worth of books,

01:50:41

DVDs, CDs, flash drives, different podcasters from the community keep adding stuff. So I keep putting it onto the list.

01:50:48

And so it keeps growing. So if you want to see everything that we have there, that you go to the contest, there's a link to the full list of everything that's included and that's there for you.

01:51:01

So you could see what you would win if you are the winner. And we encourage you to enter often.

01:51:06

This is one of those times like in Chicago where it was, you know, vote early vote often with this time you actually can.

01:51:12

It's would actually be legal. So we encourage you to enter early and enter often. And the more entries you have, the greater the chance you have of winning.

01:51:22

So someone is going to walk away with a very large box of basically a brand new library for themselves.

01:51:29

I think the recent edition we got was the, the movie truth and spirit.

01:51:35

So that got added in. Andy Olson sent in some books that I added. I'm just looking at one of them, the parable of the fig tree by Ryan Haber, Haberman.

01:51:47

I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Sorry, but so that, that was added. Those were added in.

01:51:54

So that continues to grow. So go check that out, go, you know, be part of that contest.

01:51:59

And really part of that is to help you get to find out about all the podcasts that we have out in the

01:52:06

Christian podcast community. If you want to check those out, other podcasts, you're looking for good material to listen, just go to Christian podcast, community .org.

01:52:18

And from there, you're going to get the, all the podcasts you'll, you get to our website where you can go to the show, to the different shows and see all of the podcasts that we have available and listen to them.

01:52:29

If you want to say, Hey, I just want one podcast that has it all. Well then just in any podcast app, just search for Christian podcast community.

01:52:38

And that podcast will get you all of them. So I appreciate everyone who came in and offered their input.

01:52:46

Again, this is the third week. We haven't had much disagreement, but we'll keep trying to find a topic.

01:52:51

You know, I think, I think we might, you know, we will eventually get one that we can disagree, but maybe the divorce one would be, you know, we'll see how, you know,

01:53:00

Jamal's part, most recent podcast for how much I agree with it or not. We'll have to see, but we'll pick a topic.

01:53:10

We'll be back next month. And we're glad that you were here to join us.