Responding to the Open Letter to Justin Peters

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Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pearce.

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your challenging questions that you have. Anything about God and the Bible, we can answer them here. We can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible, because I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. I'm glad to have you with us. There may be a little echo here. I'm still up in Boston with my grandson, and so he's now, I guess, four weeks old, and so we're still up here.

And the only place that actually was conducive, if you remember last week, was here in the sanctuary. So I'm actually at the pulpit of the sanctuary, because that's where the Wi-Fi was the best. So if it's a little echoey, I'm sorry.

I'll just give that as a apology up front. So I will say that, just I'll say this again at the end, next week Dr. Silvestro was gonna have a guest talking creation. We're then gonna have probably about five weeks of reruns.

I'm working on those now, but the last few we're gonna be important, because when I get back March 23rd, I have a debate. But it's going to be a fun debate. Maybe not. The topic of debate is, does the Bible teach the Trinity?

And it will not be that just me versus one person. It's gonna be me versus four people. Not just me versus four people, but four black Hebrew Israelites. So we will see how that goes. And so I will have try to put up some of the older messages where we dealt with black Hebrew Israelites or Torahism.

And so that you'll be able to be ready for that. But that will be on March 23rd. And so the gentleman told me that I was set up with to have the discussion. He said it was it'll be a debate. And he's bringing two or three friends.

I said, he said, and he suggests I bring friends too. I said, that's okay. I have a Bible. That's really all I needed. So me and a Bible versus three or four black Hebrew Israelites. I'm sure that's going to be fun.

Now I will say that my computer right now, I plugged in and went, took my bride out to eat and thought that the computer was plugged in and the outlet wasn't on. So my battery, it was completely drained when I got in.

And so there is the chance that I may be struggling and have to shut things down, but we're going to hope that everything goes well. So with that, let me bring Drew in. Drew is going to act as a co-host with me.

Now you've been actually co-hosting with me because you and I just recorded like four episodes of the rap report that will be out later this month. Well, while I'm in Israel and in I'll be in Israel and then I'll be at shepherds conference.

And you decided to trigger me with some Andy Stanley. And I know everybody's talking Andy Stanley, but what we dealt with was from 10 years ago. That's right. Which reveals that this, the stuff we're going to talk about in that episode, it's not something new with him.

This has been.

A long-term thing. Yeah. Yeah. This has been going on for a while. So when people start talking about Andy Stanley as though this is a new thing, it's like, well, where have you been for the last 10 years?

Like especially here in Georgia, we've.

Been hearing it for a while. Yeah. So, um, so what we wanted to do was just check in for the, in the news section before we get to the main thing. And I should say that, uh, I know Justin Peters was trying to, to get in, but Justin, uh, for those that remember Justin and I were both doing a trip to Israel, we're going to do it together.

And then there was this thing called COVID that occurred. Uh, well, our trip got postponed, postponed and eventually canceled. And then when we redid it, uh, we ended up doing it differently where he's going with Jim Osmond, which is his old church.

And I'm going with Matt slick. And so he's going, he's leaves this, uh, this upcoming week and there'll be gone for two weeks. And as soon as they come back, we leave. And so, uh, just in the midst of trying to get everything packed up and whatnot, um, I doubt he's going to make it.

He might come in later. We'll see. Uh, so in the new section, um, you know, there's an interesting thing that's been happening. And so I want to ask you, Drew, to just look around your office there. I want to know, do you, do you have any, uh, classified documents laying around?

Um,.

Not in here. Should I go check by my car? Yeah. Maybe you should check in your.

Corvette or, you know, this is for, for a lot of folks. Um, this issue with these classified documents is, is super concerning. Now, the reason that I bring it up is there's major issues with classified documents.

Now, if you're a president, the United States, president Trump, president Obama, Bush, you know, you go back, the president can declassify a document. So documents typically, uh, the way that they work is once they're classified, they're classified for a specific number of years, usually 25, 30 years.

And then they're either reclassified after that time, uh, or, you know, certain documents will have a longer period of time. Uh, if not the basically until they become declassified either by time or by the president order or something like that, uh, what ends up happening is that those documents remain, uh, classified.

And so the thing is, is that we had this whole raid on, on Trump's house. Uh, you know, I, I have dealt with classified documents in a previous life. Um, there's, you, you don't just have them laying around folks.

This is not the sort of thing that you go to the office and you, you get your documents and then you, you leave. Yeah. You just spread them out all over the floor. Yeah. No. Dot. When you deal with classified documents, they are there to be in what's called a skiff.

It's a area where is locked up. You can't bring a cell phone in there. You can't bring any electronics in there. You go in, you have, you have to check out documents. You then have to read them, check them back in.

So there's a check and balance or at least supposed to be so that you can see documents. So this is, this is the sort of thing that they don't just get late laying around. Someone has to account for those missing documents.

And in fact, every six months to a year, usually someone's job it is to go through all the documents.

To make sure everything checked out is checked in. Right? Yeah. That's, that's a, a distinct position in the national archives. Yeah. Yeah. And so it is.

Concerning to me that there'd be so many supposedly, supposedly classified documents floating around. Now, why do I say supposedly? Because here's the thing, folks. Um, there's a lot of discussion over these documents.

And one thing I just want to say is you can have a document that's been declassified, but still has classified markings. Right. Okay. President Barack Obama made an, an, an order basically that anything that he took out of a classified area was automatically declassified.

So if he brought classified documents home, they're declassified. Well, if that's the case, then guess what? When Trump brings those documents home, they're automatically declassified. Right. Um, I don't think that's a, I personally don't think that's a good thing to do.

Uh, I'm against that model, but, uh, Joe Biden, when he was vice president or Mike Pence, both of them had classified documents. Um, and, and, and, and this is the thing like almost every president has because they, they're dealing with many documents and they don't handle them as, as carefully.

The reality, um, they're usually not threatened. They don't get threatened with jail time if they, if they break the rules, but, but, you know, others of us who, who we will. So the thing though, is when you hear about all these documents, just be aware, even though some of them and concerning that, that Joe Biden had some as a Senator, um, these could be documents that were declassified, but the markings weren't removed.

Now they're supposed to be removed and they might not be. So it is concerning how many and all the places and the most concerning thing. And this is the one thing that I want to bring up for the, in the news section is the fact that we deal with classified documents and we deal with Hunter Biden's laptop and his negotiations with Ukraine, which Joe Biden was over and dealing with.

And if these documents, this is the one thing that it does become a major issue is if these documents were, they were in supposedly the house, um, that his son lived in and his son did negotiations with Ukraine and China and Russia.

And so the issue becomes, did he have access to these classified documents? And if he got them from his father, even from his father, leaving them around, the issue is that either Joe Biden or Hunter Biden could be acting as foreign agents without registering as such.

That is considered treason in the country. And that would be greatly concerning. And, and that's something that we need to, I think, need to, uh, be able to address. I think that I, I mean, that's something that DOJ must get to the bottom of.

Will.

They? I doubt it very highly not. Yeah. I mean, if they happen by now and especially with the whole dilemma with Hunter Biden's laptop and I mean, that's a no brainer, right? They know what's on it and they don't pursue it.

Yeah. They're not going to pursue any, anything with Joe Biden.

Responding to the Open Letter to Justin Peters

All right. So now let's get to the main thing. And what I want to do is welcome for the first time. Uh, Zach, how are you, sir? I'm doing well. Thank you very much. So I appreciate you coming in. It's something that, you know, one of the things that, uh, you know, I do on this show and regulars, you, you know, this, that I, I want to give people opportunity to, to, to voice with their own views as well.

I don't shut people down. Um, I maybe get criticized for that when we have debates on different topics and have black Hebrew Israelites and things like that. And people say I give them too much time, but it's my show the following week, I could spend three hours rebutting them.

And so I don't, right. I, I, I always liked, um, Ben Shapiro got all kinds of heat for having John MacArthur on his program. And basically it was like, I think an hour long program of John MacArthur, just sharing the gospel with Ben Shapiro.

And, and Ben Shapiro got some heat because he didn't, he didn't, uh, what they felt like correct John MacArthur. And I thought Ben had a very interesting take. He said, look, it's my show. I invited him on as a guest.

I'm going to let him speak. And I can always rebut everything, rebut everything he said on my next show. So, you know, uh, and that's been a thing. Look, we had the Canadian atheist in here. We used to have, he used to come in regularly and we do shows responding to him.

So, um, so we're going to deal with, uh, today what I want to deal with, uh, is Zach, you, you put out an open letter to Justin Peters. Um, we plan to go through this, uh, this letter and I want to, um, I want to address this.

Uh, my plan, you know, is to address this from a logical perspective. Drew, I know you, you ended up doing a, on your podcast. I'll let you plug your podcast, but you, you had addressed the, the letter a little differently than, than I planned to, but.

You know, let you plug your podcast real quick. Yeah. So, uh, Zach, I don't know.

If you heard it. Probably not. Um, no, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that you had.

A podcast. It's okay. Uh, he's got two, he's got two, but I only know a matter.

Of theology. Cause that's the only one on, on the Christian podcast community.

Yeah. That's usually matter of theology is usually the only one Andrew will let me speak about on here, but not true. My other one is called for life and godliness. And, uh, it's a little shorter format, but, uh, I did, uh, kind of go through the letter.

Um, and if you listen to it, Hey, I, I hope you think that I, that I did so, uh, respectfully and graciously. Um, you know, I didn't want it to be an attack or anything like that, but I did kind of go through kind of line by line, uh, your parts of the letter.

And that's what we plan to do.

Here now. Just, uh, there's a guy, Matthew went backstage. Uh, if you get your camera working, um, we can, if you have questions, just put those in the private chat, which folks just, if you want to join us, uh, anytime that we're, we're live.

And I got to say that because now that we're actually going to plan to do some reruns, there are times we won't be live, but you'll know it because I found a way right up top up there. It'll say not live so that you know, uh, it'll say it's prerecorded.

So, um, the, the thing is everyone's asking for, for, uh, half a, if he's, if he's here, so we're going to have to bring him in. He's, he's very active in the comments. I see. Yeah. Yeah. And I may not have all the time to, uh, to be looking through all the comments.

Um, but I do see the doctrine matters podcast, uh, Stephen do one of the other podcasters at Christian podcast community. Um, he's, he's responding to him. So, uh, so we're with him in backstage there.

We are on the comments. We know it's in good hands. So, uh, what I want to do though is, uh, remind folks that you can come in, ask any questions on any topic throughout the show. We're going to try, we're going to try to do is spend the first hour of the, of these shows going forward.

The first hour is going to be on the topic, and then we're going to go to people's questions. And the way to get the questions in is to please come in, um, through, go to apologetics live .com as both drew and, and Zach did, and then click on a little duck icon, which is stream yard.

And you'll be able to, um, to, to join us there. And, uh, I may or may not be able to respond to all the comments tonight. So with that said, let me, I want to bring up, I'm going to share the open letter Zach that you had done to Justin.

And I just, what I did to make it a little bit easier is I just put it into a text thing so that we're not just, it's harder to read with all the, with, uh, all the Facebook stuff. So, so this is, and I'm going to read each, each part of this.

And, and, uh, kind of what I'd like to do actually is, um, just so we have context, I'm going to, I'm going to read the whole thing. Um, or in fact, Zach, would you, would you want to read it? Sure. It's, I mean, you, you, it's your word.

So maybe since you're here, it's better having you read it and I'll just, and I'll.

Scroll. Yeah. Don't, don't take the words out of his mouth. You know, I just.

Realized I misspelled hashtag. Um, and had I known that I would have fixed that already. That's going to bother me for a while.

Where? Oh, hold on. Hold on. I don't see it misspelled.

Oh, it's down. Um, no, no, no. I just corrected it. Oh, thank you. No, I, I miss, I actually misspelled it on my post cause I printed it.

Out so I can,. Oh, I know that's where I copied it from, but I just, that was my.

Fault. Sorry. Um, but yeah, I'll be happy to read it. So I'm responding to this publicly because you posted it publicly. Here's your statement as made evident by the screenshot below. As cessationists, and I'm quoting Justin here, as cessationists, you and I should see no ground to this charismatics in our view of the Holy Spirit.

It is not we who have a low view of the Holy Spirit. It is they who have a low view of the Holy Spirit of God. And then this is my comment here. I want to begin by stating that you are my brother in Christ and I love you.

That being said, this is one of the most divisive statements I've ever seen a minister in your position make. What an egregious statement that reeks of pompensity. You're better than this brother. This statement does not bring any glory to Christ because it isolates hundreds of millions of faithful Christians as having a low view of the Holy Spirit.

It's not an out of context statement. As you quoted from your sermon, there was a qualifying statement to this. You left it out of your quote. If there's more context, you fail to include it. And it's certainly appearing like you, like this was meant to be a punchline, which is further evidenced by your quote truth bomb hashtag.

What was the point to slander your charismatic brothers and sisters to bear false witness against us by accusing us of having a low view of the Holy Spirit? There are many valid criticisms against charismatic.

And frankly, I'd agree with you on some of them. But this statement is absurd. With this statement, Justin, you sow division amongst the brethren and slandered brothers and sisters in Christ. Two things God abominates.

Proverbs six, your statement is categorically false. Moreover, you recently concluded a speaking engagement comparing the best of your movement to the worst of charismatics, which is just disingenuous.

Here's your quote. And I'm quoting Justin here. Charismatics have John Alexander Dowie, a cessationist. We got John Calvin. Charismatics have John G. Lake. Cessationists have Jonathan Edwards. Charismatics have Charles Fox Parham.

Cessationists have Charles Haddon Spurgeon. More modern day. Charismatics have Kenneth Copeland. We got Phil Johnson. Charismatics have Creflo Dollar. We got Boney Bauckham. Charismatics have Joel Osteen.

We got John MacArthur, end quote. I can't help but wonder why you chose not to include charismatic scholars like Jack Deere, Dr. Jack Deere, Dr. Sam Storms, Dr. Wayne Grudem, Dr. John Piper, Dr. Craig Keener, Leonard Ravenhill, Dr. Michael Brown, Dr. D .A. Carson, or Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones.

I could go on and on. And if you want to go into the early church, we can go there too. Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Cyrus of Jerusalem, Justin Martyr. The material is all over the internet to read.

You probably won't even see this, which is funny. But I don't care. This is so divisive that it grieves Christ just as much as the excesses of a charismatic movement. You're better than this. Stop making statements like this.

It's so division. You're not bringing any glory to the Holy Spirit by accusatory statements like this. Okay.

Public Response, Context, and the Charge of Divisiveness

Alright, so let's... I'm gonna go back up and I want to walk through this. And Zach, I'm glad that you're here so we can walk through this together. Okay, so you're responding to this publicly, because he posted it publicly, and obviously we're responding to this publicly, because you posted it publicly.

Yeah, and here we are. Yeah. And I'm not against dealing with things in public unless there is a means of doing things privately. That's one thing that... We often see that there's people who... I've been in cases where...

I remember someone who I was dealing with privately, and some other guys, they wanted to make it public, and when they did so, that shut down all of the private communications that we were able to have with this brother.

And to... Really, to... Unfortunately, to his detriment. And so I think there's a time where if people... If there's ways of doing things privately where we can now, if we don't have access to someone...

Drew, you and I just responded to something publicly that Andy Stanley said, although it's... I said we just did it, but it's not gonna air for, I guess, another week or two on my Rap Report podcast. We criticized a public statement that was made, right?

Now, I think there's nothing wrong when it's in the public domain. So first off that I wanna do, and some of this, Zach, I had prepared to say whether you were here or not, so if it sounds like I'm speaking in general terms, it's because I am.

So I don't think there's anything wrong. A lot of people will make the argument that when a public letter goes out... We saw this with Beth Moore, when there was a public letter that went out to her about homosexuality, asking her to take a stand on the issue.

That was something where many people criticized the women that did that, saying that they needed to deal with this privately. Well, not when someone's a public figure. In fact, if you go back on my Rap Report podcast, I did two episodes on Al Mohler, one of them dealing with Beth Moore, because Al Mohler was critical of a Catholic Canadian politician for not answering that question.

But he doesn't ask that question of a Southern Baptist preacher in America, because he's Southern Baptist. He didn't wanna address that. And so my issue was, if a politician has to answer it, how much more Beth Moore?

And so I'm not against doing things in public, but I do think there's times where if we can deal with things in private, we do. And so I don't have any problem with public letter the way it was put out.

Okay, so that was just something I wanted to address first with this. So, Zach, I'll just leave it for you or Drew, if either of.

You have comments on that. I doubt it, but... No. No, I agree.

I figured everyone would be in agreement, at least there. Okay, so here's the thing. The statement that Justin made is in the screenshot that's there. It says, as cessationists, you and I should cede no ground to the charismatics in our view of the Holy Spirit.

It is not we who have a low view of the Holy Spirit. It is they who have a low view of the Spirit of God. And so, Zach, you had said, I want to begin by stating you're my brother in Christ and I love you.

So this is something that... When we see this, there's two things. You'll often see folks... And Zach, I'm speaking more as well to the audience as it's to you as well. Sure. But... Because this is...

I mean, Apologetics Live is about doing apologetics, but teaching apologetics. That's what we try to do. So the idea of... When we recognize that we're dealing with someone who is a brother in Christ, when we're gonna say something negative, there's two things you end up seeing.

There aren't those who do that because they want to save from the fodder. If someone is going on the attack, you will see people that will be like, oh, they're a brother in Christ, now let me tear them down.

You see that with people... And where you'll see it and where you'd have a statement like this and have a concern, folks, is when you see someone saying, hey, I love you, you're a brother in Christ, and then everything they say afterwards says you're not saved, right?

If you see that, that's when you realize, you know, when they say you're a brother in Christ,.

They really don't mean it, right? It's kind of like saying, with all due respect, and then what follows is not quite respectful.

Correct. Exactly. And so the one thing that I was gonna point out is that, you know, I don't see in this... And Zach, these are things, like I said, I don't care if you're here or not, I'll say things that, you know, later that, you know, are gonna be a little bit harder, but I don't say things...

I'm not trying to flatter you in any way or anything. I planned on saying what I'm saying anyway, whether you're here or not. What I didn't see in this was, you know, here's this statement, and then later on, it's let's tear the person apart, question their salvation, say that, you know, they're of the devil and things like that.

I've seen those type of letters. And so I wanna take this and, you know, for folks... This is the very first time that Zach and I have ever spoken or seen each other. We've never met. And so, you know, this is me having to read this and take it for what I see.

So now, let's address... Or any statements there?

Yeah. Well, I would just first like to say that I genuinely do believe that Justin is a brother in Christ, and I don't want anybody to think that anything I said was in a reflection of a position that I don't have, that he's not a brother in Christ, and I obviously would consider you both brothers in Christ as well.

I'm definitely more gracious on things than I used to be, but not saying that I never thought you guys were brothers, but I just wanna make it clear that I love Justin. I've learned a lot from him over the years.

I first saw him probably 10, 12 years ago when I first was introduced to him, but I love Justin and do consider him a brother. So I just wanna make that clear. Well, I'm not sure that Drew is a brother.

He's only saying that because I'm Post Mill, okay? I'm the Post Mill whipping boy.

Wait, wait. I wasn't even gonna bring that up, but you're Post Mill. I didn't know that. Yeah. All right. So let's deal with this. So the first paragraph we have of content here to deal with, it says, that being said, this is one of the most divisive statements I have ever heard, I've ever seen as a minister in your position.

So, Zach, I'm glad that you're here, because now I can actually ask you the questions I would have asked without anyone to answer. The statement that we have a low view of the Holy Spirit, that statement, do you know where that comes from?

Which one? The low view of the Holy Spirit towards who?

Not toward anyone. But where it originates, this statement that Justin is referring to, well, there's a context to it.

Yeah. There's a context to it. And I understand that it's from people that have accused him of having a low view of the Holy Spirit. And my whole point behind that, of course, we watch his sermon, had he mentioned that, my response probably would have been different, but he didn't mention that in his presentation, which is why I took issue with it.

So the context of the statement is that it's not him, it is every cessationist. This has been made by many charismatics, but especially the leaders of the charismatic movement to claim that anyone that doesn't believe that all the gifts continue to today, the argument is that if you believe they ceased, you are somehow limiting the Holy Spirit to have a low view of the Holy Spirit.

So the question I have for you is, if this is a divisive statement for Justin to make, is it a divisive statement for Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, Bill Johnson, and every other charismatic that ever made it?

Well, as far as that's concerned, for one, statements like this that are divisive, if anybody says it on either side, then yes, it can be divisive. But my whole point in what he was saying is that he didn't preface it with that.

Had he prefaced it with that, I would have had an issue with it because somebody even commented on my post that was saying something similar to that. And I said, look, had he clarified his statement or given some context to it, he's allowed to defend himself and he's allowed to respond to that.

So I don't have a problem with that if he does that. But generally statements that draw a line in the sand between, hey, you, me, we're going to, even though being brothers and sisters in Christ, and again, I'm not saying certain people are brothers and sisters in Christ, I don't know enough about their heart, I'm not going to go into that.

But my whole point is that there are statements that are divisive.

That can be from either side of the coin. Okay. Do you believe that at a conference, a cessationist conference, that's where this was at, and I was there, I was one of the speakers, so I was there when Justin was preaching.

Do you really think that to the audience there, that they did not know the context of it? Well, he posted it on Instagram,.

So even if that's the context of it, he posted it on Instagram for people that didn't know the.

Context of it, like me. You're saying you don't know the context of that statement?

No, I know the context of it, I watched it, but what I'm saying is that you quote it, I'll say it this way, you quote it by itself to put on Instagram, so if that's his audience, that's fine, you give it to your audience, that's fine, that's the context of it.

But when you remove that and post it in it just of itself right there and have it posted on your social media, you're removing it just from, hey, this is at a cessationist conference, and now you're posting it here publicly for people to read that didn't know that this was at a cessationist conference.

And just see the statement by itself. Have you written an open letter to.

Bill Johnson? What does that have any relevance to?

I just want to see if there's consistency, and since it's guys like Bill Johnson and all these others who make the statement, when you say that this is the most divisive statement you've ever seen of a minister, and Justin's not a pastor, he's an evangelist, but there are men who are pastors, that's the role of a minister, so if you haven't written an open statement to them, then you're being divisive yourself.

In fact, you're being inconsistent and divisive.

So to that, I would say, one, how am I supposed to know what every other pastor or teacher has said? That's not for me to know, and it's not my job to either do research on that and say, well, let me go see what something Crefla Dollar said, let me go see what Bill Johnson said, let me go see what this person said, and let's see how all this is.

This is all that I saw from Justin Peters specifically, so it's not necessarily a matter of consistency with me, because again, I mean, if we wanted to take that to its logical conclusion, we could, but I don't have to respond to every single thing that every single pastor has ever said that it's.

A divisive statement. Yeah, but you did say you know the history and the origin of this, the comment of people having a low view of the Holy Spirit comes from the charismatics. It doesn't come from the cessationists.

It's the cessationists using that same line in response,.

Right? I would ask, have you heard Justin before say the context? Have you heard Justin in the past talk about how it's the charismatics who have said of the cessationists that the cessationists.

Are the ones with the low view of the Holy Spirit? To my knowledge, no. The only time that I've, I mean, the last thing that I've seen from Justin was obviously this particular presentation. I don't know the last time that I actually watched something from Justin.

It's been some time since I've seen something from Justin in full, but again, if there's context to the statement, he left it out in the post, and he didn't necessarily bring it up inside the sermon or the presentation, I would say.

I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as a sermon, which is by no means a shot at Justin, but he left that out, and I think that was my biggest issue, and I think I would like to clarify with him too, okay, but how do you define charismatic?

That was a question I have, because if there's a different definition you have, that's certainly helpful than what just the standard definition would be, so that would be.

Something. Actually, yeah, I can actually answer that, because we got into a discussion about this the other night, because we were talking about Drew's podcast, where Justin and I had some differing views with it, so Justin's view is charismatic would be anyone who believes that the charismatic gifts continue to today.

That would basically... Drew, you made a distinction between continuationist and charismatic, so I'll let you give that distinction, and then I'll let.

You know where I landed. Yeah, so the distinction I make between charismatic and continuationist is the continuationist is someone who is cautious about the gifts. They believe that the gifts can still be used, but they're more on the cautious spectrum.

They're not going out and trying to grow people's legs. They're not trying to raise people from the dead. They're not trying to prophesy over any and everybody. That would be more in the actual charismatic side, the Todd Whites and the Todd Bentleys and the Kenneth Copelands, who think they can charismatically blow COVID away, so I make the distinction between charismatic and continuationist in that sense.

I said to Justin, I thought that was a good distinction, because I think there does need to be a distinction made. What he was saying was that if you believe the gifts continue, that makes you a charismatic.

I made a distinction, and I think he kind of agreed with it, but I don't think fully, but my distinction off of what you had said, because I understood Justin's view of saying it does water down the depth what a charismatic is, and so I kind of distinguished it between practicing charismatics and open charismatics.

In other words, those who are open and cautious, their charismatics, they're open to it, they just don't do it themselves, but they still believe the gifts will continue today, and that's really the issue is, do the gifts continue to today?

Now, Zach, let me ask you, so you're saying the biggest issue you had was that Justin didn't provide context to the Instagram post, correct? Mm-hmm. Okay, and yet you do concede that he has made that context clear in other places, correct?

Well, my whole point is, okay, so if I define,.

If I say, hey, this is what I mean here, and I have a sermon, let's just use a hypothetical example of a year ago, if you're going to clarify what you mean and use a term like that, you need to clarify what you mean by that every time you use it, and if you just blanketly quote something like that without any full context, hey, by charismatic, this is what I'm referring to, or by this, this is what I'm referring to, then have your statement, because, again, if he's clarified that before, he may have, but I'm not aware of exactly where he's done it or what he's done it before, and that's pretty much my whole point behind it.