Diving Deep: Unpacking Bill Johnson's Theology on Miracles

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member. Today we're going to have a, well, a little bit maybe of a different interview.

We're going to talk about Bill Johnson. And hold on, folks, before you get upset with me, for those who like Bill Johnson, and you're going, oh, you cessationists, you just always want to pick on charismatics.

I'm just going to say, just hold your horses for a moment, okay? But I'm going to do this with a friend of mine, a fellow podcaster at the

Christian podcast community, Pastor Adam Parker. Now, Adam, when I first met,

I think when you had me on your podcast to do apologetics, and you were doing the different views of apologetics, you had me on to represent the, you know, presuppositional view.

I actually think after talking, we ended up in my apologetics live show, having each of those guys on to talk about their views in more detail.

And I think I really liked the cumulative view. I think I've kind of like lean in there. So I'm really glad that I was on there.

But you are part of the podcast you do is Bold Apologia. So introduce yourself to the audience, let folks know a little bit about you in case they're not listening to your podcast.

Why are they not doing that? You should, just saying. Yeah, so, yep, as you know, my name is

Adam Parker. I do host the Bold Apologia podcast. And in the Bold Apologia podcast, the hope and goal behind it isn't just to present arguments, you know, to, for example, maybe an atheist for why

God exists. That's kind of what you think of when you think of apologetics often, or maybe debating with Muslims, but also just to engage culture in a way where you can take a look at the issues that are happening in the world and then point people to Jesus.

And then not just that, but also taking a look at how there are certain issues in the church that need to be addressed.

And one of those being, we are talking about Bill Johnson, the hyper charismatic movement. A lot of our apologetics is actually going to be regarding church people and church issues.

A lot of the apologetics that the Apostle Paul did were, quite frankly, with people who claim to be believers.

He was actually defending the truth from people who claim to be in his camp.

It wasn't him debating with, you know, all the time, not all the time.

It wasn't always him debating with Jews resisting him or Gentiles resisting him.

There's oftentimes where he's debunking Gnostics who believe they're Christians, who are claiming

Jesus, things like that. And so, apologetics is something that reaches into many different categories.

I love how apologetics can be used when it comes to just discipling believers.

So, it's an evangelistic tool. It is a discipling tool. And what we find is that when we give answers, we need to do it with boldness.

And so, the kind of the story behind the name Bold Apologia, when I was young,

I was very interested in apologetics. And I made a website on wordpress .com

where I could just blog and whatnot. And I was like, well, I'm bold, so I'm going to name it

Bold Apologia. And so, when I decided to make a podcast, I'm like, what am I going to name this podcast?

Well, what do I want it to be on? Well, I'm going to be talking about theology and doctrine and church issues and giving reasons to believe in Jesus and things like that.

And I thought, oh, well, why not just use the name that I gave my website when

I was just in high school, Bold Apologia. So, Bold Apologia podcast became a thing.

I am currently serving as the associate pastor at New Life Church of God in Wahpeton, North Dakota.

And I'm happily married and I have two amazing daughters. I think the most exciting job that I have is

I get to be a dad to my two kids. So, that's awesome as well. An amazing ministry is being a father to daughters.

So, anyway, that's a little bit about me. Is there anything you'd like to talk about specifically? Three girls in the house, I sure hope that you have more than one bathroom, because when those girls become teenagers,

I'll tell you, they take long showers. There are two bathrooms in the house and I've definitely run into the frustration hearing that.

So, you have been doing a deep dive on your podcast into a book by Bill Johnson.

And I reached out to you because I've been listening to the podcast,

I have seen what you're doing, and I figured some of what you're tackling and dealing with needs to be, well, exposed is the word

I'm thinking, but I figured that's going to trigger some people, but to explain what's really the theology behind Bill Johnson in this book.

And the reason I wanted you to come in, because I have plenty of friends who disagree with Bill Johnson and would be happy to critique anything of Bill Johnson, but I don't like to use the term camp or tribe because we have so much tribalism that bugs me in Christian circles, especially on social media, but for the record, you are coming at this attacking

Bill Johnson because you don't believe in the charismatic gifts continuing for today at all. Is that correct?

No, that's not it at all. I come from a continuationist perspective.

I have always believed that all of the gifts that we read about in scripture are for today.

And, you know, it's kind of interesting. The angle that I'm taking in this series is not an angle of trying to take jabs at Bill Johnson or attack

Bill Johnson. And I made that very clear in my first episode of this ongoing series that I'm doing.

It's going to take me quite some time to finish it. But in my first episode, I even threw a little bit of an olive branch to Bill Johnson.

There are at times things that you can see about him that appear to be godly or at least nice.

For example, I watched a video where Bill Johnson is being interviewed and the late great

John MacArthur's brought up and Bill Johnson was actually relegated to tears as he talked about how these people who are against him believe that they're defending the gospel.

And it seemed like something welled up from within him to have compassion for his cessationist,

I guess you could say, counterparts. So in my mind, I appreciate that. That seems really good.

And so I brought that up. So there are certain things about Bill Johnson, or at least the way he presents himself, that seem nice.

But it's not about being nice. It's about the truth. And the Bible makes it very clear.

Teachers are held to a higher standard. And so we have a responsibility to the

Lord to take the things that he's teaching and line them up with scripture to see, do they actually line up?

And so in this series, I'm being thoughtful. I'm using direct quotes from his book. I'm going page by page.

And it's been quite the process. We're only four chapters in. I actually just finished recording three.

Well, actually, I recorded one of the three, but it's probably each one of them are probably going to be a little over an hour segments for April's episode, which will be titled

When Power Shapes Faith. So this month's episode was

When Power Shapes Repentance.

And the reason I say that is because the way

Bill Johnson goes about it is from a particular framework, and that framework is power.

And I'm willing to talk about that, but I figured I would just get a few of those bits of information out there for you.

But no, I'm not coming at this from the perspective of I'm here to attack Bill Johnson. I've actually ministered in charismatic circles.

I have been in churches that have played Bethel music. I have been under teaching that is very much

Bethel. It was hard to stomach, but I was under it. And I say all that because I am most certainly not someone who is unfamiliar with the content.

I'm very familiar with it. And my desire in doing this is not to dunk on anyone or theologically tear anyone down or theologically dunk on them in a way that is to embarrass them or just hate on them.

But it's from the perspective of I actually want to win these people over to the truth.

I'm actually concerned about our hyper charismatic brothers and sisters, and I'm willing to call them brothers and sisters if they really do believe in Jesus.

And I do believe there's sincerity in that movement that truly believes in Jesus, but they're being led astray so badly.

You know, I think about the seed being sown. They're being choked up by the hyper charismatic weeds of this doctrine, and we want to help them get out of that.

We want to pull some weeds, and that's the whole point behind this. When you pull weeds, you don't pull up the,

I don't know, hydrangea along with them. You just pull the weeds. And so my hope in this podcast series

I'm doing called Examining Bethel is to pull some weeds so that some

Christians can come to the truth and realize, okay, I was in a really bad spot, and now it's time to get along with the truth that's found in the scriptures.

So I'm totally willing to jump in if you are. Yeah, so let's, I mean,

I just want to make clear for folks, the reason I had you on is because you're not someone who is just attacking all charismatics, right?

You and I disagree on that subject, clearly. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that we're not brothers in Christ.

It doesn't mean that we have to hate one another. Right. If you want to believe this for, you know, the, what, 70, 80 years on earth, hey, that's okay.

You know, I'm just going to be like 70, 80 years ahead of you, that's all. But in all seriousness,

I thought, I think that in listening to the episode you did already, it was, you were,

I think, now I think anyone that's a fan of Bethel or Bill Johnson would probably disagree because they just have that mindset where, well, this is our hero.

This is someone we love. This is, you know, that you have that kind of mindset. But as I look at this,

I think that you've been pretty fair in my estimation. You haven't been really attacking, but you're digging into what is the theology.

So let's name the book. Let's go over why you're doing this.

What's your goal of this? And just let's start high level. What is the high level view of what you've noticed as you've started this project?

Well, I'll just start with this. I'm examining Bill Johnson's book,

When Heaven Invades Earth. And the reason why I'm looking at this particular book is by many people that I know who are

Bethel fans, Bethel fanatics, even. They say that Bill Johnson's book,

When Heaven Invades Earth, can be considered the theological statement of Bethel Church in Reading, California.

So this book is pretty popular. It is pretty popular amongst that crowd.

They see it as the statement, the defining statement of what it means to be this revival culture, honor culture, just charismatic, walking in power type of person.

And so they see, in fact, the subtitle of the book, I wish I had it. I'm going to try to remember it just off my head.

But it's basically how to live a life of miracles. And that's what Bethel is all about, is living a life of miracles.

And so you had a tail end part. What is the... Just give me the overall, what is...

You've gone through the book because you're going to be doing this. It's obviously several episode series.

You already have several episodes in. You just said chapter four has got, what, three episodes. So high level.

Let's start at the high level and then we could dig into specifics. But what is it about this book that is concerning you with what it's teaching?

Let's start off with high level. What's the book about? And then what is it that's concerning you? Yeah. So essentially the book is really, it's about how to live a life of miracles based on really what

I would say is Bill Johnson's systematic theology of how to get to that point where you are living a miracle life.

Now, it would be really hard for me to just list off all of the issues that I see.

But I would say probably, aside from his Christology, probably the most concerning thing for me is how he uses the scriptures.

Now, the main framing point of Bill Johnson's book is that power is the measure.

It's not the scriptures. In fact, he goes away from the scriptures and the measure for what it is to be a

Christian is defined through a power experience. And that's problematic for me when

I read that in his book, because when power becomes the measure of legitimacy, scripture gets functionally subordinated.

And so, this allows things like Bill Johnson's Christology to take place because Jesus then gets reshaped to make power replicable.

And the movement then has to be defended on those points once the sandals break, because now you don't have a

Jesus who is unchanging, but in fact, you have a Jesus who is the prototype of a miracle working hyper charismatic.

And so, there's a lot of things that take place. Repentance gets redefined.

Faith gets ontologically redefined, which is what we're going to find out in April when

I get those episodes out. And so, just the overall way with which it is laid out is problematic.

And so, it's hard to pinpoint one particular issue when there's just so many.

And I'm not saying that as someone to try to just make anyone who believes in Bethel's teachings feel bad.

That's not the point. I'm just being as objective as I can when I say that.

So, gosh, it's just so hard to really pinpoint one particular thing. And I would like to talk about Bill Johnson's Christology because that was a pretty big part of why

I wanted to do this. I found myself getting into just these debates online, which never debate people online.

It's annoying. But it's like noticing the problem with his

Christology that when Jesus, he would say when Jesus did any miracle, he didn't do it as God.

He did it as a spirit -filled man. Now, that is problematic on so many levels.

That steps on the feet of the Athanasian Creed and so many others that Jesus somehow can turn off his divinity and only operate as just a mere spirit -filled man.

That doesn't add up. At the same time, he'll try to have his cake and eat it too.

And he'll say, while Jesus is still 100 % fully God, when he did miracles, he did them only as a spirit -filled man or as a human being.

He says Jesus could not cast out demons. He could not heal the sick. He could only do what the

Father enabled him to do with the Spirit's power. And so, why is that problematic?

Well, it flies in the face of the hypostatic union. Everything Jesus does, when he does it, he is fully

God and fully man. Full stop. Now, does that mean that his feeling of being hungry on the earth, when he would be hungry or when he would be tired, or maybe when he's on the cross experiencing the pain of hanging there, is that something that his divinity is feeling?

No, that's his humanity feeling. While he's still divine. But the divinity never ceased to be a thing.

It has always been there. When he's performing miracles, is he still a human being in the sense that he's fully man?

Yes. But he's still God. Those miracles are divine things that take place.

When he commands the wind and the waves by the word of his power in the

Gospels, whenever the disciples are in the boat and there's a storm and Jesus has to command the waves to stop, he's saying that as God.

Now, he's also saying it as man. That's why we call him the God -man or God -made flesh.

That's why we talk about the incarnation that God stepped into humanity. So, whenever you try to split those things up, you run into a number of issues.

And really, what is the point behind it? The point is, because power is the measure, power cannot be something that lies solely in the sovereignty of God.

That God is sovereign with how we are to walk in quote -unquote miracles or spiritual gifts, right?

The Lord gives gifts as he wills is what we read in 1

Corinthians chapter 12. But that's a problem because in Bill Johnson's theology, it's always

God's will to heal, which means if someone isn't healed, it's probably, and honestly, this is where my episode when power shapes repentance comes in, it's probably because there's something wrong with us.

And so, we have to now repent, which is why the chapter that I look at in that part of the book is repent to see is what he says.

So, repentance is no longer a moral turning from sin and to God. It is now a change in perception to now be able to see what

Bill Johnson calls the kingdom. These things are riddled throughout the book.

So, when you ask me, what are the main issues? I can't pinpoint just one because there's so many.

There's so many. Faith is no longer this thing that we have where we trust in God.

It is now this ontological process and tool used to take what

Bill Johnson calls his world or God's world and bring it to this world, which is kind of a strange way of putting it, where he completely reinterprets

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, where it talks about faith being the substance of things hoped for, to now actually faith is what brings in a substance from the unseen world, which is apparently, according to him, superior to the seen world.

The seen world is inferior. The unseen is superior and faith is what brings that substance in.

So, now faith is no longer the substance of things hoped for. Faith is now the mechanism to bring the things hoped for into the seen world, which would be miracles and signs and wonders.

And so, it's the abuse of Scripture. It is changing

Jesus himself, changing Philippians chapter 2, where it talks about kenosis.

You know, the hyper charismatic view of kenosis is that Jesus emptied himself of his divinity.

That never happened. That's right. He never emptied himself of his divinity. In fact, if he did, we're dead in our sins, because it means we don't have someone that could pay the eternal fine.

Yes, and well, yeah, and that's penal substitutionary atonement, which is another problematic thing with a lot of hyper charismatic theology, because they will lean way too heavily on Christus Victor.

And there's reasons for that, because it fits so well with their dominionist theology. You know,

Philippians 2 is really, you put it in perspective, that kenosis that is being spoken of in Philippians 2 is humbling himself, being the example of humility, where he condescended is what the theologians will say.

He condescended into being, entering into this event called the incarnation.

And then now he experiences life as a newborn baby, and then a child, and then a young man.

And now he's in his 30s, and he has a three -year ministry to fulfill prophecies that were written about him.

That is the point, is that he is stepping down from the divine throne and onto the footstool, and steps into the footstool, which is the earth, which it is

God's footstool, and he dwells among us to fulfill a mission, and it is to redeem sinners.

But for Bill Johnson, and for this type of theology, he doesn't have time for that, because he has to defend his position of power being the measure.

You know, you take a look at how they look at the Book of Acts, where, and they'll always appeal to the

Book of Acts, which was written over the course of 30 years. And so, oh, look at all the miracles.

Okay, these miracles were over the course of 30 years. So, it's not that there were miracles left and right, but it will be used as a, essentially, as a compiled proof text to say, we should be having miracles left and right all the time.

And so, that is problematic. And you know, there's other drivers in this, where you get to the dominionist theology, where Adam somehow in the garden, he was actually, and you'll see this in my episode titled,

When Power Shapes Jesus, because this is kind of included in that episode,

Adam lost the keys to the kingdom. When the Garden of Eden was even established by God, there was darkness and evil on the earth, and God wanted

Adam to go and subdue the rest of the earth, rather than, you know, Adam's in this garden, and God says to subdue the garden and, you know, be the steward of the garden.

It's not saying go to the earth. Now, maybe that was something that was to take place. There's a lot of theologians who believe that the plan was for humanity in that moment to then populate the earth, but that's beside the point.

Bill Johnson argues that darkness was already on the earth, and Adam was essentially to be

God's soldier to subdue it. Now, that comes from some other wacky theology that you'll find in Finnis Jennings Dake's commentary on the

Bible. He believes that the earth that we have now was not the only time that it was, you know, that it was used.

It was used for other things, and God had to wipe those people out and put new people on, and so, but there's nothing that really backs that up.

So, then what happens is, okay, Adam has to take dominion, but he was tempted. He loses the keys to the kingdom, and he turns them over to the devil, and now the devil has what's called the title deed to the kingdom, and so, when we read verses where it says the devil is the god of this world, we don't read that as, oh, the devil is the god of this world system.

It's now read as, oh, the devil is the god of the earth, and he owns it.

We go to, they go to, you know, we end up going to chapters like Matthew, I believe

Matthew 4, where Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, and we read the devil saying, hey, you know,

I'll give you all this power and authority because I have the authority to give it, and Jesus turns him down, saying you shall only worship the

Lord your God, and Jesus is responding to that and build an entire theology of, oh, see, the devil had the title deed to the earth because he's telling

Jesus he has the authority to give him all these kingdoms. Now, the problem with that is you're building a theology based off of the words of a liar.

That is, you know, the most offensive thing I'll probably say in this podcast, hopefully, is that's stupid.

Why would you do that, you know? That actually is the argument

I sometimes make with Muslims because they know that the Quran teaches that Allah is the great deceiver, and he even deceived people to have a lookalike for Christ on the cross, and, like, why would you trust someone that you admit is a deceiver of his own followers?

Precisely. And so, building a theology off of that, and they'll say, oh, well, we have other texts where, you know, the devil's called the god of this world.

Yes, this world system, but there was no title deed transfer that took place when

Jesus went and he took the keys to, you know, of Hades or whatever. The teaching of scripture is that the devil is a usurper, that everything already belongs to God.

In fact, if you look at the Psalms, I don't have the exact address. I wish I did. But in the

Psalms, it flat out says that the earth, the world that we live in, is still under our stewardship as human beings, that God gave it to us for us to steward.

That's still on us to steward it. Now, God is still the king. He's still in charge of it.

It's still his earth. It's still his footstool. He's still the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

It's all his, but we are the stewards. It says nothing about the devil taking ownership of the earth through a title deed transfer where Adam and Eve somehow made an agreement and agreed with the devil, and now this is how it is.

And so, this is where Christus Victor gets important for this camp. Now, I affirm Christus Victor.

I do, because I think the Bible teaches it. I think the Bible teaches Christus Victor. I think the

Bible teaches penal substitutionary atonement. Darrell Bock Explain each of those terms for folks who may not know.

Jeremiah So, Christus Victor is Jesus came, and he triumphed. He got victory over the devil, and sin, and death.

And so, any Christian would affirm that. Darrell Bock Or should. Jeremiah Should. Yeah, that's a good point.

Any Bible -believing Christian will affirm that. Now, penal substitutionary atonement, you brought basically the bones of it up earlier, is that we committed a sin.

We committed sin, and the wages of that sin is death. Now, we can pay that price.

It just means that we die, and we go to hell, and we don't get to live anymore. But God, in his goodness, decided to condescend, come to this earth, live this perfect life, so that in him, by dying in our place, he's the substitute.

He takes the penalty. So, penal, he's the penal substitute to appease or atone for the sins of those who would put their faith in him and believe in him.

So, you have Christus Victor, which is true. You have the penal substitutionary atonement, which is true.

Yeah, there's ransom theory. Yes, Jesus was the ransom for many, but it's not one theory over the other.

They're all true. Probably the most consistently taught theory of – and I don't even know why we're calling them theories.

Let's just call them theologies. The most consistently taught one in Scripture is penal substitutionary atonement, but you get the hypercharismatics.

They want to lean on Christus Victor because it fits so well with their dominionist framework.

Well, Christ is victorious, so now we need to now usher in or bring in that victory.

And so, now we've got to go conquer the seven mountains, which I can't even remember what those are.

The political, the arts, the Christians have to go take it all over because Christ is victorious.

Now, we have to bring that in. A lot of what would be read in Bill Johnson's book, When Heaven Invades Earth, is that Jesus has won it all.

You know, he was victorious on the cross. He has the keys to the kingdom, and now we need to bring the kingdom to earth, is his point.

And so, it is – if you look carefully enough, which is what my series does,

I look very carefully at everything he's saying. I haven't found one

Scripture verse to this point. I'm on his chapter about faith, didn't see one verse there either, where Bill Johnson has used the

Scriptures appropriately. Every time he uses the Scriptures, it is to back up the framing of the book itself.

So, you're saying, just to, I guess, cut to Chase, right?

You're basically saying that he's begging the question. It's a logical fallacy. He starts with the conclusion and then looks to see where he's using

Scripture. It's to support the claim that he's already making. Exactly.

So, and why would I say – it's actually even, if it weren't real, it would be hilarious for anyone who knows anything about logic, who knows anything about presenting an argument or building a case, because at the very beginning of the book,

Bill Johnson frames all of it. He opens the book with the story about his uncle

David Morkin. He's at his uncle David Morkin's 90th birthday party, and he's hearing stories from these older saints at this birthday party reminiscing about revival under Amy Simple McPherson, which

I'm not exactly a big fan of some of the things that she taught either. Not if you know her background.

Yeah. Yeah. And they described in this, where the title of the book comes in, the experience as heaven on earth.

And then what happens is interesting. Johnson doesn't go to the

Scriptures to interpret the Christian life, but instead, he interprets their memory as spiritually normative.

This is what he says in the book, their experience became the standard by which all other days were to be measured.

I was pierced through. That is a problem.

Well, because the normative framework for how everything is to be is their experience, not his experience, even it's their experience.

Their experience is now the standard. It's not the Scriptures. But when I read Psalm 119, 105, it says that your word,

God's word is the lamp unto my feet and the light to my path.

So, Scripture honors remembering God's works, but it never authorizes experience to be the final measure.

Yes, if God did amazing things in that revival, great, we should remember it. Testimonies are awesome, but it's not the final experience or the final measure of experience,

I should say. The measure, the light is his word. Full stop.

So, when experience, just real quick, when experience becomes the standard, Scripture becomes a supporting tool rather than the ruling authority, and that's not acceptable.

It's like, you know, flipping the light switch around and the light switch is, you know, shining at you and you're just kind of wandering around in the dark blind.

Not going to work. Yeah. And we have to, when we talk apologetics, something you and I both like to discuss, and actually,

I think about it, I should say, you're going to be coming on to Apologetics Live, so that we're going to drop this episode.

So, if you're listening to it, you know, I want you to have time. Hey, you have questions, you have maybe challenges, there's things that you're saying, maybe you agree with Bill Johnson.

We're going to give you a way that you'll be able to talk with Adam and come on to Apologetics Live when he's on, and we'll be able to, you know, discuss with him what he studied and be able to engage directly with him.

So, if you want to join on April 16th, that's a Thursday night, 8 to 10 Eastern time, go to apologeticslive .com.

You'll be able to join in a discussion. We're going to go into a lot more detail on that episode, especially about how to do apologetics.

But just one thing that I want to point out, as you're listening to Adam, what's he doing? He's saying, hey, look, what's

Bill Johnson's main problem, kind of with this book? He starts with a conclusion. Now, I want to give everyone a caution.

We all do that, right? This is one of the things I teach when

I teach hermeneutics, which is how to interpret the Bible. The first rule

I teach is that you have to be willing to question your presuppositions. What do you come to the Bible with what are the thinking, the things you've been taught that you come to the

Bible with? And I know that I'm kind of like in a different boat,

Adam, because I came out of Judaism, having read the Bible for two years, not knowing any other Christians.

And so there were things that I got just from studying the Bible, because I'm reading what it says and I'm not being influenced by what

Christians teach about it. I could read in the New Testament and clearly see Jesus is

God. I didn't have to be taught. Now, I didn't understand the Trinity. When someone explained the

Trinity to me, it was like, I don't, it doesn't make sense to me. And he's like, well, you believe

Jesus is God, right? Well, yeah. And yet, you know that he died on the cross.

Who do you think when he was on the cross was running the world? I'm like, I didn't know. I mean, he's God. I literally said to the pastor,

I'm like, he could figure everything out. Like he's God. He could be on the cross and still run the universe because he's

God. And he's greater than my ability to understand them. So I can't comprehend it.

In my simplistic thinking, it was just the Bible says Jesus is God.

He's God. Right. It wasn't looking for a theology to read into it.

And, you know, one of the things I just want to point out, and I'll link this in the show notes, but you know, so much of what you're saying, this book is to try to prove you can live a miraculous life, have miracles every day.

And this is one of the struggles I have with the, what you're calling hyper charismatics. They teach people to look for miracles every day.

I mean, everyone should have a miracle in their life. And it gets people to feel, this is one of the dangers

I think with it is it goes from, well, if I don't have a miracle, if I've never seen some miracle in my life, you know, why am

I, must be something wrong with me. I'm not like that guy who's, who has all these miraculous things. I mean, Bill Johnson just has all these miraculous things, you know, except for when his wife is sick and then she goes to doctors and hospice.

Right. So, but you know, I did at the cessationist conference, I know you, you would have loved to been there.

You, you would have learned a lot. I would encourage you to check it out, but it was up at Kootenai community church.

We did the cessationist conference and I, my topic was on the fading New Testament miracles.

And what I decided to do was just take a step back and look at miracles in the

Bible. We've got 4 ,500 years of biblical history.

And I would think that when miraculous things happen, not all the time, but probably more often than not, they would be recorded in the

Bible. It might be fair. Well, maybe, I mean, there was what, what was it?

The apostle John who wrote, if I, if I wrote all the miracles down, they wouldn't, wouldn't be able to contain it all in this book, something like that.

Well, there were numbers of miracles of Jesus that weren't written down. Yeah. And I don't know that he was speaking of,

I think he said of the acts of Jesus. Yeah. But you got me curious.

So I'm looking it up, try to see if I could find it while, while we talk, but all right.

Well, I have to look that up cause I don't know the exact wording of that, but we'll, we'll have to return to that on when you're on, on April 16th on Apologetics Live.

We'll have to make sure we look that up, but, or you could look it up while I'm, while I talk about this, but here's the interesting thing.

Yes, there's lots of miracles done by Jesus. In fact, if you go through the entire Bible and if you go to strivingforeturning .org

slash miracles, I not only have my notes for that presentation that I did, that sermon that I did, but I also have all the charts that I used and all the data.

So you can do the, do this math yourself. But I looked through and found 265 miracles that are mentioned in the

Bible. 265 out of 45 years of history, 104 of them are by, are miracles done by Jesus himself.

So like 39 % of all the miracles mentioned in the Bible were done by Jesus, which if you think about it makes sense because this is the pinnacle of history, right?

And so if you look at it, 178 of the miracles in the

Bible are attributed to the Trinity. Okay. So that's 76 % of all the miracles mentioned in the

Bible are done by the Trinity. That leaves us with 87 miracles that are done by created things, whether angels or humans.

Okay. Six are attributed to humans, which means, or sorry, six are attributed to angels.

So we have 81 miracles in all the Bible. That's 31 % of all the miracles in the Bible are attributed to humans.

81 in 4 ,500 years, we have 81 miracles attributed to human beings where they were the agent.

And I say that to say, if we have over 4 ,000 years of history and only 81 mentioned by that, where the agent is a human being, why in the world, this is kind of your question, why would you follow someone who's a right?

Why would you expect to have a miracle in your life every day? If most people in the

Bible times didn't see miracles, or at least they're not recorded. Right.

And just so you know, the passage is John 21. And I'll just read 24 and 25.

So this is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things.

And we know that his testimony is true. Now, there are also many other things that Jesus did.

So, you know, we, it could be an inference that they were miracles, but he did, it does say things, but where every one of them written, one of them to be written,

I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

So what is interesting as I looked this up, the word, the word, other things, it's the same, it's used there in verse 24, as well, bear witness to these things and wrote these things.

He did many other things. I, it is interesting because as I looked this up, the, the word here just means other or another.

So each of those things that say things, the word would be, would just be another.

So the thing, you know, so I guess the, the idea of a thing is it's just another, but so, so it would be tied to that.

I don't know that we could, we can't, I don't think we could dogmatically say that's a miracle that that's only speaking of miracles or, or works.

It seems like it's a pretty broad, pretty broad in what it's saying, all the things he's written down.

I think you're right about that. I think that you could infer that maybe there were miracles that were not written about.

And I do want to say that is a passage that what

I kindly call our Bethelites will refer to because they'll say,

Oh, Jesus did so many more miracles that weren't written about now. They would probably just rely only on,

Oh, this is miracles and healings and things like that. But Jesus did more than just miracles and healings.

He taught sermons. He rebuked the Pharisees. He rebuked the Sadducees. He did other things.

So it's very fair to, to say, well, that doesn't necessarily have to be miracles.

If I were to say how confident I am that miracles were probably of the things not included,

I would say I'm, I'm pretty confident, but I'm not going to take that and say that that's a reason why we should always be experiencing miracles.

And the reason why I would say that is it in your, you know, the, the study that you did, that's interesting.

And I think there's some good points to be considered in that, but also take a look at specific instances.

Like what about with Trophimus who was left in, what was it? Miletus still sick?

Well, yeah, I was in Ephesians. I was going to bring this up. So in Philippians where he, he says that he he's got someone who they left that was near death, but God showed grace.

It wasn't that Paul healed him. Right. But yeah, you're right with, with, you know, where people could be left.

I mean, look, Paul had an illness. We don't, well, we, we have to be careful with that because it does, it is the word for angel, a messenger.

So, you know, so some people will say that he was dealing with something, he was dealing with something.

And so we, we are, Timothy had a stomach issue. Correct. Why didn't he get healed of the stomach issue?

Why did he need a little wine for his stomach? Yeah. So, so it's like, okay.

The idea that they just went around doing miracles all the time, it doesn't line up.

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to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Well, I'll tell you why it doesn't line up.

So here's a, here's more of you, right? So I say that there's 85 miracles done by humans in the whole

Bible, right? But do you know that those are all, those miracles, the majority of are done in three periods of history,

Moses and Aaron. Okay. So that period, and then

Elijah and Elisha, and then the New Testament.

And so what do we have with each of those periods? You have the writing of scripture. And so what are the miracles do?

They're attesting to the writers of scripture. They're, they're vindicating them. So if you take those three periods of time out, you realize you're only left with eight miracles attributed to human beings outside of that time period.

Well, you see that that's where I struggle because I wouldn't even want to attribute,

I wouldn't want to attribute any miracle to a human being. I think the work, the real worker behind the miracle is the

Lord. No, I agree with that. Yeah. But the human is the agent. We would, we both agree. I think even from a charismatic perspective, as you are, you would say that the human is the agent, but God is doing the miracle with that, right?

Yeah. Right. And so, and that's why, how I was trying to approach it.

And so I'm looking at this going, okay, if we were to remove the writing of scripture from the equation, if we only have eight miracles in 4 ,500 years,

I mean, why would we expect to have a miracle in our lifetime?

Let alone every charismatic having them like every day? I know

I'm using logic. I get it. But I think, I think the one problem that approach may, you may run into is

I would struggle to assume that miracles weren't happened simply because they weren't written down.

That's a fair argument, right? I am making, it can be argued that I'm making an argument from silence saying that if, because it could be miracles and I take that into account, but still,

I think if there was, if there were miracles, especially if they're happening like regularly, they're normative, then there'd be a lot more in the

Bible than what we have. Maybe more written about. There'd be more written about. And I think if they were normative, it wouldn't be miraculous.

Well, and, uh, well, I don't know. See, this is where we get into, and this is -

Our two differing worldviews is where - No, actually not really. So, so there is -

Maybe not worldview, but - No, but, but when you like, so it, no, but I would, I would say even so, because it gets into how you define a miracle, right?

We both would say a miracle is when, you know, something supernatural occurs within, within the natural world.

A supernatural act of God - Correct. In the natural world. Yeah. And so here's where people get into question, not playing, didn't plan to open this can of worms with you, but right?

The, when God saves an individual, is that miraculous?

Yes, it is. Right? And yet that's, that's kind of normative. We see that happening quite often.

Yeah. Right? It's true. And so that's the one miraculous act that I go, okay, outside of that, they, they seem to be few and far between, but that act is if, now some people try to say that that's not miraculous.

Well, I think it absolutely is miraculous because it's something only

God can do. It is God, only God can do the spiritual heart surgery needed in removing a stony heart and replacing it with a soft heart that will respond to him.

So, so I would, I would just say like, like this, miracles are supernatural acts of God.

Now to, to prove my position and refute the hyper charismatic movement on there, you should experience a miracle every day.

I don't need to go to all, you know, through all, all that to make my point.

All I need to do is ask them it, show me in scripture, a positive command that says

I must be doing these miracles every day or experiencing these specific miracles every day.

And they can't, they can't show me one verse that presents that as a command for the normative

Christian life. But what I do see is I Paul, I see Paul giving specific examples of what the normal Christian life looks like.

And, you know, it's kind of interesting. This is a perfect segue here because if we were to go back to the first episode where I talk about when power becomes the measure, and he talks about David Morkin's 90th birthday and how their experience became the measure by which all other, you know, the life of a

Christian is to be measured. Notice that before sustained exegesis, Johnson defines what counts as normal and abnormal

Christianity. And those definitions completely frame everything he does for the rest of the book and how scripture is going to be read afterwards.

And in fact, before he even talks about a verse, you know, in the first episode that I did, looking at the beginning where he frames the book, he uses two scriptures that I had to look at.

He made my job relatively easy because I had to just look at the two scriptures that were taken out of context and ran through a power framework.

But he says this, it is abnormal for a Christian not to have an appetite for the impossible.

Now, that sounds like a powerful quote, like, you know, if especially if you come from that kind of perspective, but where's the backing behind it?

He also says, it has been written into our spiritual DNA to hunger for the impossibilities around us to bow at the name of Jesus.

Now, that's powerful as well. And I don't know what he means by impossibilities, but, you know, it sounds really cool.

It sounds powerful. But, you know, I'm not 100 % certain that you can just jump into that conclusion without having a reason, a valid reason for stating it.

And as a Protestant believer who views the scriptures as the final authority for life and practice,

I can't get on that train. And for the hypercharismatic movement, this is why it becomes so dangerous.

And this is why if you're hypercharismatic or someone who comes from that stream, the

Bethelite, Dominionist type of views, understand this is why you have

Chris Reeds. This is why you have Sean Bowles.

This is why you have Bob Hartley. This is why you have these, quote unquote, prophets who aren't accountable to anybody, because what they're accountable to is the fact that they can say,

I had an experience. I heard from the Lord. I did this miracle. And they're unaccountable to the scriptures.

In fact, the scriptures are subordinated to what they would call their power framework.

And so, rather than having principled men of God who are walking the walk, and as well as the talk or whatever, they are subordinating the scriptures to their experience.

Their experience goes first. You know, oh, I just got this word from the Lord. And maybe someone vaguely says, oh, that must be for me.

Oh, see, there we go. Prophecy, living in it every day.

Or someone shifted their shoe a little bit, and now it looks like their leg grew out, aka

Todd White. You know, okay, well, look, miracles, people's legs grow out.

By the way, it's so easy to fake that miracle. Darrell Bock In American Gospel, they have a clip where they show exactly how

Todd White does it. And what they do is just slow the video down to show that he's not lifting the shoe.

He's just tilting the foot very slowly. Andrew Rappaport What is Andrew Rappaport doing?

This might be the most brilliantly insane concept on the internet. Yeah, I'm talking about the Apologetics Live podcast.

Okay, here's the premise, a live stream on Thursdays from 8 to 10 p .m. Eastern Standard Time, where you can jump in and ask any

Bible or theology question you have, and Andrew Rappaport will answer it. But here, listen, it gets even better.

You can debate him live, and he doesn't even know the topic. There's been guys who have been prepared for weeks who come on the live stream, and you get to watch

Andrew debate a theological subject off the top of his head. It's really fun to watch. I've personally watched viewers jump on the live stream and try to stump

Andrew, but it hasn't happened yet. So each Thursday, get your popcorn and questions ready, and tune in to Apologetics Live podcast with Andrew Rappaport, and be part of one of the most fun live streams on the interwebs.

You can join the fun at www .apologeticslive .com if you want to be part of the show, or click the link in the description box of this episode.

As always, Apologetics Live is part of the Christian podcast community. And because it's so slow, you don't feel it, and he's just turning it just a little, and it's like, oh look, they're the same.

And the reason to do that is because when he grabs the feet, he purposely holds them in a certain way that one will always look shorter.

And as he just slowly shifts it, it looks, oh, it looks like it grew. You know, and there's so much power behind,

I don't know if you saw the person who grows the arms now. There was a video, it was really funny because the person grows the arm and pulls the one hand out a little further, and then tried to adjust it and overcompensated.

I've seen, I've seen people do that gimmick trick and just with the, with the shoe, you know, like, so they thought this was just this amazing thing.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, it grew so much that it grew too long, and then he had to grow, he had to grow it out some more, and oh my goodness.

Yeah. You know, and they measured him afterward. He's still just as tall as he was before, but oh my gosh, a miracle, right?

Because with how much the, everything shifted, it had to have, he had to have grown two or three inches, but that did not happen at all.

So it's like, you know, you talk about these, this idea of a life of miracles.

I come from the position that miracles can be part of the

Christian life. Does that mean that they're every day? I don't see a reason to believe that they have to be every day.

Same thing with healings. They can be every day. There's this idea of a gift of healing.

I actually do not believe in the gift of healing. Neither do I. I think there was one, maybe.

So there never was. Oh, you don't believe there ever was one. Okay. There was never a gift of healing.

If you go to first Corinthians chapter 12, it never says the gift of healing.

It says gifts of healing. And what are gifts of healing? They are divine moments where God will heal someone through you.

Sure. And what's the purpose of that healing? Well, it's compassion toward the person being healed. And it is a testimony.

It is a faith builder for the person being used and the person experiencing the healing. That is a gift from the

Lord. And do certain people maybe have more of that taking place than others?

Sure. Maybe Peter had more, and I'll just use people in the New Testament because I think it'll translate over to your cessationist audience better.

But let's say Peter has more healings than maybe Paul. Okay, great.

So, he is more of an occurrence with having gifts of healing, but there is not ever even once a mention of the gift of healing.

And so, that puts it in perspective. That really helps bring this idea full circle that it really is based on God distributing those gifts as he wills.

Now, if it's always God's will to heal, no one should ever die, at least within the

Bethel circle, because you're just going to pray for them and they're always going to be healed. That's not what happens.

The apostle John died, Peter died, James died. James, what was he the first apostle to get killed?

He was killed with a spear. I could be wrong. I'm trying to remember now.

But yeah, I think he's the first one to die, but I'm not sure if it was a spear or I don't know if it's even mentioned.

It's an axe. It's an axe, yeah. He was killed. I've read the story of the apostle

Thomas. He went to India. I know that he was thrust through with a spear. Peter, crucified upside down.

Why didn't they just not die? I mean, yeah, we have the apostle John, who is this miracle working man.

They put him in, what, boiling oil. He didn't die, so they sent him off to that island, and guess what?

He died on the island. So, if it is always God's will to heal, we'll never die.

But obviously, it's not always God's will to heal. That is a Bethel teaching.

I'm looking forward to being able to dig into that a little bit once I continue on in the series. But another thing that's really big in the

Bethel movement, it's not just that experience is normative, but then testimonies become normative.

They are made this normative important thing. What does Johnson do right away in the book?

He tells a miracle -heavy story where there's this wedding service, and it's a wedding service in Reading, and then what does he do?

He draws a normative conclusion about the normal Christian life. This is what he says.

He says, this story is true. Talking about this wedding where amazing things happen, and it is closer to the normal Christian life than what the church normally experiences.

I find that interesting because it's not based on just the fact that, you know,

God did this amazing thing, and that you can just be excited just that God did something amazing, but now he's got to take it, he's got to use it as a framing substance to back up that power behind it.

It's just someone's experience, and I'm not opposed to experience.

I agree with the Wesleyan quadrilateral that experience can be part of what we can use to validate life.

But at the same time, you know, you've got to understand that you're not always going to have the experience.

You're going to go through dry periods. Cessationists, they go through a lifelong dry period. But, you know…

Darrell Bock Yeah, it's a dry period of studying the Word of God and being accurate. That's true. But here's the thing.

I just look at what Scripture says, and, you know, Paul, he went through a period that wasn't so great.

He said that the Lord told him, and you referenced this, he had this messenger from the enemy, it was a thorn in his side.

The Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you for my power. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest.

You know what frustrates me the most about this movement is, you know, they also have this word of faith stuff mixed in with it, where you can't even give the… what's a good way to put it?

You can't even give the fact that you have illness credit. Because if you mentioned that you have a cold, oh no, they have a cold.

Well, here's the thing. If you already got a cold, and the cold is from the devil, then apparently the devil already has power.

But Paul presents a completely different perspective here. That in our weaknesses, in our weakness, there's something beautiful about that, because God becomes even more obvious when we're used, whether it be, you know, a cessationist who's in India preaching the gospel.

Or let's say that there's a charismatic missionary in Africa, and there ends up being this powerful healing service.

And let's say that missionary is not of the greatest health because… well, okay, you know what?

In that weakness, God just makes himself more manifest. Or, you know, if you're a cessationist in India preaching the gospel, okay, let's say, okay, well, let's say you have your limitations.

Well, when you get home from that mission strip, you cannot say, look at all the amazing things

I did. God gets the glory for all of it. So, we got to make room for weakness. And in the charismatic movement, there is no room for it.

Because weakness is often paired with suffering. And what comes with suffering?

Well, there's sickness. There's feeling depressed sometimes. You can still, you can be depressed and still be a

Christian. I hope that people understand that if you come from the Bethel perspective, what

Bethel's going through right now, it's pretty depressing. It should be saddening. It should lead to a sorrowfulness.

And all of this is part of the Christian life. And that's okay. Suffering is part of it.

You know, the good thing is that as children of God, yes, we're heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

But what does the scripture say? Provided we suffer with him in order that we all, well, because suffering in Bill Johnson's book is viewed as this problem.

He creates this trinity of poverty and sickness. And there was one other thing that keeps slipping my mind, but it comes from, oh, and sin and sin.

He does this interesting word study that where they all come from a similar word, panos, meaning pain, right?

And what is suffering? Suffering is pain. Well, listen, it's part of the Christian life.

We don't live in the perfected world yet. The heavenly

Jerusalem isn't here. This old and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have, we have with us now the first fruits of the spirit, but we still grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons for the redemption of our bodies.

And so, we can still trust that the Lord is at work in us. And how do we know that?

Well, we have the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

And against such things, there is no law that we're free that takes place. There are first fruits that we have now, but sorry,

Bill Johnson, we're not in this position where we can by faith pull in from the heavenly realm into the earthly realm.

And now we can live in the second Jerusalem now. No, it is in, we are in the already, but not yet, you know?

And all of this is encapsulated in their theology. This, you know, when they hear already, but not yet, they say, we already have access to the kingdom, but it's not all here yet because we need to bring it down.

Why do we need to bring it down? When I read these eschatological verses about Jesus coming down with the new

Jerusalem, it says nothing about, it's because we prayed it down. No, there's an appointed time for that.

So anyway, maybe I'm ranting at this point. Yeah, but no, but I mean, what

I'd like folks to see, and even in the way you and I conduct our differences with each other, right?

No name calling, no attacking, no being like vicious with one, but we recognize we disagree.

We recognize where we disagree, and we can listen to one another and evaluate.

And this is an important thing because this is what, this is why I wanted to have you on. When I listened to your series and why

I want you on Apologetics Live as well, when I listened to the series that you did, it was really helpful to me to hear the way you went about dealing with this issue, because this is the thing

I think a lot of people do struggle with. When someone disagrees with me, I have to lash out at them.

Because I got to prove how right I am. Get over yourself.

I think you're doing a really good job on Bold Apology Podcast, dealing with this book and dealing with the topics.

I think it's kind of, it seems to me to be balanced. You're kind of in that better for people who are in that camp, who would be supportive of Bethel to hear it from you than me.

Because you're not trying to disprove charismatics, you know, continuation of gifts.

You're in that. And I think that if I tried to do it, people just go,

Oh, well, you're a cessationist. Therefore, you just don't believe any of this stuff. I think

I could be fair and disagree. And I can also be fair, as I think you're doing and agree with some of the premise.

And we're not going to end the conversation here. We're going to continue in April on Apologetics Live, which is another one of the podcasts that I do.

And that's one where people can go to ApologeticsLive .com Thursday night. This is going to be

April 16th. And you will be able to join that discussion.

If you go to ApologeticsLive .com that day when we're recording, you can join it. So we're doing this now so that you know to set the date.

If you want to challenge, if you want to challenge Adam on, you know, Bethel and the teachings there from this book, at least from Bill Johnson, that the charismatic gifts have ceased, go ahead.

What you're going to find is I will be, and I think Adam, having talked with him so many times, will be just as respectful to you who disagree with us as you're seeing we are with one another.

And this is an important thing to do in apologetics, folks. It's not about winning an argument.

It's about discussing truth. About winning people. Yeah, for the

Lord. So Adam, with that, let me give you, you know, anything you want to promote or talk about, you know, just as we close out the show, anything you think that we just missed, that last thing that you had to say, a burning thought.

You know, I just want to thank those of you who have listened through this. I'm sure,

Andrew, that a lot of your audience is probably from the cessationist camp. You might be surprised, actually.

A lot are not because, you know, I don't, I mean, even though I take a cessationist position, it's not something that, well, like I joke around with you.

I think a lot of the audience has over the years told me they appreciate, like, Matt's like one of my best friends.

And he's a continuationist, right? We've debated it plenty of times. So it's not like we don't know where each other stands.

But we joke around about it. We can be lighthearted about it.

And that's, I think that's an important factor. But yeah, no, some of the, a lot of the audience, and I know that because I get the emails that tell me how wrong

I am and I'm okay with that. Nice. Nice. I think you're wrong.

You think I'm wrong. Guess what? Either we're both wrong or one of us is right. We both can't be right.

That's true. One of us has to be wrong or well, maybe we're both wrong. I don't know. We'll see. Maybe it's, maybe if it's a mutually exclusive thing, like they, they continue or they didn't continue that,

I guess. Yeah. And I would just want to clarify that for myself, we had this discussion, you and I, just that in the continuationist camp,

I would put it in two camps. One is a continuationist camp. One is cessationist. And I believe that the cessationist camp is much more unified than the continuationist camp.

You did have that one objection. What about if they're open but cautious? Listen, either they ceased or they didn't.

So if they ceased, there is no being open, but cautious. So we, I claim, sorry, you may not like hearing this, but if you look at that, you have so many different kinds of continuationists.

You have the classical Pentecostals. You have the kind of word of faith type people.

Then you have the hyper charismatic kind of Bethelite people, but then you have churches that affirm that it's possible and that the gifts are available, but we're not going to just jump into it.

They're kind of the open, but cautious types. It's funny. There's open, but cautious, more continuation or to the cessationist people.

But here's the thing. The continuationist camp is such a broad range of different ideas about what it means to be a continuationist or believe in the gifts or what the gifts look like and the movement of the

Holy Spirit looks like. But all of that being said, why would I bring myself as I'm in a position where I'm part of this camp and I feel in some sense as almost,

I feel like I'm a missionary to my fellow continuationists because there is a problem.

I don't always agree with maybe some of the spirit behind us will go after the continuationists, but I appreciate the desire for things to be done right and to honor

God and honor scripture and not con people. There's so much con man actions going on in the continuationist movement and it's because there is this veering away from scripture and it doesn't have to be.

I think that the reason I'm a continuationist is because I base my worldview on the scriptures and I know my cessationist brothers in Christ would say, well, we're cessationists because of the same thing.

It's not necessarily a mutually exclusive thing. You can be a continuationist follower of Jesus and a cessationist follower of Jesus.

But what's important at the end of the day is the scriptures be the final authority for life and practice.

And that's the hope behind the series is to point my continuationist brothers and sisters who are more on the high scriptures, get back to the word of God, get back to Jesus as the leading authority.

And he points us to his word, Matthew seven, whoever hears these words of mine and obeys them is like one who builds a house on the solid rock.

But there are so many continuationist churches that are crashing and burning right now because it's all built on sand.

They're disobeying Jesus. They're not building it on the word of God. And they're seeing the consequences of that.

We saw that with Hillsong. We're seeing it with Bethel. And so bringing this full circle,

I just want to invite those of you please go on Spotify, YouTube, go on Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, follow the

Bold Apology Podcast. You can scroll down. The first episode in this series is titled

When Power Becomes the Measure. And then you can find those going through.

I'm also doing an ongoing series called Sanctify Christ as Lord. It was actually inspired by a podcast

I did with you and with, you might not have been there for it. And I don't even remember his name.

They call him the seven foot apologist. Yeah, no, I was there. So that was - You were. Yeah, that was on Apologetics Live.

And he, the seven foot apologist is Dan Craft. He's one of our speakers at Striving Fraternity.

And since I was on your podcast, doing the precept view, I realized, well,

I can't present it on mine and be able interviewing me. So I had Dan in.

He had brought up this amazing point about, you know, sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts, and that stuck with me.

And so I started this series about sanctifying Christ as Lord, just because I just think that is so important.

And so you'll get nuggets in that. That's been weekly. It may change in the future, but I want it to be an ongoing weekly thing.

I'll be posting one this coming Monday titled Sanctify Christ as Lord in Motive.

So I'm looking forward to that. Last week, I did one on, or actually this week, did one on Sanctify Christ as Lord in Leadership.

And they're just, they're shorter. They're not the long form ones. So you get a variety with the Bold Apology Podcast. And again, if you like what you're listening to, especially on Spotify, please give me a five star rating.

It'll help out with just getting the podcast out there and then follow me on YouTube and hit the bell.

Yeah. So the important thing with that, folks, is follow it, right? So where ratings help the feedback.

Well, I enjoy it good or bad. And that's really all it does. It doesn't get us up in the charts or anything like that, like something

I'll try to argue. What it does do is get others to know what you think about the podcast.

So you can go to Christian Podcast Community, where you can contact

Adam through there and you can rate it, but follow it so you get the series.

And I'm going to tell you one other thing to do. If you like this episode or you go to Bold Apology and like the episodes he's doing, would you share it with five friends?

Just text, take five friends that you know, follow Bethel and say, Hey, you got to listen to this and just text it to them.

Let me know your thoughts. The reason to ask them to let me know your thoughts is they will listen differently.

They're listening to get, give you what they think about it. And so that becomes more helpful.

So Adam, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your podcast, what you're doing.

I appreciate just even in our differences, the kindred spirit we have for Christ.

Yeah, absolutely. And so with that folks, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.