Panel Discussion on Cessationism

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WIth the Cessationist Conference this weekend some of the speakers will gather for a shorter show then usually for a panel discussion. It will be a fun and informative show, with Justin Peters, Jim Osman, John Reuther, and Andreas Wiget.

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Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the
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Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.
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We are live, Apologetics Live here, coming to you, well, not from our normal studios. It looks a little bit different.
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We're in the home of Pastor Jim Osmond here for the Cessationist Conference.
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So we decided to do a short. I know some of you are upset. I know you guys like Anthony time. We go over the two -hour mark.
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Not even close this time. Maybe an hour because we got a lot of things that we got that were planned for tonight as speakers will be coming in.
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So you may see some people coming in and sitting throughout the the show. But I'm gonna,
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I have a couple people, someone that's off -camera. I'm gonna try and pull him in and and let him introduce himself as well.
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See, there you go. And we're gonna eventually have Pastor Osmond come in. But Cole, I see,
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I want to thank you. So we had technical issues and Cole had to play the the audio. But so I'm gonna do a quick in the news segment for folks that we usually do.
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So if you guys saw in the news today that Chuck Schumer decided to announce that we need illegal immigrants to come in this country because we don't have enough workers.
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Because Americans are not reproducing enough. Now keep that in mind because what else did he just do today?
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Yes, they just signed to allow for homosexuality to be codified or same -sex marriage,
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I should say. Why after the election? Well, because there were 12, there was 12 Republicans.
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They needed a 60 vote. 12 Republicans voted to codify same -sex marriage.
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Mitt Romney being one of them, by the way. A Mormon, which by the way, the
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Mormon Church just came out and has supported homosexuality. Something that has been known that they'll be doing for a while.
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But so that's, you know, if you know Chuck Schumer wanted Americans to, more
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Americans, simple solution. Encourage traditional marriage. Stop aborting children and, you know, traditional marriage.
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So the question that, yeah it is upside down, you're right. So here's the thing.
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The question I was asked is what will this law do? Does it offer any extra benefits to those who practice homosexuality?
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The answer is actually no. It doesn't offer them any extra benefits. It codifies it.
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Their argument is to say that to prevent the Supreme Court from overturning it. But here's the thing it does do.
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It does prevent people like you and I who believe in a traditional marriage from speaking out against it.
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So it doesn't give them any extra benefits. It just takes more of our freedoms away. Expect that this will be used to remove 501c statuses from churches and ministries.
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So this is what we we have to expect. So I'm gonna let, we have two folks here.
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One's a speaker and you go to Church of Kootenai. So and then we're gonna have some others coming in.
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So I'm gonna give you a chance to, what I want you to do is introduce yourself. In your case explain what country you came from.
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You came all the way out here from. And then explain what you're gonna be talking about for the conference.
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I have to disappoint you. I'm not an actual speaker. But I will be interviewed for the cessationist movie.
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So my name is Andreas. I'm from Switzerland and I'm currently traveling the
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US because of my involvement in two movies. One of them is American Gospel 3.
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So last week I was in to do the recordings there. This week I'm in Idaho and we are doing recordings for cessationists.
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Yeah that's, these are the basics. And you came all the way from Switzerland for this.
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So this is, you'll have to be looking for him in the film. Now you go to church here locally.
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But you don't, you haven't lived here for all your life. You've been overseas a bit.
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So if you could introduce yourself and let folks know what it is you've been doing. We've talked, you and I talked years ago about trying to have you on the program talk about what you have done overseas.
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So let folks know about that. Well my name is Gordy Hunt and for 40 years we spent in the country of Paraguay and the hot dry section of Paraguay working with a people called the
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Manhui people. Very small tribal group of indigenous people. And we learned their language, turned their language into a written language, gave them the
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Word of God. And we now have a church established among those people and quite a number of believers that are teaching themselves and reading the
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Bible on their own. Okay now this is a fascinating thing that I got to talk to you about years ago.
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But how do you take someone, a group of people that do not have a written language, have never seen a written language, and create a written language for them and then teach them to be able to read it?
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Well it's a long story but just to try to summarize it you have to sit with them where they are and watch them and see what they say and write it down in phonetics.
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And be able to observe, just mostly observe and listen for the longest time until you begin to learn their language.
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And the words that they say on the paper, you begin to speak back to them and eventually you learn where all the, how the language breaks down and then you can actually turn it into a written language and begin to teach them how to read it.
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As well as evangelism at the same time. So it's a long process. So I'm assuming that you use the
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English alphabet and the English phonetics for that? Well actually it was English looking but it's actually more closer to Spanish using some of their letters and sounds because eventually they people would learn
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Spanish. So we wanted to keep the language, written language, to look a lot like Spanish. So that's what we did.
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That's neat. All right. So Andreas what I want to do is ask you, you've done a lot of research kind of on the history of some of the charismatic movement.
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That's right. So could you give us, you know, just a little bit of a thumbnail of, you know, the history of this movement, how it has changed over time.
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Yeah. Because it has changed over time. Some people don't realize that. So how, give us the beginnings of it and how it's changed.
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Yeah so, I mean Pentecostalism started in 1901 with Charles Fox Parham who had a
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Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, right? And when you read about the history of Parham and his students you would actually figure out that their view of speaking in tongues was really to speak in foreign languages.
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At that point it was not any kind of an ecstatic speech. And they really thought that they have this gift and that they wouldn't have any need to learn foreign languages when they would evangelize in foreign countries, right?
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And so they really went to these assigned countries like China and other places thinking that they were speaking in the native language.
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Yeah. Thinking that they were speaking Chinese and presenting the gospel there only to figure out that no one was able to understand them as they were, you know, babbling in tongues basically.
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So those missionaries then were really disillusioned and bitter and went back and that brought about a great crisis.
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I would call it the great Pentecostal disappointment alluding to, you know, the
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Millerites experience. So they were put into a place of cognitive dissonance, right? Where their expectation just didn't fit reality.
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And they were offered two choices now. Either they could be honest about it, right?
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That would be nice. They could acknowledge, hey, our experience was just false. Or the second option is we simply redefine what the gift of tongues is.
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Guess what they did? They redefined it. They did the same thing the Catholic Church did in 1000
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AD when they realized, oh, wait, we're not in the literal 1000 years. Oh, yes, that's right.
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They just redefined it. Yes. So that was really their strategy to just overcome the cognitive dissonance and the embarrassment, the public embarrassment.
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Because even back then, the public voice was, hey, you guys are just babbling. It was nothing different than today.
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So and when you read like, you know, the early Pentecostal literature, you would see the same types of arguments already brought up.
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So we're speaking in a heavenly language, tongues of angels. We're speaking not to man, but to God.
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So the same types of arguments that you would even read like from charismatic scholars today, they came up with that very early.
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And the tragedy is that if you look at the big history, we have to actually acknowledge that today we have millions of charismatics and Pentecostals who have embraced a counterfeit gift because those early
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Pentecostals were embarrassed and not honest. That's really a kind of a shocking conclusion when you look at that.
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Yeah, you know, one of the things that, because Justin Peters has his clouds without waters, and you know, he said to you that, you know, he has put some of that into his his most recent
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Clouds Without Water. And so what he's done is he actually had sent something, he said, he told me, he's like, hey,
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I want, I want to get you to send something to your wife. Now my wife is from Hong Kong, so she is, can read
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Chinese. And one of these early Pentecostals that thought they spoke
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Chinese went to China to to be able to, you know, to be able to go and be a missionary.
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And so what ended up happening is she actually wrote what she said was
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Chinese. And so Justin sent it to my wife and wanted to see, he's like, I got to do it on video so I could see her reaction.
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So he says, so Justin says, so Yim, is this Chinese? And she goes, no, that's chicken scratch.
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And so he had her right in Chinese, this is not Chinese. So we have, we have a new person that just showed up.
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New person. This is a Pastor John Rutherford, who we've known, you and I have been doing open -air evangelism.
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Yeah, for a long time ago. Yeah. So why don't you introduce your folks, the folks here, to who you are, the church you pastor, and the topic that you're gonna be speaking at the conference.
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Okay, well my name is John Ruther. I'm from New Jersey. I know Andrew from, he lived also in New Jersey, and we were fairly close, and we did street preaching together, and so that was great.
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This is great to see you again, Andrew. And we actually had dinner with our wives just a few weeks ago.
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We wanted to start the fellowship early, we met two weeks ago. Yeah, we started early. Yeah, so I've been the
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Pastor of the Covenant Baptist Church in Lumberton, New Jersey, which is just northwest of Philadelphia, northeast of Philadelphia, on the
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Jersey side, for 37 years. Wow. Yeah, 37 years, and I'm looking forward to being part of this conference, and this movie they're making, and I got connected to this from, by Tim Cannon, who learned that I had written a book on the
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Holy Spirit. Yeah. It was published two years ago. So I'll be doing a, just a high -level survey of the
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Holy Spirit's person and work, and concluding with showing how his completed works commence his continuing works, so that that part fits into this theme of cessationism, because obviously not everything ceases, most things continue.
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So, so, and my, one of the topics I think here is, one of the first, is to define cessationism.
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Yeah. Because it's a very negative -sounding term, but unfortunately it's just a term that we have to use that's true with all labels in the
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Christian faith, right? They're important, you just have to define them, and, but they're not, they don't always tell the whole story.
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Now with your topic, let me ask you this, why do you think so few cessationists speak on the personal
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Holy Spirit? So we, I mean, we see a lot of talk in continuationist circles about the
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Holy Spirit, and who he is, and what he does. Mm -hmm. Often we would probably disagree with what they claim he's doing.
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But why do you think so few in our camp are speaking about the Holy Spirit? Well, I'm not really quite sure what to say about that.
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Is that the impression that you've gotten? Yeah, I mean, if you think about, your book is, I haven't seen a book written on the
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Holy Spirit maybe since, you know, Charles Ryrie. Okay. And some people would say, well,
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Strange Fire, but that's not really devoted just to the personal Holy Spirit. Right, right.
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So in our camps, I haven't really seen much written. You know, your book, your book two years ago was the first in a long time.
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Okay, so, well, one of the unique factors about my book is that there are, there are books on the
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Holy Spirit that actually support the idea of tongues, like D.
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A. Carson, for example, or M. J. I. Packer, which is, you know, quite disappointing, actually.
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And commentaries, it's an amazing how many, it's amazing to me how many commentaries teach the devotional use of tongues.
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So my book is different in that, in that regard. And the few books that have been written in the last, you know, 10 years, let's say, really of note, they, sadly, they teach that.
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But overall, there's been, there's quite a, been quite a surge in writing on the
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Holy Spirit, but just from all different angles. Okay, so we have a question here from KT, a regular listener.
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Oops, it doesn't help that I just shut the screen off. KT is asking why my accent is stronger than yours from Jersey.
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I don't know what... I was originally from New York. Ah, that's it, you got to do, you retain the New York accent.
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Okay, so we, so we have a question here from Michael. Let me put this up here, so I'll read it to us.
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Brother Andrew, I believe the the biblical tongues are not active during this dispensation.
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I am not sure whether during the 70 week of, the 70th week of Daniel, if biblical tongues will be acting through the 144 ,000 evangelists.
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Any thoughts on this? Neither of you guys have... Well, I'm not a dispensationalist. Well, so, okay, then the only dispensationalist here...
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Well, the only answer I could give, and I usually start this show by saying, and I didn't open this way, but I've often said, you guys, because we're doing a shorter show,
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I wasn't so much inviting folks in, but you, I usually say you can come in to ApologeticsLive .com and ask any question, and I always say,
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I can answer any question you have about God and the Bible. So, Michael, I will answer your question.
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I don't know, and I think that's a perfectly good answer. Yeah, I don't, there's no, there's no,
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I'll say this, and this is, why do I keep putting that comment up?
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One of the things I'll be talking about, hey John, you want to sit over, sit over here, and we'll let
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Justin get in. So, what I'm gonna be speaking about is the fact that, here, sit here, yeah, you're familiar with this audience.
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So, the thing I'm gonna be speaking about is really the miracles in the
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New Testament, how they're fainting, but one of the things that I'm gonna be doing is actually going through miracles throughout the
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Scriptures, and what you're gonna see is there's only three periods in history where miracles happen often.
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Now, I'm saying that because there's only about 265 miracles in the
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Scriptures. So, right off the bat, there's not a whole lot of them. Once you eliminate those done by God, and you just look at humans that perform the miracles, you're down to like 81 over 4 ,000 years.
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So, right out of the gate, we should not expect these to be normative, but there's three periods of time that we see them.
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In fact, if you take all the miracles performed by humans, you'll see almost all of them are done during the time of Moses, the time of Elisha and Elijah, and the time of the
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Apostles. Outside of that, there's only eight, that's it, eight miracles that are done outside of those time periods.
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Two from Daniel, two from Samuel, two from Isaiah, one from an unnamed person, and then one from Samson.
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That's it, eight. What's significant about those other three periods of history? I would say that's a period where there was no writing of Scripture, a period of silence, and then the writing of Scripture.
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So, the miracles vindicate the new writing of Scripture. So, to answer the question,
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I would say in the 70th week of Daniel, if there's new Scripture, if God is deciding, and I don't know that He would do this, but if He was adding to Scripture, then maybe
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He would have miracles. So, I'm gonna reread the question for Justin, since he came in, and I know the audience knows
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Justin, but the question that came in from Michael was that he believes biblical tongues are not active in this dispensation.
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I'm not sure whether during the 70th week of Daniel, biblical tongues will be acting through the 144 ,000 evangelists.
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Any thoughts on this? No, I'm not sure.
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I've never been asked before. Yeah, through the 144 ,000 evangelists.
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So, I mean, in one sense, I can understand the question because they're gonna be evangelizing to the nations. Right, right.
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That's, yeah, I don't know that we can say definitively one way or the other on that. Prophets active, and you understand speaking in tongues as a form of prophecy, if it is translated, right?
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I mean, Paul talks about that the tongue speaker speaks in mysteries, which means he brings forth revelation, right?
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So, if tongues is, in that sense, similar as prophecy, then it could be possible.
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So, we got a question for you. KT's asking, what's your name? What's the name of the Swiss guy? Yeah, my name is
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Andreas. Andreas. How can folks get a hold of you? Well, I have a YouTube channel, so you can look up Digging Deeper on YouTube, or just type in my name.
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It's Andreas Wiget. It's spelled W -I -G -E -T. Okay. And I want to put in a plug for Andreas's YouTube channel as well.
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I suppose I'm looking here. I should be looking at the camera. Digging Deeper, it's excellent. It really is.
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Really good stuff, and I am thrilled to finally meet Andreas in person, and we're on.
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Yeah, so it's really cool. It's an honor. Andreas is a good guy, so I highly commend Digging Deeper to you. We actually did this conference just so the two of you can meet.
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You know, that was really... John, come on over here. So, Justin, what are you planning on discussing during the conference?
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What's your topic going to be? So, I'm going to give an overview of the charismatic movement, basically.
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Well, the history of the charismatic movement. We're going to look at some of the early movers and shakers, how the movement came to be.
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Going to look at John Alexander Dowie, Charles Fox Parham, Amy Semple McPherson, Katherine Kuhlman, William Branham, and kind of work our way through that.
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Just a bird's -eye view of the history of the charismatic movement, and it's... I'll tell you, when you look at the history of it, all of the charismatic generals, as charismatics call them, they're
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God's generals, to a person, they were heretics, they were false prophets, they were charlatans, many of them sexually immoral, most of them, which is what you expect from a false teacher.
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So, the whole history of the charismatic movement is not a good one. It's an absolute train wreck.
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It's an absolute train wreck, and so we'll be looking at that. I'm going to bring...
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I'm going to bring... Cole had a question here. I'm going to bring him into the stream. So, Cole, you can ask your question, but I'll put it up for folks, but we can't hear you.
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You got to unmute yourself. Yeah, I got it there. It's on my MIDI controller now. So, what do you have to say to people who say things like, well, we don't see miracles in the first world because the third world's poor and in need and etc.,
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etc., that kind of context? Say that again. You cut out for a second there. So, what do you have to say to people who say, you know, we don't see miracles in the first world because the third world's poor and in need and doesn't have access to, like, modern medical care and fresh water and all those things?
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Okay, so the fact that we're in a... we're more sophisticated, that's why we don't...
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and I've heard that argument... MacArthur has made that argument with demons, but I haven't really...
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I haven't heard it with miracles. You have an answer? Well, I've been to a lot of third world countries and I wouldn't be...
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I wouldn't put it outside of the realm of possibility that for some of the believers who just simply do not have access to medical care the way we do here in the
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West, it may be, may be, that God would perform more miracles of healing for those individuals than maybe
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He would in an area where we do have that kind of access. It's possible. I don't know that to be true, but I suppose it's possible.
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But what I would say is that no one anywhere on the planet, I don't care what country you're in, has the gift of healing, has the gift of miracles.
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Those signed gifts have passed away, they're no longer in operation. So God still does miracles today, but only when it is
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His sovereign will to do so. So is it possible that in an area where there's more of a need for that?
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It's possible, but it still doesn't... there's no validation in any shape, form, or fashion of the charismatic movement or their theology.
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So would you say that our argument as cessationists isn't that miracles don't exist, it's that God is in control of when they happen, how they happen, and for what purpose, and it's not an office that someone can just pick up the phone and call
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God and say, hey, do this for me? Yeah, that's right. I'm a card -carrying cessationist, and so I fully affirm that God still performs miracles when it's
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His sovereign will to do so. I don't think it's common, it's not an everyday thing, but I have heard a few very credible stories of miraculous healing that I believe are genuine and really did happen.
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They did not come at the hand of anyone claiming to have the gift of healing, it was just God answering prayer.
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That's what it was. So yeah, so I do affirm that God does miracles,
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I just do not affirm and I reject miracle workers. Yeah, footnote, so today the gift of healing is so soft in its understanding that what you would actually see is more like a prayer, an answer to a prayer rather than the actual gift, because the gift of healing was the ability to directly, instantaneously, and completely heal the sick person, and that was not just lower back pain, it was not just, you know, psychosomatic issues, but real organic health issues.
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That's a big difference. Yeah, I would say, I mean, and this is what I'm gonna talk about at a conference, is when you look throughout biblical history, 4 ,000 years of biblical history, there's less than 300 miracles that are even mentioned in 4 ,000 years, and when you start to look at that, it's just, we don't see a whole lot of miracles.
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By definition, a miracle is something that's miraculous. It shouldn't be normative. So the fact that people are looking for miracles and expecting them is out of character, both biblically and historically.
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So do they happen? I mean, like as Justin said, I think the gift of miracles has ceased, but God is still, does, because every time
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God works within creation to do something outside of what is the natural order of things, that's a miracle, and so he can still do that, but he's not giving people the gift, and I think the reason he's not giving people the gift is because the purpose isn't there anymore.
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The canon is closed, and we don't need to vindicate the writers of Scripture. That would be my argument for it.
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John, you have anything you want to add to this? I agree with everything that you men have said.
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I would just add that the Trinity, especially when we're talking about the
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Holy Spirit, has completed works. There are certain works that are completed. That's one of the things that I will speak about on Saturday, that the baptism of the
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Holy Spirit is actually a completed work, and then the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which occurred on the day of Pentecost, which is, on the day of Pentecost, the pouring out of the
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Holy Spirit with all of its manifestations, but that gift commences a continuing gift, which is the fullness of the
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Spirit in the lives of all believers. So that is a completed work.
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Also, the inauguration of the church is a completed work, as is the completion of the canon.
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These are completed works that the Holy Spirit was part of, but those completed works commence his continuing works in the various ministries that he has, which are much more than gifts.
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In fact, gifts, spiritual gifts, as important as they are, I'm not minimizing them at all, are really at the end of the line of the
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Holy Spirit's ministries in the lives of believers, such as illumination, the leading of the
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Spirit, the witness of the Spirit, which is all about assurance of our salvation, the fruit of the
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Spirit, and then the gifts of the Spirit. But of course, I forgot to mention the filling and the fullness of the
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Spirit. So the Spirit does all these works as a result of the baptism. You know, John Starr wrote that book years ago called
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Baptism and Fullness, and that's actually a good way to view it. Baptism, the baptism of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, leads to the fullness of the
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Spirit in the lives of believers. That's good. Well, you know, one person here, Andreas, is saying they'd like you to stop speaking in tongues.
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They're saying, okay, are we gonna hear Andreas speak in his native language? Can you translate that?
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I can. Do you want to hear that now?
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Why don't we have a conversation in tongues? We were talking about this earlier. We both did this as kids.
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Yeah, well, I did it as a young Christian, too. So did I. Yeah, I mean,
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I grew up charismatic, basically. And I spoke in tongues.
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I thought that's the real thing. What you thought was tongues. Yeah, yeah. That's right, exactly.
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So I changed my mind later on just by studying Scripture more carefully. Basically, when
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I came across the Strange Fire Conference, that really helped me to better grasp
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Scripture regarding this issue. And you and I talked about the fact of how when we were younger, we'd hear people speak other languages, and we would be able to see that.
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That's right. As a child, I was actually trying to imitate rock singers. And I did it with a kind of babbling that sounded similar, because they were singing in English, and they didn't speak this language.
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So it is really something that everyone can do, no matter if you're a Christian or not, if you lived before or after Pentecost.
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It is simply a creative way of putting together syllables and let them sound like a language.
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It's all it is. It's learned behavior, sometimes maybe stimulated through just spiritual or social expectations.
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We can do that right now, right? Let's have a conversation in tongues. Okay. Yeah. It really is that easy.
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He's really good at it. You can tell he's... I practice. So some of the questions that we have that came in here, and we're going to wrap this up within less than 30 minutes, probably.
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But the question is, when Scripture refers to, quote, gifts of the Spirit, unquote, as, quote, members of the body, unquote, who has the authority to dismember the body other than the
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Lord? I'm not sure I understand the question completely, but so when
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Scripture refers to the gifts of the Spirit as members of the body, so I guess what he's saying is that the gifts of the
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Spirit are the members of the body who can dismember it.
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I think... I mean, if I'm understanding this... I think it's from 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul explains the different members of the body and the different gifts that they work together to build the whole.
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So how can we take away a norm, basically, right? The body would lose something. So I guess if I'm reading into the question, but I guess what he's trying to say is like if we remove certain gifts, it's like we're removing certain members of the body, but...
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And I guess my answer to that question would be... And I'll see what you guys think. I mean, I think that what he's doing when he talks about the members is to say that God has a place for each person in the church.
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He gives each person in the church a different giftedness so that they can serve the local body, which right in there shows kind of the difference with the way current charismatics do it because they see the gifts as for self, not for the body of Christ.
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And what Paul's trying to say is that if you have someone that can teach, they're doing it for the body.
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You're not removing the person. You're not dismembering them. You're having the gifts for a purpose.
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Now, if the purpose of the gifts are for the revelation of Scripture and the revelation is complete, you no longer have a need for the gift and therefore you're not dismembering it.
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It's not really an issue of being dismembered. It's just an issue of the nature of the gift and its ongoing or its cessation, however the word would be, status, the status of that gift.
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Okay, here's a question I couldn't put up because this is backstage, but Sean is asking, can one believe that they can speak in tongues and still attain eternal life?
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What? So can someone believe that they're speaking in tongues and still have eternal life? It can be mistaken to that degree.
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That's not the first matter issue. Yeah, and this is one of the things when we did this conference, and you guys who are regulars here, you know that we had
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Matt Slick on a couple of weeks ago to talk about the conference because he said it was very divisive that we would do it. And I had said to him, well, he has a whole website devoted to Calvinism.
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That's far more divisive because in Calvinism and Arminianism people are anathemizing everyone saying they're not even saved.
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That doesn't really happen so much with the gifts of the, you know, whether they continue or not. There is for the guys in the other room there.
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Hey, Jim. All right. Well, we'll get his attention in a moment. So Michael had said this.
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He said, faith healing is when you were speaking, Justin's faith healing, not faith healers.
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And that's really the thing is that you have a difference there between whether it's the faith healed, the person who's doing the healing, his faith is required versus the person who's being healed.
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You've dealt with that a lot. Yeah, I've been told more times than I can count that the reason
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I'm crippled is I don't have enough faith. And that doesn't affect me. I mean, there was a time many, many years ago it did, but now that's waters off a duck's back to me.
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It doesn't affect me because I know better. But there are a lot of people who are tremendously affected by that kind of erroneous teaching and they are made to doubt their relationship with Christ simply because they're sick.
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Now, if you had enough faith, you'd be healed. And it's a horrible, horrible thing to tell people.
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And the way I put that, there's times when apparently faith on the part of the person being healed was an integral part of their healing.
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There's other times such as John 9, the man who was born blind, and John 5 as well, the people of Bethesda, but especially
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John 9, Jesus healed that man who was born blind and that guy didn't have any idea who
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Jesus was. But I put it in these terms for Christians. If you are in Christ, if you have been born again, if you have been adopted into the family of God through the merits of Christ, through the regenerating work of the
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Holy Spirit, if you have been granted the faith to be saved, don't let anybody tell you that you don't have enough faith to be healed.
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Because being saved is by far the greatest miracle. By far. God could, if He wanted to,
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He could heal me of my cerebral palsy right now on camera and He could make me run like a deer.
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And as impressive as that miracle would be, that would pale in comparison to what
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God did for me when He saved me from my sin. That's the greatest miracle. So if you know
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Christ, don't let anybody tell you that you don't have enough faith to be healed. To be saved. I mean, to be healed.
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Sorry. So why is it, Justin, that so many of these faith healers wear eyeglasses?
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Yeah. I've said it before. Never trust a faith healer who's wearing eyeglasses. And you see that a lot.
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Bill Johnson, Jesse Duplantis, I mean, almost all of them actually wear eyeglasses. So, never trust a faith healer wearing eyeglasses.
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He's telling me their faith. But, all right. Jacob is asking this question.
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What are the top scriptures proving cessationism? Should we be careful pointing to church history to prove cessationism?
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Ultimately, how do we prove it sola scriptura? So that's in your kind of camp there.
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Yeah, I think one of the most important scriptures is actually Ephesians 2 that explains us the foundation layer of the church which is the apostles, the prophets, and Christ who is the cornerstone.
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And we do know that Paul was the last apostle. So, the office of apostleship has ceased just as the office of the prophet has ceased.
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And of course, these offices include such a gift like the gift of prophecy, right?
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So, they have ceased together with those offices just as miracles which is closely associated to the apostles have ceased because the office has ceased.
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Same thing with tongues because it is also a form of prophecy. We can say it ceased together with the ceasing of the apostles.
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So, Ephesians 2 is really the key passage to use. I guess, for me, and I know
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Justin and I disagree on this one, but for me, the key would be 1 Corinthians 13 where it says tongues will cease.
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I believe that's speaking of the canon. But, you... Yeah. Yeah. I like being...
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So, there's... Yep. There's other things too. I mean, no, you don't...
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There's not a chapter verse that says the signed gifts ceased on such and such date. But, the only times, for example, tongues are mentioned is in the book of Acts, book of 1
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Corinthians, two of the earliest books in the New Testament in the canon that were written. Then, when...
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Interestingly, when Paul wrote Romans, Romans 12, and he also dealt with spiritual gifts, he did not mention any of the signed gifts.
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They're there in 1 Corinthians, but they're not in Romans. Also, chronologically, when you go chronologically through the
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New Testament, the signed gifts phase out pretty quickly after the year of A .D.
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58, give or take a year. There's no more miracles. Miracles just stop.
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Paul wrote to Timothy, 1 Timothy 5, 23, he said, take a little wine for your stomach and your frequent ailments.
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Paul didn't lay hands on him, didn't send him a prayer cloth, none of those things.
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He said, take a little wine for your stomach and your frequent ailments. Then, two years later, Paul's writing 2 Timothy, and he said that he was with Trophimus, and he left him sick.
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Trophimus was sick, Paul was with him, and he didn't heal him, didn't lay hands on him, he left him sick.
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I think that's interesting internal evidence in the scriptures that even by that time that the apostolic gifts had already begun to fade away, pass out of operation.
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So, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, A .D. 64, A .D. 66, respectively, the sign gifts had already faded away.
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If you were to back up 10 years, go to the year A .D. 54, that would put you in the events of Acts chapter 19 when handkerchiefs and aprons were going forth from the apostle
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Paul delivered to sick people at distances and God was healing the sick through those handkerchiefs and aprons.
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So, those were extraordinary miracles in Acts chapter 19 in the year A .D. 54, but if you fast forward 10 years to the year
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A .D. 64 and then A .D. 66, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, none of that was going on anymore.
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So, it's interesting internal evidence that even by that time those sign gifts had already faded away because they had already fulfilled the purpose for which they had been given.
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Yeah, and even before that, 2 Timothy is Philippians where he says with Epaphroditus, he was near death and he said he was needful but he didn't heal him.
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So, I mean, and when we go through the scriptures, as I said, we don't see a whole lot of miracles.
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So, the fact that people expect them is not the norm. Now, so we do have
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J .C. says this, don't forget Jim Osmond, you gotta watch out for that guy. Only to be followed up by Peter Hammond who says you gotta watch out for the
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J .C. guy as well. So, I guess there's some locals here warning us. But, alright, so this will probably be the last question that we have for tonight from Kevin.
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He says, I heard people say you can't prove the doctrine of cessationism from scripture. How can we respond to that claim?
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We've kind of sort of answered that. But, you know, I think there's there's a couple different ways we could argue.
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And so, I would argue, my way of arguing is the fact that we shouldn't expect to see miracles because they weren't they weren't common throughout the scripture.
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And kind of to the other question with, you know, you and I I know you and I have talked about this with the tongues.
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We don't see tongues historically. I don't think there's any reason to argue to not argue historically because you don't see them outside of the cult and the occult.
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And so, you know, where Mormonism is the one that really got tongue speaking started in the 1800s.
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There was, that's where we kind of see some of it in America long before the Christian church was doing it.
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And so, there's nothing wrong with looking historically and say, well, what we see historically matches the biblical pattern.
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Miracles don't happen regularly. They happen for a purpose and the purpose is done.
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But there's also the argument of the apostles. I know you would argue this way. The apostles are no longer here.
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You want to give that argument for folks. Yeah, sure.
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Just to tag on what Andrew was saying about tongues. He's right. You never see tongues exercised any time outside of kooky, fringe groups like the
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Montanists in the 2nd century. They were a group of false prophets and you have the
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Jansenists which was a group, this was fast forward like 1 ,500 years.
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This was a militant Roman Catholic group that claimed to be able to speak in tongues.
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Mormons in the Shakers in the 1700s in colonial
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America you see them doing it. But never in the true body of Christ.
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They're always connected to fringe, kooky, heretical groups. So if all of the spiritual gifts are still in operation and have been without interruption then where has the genuine gift of tongues been for the last 2 ,000 years?
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Even now with the charismatic movement you see people speaking in gibberish but that's not the biblical gift of tongues at all.
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Oh, the apostles. There are no more apostles today to be an apostle of Christ.
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A man had to meet three requirements. He had to be an eyewitness of the risen
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Lord Jesus. He had to be directly appointed by Christ to be an apostle.
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He didn't choose to be one. He had to be appointed by Christ to be an apostle. And he had to have the ability to perform signs and wonders of an apostle.
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He had to be an apostle of Christ to be of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be of Christ of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ an apostle to be an apostle to be to be an apostle to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle of Christ to be an apostle to be an apostle an apostle of Christ an apostle an apostle of Christ to be an apostle to be to be an apostle of Christ to be spoke of him in this way as the kind of Kenneth Hagen of England.
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I was his associate minister so I was as deep in it as you could ever get and also when
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I got here I was a TBN host of all things and you think of used car salesmen on one level low low low and TBN is lower than that and it just goes to show the
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Lord can really reach anyone so I think that's why I'm here to to talk about what was it that alerted me that something was wrong and the journey out used car salesman
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TBN where's politicians fit in there all right well
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I said we were gonna do a shorter show today I know we're not gonna have a show next week for Thanksgiving and we didn't want to miss three whole weeks
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I know a lot of you guys didn't want that so we're gonna wrap it up tonight and we thank you for tuning in so no show next week after that I don't know
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I I think there was a change of plans we won't have Andy Burgereff on on in early December I think he'll be later so but we'll have something
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I'm sure early December so look forward to it and just remember to strive to make today an day for the glory