From Word of Faith to Reformed

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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slash careers. Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report.

00:33

I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the Executive Director and President of Striving Fraternity Ministries and the

00:38

Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for Christian living.

00:47

This episode is another prerecorded one where we had, I had an interview with Conversations That Matter, John Harris.

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He had me and another person on to discuss our transition from Word of Faith to Reformed.

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So there's a lot we ended up discussing, a lot of things we got off topic on as well. I hope this is valuable to you.

01:11

I hope you learn a lot. And I appreciate all the prayers that you all did while we were traveling, we being

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Justin Peters, Jim Osmond, and myself traveling to the Philippines. I should be at this point home, resting,

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I hope. And so we prerecorded this one as well. But I do want to encourage you, if you find this valuable, share this podcast with others.

01:34

It is extremely helpful when you do that. So I also want to recommend you check out Conversations That Matter with John Harris.

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He does a great job of bringing up and addressing some cultural issues that are affecting the

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Christian church. So check them out. It's an excellent podcast, one I listen to regularly.

01:53

So hope this is valuable. Hope you will share it. Hope you are encouraged. And hope that you get a blessing from this.

02:01

So here is today's episode of The Rap Report. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

02:08

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the

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Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

02:26

We are now live on the Conversations That Matter podcast. Hope everyone's doing well out there on this

02:31

Monday night. I hear the crickets outside right now in New York. And it's a beautiful sound, let me tell you.

02:38

So if you ever get a chance, I mean, I guess that's probably the case in most parts of the country. There's crickets right now, but I don't know.

02:45

With the fireflies and the crickets, especially right now, it's just a wonderful time. But I want to introduce, we have two guests today who have a background in the

02:54

Word of Faith movement. And some of you have asked me before, John, can you talk about prosperity gospel,

02:59

Word of Faith? And I've just said, like, I think there's a lot of ministries doing good work in that area.

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Interesting enough, though, yesterday, I talked to someone. I won't say who or where, but I did have a conversation with someone and it threw me.

03:14

Because this person had been influenced in some way by Benny Hinn. And it was in a place that I just did not think

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Benny Hinn's influence had reached, really. And it did get me to thinking a little bit about that.

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Maybe there are people, even in my audience, who are taken in by some of that stuff. Maybe you were attracted to this podcast because you saw an episode

03:35

I did on, I don't know, cultural Christianity. But you're not, you know, you're not reformed and maybe you're in that Word of Faith movement.

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And I thought, you know, it would be good to do an episode on it. And I was talking to Joel Webben this morning, who's one of our guests.

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And he agreed to come on and talk about it. And then also my friend Andrew Rapoport is here.

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And I'll just introduce you guys both real quick. You can add to this if you want, but I'll start with you,

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Andrew. Andrew, is it president of Striving for Eternity? Is president the right word? President, founder, executive director.

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I don't know what title I have. Okay, so you're in charge of Striving for Eternity Ministries.

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And actually, Andrew's also going to be speaking at the retreat coming up, which everyone should sign up for at overcomingevilconference .com.

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And that's a men's retreat in the Adirondack Mountains. And then Joel Webben, of course, maybe needs no introduction.

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Joel's been on the podcast before, but Right Response Ministries president. And of course, he's a pastor out in Texas, and I've spoken actually at his church.

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And so anyway, Joel's a good friend, too. So thanks, guys, for just joining me to talk about this. Appreciate it.

04:47

Yeah, well, thanks for having us here. So this is a long form conversation podcast, which means we can talk a long time if we want.

04:56

I don't have any set end time. I thought the first thing we would do is just maybe get your stories, because you both came from this prosperity gospel or word of faith.

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I don't know if those are the same thing, by the way, background. And so I want to hear your stories and then maybe talk about why did you leave that for more reformed theology?

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And I think, Andrew, if we could just start with you, just give us your story. Like, what's your testimony?

05:21

How did you go from word of faith to reformed? Yeah, well, I actually grew up in a

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Jewish home, so I knew nothing of Christianity. And for folks in the audience to realize,

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I grew up believing that Jesus Christ is Hitler's God. And you go, what? It's because to Jewish people, we just, everything's

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Catholic that's Christian. I mean, Baptists, Lutherans, they're all Catholic. You know, we don't really kind of like Jewish.

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You guys probably think that everyone that's Jewish is Orthodox. You know, we don't really make sometimes distinctions.

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But the Catholic Church was funded Hitler. And so I knew very, very little of Jesus Christ other than the fact that his name was used as foul language in my home.

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And so I came to Christ over the summer when I was 16, had to live in a secret

06:10

Christian life because when my parents found out that I was Christian, I was 18. They actually went casket shopping to bury an empty casket.

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And I fully expected they would do that. So when I got to college, that was the first I was around any other

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Christians. And they were all word of faith. And I, I assume they grew up in church.

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They must know more than me. So anything they said, I just, I just believed it because I knew nothing.

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I mean, for me, it was just me and a Bible for two years. That's all that I had. Well, when

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I turned 17, I found family radio, Harold Campion. I thought he was the bomb. I thought he really tells you how bad

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I was. Right. But I just had no discernment. And I got into word of faith for several years, for about four years.

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I was in college and heavily pressured to speak in tongues and things like this.

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And the thing that I remembered, even when speaking in tongues, when I was a child, my sister and I used to probably see people speaking

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Spanish. I don't know what language they're speaking, but we'd hear a different language. And she and I would just pretend like we were speaking a language and it was just complete gibberish.

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And so when there was the pressure to speak in tongues, because somehow I wasn't, I wasn't at like a higher level of Christian life.

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I did the gibberish. And I would do like a mix of gibberish and Hebrew.

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So it was kind of a, just I, at first I thought this is complete nonsense because I know what

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I'm doing. But then everyone so reassured me, oh, this is, this is, you know, a gift of God.

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And so I, not knowing any better, I just, I took what they said. And it was interesting because one of the things

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I noticed within those circles is there was a spiritual pride of it, of a one -upsmanship.

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So when, when someone would get the gift of tongues, supposedly someone else got a word from the

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Lord, someone else got a prophecy. It was always like everyone was trying to outdo each other, showing they're more spiritual than the other.

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And I, and kind of in the back of my head thought that that's kind of weird, but okay, you know, they know better than me.

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And really my, my step out of the word of faith was interesting because just like when

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I became a Christian, I literally went from three and a half hours of believing Jesus Christ is Hitler's God to a follower of Christ.

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I mean, it was the first time I heard the gospel and I received, well, the first time I heard someone say

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I was at a Bible study and they weren't even talking to me. It was two guys at the other end of the table and one guy just says to another guy, you know, not all of people, not all

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Christians believe that those gifts continue today. And I went, wait, what? Like I thought everyone believes this.

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So I went home that night and read first Corinthians 12, 13 and 14 in context, in one sitting asking the question, does this teach what

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I've been told it teaches? Is it in context teaching what I thought?

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And in one sitting I went, wait a minute, this is actually condemning everything I was being taught.

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And so I ended up coming out of word of faith. I got into an independent fundamentalist

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Baptist church. So I didn't go quite reformed, but from there

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I ended up in a church when that church merged with another. And I ended up leaving, went to it.

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The only good church in the area was a reformed church. And so I went there originally arguing against a lot of the points of some of the reformed faith.

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The real sticking point with me was whether our belief was given to us or whether that's something we did.

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And it was actually when I was preparing to preach, when

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I was preaching through Philippians, Philippians 1, 29, that it has been granted unto you not only to believe, but also to suffer for his sake.

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And I went, oh, and I started calling some friends and go, yeah, you were right. I was wrong. So that was my kind of from, from salvation to reformed.

10:28

Awesome. And before we go to Joel, there is a question in the chat. Make sure Andrew looks into fulfillment covenant perspective.

10:35

I don't know what that means. Not sure what that means. No. OK, Chris, you're going to have to tell us what that means.

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And I'll just state it in case it has to do with Judaism, because a lot of people think that I'm dispensational because of my

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Judaism. I'm not. And I didn't get saved any differently than anybody else.

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Like people think like, oh, if you're Jewish, something not now. And I don't have special love for Israel because I'm Jewish.

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It's, you know, so, yeah, get those things out of the way. They'd always come up when we talk.

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There is someone in the I want to just go to this call or and see if we'll see if they are a caller.

11:11

Wayne, can you hear me? Wayne's in the not in the chat, in the video feed here, but I'm not sure.

11:19

Wayne, if you got your microphone off. So if you turn it on, I'll see that and I'll come to you while we're waiting for that.

11:26

Joel, why don't you tell us a little bit about your story? So you also have not the same background.

11:32

You're not Jewish, are you? No, I didn't think. Not that I know of. I was adopted as a baby. I don't actually know my genealogy, so I don't know.

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I don't ever did the ancestry thing. I've never made a lot of money, so I don't feel like I know.

11:45

Bad bad Jewish joke, but no, I'm not sure. I'm probably a mixture of a bunch of European, you know, like everybody else.

11:54

So, but you grew up in what a Christian home. What was it? Yes, sir. So my dad was a pastor from the time that I was born.

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He pastored a small Baptist church. But my dad's background and my dad is actually my dad and mom are members in our church out here and are incredible.

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And we're so grateful for to have, you know, the grandparents of our children next door, you know, and in the same town.

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And so anyway, so my parents are awesome. But my dad, he's starting with his testimony. He was raised in like a

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Southern Baptist church with his mom. His dad was Catholic, and so he would go to church with his mom every now and then go to mass with his dad.

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But for the most part, would go to church with mom in the Baptist world. And then when he went to college at Baylor, that's where he met my mom, and they got married shortly after.

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They went to High Point, I believe is the name of it, either High Point or Highland Baptist.

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And the young adults program at that church at that time was very big on, you know.

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Yeah, you got the gospel, but you need to be spirit filled, get spirit filled, you know, with the evidence of speaking in tongues.

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And that young adults ministry from what my dad's told me is what actually eventually broke off and became

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Antioch Church, which is a fairly large, well -known church in Waco that like Chip and Joanna Gane were going to that.

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I don't know if they still do, but went to that church for a time. And they, you know, were really big on missions and very big on, you know, the signed gifts of the

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Holy Spirit. So anyways, my dad's going to college and he, you know, his roommates are part of this ministry.

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And that's the thing, you know, at that time that was the thing is being spirit filled, baptism in the

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Holy Spirit as a subsequent event to conversion. So you're saved, then you're filled with the Holy Spirit and the evidence, the sole evidence of speaking in tongues.

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And that was, my dad always loved the Lord. He was a Christian, you know, before that in terms of conversion.

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But that was big for him, you know. And so he became a Baptist pastor, but a charismatic

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Baptist pastor outside of the SBC with his first pastorate. That's when

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I was adopted into the family. And then later on, like just non -denominational, more charismatic, kind of think like soft, agey assemblies of God, not quite as strong.

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And then my dad gravitated in his doctrine where eventually he started to believe more of that third wave continuationism of like Wayne Grudem, John Piper, Sam Storms.

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He started to believe that the baptism of the Spirit happened at the point of conversion, not a subsequent, you know,

14:30

Christianity 2 .0. But it happened at conversion. But certain gifts, sign gifts particularly, could be awakened that were dormant, could be awakened as subsequent refillings of the

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Spirit after conversion, maybe years after. And tongues might be one, prophecy might be one.

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And at that point, as my dad was gravitating into that conviction from more of a classic

14:52

Pentecostal assemblies of God to this third wave continuationism, that's when he ended up taking our small non -denominational church that he was pastoring at the time.

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I was in middle school at the time and brought us into the vineyard. So think John Wimber. So sign gifts, but with the laid back, you know, flip flops and Hawaiian t -shirt style.

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And so that's kind of was most of what I remember. My older childhood of middle school and high school was being in the vineyard.

15:19

But after that, in terms of word of faith. So I wouldn't describe any of that as quintessential word of faith, heretical.

15:26

I think it's wrong, but there's a difference in being unbiblical versus being heretical. But after that,

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I went to a school that really was kind of like a two year. It wasn't accredited.

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It is a two year training school. And it really was like Bethel with Bill Johnson, but not as cool.

15:45

It's called Christ for the Nations. And we had like Costi Hinn's dad, Henry Hinn came out as a guest speaker,

15:52

Joyce Myers. So very much that was a word of. I had one professor. I remember he said that anything that doesn't proceed from faith is sin and sin is what brings death.

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And so he said, if you had enough faith, you would never get sick and you would actually be able to live forever. You would never die.

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So that was taught to me in one of my classes is that if anybody could have enough faith, they could never physically die and just live for thousands of years until Jesus returns or whatever.

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Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn's brother, Henry Hinn. So that was very much the flavor there.

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And they did believe that baptism in the Holy Spirit was a subsequent event to conversion. The only evidence was speaking in tongues.

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And it was your classic word of faith in terms of what I would describe faith, not in Christ as the object, sole object of faith, but faith in your faith, the power of positivity manifesting.

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Name it and claim it. If you believe it hard enough, you can make it happen. Health, wealth, all those kinds of things.

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And I definitely bought into that at that time. And so I just want to be clear. I didn't get that from my dad.

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But I got that in my first two years of college. Then I transferred to Dallas Baptist University because they actually would take your credits.

17:10

They were the only school that would from Christ for the nations. And that's where I went ahead and got my bachelor's in business and biblical studies.

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But my point is that I got that word of faith kind of thing in me at 19, 20 years old at Christ for the nations.

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And that stuck with me for a few years. Yeah. So I do have a question now from the chat.

17:31

Chris Head says, Joel and Andrew, were you into Rick Joyner and Morningstar Ministries? I was heavily into the prophetic movement at one time.

17:38

I have no clue what he's talking about. I know exactly what he's talking about. But Andrew, I know I just talked. Do you know what he's talking about?

17:44

Andrew, you're on mute. You got to unmute yourself. If you know, Andrew, go for it. If not, I know. I was never involved with that.

17:52

I know a little bit of Rick, but not. Right. So it's not Rick Warren.

17:57

It's Rick Joyner. So Rick Joyner, he actually, when

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I graduated CFNI, Christ for the nations, that was very much word of faith. And I was going to Dallas Baptist.

18:09

I knew I should go to church on Sunday. And that seemed like a pretty basic thing to do. And so I was looking for thinking of my vineyard days in my dad's home.

18:19

And then, you know, so I thought, well, I like John Wimber. And one of the guys that I read when

18:26

I was a teenager, before going to Christ for the nations, was I read The Beginner's Guide to Prophecy by Jack Deere.

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And I also read his two more well -known books, Surprised by the Holy Spirit is one of them.

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And then also, Surprised by the Voice of God is the other. And Jack Deere was a professor,

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I believe, at DTS, Dallas Theological Seminary. That's cessationist and dispensational, very much like MacArthur, some distinctions, but similar.

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And they actually fired him because he had his awakening where he became charismatic and started teaching the sign gifts and doing workshops of impartation and teaching how to prophesy and stuff in his class and got fired by DTS.

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And he was pastoring the church in the DFW Dallas Fort Worth area when I was at Dallas Baptist University after Christ for the

19:22

Nations. And so I read his books. I was familiar because he was friends with John Wimber back in the day in the vineyard days.

19:29

And so I started going to his church. I went there for two years and actually was discipled.

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I disagree with the charismatic stuff, but 90 % of the discipleship I got was really good. I don't know if you guys have heard of Remnant Radio.

19:43

But Remnant Radio, Michael Roundtree is one of the guys.

19:48

And he's a pastor in Oklahoma. He actually just recently took over for Sam Storms because Sam Storms just recently retired.

19:56

And so Michael Roundtree is now pastoring his church. At the time, he was the youth pastor at Jack Deere's church in the

20:02

DFW area. And Michael really took me under his wing and mentored me. And from Jack Deere, I've got to give him credit.

20:09

He preached a reformed, Calvinistic, grace, God, election, gospel, grace alone.

20:15

And that's where I really – arguably, that might be where I was converted. I'm not sure. You know how it's hard looking back when – but that's for sure when

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I first started really hearing the clearest articulation of the gospel.

20:30

I started feeling like I'm a sinner. I can't save myself. It's got to be grace and grace alone.

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But all that said, I went to the church because I got the gospel, but I was attracted because of the gifts.

20:43

Jack Deere was big on – they would do prophecy from the stage. So every Sunday morning, because he's looking at the

20:49

Bible and 1 Corinthians and saying, well, when you come together, one should bring a word. One should bring a prophecy.

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And so in his defense, he's just trying to actually be biblical. So they would have two or three.

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So per 1 Corinthians 14, two or three should prophesy, not at the same time, one at a time. And so between the worship through song and the sermon, every week, they would have two or three people appointed to come and give prophetic words.

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And it was rough because it was like – I felt bad because a lot of them were my friends. And a lot of times it's just bombs.

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Like they point to someone in the congregation, and so you, da -da -da. And it'd either be really vague and general and just a positive, what we would call a

21:29

Christian compliment, or it would be we're going for it. And I'll be like, dang, they're going for it today.

21:35

Like you're back molar on your left side, bottom. And is that right, brother? And they're like, no.

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So whenever they were specific, 90 % of the time, it was just way off.

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And so anyway, so I was going there. And when I was going there, Rick Joyner, to answer the question,

21:55

Rick Joyner was friends with Jack Deere and was invited. And he would come from time to time and speak at the church.

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And that's how I got familiar with his ministry. And one of his quintessential books is called The Final Quest.

22:07

And allegedly, according to his testimony, he may have recanted this later. I don't know. But at the time, it was a book that he wrote alone in a cabin on a trip as he's praying and fasting in isolation.

22:19

And it was not something that he wrote as like Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, an allegory, but it's a vision.

22:26

That's how he framed it was this is a vision that I had. And it's very much like Pilgrim's Progress. If he just called it an allegory, it would still have some wrong thing, but it wouldn't be half bad.

22:36

But he's saying this was this open vision that the Lord gave him. It's like warfare and soldiers and climbing up this mountain to the top to where Jesus is along the way.

22:46

And there's different rungs and different roles and different gifts and different. And I remember reading that book.

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And at the time, I thought it was great. And that would be my experience with Rick Joyner. So, yes, I am familiar.

22:56

And I would say from my knowledge, I can't speak to Rick Joyner today. I can speak to Rick Joyner 14 years ago when

23:02

I was introduced and aware of him. I would say that he was very charismatic, open visions, prophecy, tongues, those kinds of things.

23:11

Was he word of faith, heretical? I'm not sure. I didn't look into him enough to be able to answer definitively.

23:18

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Joel. We have someone in the chat. Oh, they just left. I see someone named

23:24

King Dave. King Dave, if you can hear me. He keeps coming into the video feed. And I think he might have a question, but he just left.

23:31

I want to ask a personal question myself to you guys. So maybe we'll get into some of the theology later.

23:38

I know I think both of you, I think, referenced 1 Corinthians and how the teaching on tongues from the

23:45

Bible contradicted what you were being taught. But one of the things that I've noticed, and I did grow up, obviously,

23:53

I don't have the background you have. But I did grow up in an area where a lot of the people in the homeschool movement were charismatic.

24:00

And it's in a secular area. I mean, you know this, Andrew, because you're Northeast, right? Like when you're in a secular area, there's less

24:07

Christians and you tend to huddle close together. And so you have a lot more in common with someone who's charismatic or Pentecostal than you do the pagan at work.

24:15

And so anyway, there were a lot of relationships that I had.

24:21

Some of my best friends kind of erred in that direction. And then

24:26

I went out with a girl actually for a while who had a Pentecostal background.

24:31

So I went to her church and we went through the prayer tunnel and I was prophesied over. And I think my impression was just like, this is kind of kooky, right?

24:38

Like this is kind of weird. And there were three things. I just wrote them down that I observed over the course of my life about the people that I knew who were word of faith and or charismatic.

24:51

Like I'm pretty aggressively charismatic. One was they seemed to be soft on sin.

24:58

This is just my observation. But like sin was not a big deal. I don't know how many times

25:04

I heard that like either leaving your wife or getting involved before you were married sexually or like all these things were like framed as if the devil was behind them and not sin.

25:19

Like the devil tripped you up and fooled you or tricked you. And so it really wasn't you. And you just got to like pray that the spirit defeats the devil.

25:29

And so that was number one, soft on sin. Number two is emotional highs and lows. That is just like you're up in the clouds one minute and then you're down in the dumps because you stink and you sinned and you played into the devil's hands and it's your fault.

25:43

Like you can't really blame anyone else. And then I guess the third thing I kind of touched on it was this obsession with demons that like everything is demonic.

25:51

I remember one time this is my last thing I'll say is I was I was at a church assemblies of God church and the guy got up there to preach a sermon that was over an hour long.

25:59

He did not open his Bible once and it was all about a vision and the vision was about the demons in the local area and how they were oppressing people.

26:08

And I just thought that was I mean you got to hand it to him. It was creative, but it was it was not like any it wasn't biblical.

26:17

It wasn't helpful. It I think just steer people in the wrong direction and give them an excuse for why they might have troubles in their life, including sin issues.

26:26

So if you guys could speak to that, maybe we'll start with you, Andrew. I mean, like, have you seen that?

26:33

And we're talking about a character more, I guess, than theology, but like these these negative effects on people that God that I think some of them

26:40

God does care about. I mean, I mean, God cares about everyone, but I think some of these people might be legitimate children of God, but they're being tossed to and fro by this doctrine and it's affecting them.

26:50

Yeah, I think my experience is similar to what you shared. I think that the core of it is because you and Joel kind of said their faith is in faith.

27:04

I think that their faith is is kind of it's in their experience. It's in themselves.

27:10

And so the reason you have those highs and lows is because they're trying to get to the next experience to give them that high again, because they're looking for that to be what's what's going to make them feel like they're they're saved.

27:23

They're close to God. And yeah, I mean, when I came out of it, one of the interesting things is as a charismatic, we would we pray all night.

27:34

We'd sit there praying all night. And I look back at that and half of the prayer was was gibberish.

27:40

The other half of the prayer was binding Satan. I mean, we literally everyone would go around. I'm tying you up and I'm I'm throwing you to the pit.

27:49

You know, I'm stomping on your head and all this stuff. And that's true. I came out of that and was like, why is it that Christian the

27:56

Christians I'm with now don't pray like all night long. And I kind of realized, yeah, well, we weren't really praying.

28:02

We're making ourselves feel good by that. We're stomping on the devil and we're we're being spiritual because we got this, you know, this prayer language that we could do.

28:12

And it wasn't really prayer. We spent very little time actually praying, you know, and I think that a lot of it is because it's a focus on self.

28:22

I mean, look, you could go look at the music that's produced for church services. Most of it is produced by charismatics for charismatic.

28:30

In fact, this was there was an article in charismatic magazine kind of condemning the fundamentalists for critiquing their that their stance against charismatic movement being emotionalism.

28:45

And yet a lot of these churches would use the music that's designed for the emotionalism.

28:53

So much of the music being produced today is about self. It's not about God. And if it is about God, it's about what

28:59

God did for me. So it's still self. And I think that's really at the root of it there.

29:06

That's the root of it. It's that you have a focus on me trying to manufacture something emotionally to make me feel spiritual rather than drinking deeply from the word of God and having that close relationship that we might feel with him from knowing him well.

29:28

And I think that's probably a big part of what you're describing there. Yeah. And I think it bothers me just because, like, aside from the error,

29:38

I just see people I love hurt. And I saw that for years and had many discussions.

29:44

I want to get Jules. One thing I saw when I was in school was you talk about people being hurt.

29:49

We were talking about how people were doing the ones upmanship. And what Joel was saying with the prophecies,

29:56

I remember watching a guy that supposedly had a prophecy from God. And the prophecy was that this girl that he liked who was engaged to another guy would marry him.

30:10

And she actually, because she thought this is of God, she broke the relationship off and married this guy because she thought it's of God.

30:19

They are divorced today. But, you know, that, you know, now whether she was really looking to get married to the other guy, who knows.

30:30

But, you know, this is somewhere I look at this and go, this was someone just saying this is of God, but it's really my will.

30:36

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard similar stories to that. Even people near me.

30:43

I remember one in particular was someone who justified leaving their spouse because they said the

30:51

Holy Spirit told me to do this. And you can point out Scripture. I mean, there's been a number of issues

30:56

I know with people closer to my family, mostly in the home school circles, where they've been in direct violation.

31:04

Like, I'm not going to go to church. I just stay at home. And that's my worship. And it's like you point them to verses that say we shouldn't forsake the assembly of the saints.

31:11

You shouldn't get divorced. Right. And they don't care. And I'm just like, how is that Christian, though?

31:17

I don't understand how you're Christian. Because like, isn't that like the fundamental thing that Christians care about what God says in the

31:22

Scripture? It's because they think they're hearing from God. Right. And let me plug a great book for folks on the hearing the voice of God.

31:33

And I'm putting that in air quotes. There's a book called God Doesn't Whisper by Pastor Jim Osman.

31:41

And you could just go to jimosman .com, I think it is. And you can get them there. You could get that book at my website at strivingforeturning .org

31:47

as well. Excellent book on dealing with the people that say they're hearing from God, whether it's be a feeling or nudging or a voice or a dream.

31:59

But that makes them feel like, well, I can't question this. This is of God. And part of the issue why it's so difficult to talk to charismatics about these issues is because it is deeply entrenched into their personal testimony and their sense of being a

32:19

Christian. And so when you're saying you don't believe these things are that these gifts continue, someone will be like, oh, so you're saying that, you know,

32:28

I'm speaking in tongues by the devil. I'm not saying how you're doing it. You know, I'm just saying it's not of God, right?

32:36

It's deeply personal to them. And so this, and maybe we should have started with this, is the fact that for many who may be listening who believe in the charismatic gifts, they probably tuned out by now because they got emotional.

32:50

But if they haven't, look, I just want to say, I understand how emotional it is, but we need to be able to separate our emotion from the logic and the thinking and look at what

33:05

God's word says, not what we wish it says. And that is a big thing that doesn't get discussed when we have these discussions.

33:13

You have one side arguing emotion and another side arguing thinking.

33:19

I want to say scripture, but they're both trying to use scripture. Yeah, no, that's really good.

33:26

Yeah, Joel, so like when you were in the charismatic slash word of faith movement, which, and we know we should probably make define our categories here.

33:34

I know, Joel, you said there's more error. It's there's heresy and word of faith. But did you notice what

33:42

I described, at least like the consequences of this theology being soft peddling sin and then at the same time, maybe playing up demons or attributing sin to something else?

33:57

Yeah, I noticed it with dozens of people around me, but most importantly, I noticed it with myself.

34:08

When everything is centered around receiving a personal word from the

34:13

Lord, then you don't have a clear, universal, transcendent, unchanging standard.

34:25

You have a perpetually, constantly, interpersonal, subjective, fluctuating, changing standard.

34:33

What is God's word for me today? And it could directly contradict with what he said the day before.

34:39

You know, it's, but who am I to argue? The spirit blows where he wills, John chapter three, you know, and you'll use some scripture and twist it and take it out of context.

34:47

And so, you know, and again, I want to exonerate and obey the fifth commandment.

34:53

And it's not flattery. It's true. But, you know, to honor my father, I didn't get that from my dad. My mom and dad are some of the most level -headed, non -emotional.

35:02

They're kind of like, it's kind of weird that they were ever charismatic at all, because in terms of their personality and disposition, they're just very even keel, very steady, more than me.

35:15

See, my problem was that, well, I was adopted. I didn't get that gene from mom and dad.

35:22

I have always had, especially when I was younger, God has sanctified me by his grace and changed me, but I always had a more emotional bent.

35:32

Like I remember even, you know, as I became reformed and I remember reading, you know,

35:37

Charles Spurgeon and like the dark night of the soul, the black dog, you know, these bats of depression and thinking, oh my goodness.

35:46

Like, you know, like sometimes, you know, still to this day, people say, man, you are such a good preacher. Part of the reason

35:51

I'm a good preacher, apart from, of course, the grace of God, is because I am an emotional person.

35:57

And so I think the charismatic doctrine, I was particularly, in terms of just my natural disposition,

36:05

I was susceptible to and didn't get it, you know, in an extreme unhealthy way from mom and dad, but I did get it at 19, 20 years old in school.

36:15

And I started, you know, seeing people who, it was just, were kind of led by the seat of our pants, flying by the seat of our pants.

36:21

And I bought into that and John, you're right on the money. I think it's two things, it's probably more, but at least two things.

36:28

One, there's this fluctuating standard that's subjective. It's what does

36:34

God say today? It's not transcendent, universal, you know, word of God.

36:39

It is written. Secondly, it is very much, spiritual warfare is a legitimate biblical category, but the charismatic, it's everything.

36:51

Everything. And so I remember one time, a guy who

36:57

I won't name, but a guy who went to that church that I went to, Jack Deere's church. It wasn't Jack himself, but a young man who

37:04

I looked up to and thought highly of and thought has a prophetic gift. He said, I've got a word for you.

37:11

And I'll never forget this. He said, I have a prophetic word for you. And he said, I saw you and I saw like a pile of frogs on you and around you.

37:23

And I was like, wow, that doesn't sound good. And then he began to interpret his word.

37:31

And he was like, well, that's like a word of knowledge. And here's the word of wisdom. And he said, well, frogs are a symbol, a sign of a perverted spirit, like lust and perversion.

37:46

And I think that you have, are going to be battling and, you know, a unique perverted kind of spirit, you know, is going to be plaguing you for the foreseeable future.

38:01

And you need to be aware of that. And you need to, you know, battle that. And so here's the deal. My point is, you know, going from that, and this is, you know,

38:10

I'm at this point, it's after Christ for the nations at 21, 22 years old. And then, you know,

38:16

I moved to California with my college roommates and, you know, we wanted to plant a church and we weren't qualified.

38:22

I wasn't qualified. It was a glorified small group of 10 to 30 young, 20 something singles meeting on Sunday night.

38:31

And, you know, we were, we were, you know, I was a church planting, you know, candidate guy who was supposed to plant a vineyard church, but we couldn't get it off the ground because of our own sin and lack of doctrine and lack of character.

38:44

And eventually by God's grace, 2013, 14, I subjected myself to a year long process with Acts 29, which has its own problems, but their assessment was really good.

38:54

They helped me get my, both my character, my doctrine together. And then by 2014, we officially covenanted and planted the

39:02

Acts 29 church that I pastored there, you know, for six and a half, seven years in California. But before that, the early days, the, you know, church planting

39:11

LARPer days where I, I'm in way over my head. I'm not qualified. I don't know what

39:17

I'm doing. I don't have strong accountability. My friends are good friends, but they're just as immature, if not more than I am.

39:23

And we, none of us, it's like we're all the blind leading the blind and I'm operating. And I remember in those days, remembering back to this prophetic word that I received of the pile of frogs that I'm in the middle of and they're on me.

39:37

And this perverse spirit has kind of drawn a target on my chest and it's coming after me.

39:43

And I remember this sense of feeling like I'm a victim instead of I'm more than a conqueror.

39:49

Like I'm a victim. There's this, like my fate is written in this. And I remember like during that season, struggling with sin and struggling with lust and, and, you know, and, and, and, and many ways.

40:02

And I was wrong and I'm responsible for this. And I was wrong. Bad theology. I'm not, I'm not excused for it.

40:07

Ignorance is not, not an excuse. But I remember my point is to answer your question,

40:12

John. Yes. If anyone says there's not a correlation between bad doctrine and a bad life, they're crazy.

40:18

That's why Paul says to Timothy, guard your life and doctrine closely. The two go hand in hand. A dude is a greedy scumbag.

40:25

And turns out he also preaches the prosperity gospel and his doctrine. And he preaches the prosperity gospel and his doctrine.

40:30

And turns out he buys a jet plane and cheats on his wife and is a dirty. It's always two peas in a pod.

40:36

It always comes as a pair. And so, yeah, if you think that God's word is just this general abstract, you know, handbook that you can take or leave, but his spoken word on a daily basis to you personally, that that's the real standard.

40:51

And you've been told that you are a victim to some perverse spirit, then you're in trouble.

40:59

You're in trouble. And you're responsible. And you need to repent of that sin and grow in grace and grow in the gospel and all those things.

41:06

But yeah, that is not a helpful scenario for any Christian to have that kind of doctrine while seeking to live a holy life.

41:14

It's a recipe for disaster. Thanks for sharing that. If there's folks in the audience who are having trouble with this, you can reach out.

41:23

I'm sure to Joel, you get a right response ministries. I think what is it dot com? Yeah. You can go to striving for eternity ministries dot com.

41:31

You can talk to Andrew. I mean, they have their stories. They've I mean, Andrew's he's done the speaking in tongues, at least what they call that call speaking in tongues.

41:41

And and they can help you walk through some of this stuff and probably ways that I'm not going to be as equipped.

41:47

Of course, I have the Bible. We all do. But but you guys have been there. You've experienced this. And and it's powerful.

41:54

It's real. It's it is a problem. It is, you know, like I think I said at the beginning that there's so many other good ministries like Justin Peters.

42:01

I know talks about this. I know Kosti Hinn talks about this. And they're bigger ministries,

42:06

I think, than even what I'm doing. And and I thought, well, you know, they got it. But it's interesting to me how many people get sucked into this.

42:14

In fact, just the other day, I don't know if you guys saw that clip of Michael Flynn at a church.

42:20

I don't know what kind of a church it was, but he was just he said in the church that we should be closing our

42:27

Bibles and opening up the Constitution certain Sundays to preach. Right. Right. And and I'm pretty sure

42:33

Michael Flynn is charismatic in some. And I'm not blaming this on all charismatics, but but there is this kind of kooky.

42:41

I'm not saying all charismatics are kooky in every way on their politics either, by the way, just so people know. But there is this kookiness that people will use to try to smear

42:51

Christians who want to get involved politically. And they'll say, well, you're just like this person over here who does something so cringy.

42:57

Right. With an American flag and an eagle or whatever. But you find out when you start peeling the onion layers back nine times out of 10, that person is word of faith or if they're not word of faith or charismatic or Pentecostal.

43:12

And it's I mean, that's been my experience, at least. Now, maybe that's not for everyone. But Andrew, we haven't heard from you for a while.

43:20

So maybe this would be a good time. Let's do a little theology if we can.

43:25

A theological critique. I mean, you mentioned you read through First Corinthians and that kind of. Why don't we start with word of faith?

43:32

Maybe you can define that and then go to the sign gifts and just briefly. OK, what are the passages?

43:37

What's the argument for why this isn't the teaching of the charismatic movement isn't correct on these things?

43:44

Yeah, there's a couple of different levels we could look at. We could look at word of faith. That's the one extreme a little bit closer to us would be new apostolic reformation.

43:54

That's kind of word of faith. Light closer to us. Charismatics. And I'd even say closer from that, maybe even

44:03

Pentecostal. Right. And so I make a distinction. It was actually a tremor who edited the book.

44:10

But there's a book called Dune Theology where they took different people from different backgrounds to explain their view of how they do theology.

44:17

You know, feminist, you know, dispensationalist, the Presbyterian.

44:22

But they had one that was a Pentecostal and one that was a charismatic. And I found it very interesting to read them because the

44:30

Pentecostal made the distinction by saying with Pentecostals, they realized they had the gift of tongues and these gifts that continued.

44:40

And they left their churches and started new churches. And they'd go to a church that holds to what they believe.

44:49

And this guy was separating that from the charismatics that went into churches with the hopes of converting them.

44:57

And I was like, that's a really interesting distinction that he was making. But you have people that could be

45:04

Pentecostal or charismatic and be very much in line with much of what we believe.

45:10

So you have like the John Pipers and Wayne Grudemsey.

45:16

I think you mentioned that, John, where they're continuationists because they're saying, hey, God can still do this.

45:22

Now, God could do whatever he wants to do. The question is, if God's word has spoken on these things then and he says he's not going to continue them, then they're not going to continue.

45:31

And I want to get to give you the theology why I don't think he's continuing it in a moment.

45:37

But you have charismatics that is a wide range. And so when you get to word of faith, though, the

45:45

New Apostolic Reformation, they're going to be starting to believe in some of the prosperity gospel.

45:51

God wants you healthy, wealthy and wise. The word of faith is that. But the word of faith goes beyond.

45:57

I mean, the word of faith will teach a little God's doctrine that you are God. You're a little

46:02

God. You can speak things into existence the way God does. So you get to a far extreme with some of those.

46:11

Now, I do I do have to admit it was interesting when Justin Peters and I went to Benny Hinn's, sorry,

46:19

Kenneth Copeland's Southern Southwest Believers Conference there in Texas.

46:26

Everyone's speakers, Creflo Dollar, everyone talked about how a doctor healed them.

46:34

They had cancer, they had heart issues, and they went to a doctor and then they're going to do a healing session later.

46:41

And Creflo Dollar was the funniest because he goes, I know we're going to do a healing service later. And I'm sitting there going, yeah, you just caught how hypocritical it sounds when you go to a doctor, but you're telling these people to give their money to you to get healed.

46:57

Well, all the craziest preachers come from Texas. We all know that. But here's the thing.

47:04

When we look at this, the idea that the gifts continue or not, you know,

47:13

I did a thing at the cessationist conference that was up here in Kootenai, Idaho, where I'm where I'm actually at right now.

47:20

This is back in the winter. And I did a thing on the fading New Testament miracles.

47:26

And I actually broadened it and looked at miracles in the entire Bible. And when you start to look, there's only 300 some miracles in the entire

47:35

Bible. I mean, 104 of them are done by Jesus, which makes sense. If God becomes a man, he's going to put his deity on display.

47:42

It makes sense. He would do the majority of miracles. But when you look at miracles done by human beings, you only have about 80.

47:49

And out of those 80, they're almost all within three time periods. Moses, Elijah and Elisha, and the apostles.

48:00

What's unique about those three time periods? You have new writing the scripture after a period of silence or no scripture.

48:08

So there's no scripture being written. Moses comes on scene, writing of scripture. How do you vindicate it?

48:13

He does miracles. There's a period of silence. Then Elijah and Elisha come on scene.

48:18

They're saying they speak for the Lord. New scripture is going to be written. They start doing they are vindicated through the miracles.

48:25

I mean, this is what Hebrews ends up saying, right? That we it's these various gifts that are miracles and signs are for what to vindicate what you've heard spoken.

48:36

So outside of those three time periods in the 4 ,000 years of biblical history that we have recorded, we only have eight miracles done by human beings outside of those times.

48:54

And with people that say, oh, this should be happening all the time. No, it shouldn't. Because it happens for the purpose of vindicating the new revelation.

49:04

So if we don't have new revelation, I would argue we shouldn't expect to see these gifts continue. And so I look at 1

49:10

Corinthians 13 when it says the teleos comes. Teleos does not mean perfection.

49:16

It means completion or maturity. And so I would argue that everything in there is pointing to the canon of scripture.

49:22

I believe that he's talking about revelatory gifts. Those gifts will cease when the canons complete.

49:28

We won't need them anymore. And so I know that others take a different view, even as cessationists.

49:34

But I think that the clearest thing is that it's the prophecy and knowledge are partial to whatever is the teleos.

49:43

And so those two are revelation. So I think that when the revelation is complete, you don't need these gifts.

49:49

And that would make sense with it. So as we look at it, you have those who believe they're saved.

49:58

They're going to be in heaven like you and I, but they're open but cautious. That's still continuationist.

50:05

Then you have those that are charismatic, but they're not going crazy with it.

50:12

They may even be in solid non -church. The church that I'm going to here in Kootenai, there's a guy that's charismatic and he goes to the church here.

50:22

And so that's because he's more doctrinal. And so you're going to find that within charismatic.

50:28

So it's one thing you have to be careful is we can't broad brush all charismatics into one group because it really is a wide range.

50:37

But then when you get into the new apostolic reformation and word of faith, now you're getting into a very different view.

50:45

I mean, you'll have guys like Todd White who believes he never sins.

50:51

I mean, he's basically teaching a sinless perfectionism. Claims in 15 years he's never sinned.

50:57

Yeah. I mean, as my buddy Matt Slick says, 15 minutes with me, I'll get him to sin. I'll get under his skin and make him angry real quick.

51:06

But that's like a joke for those who don't get it. Yes, yes, yes. But the thing is that we have to be careful not to bucket everyone in one group.

51:17

That's one thing. But theologically, we have to realize that there's many who want to claim that they're believing in the continuation of gifts based on a theological and biblical argument.

51:29

But the thing I have noticed, John, every single time I debate someone on the charismatic gifts, it always ends up leading back to personal experience.

51:40

Now, I'm saying that as someone who I've had a debate with a personal friend of mine on the radio.

51:46

We've done debates at conferences and he used to make good arguments. Now, I'm not saying

51:52

I agree with the arguments, but arguments from the scripture that he would try to make as good arguments. But then as I started to interact with those more and he didn't have answers, he ended up appealing to emotion.

52:03

Hey, this is my experience. I had this happen. I did this. And Michael Brown kind of does that,

52:09

I think. Right. Because he's a brilliant guy. He's a linguist and he knows the text. But he

52:16

I've noticed that I think I've heard him talk to about this with others like James White, I think might have. Anyway, sorry to derail you.

52:22

No. Yeah. I mean, as a linguist, you'd think he would know that the language of tongues that people speak, you know, the the they all say it's an angelic language because it's they know it's not a known human language.

52:37

And there's only one verse in the Bible that we could refer to that. Recently on my Apologetics Live show.

52:44

And John, you've been on that show. We had a guy that wanted to defend Benny Hinn, and he was trying to defend that he speaks an angelic language.

52:52

And the only verse that talks about this, First Corinthians 13 one, where he's using sarcasm.

52:59

How do I know it's sarcasm? Because if I speak the language of men, even of angels, but have not love him a noisy single symbol.

53:06

Why is that sarcasm? Because the very next verse, he says, if I have all knowledge, but have not love of yet, if he has the ability to speak in angelic language, then he would have to have the ability to be

53:18

God. Because that's who has all knowledge. Clearly, verse two is sarcasm. Therefore, verse one incongruities also.

53:27

Yeah, that's good. I was just thinking that you referenced First Corinthians 13, and I think it's chapter 13, verse 12.

53:36

For now, you see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have also been fully known.

53:42

Actually, it's before that. When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. Yeah, verse eight and nine.

53:48

Sorry, I went way too far after that. For we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

53:56

Anyway, I do find it interesting. You say that's the word of God. I don't want to get into the weeds deep on this, but I always thought that was

54:03

Jesus because it says face to face. I'm working on a weekend seminar to come into churches on the doctrine of cessationism.

54:13

One of the things we do in that is I go through First Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, but then I focus in on 13, 8, and following.

54:21

What you have there is three illustrations. If you look at those from childhood to manhood, looking in polished metal, and I'm saying it that way because when we think of a mirror, looking in a mirror is as clear as looking face to face.

54:38

That's not what they would have had. It's looking in polished metal versus looking clearly. What is that?

54:45

That's completion. Knowing in part, knowing as I'm fully known, partial to completion.

54:51

All three of those are illustrations of partial to complete. I think that what you have there is, and I know that some people would say, well, see, face to face always refers to a personal encounter.

55:05

That's not true. In Proverbs, water reflects face face in the Hebrew. It's the same language, but it's always translated reflects face to face or face reflects face depending on translation.

55:21

That's what you have there is that looking in a polished metal versus the reflection looking face to face.

55:29

What you have is those are illustrating something that goes from partial to completion. The real key is when you look in verse nine, it tells you what's the partial.

55:39

It's the prophecy and the knowledge. But when the teleos comes and teleos is most often translated as complete or mature.

55:52

So just because it's translated perfect doesn't mean perfection. It means perfect as a jigsaw puzzle.

55:58

You put the last piece in. It's perfect. It's done. It's complete. That's the idea of it. Interesting.

56:05

So yeah. Okay. I have a whole one hour session I do on that. And I have a paper at striving for eternity .org.

56:13

You can go there. I want to look at that. And I have one paper on First Corinthians 12, 13, 14. I have another paper just on the word perfect in there.

56:24

I want to go to Wayne whose camera is on, but I don't see you, Wayne. I see the wall, which is fine.

56:30

Can we hear you? Hey, did you have a question? It's not going well, guys, with the video feed tonight.

56:40

I'm having trouble. Wayne, let me know in the chat if you want to be part of the podcast here.

56:50

Because I can see your camera, but I can't hear anything. All right. So Joel, I'm kind of curious if you agree with that interpretation.

56:59

Did you think the perfect was the word or Jesus? I've heard both. Yeah, I've heard Jesus. And in that vein, it would be kind of similar to Hebrews 1.

57:12

He's the final revelation, the exact imprint of the Father's nature, the fullness of the radiance of the glory of God.

57:23

He's the final word. And many times long ago to our fathers and many times in many ways,

57:29

God spoke to our fathers through the prophets, but now He has spoken. This final revelation through His Son.

57:35

And so I've heard some guys say that, yeah, it is Jesus. But immediately correlating that to the written word, the completion of the canon.

57:42

Because, yes, if that is true, that Jesus is the final perfect revelation.

57:49

And that's certainly true of Hebrews 1. But if that is exactly what 1 Corinthians 13 means, it's still a moot point in my assessment.

57:57

Because Jesus, part of Jesus being God's final spoken personified word, is that Jesus in His teaching and authority,

58:09

He's the one who commissions and gives authority to the apostles to complete the canon. And everything the apostles write is about Jesus.

58:18

So it's Jesus inscripturated. That's what the Bible is. The prophets looking forward to Jesus dimly.

58:25

The apostles looking back after the cross, after His resurrection and ascension, saying we walked with Him.

58:31

I mean, 1 John. He's bending over backwards to make the point.

58:37

We saw Him with our eyes. We touched Him with our hands. We're not like the Gnostics giving this secret elite revelation.

58:46

Like Joseph Smith, I stuck my head in this sack and saw these golden tablets and nobody else could see.

58:52

No, He walked among us. Everyone knew Him. They knew where He was born. They knew His mom.

58:58

They knew His dad. We touched Him. We saw Him. We were friends with Him. And we're now writing everything about Him.

59:04

That's what the New Testament is. It's the four gospels. It's all the narratives about Jesus' works and teachings.

59:10

And then all the apostolic writings. And then the book of Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's actually the full title of the book.

59:17

So either way, in my assessment, it's like if Jesus is the perfect, mentioned in 1

59:23

Corinthians 13, that message of Jesus as the final perfect word is conveyed in the completion of the

59:33

Scripture. All that said, I actually feel comfortable publicly going on record saying that Andrew won me over.

59:40

I think that his interpretation is really solid. Because the face -to -face, I always thought of a person, like I'm looking at you guys right now through the camera.

59:47

But he's right. If it's coming off of the heel, I think he's right. I'm not infallible. But coming off of the heels of the dim reflection, if reflection is the concept that's actually being talked about and it's not looking at another person.

01:00:01

It's actually looking at yourself dimly with polished metal because they didn't have mirrors like we do today. But eventually you would see, as a man would see another man, but really in reference is still seeing yourself, just a clearer reflection.

01:00:14

There's a partial reflection, now a full reflection. Then that doesn't have to refer to Jesus as a person looking at him at all.

01:00:21

That could just be one of three different analogies, illustrations to make the same point partial to complete, partial to complete.

01:00:29

And if that's the perfect meaning is complete, which I think it is, then absolutely it could refer to the canon of Scripture.

01:00:37

Yeah, no, I'm actually, I think I'm being won over too. In the paper that I have, there's several different things.

01:00:45

MacArthur believes it's the second coming. I go through and explain each of them and their strengths and weaknesses.

01:00:54

You disagree with John MacArthur. Yeah, there's a couple areas I disagree with John MacArthur. Well, if it is the second coming, that's great.

01:01:01

That means it ended at the end of the apostle's life around AD 70 because Jesus came a second time already.

01:01:07

But that's not what John would hold to. I know that's not what John would hold to. We're not getting into eschatology, at least in this podcast.

01:01:15

So Vlad, hopefully this works. Vlad, can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? It works.

01:01:21

Yes. So did you have a question or a comment? Yeah, I did. I had a question. I was interestingly, last time

01:01:28

I was at G3, I was talking to some people. There was some controversy going on in our church about some of the singing hell song and some other stuff like that.

01:01:37

And some of my friends, we were going over 2 John chapter 1, where there's talks about the false teachers, the category which being the

01:01:47

Gnostics who proclaim that they weren't come, that Jesus didn't come in the flesh, and to not even associate with those kinds of people, lest we share in their evil deeds and give them greeting and accept them into our homes.

01:02:02

Would it be appropriate to apply this passage to using songs from those kinds of sources?

01:02:12

Because rightfully, if we're doing it correct, we are to give money to use the copyrights and all that stuff to these organizations.

01:02:20

Is it proper to apply that passage in 2 John to a situation like that, of using those songs from these sources that have a lot of heresy?

01:02:29

Would that be propping them up and helping them? That's a good question. So I take a little bit of a different tact.

01:02:37

I know Justin's position on, and I think he has a lot of good points with the fact that you're supposed to mention your

01:02:46

CCLI license, that you use those songs so that they fund it, that they are teaching error.

01:02:55

Not all their songs are good, but you can sing the good songs as the argument, and you can talk about what you're supporting.

01:03:02

But the thing for me, because people would make the argument, yeah, but you have songs that were written by someone that went apostate later in life, and yet we still sing their songs.

01:03:13

The difference for me is, Hillsong and Bethel have been clear that they use their music as a hook to pull

01:03:22

Christians into their theology. That's the issue for me. This is their evangelism.

01:03:29

And who are they looking to evangelize? The people in churches that don't agree with their theology, to get them into their music and from their music, bring them into their theology.

01:03:40

So I'm more against it, not because of the support issue. I'm against it for that. The theology issue,

01:03:46

I'm against it for that. But the difference between that and singing a song like it is well with my soul by someone who later it seems might've gone apostate, the difference is

01:03:58

Sprafford didn't use it to try to pull people into a false religious cult.

01:04:05

These guys are. That would be the difference for me. I completely agree. I was thinking of,

01:04:10

I think it's Isaac Watts. Am I on the right track? Wasn't Isaac Watts like a hymn writer?

01:04:18

Isaac Watts wrote a ton of good hymns. Yeah, like two thirds of our hymnal. Okay. Yeah. But, but who's the guy who

01:04:26

I, I miss it. Who's the guy who wrote it as well with my soul. Cause that's the one that ratios. Yeah. Right.

01:04:31

Yeah. I was going to say, I, I love that song. I've sang it dozens of times and I've never, as I've just proven,

01:04:38

I've never thought I should read Horatio Spafford, you know, writings, but, but people who listen to Hill song, in fact, you, cause you can go to their channels on Spotify or whatever or online and it'll be song, song, song, sermon by Joel Osteen song, song, but they, they actually have the teachings, the teaching sprinkled in right there and yeah.

01:04:59

So I agree. Can I throw a wrench into the gears here if I can, cause this is, I'm a minister music at my church.

01:05:05

This has been off and on, I think a bit of a controversy and there is, there's only like one

01:05:10

Hill song that I kind of like man of sorrows. You guys heard that one. It's, I mean the theology, it's simple, but the theology is good.

01:05:19

It's a catchy song. And we don't play it anymore at my church. And I think maybe that's the wise thing to do, but I never really had a problem with it because,

01:05:28

I mean, I don't know really, I don't know the theology of the person who wrote it. I just, I know Hill song is a big tent, so there might even be people in it who have since left that, you know,

01:05:38

I don't know. I mean, I, I, I'm just, I'm not an expert on Hill song, but I know that there's just quite a bit of diversity, even within Hill song and, and different countries and different churches and so forth.

01:05:49

And you know, I guess one of the things that I thought is like to answer the question of that Vlad asked is like, there is a discernment element here.

01:06:02

Like the association might be too tight. It might be too much of a stumbling block. It might be, you know, unwise to play something because someone will go look it up.

01:06:12

And then as you said, Joel, they're going to listen to Joel Osteen or something. But, but I don't know if that fits into the second

01:06:21

John passage. Like, I don't know if like, cause that isn't that about like blatant.

01:06:27

These are false teachers who are it's obvious that they're coming to your town to do false teaching that the lyrics would be embedded in the song.

01:06:36

Like that, that would seem to me like the parallel there would be like, this is someone who is going to actually preach or teach heresy.

01:06:46

So I don't know, I don't know exactly where the lines are, but I, I, maybe, maybe it's just cause

01:06:51

I like Man of Sorrows. Maybe I'm secretly trying to justify my own. There's a couple of things with it, John. I mean, one is some of the songs that are under the

01:07:01

Hillsong banner or Bethel banner weren't originally from them. They, you know, they bought the rights and things like that.

01:07:07

There's, you know, there's some that are like that, but so, you know, sometimes you see older renderings of a song that's not from them.

01:07:14

And, but, but here's the thing. The thing for me is like, you're right.

01:07:19

I could, you know, I could sing it as well with my soul and I never have the desire to go see if Spafford wrote anything else.

01:07:27

Right. The, but Spafford isn't going out and saying we're,

01:07:33

I'm writing this song and doing this music to bring people into what

01:07:39

I believe. Right. That's, that becomes the difference. And so, you know, like, can we just like use

01:07:46

Man of Sorrows just cause that's such, I mean, I think that's a good song. Yeah. If the theology is fine in that, like how, how is that working?

01:07:54

Like how do they use that? The way that they're planning on it working and I'm going to grant you, it may not always work this way.

01:08:01

It does sometimes, but the way they, they plan for it to work is that you sing a song like that.

01:08:08

You like the song, you see that it's from Hillsong, Bethel Elevation, and you go check out more of their music.

01:08:16

They, they know in the, in the age that we're in, which is different than, you know, when it is well my soul was written, they know that people will do that.

01:08:27

They'll go out to YouTube or wherever and look for other songs that happens. And so for me, it's the fact that the people behind the producing of these songs are, are creating good biblical songs on purpose to try to bring people into the bad heretical songs.

01:08:49

Okay. And so that's, so for me, it like if, if someone was to play

01:08:55

Manasaurus and, and didn't know anything about Hillsong, it might be like, okay, not a big deal.

01:09:02

Right. Because they're, they're not pushing it. Yeah. There's, there's one church I know that I, yeah, this becomes a difference is what they do is they, they put the, they've, they put the

01:09:15

CCLI there, but they put the font so small, you can't see it. And so then they, they'll sing the song so you don't know who's who actually produced it.

01:09:23

And I'm like, yeah, to me, you're trying to like that. I don't know. You're trying to be in the letter of the law, not the spirit.

01:09:30

Cause you, you yeah, you're putting it, the CCLI that you're required to do. Yeah. So I think

01:09:37

Joel's got, got the Bible open, which I mean that's always scary when a preacher's not the Bible. I just wanted to go to the text cause it's a good question that Vlad asked.

01:09:46

And so it's a second John starting verse seven. It says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world.

01:09:51

Those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

01:10:00

And you know, and we know that John elsewhere says that many antichrists have gone out into the world. So this isn't, you know, a one you know, like a

01:10:08

George Soros who, you know, one world order, one individual man who is the antichrist. But the first thing

01:10:14

I wanted to say is the one who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. John in his first epistle really deals with the

01:10:22

Gnostics, everything he says, it's just describing the Gnostics to a T, but it seems like, and I could be wrong, but just looking at the,

01:10:29

I, I think part of what he's getting at is in his second letter is I think he could be talking about the

01:10:34

Gnostics again, kind of a wide net, but I think he's definitely also talking about Judaizers. I think he's talking,

01:10:41

I mean, the Jews are the ones who, you know, if they were devout and faithful to the

01:10:46

Sanhedrin and to, you know, the not wanting to be thrown out of the temple, they would have been the ones who denied that Jesus came in the flesh, that Jesus of Nazareth, he's not the

01:10:57

Christ. He's not the Messiah. He didn't come. And so I think in some sense, he may be warning about Gnostics, Judaizers, but going on in the text it says verse eight, watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.

01:11:15

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have

01:11:20

God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the father and the son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

01:11:37

I would read that as the right hand of fellowship. I would read that as taking into your house is it's an alliance.

01:11:48

It's not just a stranger that's in need that you give a meal to one time, but it's an allegiance.

01:11:54

It's an alliance. It's the right hand of fellowship. It's a partnership. It's a salute agreeing that we're of the same cloth.

01:12:03

We are brothers. We're on the same page and you're not, you're not. And it's giving a permission for false heretical doctrine to be received, to be believed by you that you're going to accept those things.

01:12:20

And so all that being said, I don't think that someone listening to Man of Sorrows on Spotify with their voice activated

01:12:28

Alexa in their living room as they vacuum the house, you know, is, is in blatant sin.

01:12:35

I would not go that far, but I would say that that guys who, you know, who would formally partner, you know, they would, they would be under in, in, in, in ministry, in conferences become a member of a

01:12:49

Hillsong church that I would view that as like, no, that that's way too far. And I also, the thing is, it's not just the partnership, but in the case of Hillsong, especially as a local church that pays money, the

01:13:03

CCLI license, it's do we want to fund false teachers?

01:13:09

You know what I mean? That's so I think that one there's the right hand of fellowship partnership that I don't think the individual listening to Hillsong in their car is doing.

01:13:16

But at the church, local church level with the CCLI license, I think it's, it's maybe not a formal partnership, but it is a funding.

01:13:25

And the same way you would give a portion to missionary because you think he's doing good work. You're giving a portion of the church's tithe that you're trusted as stewards, as elders of that church and deacons to, to use wisely to support false teaching.

01:13:39

And so I do think it's a diff, I say all that to say, I think there is a distinction between the individual

01:13:44

Christian with discernment enjoying man of sorrows on an occasional Tuesday afternoon while cleaning the house versus the church corporately using it in worship, funding them financially by virtue of proper licensing.

01:13:59

I think those are two separate issues. Joel you're right because a lot of people don't understand.

01:14:04

And you can see this when Jesus sent the disciples out, having someone in your home was not just,

01:14:10

Hey, they need a place to stay. It's where they set up shop while they did their teaching in the town. Right?

01:14:16

So you, you lived there, you ate there, you slept there, but everyone came there to hear you teach.

01:14:24

And if you went out to the marketplace, you came back in the evening to teach more that that's the way they would do it.

01:14:31

So when you receive someone in your house, it's not like pill use that passage to say, you know, can you let your witnesses come with that knock on your door into your home to talk to them?

01:14:40

Yes, you can. And that passage isn't condemning it because you're not having them set up shop and giving them the support to teach their teaching.

01:14:50

You're teaching them, you're having them in to correct them totally different. And so I agree someone listening, you know, and I like someone liked your comment of while vacuuming the house, but not that anyone's ever done that.

01:15:05

Yeah. But it's, but listening in your home versus playing it in church, singing in church, putting it up there with us, you know, saying we're supporting it, you know, and some churches get away from that by going, well, we don't, we just don't fill out that paperwork for CCLI to tell them that what songs we did.

01:15:20

Yeah. But when you pay for your CCLI license and this, this may, this could become an issue for folks because one, a, you should mention, you should do what

01:15:28

CCLI is asking and say which ones, but CCLI just ends up paying, you know, all of the folks knowing that most people don't say which songs they're doing.

01:15:38

So even if you're paying a CCLI license, you actually are kind of supporting Hillsong and Bethel because they're getting paid, you know, a little of everybody's money.

01:15:47

Now, does that say you're supporting it? Well, that's not your intention. Your intention is to, is to support the ones you are using, which is why you should use, you know, say these are the songs we're singing.

01:16:00

So the money goes specifically to that. Well, you're making a good case for just sticking to the hymn book.

01:16:06

Yeah. For us, it's not, we don't use instruments. It's, it's just acapella and it's, we use the

01:16:12

Cantus Christi 2020. It's all psalms and hymns. I was going to ask you, I was going to ask if you just do psalms because I was going to guess that.

01:16:21

Yeah. Almost exclusively psalms, but we do do some hymns. It's probably two thirds psalms, one third hymns.

01:16:26

Is that by choice, not just the voice and not the music? Or is that because you don't have instrumentalists?

01:16:32

Well, no, we have instrumentalists. We have a lot of really gifted people, but it is, you know, to be fair, it's super convenient.

01:16:39

We're, you know, we're a little over two years into this church plant in Georgetown, Texas, and we don't have our own space.

01:16:46

We're renting. So we're having to do portable church and boy, oh boy, is it nice? Not setting up a band.

01:16:52

Another thing is we don't have to set up for children's ministry because we're by conviction, family integrated. So when people ask us like, is it conviction

01:16:59

Joel, or is it just, you know, makes church easy? Well, for a portable church being family integrated and acapella and worship, it is, it is nice, but no,

01:17:07

I would say that the family integrated aspect is 100 % a conviction. If we could staff the children's ministry, we still wouldn't do it.

01:17:17

The music, I think in my ideal world, and I'd have to talk to my fellow elder and we've talked some, and then we would probably consult the congregation and give them a voice on it as well.

01:17:27

But in an ideal world, if we have a building one day, I would like to see, you know, piano and maybe some strings.

01:17:34

The conviction for me is, you know, scripturally is addressing. It's not just singing to God, but it's addressed one another with spiritual songs and hymns and psalms.

01:17:44

And so there's a horizontal aspect to our worship through song. And so for me, the simplest way

01:17:49

I can say it is this. I always tell people if I'm going to obey what scripture tells me for sure, when

01:17:55

I know for sure in scripture and addressing you with my singing, I got to hear you and I got to see you.

01:18:02

So for me, that means there's no lights turned down in fog machines.

01:18:08

And there's also no blaring music that's so loud. But see, here's the irony, that's precisely what

01:18:15

Hillsong, just to go back to our main theme, that's what they do. And here's the intent.

01:18:21

It's to create a simulation of a private worship experience with just,

01:18:27

I remember singing songs like, it's just you and me here now. It's only you and me here now.

01:18:34

And I remember thinking one day, but it's not just me and you here now. It's me and you and other people.

01:18:40

And that matters. And it's supposed to be me and you and other people. And in heaven, it's going to be me and you and other people.

01:18:45

So I might as well get used to it. It's not just me and you here now. And so all that being said, I'm not a hard, exclusive psalm singing only like Rosario Butterfield, who

01:18:55

I respect or Robert Godfrey. I do think psalms are the top shelf. And they should be regular, but I would say hymns and psalms.

01:19:04

And then with music, I'm down for music, but here's the deal. The music is the accompaniment to the lead instrument, which is the collective voice of the saints.

01:19:12

That's the lead instrument and it has to be heard. Well, we've been going now over an hour and 16 minutes.

01:19:19

So we've got to land the plane soon. Joel, Andrew, sorry. Do you have anything to add to that? Cause I have one final question for Joel.

01:19:25

That's unrelated. Actually, if I could, there was Sean, Sean, Sean, that made a comment about people saying, yeah, it was way up with the speaking of Chinese.

01:19:36

It's above the ones you start. So, and so I want to give some history to that as well.

01:19:42

And why is it that everybody says they speak angelic languages? So understand that prior to the, the late 1800s, the only people that were quote unquote, speaking in tongues was the cult and occult.

01:20:01

Okay. You have Hindus, you know, Hindu Kuhlini that still does it today. You have Mormons that were, were very prevalent in speaking in tongues and you ended up having, you know, someone who says,

01:20:16

Oh, we can speak in tongues. His followers believe that they had the gift of languages. One lady felt that she had the gift of speaking

01:20:25

Chinese. And she went over to China to do missions. She could speak and write

01:20:31

Chinese. She was going to do that. And Justin Peters, he has this, I think in his new, his clouds without water three, he tells this story, but he has the handwritten notes from her.

01:20:42

Now she goes over to China. She can't seem to communicate to everybody, anybody.

01:20:48

The realization should set in that she doesn't speak Chinese and she can't write

01:20:53

Chinese. And what, what Justin did now, just so you understand the background, I am, I'm married to someone who was born in Hong Kong, fluent in Chinese.

01:21:02

Okay. So Justin sent this handwritten note that supposedly

01:21:08

Chinese to, to my bride asking if she could read this. And of course he wanted it to be on video so he could see her face.

01:21:15

And she just looks at this and says, Justin, that's chicken scratch. And so she had written for him, this is not

01:21:25

Chinese in Chinese and you can clearly see the difference. Well, that woman came back to America in just a few short years.

01:21:33

You'd think she'd come back realizing I don't have the gift of speaking Chinese. No, she came back saying,

01:21:39

I speak in angelic language. Of course she did. It only took like a dozen years for those people that originally went to the mission field claiming they spoke known human languages.

01:21:50

They all said they had known human languages, came back only speaking angelic languages. Why? Because a known human language can be verified.

01:21:59

An angelic language cannot. Yeah. Well, that's what happened with Charles Parham, right?

01:22:05

Who that's who that is the guy who was referring to. Yep. Oh, Charles Parham. Okay. I was like, that's very similar to a story

01:22:11

I heard. So it is the story I heard. It is a story you heard. Yeah. And so that's the whole thing of it is you, this is not new in history.

01:22:18

And that's why I think Paul does bring that up because I think the same thing happened in Corinth. You know, you had the same thing where people are, you know, going right back as Joel was saying with the music, it's going right back to where we started.

01:22:34

It's that emotionalism that they're, they want to create that private experience them in God, because they're looking for some emotional experience.

01:22:43

And that's what the whole movement is about right now is to create that. I have something personal with God.

01:22:51

It's sort of the, maybe the problem of saying that we have a personal relationship with Jesus because people forget that Joel has a personal relationship.

01:23:00

I have one, John has one. It's not, it's not a one -on -one relationship. You know, we're all part of the same family and yes, we have a relationship, but it's not alone.

01:23:11

You know, as Joel was saying. We wouldn't say that about our earthly families, right? You wouldn't be like, I got a personal relationship with my brother or my father or like, it would just be kind of weird,

01:23:20

I guess. We might say personal, but we would never say private. We'll say I know them. Exclusive relationship.

01:23:27

Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that a lot of what we see in the charismatic, here's, my biggest issue with the charismatic movement is what you have by looking for experiences and looking for gifts to make you feel more spiritual.

01:23:46

The issue I have is it denies the sufficiency of scripture.

01:23:52

It says scripture is not enough for a Christian life. I need something more.

01:24:00

And I would say, no, we don't. We have just think about what we say.

01:24:05

God's word. You have the very words of the creator of the universe speaking to you.

01:24:13

And you say, I need something more. I need some experience. I need some emotion. Folks, we need nothing more than what we already have in the word of God.

01:24:24

And that's where I think to get back to your very original thing, John, the reason

01:24:30

I think that people go where their sin's not important and they go down that where doctrine's not important in many of the charismatic circles is because they're not looking to the word of God as their authority, but their personal experience as authority.

01:24:45

And what ends up happening when I teach my, my harmonetics class, this harmonics is just the study of how do you interpret.

01:24:52

And so when I teach interpretation of the scriptures, I say there's two ways to interpret. You're either going to follow the rules or you're going to have some personal experience, personal goal, whether, even if it's your personal theology that you start to say, well, the

01:25:06

Bible must mean this because I gave a prophecy once. So that must mean prophecy continues. No, the, the question is you may have said something that was, that was turned out to be right, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

01:25:19

We don't trust it to tell time because you happen to the, I had a guy that told me

01:25:24

I have dreams and I write them down and, and they come true. A lot of times I said, have you ever been wrong?

01:25:29

He goes, well, I just keep waiting for them to come true. So the fact is once they come wrong, then you're a false prophet.

01:25:36

I mean, you look at all of these apostles and prophets that in 19, sorry, in 2019, they all predicted that Trump would win reelection.

01:25:50

And not one of them, not one of them saw COVID. Not one of them saw the world, which is that in fact, they all talked about a 2020 vision where everything was going to be great.

01:26:01

And you could go, Justin Peters has on his YouTube channel a video and he plays each of them saying it.

01:26:06

No, they clearly all got it wrong. And that's a false prophecy.

01:26:12

They should be stoned according to the Bible. Right. But instead what they go, Oh, we just have to be like 85%. Right. Where's that in the

01:26:19

Bible. You see once they make something other than scripture, the authority, the soul, an ultimate authority, then scripture is not sufficient.

01:26:30

And that's why you have so much of the, the other things that we've been talking about in that movement.

01:26:35

That's why I think it's, it's harmful for, for many Christians. Yeah. Yeah. That was really good,

01:26:41

Andrew. I think you hit the nail on the head. It is about experience versus scripture and which one is the final authority.

01:26:48

Which one do we trust? So while we're winding it down here, I debated whether I should ask

01:26:54

Joel this, but because there, there's someone in the chat who has been putting this several times.

01:27:00

It's the, it's the con it's not this controversy. It's a different controversy. But since I talked to Joel about it this morning, I figured

01:27:05

I'd get, he had a good answer and I give him a little chance. So Joel needs to explain Joel, you need to explain your bad take on women learning theology.

01:27:14

So since I don't know his take on this, I'm kind of curious seeing the comments going is there something

01:27:20

I should be concerned about you, Joel, since this is the first time we've met. I don't know if Joel's mad at me or not, but I do.

01:27:27

I figured I would give you the opportunity. I know I would want that opportunity if I was on your show or something. So I know we talked about this and there, some people seem to think that you have this view that like women shouldn't study the

01:27:39

Bible together or something. I've heard people say that. So, so what do you actually believe? Yeah, yeah, no,

01:27:44

I appreciate it. So the first thing is I would bifurcate learning and teaching, women teaching versus women learning.

01:27:52

When it comes to learning, the first thing that I've been saying for a while now is that I think we sometimes just assume that the chief end, the whole purpose of learning is to teach, but it's not.

01:28:04

First and foremost, the purpose of learning is knowing. And we even see that, you know,

01:28:10

Jesus says, and this is eternal life that they know you, the father, and me, your son, who you have sent.

01:28:19

So, so the first thing when it comes to learning theology, learning about God, whole biblical theology, systematic theology, the whole nine yards is not so that we can teach others.

01:28:31

That often comes into play, but first and foremost, it's so that we can know God and women are called to know

01:28:38

God. Men, women, children, and, and it's not that men are called to know one portion of God or the whole enchilada and women are called to know partially in children, but no, every person is called to know

01:28:53

God as fully as they possibly can. So one of the arguments that I'll always, you know, make is from first Corinthians 14, where it says, you know, that it's shameful for a woman to speak in church, she must remain silent.

01:29:06

But then he quickly follows it up, the apostle Paul, by saying, if there's anything that a woman is desiring to learn, let her ask her husband at home.

01:29:15

Now, if you logically just draw out the conclusion of that, what that would mean is that all the married women in the church, there would be actually no disparity between their theologically, their theological knowledge and the men in the church, namely the men that they're married to, because anything that the men are learning about God, the woman is actually not only permissible, but commanded to ask her husband so that he can catch her up.

01:29:38

And so that through the discipleship and their marriage, there would be no gap, no disparity between the wife's knowledge of doctrine and knowledge of God and the husband.

01:29:47

So all that being said, the first category is learning. I believe that women should be learning theology, just like anyone else.

01:29:53

Some people have attributed to me, you know, I think misunderstanding my position saying, well, Joel thinks that women should only learn theology of sourdough or that women should learn, you know, they need to learn mathematic fractions so that they can be better bakers.

01:30:06

That is not my position. I believe that women should be learning the whole counsel of God, everything that a man should learn, a woman should learn.

01:30:15

Then it's teaching. So now we're ready for teaching. When it comes to teaching God, God calls biblically qualified men to the office of elder, which is the primary teacher in a local church.

01:30:26

And I believe that men and women are both going to be learning primarily side by side in the context of the local church, from their biblically qualified male elders.

01:30:35

Titus two is one of the only, only context in the new Testament that provides, you know, a realm for women teaching, not men.

01:30:45

First Timothy chapter two, a woman must learn quietness and full submission. I do not permit her to teach or exercise.

01:30:52

So two prohibitions, neither teach nor exercise authority over a man. She must remain silent. And Paul appeals to the order of creation and the order of the fall.

01:31:01

But when it comes to teaching Titus two, older women can train younger women. Now where this is where I get in trouble.

01:31:08

My position is that Titus two, it doesn't just say that in a general sense, it says that the older women should train the younger women in the good, but it's not just a good that's left open ended as an abstract general good.

01:31:21

Immediately. We have in the same breath descriptions of that good, and it's all related and concentrated in the feminine domestic role of a woman that is homeward bound.

01:31:33

It's she should submit to her husband, be lovers of children, not slanderous, not given to much wine, a keepers at home.

01:31:40

Now that said to be fair and not have a double hypocritical, double standard. He then says likewise, older men should train younger men.

01:31:48

And he gives descriptive terms for what that looks like. The one argument I would make though, is that when it comes to men teaching, there's older men and that's just in general, older saints training, younger men, saints in a particular vein and older women, saints training, younger women, saints in a particular vein, mostly domestic feminine home callings of a woman.

01:32:11

But then there's also a whole nother category, which is church wide teaching of doctrine in general, which is given to the elders of the church who are called to be biblically qualified men.

01:32:22

So all that being said, somebody asked me and it blew up on Twitter and people got mad. And I, I think that, you know,

01:32:29

I look now and I'm like, I think that was probably a trap and I fell right into it. But they said, you know, well, can women have a book study where they're going through not a book that's specific towards women, but a book like by R .C.

01:32:41

Sproul, they gave this as an example, everyone's a theologian by R .C. Sproul. And I said, a women's only book study with that being the book.

01:32:47

And my answer was I gave three options. And again, this is my opinion. I'm not infallible. I could just be wrong.

01:32:53

But the three options that I gave was number one, I said, if it's only open to women and you're going through a book, that's not directly related explicitly to women, then go through the book, talk about the whole council of God and everything that Sproul talks about systematic theology, biblical theology, the

01:33:09

Trinity, the hypostatic, all of it, but have a portion of the small group where you then take the doctrine and talk about how to specifically apply the whole council of God in our unique callings as women.

01:33:23

And if you don't have any portion of this women's only group, it's unique to women.

01:33:29

Why can't your husband's come do the book, have the women there. Let's, Hey, let's make it a party, invite the husbands to come to let's, let's have it for, for, for everybody.

01:33:39

And then the third option is if you just want to get together as women in the church for relational reason, then you don't, you don't actually have to have a book.

01:33:46

The women in my church, they get together on a monthly basis. And so do the men. And the irony is people, you know, people like, well, he doesn't want, you know, book says the women get together.

01:33:54

It's not a book study. It's a once a month hangout. The men get together. It's also not a book study. It's a once a month hangout.

01:34:01

And, and the men and the women both learn on a full Lord's day morning and evening service from biblically qualified elders in the church.

01:34:09

Women can read women. I, you know, a lot of it's because one clip went viral where I asked my wife not to read one book.

01:34:17

I've done that once in our eight year long marriage. It was a book on pedo baptism. The context that people don't get is

01:34:22

I am a credo Baptist pastor. My wife has read several books that I've never read with her because I trust my wife.

01:34:30

I trust her godliness or discernment. She's not reading heretical books. She knows better than to do that.

01:34:35

She's a mature woman of the Lord. This one book, the reason she, she felt like this is great is because it is an

01:34:41

Orthodox book written by a guy that we both think highly of and trust. But the whole purpose of the book was not parenting from a covenantal perspective.

01:34:49

It was making arguments to bind the conscience to why pedo baptism is biblical and credo baptism is not.

01:34:56

And what I said to my wife was, sweetheart, I am the senior pastor of a credo Baptist church. It's not ideal for the, the lead pastor's wife to subject her conscience to potentially being bound that the whole church, including her husband as the pastor is in sin because we won't baptize the infants.

01:35:13

This is a book that I'd like us to not read. And let's, and I didn't tell her never, I said, let's read it, but let's read it together at a later time in the internet, lost its mind, lost its mind.

01:35:23

So anyway, so that that's the best that I can answer, but it would make people happy. Well, now I'm getting all the, all the controversial questions.

01:35:30

What are your thoughts on Christian nationalism by Stephen Wolf? We're not going to answer that. I've now opened a big can of worms.

01:35:37

You know, Joel, I think I, I said this this morning when I asked you about this too, that it just sounds like the regulative principle is mostly what you're kind of, what people have a problem with really.

01:35:49

It's not, it's not at least from my outside perspective here and listening to what you just said, it's not your take on whether women can learn or teach.

01:35:57

It's, it's more when you look at the scripture and it outlines, this is what older women should teach younger women.

01:36:03

This is what older men should teach younger men. You are saying that that is the circumstance in which older men interact with younger men and older women interact with younger women.

01:36:13

And there aren't other circumstances that the Bible authorizes for that to take place other than of course the training of elders.

01:36:20

So, so that's at least what I heard. And I thought, okay, let's just, just regular principle. That's what it comes down to.

01:36:26

I think I get in a lot of trouble because I have been, it's fair. I don't want to sit here. I'm not a victim.

01:36:33

I have, have chosen voluntarily to speak a lot to, to the relationship of husbands and wives and men and women, because I, I do think right.

01:36:42

A lot of times what happens in culture and evangelicals, just they, whatever the culture does, evangelicals do seven years later.

01:36:49

And so, you know, and so what happens in the court, we're going to storm the Capitol. That means in five years, I just got to say, so what happens in evangelicalism along with the culture is,

01:36:58

I think this is wrong, but we often make the headline, the footnote and the footnote, the headline, the headline of our hour, right?

01:37:07

The sons of Visigoth, they knew the times. Let's be honest. The headline right now is not abusive patriarchy.

01:37:13

It's feminism. We know it is. It's feminism. Are there men who are abusive right now?

01:37:19

Yes, there are. But right now, the big thing dominating the church, it's dominating theology, the divine feminine, you know, like this dominating our, our, our politics, our culture, our media, our, our movies, our, our education for our children.

01:37:35

The dominating headline of the story right now is that men are stupid. Men are abusive.

01:37:42

Men don't contribute anything that why are all the young men going to Andrew Tate? Andrew Tate is a loser.

01:37:47

I'm not defending him, but, but there's, but we should notice that something's happening. And until pastors are willing to, to call a spade a spade and say, yeah, young men don't want to come to church because it's a feminine it's for women and children.

01:37:59

It's not for men. I think we're fooling ourselves. And so I'm trying to address those things.

01:38:04

And I'm a regular principle guy. So anything I do, it's funny because in the same episode I addressed, you know, worship through song and, and what was my position on that?

01:38:13

Well, shocker it's, it's hymns and mostly Psalms and acapella, right? Because I'm a regular principle guy.

01:38:19

So everything that I do, I try to stick to, I don't read the Bible just for anyone who doesn't know what the regular principle is.

01:38:25

I don't read the Bible and say anything. The Bible doesn't forbid as long as it's not explicitly forbidden.

01:38:30

It's free game. Now that's, that's a normative principle guy. That would be a hard normative principle guy.

01:38:36

But for me, as, as a pretty strict, regular principle guy, the way that I read the Bible, and it's not unique to me, a lot of guys have done this throughout church history.

01:38:44

And still to this day, I read the Bible and I don't look at us as long as it's not explicitly forbidden. It's, it's on the table.

01:38:50

Instead. I look at it as when in doubt, let's stick to what is in the script. Let's only, let's only do what the

01:38:57

Bible says. And when it comes to women teaching, I only found one place. I've only found one place.

01:39:03

Where women are teaching and that same place where women are teaching, not only are they only teaching women, but what it's not just that who's teaching, but it's the curriculum, what they're teaching is clearly defined.

01:39:15

They're teaching these specific things. And so when we create women's only context where a woman stands up and she gives an expositional sermon that has no unique feminine application, it's just, it's just whatever

01:39:28

Hebrews chapter 12, she opens up the text. She gives a 45 minute homily, the same way a male pastor would, but because only women are there, she gets to still be a card carrying complimentarian.

01:39:38

I think it's not the end of the world. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I do think that we're being a little silly, that what we're doing at the end of the day is we're not actually training and equipping women.

01:39:50

It's not that this woman is serving all the other women listening. It's all the women listening are actually in service of the one woman so that she can get to, to function as a pseudo pastor for a moment while, while not canceling her complimentarian status.

01:40:06

I'm just curious and a really quick response if you could, but because I'm listening to you, first time hearing you speak on this, but what would you say then about Paul's commending of, you know,

01:40:19

Timothy's mother and grandmother teaching him? Right. I think, I think that mothers and grandmothers teach their children.

01:40:26

Of course. But theology? Yes. Okay. Okay. I just want.

01:40:32

Yeah. My wife is teaching our kids. Now I'm teaching them of course, too, as a father at home, but yeah, absolutely.

01:40:37

My wife is teaching our kids doctrine of God, theology, proper sovereignty of God, the whole nine yards.

01:40:45

I thought you were going to go to Priscilla and Aquila. That's where I thought you were going, Andrew. Right. And that, and that's, I did an,

01:40:52

I did an episode on my rap report podcast, dealing with the whole women's, you know, teaching and all

01:41:01

Priscilla and Aquila is again, one of the bad arguments, because quite frankly, you show me where you see the woman teaching.

01:41:07

You don't see who you, it doesn't say who's doing the speaking. Right. For all you know, it's the man in there's, cause there's other cases where people try to bring it up.

01:41:17

It's, but you don't know who you don't see where it says, oh yeah, the woman is speaking now.

01:41:24

Right. You know? Yeah. So I think Priscilla and Aquila, and I just think that's, that's also a different, a three person conversation is, is different than like a women's conference, for instance.

01:41:36

Right. You're going to try to argue for Deborah. Deborah can, Deborah's basically saying, Brooke, look, you're going to be judged because you're asking for this.

01:41:43

So she sees it as wrong. Okay. So it's like, yeah. Yeah. We, we desperately, unfortunately have to land the plane.

01:41:51

I know you just got to go eat dinner, which I wish. And maybe I was wrong to bring that hot. No, it's okay.

01:41:56

I, I, I probably did. I was actually in one sense. I was glad you did because I saw the comments and I didn't know what his position was.

01:42:03

So I was like, well, you got me curious. Well, it's not a crazy position. It's the same position that most people have held in church history until approximately 1960.

01:42:13

So, well, well, let me wrap this, tie this together if I can, because I do think they are related.

01:42:18

The regular principle, normative principle, charismatics. And, and of course, word of faith would definitely err on the side of like, if the

01:42:26

Bible doesn't forbid it, it's okay. Like, and, and they can build whole theologies on the, it's okay because, you know, this extra biblical thing.

01:42:34

And I do think that is the grounding that reform people. We never really got into how reform theology is contrasts, but I, I do think that is part of the grounding reform.

01:42:43

People tend to be more regulative principle, some version of that. And because they, they do look at the word of God as if it's telling them how to live.

01:42:52

And it's not, and they don't want to go outside those lines, at least when it comes to things concerning faith and practice.

01:43:00

So, so I do think that that is that relates. And, and you've seen a lot of charismatic churches, women preachers. I mean, that's where a lot of them are.

01:43:06

And so not a coincidence, right? So anyway, if everyone, anyone wants to check out

01:43:12

Andrew Rappaport's podcasts and ministry, go to striving for eternity, ministries .com

01:43:19

and for Joel Webben, go to right. Response ministries .com. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it. Have a good night. Yeah.

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