F4F | Interview with Phil Johnson RE Prophetic Standards Statement

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseboro, I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Well, I haven't done a full analysis on the

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Prophetic Standards Statement, and I thought it would be a good idea if I invited

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Phil Johnson, who works for John MacArthur and Grace to You, on to Fighting for the Faith, to talk about this document that's been put out, and consider the ramifications of the standards that are put forward there, and look at whether or not these are biblical standards or not, and whether or not the

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God that they're confessing is the actual God of Scripture. So with that, let me whirl this up, and Phil Johnson, good to see you, sir.

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Good to be with you always, Chris. All right. So, you had a chance to look at this document.

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What are your initial impressions? Well, you know, there are things in it that I would heartily agree with, but I think if they actually followed their own guidelines, if they actually did what they say they want to do about accountability and taking seriously false prophecies, it would end the prophetic movement.

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I cannot believe that the people who signed this document are really serious about it, because their track record really points a totally different direction.

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Right. I completely agree. I mean, some of the people who signed this document signed it as Apostle so -and -so,

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I think Patricia King signed it, Jennifer LeClaire, and of course,

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Dr. Michael Brown was instrumental in putting this thing together. And so, here's what

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I'd like to do. I'm going to pull this thing up on my desktop, and we can talk about some of the things here.

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I note there was a particular passage of Scripture that was missing, Deuteronomy 18, and the fact that if you say something's going to happen and it doesn't happen, that that's a word that God has not spoken.

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And of course, they claim that that has nothing to do with the New Testament, but we'll talk about that also, how glaringly missing that is here.

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But in looking at the document, I mean, obviously, the charismatic movement is in tatters and disarray as a result of the vast majority of their so -called prophets claiming that Trump was going to win re -election, and then that didn't happen.

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I've seen some pretty egregious things happen since then, you know, so -called prophets who got it wrong, claiming that it's the fault of the people, it's the fault of pastors, it's my fault, your fault, everybody else's fault, but they gave a true prophecy.

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And what are your initial thoughts on that? Well, again, that's nothing new. Charismatic prophecies have always had this elasticity to them that you can interpret them any way you want, you know, that goes all the way back, in my memory, to Oral Roberts, who had this vision of a 900 -foot

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Jesus, who told him to build a hospital in South Tulsa, and you know, I was from Tulsa, all the hospitals were already in South Tulsa, they didn't need one there.

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City officials desperately tried to get him to build a hospital in North Tulsa, but he built it anyway, said the

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Lord told him. The thing was a monumental failure, and you remember, he was having trouble paying for it, and ultimately said that the

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Lord had appeared to him again and told him that God was going to kill Oral Roberts if he wasn't able to raise the money to pay off this debt.

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And for reasons that I don't think anybody quite understands, a pagan gambling, like racetrack owner,

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I think he was a dog track owner from Florida, gave Oral the money that he was pleading for, so he escaped the death threats.

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But if you watch that whole trajectory, that whole record of Oral Roberts, he was wrong every time he spoke on that issue, the prophecy failed to be fulfilled, and yet at the end of it, he celebrated the whole thing as a good fulfillment of modern prophecy.

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And my response even then was, if charismatics are willing to see their failed prophecies in a light like that, then prophecy doesn't really matter, it isn't any better than the horoscope in the newspaper, which is subject to all kinds of interpretations, and in fact in my experience, charismatic prophecies tend to be just dead wrong.

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The more specific they get, the more likely they are to get it wrong, and they're wrong more often than the horoscope in the newspaper.

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I think you'd do better trying to discern the future if you read the horoscope than you're going to if you listen to these charismatic prophets.

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Right, you know, might as well be just throwing dice or playing the roulette wheel, you know, it's that bad.

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And one of my main arguments, Exodus 20 verse 7 clearly says, you will not take the name of the

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Lord your God in vain, and when you read it in Hebrew, kind of the wooden English translation of it would be, you shall not take, you shall not carry the name of the

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Lord your God to falsehood or into vanity. Just let me pitch this out there to you.

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When somebody gives a false prophecy and they say, thus saith the Lord, and it doesn't come to pass, do you see that as a breaking of the commandment of not taking

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God's name in vain? Yes, it absolutely is, because you're using the

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Lord's name actually to speak of falsehood. That's the epitome of taking the

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Lord's name in vain. I preached a whole sermon on that commandment, and that is one of the points I made.

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But I would also say that just garden variety, taking the Lord's name in vain is one thing.

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That's a serious sin. But when you compound that with a false prophecy and you say, thus saith the

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Lord, when he said no such thing, that's even worse. That's a much more egregious sin.

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You started the broadcast by mentioning Deuteronomy 18. You haven't seen my notes yet, but in the notes

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I took on this statement, I copied and pasted Deuteronomy 18, put it on the first page, because I had the same response as you.

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They don't take that text seriously, and they don't explicitly refer to it in this document.

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Once you get into the prophetic standard statement, two or three pages, they allude to it.

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They acknowledge that to prophesy falsely in the Old Testament was a capital crime.

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You would be stoned to death for doing it. But then they just pass on by that and act like, but it's not a sin anymore.

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That's what they think, and I think that's the legacy of Wayne Grudem's book, where he sets up this whole scenario where he claims in the

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New Testament it's okay to prophesy falsely. It's not the same standard, and so not only is it not a capital crime anymore, it's not even considered an egregious sin.

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Yeah, but it is a clear breaking of one of the Ten Commandments.

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It is undeniably that, and since when did that commandment drop out?

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You know, it hasn't. I mean, and not only that, that commandment comes with a warning that God will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

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It's one of the stronger warnings in Scripture, like, keep that up, buddy, and God's gonna remember your sins and there's no salvation for you.

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That's kind of how strong the warning is. But over and again, I run across charismatics and charismatic channels and people like Dr.

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Michael Brown and others. As soon as you even mention the words Deuteronomy and 18 together, they say, oh, that's the

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Old Testament. And I thought I would put you on the spot here because actually you do good with these high inside fastballs.

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But if I am reading this text correctly, this is a text that absolutely in its context must apply to the

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New Testament era. Let me explain why. So, in Deuteronomy 18, we see this prophecy,

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Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, it is to him you shall listen.

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So, the standard that's given a little bit in a few verses down is in the context of a prophecy regarding Jesus.

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And if I'm not mistaken, I think Jesus is a New Testament guy. But I may be oversimplifying here.

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So, he goes on, he says, just as you desired of Yahweh your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, let me not hear again the voice of Yahweh my

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God or see this great fire any more lest I die. And the Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken.

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I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth.

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He shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name,

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I myself will require it of him. So, here we have a prophecy about Christ, who is a prophet, priest, and king.

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He is the prophet that Yahweh is saying we need to listen to. And that if we don't listen to it, to him, we refuse to listen to the words that he speaks, that God himself is going to require that of us individually.

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And that's not a positive thing. And so, the whole context here is a prophecy regarding Jesus.

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But then the logical question comes up, well, what if, how are we going to know, right? So, he says, but the prophet then who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.

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So, here's the death penalty portion of it in the theocracy of ancient Israel.

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So, if you say in your heart, how may I know the word that Yahweh has not spoken? That's the question that's on the table.

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And in the context of you've got to listen to Jesus, when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if that word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that Yahweh has not spoken.

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And that's the bit that they refuse to deal with, is coming to grips with the fact that when somebody says,

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God told me Trump will be president and re -elected in November of 2020, and it doesn't happen, that means that that's a word that the

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Lord did not speak. And so, the prophet then has spoken it presumptuously, and you need not be afraid of him.

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In other words, he's not speaking for God, please see verse up above that basically says that they are to be put to death.

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And so, I would note that the context itself, being in the context of a prophecy regarding Jesus, and God requiring us to listen to Him, and then the obvious question, how do we know that when

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Yahweh hasn't spoken, that the entire context of this prophecy is one not only for the ancient theocracy of Israel, but moving forward continues to be a test for whether or not the

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Lord has definitively spoken, because the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy is found in Jesus.

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Am I off here? No, you're dead right. And in fact, it's an important point in Scripture.

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Deuteronomy 18 is the foundation of the specific messianic promises of the

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Old Testament. This is the first explicit hint of the Messiah who was to come.

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There had been other sort of symbolic things like in Genesis, the one who would crush the serpent's head and things like that.

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But here is an explicit promise of a person who will be a prophet like Moses.

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This is what Jesus was referring to when He said, Moses wrote of me. This is the foundational messianic promise.

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So, it is clearly talking about Jesus, and remember that Jesus Himself warned that in the latter times, many false prophets would come.

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Many people would come pretending to speak in His name. He warned us about that.

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And what this, I think the most obnoxious part of this entire document is a statement that's sort of buried towards the end.

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It's on the very last page, just before the last two paragraphs, where they say, we do not believe that a sincere prophet who delivers an inaccurate message is therefore a false prophet.

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That's a direct contradiction of the whole point of what Deuteronomy 18 is saying. And if you're going to take seriously the warnings of Jesus about false prophets, how can you blow that off like this?

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I just don't get it. And so, it sort of nullifies all of the talk in this document about accountability and examining all things.

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What's the point of examining all things if, when you discover this was a false prophecy, you basically just ask the prophet to apologize for it, and he carries on making more and more false prophecies.

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That's not speculation that that might happen. That is precisely what's been happening in the charismatic movement for years.

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Yep. And I would note that they've moved the goalposts from the biblical ones to the goalposts of their own making.

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I can't look into somebody's heart to tell whether they're sincere or not. I am incapable of actually pulling out goggles and looking into the hearts of people.

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And these standards that they've created make it almost impossible to actually identify somebody as a false prophet.

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Well, that's right. And in fact, they define what they mean by false prophet in that same paragraph.

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They say the false prophet is someone who operates under a false spirit masquerading as the

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Holy Spirit. All right, if you're getting messages that are consistently false, what is that?

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A false spirit masquerading as the Holy Spirit. Exactly. And I would note that all the way back in the time of the apostles,

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John, the beloved apostle of Jesus, he writes in 1 John 4 that,

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Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits. In fact, do not believe every spirit, me pustuita, is in the imperative.

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We are commanded by God the Holy Spirit to not be dupes, but we are to test to see whether they are from God.

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For the reason is that already by then, many false prophets have gone out into the world. Using this prophetic standard statement, we have to assume that a false prophet is kind of a rare bird, that there's not many of them.

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Sure, there's some of them out there, but if you're sincere and you gave a false prophecy, you weren't presumptuous.

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Deuteronomy 18's not in play. You just, you made a slipsie -doopsie, and that's not the standard that I see in Scripture at all.

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So, yeah, the portion of the document you're referencing is all the way down here at the bottom.

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And actually, I wanted to fill in a little bit of context, because I know that Chris Vallison had a hand in putting this together.

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I'm going to read this. We reject the notion, apparently it's a notion, that a contemporary prophetic word is on the same level of inspiration or authority as Scripture, or that God always speaks inerrantly.

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And people are accusing me of like, you know, basically parsing this wrong or misrepresenting the charismatics.

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You're a guy who works with grammar all the time. Am I incorrect in saying that by basically using the noun

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God, and the verb speaks, and then the adverb inerrantly, that they are basically claiming that they believe on some level that God speaks errantly today?

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That's certainly what it implies. I think they might deny that they believe that, because I've heard

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Michael Brown, for example, deny that he would question the inerrancy of Scripture.

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But that paragraph, notice it goes on to say, it's the written word alone that can lay claim to being the

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Word of God. I think what they're implying there is that the Word of God is inerrant, but then they make a false distinction, really.

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This is pulled out of thin air. Prophecies are at best, they say, a word from the

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Lord, as if there's a difference between a word from the Lord. A word might be full of error, but the

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Word is not. I think that's what they intend to say, and it doesn't absolve them from the confusion that this teaching creates.

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I know, it's just unbelievable. In fact, I think that's a false distinction.

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It kind of smacks of the word games that the Jehovah's Witnesses play regarding John 1, 1.

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Without any understanding of how predicate nominatives work and how that construct works, they'll say, well, because it says that the

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Word was, you know, enarche en halagas, kai halagas en prosonteo, kai theos en halagas.

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So they'll say, and God was the Word, and they'll say that, and the

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Word was a God, you know, with this weird thing that they do. And yet there's no a

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God anywhere in Scripture. There's only the God. There is no a word from God. There's only the

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Word of God. There is no other kind of word. If God speaks, it's to be collected up and put in Scripture, you know?

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Right, and the distinction that they're trying to make there, again, undermines the whole point of Deuteronomy 18.

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How do you know if the Lord has spoken? Scripture's very clear about that. If it's not true, it's not the

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Lord. So you can't say this is a word from the Lord if it's erroneous. Right.

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Yeah, and in this context, and I wanted to add this into the mix, this was the video that Chris Vallotton put out on the day of Biden's election.

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I don't know how closely you kind of watch these guys, but after the election, so before the inauguration,

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Chris Vallotton issued an apology for prophesying falsely that Trump would win.

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And there were people who were saying that, well, that proves that you're a false prophet. And he ended up taking his apology video down, and then when

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Biden was finally inaugurated, he put this one up. And I'd really love to get your reaction to it.

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I haven't even played this on Fighting for the Faith yet, but it's in the same vein as this last portion of the standards document that we were looking at, and I really want to see what you have to say about this.

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You know, I've shared this a couple of times before, but Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 29, that two or three prophets are to speak, and the others are to pass judgment.

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In 1 Thessalonians chapter 19, he says this, don't quench the spirit and do not despise prophetic utterances, but examine everything carefully and then hold fast to what is good.

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And I just want to begin this conversation by talking about the fact that God has a, if you will, a safety net, a balance of power in the body of Christ for everybody.

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Here we're talking about prophecy and prophets, that prophecy and prophets were never meant to live in the world of infallibility.

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And the truth is, when we create a system where we believe that people are supposed to be infallible, think about how crazy that is.

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Like, are we actually saying that there's a certain title that you wear that means that everything you say should be taken as being infallible?

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You are infallible. And what I'm getting at is that the moment that a leader thinks that he is infallible is the moment that he begins the slippery slope towards building a cult.

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What convoluted reasoning. I honestly, I mean, it's true that none of us are infallible.

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That's part of our point. He's a mere human. He's not a prophet. If he's a prophet speaking the word of God, God's word is infallible.

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Elijah was infallible. Isaiah is infallible. Amos and Malachi, infallible.

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Moses is infallible. What is he talking about? Yeah, when they spoke the word of God, they were infallible.

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They're not infallible people, meaning that they could never sin or say anything that's wrong, but that when they spoke in the name of the

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Lord, it had to be accurate, otherwise they would be put to death. So you can't say the

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Lord told me, you know, honestly, I would have no trouble with this whole charismatic thing if they just understood that all they're doing is broadcasting intuitive thoughts.

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They call it the word of God, which is what makes it a problem. If they just said, my intuition tells me this, then

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I would be fine with that. You would learn after about four or five failed intuitive predictions that this guy's intuition isn't very trustworthy, but for some reason, once they call it prophet, there are lots of people conditioned by this charismatic system to invest in that person some kind of authority where even if they don't regard them as infallible, they think they speak with authority.

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And so every new prophecy, even if all the other ones were false, every new prophecy has to be taken seriously, treated seriously, and I just don't see any warrant for that.

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In fact, I think it's a serious problem because it undermines real authority. It undermines unity in the body of Christ.

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It undermines sound doctrine. It undermines the credibility of Christianity itself. If I were an unbeliever watching this parade of self -proclaimed prophets in the past year, as you keep pointing out, has been remarkable because not only did they predict wrongly how the election would come out, they missed the obvious big predictions, the virus and the quarantine and the riot in Washington, D .C.,

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all of those things were totally missing from any of the charismatic prophecies.

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And what they did prophesy, they got wrong. That one year alone, it would seem to me, should be sufficient to cause people, even though they've been steeped in charismatic superstition for years, you think a reasonable person would look at this and say, these people are not trustworthy voices for me to listen to.

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Yeah, not at all. That's what Scripture tells us. Yep. They're not bringing me the voice of God.

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This is a voice of a stranger. Now, let me come back to my desktop real quick here and just walk through some of this, because we've talked about Deuteronomy 18, and you're right, these people are not bringing us the voice of God at all.

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And it's absolutely preposterous to believe that God speaks errantly. And you'll note that there are justifications.

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Well, the way it's supposed to happen in the New Testament is that New Testament prophets, they speak the word and then it's supposed to be submitted to other prophets for consideration.

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Then he says that's the safety net, as if somehow, well, Deuteronomy 18 is out of play.

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That's ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd. But I would go back to the fact that years ago,

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John MacArthur published a book called Strange Fire. And in the book, Strange Fire, John MacArthur laid out some of the history as it relates to the early

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Pentecostal movement. And let me, I'm going to quiz you off the top of your head. I think you're going to do great.

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Can you name for me the great prophets of the 11th, 12th, and 13th century? The 11th, 12th, and 13th century?

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Yeah. Who are the great Christian prophets of those centuries? None come to mind. Exactly, okay.

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So one of the things, and this is a recurring point that I bring up on fighting for the faith, is that I was in the charismatic movement.

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I was in the latter reign in the late 80s, and it was in the late 80s in the latter reign that they claimed that God restored prophets, okay?

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And if you read the early history of the Pentecostal movement, from the eyewitnesses of Azusa Street, their claim was that God restored the gifts.

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And so here's the glaring issue, is that all these people out there who are talking about the importance of prophecy in the church and the ongoing apostles and prophets today claiming that they're just believing in the five -fold ministry,

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I guess the charismatic movement has been around just long enough so that people forget that the generation that preceded them, they never talked about these things as always being present, but as only being recently restored.

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And so in this document, you get some of this language as if somehow apostles and prophets have been with us for two millennia, and they haven't.

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They've only been with us super recently. So when they say, we believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including the gift of prophecy and ministry of the prophet, are essential for the edification of the body of Christ.

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And my immediate question then is, well, then where were these gifts for 19 centuries?

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They were restored by the claims of the historic Pentecostals at Azusa Street.

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And then we've only recently in our lifetime seen the restoration of prophets, and then in the early 2000s, the so -called restoration of apostles.

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Thank you, C. Peter Wagner, for that. So we've got a historic problem here.

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Yeah, it goes back to, I think this really started with third wave charismatic ideas in the early 90s.

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They began to rewrite history and try to eliminate this notion that the charismatic movement reflects the restoration of the gifts.

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And they went back through church history and looked for anyone who claimed that a miracle had occurred, that a prophecy had taken place, even people who had intuitions.

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I mean, this was a feature of both George Whitefield and Cotton Mather in early

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America. Both of them had a kind of superstitious notion that they could discern ahead of time whether the

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Lord was going to answer a prayer a certain way or not. And both of them proved to be wrong.

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Both of them ultimately abandoned that idea. But charismatics go back and look for things that men like that said.

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And they say, see, there's a guy who believed in the gift of prophecy. It was operational during that time. When in fact, history argues entirely the other way.

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Something you notice through this document, a recurring phrase, they talk about the five -fold ministry.

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And of course, that's a reference to Ephesians 4, which talks about the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, five different ministries.

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That's what they mean by the five -fold ministry. And so they're claiming that prophets and apostles are ongoing offices in the church.

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Yep. And that's why they give themselves titles like apostle or prophet.

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And then ignoring Ephesians 2 .20, which makes it clear that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

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Exactly. And Christ is the cornerstone. And so one of the points I make regularly is that the prophets speak every single

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Sunday in the congregations that I serve. And we have prophet Moses speaking, or prophet

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Isaiah, or prophet Jeremiah, or prophet Ezekiel speaking. And every single

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Sunday, the apostles are preaching. It may be Matthew, or Mark, or John, or Paul, but every single

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Sunday we're hearing from them. And here's the thing, is that the prophets and the apostles are still speaking through the living, active, sharper than a double -edged sword written

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Word of God. They are still speaking to us today. And they are still discipling nations as we speak through their written

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Word, which God inspired them to write and is infallible. Yeah, that's where the book of Hebrews starts out, by the way, saying that God spoke in time past to our fathers through the prophets.

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But in these last days, He's spoken to us by His sons. It's clearly signaling that there is a change here, that God now has spoken, that we're not to look for ongoing new messages from prophets and stuff like that.

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And I think that's one of the egregious problems with this statement.

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It makes the assumption that God is still speaking. It can't point to a single prophet.

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And in fact, in that video you showed, Chris Fowlton, he quoted a verse that every charismatic will quote to you, don't despise prophetic utterances.

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Yeah, 1 Thessalonians 5. Don't despise prophetic utterances, if they're genuine prophecy. But I don't know of a single charismatic prophet today who fits the description that's given to us in Deuteronomy 18 on how to discern whether a person really is a prophet or not.

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Yeah. And over again, the people claiming to be prophets, I mean, they couldn't rightly handle a biblical text if, you know,

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I like to say if I printed out a Martin Luther sermon and all they had to do was read it, you know, they couldn't rightly handle a biblical text if you gave them a copy of John MacArthur's commentaries and all they had to do was pay attention to how the grammar works.

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They literally are incapable of doing this. And over again, claimed special revelation.

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Oh, the Lord showed me what this passage really means. And here's the thing, is that when you point this out, that they are claiming exegetical revelation apart from the grammar, that special insight from God, the

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Holy Spirit, now it becomes a doctrine of faith. And these people are divisive because now the test of whether or not you're an

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Orthodox Christian is not whether or not you're believing what the scripture says, but also if you're believing if Kat Kerr really goes to heaven.

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You know, it's unbelievable what these people are doing. I have a question for you that kept occurring to me as I read this document.

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Did you, like me, keep thinking, even the people who signed this document do not really believe this and their actions prove that they don't really believe it.

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They say, for example, that they recognize that prophets don't serve as spiritual fortune tellers or prognosticators.

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And yet that's precisely what they've been doing. Yep. And I believe they will continue to do that.

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They also say they believe that, for example, let's see, there's a statement in here that says, we believe that all spiritual leaders, including those serving as prophetic ministers, should be vetted and qualified by their respective churches, networks, or movements based on the standards of leadership set forth by Paul the

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Apostle as found in 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 8, and Titus 1 through 5. You know,

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I would amen that statement if they really believed it, but they don't. I mean, a lot of the people who have signed this document were the people championing

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Todd Bentley. And in fact, one of the people who signed the document was Mark Driscoll, who doesn't even meet that qualification himself.

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Right. And who, when he was going to be disciplined by Mars Hill, received a direct revelation from God telling him that it was a trap and that God was releasing him from ministry.

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How convenient, you know. That's the kind of accountability that is going to ensue from a statement like this.

32:50

They keep talking about accountability, but they don't really lay out any principles for genuine accountability.

32:57

Right. Another thing that struck me, Chris, was I read a news article about this in Christianity Daily at their website.

33:08

I don't know who that is or whatever, but they had a list of people who, prominent leaders in the prophetic movement, who have refused to sign this statement.

33:16

And some of the best known names, some of the most egregious false prophets, Cindy Jacobs and Kenneth Copeland and Lance Wallnau and Bill Heyman, these people refuse to sign the statement.

33:30

So what does that mean and what are we to think? And will Michael Brown continue to champion those people as true prophets?

33:39

That is a good question. I would say this, that Michael Brown has publicly stated that those people in the charismatic movement who refuse to sign it, that that would be signaling something.

33:51

He didn't, he wasn't exactly clear. He kind of inferred that it would be a negative thing by those who refuse to sign it.

33:58

And the thing is, is that the charismatic movement is a circus and Michael Brown has been complicit in the circus that's been the charismatic movement, not only with the

34:10

Brownsville revival, but also, I would note, was it back in 2017,

34:16

Jennifer LeClaire, when she was still the editor of Charisma Magazine, published this stupid article claiming that a sneaky squid spirit was out roaming the land and that it causes mental illnesses and attacks people's minds.

34:32

And no sooner did she publish that that Michael Brown had her on his line of fire program.

34:39

And I actually called in after she hung up and said, why are you having this lady on? She's out there telling us the sneaky squid spirits are attacking us.

34:48

And he basically played stupid. And then a week and a half later had her back on the program and defended the sneaky squid doctrine as basically saying, well, it doesn't contradict scripture, so it can definitely be true.

35:01

I remember that. And, you know, my response then and now is if you're going to defend a silly prophecy about the sneaky squid spirit, then

35:11

I don't believe you have either the discernment or the authority necessary to hold any false prophet to accountability.

35:19

Yeah. And Michael Brown has a pattern of doing that sort of thing. It was in the midst of a discussion with me regarding his refusal to really hold any charismatic to accountability, either doctrinally or in terms of false prophecies.

35:36

He was in the midst of trying to convince me that he is the most discerning and outspoken critic of false charismatic statements.

35:46

He decided to go on Benny Hinn's program and promote Benny Hinn. So I don't know if you can promote

35:54

Benny Hinn and the sneaky squid spirit. I don't know why anyone should consider you an authority on the distinction between true and false prophets.

36:05

Yep, absolutely. And so then walking through this document, you know, so they believe that, you know, these gifts are necessary and essential for the body of Christ, yet they disappeared.

36:20

And according to the early charismatics, they were restored. And they're trying to rewrite history to make it sound like the current charismatic movement as we see it, that those manifestations of the charismata continued for two millennia.

36:34

No, they did not. And there were no prophets or apostles in the church until super recently, you know, and they disappeared with the death of the apostles in the first century.

36:48

So, and then they say that it's essential to create an environment in which prophecy can flourish. Why? Where is this said in scripture that we need to create an environment where prophecy can flourish side by side with other gifts of the spirit?

37:04

Again, if God wanted us to have prophets in the church, why were they missing for 19 centuries?

37:11

None of this makes any sense. And so they're basically misapplying, you know,

37:16

Ephesians 4 in their claim that, you know, we have to have this ongoing five -fold ministry. And then they say, and by the way, have you noticed that this reads like a creed?

37:25

This reads like a statement of faith, you know? You know, we believe that it's, yeah, it's unmistakable if you know your creeds.

37:34

We believe that the general function of the gift of prophecy as it relates to the church has to do with edification, exhortation, and comfort.

37:41

Well, okay, this is, which is why I listened to the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the

37:46

New, you know, because Paul says that, you know, all scriptures say, and it's profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

37:59

There's no good work that Christ is going to call me to, that the written word of God won't prepare me for if I'm reading that text correctly.

38:06

Right. You know, it would be interesting to get a small group of the drafters of this statement in a room and question them about what some of these things mean, because as I read that statement that you just read, we believe that the general function of the gift of prophecy as it relates to the church has to do with edification, exhortation, and comfort.

38:25

And they say, shortly after that, just two paragraphs later, is where they say, we don't think the prophets should serve as spiritual fortune tellers or prognosticators.

38:36

Right. It seems to me that they're saying, really, that there shouldn't be any truly revelatory content to prophecy, which is then my question is, why do you call it prophecy in the first place?

38:50

Just call it exhortation. Just call it edification and comfort. Just do those things. Right. I don't think that's really what they mean.

38:58

It sounds like they're saying that prophets should stop making predictions because they always get them wrong.

39:04

And I agree with that. But I wonder if the people who actually drafted this statement believe that, if they are intending to rebuke, you know, the

39:14

Cindy Jacobs and the vast majority, actually, that article that I've read says the vast majority of people in the charismatic prophetic movement refused to sign this statement.

39:26

Right. And I wonder if it's because they seem to be saying, look, let's stop predicting the future and just do edification, exhortation, and comfort.

39:35

Which, if that's what they're saying, then stop calling it prophecy and get to preaching the Word of God.

39:40

Exactly. And I would note that in the past, Jennifer LeClaire, she used to give prophetic words for upcoming months, which a lot of so -called prophets are doing that nowadays, which makes it possible for us to do prophecy bingo and bang our head against the wall.

40:01

And of course, Cindy Jacobs, she sits at the head of the prophetic council of apostolic leaders, and they all gather once a year to try to divine what

40:14

God the Holy Spirit is saying for the upcoming year. And we always get a, the Word of the

40:19

Lord for the year 2020 is what? And then whatever. And none of them saw... What was it for 2020?

40:25

Was that supposed to be a breakthrough year? It might have been reset. I don't know anymore.

40:32

I'd have to go back. I cover it every year, but I can tell you that not one of these so -called prophets who've told me anything about what the

40:41

Word of the Lord is for any given month or year, none of them agree with each other, and none of them actually say anything.

40:49

And I can honestly say I have yet to make a single decision in my life based upon a prophetic word coming from one of these wackerdoodles who sit there and say,

40:59

I feel that there's a new breakthrough season coming up ahead and that there's going to be a

41:05

Kairos moment when we can... They don't say anything. And all of this in the name of the ongoing gifts of the

41:16

Spirit, but they're making God sound like he's lost his mind because he doesn't know how to actually speak in any kind of lucid sentences anymore.

41:26

Yeah, and that's precisely what I mean when I keep comparing these charismatic prognostications to the horoscope in the newspaper.

41:34

Those horoscopes in the newspaper are written deliberately to be ambiguous, and usually encouraging and upbeat, but vague enough that no matter what happens to you, unless it's a totally disastrous day, you can look back at the horoscope and say, yeah,

41:51

I see how that was fulfilled. And that's how a lot of charismatic prophecy works. The more specific they get, the more frequently they are wrong.

42:01

And that should be proof that these are false prophets. Yep, yep. There's nothing true about them.

42:08

And if somebody says, well, they're telling people about Jesus. On the rare occasion they actually do that, that doesn't justify anything that they're doing.

42:18

And I would argue that the Holy Spirit and the Jesus that they're believing in, if you pay attention to the details, sound like a different Jesus and a different Spirit altogether than the one of Scripture.

42:31

No question about it. Kenneth Copeland is the classic example of that because he's been doing it to larger audiences for longer than anyone else.

42:39

And his prophecies are always wrong. His teaching about Jesus is shot full of heresy.

42:46

And if this group wants to hold their charismatic community accountable for what they say, they really ought to start with someone like him.

42:58

But that's exactly what Michael Brown has consistently refused to do.

43:04

Yeah. He won't bring himself to say that Ken Copeland's a heretic or a false prophet. And if you can't say that Kenneth Copeland is teaching a false

43:13

Christ, making false prophecies, he's a dangerous false teacher. If you can't say that about Kenneth Copeland, then you really shouldn't be talking about holding anyone accountable.

43:23

Because what kind of accountability is it if it's not accountability to the Word and to sound doctrine and to the more sure word of prophecy?

43:32

Yep. And look at this statement here, we believe in the fivefold ministry of prophet, recognizing that such prophets will also be used to bring correction, instruction, and directional clarity to the body, but not independent of other leaders and therefore different from the model of the independent

43:47

Old Testament prophets. This is a strange thing. It's almost as if they're setting up their own ecclesiastical prophetic counsel that then people have to submit their prophecies to.

44:01

And if you get counsel approval, then it's a true prophecy. And if they shoot it down and say, maybe try again, it's not a false prophecy.

44:10

This is weird what they're describing here. Yeah. And I blame

44:17

Wayne Grudem. He, of all of these folks, he is a better theologian than any of them.

44:23

So I know that he knows better. And yet he is the one who, with his book on New Testament prophecy, opened the door for this idea that it really doesn't matter anymore whether a person speaks a word as from the

44:36

Lord and it turns out to be false. He said that's okay in New Testament prophecy. He's the one who gave credence to that and it opens the door for all these wackos.

44:46

He was a signatory on this thing. And I don't know whether he helped write it or not, but his fingerprints are all over it, because that notion that New Testament prophecy is of a totally different character.

44:59

It's basically fallible intuition, and yet we can call it a word from the Lord. That's the result of his teaching.

45:08

Yeah, no, the current crop of so -called YouTube prophets and all the wingnuts out there right now who have no accountability and reject

45:19

Deuteronomy 18, it's his arguments that emboldened them and brought many of them into existence.

45:25

The current charismatic movement, as we see it, is the direct result of his false teaching along these lines.

45:30

And here's the thing. They somehow think that the thing that God really wills for you to do is to reach out with your feelings like a

45:39

Jedi and go ahead and let those words flow and don't worry about getting them wrong. That's showing and exercising faith and you can get it wrong and still be a true prophet.

45:49

But they absolutely reject the idea that God now demands that if you speak in his name, you dare not speak unless he's given you those words.

46:00

And that's exact 180 degrees opposite against the entire warp and woof of Scripture and explicit commands and standards established in Scripture.

46:14

Yep. Yeah. Okay, let's see here. We recognize that prophets do not serve as spiritual fortune tellers.

46:21

We've talked about that. So, due to the nature of prophetic ministry, some prophetic words can be submitted for evaluation before they are delivered, while other words will be evaluated after they are delivered.

46:36

I just sit there and go, you know, are they setting up some kind of a prophetic council that has the, it's got their gold seal of approval on this.

46:45

And again, I think we've pointed out, and I'll just reiterate it, Deuteronomy 18 is mysteriously missing.

46:53

And my question for these people is going to be, so when all these prophets that said that Trump was going to be the next president of the

47:02

United States, you know, a lot of these folks are still hanging on to the, he's going to be back sometime soon, and they're buying into this

47:08

QAnon nonsense. And, you know, who told them that Trump was going to be reelected?

47:18

You know, what was the source of those words? Because Deuteronomy 18 says that's a word that the

47:25

Lord has not spoken. Why do they refuse to adopt that standard and say God didn't say those words?

47:31

It's like, you know, all of this seems to be just blurring this so that we don't come to that fact.

47:37

That's right. That's why I say, even though I would agree with some of the statements here, I don't think these people genuinely believe it.

47:45

I mean, the paragraph you just read, we urge prophetic ministers posting unfiltered and untested words purportedly from the

47:51

Lord to first submit those words to peer leaders for evaluation. My question is, what would that have solved in this case?

47:59

Let's take all the prophetic community. And so I think I have a prophecy from the

48:04

Lord that Donald Trump is going to win the election. And I submit it to all these other people who've made the same prophecy for evaluation.

48:13

They're going to all get it wrong. So none of this accountability would have solved any of the critical problems that have provoked them to make this statement.

48:22

This doesn't solve anything. It just gives them a veneer of seriousness and respectability.

48:29

But honestly, it gains no respect from me. This to me is like a fig leaf.

48:38

I like the analogy. Yeah. They're trying to cover some things up, but there's still a lot stuff showing here.

48:46

Yeah, those fig leaf loincloths are not very good in the cover up. And why couldn't they just go back to the biblical standard, you know, and say, you know what, this whole thing is corrupt.

49:00

We've got to adopt what God has already revealed through the Holy Spirit in Deuteronomy 18.

49:05

If somebody speaks and it doesn't come to pass, God didn't say those words. The person who spoke those words acted presumptuously.

49:12

They're a false prophet and they need to be treated as such. I mean, and anybody who, and this is the other bit, is that when somebody does something this egregious in the

49:21

Old Testament, I mean, it is likened to adultery. This is a form of idolatry.

49:28

This is spiritual adultery. This is a ministry disqualifying event.

49:34

And one of the things I've noticed is that all the people who refuse to abide by Deuteronomy 18 openly confess to having at one time or another given one or several false prophecies that didn't come to pass, and they somehow think that's no big deal.

49:50

Yeah, yeah. In fact, the next paragraph, it quotes that text from 1 Thessalonians 5, don't despise prophecies.

49:59

And then it says, this also means that we should cultivate honor and respect for true prophetic ministries rather than an attitude of skepticism or scorn.

50:08

I wrote in the margin of the document, show me one. Just show me one. Show me one true prophetic. I haven't seen one.

50:15

No. I mean, if you go by the standard of Deuteronomy 18, all of them are disqualified.

50:22

All of them have sinned egregiously. All of them under the Old Covenant would have deserved capital punishment.

50:30

And think about it, of all the sins in the Old Testament that required a capital penalty, a murder, and even incorrigible children could be stoned to death in the

50:42

Old Testament. And I agree that some of the severity of those penalties don't apply to the church in our era.

50:51

I think, though, that they do outline a system of equity justice that would be fair.

51:01

It shows you how serious this sin is and what kind of punishment it deserves.

51:08

But they've taken false prophecy and made it so that it's not really a sin at all, it's just an embarrassment.

51:15

So you have to apologize for it, and then everything you need to do is done. I don't understand that at all.

51:22

Yeah, and this is where, in fact, let me pull this up, because I'll show you this, okay, is that what they do with 1

51:29

Thessalonians 5 is they created this eisegetical narrative that's false.

51:38

And so here's the text, do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything, hold fast to what is good, abstain from every evil.

51:47

And so their claim is that the reason why we test prophecies rather than despise them is because today's prophets can speak errantly.

51:57

And they've eisegeted that into the text. But again, Scripture always interprets

52:04

Scripture. And so the command to test everything is further illumined going back to 1

52:12

John chapter 4. Let me pull that up. Hang on a second here.

52:17

Where did I put it? I might have to just put it this way. There we go. Here we go. Here it is. 1

52:23

John 4, do not believe every spirit, test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

52:31

Their narrative is false. Their claim that we have to test prophecies because today's prophets can err is false.

52:39

The reason why we are instructed by God, the Holy Spirit, when you take the full counsel of the Word of God and the command to test, it's due to the fact, it is necessary for us to identify false prophets.

52:51

And so they're misusing 1 Thessalonians 5 here as if somehow, well, that proves that this means that you've got to test these things because prophets can be fallible today.

53:04

No, the reason why we're told to test is because false prophets, there's a lot of them already, and there have been for a long time.

53:11

And I would even point to a historical document like the Didache. So the Didache is written in this in -between period before the finishing of the

53:18

New Testament. And one of the tests you can tell whether or not somebody was a false prophet.

53:24

They said, if a prophet comes and he stays for a day, he's a true prophet. If he teaches both law and gospel and repentance and amendment of life, he's a true prophet.

53:33

If he asks for money, he's a false prophet. The Didache says that. So these guys are just, they've created this false narrative that somehow, well, we've got to cradle and cultivate your people who have a prophetic gift, and we can't condemn them if they say it, they get something wrong.

53:56

The whole purpose of weighing these things is so that we don't quench the spirit. Balogna, the reason why we're told to test is because there are false prophets, and you're tested to see whether or not they're a false prophet.

54:06

That's the purpose of the testing. Right. I noticed in the clip you played from Chris Vallotton, he actually quoted that verse, and just breezed past it, but you could tell from what he was saying that his interpretation of, you know, test everything and hold fast to that which is good.

54:23

He sees that phrase, and he would paraphrase it like this, eat the meat and spit out the bones.

54:29

Yeah. Take in all these false prognostications, don't worry about them too much, just spit them out, and hold fast to whatever the guy gets right.

54:37

Yeah. Well, you can apply that standard again to any horoscope or fortune teller you wanted.

54:43

Yeah. You probably have more truth than you get from the typical charismatic prophet. You could apply it to Joseph Smith and to Muhammad, you know.

54:53

Right. You know, both of them claim to be prophets. And here's the other thing.

54:59

Without Deuteronomy 18, we can't say that Joseph Smith was a false prophet. That's a good point.

55:07

Okay. We can't say that the Watchtower Bible and tract society is a false prophet. You know, we lose the ability, you know, to actually engage in meaningful counter -cult work and call people out of these cults into biblical

55:22

Christianity. Well, you can see that in the work of Michael Brown, who acknowledges that there's a lot of falsehood and phoniness in the charismatic movement.

55:34

But I have never once heard him point out a specific example of it and say, that is a false teacher to avoid.

55:41

That's a false doctrine that, you know, you should not listen to this teacher because he's corrupting some essential point of...

55:51

He'll take anyone who professes to be a Christian, if they claim miracle gifts, he'll gladly embrace them as a brother.

56:00

Yeah. It's a dangerous thing. He's come really close to, you know, almost, almost, you know, saying, you know, listen,

56:10

Kat Kerr and Kuhneman and these guys who are saying that God's going to destroy you if you oppose them, you know, he's not describing them by name, he's describing them by deed, but he still won't name them.

56:23

He still won't actually say it, you know, which is just absolutely bizarre when you consider it.

56:29

And not helpful to his audience either, because he spends most of his time touting that sort of phenomena, and, you know, people encounter it and they think, well, you know, this is real.

56:44

Yeah. Well, I refuse to believe in the God who speaks errantly, because that God is not the

56:50

God of Scripture, that's a different deity altogether, and this narrative that's been created about New Testament prophets prophesying falsely, but as long as they're sincere, they're still true prophets.

57:00

It's just nonsense. Amen. So, well, Phil, I know you're busy, and I truly appreciate you giving me a little bit of a slice of your day to discuss this.

57:13

I'm sure that we're going to get a lot of hate mail from this, but, you know, sadly, it's necessary because this prophetic standards is not a biblical standard, and it actually furthers the false narrative of the

57:27

Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, and does nothing to legitimately create any real accountability as it pertains to the wingnuts and wackerdoodles out there claiming to be speaking for God, when clearly they are not.

57:39

Do you think this statement will have any long -term influence? Because I don't. I predict that within six months, this will be totally forgotten.

57:47

You know, like I said, it's full of things that I know they don't genuinely believe. There's a statement in there where they say, we value humility, integrity, and accuracy in prophetic ministry.

57:59

And since when? Did they say that with a straight face? Yeah. Yeah. It's just nonsense.

58:08

Now, I'll disagree with you on what you say, six months. No, no, no.

58:13

This thing's going to be forgotten in 30 days, all right? You may be right. But I will say this.

58:20

People who signed it will always point to it and say, well, I actually hold to standards, while at the same time ignoring the standards.

58:33

For lack of a better way of putting it, it's come to me more like a prophetic virtue signaling.

58:42

Yeah, true, true. And because it is shot through with the word accountability, my question to anyone who six months from now says, well,

58:52

I signed this thing. That's what I believe. My question is going to be, show me one instance where you have ever really demanded accountability for any of these prophets who've gotten it wrong.

59:03

I mean, I haven't even seen that yet with the false prophecies about Donald Trump. Yeah. No, I haven't seen a single person truly be held accountable.

59:13

And you think of Sean Bowles or Jeremiah Johnson, who issued an apology. And Jeremiah Johnson, he disappeared from ministry for,

59:22

I think, all of a week and a half, maybe two -ish weeks. He shouldn't be preaching to cats at the dog pound for any time in the foreseeable future.

59:33

But he pulled back from doing ministry for just a little bit of time. But he's still presently traveling the country and being put on stages and offering up prophetic words that he claims

59:44

God is speaking to him now. Yeah, I've seen that. And it especially annoys me with him because I have a son named

59:51

Jeremiah Johnson. I could see how that would be great.

01:00:00

Well, it's like when people refer to Bill Johnson and they don't say it clearly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:00:08

And I'll point this out. I'll point this out. We have been seen in the same room together, and this is an example of the two of us being on the same interview together, and we're not the same person.

01:00:20

So I get people say, are you really Phil Johnson in disguise? No. Yeah, I don't have a

01:00:27

Lutheran bone in my body. Yeah, I'd make a terrible Baptist. Yeah, I'd love to maybe pick your brain and your thoughts regarding Saddleback and their move to ordain three women.

01:00:41

But that's a whole other segment. So that is interesting. And we've talked about Rick Warren on one of these interviews before.

01:00:49

But I think it's going to force the issue in the SBC. And I'm not sure they have leaders who are really up to the battle now.

01:00:59

I think you're about to see a split in the Southern Baptists. And I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but I think you're right.

01:01:08

I think that was the whole purpose of this was to force the issue, and it'll tear the whole

01:01:13

SBC apart. Yeah, you know, you said I'm not a son of a prophet, and I say that as well, frequently.

01:01:20

But I've been watching your ministry for more than a decade, and I have to say that you and I combined have made far more correct predictions than any of all the charismatic prophets put together.

01:01:36

Yeah, I think prophetically, we could go on the road, man. But here's the thing. I don't get any utterances.

01:01:42

I could just see patterns and kind of figure out trajectories. Which is what

01:01:48

Jesus told us to do, right? To discern the signs of the times like, you know, a sailor would do with the weather.

01:01:57

You can see storms building sometimes if you just pay attention, and I'm afraid most people don't pay attention.

01:02:04

And let me ask you this, talking about the signs of the times. So you and I, we've known each other for a better part of a decade and a half.

01:02:15

And I remember first really being introduced to you on your work on pyromaniacs. And I remember you and I, we were working hard against the

01:02:24

Emergent Church and McLaren and Jones and Paget and those guys. And of course, you were the one who discovered the kryptonite of meme warfare with your

01:02:33

POMotivator posters. But the fight that we fought 15 years ago against the emergence,

01:02:41

I'm looking at the state of evangelicalism today, and I got to admit, there are many nights when

01:02:49

I go to bed and I think, I've never seen it this bad. And even in church history, it's really, it's gotten to be just complete lawlessness.

01:02:59

And there are no standards in so many evangelical churches today. If you were to give us the state of the church right now, is it significantly worse than it was back in the day when we were fighting

01:03:12

McLaren and the guys? So around 2012, 2011 or thereabout, the movement began to fragment and fracture.

01:03:20

And finally, even Andrew Jones, who was one of their more interesting voices in that movement, admitted that the emergent movement was dead.

01:03:29

And my comment was, yeah, the movement is dead, and thankfully so. But the idea is that they spread out among mainstream evangelicals are like dandelion seeds, that they are going to come back and bear a bitter fruit if we don't get control of it.

01:03:45

And I was thankful when groups like T4G and the Gospel Coalition were founded supposedly as an answer to the emergent drift, which had attacked substitutionary atonement.

01:03:57

They were going to defend substitutionary atonement and stand for gospel -centered ministry.

01:04:04

I would not have predicted that those two large organizations would abandon that goal as quickly as they did in favor of social justice and start defining everything as, you know, gospel issues.

01:04:17

Social justice was one of the key elements of emergent religion from the start. That was a, that was, they were trying to revive the

01:04:24

Rauschenbusch view of the social gospel. And they disseminated all those ideas that now are bearing fruit among mainstream evangelicals.

01:04:34

I see the social justice movement as a subset of emergent Christianity. And so yeah,

01:04:41

I think we're in a huge mess. And the charismatic movement doesn't help because it's utterly lacking in any kind of discernment or discrimination.

01:04:49

They'll take anyone on board who can, you know, pretend to speak in tongues or claim to prophesy.

01:04:56

There just are no viable doctrinal standards associated with the larger charismatic movement.

01:05:02

And evangelicalism is becoming the same way. The evangelical movement now, I would say, the mainstream is the big problem.

01:05:11

And it's about to rupture. I think there'll be a remnant of faithful people who come out of that.

01:05:17

If the Lord tarries, you'll see that remnant come back to life under maybe a new name because I think the word evangelical has lost its uniqueness and significance.

01:05:31

Yeah, yeah. Evangelicalism is nothing, nothing like what I grew up in, nothing.

01:05:36

Yeah. I mean, the word evangelical has the idea of the gospel built right into it. So that's what we need is some sort of gospel centered term to define the new remnant, which

01:05:48

I believe will survive because the gates of hell are not going to prevail against the church. So I'm not worried about the future.

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I always tell people I'm not a pessimist, I'm a Calvinist. And things may look dire and sound dire.

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And I may say a lot of things about how ugly the future looks. But as a Calvinist, I know that the

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Lord's will will be done and he will sovereignly defeat all the enemies of truth.

01:06:16

And so I'm not worried about the long term future, but I want to do anything

01:06:21

I can in the short term future to combat the drift. Yeah.

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I mean, my job as a pastor is to preach the word. And what we're finding are just a lot of refugees coming out of churches where they're not being fed the word, haven't been fed the word, and are just starving sheep.

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And caring for them in any kind of a meaningful way is a super challenge.

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But the thing is, is that we're seeing this all over the world right now, because where the charismatic movement comes in, the word of God disappears and these false words end up taking over.

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Where the emergent seeds take place and the dandelions pop up, people end up going woke and social justice is offended by the fact that the gospel actually absolves real sinners.

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You know, but that's a whole other story. But again, thank you for your time and our discussion today on the

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Charismatic Prophetic Standards statement. And may Christ bless you in the work that you're doing, sir.

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And I look forward to talking to you and seeing you again sometime in the near future. You too. Thanks for having me. All right.

01:07:36

Give me a second. So we found this helpful. All the information on how you can share the video is down below in the description.

01:07:44

And until next time, may God richly bless you in grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.