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Andrew and Drew will be challenged by someone that states that Benny Hinn is biblical. Can Benny Hinn be defended? Are Andrew and Drew up to the challenge?
This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.
Yes, we're live, and those who are watching our video, let me just bring Drew in right away. Drew, is something a little different? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. You're about to set sail on the high seas.
Yeah, well, you know, maybe what it is is Living Waters did a, I was out in Huntington Beach some time ago, and this is a couple years ago, Ray and I were evangelizing, and this guy dressed as a pirate jumped up, and so everybody was, they know me as the, what was, how did Ray word that video?
A bold preacher, you know, something, bold preacher, false teacher, I forget what it is. So maybe I was trying to look like the pirate in that video, but no, no, that's actually not it.
I mean, look, we even got Kofi jumping in. Arr, matey. There we go, yeah.
So yes, for those on the audio podcast, this is Andrew Rappaport. I'm the host of Apologetics Live, and I am wearing an eye patch for a reason. So I figured I'd get this out of the way right in the beginning.
I have double vision. It seems to be if I cover one of either of my eyes, it goes away. After last week's show, looking at the screen for two hours, being close, it gave me a splitting headache. And so I just figured I would look funny, but at least I won't feel bad, because I could not wait until the show ended last week, so.
You were out of there pretty quick. Yeah. You were out of there, but I have to ask you a question. What's a pirate's favorite letter?
Oh, that's such a bad, you know, that's not even worthy of answering. It's so bad, but I mean, Kofi already answered.
Oh, yeah. You'd think it'd be R, but it's the C. No, it's R.
You're wrong. You just don't want to admit defeat. I get it. All right, so. All right, so. Jody is saying, where was it? Good evening. The bad jokes are already starting.
We call them dad jokes.
Yeah, the really bad jokes are Drew's theology of post-millennialism. That's the really bad joke. When he gets to heaven and realizes he's wrong. See, Jason is, okay, folks, those in the chat, let's go for it.
If you're in the chat, please give us a C or an R if you think that is the right answer to that joke.
Yeah, Jason called me. He called me and left a message. Brother, I've just been super busy. I'll listen to your message.
You haven't even listened to his message. Wow, that's bad. Note to self, if I need to get a message to Drew, do it three weeks before. Okay. Oh, look at this. Brother John is just, he's a good politician.
He says C-R.
Yeah, he doesn't really make it in government.
Doesn't want to commit. Okay, so we have a pirate flag. Facebook user says it's I. You give instructions of an R or a C and people just have to go outside the bounds.
Look what D says though. Well, C kind of makes sense now that I think about it. Thank you.
Kind of makes sense, but not the answer to the joke that everyone knows. Okay, strange intro. We're going to get into today. We're going to be, we have James Park. He's going to join us. I actually would have to go back and figure out how he and I got connected.
It was on Facebook somewhere and he was defending Benny Hinn's ministry. And I said, Hey, would you want to come in to Apologetics Live and do that? He said, sure. And so we said, okay. So that's what we're going to end up doing today.
Um, so actually, you know, I just see KT is, is posted this and she says he's ARR actually. So it's, it goes quite well. So she's saying it's even my initials are fitting with the, the pirate patch there.
And he, okay. Total sidebar drew. Why do pirates wear a patch? I don't know. I need the cricket sounds right now. Okay. There is actually a reason for this. I learned this when I was in Jamaica where the pirates would go to and they would hide rum and gold and different things in the caves.
And I discovered this is actually true because what ended up happening was I was wearing the patch for a day and my one eye adjusted to the dark, because what happens if I try to close one eye all day, it, it becomes painful, um, by the end of the day.
So I had one eye, uh, covered in the patch. And when I took the patch off at night in the dark, one eye that was covered in the patch saw perfectly. And if I close that eye, I couldn't see anything. And so what they would do is they would take the patch and just move it to the other eye when they went in the cave and they could see, and then they moved back into the daylight and switched it back.
And so they could quickly get in and out of caves. So I, one of the things I learned about when I was in Jamaica, I know, uh, I know a lot about.
Pirate history, but I don't, I didn't, I never knew that one. Yeah. Yeah. It, it sounds logical.
Yeah. That's, that's what I was told when we were going through the caves in Jamaica. So, uh, we, you and I decided we'd come up with a game for audience today, audience, you, you guys are going to get to help us out, um, do some participation before James gets James is at backstage.
We're going to bring them in and I see Pedro and Eric backstage. We're going to bring them in at the top of the hour, uh, with any questions I have, you guys are that are backstage can, uh, give private chat as well.
So you guys are able to communicate with us. If, if Pedro, Eric, you guys have questions, feel free to let us know. Uh, but I, I saw this on, uh, social media this morning and thought this could be really fun, drew it.
I saw someone said, how did they manage to discover aliens, but not where, uh, but not even one of Epstein's clients. Okay. I was at a gathering last weekend and bunch of Christians and someone brought up the thing of aliens.
He said, what do you think about aliens? This is really popular in the, in the, in, in news right about now. And so people are talking about hearing on it. Yeah. And so what happened was as soon as, well, the one person asked me the question, one of the other guys goes, turns to his wife and says, see, everybody's talking about aliens.
And I said, why? Well, I think that the whole talk of aliens is, I believe is nothing more than a salacious way to get something in the news other than all of the corruption Joe Biden's doing. And so, I mean, you can't keep indicting Trump.
It's going to become obvious after four times that there's bad news for Biden and Trump gets a new indictment and the bad news for Biden is coming so fast and furious. They can't keep up with, it takes time to create the, you know, these indictments.
And I think they're running out of them. So let's talk aliens. So we're going to play a game. We're going to see how many other things couldn't be found other than just Epstein's clients and audience.
You're going to, you're going to get to, to jump in as well. Things that you think can't be discovered. Just, we can't seem to find the answers to, and we're going to give extra points if, and Drew and audience, we all have to be honest.
We can't steal someone else's. So you get extra points if someone comes up with something you didn't think of. All right. So those in the, in the chat are going to be able to chat away and, and give their answers.
I'm going to give my first two and then we'll go with Drew, your first two. My first, my, my first one immediately, I thought about this, they're, how is it they're able to manage to discover aliens, but they cannot even discover who brought the Coke in the white house.
That's at the top of my list. Okay. All right. My second one. And this is one, I think would it be, would it be on, on your list? Although if you saw what I posted on social media, you might, they, they, they're able to discover aliens, but they can't figure out who put the bomb,.
Planted the bombs on January 5th. That one was not on my bingo card.
That was not on your bingo card. So, okay. I'll get a point for that.
I really forgot about that, that there was a bomb there.
That's right. They, they had bombs on the fifth, which was really neat if you, cause the bombs that were planted at the RNC and the DNC in America, that's the two political parties here in America. And so there were bombs on January 6th that were discovered 20 minutes before Congress before the Senate met on January 6th.
And there was 20 minutes left on the timer. They were set to go off. You know, it was kind of interesting though. If you, if you actually found did any research into it, the timer they had was an egg timer.
You can only go for an hour. And this person planted it at like three in the morning, the night before, and then set the egg timer, but both timers just, they were discovered right at 20 minutes. I mean, they had, they had bomb sniffing dogs in the DNC when, when Kamala Harris walked through, but none of them picked up any bomb detection.
Okay. So those are my first, what do you got?
All right. My first one. Okay. How can they discover aliens, but they can't seem to find any evidence into the Biden crime family?
Well, that's a broad one. I mean, that kind of covers everything.
I know. Yeah. All right. Well, okay. Here's my, here's my second one. All right.
How can you see your third one? Because you, your, your first one, we had the same.
How can they discover aliens, but they can't seem to find the Clintons. I mean, Epstein's killer.
That was on mine. That was, that was my next one was they, they can't, they can't figure out who killed Epstein. So this one was his clients, right? Right. So, um, all right, let's see if we have anyone in the, in the chat that's given some.
Jody's got one. All right. What's that one?
It right here. It says, how could they figure out aliens? There are aliens, but can't figure out what a woman is.
Oh, that was that, that was on my list. Okay. That is it. Yeah. Well, I, okay. I, I, I did. Okay. We'll see if Jody had this on her list because I did it two ways. I said, they can't figure out what a woman is, but they also can't figure out what a man is.
So I did both. Hmm. Okay. What's, what's this next one that KT has, is this, uh, oh no, she's saying, I got, I got to see the video and guess what? Kamala's car went right by the spot at some point. Yeah.
I mean, the, the supposed bomb was right out in the open. Yeah. Okay. So John is showing up late and saying, is Andrew, is Andrew, uh, will be okay. No, I'm going to die one day, John. I don't hopefully not soon, but, uh, you know, and if, if the, if the Eric is that I think is, is backstage, he was like, when he found out I had double vision, he was like, get to the emergency room.
Cause it could be double vision could actually be quite serious. Uh, what they think the theory is right now that I have a fourth nerve palsy, which is a genetic disease. It's where the muscles, I guess, in my one eye is weaker.
And it probably has been all my life. Um, one eyes weaker than the other. So what ends up happening is for years, what would be as I would tilt my head to the left because the double vision goes away that way.
And the doctor said, if you go look at pictures, you'll probably see your head's always been tilted to the left. I'm like, yeah, I, I have been doing that in pictures. And so that's a sign that as a, as a young child, uh, I probably compensated by just tilting my head.
And at some point, one of my eyes just gave out either the weak one or the stronger one, it stopped overcompensating or just couldn't, you know, so, so that's, that's the cause of it. They think that I just have to like my father, where the special prism glasses, progressive glasses, and that should solve it.
But I'm still going to get a MRI and stress test. All that'll be done next week, I think Tuesday. So, and then maybe I'll get an answer. All right. Jody has another one up there. That's a good one. Uh, they can't find aliens.
They can find the aliens, but they can't find any of the BLM members to prosecute. Okay. I didn't have, I, I, I'm going to give her that one because I didn't have the two prosecute. Um, but I did have, they can find aliens, but they can't find any of the BLM money.
That's true too. So, so if I give Joe, so let's see, Drew, you'd be the judge. If we give it to.
Jody on the prosecute, can I get the extra point for that? Yeah, because, because they're two separate things, right? You got one that's the riots where government property was destroyed. Cities were destroyed.
Lives were lost. But then you also have the money that people donated that.
Was basically stolen from them. Yeah. Yeah. We, we don't, we don't know where it went. I mean, it's somehow went to a line, the pockets of the founders and they didn't report it on taxes either. I wonder why they didn't do that.
Huh? Anyway. Uh, so that's, that was my full list.
Do you have any others on your list? Oh, that's, that's, that's your whole list. That was my whole list. Oh, I've, I've got more. Okay. So they can find aliens, but they, they can't find, uh, figure out that the money we're giving to Ukraine is just money laundering.
Ah, that's a good one. All right. They can, they can find aliens, but they can't discover crimes in cities. Walking through stores, stealing stuff. Well, yeah. Red cities.
Oh, Oh, look at D come on. I don't know if we could do this one, but.
D they can find aliens. Huh? I thought about it, but I didn't put it. Yeah. They can find.
Aliens, but they can't find Biden's brain. Actually the, the issue there. And, and so that I don't, I don't, I don't think it's good. I think we did an episode on whether we should mock those in government that way.
But, um, he, it's actually just a crime that I would say that it's, it's elder abuse, what they're doing to him. Yeah. Oh yeah. I would agree. Yeah. Uh, Jody says they can find aliens, but they can't find out how, uh, how much Newsome broke the.
Constitution similar to that. Okay. So they can find aliens, but our government can't figure out.
That they're violating the constitution and the bill of rights. Oh, okay. Good. Good. Okay. Well,.
One more, they can find aliens, but they can't find out who leaked the Dobbs decision.
That, ah, why did I forget that one? There's only a handful of people, 40, 40 possible people. Yeah. That's right. Where the, where the other, you know, the, the Coke in the white house, I think there's like, I think close to maybe like somewhere between 120 to 200 people that possibly could have broken, because you gotta remember the entrance that it was found originally, remember it was founded an entrance.
And then they said, oh, it moved, it suddenly moved to the library, but then they realized the library had even fewer people that were in there. So then suddenly moved downstairs to where all the workers are, you know, but where it was originally supposedly found, um, they, uh, they had, um, you know, it's, it's where you have to have secret.
Service detail to get a West wing. It was found in the West. Yeah. So you figure how many.
People were there on the weekends. Okay. So, um, Mason says they, they can find aliens, but they can't find the inerrant truth of God's word that helped found this country. So I had a couple others I thought of putting on the list.
Um, they can find aliens. I didn't put this on the list, so these don't count, but they can find aliens, but Andy Stanley can't find the old Testament. Um, I had a, and then once I started thinking that way, I was like, we would.
Be here all night doing this because you'll. Biden's a doctor of, yeah. All right. So let's,.
Let's see if, if Jay, so I'm going to, let's bring James Park in. Um, James is so James, it is really dark in your car. So James is in his car folks, because he has a newborn at home. And therefore any of us who have had newborns, we know what that's like.
You never know. It's really going to be hard to do a podcast with a baby. That's could be screaming.
Yeah. That's the best place I have. No, I mean, just so you know, you, I don't want you to feel.
Bad, but when COVID first started and I, I ended up, uh, doing a recording on a podcast with Ray comfort, he was doing all of his podcasting from his car because he realized he, he, that was where he, in his house for in like, go, he went through Mark's Mark Spence.
Yeah. Yeah. It got the car. Yeah. They would get the best acoustics in the car. Yes. I told Ray,.
In his chicken coop, I am a living waters, biggest fan, by the way, because I always get the million dollar bills boxes. This is so easy to evangelize. You just throw money on the ground. It's not littering.
Well, you shouldn't litter, but they pick it up. Yeah. Well, the,.
The, the, um, I had gotten when I was out there, I don't know. I, I don't know how many packs of bill tracks come in the hundreds. And if folks, if you want, if you want, you can go to living waters .com and see, you know, under the tracks and see what we're talking about.
But, uh, I stacked them in this box, which I was like, TSA is definitely opening this box. Yeah. I just, that would have equivalated to, you know, like I forget how much I figured. I tried to figure out if there were a hundred dollar bills, how much I had.
I think I had like, um, would it, would it have been a million dollars worth or something? But I just, I had a bunch.
In there and they were probably like, someone's trying to transport money. Yeah. So pick them up.
Cause it looks like real money. Yeah. So, so James, I don't, I don't even remember the conversation.
We had. What started this? I don't know if you do. I started out, you know, when I was first.
Again, just our discussion, our discussion, what started the discussion that we had?
Yeah. I mean, I basically, I believe everything that Benny him believes. I agree with him on.
Most of the stuff. Yeah. Okay. Well, what I was trying to get to is I don't, are just you and me, our discussion on social media. I didn't remember how that started.
I just, well, I'm a, I have a friend who's a friend of yours on my friends list. Ah, okay. He invited me to debate with you. Yeah. And I, it was, it was based off some comment on,.
On, on a post. I just didn't remember which one. Sorry. So for folks who, who don't, don't know who you are, why don't you give a little bit about your background? You already said you believe.
You agree with everything. Um, that almost everything, almost everything. I grew up, I became a Christian about eight years ago. And I'm just going to, I'm going to take the.
Banner off. So people can, some people were asking for your name and your name's Mark.
Yes. So, so there folks, you have that. And I grew up where like, you know, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, they were the prosperity gospel. They just wanted your money. That's how I grew up, but I, you know, I got the gifts of the spirit and I always had them when I was, from when I was first born again.
And, uh, by the way, Ray Comfort, sometimes he does deliver its prayers every now and then, if you watch his videos, just a side note,.
Every now and then he doesn't, but, um, he doesn't. Yeah. I, I, I know Ray personally,.
And I can tell you, he does not believe in that. He prayed against a woman's demons one time. Very rare, of course, but, and he believes that some people are possessed by demons,.
Like the wizard from New Zealand. Yeah. I believe people are possessed by demons. I have a friend of mine who believes that, uh, you know, Kenneth Copeland is possessed by a demon. And I kind of.
Believe that. Well, as I, um, just got to know, like Kenneth Copeland and, uh, the Benny Hinn got, got to know them more. I realized that I believe the exact same things as they do. You know them personally or?
No, no, just knowing I'm from like social media, I realized I believe the exact same things they do and I'm going to defend them from now on. I don't care who says it.
Okay. So, so tell us a little bit about yourself first, how, how, you know, uh, you started explaining how you came to know Christ. So start, start there. Yes. So, um,.
Concisely, if that is. I got out, I got out of the Marines and I was, I was desperate for work, end up getting a job on a farm. The farmer was a outspoken Christian. He'd always played gospel music. He'd take me to church to feed the homeless.
He was always preaching Bible truth. And I, even though I always thought I was a Christian, just being in his presence made me realize that I was not a Christian. And, um, so just like admitting that I'm not a Christian in my heart, then that's when I actually became born again and God changed my life.
Yeah. I believe there's a baptism of repentance and also baptism of the Holy spirit, all spiritual. I don't believe you have to have water baptism or anything like that. And, um, yes, I just been, I've been evangelizing ever since I've been, uh, always the gifts of the Holy spirit, like deliverance and all of that always had them, but I was with cessationist for my first five years until I moved to Miami.
And then, um, so once I got away from those church, those churches, I, uh, began to practice the gifts more. So that's where I'm at right now. Okay. So I want to, I want to go back.
To sound just to make sure I heard right. You said you started to believe in these because you experienced the gifts. Is that, is that right? Uh, yeah, but I have a lot of Bible verses to back it up though.
Okay. But, but what, what's so that was, yeah, that was my experience. That's your experience. So then you're trusting your, your, your trust is your experience. Is it.
Not? No, I, uh, if I, if there was no verses in the Bible backing me up, I would just say I'm schizophrenic and I need to just forget about that and just put the Bible first. So which, which gifts is it that you say you experienced?
Um, so like healing, um, casting out demons. Okay. And speaking in tongues, I never did speak in tongues till I moved to Miami. Not that you speak. I believe there's two different types of tongues. There's that tongues and Pentecostal is actual languages, earthly languages, and then the heavenly language.
Do you know any passage in the language? Yeah. Yeah. I got a few. Um, so you have, uh, first Corinthians 14, 14 in unknown tongue.
Okay. That's not heavenly. That's unknown. That means,.
And it's, uh, it's a, it's a tongue that you're, that you don't know that you end up speaking.
And I know, and it's not that verse, uh, cause I don't think, uh, first Corinthians 14, 14 says, if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So we'd have to see what,.
What translation are you using? Uh, I think that one, I'm not sure actually. I wonder if that's a translation issue. Yeah. There's also a Romans 8, 26, the, uh, spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings, which cannot be uttered.
So to me, that's what it's like. It's like a groaning. Hold on. So if it's, if it's a groaning.
That can't be uttered, you, you wouldn't be able to utter them. Correct. Well,.
Cannot be interpreted by a human, the human mind only by the spirit. But that's not what that.
Passive says, right? That was what Romans what? 8, 8, 20, 8, 26. Yeah. Um, in the same way, the spirit also helps our weakness for, we do not know how to pray as we should, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
That doesn't seem to indicate the same thing that again, maybe a translation issue. Um, but it's, it, this is saying a groaning too deep for words. Now I can flip through some other translations that was new American standard,.
But there's also a acts two forward. It says he began to speak with other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. So the spirit gave them this tongue.
And, but, but further down in the context, we know exactly which tongues they were. Verse eight starts saying, and how is it that each of them hear them in their own language to which we were.
Born? Parthians and meads and, uh, laminates. Yeah. Those are the earthly tongues. Yes. I agree.
I agree. There's no other mention. There's no mention of anything other than the earthly.
Tongues. But that's another gift too. Sometimes I hear that this never happened to me personally, but I heard of people never spoke Spanish. They began speaking Spanish because a Spanish, I'm believer was curious about the gospel.
And then we hear about those. They're just never.
Documented. So, so late, you know, um,. Oh, and I just drew his, just drew a blank on his name. I think it's John Hornham, I think is the name. Shoot. I forget. But, uh, late 18, uh, late 1800s, he was the first with, uh, when to, to popularize the gift of tongues.
And he had a follower, uh, several followers who believe they had the gift of languages. Charles, Charles, that's it. Charles Parham. Um, and so, uh, and he had one of his, his students who, Agnes Osmond.
Yep. Agnes Osmond had supposedly the gift of speaking Chinese. And so she got on a boat, went over to China so that she could do missions work, uh, got there realized nobody knew what she was saying. She was writing things.
Cause she said she had the gift of writing Chinese, but nobody, uh, could read anything she did. In fact, uh, uh, she has a, a hand written copy of what she had, uh, what she said was Chinese and people were buying her story.
Uh, but I actually received that handwritten, uh, a picture of that handwriting. Uh, we gave it to my bride who actually was born writing and speaking Chinese. And she took one look at that and said, that's chicken scratch.
So she came back and said, she is, was actually speaking in angelic language. So it's, it's kind of interesting that once she changed her story.
Yeah. Correct. So, so, so far you haven't given a single passage that.
Actually argues for a non-human language. Okay. You've written more, two more verses.
Really quick. Okay. Okay. So first Corinthians 14, two, two verses before that, for he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but the God for no one understands him. However, in the spirit, he speaks mysteries.
Now also remember Daniel was the only one who could interpret the writing on.
The wall. Okay. So was, was Daniel interpreting a human language? I don't think so. I think,.
I mean, I don't know. I think it was a angelic language. Yeah. If you think about Daniel and all.
Of Daniel's interpretation, Daniel interpreted dreams too. It didn't mean that they couldn't under, you know, Nebuchadnezzar couldn't understand what was going on in his dream, but he needed it interpreted for him.
Right. And so it's not that someone can't see what's on the wall and, and read what's on the wall. It's that they just can't understand what it means. So, so those two aren't exactly linked. Okay. So let's, let's go back to verse.
Corinthians 14, two because we need to address that one. So let's look at the context. Is that a fair thing to do, James? Yes. Yes, please. Verse one, pursue love yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy for one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God for no one understands, but it, but in his spirit, he speaks mysteries, but one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolidation.
So, so let me ask a question. Is Paul saying we shouldn't speak to God? We should speak to men and not God? No. Well, if, if we're going to take this literally the way you did,.
Then that's what that's saying. Well, so I believe that Paul, he was saying that we, we speak, we're speaking, we should not speak in tongues to men, but to God, he's meaning the spiritual warfare. Okay.
So let, let's, you're, you're,.
So what you're doing, James, is you're, you're reading things in. I'm, all I'm doing is reading, right? And looking at context. So let me ask the question this way. Is he, is he trying to contrast two things, prophecy and languages?
Possibly. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he's saying, he's, he's saying pursue love. The, the, the real thing is he's saying love is the more important than all of them.
Right? Yes. He's saying pursue love, which comes out of chapter 13, just before it actually starts.
In verse chapter 12, it's 12, 13, 14. And once, and I'll say this for folks who are listening, if you go to strivingfraternity .org on our site, I do have a paper called, I think it's called understanding biblical tongues.
But if you search for first Corinthians 12 to 14, it basically looks at those three chapters, 12, 13, 14 in context, and just gives a high level overview. And I would argue that much of what Paul is condemning in those three chapters is the charismatic movement we see today, because it's nothing, nothing new under the sun.
The same things that we saw in late 1800s, you had a bunch of people feeling they're more spiritual. They're saying they speak a language because someone else is speaking a language. So you have this spiritual pride.
And then all of a sudden someone's being, just speaking gibberish. Well, can I give my take on it?
Sure. So I believe he is saying, don't speak tongues as a sermon or in the church. And, but it's for spiritual warfare. So meaning that like when you're speaking mysteries to God, only you and God can know, and the angels, and then the devil won't even know.
I hit him.
Where, where do you see spiritual warfare sermons in here?
Well, it's not, not for sermons at all, but it's for spiritual warfare.
Where do you see that in here at all?
When he says it's not, not to speak to men, but to God. So when we pray to God, most people, or a lot of people, when they pray to God, they're asking to battle spiritual warfare.
Okay. So you're saying, I want to make sure I understand this. You're saying that the speaking to God is the spiritual warfare?
Sometimes. Yeah. I can't say all the time, but sometimes, yes.
So we're at war with God? Like when we're praying, that's at war with God?
No. Asking the Holy Spirit to do battle for us.
Okay. So now there's nowhere in here that says that this is about asking the Holy Spirit to do battle for us, correct?
No. Not in this specific verse, no.
Okay. So you're, you're, you're, but that's your interpretation of that. Could that be influenced by your experience?
Well, I do have the experience. I, when, even when other people, when I'm doing deliverance, other people's speaking tongues, I can interpret that tongue in the spirit. And then it's a specific message for their life, completely specific to them.
There's no way I would have known the things that are said. And so it, part of it is experience. I put the Bible first, then experience, then history as well, all together. I.
Recognize all three of those. Okay. James, I heard you say a minute ago, when you speak in tongues and you're, you're speaking to God, you're speaking to God and the angels and the devil doesn't understand what you're saying.
Is that kind of your take on that? That when you speak in tongues, the devil can't understand you, only God and the angels because it's an angelic language. Is that, is that what I'm trying to understand?
Well, the language changes on God's side. The language changes. So the demons, they try to learn it, but they never learn it.
Are those demons and the devil, are they, are they angels? They're fallen angels. Yes. Okay. So they, they, they speak angel.
But after they were cast out of heaven, they, they no longer have God's spirit.
Where do you get that information from?
You have to have God's spirit to know the language. They have their own tongues, demonic, a demonic tongue. That's different.
Yeah. So, so James, I'm, I'm hearing what you're saying, but the problem is none of that is found in scripture at all. But I have, I do have another question for you.
It says the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues, Acts 19.
No, the question is, the question he's asking is, you said that angels that fell no longer speak angelic language. You have a Bible verse for that? Or is that something that you're trying to, you're building a doctrine to save your, your belief system?
Well, they, they still speak. Their demonic tongues.
Information is what Drew's asking. Where do you get that information from?
Well, I don't have any Bible verses for that. So you got me on that one.
I do have another question for you, James. So, cause we've been spending a lot of time in first Corinthians and then we've only mentioned Acts a little bit. Do you know that first Corinthians was written before the book of Acts?
No.
I was not aware. I'm going to have a chronological order list.
I'm going to intercede and say, Drew, I like, I never thought about that. That's an excellent point, which explains why Paul had to do so much explaining by the, to the Corinthians, because this has not been written about yet.
That's an excellent point.
So, so in James, what I'm getting at, what Andrew's picking up on is the book of Acts or the book of first Corinthians, it speaks about tongues, right? But then once the book of Acts comes along and it talks about the Holy Spirit falling on people and they spoke in other tongues, Luke in Acts is clarifying at the beginning of Acts, what those tongues are, that they are known languages.
So if they were anything other than that, he would have said what they are, that they were angelic languages or they were, they were some other kind of gibberish that, that we can understand. But Luke specifically says in Acts two that they are known languages.
Yeah, I agree that Pentecost was,.
It was known languages. It says it straight out. I agree with that, but I think this is a separate.
Different gift, a different gift. But here, here's the thing, right? I believe, you could tell me if I'm wrong, you, you want to follow the truth. Would that be fair to say, James? Yes. Yes, definitely.
What becomes the ultimate authority for truth? The word of God. Okay. So if we see something in the word of God, then that becomes the authority, even over our experience, correct? Yes. Okay, good. I'm glad you agree with that because if I want to go back to the first Corinthians 14, because you're, this passage to, to, if we stay consistent with the way you're interpreting verse two, the rest of the passage then is indicating that God does not want us talking to him.
Now, is that, does that fit with the rest of scripture that God would want us to talk to men and not God?
So you mean when Paul was saying that it's not for men, but to God?
Yeah, if we're taking it the way you're taking it, I'm just reading it, but you read into this that this is spiritual warfare. And so if we're going to say that this is spiritual warfare, then when he says, when he's saying, he's talking about love, pursue love, that's, there's two commands here in verse one, pursue love, that's an imperative, that's a command, and then desire earnestly, and the definitive article to desire earnestly is spiritual.
The word gifts actually isn't there in the Greek. So there's two commands, pursue love, desire earnestly spiritual, and he says, but especially that you may prophesy, the verse that you bring up, for one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God, for no one speaks, for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries, but one who prophesies listens to men for edification and exhortation.
Okay, but then look, it says, one who speaks in a tongue edifies who? Himself. Himself, yeah. So do you know any passage of the Bible that it says that we should edify self, that that's a good thing?
Well, Paul, he says later, I wish everyone he spoke in tongues, but I would rather you prophesy.
You're avoiding the question, so I'll ask you. Is there any passage in the Bible that, outside of this one, where we see self-edification as a good thing?
Well, I think Paul says in 14 .5, 1 Corinthians 14 .5, I would like you to edify yourself, speak in tongues, but I would rather you prophesy to edify the church. Okay. So the church is more important than self, but we're still important,.
But the church is more important. Okay. Is there any, this is the third time I'm asking it, so is there any passage outside of this where self-edification is praised?
Yeah, I mean, you got love your neighbor as yourself.
So that assumes you love self. It's not saying you shouldn't love self. It's assuming that.
I don't think edifying yourself is necessarily selfish.
And yet it's condemned over and over again in scripture.
That's a good point, but I don't think he means by edifying himself. I don't think he means.
By being selfish. I didn't say the word selfish. I said self-edification.
That's what edifying himself would be. Sometimes we need, when you're doing spiritual warfare, you need the energy and the strength to continue to pray.
I'm not, okay. You guys put your experience aside.
Sometimes you need self-edification. No, there's none that I can think of.
Okay. Is the Bible pretty clear that self-edification is wrong?
Like pride would be wrong? Pride is definitely wrong. Yes.
Okay. Is self-edification pride?
I don't think so. You don't think so? Lifting yourself up? You got to take care of yourself to take.
Care of others. That's not edifying self. Taking care of self is not edifying self. The reason I'm laboring this is because what we see in the text, if I just read the text, is clear that Paul is saying something that is contrary to the rest of scripture.
And so therefore it's not to be taken as instruction, as literal instruction, but as condemnation to wrong behavior. What they were doing was edifying themselves, claiming they spoke a language that only God can speak.
That fits perfectly with everything he's saying, because he's not going to tell people not to pray. That's not biblical. He's not going to tell people to edify themselves because that's not biblical. So if it's not biblical, either there's other passages of scripture, there's a contradiction in scripture, or the other option that we see here is that Paul's condemning certain behavior that they were doing, the very same behavior we saw with Charles Farm's followers that we see today, the same exact behavior.
It's people saying, look at me, I'm speaking to God, and only God can understand. And yet, if you're going to take that that way, you have to take all of this that way. Therefore, Paul's condemning speaking to God.
He says it's better to speak to men. That's nowhere seen in scripture. You should edify yourself.
That's nowhere seen in scripture. Well, when you're speaking in tongues, it's for yourself. When you're praying for yourself, please help me, Lord, get through the day. You are helping yourself.
That's speaking in a language you understand.
Well, sometimes in scripture, there are verses about edification, like to edify your neighbor.
I have no problem with that. That's not edifying self, that's edifying others.
So it's good to be edified. You're not making them yourself. You're edifying people. So you want to do anything to others that you would do yourself? I don't know. It's confusing. You make a great point, though.
I'll admit you make a great point.
I'll tell you why, James, I think it might be confusing for you. Because I think scripture says one thing in your experience is saying a different, right? And that's what's causing confusion.
I don't think edification is bad. That's what we disagree on.
Yeah, but what about self-edification?
I don't think self-edification is bad. That's where we differ.
Self-edification would be the definition of pride, and you said that's bad.
I don't think so. Today, I heard somebody saying—because someone told their boss the gospel, and this is a Calvinist—he told his boss the gospel, and he even said to the point, you're going to hell, like Ray Comfort style, in a nice way.
And then somebody said to him, you're being prideful. I said, no, this is actually humility. Humility is saying that God's right and we're wrong.
Okay, but so this—.
I think we define pride differently. I think we define that differently.
Okay, do you believe that pride is building up of self?
I think pride is doing what you want to do. Like, sins, only sinful stuff. Not just—if you want to do what God wants to do, that's not prideful.
Well, okay, you're giving it by example. The definition of pride would be to build self, to build up self, to put your agenda before anything else. That's what it ought to be. Edify is the word to build up.
So this is to build up self. That's the definition of pride.
Yes, but praying in tongues is you're building up—God is building you up.
Yeah, but again, the whole—the reason I'm belaboring this, James, is so you can see, what Paul is saying in this passage where you're trying to say that this is speaking of spiritual warfare, which isn't mentioned, and speaking of spiritual warfare versus sermons, neither of which are mentioned, Paul is saying things that cannot be taken the way you're taking them literally, because those very things are against everything else the Bible teaches.
The Bible teaches us that pride, or building up of self, is condemned, not praised. So if Paul is praising self-edification, pride, then that can't be what he's actually saying, because that's against everything else of Scripture.
He wouldn't be saying that we shouldn't pray to God, but pray to men. It's better to pray to men than to pray to God. I got news for you. It is much better for us—throughout Scripture we see this—it's much better to talk to God than it is to men.
Spending time in prayer is a better thing than us talking to one another. And if we take your interpretation, that flips this upside down. So it's more likely that Paul is condemning behavior, and he's pointing out to them, by your behavior, you're edifying yourself.
Okay? Well, yeah, I think that meant it's better to speak English to men, or whatever, you know, Hebrew, or Greek, and speak in tongues of God only, yeah. Well, he says, in verse 5,.
Now, I wish that you all spoke in languages, but even more so that you would prophesy, and greater is the one who prophesies than the one who speaks in languages, unless he interprets. So the church may receive edifying.
Now, you're saying that this gift of languages is for self, and Paul says it's for the church, and it must be interpreted. Now, when you pray in languages, do you have an interpreter there?
Yes, I can interpret the angelic.
You're your own interpreter?
It sounds like gibberish. It's, I can interpret that.
You can interpret, but you are your own interpreter. Well, for the tongues. Because Paul says that the proper way to do this is to have two people speak that same thing, and have an interpreter.
Yeah, I mean, I do it, I'll do it in front of the whole entire church.
And you have another person that can say the same thing?
Yes, and then, yeah, sometimes when we have another interpreter, they'll say the same thing,.
Or they'll say it. You have, the Bible has two people speaking that same language, and then the third person is the interpreter. Not two interpreters. Two people that have to the ability to speak to say the same thing.
That's what Paul says when he gives the instruction to the church. So, when you're alone and you're praying in languages, who does the interpreting?
Okay, so, yeah, when I'm alone, no one.
Okay, so, you're not fitting with the...
Just me. I am self-interpreting at that moment in time, yes.
How does that edify the church?
It's completely self-edification, as you say.
Okay, yeah. All right, which the Bible would condemn. So, let me go to the only passage, and I'm amazed that you didn't bring this one up, because it's the only passage, the only passage in all the Bible that mentions an angelic language.
And it's 1 Corinthians 13, 1. I missed it? Yep. Wow. This is the only passage that talks about an angelic language. And what I said, what I believe happened is, in Corinth... Now, keep in mind, as you read through the book of 1 Corinthians, every single chapter, I mean, every one of them, Paul is condemning them for bad behavior.
And somehow, chapters 12, 13, and 14, he's just condemning everything they're doing. Well, that's not likely. It's more likely that he's continuing in his condemnation of their behavior. And I think the behavior they were doing is very much what we see the behavior today.
When I was involved in the charismatic movement, what I discovered is that everybody had this pride of, will you speak in languages? I got a word from the Lord. Oh, you got a word from the Lord? I got a prophecy.
Everyone's trying to outdo each other in showing that they're more spiritual. And that, what you end up seeing is someone who claimed he spoke Spanish, and then someone who was a Spanish speaker said, that's not Spanish.
And he switched to it while he was speaking in angelic language. And the Spanish speaker just didn't know it. And that's what I think Paul is condemning. Let me make that case from what Paul said.
Hey, Andrew, I got to throw this comment up here from Dee. She says, I'm dying here. 1 Corinthians 14. She has been throwing it in the comments.
Okay, so 1 Corinthians 14 .22 says, Tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to the unbelievers. But prophecy is a sign to the unbeliever, not to the unbeliever, but to those who believe.
So basically the gift of tongues was the purpose. And we see this in Acts chapter two, was for the unbelievers to realize that here's people that don't know my language and they're speaking my language.
And so the verse Dee's throwing out here, 1 Corinthians 14 .22. If you just back up to 14 .21, it tells you that this is an actual language because it's quoting Isaiah 28 .11. And if you go look at that, it's God saying that he would send people who speak foreign tongues.
And so when you hear in foreign tongues, it's always someone from a different region that speaks a different language. Well, let me just say first.
So the reason on the Corinthians behavior, okay, it's not always due to lukewarmness. Sometimes the closer we get to God, the more the devil attacks. And as for being for unbelievers, I agree with that.
Sometimes we do get people who are, they're trying to become Christians, but they're not really Christians yet. And we interpret a tongue for them. And then it's like a message for them of repentance and they need to stay closer to God.
That's a lot of the messages are they need to repent and become believers.
If I could just speak real quickly to the behavior of the Corinthians, in the case of the Corinthians, it's not that the closer they were getting to God, the more the devil was attacking. Because if you look through the book of Corinthians, just read it, Paul is condemning them.
He's condemning sin, even to the point where you get to chapter 15. And he's saying, look, I've already given you the gospel, but you need to be reminded again, because it's not that the devil's attacking me, it's that they've rejected it.
I will say this about a negative thing about the charismatic movement. When you embark on deliverance, you will have more temptations. You will be attacked more by the devil. But the way to counter that is by more prayer.
You need to do your early morning prayer first thing in the morning. Or if you're going to do deliverance, then you have to pray at least, you know, you have to pray for a long time first thing in the morning.
Well, yeah, but when you're praying in a gibberish, then you're wasting time because you don't understand anything you're saying. And that's exactly what Paul's going to make. I do.
And God understands it, most importantly.
But is it necessary for me to speak to God in another language? Let me say this.
Even if tongues was fake, God still knows what we're thinking.
So God does understand. Yeah, so why don't you pray at all? What's the purpose of prayer? I mean, because do you think we can inform God of something? No. No, because he knows everything. The purpose of prayer is so that we would be dependent upon him.
Yes, that's me. I depend on him for everything.
So if we don't know what's going on, then we're not depending on him. Here's a great comment, Andrew.
Bible Care and Share Fellowship. I have read church history and the greatest soul winners did not speak in tongues. Now, we have a lot of people commenting in the comments that do study church history.
And I know Andrew has studied it and I've studied it myself. When we look through church history, James, what we see is we see very, very few groups of people that claim to speak in tongues. But those people that do claim that they are actual heretics because of what they teach about Christ.
They teach falsely about Christ. We see this with John Calvin battling against the Libertines. We see this with Charles Spurgeon and dealing with the I think it was the Shakers and the Quakers all throughout church history.
We also see it with Benny Hinn, who taught that the Trinity was nine people. That's true.
So we see this. We've seen this throughout church history. The very, very few people that claimed to speak in tongues, they were all heretics because they taught falsely about Christ.
Now, I think when Benny Hinn was talking about the nine Trinity or whatever he was talking about, all he was trying to say is that they're all separate and they all have their own body. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit all have their own mind, body, and soul, which I don't know if that's true or not.
He—. Well, no, I can tell you it's not because Scripture says that the Father is a spirit, not a body. And mind, body, and soul is not a way of—we are material and immaterial. Everywhere where you see body or flesh, it refers to the physical.
Everywhere where you see spirit, it refers to immaterial. And the soul can refer to either one, so it refers to the whole being, the whole person. But he ended up, by the way, when he taught that heresy and got exposed for it, he then tried saying it was a joke and then had to apologize for that.
But here's what Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak with the tongues—with the languages of men and of angels, but do not have love, I've become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Now, this is the only passage that talks about angelic language.
And he is not teaching that there are angelic languages. He's actually teaching the opposite. You know why I say that? Because I read the next verse. What we see in verse 1 is he's making a comparison between the speaking of languages and love.
And he's saying love is greater. If you don't have love, then you're just making noise, speaking gibberish. Yes. But look at verse 2. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and even if I have all faith as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I'm nothing.
James, if you knew all mysteries and had all knowledge, what would we call you? That would be, like, God. That would be God. Now, is Paul saying that you can be God? No. But is that then exaggeration?
Is he exaggerating?
Uh, well, no. I don't think anyone can know all mysteries.
So wouldn't that be an exaggeration? If I know prophecy, even more than prophecy, I know all knowledge. I mean, he goes to the extreme. If I can know all the prophecy, I know all the mysteries. I have all knowledge, so much so I can remove mountains.
But I don't have love. Doesn't that sound like he's being, you know, he's exaggerating to make a point?
That love is more important, way more important than the gifts. Way more important, correct.
And he's trying to take the prophecy and take it to the extreme. Not just that you know that you could speak a prophecy, but that you know all mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith, right? He's exaggerating to make that point that even if you could go to the uttermost extreme, but you don't have love, you're nothing.
Would that be a fair interpretation of that? Yes. Okay. That's the same thing he's doing in verse one. If I can speak of the languages of men, even of angels, there's the same exaggeration right there.
He's not saying angelic language any more than he's saying that you could be, that you can have all knowledge. He's exaggerating to emphasize if he can go far beyond knowing every human language. Even if you could speak the language of angels, he's not saying there is one.
He's just saying that if you could, but you don't have love.
You see that? Yeah. I think that I did understand that exaggeration and everything. I think that's why I left the verse out specifically in my list.
But I agree with that. I agree with that. So throughout this, your list didn't have any passage that talked about it being an angelic language, but doesn't it have to be an angelic language? Because it's the only way for the experience to fit, right?
Because you're not speaking a known human language, are you? No. Okay. And I've never met anybody who does. I mean, there's lots of stories about people who do, but they've never been verified. I've never seen it verified.
Let me correct that. One person, there was a video that I saw of a person who was speaking French. And they said they never knew French. They did know a dialect of French, however. Well, so they spoke, I think it was Creole.
And so they were from Louisiana is what you're saying.
Haiti. Show no partiality to man. If one man can do it, any man can do it.
Well, the thing is, is that your defense of Benny Hinn, right? Was because you experienced these gifts. And therefore, you know they're true, and you're going to defend Benny Hinn. And yet, when we look at scripture, and I'm not saying this to be hard on you, James.
You know, I'm actually saying this to help you. When we went to scripture, you couldn't ground the argument that Benny Hinn makes in scripture. You may not realize you did it, but you kept going back to your experience.
You're reading things into the scripture that the scripture doesn't say. And to make it match your experience. So there's two ways that you can interpret scripture. You can either follow the rules of interpretation, or you can let your personal experience interpret it.
And I think you're doing the latter, because you're looking at these passages and going, well, this is speaking of spiritual warfare, but it doesn't mention spiritual warfare or anything about spiritual warfare.
Then you're taking it and you're saying, well, this is that you're looking at them and saying, well, this is what this is. But that's not what it's saying, right? Each time we looked at every one of the passages and just reading context, each one of them is not saying what you claimed it said, right?
Well, I mean, Paul, he talks about spiritual warfare a lot in James and Peter.
But not in the passages that you brought up, right? So that'd be like me saying, you know, you gave money to friends, therefore you should give me money. I mean, just because you gave other people money that, you know, doesn't mean you need to give me money.
No, not at all. I think. But so just because Paul mentions spiritual warfare elsewhere doesn't mean everywhere he's speaking only of spiritual warfare.
I think deliverance and prophecy and all the gifts, they're all a huge part of Jesus' ministry. And why? So that unsaved people would become saved, one of the reasons. But why? So that they may believe.
Okay, I would disagree. Okay. And the reason I'm going to disagree is because, and folks, I'll give you a link to go check. You can go to strivingforeternity .org slash miracles, strivingforeternity .org slash miracles.
And James, I want to give you some of the information of the research I've done on miracles. Because we only see three times in history where there seems to be a lot of miracle activity. Do you know what those three are?
Are you talking about the Old Testament prophets and Jesus' time in that book Acts?
Well, we see in the time of Moses, the time of Elisha and Elisha, and the time of Jesus. Right, right. So there's 265 miracles in the Bible, okay? 104 of them are done by Jesus. So it's 39 of all the miracles in the Bible are done by Jesus for a very simple reason.
Jesus is putting his deity on display. Okay? Yes, yes, true. So he does more than any other human, more than anyone actually, even of the Father. However, when we look at them by humans, right? Now, why those three periods of time that we see by humans?
When miracles are done by human beings, okay, we're going to limit it, not just, you know, like God or whatnot, just human beings. Okay? You have 80 miracles, 80 some miracles out of those 265. So that's what we're dealing with, 80 some miracles.
All right? Now, I'm actually just trying to look so I can give you the actual number, because I'm sure I have it in the paper. But so here's the thing. When we look at the miracles, okay, there, here, I found it, 81.
So I wasn't too far off. 81 miracles are performed by human beings in the entire Bible. That's 31 of all the miracles.
And then John said, Jesus did even more miracles, but not enough books to hold them. Correct.
So here's the thing. What is unique about the time of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus? Do you know?
Was the people being freed from Egypt, coming out of Egypt. And Elijah was just wanting the, like Jezebel and Ahab to stop killing the prophets. Let me help you with it.
Go ahead. During the time of Moses, did we have any written scripture? No. So Moses is writing scripture saying, thus says the Lord, right? He's claiming to speak for God and writing down God's word. How do you know that that's God's word?
Because it's validated by miracles. So Moses does miracles. Then you have Joshua writing and elsewhere where you have people writing afterwards. But what did you see historically? After about 30, 40 years, the miracles fade away.
Scripture is being written. And then there's a period of silence. After a couple hundred years of silence, all of a sudden, Elisha and Elijah come on the scene claiming to be prophets speaking for God.
And all of a sudden they're doing miraculous miracle, this miraculous things, these miraculous gifts. And all of a sudden, within 30, 40 years, that fades away. But what can, what happened? The new writing of scripture.
And then you have all the prophets. Then you have 400 years of silence. And Jesus comes on the scene. What do you see? Lots of miracles done by not only him, but also the disciples. And then after 30, 40 years, those miracles fade away.
The gift of miracles fade away. And what happens? You have the writing of scripture. All three times are with the writing of scripture. That's exactly what Hebrews 2 says, where it says this, and starting in verse 1, for this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it.
For the word spoken through the angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedient received just a just penalty. How will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will.
So very clearly, he's saying that the purpose of the gifts, these signs and wonders, these miraculous gifts, is to vindicate or, as it says here, confirm the spoken word of God that was then written down.
Okay. Well, you have times, like in Judges, Samson, he asked for the Holy Spirit. Unlike the apostles, he actually asked for it. So maybe now we do have to ask for it more.
Okay, so you think we should ask for it more. So you think we should see a lot of miracles then?
Yeah, I mean, Jesus said, seek and you'll find. Okay. Seek the Lord without—you're seeking the Lord without your hard-minded soul. Well, that's not asking for miracles.
So let's do an experiment. Let's remove all of the miracles done by human beings over the 4 ,000 years of biblical history that we have, and let's take out the times where there's new writing of scripture.
And let's see, how many miracles are we left with? We're left with eight miracles in 4 ,000 years. That doesn't sound like something that's common, does it?
Bible says, show no partiality to man. That means no man is greater than any other man. Okay. James, if I may—.
I think that's important. I think that's important. You mean avoiding the answer to answering the question is important?
One man can do it in 4 ,000 years. We could do it today.
James, the Bible speaks about partiality, not showing partiality. That's in terms of salvation, that God shows no partiality to your status, where you're from, your bloodline, pedigree, anything like that.
That has nothing to do with these spiritual gifts. That's a salvific verse.
So you can walk on water, James?
No. Can I walk on water? Why can't you walk on water? Peter walked on water. Yeah, I mean, I believe—.
Why can't every human being walk on water? I mean, many people have tried that.
God gives an anointing for everything. There's an anointing of preaching, anointing of teaching, anointing of being an evangelist.
Here's the thing. You keep giving us talking points, not scripture. We keep giving you scripture. And the scriptures you have given—. No, I have the scriptures. Let me finish. Each of the passages you've given have been out of context.
If it's out of context, I'll quote, or I'll paraphrase John Calvin, if you take God's word out of context, you no longer have God's word, you have man's word. Once you take it out of context, you no longer have the word of God.
You don't have—you're giving it a new meaning. And you've done that over and over again.
You have Romans 2 .11, for there's no partiality with God. Colossians 3 .25— Hold on, hold on.
Romans what? 2 .11. Okay, so you're saying that this, in its context, is going to teach us that if one person can do something, we all can do it. Is that what you're saying?
Yes. No one is special in the eyes of the Lord.
Okay, that's—okay, so you're saying that—. The apostles are not better than us. But it's not—okay, but that's not the—. See, you have a category error here. We're not talking about better. We're talking about ability.
Two different categories. You're saying if one person has the ability to do something, every other human being has the ability to do something. So if one person ever could do a miracle, a gift, have a miraculous gift, then every one of us must be able to have that, correct?
Well, I believe if God permitted, it is possible to walk on water. I've never done it, but Jesus said, blessed is he who sees with—or believes without seeing. Okay, here's the thing.
And folks, I want you to see what keeps happening. And those who are regular to the show, you've seen this countless times. Um, but every time I ask a question, it's not being answered. It's being, we'll jump over here, we'll jump somewhere else, or we're going to quote a verse—.
My answer is yes. Yes, I believe that that means that we can do anything that other people have done. Yes, I do believe that.
So then, therefore, then the passage you gave, Romans 2 .11, is not dealing with salvation, correct? It's dealing with giftedness and ability.
I believe, well, I have to look at the, which, are you talking about the Romans?
The Romans 2 .11 that you mentioned, for there is no partiality with God. That's, you're saying that's not dealing with salvation, that's dealing with spiritual gifts and abilities.
Well, I mean, according to many other verses, I believe that, but let's look at, let me look at, I have to look at the context. I look at context, too.
And the context, right, the verse right after that says, for we have all sinned without the law and perish without the law. And those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law, right? So there, who is it that's under the law?
Jewish people or Gentiles? The Jewish people. Jewish people. And then he continues down to verse 14, for when the Gentiles, now who's that speaking of? Is that speaking of Jewish people or Gentiles? The non-Jews, yes.
Yeah, Gentiles. And so just before that, verse 10, but glory and honor and peace be to everyone who does good, both to the Jew first and also the Gentile, or to the Greek, sorry. Is that the Jews and the Gentiles?
Yes. Okay, so the verse before it and the verses after it are speaking of what? Jews and Gentiles? Yes, yes. Could that be, I mean, this may be a radical thought, but could verse 11, which is sandwiched between the passages before it in verse 9, referring to Jews and Gentiles, verse 10, Jews and Gentiles versus 12 to 14, Jews and Gentiles, could it be that the partiality is that everyone gets saved the same way, both Jews and Gentiles, that there's nothing special about Jews?
Yes, yes. I agree with that too. So the only thing special about Jews is Yeshua, yes.
You're going to remove this verse that you used because that no longer fits with the context you gave it, right? So you can't use this one to make the claim that because they could do miracles, you could do miracles, that's not what that's teaching.
It's teaching that Jews and Gentiles all get saved the same way, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, so then we could do this all night. We can look at every, because we've looked at every single passage that you've given, and all I've done is read context, and every passage does not teach what you claim it teaches.
Andrew, I just want to bring up something, and I got this from Jim Osmond, because he teaches this right at the beginning of his Hebrews sermons. And it's who does miracles in Scripture, right? Specifically in the New Testament.
Now, you've got all of the stats and numbers throughout the entire Bible, and I encourage everyone to go get that because it's mind-blowing. But let's just look at two sections, okay? You have Jesus, and then you have the apostles, all right?
So you can start, and I have these written in my Bible next to the verses, and they're highlighted, so it's like a little daisy chain that follows one after another. So we see Jesus, you can go Acts 2, verse 22, and then look at John 3, verse 2, John 5, verse 36, John 10, verses 25 and 38, John 14, verse 11.
And then for the apostles, you can look at Acts 2, verse 43, Acts 5, verse 12, Acts 14, verse 3, Acts 15, verse 12, Acts 19, verse 11, and 2 Corinthians 12, 12. And what you're going to notice is this pattern that God was doing signs and wonders first through Jesus and then through the apostles.
And there are only two instances in the New Testament of people who were not apostles doing signs, but they were people who were directly connected to the apostles. So we don't see just this outbreak of a whole bunch of people performing all these signs, wonders, miracles, and doing all of these things.
We see it distinctly with two groups of people, Jesus and the apostles.
Yeah, and the thing is, so we've gone through the passages that you brought up, right? And the reason, I know we want to talk about Benny Hinn, right? But the thing is, is Benny Hinn has led you astray, James, because he's led you to believe the Bible says something the Bible doesn't say.
You're having to, in each one of these passages, read something into the Bible, and we're just looking at context and realizing the Bible is not teaching what you're saying it teaches. That should concern you, James, because you want to follow truth, right?
Yes, I do. And where are we going to get the truth from? The Word of God. And is it going to be when we read the Word of God in context, or when we add context to it?
Well, I have other verses that say that the apostles are not any more aptly to receive the gifts than people today.
All right, we'll look at a couple more. Okay, so you have, and I'm going to give you a couple more, and then I do want to bring Pedro in to see if he's got questions, and I know Eric's still backstage.
1 Corinthians 3 .5, when they talk about, let me just make sure that's the right verse.
What then is Apollos, and what is Paul?
Yeah, they're saying they are nothing. It's all about Jesus Christ anyway.
Oh, so they're nothing. So, okay, so it's not teaching that we're all the same.
And remember when, in the book of Acts, when they went to go worship.
Well, hold on, hold on, let's deal, like, you keep doing this. So, this passage is not teaching that we're all the same, it's teaching that we're not better than the Lord, right? Yeah. Okay, so this doesn't teach what you claim to talk.
And when they went to go worship, Barnabas and Paul, they said, hey, we're just men.
That's Acts 15, again, so why were they, why did it say that? What were they doing in Acts 15?
Because they, um, they did some kind of miracle, and then, uh—. They went to go worship and said, no—. We went to worship Him as God. You know why? Glory, we don't have glory for us. The miracles are supposed to bring glory to God, not to us.
We do the same thing. So, then that passage is teaching that they're men, they're not God. They're not worthy of worship, correct? Right. So, that's not teaching that we could do miracles because they did miracles.
That's teaching that they're not God and don't deserve worship. So, I mean, how many passages do we have to go through before you start to see that you keep taking them out of context? I mean, one after another after another, is it starting to concern you at all that that's happening?
That you can't be honest with Scripture? And I don't, and I'm not saying that to say that you're trying to be dishonest. I think you've been deceived by deceivers. I mean, look, let me ask this question.
Has Benny Hinn promised people blessings and healings? Yes. And have they come true every time?
I don't follow him that closely. I just, the stuff he believes in general, I agree with the same stuff.
Has there been any instance that he claimed someone would be healed or claimed a blessing, promised a blessing, and it didn't come true? He said, if you sow a seed, you give him money, you will become rich.
You will get money.
Now, if we're on a different subject, my beliefs are somewhat different. I don't necessarily believe in the prosperity gospel.
Wait, you said you believe, you came in here saying you believe everything.
And that's almost everything, according to this subject. Because I believe God will, he does bless people when we give, but only if that's where God wants us to be. But God will, God will make your life miserable if you're not where he wants you to be.
But yet, this is where you're getting all this teaching from, is guys like this who are charlatans and frauds. They've made promises to people that they would be healed and become wealthy, their bills would be taken care of.
Well, for Benny Hinn, this actually happened to him. He began to give to anointed churches, he practiced the gifts, and then he became blessed. Because that's where God wanted him.
No, he's a charlatan who takes from people. This is not God's blessing because he's taught false doctrine.
Didn't he also bury into money too? Wasn't his wife's father some kind of owner of a Christian publication or something like that? I don't know.
Well, I know Kenneth Copeland, he got rich off of oil, not just his people giving.
You know what's amazing? When I went to Kenneth Copeland's Believers Conference, I heard Jesse Duplantis, Creflo Dollar, another guy whose name I can't remember, all talk about going to doctors to get healed.
If we're going to take your argument, God doesn't show preference. When the disciples healed, they could heal everybody immediately. I mean, Jesus healed entire towns, it says. Everybody, whether they believed or not.
So you should be able to do that. You should be able to empty every hospital that is in your neighborhood, unless, of course, you don't love your neighbor.
Well, first of all, the security won't let us in. Security won't let you in? Because they don't believe in God. You can't go in a hospital. I go in hospitals all the time.
No one stops me. You walk right in. I mean, if you had the ability to heal the way that Jesus and the disciples had the ability to heal, then you should be able to walk in a hospital and empty it. Go to St. Jude's Children's Hospital and empty that place.
You know why nobody does that? Did Jesus do that? Yeah. Scripture says he healed entire towns. Everybody, even people that didn't believe. There were 10 lepers. Only one believed.
The other nine don't believe. But they were healed. No, the lepers, they came, only one came back. It doesn't mean they didn't believe, though. Why didn't they come back? Because, maybe, I don't know, they told, Jesus said, uh,.
Isn't that the whole point of what Jesus is asking?
Jesus said they were ungrateful or something like that. Yeah.
Yeah. Jesus is questioning that he's the only one to come back. He's making the point that the others weren't believing. You know why the fake healers say that it's about someone's belief and not their belief?
Because then they can continue with the charade. Then they can say, oh, look, it's you that has the problem.
No, not necessarily. I mean, some, yeah, I'm sure they're doing that.
It seems that Kofi knows these guys well. Jerry Saval was the other guy.
Believe me, if you don't believe God's going to heal you, sometimes God just doesn't happen.
Let me speak to some of Benny Hinn's, uh, we'll call them crusades or gatherings, things like that. Do you believe that Benny Hinn screens people who come to his stage?
All I know, are you asking someone else, right? No, I'm asking. Do you believe, do you? I have a comment on that, though. If my pastor told me to fake something, I would disown them. Yeah, but that's not what I'm asking.
I don't believe people are faking it. So you don't believe that people are faking it. You believe that those people are really sick and impaired that are going up to the stage to get healed by Benny Hinn.
Yeah.
Do you believe all the people that are in wheelchairs, that they came in there in wheelchairs, or could they have walked in with crushing force?
I don't think a one person would fake that because they feel too guilty.
I mean, if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you have no reason to feel guilty. But the reason I'm asking this is because if you've listened to this show, you've probably listened to Justin Peters a lot as well.
And Justin has spoken on this numerous times where there's a backstage, there's a curtain that separates the people who are in the audience from the really sick people on the hospital beds and who have cancer and who are sitting backstage, who never get seen by Benny Hinn and never get healed.
And so let me say this is I went to church with a guy who his job in one of these churches was to do the screening. He would have someone come in that would use a cane and they would say, hey, let us help you.
They'd have a wheelchair brought to him. They'd sit him in the wheelchair. When they brought him up on stage, they'd say, see, he can walk. Well, he would walk his way in. He could walk before. But everyone says, see, it's a miracle.
And he gets caught up in it. But the guy that I went to church with, it was his job to not only do that, to put people that could walk and he could tell who could walk OK without the cane. They just had it for stabilization.
They'd put them in a wheelchair and everyone thinks it's a miracle. His other job was to ask details of people and he'd gather information and then give it to the pastor. So when the pastor would say that there's someone here that has this.
It isn't because it was some miraculous thing. It's because he did his job by doing by talking to people as they came in, jotting things down and running it up to the pastor.
Yeah, we see that with other people, too.
Well, sometimes God tells us as a word of knowledge. It's not a word of knowledge. He asked them. I mean, like the people that Benny Hinn did not pray for. Maybe God was telling Benny Hinn that I'm not going to heal them.
I'm not going to heal them now because I want a different thing for them.
James, you keep making excuses for both him and his doctrine. That is not out of the Bible. He's a false prophet. If he's a false prophet just once, then he's a false prophet. Unless you're believing that God could be in error.
Remember, Jesus asked many times to people, do you have faith? Do you believe?
Has nothing to do with what Deuteronomy says about false prophets.
In other words, I'm not going to heal you if you don't believe.
When someone says, thus says the Lord, are you saying that God could be wrong? That God could get something wrong? Let me give you a for instance. When all of these faith healers, prophets claimed that Donald Trump would be reelected in this next term, every single one of them prophesied that said, thus says the Lord, they were all wrong.
Does that make them false prophets? Or is God the one that was false?
They would be false prophets. I have a unique opinion on that though.
Well, James, do you believe that it's God's will to heal people?
Yes, but sometimes it's God's will that he doesn't heal us until he gets us where he wants us to be, like in a certain church to be healed and then he'll heal us after.
But doesn't Benny Hinn teach, God wants you to be healed, therefore come receive your healing and people show up in faith thinking that they're going to be healed?
God wants you to be healed, but sometimes it's after obedience.
That's not what Benny teaches.
Well, I think that's what's happening to him.
Healing is now. God wants you to be healed, therefore come up front and receive your healing.
I mean, he may not understand it himself, but that's why God doesn't heal some people because he doesn't have a purpose. That's not the gift of healing.
The gift of healing, the person has the gift.
They can heal. I believe there's always some form of faith and even repentance too in everyone that Jesus healed.
Okay, so that's not what we see in Scripture, but would Paul have the gift of healing? Yes. So he can heal anybody he wanted?
No, he couldn't even heal himself.
That's right, not heal himself, but he had. In Philippians chapter 2, he's got someone that was very close to him that was near death, near death, and he couldn't heal him. So why does God show preference, according to you?
Because he wants us to bring us closer to him.
Okay, so God's first salvation.
First is salvation, number one, like you guys say, salvation is number one, then healing and deliverance.
If we take your interpretation of the Bible, then God has to heal him because otherwise he's showing preference. For the one in Philippians? Yeah. I'd have to look it up. What else? Right? That's, you're saying that's preference.
That was Philippians, what now? Philippians 2, and you can see where it talks about them, verse 25. Okay.
Oh, right, right, yeah, yeah, the partiality, preference stuff, yeah.
See, if you're going to be consistent with that, then this man has to be healed. If Aphrodite isn't healed, then God's showing preference by your argument.
Yeah, I know I'm saying that. Okay, yeah, right, yeah, to my logical conclusion. Correct, correct.
I'm trying to point that out so you could see that there's a problem in your logic and your thinking, so that you'll come to Scripture and let that be the final authority.
Well, I believe God does want to heal everyone, but everyone has a different purpose. So whether he wants us to be healed in heaven, or he wants us to go somewhere else to be healed, or he wants us to do something, take the first step to show a little faithfulness first, and then he'll give us the next step.
Okay, so staying in Philippians, you're saying we have to show faithfulness first. So, does God—. Oop, he must have just dropped. His phone might have died. Oh, his phone probably died. I did want to bring Pedro in, so now would be a good time, then.
Let me bring Pedro in and see what questions he has. Pedro, welcome to Apologetics Live. Hey guys, how are you doing? Better than I deserve. Hey, love the show.
Thank you for all you guys do. I'm a long-time listener. I'm in sale, so I listen to all your podcasts, and it's been so edifying for me. I grew up in the Catholic Church, so I started listening to Max Flick about five years ago, and that's kind of where I heard about you, and I kind of started tying it all in together.
My condolences that you listen to Max Flick, right? I love the guy, man. He's awesome.
I just love his tact. Anyway, it's so funny. Somebody called him the other day, and he goes, I'm not even going to get ready to turn my turn signal on right now, because you know Matt's real quirky about little sounds.
What's that noise? Hey, what's that? You got some wind there. Sometimes it makes me cringe. I'm like, oh my gosh, but yeah. Oh, try it in person. What's that? Try that in person with Matt. I can imagine.
I can imagine, but I was just going to say, yeah, I grew up in the Catholic Church, so I came out of the Catholic Church, went to Catholic high school, Catholic college, and then I started getting into the prosperity churches, and I just started looking at the Bible differently, and I was like, you know what?
There's something. So I wound up in prosperity churches, and I wound up in these tongue speaking churches, and it always made me feel so uncomfortable, right? So I never really felt, my wife grew up in that type of church as well, and I just never really felt comfortable with the whole thing, and I started reading the scriptures, and I read some of the scriptures about edifying yourself, and I'm thinking, okay, well, maybe there's a thing, and then there's a scripture about the groanings, and we don't know what we're saying, the utterances and things like that, that Paul's talking about, and did he bring that scripture up, by the way, about the utterances, and we don't know what we're saying, but our spirit is, okay.
So anyway, so I was reading that, so I'm like, that makes sense, but I just, like I said, I never felt comfortable with it, and I just, I thank God for people like Matt Slick and you guys that are like, when I started really studying the scriptures, it really opened my eyes to, wait a minute, there's a reason I don't feel comfortable with it, because it's not the way you're supposed to praise God.
So anyway, I have an autistic son. He's pretty autistic. I mean, he's pretty low level. He's 24 years old. He exhibits aggressive behaviors and things like that. We just try to keep him calm. He lives with us.
We have full guardianship of him, but I took him, when he was about, probably about five years, six years ago, I took him to this church that I was going to, Prosperity Church, and there was a faith healer that came in from out of, he came in from another country and had this aura, and everyone's like, oh, he's a faith healer, he's coming today.
So I'm like, great, we're going to take my son. I'm all excited. I'm like, we're going to take my son and get him prayed for. So when I walk my son in, they bring him into this back room, right? I brought him in after church because my son won't sit through the service.
And when the guy saw my son and he kind of saw his condition, his eyes just got, you could tell, I could just tell, he was like, whoa, this is like, what is, they want me to pray for this kid, what are they expecting here?
So, and again, later on, as I'm studying the reformed doctrines, studying scriptures, I started seeing like, that look on his face was like, I can't do nothing for him. All that's coming to the surface now, how, what a false, what false claims they're putting out there about this.
I just wanted to share that because I was in it and I came out of it by learning the scriptures. And I believe that God, if he puts you in it, you know, he, he kind of, and if you're looking for truth, he's going to, he's going to take you out of that.
If you're really seeking truth, right. Looking for truth. He's going to bring you out of those, those churches. So I just, just keep praying for this man that, you know, he's seeking truth and, and that he'll, you know, he'll, he'll, he'll come out of that.
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, you know, I came out of it as well. And I mentioned earlier the paper that I have on at Striving for Eternity on 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14. I'm just, Pedro, I'm just going to mute you for a moment.
There we go. There's something in the background that was just making a lot of noise, but you can unmute yourself after I say this so you could start talking again. But I, I, my paper that that's on my website about understanding biblical tongues, you know, an overview, it's basically an overview of 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14.
The reason I wrote that and came to that was I, I was coming from a Jewish background. I didn't understand Christianity. I was saved for two years, just reading a Bible. Then I went to college. Everyone in college was, most of the people were word of faith or charismatic.
They, I figured they know better than I on what the Bible teaches. So I was just trusting them. And four years of college and, and having that, that teaching, I was believing that I, I believed I was speaking in tongues.
What I was actually doing was just a gibberish. It, I ended up when I was at a Bible study and two guys were at a table. I wasn't even involved in their conversation. I was just at the other end of the table, having a cup of coffee.
And one guy says to the other guy, well, not all of us believe that tongues continued to today. And I went, wait, what? Never heard that before. So I went home that night and read 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 in one sitting asking the question, is Paul teaching everything I was taught about tongues and reading it in context, I walked away and realized Paul was condemning the very behavior we see in the charismatic movement that probably same behavior that existed in the first century.
And so what, what I quickly realized is, as I said, Paul's condemning behavior through the whole book of 1 Corinthians. It was more fitting that he's condemning behavior with, with spiritual gifts as well.
And I realized that all the things that I was talking with, with James about was there. They were condemning the very things that they are same arguments being made today. The same arguments I believe were being made in Corinth and Paul was condemning it back then.
And, and that's what we end up seeing. And that's why it breaks my heart with a guy like James who came from a good cessationist position and got sucked in because of his experience. And, and I highlight that because folks, listen, every time you talk to someone like James, their ultimate authority is always their experience.
They know it's true because of what they experienced. And, and you saw how many passages he took out of context. He added to the, to the scriptures. He, what we call eisegeted instead of exegeted. What are those two words means?
Eisegete means to put into, and exegete is to take out of. He put into, put a meaning into the Bible and I'm taking a meaning out of the Bible. And so that's what we end up seeing. And, and that, I mean, how many times did I have to say to him, Drew, this should concern you that you're taking these passages out of, out of context that, that the scriptures are not teaching.
I mean, every single verse, there wasn't a single verse that he'd got right. And yet several times he had to admit that what I'm saying, the Bible saying is exactly what it's saying, because all I'm doing is reading the context.
Right. And yet he doesn't give up the position. Why?
Cause it's his experience. Well, yeah, it's, it's a lot of feeling base. And I, I, I'm me and my wife right now, we're kind of challenged because she's still, that's a challenge. You know, when you're married to someone that, that has, she's coming out of it.
Cause the more I'm, the more I'm showing her scripture. And I'm like, that doesn't mean that, or this doesn't mean that. And she'll like, what? You know, cause it's what we're, it's what you've been taught.
And again, if you don't study, this is what they just, they throw at you and you've been taught that. So now I'm kind of slow rolling teaching her. Cause some of the things she just doesn't, and I'm just, you know, it's, it's kind of difficult when it's your wife.
And I'm just like, well, it doesn't, that doesn't mean that. I know I believe that before.
I'm going to give you a resource that you'll want to get a hold of. Okay. It's not available yet, but coming next month will be available a film, a documentary called cessationist. And you'll want to get that and just say, I haven't even seen it yet, but you'll want to get it.
And Howard says, just say to her, Hey, let's watch this together. That way someone else is telling her, not you. So you don't have to be the bad guy.
Right. Exactly. And always blame it on Andrew anyway.
Yeah. You can blame it, but you know, I'll tell you seriously, Pedro, I'll tell you what you could do. You can go to striving fraternity, check it, get the phone number, call me. Okay. Or email me. And if you want, I'll be happy to, to sit down over a phone and talk with you and your wife and, and answer any, any questions from, from the scriptures with this.
That would be awesome. Because it's, it's really hard. I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to cut you off. Our, our challenge, our son is, is extremely challenging in our life. He's, he's really, um, the autism it's, it's not, it's not easy. It's not easy. I, no, not at all. And I, I have a lot of guilt, even with not being able to go to church functions.
And I see the people, they're like, Oh, where were you? I'm like, man, I can come, you know, and I want to be more involved. And I'm thinking.
So many people don't understand that. So I had, we had, when I was pastoring my first pastorate, we had a child that was, she was 15 or 16, very, very autistic. Um, and, and the problem, the problem was in her, in their case, I mean, part of the problem was, is the parents, because she was autistic, they never disciplined her or anything.
They let her always have her way. And then when she became a teenager and she's larger than her mother, she's almost as big as her father and she's violent.
I mean, the mother can't handle it. My son's in the same, yeah, my son's in the same boat. He's bigger than me.
So yeah, it makes it super hard because they, they don't. They all look the same.
Yeah. It's challenging. But, but sometimes I feel like, yep, you're breaking up. I'm sorry about that. My wife's calling me. I'm sorry about that. Me and my wife, um, you know, we'll, we'll have to take turns going to church because it's like, well, it's hard to get babysitters on Sunday and things like that.
So there's a lot.
Well, let me give you, um, and hopefully your church will do this, but one of the things that I did, uh, was I challenged our church to say, look, we have a person who has a need because they used to do like you did.
They would take turns coming to church. And, and I told our congregation, we have a responsibility to help this family. Sunday is the one day that they should get a break and be able to worship God. And we should take turns to care for this child.
Was that difficult for everyone? Yeah, but it actually gave everyone a greater appreciation for what this mother and father had to go through every day.
Yeah. Right. And, and, and the dang, the dangerous, the way where it's dangerous in people with, with especially newer Christians and they're coming, they're saying, oh, we can heal you, you know, and then you go take your son or whoever you take.
And they were praying over this three-year-old kid who had cancer and, and I'm holding him up on stage. And I'm just thinking today, I wonder what's going on with that kid today. But, um, but, but you feel like you said, you don't have enough faith.
I'm doing something wrong. You're trying to, you're looking at every little aspect of your life. What am I doing wrong? What did I do to cause that in his life? What did I do to cause that in my life?
You know, and I was an athlete growing up. I was always a star athlete. You wouldn't, I would never thought my life would have this kind of situation going on. And yet you look back and I say, God, he's using it.
And now I look at it and I say, God, use it for your glory. Even though it's difficult. I tell people that all the time and they don't, you know, people that unbelievers, they don't understand that. But, you know, I led my, my mom out of the, out of the Catholic church.
She's going to a Christian church now. And, um, you know, I told her that because they see the challenge, but they also see us smiling. You know, we're, we're still trying to live. We're still trying to live for the Lord, which he put it, he put it in.
And that's the one thing about being in there, you know, God being sovereign overall. That's one thing you get is it's not about feeling. Cause I'm, this doesn't feel good. You know what I'm saying? And I want it to go away.
I want him to be healed. I want my life to be a lot easier, but it's not about my feeling. You know, it's about what God's using it in my life for whatever reason, me and my wife life. And I say, you know what, if this is what made me be saved, if this is what kept me from being in the world, then praise God.
You know, then, um, I'd rather have this than, than being lost.
You know, Pedro, would you believe that you and I have that in common, that we were star athletes in high school?
Oh yeah, I believe that's totally wrong.
I think me and Pedro probably have that more in common. I actually won a state championship, Andrew. Nice, nice. Awesome.
Well, I, I was okay. So I will say for the record, when, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, I was a star wrestler.
Dude, you're, you're, uh, you look like a wrestler, but your, your lunch box, your lunch box. I crack up every time I can imagine you, all the kids playing and you're behind putting the lunch box.
That's just, that cracks me up.
Yeah. For folks that don't get the content that don't know that. So, so I've shared in it when I was younger, I'm so, I was so OCD that when all the kids would go out to play and throw their lunch boxes on the ground, I had to organize them by height order and color.
And I, so I would spend the entire recess organizing lunch boxes. But yeah, no, I, I actually was a good wrestler in seventh, eighth grade. But the reason was is because I was about 60 pounds underweight.
So by the time I got into high school, I was, as a freshman, I stopped wrestling because people were trying to drop down to my weight and couldn't get low enough. So I was always wrestling people who had like 50 pounds on me.
Wrestlers, wrestlers are crazy. They, I used to see those guys spitting in cups all day during, you know, I'm like, what are you doing? They're like, we gotta, gotta get to weight wearing those bags. I think it's illegal to do that now, but they used to run around.
I did nothing to drop weight. I just, I was naturally underweight. Yeah, you had an advantage there. Yeah. But, uh, I was always wrestling people that were like half my age. Yeah, exactly. So, so, you know, I, I think though, you, you, you know, we're going to be praying for you because the situation, I know what that's like having a child like that.
I mean, not personally, but having watched it in my church, it's not easy. And so, you know, and I know that a lot of people don't understand it, nor appreciate it, nor, nor really try to help it.
Yeah. It's, it's a challenging diagnosis because there's so many different aspects. There's behaviors, there's anxiety, high levels of anxiety. There's OCD. There's just different things. There's schedule like OCD on a schedule, any little thing goes off on that schedule and it could throw them out of whack.
It could throw his whole day off. And, you know, there's, there's a lot in my son is breaking up again.
And I'll, I'll just say, you know, uh, you know, this is, this, we were mentioning Matt Slick. Matt Slick is also in, in the autism spectrum, you know, in, in the Asperger's, it's a type of, of, uh, autism.
But for the, for the highly intelligent, um, and that's part of with OCD, what you have is a very intelligent. A lot of times have the OCD. Um, it's just something in the, you know, I think it's just a balance like, okay, you're really smart, but you got these other problems.
Well, we think my, my three-year-old is on the, on the high functioning spectrum because my wife used to work with, with, uh, kids with autism. And so she's, she's noticing every time he starts stemming and, and things like that.
And so, uh, we, we believe he's on the spectrum and it's the behaviors and, you know, trying to, trying to keep those under control and things like that. But, uh, the more, the older he gets, I think the more it's, it's starting to become less and less noticeable.
Early intervention is the key. Um, when, when my son was, you know, this is 24 years ago, so he got diagnosed at three years old and they were like, good luck. And they handed us this pamphlet. I'm a young dad.
I got two other kids and I'm trying to put food on the table. I'm like, what do I do? Like, how do I even, what do I do? So now they have, I mean, ABA is now paid for through insurance, which is great.
We had to actually sue our school district, um, cause he had abuse going on there and we sued. Nope. We heard we sued. That's all we got. And it was just getting good. Can you, can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Sorry about that. But we had to sue the school district to get services. They were putting them in this little closet to learn. And my wife was like, no, no, no, that's not acceptable. And, and so it's just, it's been a constant, it's been a battle for real.
Like they pay for all of his services, which was great, but then it put, it taxed my wife cause she's taking them all over the city. This different service, which was great, but you know, it's, we got other kids too.
So that's the other thing. It's like, it doesn't just affect mom and dad. It affects everyone. It affects the whole family. Yeah, exactly.
You know, like what's, you know, we get no attention from mom and dad because one child.
Requires so much. Yeah. My daughter even told us, she thought he was faking it to get it. And I'm like, you know, when she was younger, of course, she was like, I always thought he was like faking it.
And then when you guys turned around, he was acting normal. And I'm like, no, that's not how it works.
Just for the record, we were talking about gifts and things like that. So you got, you know, that Matt Slick believes in the continuation of gifts.
He and I have actually debated it. And you know, I've heard, I've heard the debates. Yeah.
I've heard you guys debate about it. When Matt and I first debated it, Matt made arguments from scripture, but we, I, it's one of the things I don't debate with him anymore because he does get emotional about it.
And there's a lot to his background that it cost him a lot with this belief.
But yeah, I heard about the church. He lost the church pastorate and all that.
And he had a discussion on this show when we were talking about this nationalist movie and he came on.
Yeah. Well, we invited him on because he thought, you know, he had a real problem with the film. It was kind of fun. Okay. This was kind of a private conversation, but I think I shared it on the show with Matt here.
But Matt had said, he's like, this, this film is so divisive to the body of Christ. I said, Matt, you got a whole website about Calvinism. Don't you think that's far more divisive? And he was like, oh yeah, I mean, it's like, so, I mean, that's the thing I love about Matt.
You know, like if you, if you show Matt, he's wrong. He goes, okay, yeah, you're right.
Well, Andrew, I've got to head out.
You got to get going. And we were, I was going to close out. Let me just, Pedro, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it. We'll be praying for you.
No, no problem, guys. I do appreciate your ministry. And I've learned so much, like I said, and, you know, this hits home for me because of what we've been through and what I've seen in my life and, you know, taking that blame of him not being healed.
I did something wrong. What did I, you know, and that's horrible. You know, that's a horrible way to go. But anyway, I appreciate it. I appreciate any prayers and appreciate your ministry. Well, thank you, Pedro.
We'll be praying for you. I'm sure that I know that we have a listening audience that does pray. Those in the comments usually talk about that. So let me just get to, I'm going to put Pedro in the backstage.
Let me just, I'm going to hit two things real quick, and then we'll leave that. One is Bible Care and Share Fellowship says, you know, ask the question for later. What do you think the proper interpretation is of when the perfect shall come?
I'm not convinced that it is the completed canon like IFB teaches. Well, I believe it is the completed canon. I think it's the only thing that it could be in the context. I do have a paper at strivingforeternity .org.
I think it's maybe search for the word perfect. I'll try to put these in the show notes for the podcast. So if you go find the podcast version of this, which you can't always listen to these, you could follow the podcast.
So you never miss an episode. We did a show on this. We did a show in the past on this. I'll look for that as well to see if I could link that. It wasn't that long ago. I think it was like last year. We did.
So we do have resources that explain that in detail. And I preached at Jim Osmond's church on this. You know, and I know that guys like MacArthur and Justin Peters disagree with me, but I just don't see from the context and around the passage and that passage, I don't see it could be anything else.
So real quick, one last thing. Jody says, wonderful wisdom used on how you approach this young man. Thank you for being straightforward, but showing the love of Christ. That's what we're trying to do.
I mean, look, I feel bad for him. I really do. I mean, I hope that every one of you are praying for James because he doesn't, I don't think he realizes he's caught up in a false teaching. And that's a bad place to be.
And so we want to pray for him. We want to pray that he, I mean, I hope my prayer for him is that this show helped him to see that what he's doing is taking passages out of scripture, out of context, and in doing so that he doesn't have God's word and not a single passage could he hold to.
And so I hope that he'd be willing to look at the articles we have at strivingforeternity .org that I mentioned and look at them and say, well, there's something not right. And let me just close with this and encourage you, if you need some help in this area at your church, Striving for Eternity would be willing to come to your church.
We have a new seminar we're working on, on cessationism. And so we'll come in and teach about cessationism. We'll teach its history. We'll go from the history to giving an overview of 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14.
From there, we focus in on what is the teleos in 1 Corinthians 13 to say that why these gifts do not continue to today. From there, we're going to get into the message I gave on miracles and why we shouldn't be expecting miracles today.
And then from there, we're going to answer the arguments that continuationists make against cessationists and give you some discernment to be able to answer from a biblical perspective.
And what you're saying is I need to finish my book on tongues so that you can give them.
Away when you teach. You should finish your book on tongues so I can have them available for this seminar. That's exactly what I'm saying.
It's only been three years that I'm supposed to be working on that.
Okay, well, I started writing my book on the deity of Christ, I think, 10 years ago. All the research is done. It's the writing part that I hate. I mean, that's why I spent 14 years researching what do they believe?
And then it took me about a dozen more years to finally write it.
Well, I think I've got about a third, a good third of it done. The part that's going to take the longest is all of the exegesis of all of those verses.
Yeah. Well, hey, maybe you and I should work on that together and we'll encourage each other to finish it. So folks, I know I already saw in the audience, we got some people saying, hey, you forgot my pillow and Lagos.
I did. Get my pillow and get Lagos. There you go. My pillow, use promo code SFE, lagos .com slash SFE. Go check them out. So there you go. We appreciate you guys coming in. Next week, I will be by next week.
Let's see. Will I be? No, I will be here. So it's before I leave for Idaho. I don't know that we have anything planned as of yet on the schedule, but I think there's some things that I've been talking to folks.
We're hoping to have a continuation of the talk from last week with Jim Osman. Hopefully we can get that to happen with Curtis. We'll see. But I think that's all we have for right now. I hope this was helpful for you guys.
I hope that, look, when we talk about the gifts, as you saw with James, this is extremely personal to him. It's a personal experience. And so you can see how this can very easily in conversations you have with people, they can become something that it becomes fireworks very quickly.
I hope that what we did was display a way you can display a way to have these conversations without the fireworks, where you don't have to avoid the personal in that sense, but focus in on what the scripture says.
That's what I tried to do tonight. If I did my job well, hopefully James goes home, or he is home, and he's thinking about this saying, I really need to be accurate to scripture. I think he wants to be.
And so let's be praying for him. All right? And until next week, strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and we'll see you next time.