Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Understanding Spiritual Gifts, Pt. 5 (10/31/2021)

Let's pray because we've had some distractions all the way through Sunday school and all the way through now.

So it could be the enemy even so indirectly doing things.

Who knows? Lord, we thank you that you are in control of all things and you have bought us with the price and we are yours.

We have no part with Satan, neither does this building or this equipment. It's all yours. We ask you to take complete control of the service and of our minds and hearts.

Keep us in the scriptures. Keep us in the word. Keep us in the truth. We ask in Jesus name, amen. All right.

Okay, well, just to review a little bit, we are looking at the fact in Romans chapter 12 where it speaks about spiritual gifts that in general, the whole chapter is talking about church unity.

And one aspect of that, actually we've done six points. The sixth point that we came across is that a church will have more unity if it understands properly what the

Bible teaches about the spiritual gifts, because there's a lot of misunderstanding about it in the world today.

And it's been that way for quite some time, but the scripture makes it clear. And we can also look at church history.

And you might say, well, why can we look at church history? We should just stick with only the Bible. That's a problem.

There are a lot of people that say that and they sound super holy when they say it, but they're incorrect. Because if you remember a couple of Sundays ago, we looked at a scripture together where the apostle

Paul asked them to bring his cloak and his books and his parchments.

And the parchments were the Old Testament scripture. So yes, he gave them the highest authority, obviously the highest authority is the word of God, but he also wanted his other books, which could have talked about anything from science to philosophy to anything and just knowledge.

Because the Lord didn't write just one book, he wrote two. One of them is the

Bible. The other one is his universe that he created. And it teaches, it shows himself, it reveals him to us.

So if science is true, true science will reveal things that God has done to us.

And so that's important to study history, to study science, math, all the different things

God's given us. All of that has been given to us and much of it given to us by Christian scientists.

I don't mean Christian scientists, but Christians who were scientists and mathematicians, but also from lost people who didn't know the

Lord, but who God put here to bring that knowledge to us. And remember, God always has his children in mind when he does these things, not the lost world.

Jesus said, I don't know them. He said, I didn't put them here. Satan put them here, the tares, and I put the wheat here.

And from God's heart, everything good that he puts in this world, whether he puts it here by lost people or saved people, he puts it here for the good of his children.

Now, yes, he makes the sun shine on the lost farmer and he makes it rain when he chooses to on the lost farmer.

And so he's, I won't say he's gracious to them, but I will say he's merciful to them.

But to his children, he's gracious. And so the grace is for us.

But everything that God brings to pass through all of his creation, which includes all the tares and all the demons of the universe that he's put in different places and Satan himself, all of those serve

God because God is sovereign and they're doing exactly what God put them here to do. They would hate to know that if you told them, but it's a fact.

So we see that other books are important. Now I'll say this, one of the most important things other books are for, according to scripture, is that we're not allowed to have a private interpretation of anything.

That means we have to consult what our brothers and sisters have believed for the last 2000 years about certain parts of the scripture to make sure we didn't just make something up new that no one else ever knew.

For 2000 years, God never showed it to anybody but me. See, that is a dangerous type of interpretation when you get one like that.

And that's where cult groups come from and false Christian groups. Christian groups are into peripheral things that aren't true.

It's because somebody said, oh, look what I just saw. No one's ever seen this. Now I will say this.

Jesus did say that a good teacher brings forth both old and new. But what he means by that is he will bring old things to remind you of that you already know.

Because Paul is always saying, let me remind you brothers of this, this, and this. We need to be reminded of the things we already know often.

That's how our brains work. And we need that. But secondly, the new part is just where a teacher or a preacher would go, or even you in your own personal

Bible study, you go into an old familiar passage and you see something in the passage that you never saw before.

That doesn't mean no one else saw it. It just means you hadn't seen it before. Or for example, in church here, it could be none of us have seen it before, but we all agree that it's in context and it fits the whole of the scripture and it fits all the 10 rules of Bible interpretation.

It's always been there. We just saw it today as a group here. That's new. But it's not like God is adding new inspirational scripture, inspired scripture anymore.

And we'll see that in a minute as we review something we talked about last time. So we have two aspects to study which, and here's the topic for today, which of the sign gifts, spiritual gifts, there are certain of a subset of the spiritual gifts are what we call the sign gifts because they were given to authenticate

God's messengers when we switched from Old Testament to New because the whole dispensation was different.

We went from law to grace. It's a huge change, especially for the Jew. And the

Bible says the Jew requires a sign. The Gentile requires evidence. We don't think like the

Jew and the Jew doesn't think quite like we do. They need a sign, we don't. Gentiles, the Bible says, don't need a sign.

We need like scripture. We need evidence. And that's one thing I find odd about the modern church in America wanting to speak in tongues and do these different things that have already ceased according to scripture, but they still wanna keep doing it because they wanna sign like the

Jew, but they're not Jews. So even that is unnatural. You don't need a sign if you're a

Gentile. And when they asked Jesus to perform a sign for them and then said they would believe, he called them an evil and adulterous generation.

He said, I'm not gonna give you one. The only sign you're gonna get is my resurrection. And he's already given that sign, right?

So people that require to see with their eyes in order to have faith have a problem.

They've got a spiritual problem. For one thing, we're in the church age and it is a dispensation of faith, not sight.

Now the church age between the Old Testament and the church age was a transitional period.

And that confuses people. The book of Acts is a transitional book, but you don't even have to get halfway through the book of Acts.

And all of a sudden it's operating just as it does today. But in early parts, you still had a lot of Jewish things happening because the early

Christians were Jews. For example, they had to lay hands on people for them to get the Holy Spirit.

And you know full well, that does not happen with Gentiles today in the church. We hear the scripture.

And if we're saved, we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit without anybody touching us. So that's just one example of how you had a transition from Jewishness from Old Testament to New Testament dispensation, or we call it the new economy, the way it works.

The way God deals with us now is different. So you had that transition that confuses people, but it doesn't need to.

All it requires is a little study of the word of God and history, church history. And church history, they'll say, oh, we're not gonna look at that.

We just wanna stay in the scripture. Okay, there's a hyper -spiritual person right there. Usually they wanna pretend they're a Jew, even when they're not.

And they're just gonna stick with scripture. I really don't have a problem with that. I can prove everything I'm gonna say today is true and of God with scripture only, but we would be fools to make a rule like that because Paul had his other books and studied them.

And every great scholar of God, when God said study to show yourselves approved unto God, he didn't mean just to only study the

Bible. Can you imagine if you didn't know how to read, how could you even read the Bible? So you had to study some other books to learn that.

If you didn't know, if you thought the world was flat, not round, you might not have, very many people listen to you when you witness to them.

In our society, if you don't know math, some higher level math and science and physics and chemistry, some zoology and botany, there's probably 10 % of the whole society wouldn't even listen to you.

Now, 90 % would, because 90 % don't know that stuff either. But what I'm saying is, in order to study to show ourselves approved, we need to be knowledgeable.

Paul was one of the most knowledgeable human beings on the earth when God saved him. He was lost as a goose, killing

Christians, because he thought he's doing God a favor because he's Old Testament. And he thought that's not

Judaism, so let's eliminate it. And God appeared to him and called him with an effectual calling and say, regenerated that man.

And he never looked back at that point. Totally changed him. But you know what he still had when he got saved?

All that knowledge he had learned in the secular school. And God picked him for the purpose of being the apostle to the

Gentiles. Think about this, because the scripture says the Gentile does not require a sign but knowledge.

So God chose a knowledgeable individual to witness to them. Do you see it all? I mean, it's so orchestrated.

So we need to be the most knowledgeable we can be, but make sure it's not science falsely so called.

Make sure it's true. And the way you can tell is it will line up with scripture and God's revelation of the beginnings of all things if it's true science.

Anyway, that's free. So we have two books. We have the book of history which would include all of our knowledge.

And we have the word of God, which has the highest authority. So we've looked at that. Now we see from the book of scriptures in 1

Corinthians 13, eight through 10, that the Holy Spirit said, there are certain of the spiritual gifts that will cease.

And he named some of them. And I don't pretend to think that's all of them, but he named three in particular, tongue speaking.

And that's one of them. And by the way, from a biblical viewpoint, that meant speaking an actual language in the world today.

I could prove that, but it's beyond the scope of today. It's easily proven in scripture because the Holy Spirit said it's a language without, not without signification, which means it's a significant language of the world.

And you can speak that without studying it. That's the miracle part. So that's the gift of, and if you translated it properly in English, it would be languages, not tongues.

Tongues is like an old, well, it's both old English, but it also is the Greek because the

Greek word for languages is their word for tongue. They don't have a word for language. It's tongue, it's called tongue.

But you can see how, when you translate that into English, it's confusing because you've got all these false teachers speaking in what they call tongues and they're doing gibberish.

It's not languages. And yet the Bible says tongues and it makes you think what they're doing is right.

It's just a, it's a problem of language because if you had a pure translation of the

Greek, it would say they spoke in languages, not tongues. They spoke in languages, which they had not studied in school or anywhere.

It was a miracle. That gift has ceased. Let's read it. Love never fails.

I'm in 1 Corinthians 13, eight. Love never fails, but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.

And we know that means the kind of prophecy where you can tell the future, you can tell people stuff God said that's not in the word of God, that kind.

Now, if what you mean by the Greek word prophecy, which was the typical meaning of it in all of Greek usage, other than Bible usage, it simply means to speak forth something publicly, to be a public speaker.

That hasn't ceased. We still have preachers. So you can call me a prophet if that's what you mean.

But if you think I can tell you, God told me something that he hadn't told you that I'm that kind of a prophet,

I will tell you, no, I'm not. They don't exist anymore because the Holy Spirit inspired the

Apostle Paul to say that prophecies will fail and tongues will cease and the gift of knowledge will vanish away.

When? When that which is perfect is come. We've already shown what that is. It's in the neuter in the Greek. So it's a thing. It's not a person.

It's not the Holy Spirit. It's not Jesus coming again. It is the word of God. When they had the New Testament, they already had the

Old Testament, but when they got the whole of the New Testament, by that time, all these gifts had ceased because their purpose was over.

You don't need someone to stand up and say, I got a word of knowledge and quote me Ephesians 2 .8 .9 because now I need my

Bible up here. I'm always reaching for it. Here we go. Because I've got it,

Ephesians 2 .8 .9. The perfect is here. So I don't need you to tell me what

God told you to tell me. I need you to tell me what you learned in the scripture from the Holy Spirit. And then I'll go with you on that one because you can teach me all kinds of stuff

I hadn't seen yet, right? Bill, I mean, we were talking about that after Sunday school. There is so much that we can learn from each other because God reveals stuff to us from the scripture that I hadn't gone there yet and you can share it with us, right?

So that's what I try to do up here when I'm preaching. Share stuff with you. Maybe you just hadn't gone there. It'll save you 50 years.

You might not have found it for 50 years, but since you were here, now you know it. But you can do that for me too, right?

So, but these gifts have ceased. The scripture says so right there.

Now, then we moved on to this amazing passage and I'm gonna pop it all up here because notice right here, we already covered it.

So I'm not gonna read the whole thing. It says, earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.

Now the faith means the whole of Christianity which means God's revealed word like the

New Testament and the Old Testament. Now we got all of it. It says it was once delivered. Well, in the Greek, what does that mean?

Well, look at this word once right here, once delivered. Hapax is the Greek word.

It means one single time. Now, does that sound to you like God is telling us that, yeah, but after I get the book of revelations to you,

I'm gonna just keep adding stuff through these words of knowledge and modern day apostles and prophets that still claim they're apostles where if you look at the list the scripture gives for what you have to do to be an apostle, it's impossible to have an apostle today.

So they're lying. They just wanna have more marks on their shoulder, military stars than you do is what that is.

And then have authority over you is what that is. And they're lying and they know they are the Holy Spirit. If they're saved, the

Holy Spirit will tell them, look, you're not an apostle. You can play like you are all day. But some of us aren't gonna play with you.

I'm not. You say you're a prophet, I'm not playing with you. You say you can speak in tongues,

I'm not even gonna be in the room with you because you are demonized. All right, you are demonized if you're speaking in tongues.

I can prove it, I will prove it if I have enough time. If I don't, well, Lord willing, come back next Sunday. I don't think the enemy would want our

PA system to work today, do you? Think about that. You'd be surprised if Zoom keeps working, guys.

Let's hope it does. All right, so the faith was delivered one time completely, and it's in the past tense, by the way.

It's actually in the earliest passive tense here. And in Greek, that means it has happened, and we now have it.

Now, delivered is interesting. It means surrendered or yielded up, and I like this, or entrusted with.

Now, when you think about that a minute, when the Holy Spirit delivered this book to us right here, there's your mic,

Bill, I hope I didn't break it. He entrusted this with us, all right?

Now, that means it's the job of the church to protect this truth.

We're not to allow people to teach things, in other words, to take this

Bible and abuse it and misuse it to prove things that are false because a correct interpretation of this book will give you nothing but truth.

So when they use it and abuse it to try to prove something that's false, that is a false prophet, probably one of the kind who is foreordained to go to hell when they die.

And you say, well, why would God put them in churches? To test churches, because the

Bible says, in the end time, churches will have itching ears, and they will want false prophets who will mess with this book and change it to teach false things, and that's who they hire on purpose, and God's gonna have a greater judgment on that church body because they're the ones that brought the fool in, right?

And they let him stay, and they got a Bible, and they still let him stay, more judgment on that church than others.

And so to abuse the scripture is one of the highest sins that a man of God can do, and most of them are not men of God.

They're the type of false prophets in the book of Jude. Go read the book of Jude. It says that they were foreordained, that's talking about predestinated, unto the darkness of blackness forever, and that they're like dark clouds with no rain.

In other words, you see, like in Texas, we get at the end of August, we need some rain for our poor old trees and what we call scrubberies, bushes.

We need some rain, right? And you see this big dark cloud come up, and everybody goes, oh, we're so happy, and it just keeps going and never rains.

That is a picture of a false prophet. He looks good. He looks like he's full of water, which pictures the word of God, does it not?

And he's just gonna rain that water on us, we're all gonna benefit, and all he does is just look good.

Wow, that's what it's all about nowadays, right? So that we talked about last time.

So let's look at a few examples now and switch from the word of God, which we talked about predominantly the last two

Sundays of where it says these signed gifts have ceased, and let's look at church history. And this is the part

I've been really wanting to get to because most people never see this ever. There are not too many Christians sitting in pews today in our churches that go and read the early church fathers, which bizarre to me, why wouldn't you?

I mean, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I couldn't get enough of reading it. It's just amazing.

Can you imagine going back to 170 AD, which was only, you know, roughly 200 years, actually less than that, subtract another 90, about 110 years after John died, the apostle

John who wrote the book of John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, after he died, maybe 90 years later, this man named

Chrysostom writes a commentary on the book of 1st and 2nd Corinthians.

1st Corinthians is the biggest book used to talk about tongue speaking. And he says, I can't really tell you exactly what this means because it ain't happening anymore.

It doesn't happen anymore in the church today. About 300 years after that, one of the greatest church fathers of all time,

Augustine said the same thing. So, and there are others who said it, but no one sees that.

And it's so easy to, like, if you are a false prophet and you want to misuse the scripture, you want to do two things.

You want to misuse the scripture. You want to hope no one can read very well in your congregation. Secondly, you hope if they can, they don't read history.

And if you can make that happen, you have a perfect cult group. You can teach them anything you want to teach. You can move, you can, listen, you can tell them, it's okay to have five wives, 15 wives, start marrying the other men's women.

This is what most cult groups do. Did you know, by the way, that where you have seen tongues arise during church history, there's never been a time that I can find where it's absent of false doctrine and sexual immorality.

It's combined with false doctrine, which is like spiritual immorality, isn't it? And sexual immorality along with the tongue speaking.

So that's just church history. And if you want to disagree with me, then you need to become a student of church history.

And so probably what you'll do if you disagree is you'll go find one book written by Charismatic that gives his view of church history.

I've read that book or parts of it, and it's just pure hogwash.

It doesn't agree with any of the great church historians of all of the church times. It's just, it's another lie.

And it names individuals no one's ever heard of. I mean, I gave a list, what, three

Sundays ago of maybe 20 to 50 of the greatest men and women of church history that everyone's heard of.

People that started the greatest mission work like Kerry. People that turned two continents upside down like Moody.

People like Torrey, people like Whitfield who brought revival to the

United States in the colonial days and set up all the colleges as preacher schools, Harvard, Yale, William and Mary.

You name them, they're all preacher schools. None of them spoke in tongues. What God just chose not to give them the gift.

And yet they turned continents upside down by the power of the Holy Spirit. Something doesn't fit the story that these false prophets are teaching.

But if you don't know history, you're very gullible. All right, so it's evident that these church historians believe that the modern manifestation of the sign gifts that I've mentioned, those three in particular, tongues, prophecy and words of knowledge, the church historians that have been renowned throughout church history, the men who have gone and spent their whole life writing books that thick about church history, including

Fox's Book of Martyrs, all these amazing books, they're in unity on one thing, the sign gifts that are happening today are counterfeit.

In other words, it's not the Holy Spirit causing it, it's another spirit. In other words, unclean spirits.

Many of the outbreaks of tongues, which charismatics such as John Sherrill and people like that when they write their history books and they cite, oh, well, we've had tongues in the modern church in fairly recent history, they'll go back and point out an example of it.

But what they don't do in their book, which other historians do in their book is they don't show the false doctrine that was associated with it and the sexual immorality, they leave that out.

But you can go to newspapers of the day and find the sexual immorality in the newspaper. For example,

Amy Sample MacPherson, who started the Four Square Church in California, it's still a big movement out there, one of the biggest perpetrators of tongue speaking.

It's a good day to have children's church, that's great. So she goes into the ocean, into the surf in California and disappears and faints that she drowned and she swims around the point, goes over and has sex with some other man than her husband for a few weeks and then swims back underwater and appears as if she's been resurrected, gets back on the stage and talks about how speaking in tongues is the most important thing in the church.

That was in the newspapers, but if this book was probably written, no, let's see, no, it probably wasn't.

I doubt that that's in Cheryl's book. He left that out, isn't that convenient? So let's talk about true church historians who talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.

They just tell you stuff that's happened to the churches throughout the last 2000 years. They will say that the tongues movement in modern days, and by that,

I mean beyond 390 AD from there up till now is counterintuitive. Now what's interesting is when you look at the rest of that sentence, many of the outbreaks of tongues which

Charismatics cite were in clear connection with known heresy, known heretical movements.

I mean, and you can go back to the second century and you can find heretics who were branded as heretics throughout all of church history till now.

And those are the ones that spoke in tongues. I mean, you had some of them like Montanus or Montanus who lived in the second century and he could speak in gibberish and that's what this false tongues is.

It's not languages, it's just ecstatic utterances that are meaningless. But this man lived in the second century.

He was branded a heretic by the known church of the day, the true church, because he claimed, now listen to this, that he was the paraclete.

Now, do you know who the paraclete is? It's the Holy Spirit. So this man is teaching them to speak in gibberish and he claims he is the

Holy Spirit through who the Holy Spirit speaks. So he's the paraclete of the paraclete because he proclaimed that he was.

Now, this is the type person throughout all of the 2 ,000 years of church history that start what we call modern tongues movements where it's not biblical languages, it's modern gibberish movements.

It's around men like this through whom the Holy Spirit spoke to the church just as the

Spirit had spoken through Paul and other apostles. So they always claim to be an apostle and yet if you look at the

Bible definition of an apostle, it cannot happen because one of the things is they had to be in the presence of Jesus Christ to be an apostle and that's not happening to people now because Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of the

Father. And I cited the book yet. And yet this man named

Cheryl cites a revival led by Montanus as a legitimate tongue speaking episode in church history to try to prove that it still exists.

Do you see my point? But he doesn't tell you what Montanus believed, that he claimed to be the paraclete of the paraclete.

So it's all magic, folks. It's just magic. It's magically causing people to be lured into a trance of believing in something that is not done by the

Holy Spirit, is done by counterfeit, unclean spirits and taking the church in totally different directions than it should be going.

B .B. Warfield is perhaps the greatest church historian that I have found in my theological studies.

He wrote a monumental book called Counterfeit Miracles in the year 1918. And he points out that many miracles cited by historians indicate a merger of Christianity and heathenism.

So like if you can find what witches do, or if you can find what voodoo believers do and mix that with Christianity, like the

Roman Catholics have done so much, where they would go into a country, they would just absorb all their beliefs and say, well, we'll mix that with what we're doing so that they'll convert.

And history proves that they've done that. It's such a great compromise. And you know, the Protestant church does it in different ways.

It just says, look, we'll just look and act like lost people so they'll come to our church. We'll talk like them, we'll look, use music they use, dress like them and be like them so they'll come to our church.

It's the same mindset. The Catholics took it a step further and said, well, if they're into witchcraft, we'll just, have you ever seen that on TV?

Have you ever seen like Mardi Gras picture shot, video shots of Mardi Gras? See, that's Roman Catholicism mixed with voodoo.

Anyway, that's pretty good, you didn't know that. But I mean, you don't have to study far to figure that stuff out. And so B .B.

Warfield said, well, when you see the sign gifts and things, they're mixed with this sort of thing, where you're taking a heathenism and mixing it with Christianity.

The judgment of the leading church historians agrees that there has been no reoccurrence of the tongues phenomenon of the first century in the succeeding centuries.

There's been no legitimate recurrence of it. Philip Schaaf, who wrote

History of the Christian Church in the year 1910. And I have these books in my study at home that I'm citing.

Some people call Philip Schaaf the acknowledged dean of church historians. And he said this, historically, the gift of tongues passed from the church, passed away from the church, at least by the time of Chrysostom, who

I mentioned earlier, which would be sometime between 353 and 430 AD, which

I think it's more like 297, but I may be remembering the exact, of course,

I may be talking about when he was born, probably. So Chrysostom was an adult after that, obviously.

But he wrote this commentary on 1

Corinthians, and this is who Philip Schaaf is referring to, is by the time this man wrote, it had already ceased.

The gift of tongues no longer existed in the churches. He further said that analogous phenomenon of an inferior kind to the

New Testament gift of tongues, and not miraculous, yet serving as illustrations either by approximation or as counterfeits appeared from time to time in seasons of special religious excitement.

He's talking about like big revivals in England and things like that. And so he's saying some interesting things could happen in these revivals, like people getting overly excited and doing various things.

And yet we know that one of the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit, one of the mentioned, named gifts of the

Holy Spirit is self -control, don't we? So we're to maintain self -control, even when our emotions are telling us to jump up, run out the door, run around the church twice and come back in.

I've been in a meeting once where I felt like that, but I didn't do it because I exhibited self -control. But people that do these things don't.

And I'm gonna, the Lord willing, here in a minute, I'm gonna show you an illustration. And oh, let's see. Yeah, I guess

I could if I have time to do it. So the actual gifts ceased, but counterfeits have occurred from time to time throughout church history, is what

Philip Schaff, the Dean of Church Historians says. He mentions that this phenomenon has occurred among the

Mormons. So if you wanna talk about tongue speaking, Philip Schaff says it is documented that the same stuff, speaking in ecstatic utterances,

Mormons do it, and other non -Christian sects, and he is referring to ecstatic utterance are gibberish.

Okay, which is what tongues is. They can tell you, they can pretend it's a language. It's not a language. It's not even an angelic language because when angels were on the earth, they spoke

Greek. They spoke the common language of whoever they were talking to. They didn't speak in gibberish.

So all of that's false too. Acts 19 11, and God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul.

Now we're back in scripture. Now, who was Paul? Was Paul just an average Christian like we are today, or was he an apostle?

He was an apostle, and God wrote special miracles by the hands of Paul. Now you say, well,

Paul never saw Jesus Christ alive, so how can he fit that definition?

Well, we don't know that he didn't because he certainly saw some of the other apostles and was happy that they were being killed, and he quite likely did see

Jesus alive, but we know that Jesus appeared to him in a bodily form on the road to Damascus when he regenerated.

When he called him, he did it. Jesus did it instead of sending the Holy Spirit. I'm sure the Holy Spirit was there too, but Jesus appeared in company with the

Holy Spirit and regenerated Paul, and then we know that for the better part of three years in the

Arabian desert, Paul claims under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ met with him in person and gave him the information he needed to write most of the

New Testament, and the rest of the scripture says that once that was written, it was a done deal.

We read that previously this morning, that it was given once, one time to the church, and it's done, and that was when

Paul was finished. All right, so Paul had special miracles. Why? Because do you really think that Peter and the rest of the

Jews would believe that Paul was actually an apostle if he couldn't do miracles like they could? No, they required a sign.

Peter required a sign, and so God made it possible for the apostle

Paul to do sign gifts so that his message, which is most of the New Testament, would be authenticated, and it certainly was, so that from Paul's body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched

Paul, and they could then put those handkerchiefs on the sick person, and the diseases would depart from them, and evil spirits would go out of them.

Now, have you seen, I remember this dude over in Dallas that used to tell you to send him some money, and he'd send you a prayer handkerchief.

Remember that? Where'd he get it from? Right here. So why does he think he can do that? Because he claims to be an apostle. He's not an apostle.

He's a false apostle, and all that happened with those handkerchiefs is he made millions of dollars.

Brilliant business move. If I could sell handkerchiefs for $200 a piece, or 500, or 1 ,000, or sometimes in cases $10 ,000 a piece, and they finally discovered that all of the prayer requests that these little widows that were sending him the money sent him, they found them in a dumpster unopened, and that made it on one of the major network news, and that was the end of his ministry.

What was his goofy name? I'll never forget seeing those weird eyes, those eyes would get going. Charlotte, we used to watch him late at night just for entertainment for about a few seconds.

Tilton, Tilton, right? Wasn't that his name? Huh? Bob Tilton. Bob Tilton.

We were talking about him another day, weren't we? It was a bad dude. Well, now what's interesting here, if you, all right, let me finish this.

I get those popped up out of order for some reason. Let's read verse 13. Then certain of the vagabond

Jews who were exorcists, they saw Paul's genuine

Holy Spirit power, and they wanted it. There were some in that day who wanted to pay for it, give you money to give me that.

They told Peter, was it Simon? They told Peter, I'll give you money if you'll give me the gift where I can lay my hands on people and give them the

Holy Spirit. Why do people covet that power? You get more bars on your shoulder, on your uniform in the church, that's why.

So certain of these exorcists took upon themselves to call over them which had evil spirits, and they were gonna just, there were some demonized people, and they were trying to exorcise them, but they weren't walking with God, didn't know the

Lord, but they used Jesus's name to try to get him to come out. Now watch what happens.

They said, we adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches. And they come back and they say, and there were seven sons of Sheba, a

Jew, and chief of the priests, which did this. These were the exorcists, right? And the evil spirit answered and said,

Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? And then he pounced on, the demons pounced on these men, and the man in whom the evil spirit was in leapt on them, and there were several, what did it say, seven of these guys?

This one man who was demonized, didn't know who they were, and they tried to cast the demons out.

They wouldn't come out because he didn't have the authority to do it, he didn't have Jesus. And so they leapt on this man, and prevailed and beat the snot out of this guy.

And the man fled from the house naked and wounded. That's what can happen when you try to deal with those spirits without the authority of Jesus Christ.

And it came to pass as they went to prayer, a certain damsel, here's another example in Acts 16, that was in Acts 19.

In Acts 16, it says, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination, met with us, which brought her masters a bunch of money because she was a fortune teller by demons.

She began to follow Paul around the street and cry out saying, these men, they're the servants of the most high

God, which show unto you us, show unto us the way of salvation. Now, would you think that's a demon doing that?

No. So would you think today when preachers get up and tell you, hey, you can speak in tongues, you can have words of knowledge, you can prophesy and you can be an apostle, and yet scripture says none of that can happen because the

Holy Spirit said he won't do it and he won't lie. So he's lying to you, but he's saying just the right thing so you believe it.

Well, here's a woman telling you, listen to Paul. He's a man of God telling you how to get saved. Was that true?

Yes, but look what happened. And this did she many days and it irritated

Paul. It was an embarrassment to him, like the charismatic movement is to the church, like tongue speakers and all that are an embarrassment to the church because what natural person who we're trying to witness to will look at that and say, well, if I gotta be like that,

I don't think I'm gonna listen to the gospel. You see what I mean? It's an embarrassment, but this is what this young girl did.

Paul got tired of it. He was grieved by it and he turned to her and he said to the spirit in her,

I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out that same hour.

Well, isn't that interesting? So someone that you think is telling you the truth by the

Holy Ghost is actually saying things by an unclean spirit and saying true things.

Probably 95 % of what these charismatics teach is true. Although with them, I would say more, maybe 75 % is true.

Satan himself would be 95, but with these false prophets, 75 % of what they say is true. So you'll listen.

And the other 25 % is totally fabricated by resting the scriptures, by on purpose, not using proper

Bible interpretation methods and making it say what they want to make it say and then eliminating or ignoring or lying about church history on top of that.

Now, what's interesting, let me see here. I made a mistake because on this

Greek, I don't know if you can see that down there, I should have put the word that I'm defining.

So I got to read this for a second. I did this many weeks ago.

So hold on, let me read this for a second. Okay.

Oh man, this is amazing. I need to remind myself to fix this, but at least

I did underline the word. Look up at verse 11. See up here? Oh, you can't see the cursor.

Can you see that cursor? Probably not from the back. And God wrought special, but you can see that word that's underlined.

Listen to this. I'm going to tell you, the Greek is like math. It will eliminate false doctrines so easily if you just look into it.

So many times you can, like if you have a false person trying to say, well, I know tongues is real because I've done it. You know, something like that.

And then he'll show you some verse that calls it tongues because in Greek tongues means language and they don't know that.

So say, see, there's tongues. And you know, they're wrong, right? Well, sometimes if you know where the scripture is, where you've got

Greek that would disprove them, it's really powerful. But look at this. And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul.

Bill, you're going to like this. So like, this is not new, but it's probably be new to you guys. Tell me if you've seen this before, because I had not seen it, but this word special, special miracles by the hand of Paul.

Before I show you what it means, let me ask you, why did the Holy Spirit give him special miracles? Because he's about to tell

Peter, a Jew, I'm an apostle just like you, but I'm an apostle to the Gentiles. Is he going to believe Paul?

No. But if Paul can do special miracles, will he believe him? Yes, because he's a Jew, right?

So the Holy Spirit gives him special miracles. Now, these are the same miracles that John was,

Tilton, what's his first name? Bob, you're right. You don't forget anybody's name, even the false prophets.

But Bob Tilton was sending out prayer handkerchiefs that he claims he had touched for hundreds to thousands of tens of thousands of dollars.

And mostly widow ladies at home that had some money from their husband's retirement, giving that money to this false prophet in Dallas.

And he was doing these same miracles that the Holy Spirit here calls special miracles. Well, let's look what the word special means in Greek.

And here's what's interesting about it. It takes three little Greek words to make the one word special in English.

And here's what they are. Ooh, is the first part of the word. And that means no or not.

Not, okay. The middle part of the word is ho, which means the. And the bigger part of the word is tunkano, which means usual or usual.

It normally just means the usual thing. So when it says special miracles, it means not the usual things.

It means very unusual things that Paul could do. And those are what we call the signed gifts.

They are not the usual gifts like the gift of giving, like the gift of the evangelist, the gift of the teacher, the gift of teaching, all these usual gifts that the church still has today.

God gave these apostles special gifts. In other words, in the Greek, it's very definitive. It says not usual gifts, or you could call them unusual gifts.

I just found that interesting. Sorry about that. All right.

Now, what's interesting, this story in Acts where Paul, the previous story in Acts 19, where this man tried to cast out the demons and so forth.

It didn't work, right? And then in Acts chapter 16, where Paul tells the demons to come out of this woman, and right in that area of the history of the church,

Paul was preaching, and they were cast into prison for preaching the truth.

Now, let me tell you what actually happened there. You might not have caught this when you read the scripture in the past, but in Acts 16 there, where he cast the demons out of that young lady that was following him down the street, saying, listen to him.

He's telling you the truth about how to be saved. And he cast the demons out. Earlier in that passage right there, it said she was bringing much money to her owner.

She was probably a slave. She had wealthy owners who were using her to tell people's fortunes, and they were charging money for that.

Well, when he cast the demons out, guess what she couldn't do anymore? She could not prophesy anymore, because it was prophecy, but it was by an unclean spirit, not the

Holy Spirit. So there's an example of the counterfeit. I mean, the average person, the Jews on the street would go to her thinking this is

God talking to her. She's a prophet. But the evil wealthy people that owned her took their money knowing she had demons.

And when Paul cast the demons out of her, they lost their profit, and they went and had him arrested.

And this is why Paul was in jail right here. Do you remember the story where Paul was in jail?

Who was with him? I forget. Someone was with him on that street preaching. Look it up.

I don't remember who. Does it say Silas? Oh, good. So I just didn't read far enough.

There it is, Silas down at the end of verse 19. So they took Paul and Silas and they threw him in jail, and the other brothers were praying for him, and an earthquake came and broke the jail to pieces, and they just walked out, and the jailer threatened to kill himself, because in that day, if you're a

Roman jailer and you let them out, they kill you. And they said, no, no, no, don't do it. Just take us to your house. And the jailer took them to his house, and they witnessed to him, and he and his whole household were saved that night.

Remember that story? That happened right after the demons were cast out of this little false prophet girl who everybody thought the

Holy Spirit was speaking through. Great history. Now, I wanna talk about a man for a minute named

Mario Murillo, because one of you guys out there, one of our faithful students mentioned him, and it was an honest question that was asked back here and Ben got the question, but he forwarded it to me the next week.

And they were saying, well, there is this guy named Mario Murillo, who's a bit like, he can fill up football stadiums full of Christians, and they do faith healing, and miracles are happening there.

And it was an honest question about, well, how can you, Brother David, how can you teach what you're teaching when this guy is actually doing it?

So I did some research on this gentleman, because here's what I know from church history, without even knowing this gentleman,

I know from church history that every time we have seen tongue speaking, which is a false, it's a counterfeit of the true language gift that ceased.

So since it ceased, it's not here, it's not real on the earth anymore. So anything that you see that looks like it is a counterfeit by the same kind of demon that the little girl had that was following Paul, are you still with me?

Very important to see that scripture bears this out. So I knew from church history that if this man was doing this, he's either gonna be surrounded by sexual immorality, or false doctrine, or both.

I knew that before I even researched him. But when I did the research, it bore it out, at least on the part about the false doctrine and the sexual immorality.

Probably you'll see that in the newspaper in the next five to 10 years. It just, and I don't glory over that, it is a fact of history.

Because the same demons that give these men the fake power, and it's real power,

I shouldn't call it fake power, it is real power, but it's not from the Holy Spirit, it's from an unclean spirit, it's demons. The same demons that give him the power will tempt him to go after other women.

And the reason they do that is because the ignorant Americans out here that hate the church and hate

God and hate Jesus, they don't know he's any different than any preacher, and he's just a fallen preacher. And so it gets in the news that there's a fallen, fornicating, adulterous preacher, see,

Jesus isn't real, that's how they use him. So the demons will bring this man to that sort of shame eventually.

They normally, they just almost always do that with people that preach false doctrine because they're filled with demons anyway. So they have unusual temptations that hopefully you and I wouldn't have to do really weird things in the sexual arena.

And they usually get caught eventually. So I can't predict that. I can say there's some percentage of mathematical probability that that will happen,

Brother Bill. But let me show you what we do know about him. Here's a quote from this man.

If you've been following my blogs recently, Mario Murillo says, you will remember that I did not prophesy a

Trump victory. There's this big issue going around the internet world where a lot of these prophets prophesied that Trump would win the election, and then he didn't, and so now what?

Does that expose him as false prophets? No, no, no, no, because there's always an answer.

But I'll tell you what the answer would be in the Old Testament if a prophet did that and he didn't get elected, he'd be stoned to death.

Is that accurate? Well, that somehow doesn't happen today. So they just make up more lies to answer it.

I'm gonna show it to you. I'm not just, it's not my opinion. It's just my study here of this man.

So he says, no, actually, if you look carefully, he said, I never predicted that Trump would win.

Look what he says. But I supported the true prophets who did. Now let me ask you this. If he is supporting prophets who prophesied that President Trump would win the election, why is he calling them true prophets?

But he does, because they're his buddies. So that's just as evil as if he himself had predicted it.

So he is not even good enough to be a false prophet because he missed the prophecy that Trump would win.

He forgot to say that. He's just a follower of guys that do that and they got it wrong. So like he is a supporter of false prophets as if that's a defense.

This is his defense, ladies and gentlemen. Now, listen, if this doesn't click with you, then

I would say, as humbly as I can say, that you should study to show yourself approved unto

God. You need to go back and study English. You need to go back and study history. You need to learn the basic things from elementary school to junior high to high school, at least, and then go take a look at the world you're living in as an educated person who can read history and who can logically think.

Maybe take a course in logic, an online college course in logic. It's so good for everybody. If you haven't taken logic.

And listen, I get a little zealous about this topic and it's not about an argument, it's about truth because if what

I'm saying is right, how many multiplied millions of Christians are sitting in churches, they demonize, thinking that's a man of God up there and they're going to church and they're getting demonized because that man is allowing it in his church.

In fact, causing it to happen. And yes, there are miracles. Demons could not listen. The magicians did everything

Moses did practically. Of course they're doing that. Yes, they can speak in gibberish.

Yes, they can tell the future like the young woman following Paul, but it doesn't prove that's the

Holy Spirit. Actually proves the opposite because the Holy Spirit said, I won't do that anymore until the second three and a half years of the tribulation and we're not there yet.

So anybody that's doing it now, if you're going to say that's the Holy Spirit, then you've got to say God lied. And if you believe that, he's not

God. And if your God was like that, he's not our God. He's not the God of the Bible. It's some different God that's pretending he's

God. So think about all that. Just use your mind. Think about all that. Now, when we read 2

Kings 13 about a prophetic prediction, now I'm still quoting

Murillo. He is now going to explain to you why it's okay that his prophet friends missed it and that Trump didn't get elected, but they're still prophets, true prophets.

We read, and he's going to use the scripture to prove it. Now I'm talking about resting the scripture. You're going to see an example of what

I'm talking about. Resting it, like twisting it and making scripture itself teach what you want it to teach so that you don't look stupid.

I mean, if I got up here and prophesied specific things like these guys do, and it didn't happen, most of you would just quit coming here.

You would say, well, you know, poor old brother David, either he's eating too many onions for supper or he's on drugs or he's a false prophet.

We don't need to be at that church. But these churches, the guys will do the same. I mean, they will literally miss the prophecy.

It won't happen. They'll give a date and it won't happen. They're right back in the pulpit and everybody just says, well, tell us what happened because we know you're true, so tell us what happened.

And then they do stuff like this. This man says we read in 2 Kings 13 about a prophetic prediction.

So now he's gonna give us apples and oranges and pretend that they're apples and apples.

You know what I'm saying? This does not even apply to what they did when they prophesied that Trump would win and he didn't win.

It's nothing like that, but he's gonna use it to try to prove that's okay. In other words, well, I'll just,

I don't wanna get ahead of you, but well, I will get a little ahead of you. What he's about to do is he's gonna prove to you that Elisha was a false prophet.

And so it's okay for us to be false and miss the prediction. Well, what do you think about that?

Because I'll tell you this, the difference between Mario Murillo and his friends and Elisha is that if Elisha had truly been a false prophet, he would have died sooner than he did in scripture because they'd have stolen him to death.

That's the difference. Here, they just excuse it and let them go on and false prophesy again the next week.

That is not biblical, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not saying they should stone them, but they should cast them out of the church. They should remove these men from the church.

They shouldn't let them preach in football stadiums full of Christian people. Someone should stand up and say, this is a false prophet right in front of everybody and point out like I'm doing right here.

So any of you have permission to use my notes, if you wanna go do that at the next stadium meeting he does, I'll send you money to help you.

I'm joking right now, but anyway. So we read here in 2 Kings 13 about a prophetic prediction.

Jehoash the king faces the doom of the Syrians, which is true, and beseeches the prophet

Elisha for God's help. So now this man is gonna give a scripture. Now here is the scripture.

Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died. So Elisha was old and dying on his deathbed when this event happened.

And Jehoash, now by the way, you might say, well, look, this false prophet even missed, it's not even the same king.

Well, actually it is because Jehoash and Jehoash are just two different Hebrew ways to say the same name.

So he is correct about the king. So the king of Israel comes down to Elisha who was ill and dying and he wept over his face.

You can picture him laying on his back in bed dying and this king starts crying and the tears are hitting the prophet's face and said, oh, my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.

And he comes down and he begs him that Syria is about to attack us and destroy

God's people. Do something, right? Well, if you go out here and you look at what happened, by the time you get to verse 17, imagine this old prophet, maybe like brother

Otis looked in his last days. You gotta look just like brother Otis. Gets up out of bed, takes the king over to the window and says, open the window.

Now take this bow and arrow and draw it. And the king draws it. And Elisha puts his hands on either side of the king's hand that's got the arrow drawn.

He puts his hands and he says, I'm gonna tell you what, because God is with me. Let go of the string and send the arrow.

And that will be a sign that our God will totally help you be the victor in this war.

Now let's see exactly how he words it because this is important. He said, open the window to the east and the king opened it.

And Elisha said, shoot. And he shot the arrow. And Elisha said, the arrow of the

Lord's deliverance and the arrow of deliverance. In other words, that was a sign, like a symbol from Syria.

So he promised deliverance from Syria for thou shalt smite the Assyrians in Aphek till thou hast consumed them.

Well, Murillo uses this English translation of the Hebrew. He doesn't go to the

Hebrew. I'm not saying he can't, but he didn't because it fit better to use the English. Because if you read that a certain way, it looks like Elisha prophesied that he would totally destroy

Syria. And this is what Murillo claims, is that here Elisha prophesied he would just totally destroy

Syria, but we know from the story he didn't. And so he missed on the prophecy.

So it's okay for us to miss. And it's kind of like Trump, you know, who actually did win the election, but they stole it.

And if enough Christians had been praying, that would not have happened. And he really would have been elected. So these are true prophets.

But now let's look and see if that's really what happened with Elisha. Because we look in the Hebrew, we get a little bit different picture.

This word consumed them. First of all, in the scripture, the word them is an italics.

Can you see that right over here at the bottom left? That last word, he consumed them. The word them is an italics. That means that word is not found in the

Hebrew. It was added to try to make it read better in English. So them is not part of it, of the inspired scripture.

And this word consumed in the Hebrew is qal -lah. It means to end, or to accomplish, or to cause whatever's happening to cease.

So it doesn't mean that they were utterly destroyed. He did not prophesy that they would be utterly destroyed.

He prophesied that the fact that they were about to take Israel's slaves and take their land away, that problem would cease.

That's what he prophesied in Hebrew. For thou shalt smite the

Assyrians in Aphek till thou have, and see if you translate it according to this, it would read more this way.

For thou shalt smite the Assyrians in Aphek till thou have ceased.

And then here's what's interesting about it. In the language of the Hebrew, it actually means he will consume them until Joash stops.

Not until they cease to exist. You see the difference? So the little twist of the scripture, he made it sound like he was prophesying that they would be destroyed, when what it's saying is you can whip on them until you're tired.

And whenever you cease, then it's done. Doesn't mean he's gonna destroy the Assyrians. Do you see that in the

Greek? I mean, in the Hebrew, sorry. So the Hebrew bears out the fact that Elijah never prophesied that the

Assyrians would be destroyed. And this man, if he's gonna fill football stadiums full of Christian people and teach them, he should know the

Hebrew. He should be able to go to the Hebrew and see what I see. I mean, if I can see it, he kind of knows this probably, but chose not to bring it out.

He chose just to give the English rendering, which makes it sound more like the Syrian Jewish story, because it fit his purpose to prove that his

Trump predictors are not any, they're not any worse than Elijah. I wouldn't believe that even if he tried to prove that.

And the man of God was wroth with him and said, thou should have smitten, okay, now

I left this part out, but in the next part of the story, he says, now take an arrow and strike it on the ground in the room where he was.

So the king took an arrow and he tapped it three times on the ground. And then you see verse 19.

And Elisha was angry with him and said, thou should have smitten the ground five or six times, then had thou smitten

Syria until you had consumed it. Now, does that sound like Elisha predicted that all of Syria would be destroyed?

Or did he say, you know, you should have struck it six times instead of three. You're not, you know, like, you're not thorough enough.

You're not, you need to be more like Joshua, going in there and kill the giants. You're just going to kill a few of them. And now

I see that, the prophet says. And so now the prophet's prediction was, well, I can see you're probably only going to kill about a third of them as many as you could have.

You could have, you perhaps could have killed them all, but now you're going to kill about a third of them or whatever. Or you're going to strike them three times when you could have struck them six times.

That's what the prophecy is. Then hast thou smitten Syria until thou had consumed it. So he didn't say that he would smite them until they were consumed.

He said you could have, but you don't have enough zeal because the prophet could sense human nature too.

Don't you think he knew this king? I mean, let me ask you this. Would you rather have

Trump going out against China in a war or would you rather have Biden? Okay, you're not a prophet, but you can sense the character of the man, can you not?

This prophet understood that Joash was going to fall short, but he was at least going to free up the

Israelites from these people. All right, so now we see it. So Joash, the son of Jehoaz took again, and this is down to verse 25, out of the hand of Ben -Hadad, the son of Hazael, the cities.

So this is recording the fact that he was able to go in and retake the cities that the

Syrians had taken and recapture them, which is what the prophet had predicted. And what's so beautiful about the passage was it says, three times did

Joash beat him and recover the cities of Israel. And that's how many times he struck the arrow.

So the prophet nailed it. Would you agree with me? I mean, to the specific that he would not destroy all of the

Syrians. He would strike them three times when he could have stricken them six, but because of your character, you're not going to do it.

And I know that because I'm a prophet. So you're going to strike them three times. That's exactly what happens. Nevertheless, now here's

Murillo's statement where he tried to use that to prove these guys are okay. He said this, and this is off his website, his website, which

I footnoted. Nevertheless, we struck the enemy three times and we actually did win the election.

I don't think there's many people that would still agree with that. I don't think we won the election. It don't feel good to me.

I'm not celebrating like I would have been if we'd won that election. Trump won by a landslide, but we did, now watch this.

We did not get the full victory that would have come if the fraud had been exposed and overturned.

That victory was in God's original plan. Now this tells you something else about Mr.

Murillo that's false doctrinally. And that is that he believes that humans can change

God's original plan. So he is an Arminian, which means he's a humanist.

That's false doctrine. He does not believe in election. He doesn't believe in predestination. He doesn't believe in foreknowledge.

He doesn't believe God is God. He believes man is God and man can control God. Many false prophets, all the

Mormons believe that. The Catholics believe that. Every false group in the world, they're

Arminians. They believe man's in control. Did you know that Satan was the first Arminian? Lucifer was the first Arminian.

He was the first being that believed he could control God and change history.

Look at what this man so clearly says. What would have happened is that the fraud could have been exposed and the election overturned.

And that victory was God's original plan. But, now see, you don't put a but like that after you talk about God.

In other words, God could have done this and was gonna do it, but he didn't. He changed his mind, which makes God changeable, whereas the scripture says he's immutable.

So it's not the same God that we believe in. But the American, now watch this, but the

American church's response was simply too little, too late. So it was all up to us to get

Trump elected and we failed, not these prophets. The prophets predicted it accurately, what

God was going to do. And what they missed was the church would be so weak, it wouldn't pray and then

God could not do what he was going to do. And that's the same that happened to Elisha.

Will you go read the passage about Elisha? I just showed, so you see if you think he's right. I don't think that's what happened there.

Now, here's what, now, then he refers, he quotes a guy named

Albert Barnes' commentary. And so now

I'm quoting Murillo again to try to back up his false teaching. He says, well, there's other people that agree with me and church historians.

Here's one named Albert Barnes. In his commentary, or I should say commentator, he said that God had been willing, and he's talking about this same passage of Elisha that we're talking about in his commentary on it.

He said, God had been willing to give the Israelites complete victory over Syria, but Joash, by his non -acceptance of the divine promise in its fullness had checked.

I want you to circle the word checked. In other words, you stopped God from being able to do what God wanted to do.

You checked him, like in a hockey game. So humans can check

God, all right? So he checked the outflow of mercy. So now we have humans having the ability to make

God not be merciful or to be less merciful. And the result was the original promise could not be fulfilled.

And so Murillo quoted Barnes. So he quotes another false teacher and uses that as the authority to say, see,

I got it right, because this guy said so. Well, what if we go research Barnes? You're saying, but it's lunchtime by the day.

But no, it's not. It's time to go and see who Barnes is. Because I have a red flag go up when a commentator says in his commentary that men can check

God. It just, I don't know why, it puts a red flag up with me.

So I wanna go see how authoritative Barnes is, all right? So we have this thing called the

Westminster Confession of Faith, and it's Presbyterian. And I went to their website and wrote it down.

And chapter two of their Confession of Faith, which has to do with God and the

Holy Trinity, point number two in that Confession of Faith reads this way, because Barnes is a

Presbyterian. Well, most of the theology that I studied is Presbyterian, but what you have to understand is the

Presbyterians had a split, and they came to groups, a conservative group and a liberal group that doesn't even believe the

Bible's God. Guess which group Barnes is in? Not only is he in the liberal one, he helped found it and was the spokesman for it.

So one of the things that that group did that was different than the true group of Presbyterians, they said, we no longer will follow the

Westminster Confession of Faith. Well, why wouldn't they want to follow it? Because it talks about the sovereignty of God.

Talks about God is in control and you cannot check him. Didn't use that word. Stuff drives me nuts.

God has all life, this is part of the confession that they believe before they split and then the ones that split off don't want to believe this.

You say, why wouldn't they want to believe this? This is what the original Presbyterians, guess who started the

Presbyterian church? Does anybody know? John Calvin.

Well, yeah, ex -Catholic, but his name was John Calvin. Calvinism, sovereignty of God, election, predestination.

He didn't invent it. Augustine believed it 400 years, 1400 years earlier. Paul believed it 400 years before that.

Jesus taught it to Paul. But my point is, why would you reject this? God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself.

He does not need you to help him be gracious. He does not need you to say, okay,

I won't check you today. You can be merciful. That's not the God of the Bible. And he is alone in and unto himself all sufficient.

He does not react to any other created being. He does not make his free will decisions based on anything you do or say, is what this is saying.

He is free. He is sovereign. He does what he does when he wants to do it because he's

God. And what you do and say and think in your life does not affect God's plan one bit.

You're in his plan, but you can't change his plan. You can't say, well, he had a plan to be more merciful, but the church didn't pray enough, so he can't do that.

That is as false a doctrine as there is anywhere. If you believe that doctrine, then you believe you're more

God than God is, and I ain't following you or walking with you, and you have to speak in tongues. Well, I could have predicted that you would be that way because in all of church history for 2 ,000 years, everyone that's ever done it since the true gift ceased was a counterfeit, and they're associated with false doctrine and with fornication, usually.

Ah, it's good stuff. And God is alone in and to himself all sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures, which he is made.

Well, that's a little different than Barnes saying, well, they checked him. Actually, that was

Murillo's word, checked. Barnes just kind of said the same thing. He said they just made it where God couldn't do what he planned to do, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon human beings.

So, I mean, that's beautiful. They rejected that when they started their new liberal branch of Presbyterianism, and Barnes was the leader of it.

This is the man that Murillo quotes to support his false interpretation of scripture.

He is alone, God is alone, the fountain of all being, of whom, through, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.

And God hath most sovereign dominion over them. God has sovereign dominion over everything he created to do by them, for them, and upon them, whatever he pleases to do.

Now, that is the opposite of saying that we can check God. That is saying God can check us whenever he chooses to.

God can take us out of here when he chooses to, and will, and he already knows when he's gonna do it, and you don't.

So, why all of a sudden are you checking God? Well, Mr. Murillo checks God, and so does

Barnes, his commentator, that he likes to read. But listen, a false prophet's always gonna read a false prophet's material.

It's just like, you know, they quoted that the second century guy was speaking in tongues.

Well, yeah, he was, but he also thought he was the Holy Spirit. They don't give you that information. In God's sight, all things are open and manifest.

His knowledge is infinite, infallible. Now, if you got infallible knowledge, why would you change your plan?

Wouldn't you have known the church wasn't gonna pray enough for Trump? I guess that surprised you, so you just couldn't let

Trump go ahead and win, even though you wanted him to? That's the God you worship? Well, welcome to it, but it's not the

God of the Bible. In his sight, all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature.

Nothing you do has anything to do with his knowledge, and wisdom, and plan, other than you're living it.

So, as nothing is to him contingent, and nothing is uncertain to God, he is most holy in all of his counsels, in all of his works, and in all of his commands.

To him is due from angels, and men, and every other creature whatsoever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.

That is the Westminster Confession. Now, how does that truth that they believed square up with Joe Hash, with his non -acceptance of the divine promise in its fullness, had checked the outflow of God's mercy?

How does that square up with that idea? It just does not. In other words, God could not fulfill his own will. That is just false doctrine, ladies and gentlemen.

It's as bad as it gets. Now, chapter three speaks of God's eternal decree. It even gets better.

This is the Westminster Confession which this man Barnes rejected, and which our false modern prophet is quoting to back up his claim.

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain.

He did ordain whatsoever comes to pass. And so, anything that happens, it did because God ordained it.

Yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures.

In other words, God allows us to do what we want to do. You see, there's the will, but they didn't call it free will, because that doesn't exist among mankind.

It's only God that has it. Nothing has free will but God. He is the sovereign. But he does give us a will, and we do what we want to do.

And guess what? We are held responsible for it, and judged by our words and our actions, are we not?

So, he does not do damage to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he saw it.

You talked about that in Sunday school. You said it's not about foreknowledge. He ordained it.

So, even though he did foresee the things that would happen, they didn't happen because he foresaw them.

They happened because he ordained them. That's what they're saying here. Or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined, predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

The church today will say that's not even true, but we know it's true. Read the book of Jude. So, this is what these men rejected.

This is as good as the Bible. This is what the Bible teaches, and they rejected it. Jeremiah 23, 31 says, behold,

I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues and say,

God said this. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the

Lord, and do tell the people and cause my people to err by their lies and by their likeness.

I mean, they make fun. Listen, there's whole groups of these people get out and say, well, we've got the gift of laughter, and the whole church will just start laughing, and the dude can't even preach.

That's taking it too lightly. It's making light of God's power and God's church and God's word.

And the prophet of old said, man, you know, prophets, they claim to be a prophet, and they make light of it.

They're not real prophets, and they cause the people to err by their lies and by their likeness.

Yet I sent them not, God said. I didn't send them, nor did

I command them. Therefore, they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord.

They are not profitable to the church. They are the opposite. They create liabilities.

Albert Barnes held a prominent place in the new school branch of Presbyterians during the old school, new school controversy in 1837, to which he adhered to the division of the denomination.

He had been tried. Now, listen, this man that he quoted, Barnes, had been tried, but he wasn't convicted, but he was tried for heresy in 1836, mostly due to the views expressed in notes on Romans.

So one of his Romans commentary was so bad that the church was trying him for heresy, gonna kick him out, of the imputation of sin of Adam, original sin and atonement.

So guess what he didn't believe in? Depravity of man. Of course not.

He's an Arminian. An Arminian believes man is perfectly capable of accepting God or rejecting

God, and of praying and helping God do his stuff or not praying and binding

God where he can't do anything. That's just how they believe. The bitterness stirred up by this trial, this man was tried, the bitterness stirred up by the trial contributed towards widening the breach between the conservative and the progressive.

What do we call liberals nowadays? Progressives, right? This is what this man was.

He was a progressive element in the church. During the old school, new school split in the

Presbyterian church, United States of America, Barnes allied himself with the new school branch.

He served as the moderator of the general assembly to the new school branch in 1851.

The new school, what were they? Their interpretation of the word of God by the

Westminster Confession is of lesser or no importance to the church is what they stated.

So you don't have to interpret scripture according to Westminster Confession. In other words, you don't have to interpret scripture according to the idea that God is sovereign.

Wow. Your honor in 1820, but the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which

I have not commanded him to speak or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

Why isn't that happening with these guys today? Oh, they don't have to fear that.

So they're free to just show up the next day after the election when Trump loses and say, well, actually we just, you got, it's your fault because you guys didn't pray like I told you to.

There's not a prophet in the Old Testament that ever said anything like that. And if thou shall say in your heart, how shall we know the word which the

Lord has not spoken? Like, how can we tell the difference between a true prophet and a false one? Well, when the prophet speaks in the name of the

Lord, listen to this. It's kind of simple. If it's a true prophet, when he speaks in the name of the

Lord, if the thing follows not, in other words, the thing he said would happen doesn't happen and it doesn't come to pass.

That is the thing which the Lord has not spoken, but the prophet spoke it presumptuously.

Thou shall not fear that prophet. I mean, don't follow him. It's kind of clear, isn't it?

Like if you miss it one time, you're out. Back then you got stoned to death. You were really out.

Nowadays you should be kicked out of the church, but no, you just fill up another football stadium and the lies go on.

I'm gonna stop here because I got another section now where we're gonna talk about next week, witches speak in ecstatic utterances in their coven meetings.

So do pagans, so do Mormons, and so do voodoo people.

And I was gonna play it for you today. I'll wait till next week, Lord willing. It'd be nice if we had our

PA system fixed. I'm gonna play for you a brilliant young preacher, a black man born in Haiti who grew up in voodooism.

And he's gonna make some comments about the Bethel Church in California. He's gonna show one of their services where they were 20 ,000, 50 ,000 people speaking in tongues at one time.

You're gonna get to see what that looks like. And then he's gonna tell you what a voodoo meeting looks like. And then he's gonna tell you what's actually happening to these people as he plays it in slow motion.

He says, notice these people all went into a trance at the same moment. And he says, and then immediately the demons filled their bodies.

Unclean spirits, not the Holy Spirit. And he says, ladies and gentlemen, do not believe their flowery words and their seemingly educated statements that this is the

Holy Spirit. He said, it is not. These are demon, unclean demon spirits filling these Christian people in this church.

It's the same as voodoo. So I'm gonna show that to you next week in case you've never seen it. Show up, you will be very excited.

We definitely have children in church and have kids out. They don't get to see that. But there we have it.

So let's end with prayer today. If you're in disagreement with me, I don't mind that.

I'm just here to make you study. So study, prove me wrong. Not for the sake of proving me wrong, but so it'll make you study.

All right, and please stick with me till I finish this whole section, because I may have two more Sundays or who knows how many till I finish this section, exposing historically and today these false prophets for what they are.

Lord, thank you for your word because it is our highest authority of the truth. And we must yield to it no matter what our feelings say, no matter what we want to believe.

And Lord, we would love to believe that God would give David Mitchell the gift of healing and that I could just touch people and they would be miraculously healed or that I could speak in their language without studying it and lead them to the

Lord with the gospel. I would love to believe that that's available to me and I would desire it, Lord, if you hadn't said you don't do it anymore.

But I do not desire an unclean spirit to mimic that within me and won't allow it.

And Lord, we just ask you to use your word and these facts of history to touch the hearts of people that have not seen these things before and that they would just be honest and only desire the truth.

It's not about an argument. The truth is what's paramount and that thereby they might be freed from any demonic control in their own lives because they've allowed themselves to be in the presence of people that are doing these unclean things.

And Lord, we pray for us as we go into our time of fellowship that you would bless it and bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus' name.