The Here I Stand Theology Podcast Ep #8 {False Teaching}

The Responsibility of the Church to Teach the Scriptures

What's wrong with you people? I'm serious. I mean, this is what's wrong with the Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are.

That was R .C. Sproul, ladies and gentlemen, making the infamous statement, What's wrong with you people? And then followed up by what seldom few hear is that it's the Christian church that has a problem.

It's the Christian church that doesn't seem to know who God is. And I would have to agree with that statement 110 because there are a great many churches today who fly under the flag of Jesus, and yet they do not teach what Jesus taught.

And so today we are going to be taking a look at a sermon, and the very purpose and intent of us looking at this sermon and to examine carefully what is said is because it is the responsibility of every Christian believer, number one, I'll say this, to be a committed member of a local church body.

And it is the responsibility of the elders of a local church body to teach and to preach, to proclaim the truth about what the scriptures teach. So therefore, simply to teach the scriptures themselves.

Not to take it out of context, not to isageete into the text of scripture something that's not there, but to exegete, to draw out of the scripture what is there. And that being said, there seems to be a whole lot of false teaching, even in what seems like to be some of the most solid churches around.

And, of course, as we're going to examine today, we're going to see false teaching in what doesn't seem to be one of the most unsound churches that I know of, simply because they do not teach what the scripture says.

And you'll note in this sermon, you'll hear them say that the scripture says certain things, but what we're going to try to do is, bit by bit, walk through this, listen to this, let their own words testify for or against them, and then afterwards, if you will simply weigh what you hear according to the Word of God, not only what you hear the sermon that is being reviewed, but what you hear me say, weigh what I say against the Word of God, test it.

The scriptures teach us to test the spirits to see whether they be of God. And so that's what we're going to try to do here today. So let's bring in the video here. And again, this is a sermon entitled Being Filled with the Holy Spirit.

And it is evidence of power. And it is basically about being filled with the Spirit, what that, in their estimation, what that means, what that entails, and what that looks like, as well as their teachings on the doctrine of tongues in the scriptures.

So let's begin, let's hear what they have to say, and we'll move throughout.

So one of my objectives is always to bring you into an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

So let's stop there. He says there, one of his objectives is always to bring you into an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Now, the scriptures tell us in John's gospel, Jesus told Nicodemus, the wind blows where it wants to blow.

We do not bring encounters with the Holy Spirit because we are not God.

If you encounter Him, everything else is going to be just fine. Now I can get you to memorize a scripture, and that scripture is going to help you. It is the Word of God. But you must encounter the Living Word through the Holy Spirit.

All right, little bites, little chunks at a time. If you will notice, and if you will listen to what has just been said, Michael Brewer, James Abbott, those at the well, those in the charismatic movement at large, will devalue and minimize the Word of God.

He said plainly, I can get you to memorize scripture, but until you encounter the Living Word, you'll never understand it, and you'll never know it. They are making a distinction between the true Word of God and an experience.

That's largely what you're going to see and hear in this sermon, is the emphasis upon a experience outside of the scriptures.

I know people that can quote scripture forwards, backwards, upside down. They can tell me, when I'm talking, they say, this is that scripture, and they understand it, but lifeless, empty, dry, and when that happens, it begins to shift over into a very critical spirit of accusation and these things, and what it does ultimately begins to separate a person from the wall with the Spirit of God.

All right, so let me identify there, because our charismatic friends who may watch this will automatically put us in that category of the critical spirit. I am not being critical for the sake of being mean-spirited.

I am being critical because the Word of God is being mishandled, and the Word of God is being misapplied, and to put it quite bluntly, in country terms, I'm going to call a duck a duck, and in this case, I'm going to call false teaching on this false teacher.

The Canon of Scripture and the Problem of New Revelation

When you think about this, the early church, they didn't have what we would call the New Covenant scriptures. They were drawing on the Old Covenant scriptures.

That's true. Let's give, let's put a positive, put a mark in the positive column. What he said there is exactly true. The New Testament believers didn't have the New Testament as we have it today. They had the Old Testament.

The Holy Spirit was bringing life, so there was a continual revelation of the Holy Spirit. When we talk about the book of Acts, I want to position that book just a little bit for you around a covenant.

When God would establish a covenant with His people, around every covenant, there's what you would call a canon. So we have the New Covenant established through Christ, so around the establishing of that.

Covenant.

Let's just say the birth, the death, the burial, and the resurrection, it's all in there called that establishing of the covenant. We have the context of what life was like in that culture before the covenant.

All right, so as we move forward here, let's note something very, very important, and that is this, that words have meaning. And if we try to make the definition of words fluid and we do not use them properly, it does not make sense.

It doesn't matter how many words are strung and connected together. What's happening here is a word salad is being tossed with a lack of understanding what the words actually mean. So he uses the term canon.

It's very important, canon. And what he said is not at all what the word means. The word canon itself is a general law. It's a general law by which something is judged. It's a standard of judgment. So a simple way of defining that, of what a canon is, a simple way of defining that is that a canon is a measuring stick.

It's the measuring stick. It's like having a tape measure and pulling out the tape measure and measuring something and knowing that according to the standard on the tape measure, that is the length of the board that you're measuring to cut, so on and so forth.

When used in reference to the Bible, however, the canon is a reference. Historically, the word canon in reference to the scriptures is a reference to the authoritative list of the books of the Holy Scripture.

Now as pointed out in the Westminster Confession of Faith, as pointed out in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, the inspired canon of scripture is the 66 books of the Old and the New Testament. Simply, put right there, open and shut.

The canon of scripture itself is closed. God's not giving new revelation, nor are we taught anywhere in the scriptures themselves that new revelation is being given. However, this is exactly what's being taught and communicated here.

So just that misdefinition of terms is something that's very important. And I would encourage you as Christian, as a Christian believer, as church members, for you every time that the preacher preaches a message, test it according to the scriptures.

Take what you hear, hold it to the Word of God, the context not only of a little patch of scriptures that may be quoted, but look at that patch of scriptures in the larger context of the text itself, the preceding verses in the chapter, the following verses in the chapter, maybe even have to read the whole book, and you'll find that ultimately that scripture unfolds always and is always and in agreement with itself when you go from Genesis to the book of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That being said, we're going to jump just a little bit ahead, about a minute and a half ahead to the 440 mark. Let's see if we can get that. We'll go to about 434. And here you're going to hear him just describing his Pentecostal roots, and we're going to see that he contradicts his statement.

One statement after another, he is constantly contradicting himself.

Pentecostal Roots, Power, and the Experience of Tongues

The Holy Spirit, honestly. It is how he interacted with the people. So I'm going to take us into this message, just being filled with the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by power. Now my roots are in Pentecostal mainline, Pentecostal churches, I love them.

It's my roots.

So I can talk about my roots, just like it's my family.

I can talk about my family.

You don't get to talk about my family, but I can, because I'm in it, I live it. So I can talk about Pentecostalism and understand it well, because it was most of my life growing.

Up.

But in the Pentecostal church, you'll hear, have you spoken in tongues, baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues.

I'm going to give you a different perspective on that.

So the large swath of any of the teaching that comes from this charismatic Pentecostal group is always about a new perspective. It's always a new angle. It's always a new view. Some of the old timers have rightfully said this about the scriptures, that the scriptures mean what they say, and that they say what they mean, that we don't have to read extra into it.

Nevertheless, here he goes.

I'm going to say the evidence is power, because I know many powerless tongue talkers. So the actual evidence is the power. That's what we're going to go after today. I want you to experience this.

So the evidence of being filled with the Spirit is power, whether or not you talk in tongues, because he said he knows plenty of powerless tongue talkers. Yet he is going to connect the two here in just a little while and still try to make them, though he tried to separate them there, he's going to try to put them back together in this jumbled up mess that we're looking at.

I'll take you a little bit deeper in that. About 25 years or so ago, some of our leadership people have been around, they can tell my story, but I'm going to get to tell it again, because a lot of y 'all have never heard it.

I was in my bedroom, it was 2 .30 in the morning, I'd worked night shift for several years, and I couldn't sleep that night, I was off, of course, so I'm laying there, and I'm literally on my side, I mean, I remember exactly how I was laying, where I was at, I remember laying there, unable to sleep, and I'm like, I'm just praying, I'm just talking to God.

And all of a sudden, I was taken in this visionary encounter with the Lord. I rolled out of my bed, onto the floor, and I'm just praying, and a groan begins to come from deep within me. I'm praying, but I feel like I'm being pulled into this, I have language for it today, I didn't get it.

But this encounter with God, and the deeper I go, there's this rolling that comes forth from me.

I was...

This is him explaining what it means to be filled with the Spirit, based upon his experience. Notice this, Christians that are watching this, notice carefully, that his explanation of the evidence of being filled with the Spirit of God, and the power of God, is demonstrated and exhibited by an experience that he is having, and that others have had, and that if you get to be a super-duper-spiritual Christian, that you might one day get to have.

Let's listen as he tells further.

I was told, you know, I went to people and was like, help me understand what happened. I was told everything from you're dying, to you're giving birth, to you're doing all of these things. I know what's happening now, but at that point, I mean, sometimes it's good to say, I don't know what it was, but I'll just pray for you, rather than feeling the pressure of trying to give an answer to a context you have no understanding about.

So I'm groaning, next thing I know I'm on my back, and my body is curling up as I'm groaning in the Holy Spirit. The reason I was groaning, moments before rolling out of the bed, I watched myself in this visionary kind of speaking in tongues.

I never experienced that, I was watching something, I was watching myself, but yet I was up here watching myself.

So he said, I was watching myself, but I was up here watching myself, and he's saying that I was watching myself talk in tongues, although I wasn't talking in tongues.

I watched myself speak in tongues, but I heard God speak to me in my right ear. This is how detailed this was. He said, I am calling you to ministry, and when I heard that, as I watched myself speak in tongues, it overwhelmed me, and I fell on the floor, and I began to groan deeply.

This lasted about 20 minutes. So this was such an experience, my body was so sore the next day. When I got back up on my knees, and I said these words, I said, Con, if that experience had been speaking in tongues, I would have been okay with it, but it wasn't, and I know enough, show me in your word what this was, because it was an experience completely outside of my box.

Here's another point. If you, as a Christian, are going to the scriptures to try to find a passage of scripture to validate an experience that you're having, you're doing it backwards. Experience does not dictate the validity of scripture, but scripture will validate or invalidate the experiences that you're having.

And I heard the Lord, get up, go downstairs, get your Bible, turn to John 11, verse 33.

Notice what he does.

In the context of that, it basically, Jesus coming to the tomb of Lazarus, and the bridge it was set, he groaned within himself, and that's all. I still didn't understand it, but I knew at least there was a scriptural basis for it that I wasn't getting deceived, so.

So, to the uncareful here, to the one who is just saying, Claude, you're being critical. You shouldn't be saying anything about what he just said. He had scripture to prove what he was, validate what he was saying, and I would argue vehemently with you and say, no, the scripture does not validate what he says.

Number one, because the scripture is talking about Jesus. Contrary to what many popular Christians will teach today, we are not Jesus, we are not little Christ, and we are not little gods. We are human beings, sin-ridden, fallen humanity, and the only hope that we have is to trust, to hope, and to look to the grace and the mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who alone is unique.

So, his statement, his validation of that experience by going to the scripture that talks about when Jesus groaned in his spirit carries absolutely no weight.

That begins to shift, my Lord, within a couple of weeks.

Shift. That's a word, if you watch Chris Roseborough, you know that when they play Prophecy Bingo, shift is a big charismatic word. You'll hear that shifting, the shifting, the shaking, the quaking. You'll hear all these buzzwords used.

I'm standing in front of a great church here in town, and I remember walking forward into.

The altar.

It was just a normal Sunday night service. I was getting ready to go to work that night. I was sitting kind of back there. I got out of the pew, and I walked forward, and about the time I got on the altar, my left foot, I was taking a step, but I've yet to complete that step.

As my foot was moving forward, the power and the presence of God hit me so strongly. Beyond any experience I had ever had, I was pinned on the ground, and I was praying in the spirit. I was praying in a language I had never learned before.

And during this encounter, it's like this was just flowing forth from me. There was not another concern in the world as I was in awe and engulfed in His presence.

So he was praying in a language that he's never known before, and he was doing this because he was in awe and engulfed in His presence. So, according to the teaching of the well, the evidence of being filled with the Spirit is evidence by experiences that, when examined and held up to the scriptures themselves, are typically exhibitions of demon possession as opposed to recognizing the holiness of God Almighty.

If you check it out, look at throughout the scriptures, when we read of demon possession in the scriptures, you'll hear evidences of folks lying on the ground, writhing in agony, screaming and wailing and moaning and doing all of those things.

But when we see individuals in the text of scripture itself who are genuinely awestruck and in the presence of Almighty God, typically can't even lift up their head from their breasts. And if they do express something verbally, it's a recognition of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man himself.

The Mind, the Spirit, and the Fruit of the Spirit

So let's move on here. We're going to jump ahead to about the 11 minute and 40 second mark. Let's see if we can get that. Let's go to 1130. And what we're going to see here, a contradiction of terms that he makes.

Limitations in my life. So I'm going to take you into just a few scriptures if I can get through this. As I begin to share some of this, I'm believing in Holy Spirit to begin to move in this room. I'm not up here giving you an intellectual teaching today.

Let's note here as well, the charismatic practice of the day of the last several years has been, again, it's really a grammatical issue, but a lack of the preposition the, or the lack of the article the, I'm sorry, the article the, which makes it ascribed unto.

When you hear the charismatic in the Pentecostals talk about Jesus, talk about the Holy Spirit, they always want to leave off the, they just want to call him Holy Spirit. And they want to make, they express the name of the person of the Holy Spirit in a way that's impractical.

And it just kind of makes the Holy Spirit random. Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit is how the scriptures describe the person of the Holy Spirit. Notice what he says here. It's very, very important.

I'm not up here giving you an intellectual teaching today. I am teaching to activate your faith that you come into a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Here we have the disconnection of the mind and the spirit is what is taught in these circles very much. It's a disconnection of the mind and the spirit that if you are, if your mind is actively engaged and focused on the actual Word of God, then you are practicing some sort of cold, dead intellectualism.

But friends, unless you understand it with your mind, it will not energize or excite your heart. Your mind has to comprehend the truth before it will physically affect you. So do not fall prey to this teaching.

It's if you'll pay attention to your pastors as you go to church every week, listen for these things, because if you're hearing these things, you're hearing a man teaching you things that are leading you away from the truth of God's Word.

Now, I'll position that a little bit more. But while I'm speaking, Holy Spirit has never been bound to my permission to move.

You heard what he said. Holy Spirit has never been bound by my permission to move.

You know, I have a goal at the end of this thing. I'll probably invite you up if you really feel hungry and you want to touch for God. But Holy Spirit many times does not wait. I don't understand the etiquette he has, but I guess he figures it's his church and his family and he'll do it however he wants to do it.

So he's never asked me for permission. So with that said, I like to be aware of how he's moving.

Oh, okay. So he doesn't need your permission, but you like to be aware of how he's moving.

So if you begin to really feel him uniquely moving in through you, on you, you might not have the language, I'll just use all of the above. You begin to feel him touch you. I just want you to stand. And I'm just going to acknowledge what he's doing in your life.

You want to sit back down.

But what that does, that begins to bring you further into a group. You're beginning to acknowledge he is doing something very unique.

So in order for the Holy Spirit to do anything, you have to acknowledge it. And by the way, remember what he said earlier. He said he wants to activate this faith in you.

Of course, you don't have to, but I'm asking you to,.

Because I believe it's going to begin to unlock something. So Acts chapter 4. Great persecution had risen against the people. People began to go out. Here we have Philip. It says those who were scattered preached the word everywhere they went.

Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs that he performed. Now what's a sign? It points to something. It points to something.

So here he is preaching Christ and the signs are pointing to him to authenticate that message that he was preaching.

So 13 minutes and 49 seconds into this, he has made two true statements. This being second of the true statements. However, he doubles back on this statement. Let's jump to 1540. 1540 mark.

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word, they sent, I don't know why I didn't put the whole thing in space. They sent the apostles down and when they arrived, they prayed for the new believers that they might receive the Holy Spirit.

They used to read that. I love the whole context. You know, words got back. They received. So now they are going down there to bring something in addition to what they had received. Now the people were baptized.

They believed in Christ. I believe they were fully born again. I believe the Holy Spirit dwell in them. But I think what was talking about here was the power of the Holy Spirit consuming them.

All right. Notice very carefully again right here. He's making a difference and a distinction. He says, I believe they were very much born again. I believe they were very much saved, but they did not have the power.

They did not have the power. And these are his own words. Let's listen a little bit further. Again, the apostles thinking were different than Philip the evangelist. So in his estimation, he is stating that the apostles had a different angle to put on the gospel than Philip had.

Doing his work, he was doing the context of his anointing. But the apostles had a greater context of the body of Christ, how it would feel. So sometimes when things like that happen, especially evangelists, our eyes get fixed on the evangelist and what he's doing.

But the apostles had equipping and multiplication and kingdom advancement beyond just being born again.

So they're coming down.

They're wanting to make little Philips out of everybody. They're wanting everybody to begin releasing signs and wonders.

So the apostles come. They want to make little Philips out of everybody. They want everybody releasing signs and wonders. We do not see this in the scriptures. We do not see this at all. I do not think that it means what you think that it means.

Let's listen just a little bit further here in this section.

He wanted to do it too, but he couldn't. He was doing it out of a bad heart.

So the apostles come down.

And I would love to have their message transcribed. I would say it goes something like this. That's what you have seen. What you have heard came by the power of the Holy Spirit in Philip. Philip was a man just like all of us, but God anointed him with power.

And I think he went.

They are saying, amen. They are saying, come on. They are in total agreement with this. But that is not at all what the scripture says. As a matter of fact, there is the passage of scripture that says that actually, it is one of Peter's sermons that he is speaking in reference to Christ whom God has anointed.

God's anointed one is Christ.

You guys have believed in this Jesus. You have believed. You have received baptism in water. You have been born in the newness of life. But God is wanting to take what is on Philip and he is wanting to put that on you.

He is wanting all of you to be filled with the Holy Spirit and power. That all of you, everybody in this new kingdom, they get to release signs and wonders and power.

So you heard it. You heard the exact phrase. It is for all believers to do these things. No, it is not. He contradicts his own statement. They're talking about earlier that the signs and the wonders pointed to Christ.

And now he's retracting that. He's recasting, recasting his own vision of what the scriptures say. And it is not the truth.

Because through those signs and wonders, it's authenticating your life in Christ. It's authenticating the Christ that was risen from the dead. So see, they had something even greater.

By the way, the authentication that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, according to the scriptures, is not primarily in the signs and wonders that he did, though he did them and they were pointing to him.

It is in the fact that he rose from the dead on the third day and that he ever lives to make intercession for us. What he, what Brewer is preaching is a false doctrine.

They were already activating them in ministry. They weren't sending them to Bible school. They weren't doing all of those things at that time. They were sending them into the school.

Here we have, again, the diminishment of the study of the scriptures. They wasn't sending them to Bible study. Friends, if we are not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is in the word of God, we are preaching another gospel.

And according to what the apostle Paul told the church at Galatia, be damned anybody that proclaims another gospel.

Of the spirit. It was going to shift everything in their life. So can't you imagine?

So there you hear the word shift used again. Let's jump on ahead just a little bit more so we can get through. We're still not going to get through this entire sermon. Nevertheless, we're going to get as far as we can.

Let's jump down to about the 20 minute mark. Here we are.

Tongues, Witchcraft, and Order in the Church

I mean, unless we're just all seizure.

How do they know?

Something had to shift James visible here. Something happened. It says when Simon saw the spirit was given at the laying on apostles hands, he offered the money. Forget the money portion.

He saw something happen.

There was an expression somehow, some way there was an evidence. The Holy Spirit touching his people. It was practical.

So let's take a look at the text for just a moment here. And while we do that, I'm going to actually enlarge this. Let's take a look at the book of Galatians. So according to this false teacher's word, the expression and the demonstration and evidence of the Holy Spirit is that there will be a physical manifestation of power.

But let's go to Galatians chapter five. And let's go to verse 16 to take a look at the actual text itself, to see what the text actually says. So Paul, the apostle Paul describes to the church of Galatia, what it means to be filled with the spirit, what it looks like to walk in the power of the spirit.

He also contrasts what it looks like to walk in the power of the spirit with what it looks like to do contrary to the spirit of God. And he says this in verse 16, but I say walk in the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For those are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

And then he says, now the works of the flesh are manifest, are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

He said, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Notice carefully the scripture here, Galatians 5, 22. But the fruit of the spirit, fruit is what is born of a Christian.

The evidence of being born again is that the Christian loves, that the Christian has joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things. There is no law.

So the plain teaching of the text of scripture here does not in any way resemble what this man is teaching. What this church proclaims, it does not compare at all. The church, the church's message, the church's teaching, and the church's preaching should align with the scripture.

The scriptures should not be maligned or twisted to match the church's perverted, this church's perverted view of the scripture itself.

Evidence there, let's go to that next slide. So I want to take you out of that story, and I want to take you into a story of Paul. Because we're in the book of Acts, and we're jumping around the book of Acts.

So he's jumping around the book of Acts, he says. So let's go to 2205 in the sermon.

There are places that have gotten so good at doing church. Even Pentecostal churches. They got so good at doing church, there might not be much of a difference if the Holy Spirit just wasn't there among them or something.

Because we've gotten so good at it.

I want to live so over my head and beyond my experience that I am in deep trouble if I don't depend on the Holy Spirit. I mean, that's where I want to live. I want to be fully aware if I find myself in a situation where he's not.

Because I assure you, if Holy Spirit was removed from my life, I would be dead in moments. Because I've confronted way too many demons that would love, love to kill me.

I've confronted way, way too many demons that would want to kill me is what he said. Doing church. Churches have lost their power. I'll say this, churches have lost their power because they have left the Word of God itself.

So I want to live in that place.

Let's jump to 2230.

So over my head and beyond my experience that I am in deep trouble if I don't depend on the Holy Spirit. I mean, that's where I want to live. I want to be fully aware if I find myself in a situation where he's not.

Because I assure you, if Holy Spirit was removed from my life, I would be dead in moments. They answered saying, we don't know. There is a Holy Spirit.

I'll say, what were you baptized in? I said, John's baptism.

So we know what John did. John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. Saying that they should believe on the one who is to come, the Messiah who is to come. I want to give you some context to that. Because we just read through those few statements right there.

But what we fail to understand, and that's approximately 20 years after John's baptism. Think of that. So we don't have the whole story. They hear John preaching.

All right. So right there. Very important here. Whether intentional or unintentional. Understanding proper context. Understanding the dating of the books of the Bible is very important. Because even if you in ignorance, in the true definition of the word ignorance, meaning unintentionally misinterpret something, not having a correct knowledge of something, based on not looking for it.

But even if you do that, certainly the book of Acts was written probably around the year in the, I think it's dated in the 50s, AD 50s, maybe a little bit before. In any case, that would have been 20 years after Christ.

But what's being written is not talking about 20 years after Christ. The account that he is referring to did not take place 20 years after John the Baptist. It didn't take place 20 years after Christ.

So he is misapplying the date and therefore misapplying any principle that he communicates after that.

John baptized them, and apparently they were John's disciples. John sent them out ahead of Jesus. Just 22 years ahead. Jesus has now come, but they're out in the field. They're on the mission field. They're preaching.

The Messiah is coming.