September 13, 2023 Show with David Lovi, Les Lanphere & Tim Cannon on “Cessationist”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own.

Questions. And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon. Cumberland County,.

Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 13th day of September 2023, and I'm so excited that it is only one week away when I will be in Atlanta, Georgia, Manning and Exhibitors booth, as I always do every year for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, at the next G3 National Conference on the Sovereignty of God.

And there is going to be a part of that conference that will be an additional exciting event. It will be the debut of a new doc documentary that we will all be viewing at the conference called Cessationist, and I am thrilled to have on the program the three creators of this new documentary, David Loewe, Les Lanphier, and Tim Cannon, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome all three of you brethren to Iron Sharpens Iron.

Radio. Thank you for having us. And we're so happy to be with you. God bless you,.

Brother. Yes, I'm excited to be here. Yes, I'm excited to have all three of you on, and if there is anything that you could do to turn your volumes up, for some reason you sound a little bit distant, but that would be helpful to just get a little louder on your end.

I'm especially thrilled today to have on the program somebody that I know is a regular and faithful and loyal listener to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, David Loewe, because when I last spoke with him, he said, now when is your program on?

Is it once a week, once a month? Is it 20 minutes long? Is it five minutes long? Obviously a huge fan of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Well, it's kind of a.

New show you started just recently, so it makes sense that he hasn't really gotten.

A chance to check it out yet. Obviously that was said in sarcasm, because I've been broadcasting since 2005. That's right. You should ask him if he's watched less of his other movies yet. By the way, definitely if you could turn your volumes up, I'm turning you up on my end, but it would help if you turn your volumes up on your end if you can.

The Origin of the Cessationist Documentary

First of all, David Loewe, tell our listeners something about yourself and how you had this bug in your brain that basically compelled you to join Arms, link Arms with Les Lanphier and Tim Cannon to.

Create a documentary on cessationism. Yeah, thanks so much, and since we had that conversation, I actually have listened to your show, and I really like it a lot. The fact that you have like real great scholars and famous Christian leaders on here, and that you would ask humble little old David Loewe to come on the show, too, really means a lot to me, so thanks a lot.

Well, I just consider.

These great scholars, these world-renowned giants of the faith, my peers. So tell us, David, who was it? Was it you, or was it Les, or was it Tim, who first had the idea, hey, you know, there needs to be a documentary on cessationism?

Well, it was actually during a phone call that I was having with Tim Cannon. We were originally going to make a different film entirely, Tim and I were, before I even met Les. We were going to make a film that was kind of a sequel to another film that I had worked on years ago that came out in 2014 called Logic on Fire, Life and Legacy of Martin Lloyd-Jones.

I loved that documentary. Oh, thanks a lot. Yeah, I was a co-producer on that movie, and that was the only film that I had ever been involved in. By the way, just out of.

Curiosity, if you don't mind me interrupting you, why did you not pursue, unless you did and failed, to have Peter Jeffrey as a part of that? Peter Jeffrey was a friend of mine now in eternity with Christ, but he was the pastor of the first church pastored by Martin Lloyd-Jones Sanfields in Port.

Talbot Wells. Yes, so actually, unfortunately, as is with even our documentary right now with cessationists, we had so, so many interviews when we did Logic on Fire that the editors really had to pick and choose, and the director had to choose what would be in the film.

So yeah, there were a lot of guys that we really wanted to get in there that we weren't able to, and even in this case, too, with cessationists, there were guys who I kept saying to Les and to Tim, we just need like five more interviews, just five more.

But it was always five more. Even when we had 40, it was five more. I wish we had gotten old Palmer Robertson for this film for cessationists, but we weren't able to. So you asked the question, how did this come about?

Well, we were going to do the sequel to Logic on Fire, kind of. It was going to be a film about Bethan Lloyd-Jones, Martin Lloyd-Jones's wife, who was a medical doctor and left medicine to follow her husband as he went into ministry, which is really a lot of people don't know that story.

But it's truly remarkable. She was a medical doctor in 1927 -28 as a woman in England. That wasn't very common back then. So we were all set to make that film. And then COVID happened and there were travel restrictions and we weren't able to get out to England.

And Tim kept pestering me, we still have to make a movie. Let's make a movie about something else where we don't have to travel across the world to do it. And I said, well, if I was going to make any kind of movie at all right now, it would be something on the doctrine of cessationism.

Because I was a pastor of an evangelical free church 40 miles north of Chicago, oh, nine years ago. And at the very beginning of my pastorate, then I could see for the first time the tremendous damage that bad doctrines of the Holy Spirit can have on a congregation.

And before I was there, they were real, just just church splits and really difficult times in the church that I really wasn't even aware of until after I came on. And they had to do with things like Jesus culture being played in the worship service and Hillsong.

And some of the young people had left the church to go out to California and follow Bill Johnson and his kind of new apostolic reformation, which is even a word nine years ago that I had never heard before.

So it caused me a lady in the church came up to me one day and said, are you going to allow Jesus culture to be played here? And I didn't really know much even about contemporary Christian music. I when I became a Christian at 22, we we only played hymns in the church where I was.

So I said, well, I don't know. What are they bad? And then she gave me this massive packet of information that she had collected about the teachings of Bill Johnson and how really wicked they are. And that led me down a path to becoming a cessationist and not just being open but cautious like I had considered myself previously.

And so it's been on my heart for the last nine years. And and Tim, along with Tim's kind of pestering of me to make a movie with him. This was this was a subject we decided to do it on. Great.

Defining Cessationism and Continuationism

And less land fear. Perhaps it would be wise for you to give our listeners a definition of cessationism because our audience is not only comprised of seasoned Christians who might be very familiar with that term.

There may be new believers in our audience unfamiliar with what that means. And there also may be non-Christians. We on occasion do hear from people in other religions and cults and even agnostics and atheists on occasion.

So a less land fear. Why don't.

You define cessationism? Sure, I'd love to. How's my volume? Is it okay? It's perfect. Okay, great. So cessationism is the idea that the miraculous gifts that were given to the apostles and others in the early church, specifically prophecy, tongues, speaking in tongues, and the gift of healing, that those gifts served a specific purpose for a specific time as a foundational way to establish the teachings of the apostles and of Christ.

And after the purpose had been fulfilled and after the foundational period had ended, then along with that the gifts that were confirming the the messengers also came to an end. So that's there's been sort of a historic, really the church at large has has been cessationist in the sense that they believed that the apostolic age is when those things were happening and ceased after that.

But the term cessationism really is a more a more modern term and it's it's really a reaction to the claim that these gifts either never ceased or have come back more recently in the form of the charismatic movement and Pentecostalism.

Isn't that often called.

The latter reign by those advocates of non-cessationism? Yep, yep. Or.

Continuationism or continuism? Yep, yep, exactly. The continuation of the gifts or the charismata, these gifts are, yeah, so those gifts again prophecy, tongues, and healing they're saying are still in effect.

And so cessationist, cessationism as a position is sort of necessarily something that needs to be said clearly because never before in history really has the church even really entertained these ideas.

It's a very new thing that the mainstream of Christianity thinks that you can speak in tongues, you know, just at will. Like that that is a very new and odd idea within Christianity. So, but it's also very popular.

And of.

Course there have been claims by charismatics and Pentecostals that there were church fathers and reformers. Like I remember in my very early stage of searching for truth before I was a believer, I can recall visiting Pentecostal churches and one in particular that I began attending every week for months.

I can remember claims being made that Martin Luther spoke in tongues and so on. But those claims are very dubious, aren't they? Oh absolutely,.

Yeah. I mean, you can always, you know, if you look back at the church fathers, you're always going to be able to grab quotes to support all kinds of wild things for various reasons. And, you know, let's let the church fathers be the church fathers and they're studying.

And it was a very interesting time theologically for sure. But the consensus, if you really take seriously the spirit of theology coming out of the post-apostolic church, so after the scriptures are closed, what do we see?

And it's very, very clear that you don't have apostles wandering around touching people and healing them by command or things like that, or speaking in other languages that they don't know, or even prophesying, as in like telling the future or receiving a new revelation from God.

It's very clear that the canon closed and these gifts closed. And yes, you may be able to find quotes here and there that seem to maybe indicate that, you know, they saw strange things or even miraculous things, but that's very different than saying that the gifts never ceased and they still continue today.

And if you walk into any gospel-believing, spirit filled church, you should expect to see them as a normative practice that.

Is foreign from church history. And of course there are instances from centuries ago, before the birth of the Pentecostal movement in the late 19th, early 20th century, there have been examples centuries ago of people claiming miraculous sign gifts, but they were typically very aberrant and heretical groups like the Zwickau prophets, for instance, in the 16th century, who were a strain, a sect of Anabaptists that were out of their minds, really.

They believed in plural marriage and believed to be prophets and were executing their own members for less than significant reasons and that kind of thing. But just because those things existed as beliefs after the conclusion of the Apostolic Age doesn't mean that the people promoting them were true Christians.

And we also have to make sure that we state clearly that the Anabaptists are typically broad-brushed and they shouldn't be, because not all of them were promoting.

The kind of craziness that the Zwickau prophets were. Oh yeah, yeah. I think the thing that typically you have throughout history, if somebody's claiming to be able to do these sort of miraculous gifts, the thing that they all have in common is that the gifts don't look like what the New Testament gifts looked like, so they're redefined versions of them.

And then the other thing they all have in common is that they were all heretics, which is not a good pedigree. But then somehow that's not the case now. Oddly enough, we now have charismatic people with otherwise solid theology, and that's where it.

Gets very, very strange. Yes, and Tim Cannon, I love the name, the one name of the three of you that sounds like the perfect private detective name. Tim, you were gonna say something? Can you hear me okay?

Yes,.

Perfectly. Okay, well first let me say, I am a true fan of the show. I've been listening. I've listened to Richard Romano, the brother of Ray Romano. Oh yeah. So it's an honor to be on, because I have been listening for probably a good, since probably about 2011, 2012.

Bro, bro, you said you're a true fan. What does that.

Make me then? I was going to ask you, Tim, and we'll start with you and have Les and David also give some of their background. I think it's important for our listeners to know the theological, ideological positions, perhaps even denominational positions from which each of you come and represent, and we'll start with you, Tim.

What church do you represent and theological position? Yeah, I go to.

Reformed Baptist Church of Louisville. My pastor, Jim Sebastio, trained under Al Martin from Montville, New Jersey, and actually my pastor, Jim, is from the New York City, maybe it might even be Long Island.

Wow. I'm from Long Island, as you may know. Yeah, right, and so my wife and I actually just became official members within the last three months, so we've been attending there for quite some time. So they finally let you into.

Membership after the restraining order was dropped? That's correct. We had a very rigorous process, you know, make sure the.

Fingerprints came back clear, and memorized in 1689, so we made it. It's actually been a really wonderful, wonderful church body to be a part of.

Please tell Jim I want him on the program, because people have been urging me to interview Jim, and it's one of those things where I always forget that they fall through the cracks, but I would love to have him on the program.

Well, I'd.

Like to say I'm pretty tight with him, and I'll talk to him, and we'll make that happen. He's a true shepherd. He's been really good to my family, and we've been well fed spiritually and theologically there at RBC Louisville.

I grew up in the American Baptist Church with some mix of kind of theological liberalism and some Pentecostalism that my dad kind of brought in with it. So this is a subject that is near and dear to my own.

Heart from just some of my own experiences growing up. And Les Lanphier, tell us about your background and what church you represent. So I am the.

Resident Presbyterian, Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Port St. Lucie is the church that I attend. I made a film called Spirit and Truth, and that film followed the planting pastor of the church as we discussed the regulative principles, so he sort of played a recurring character in that film.

And.

That's, yeah, that's about it. And David Lobey, I understand that you are doing, you are due congratulations, because not long ago you became a pastor.

Yourself. Well again, yes, thank you, thank you very much. This is actually the third church that I have pastored. I was pastoring actually a Korean church, I'm not Korean, but I was pastoring a Korean church in their English ministry back in 2010 to 2012, and then I became pastor of an evangelical free church in 2014 to 2020, and then I became a pastor of kind of an independent small R-reformed Baptist Church just about two years ago now, in 2021.

So I've been to a few different kind of denominational settings. I actually grew up not in a Christian household at all. My dad was Jewish and my mother was Catholic, so I.

Was a cashew. I never heard that one before, that's good. Yeah, I was a cashew,.

But pretty much just an atheist or agnostic, until a Korean missionary invited me to Bible study, and the Lord saved me when I was 22 years old. And so I did not grow up in the church, and I say I'm small R-reformed Baptist, I'm just a Calvinistic Baptist.

As it regards eschatological positions, I've kind of shifted my views along the way a little bit. But yeah, so the three of us really do come from very different places, Les, Tim, and I. And.

We're going to find out more about your reasons for being opposed to the modern day sign gifts being a perpetual reality in the church today, when we come back from our first commercial break. If anybody has a question for my guests, please send your email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence. We'll be right back. Please don't go away.

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Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, I have as my guests today on Iron Sharpens Iron radio Dave Lovey, Les Lanphier, and Tim Cannon, who are all creators of the new documentary, Cessationist. And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

If you are somebody who wants to remain anonymous because of the fact that you are struggling with this issue, perhaps you were a continuous, meaning a Pentecostal or charismatic, and you are rethinking that.

Or perhaps you are someone who is at odds with your own pastors or congregation over this. Maybe you're even a pastor yourself and you are at odds with your fellow elders and your congregation over these issues that are under the umbrella of cessationist versus continuationist or continuous controversies.

Well, we understand things like that would compel you to remain anonymous, but if you are just asking a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

The Goal of the Film and Its View of Charismatic Theology

David, if you could, we'll start with you. Please clarify what your intention is with this documentary, because, and I don't know if you agree with me, but although I think that this is a very important issue, and it obviously involves a wide spectrum of belief when we are talking about continuationism or continuism or the charismatic or Pentecostal movement, it's a wide spectrum.

So therefore, there are folks like me who is, I am a cessationist, just as you are, but depending upon how aberrant or strange or frightening or dangerous the person's level of continuationism is, there are many who would be under the umbrella of continuationists or charismatic or Pentecostal that are dear friends, that I enjoy sharing fellowship with them, and I've had them on this program, and they have even spoken at some Reformed Baptist churches I am familiar with, not the one where I'm a member, but some of my friends who are Reformed Baptists have invited into their pulpits people who are not cessationist but share our love of the doctrines of sovereign grace.

So I'm assuming that neither of you, or none of you, I should say, are saying if you are not a cessationist, we can have no fellowship with you, and if you are not a cessationist, you have to.

Question your salvation. And I'll start with you, David. Yes, of course, there are continuationist Christians, charismatic Christians. The condition of our salvation is not whether or not we believe that the Holy Spirit is giving the apostolic sign gifts today.

The condition of our salvation is whether or not we trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and that alone, of course. And so, of course, there are believers, solid Jesus-loving Christians who have a different doctrine, different pneumatology than we would hold.

I would say I believe that their pneumatology is wrong, just as we might say about someone who disagrees with us about an eschatological position. But I do think that there is actually probably more at stake than one's eschatological position when we're talking about the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

There's more at stake there. And though I would say, obviously, this is a secondary issue, for the most part, you know, it could be brought into a primary type of issue. It could be, especially when it comes to things like false prophecies and false prophets.

And there are many, many of those in the world today. So, you know, we interact in our film with some of the arguments that Sam Storms makes and some of the arguments that Wayne Grudem makes and that Michael Brown makes.

You know, we always wanted to interact with those guys, and so we have. Our film is addressing what I believe are the greatest arguments that they have from the greatest defenders of charismatic theology that there are, the most solid.

We wanted not only to expose the truly false teachers out there like Benny Hinn and so many others, Bill Johnson and Chris Vallotton and all these false prophets, but also to engage with our brothers in the faith who disagree with us on this matter.

And I would encourage you ask the question, what's our goal? I mean, our goal is to come to the knowledge of the truth, of course. That should be every Christian's goal. And we are all semper referenda to be continually reforming, reforming, or even better than that, to be transformed by the renewal of the mind through the Word of God.

So, of course, all of us need to be sharpening our understanding of the Bible and of God, and I believe that that's the tool that we've tried to make here, is to help people get sharpened in their understanding of the work of the.

Holy Spirit. Yes, and Tim Cannon, just to let our audience know that I am very careful not to go overboard in my critique of my continuationist or charismatic or Pentecostal friends. I had a dear friend who is now in eternity with Christ, Al Stein.

He was not only a pastor in an Assemblies of God congregation on Long Island, Neighborhood Assembly of God in Belmore, but he was also a bishop. And over the years, when I first met him, he was an Arminian, and over the years he became a full-blown five-point Calvinist, and it was amazing that he was able to remain not only in the pastorate of the Assemblies of God denomination, but become a bishop.

They were so enamored and impressed with the high caliber of not only intelligence and wisdom and biblical literacy that Pastor Al possessed, but his godly walk. But Al, over the years, and I can feel a lot freer to say this publicly because he's with the Lord now, he, although he never became a cessationist, his views of continuationism began to become more and more narrow as the years went by, to the point where he actually, after seeing John MacArthur's conference on strange fire, told me that he agreed with about 98 of the conference and was only in disagreement because, in his opinion, he thought there was too much broad brushing of continuationists.

But he reached the point where he could say very confidently that he thought the speakers at the strange fire conference were right 98 of the time, which is something that you will very rarely find amongst a charismatic Pentecostal.

But I just thought I'd mention that to reinstate or reaffirm in the minds of our listeners that I'm not a charismatic or Pentecostal hater or basher and have very fond and close friendships with some in that ilk.

But having said that, Tim, the speakers that David were just listing, or should I say the representatives of continuationism, some of them are even highly esteemed Reformed scholars and theologians like Sam Storms and Wayne Grudem, am I right?

Yeah, that's correct. And you know, when we talk about Wayne Grudem, Sam Storms, D .A. Carson, John Piper, every one of those guys has a place on my bookshelf. And I have a lot of books, and I've read all of those guys, and I cherish a lot of what they have said in their books over the years.

I mean, Wayne Grudem was my introduction into systematic theology, and I'll forever be grateful for him for that. And I remember reading his section on the Holy Spirit and on the gifts, and I remember thinking that this sounds right.

And it was actually around that same time for me that Strange Fire had just happened, and I kind of came in right after listening to the sessions. And in God's providence, here we are now. But it was Tom Pennington's message on a case for cessationism that solidified it in my mind and in my studies that cessationism is right, but also now to be where we're at, where Tom Pennington is now in our film and has a book that is partnered with the film.

But yeah, we love these men. I'm reminded of the wounds of a friend, that they may not like the things we're saying, but we're praying that Charismatics and even our brothers such as John Piper and Sam Storms and Grudem and Carson will watch it and consider the things we're saying.

We do show them respect in the film and love as brothers, and we don't hold them into the same light as a Benny Hinn. We do make that clarification in the film. So I think those are important clarifications to make because we do love these guys and they've been beneficial to the church over the years.

But I came up in what is called the Young, Restless, Reformed or the New Calvinism movement. And this is when you're really starting to see that intermingling of reformed theology and continuationism.

And a lot of the stuff we're seeing today is the fruit of those years of this kind of New Calvinist movement, which I believe had some.

Problems. Yes, don't you think that a lot of the reason we find more and more brothers and sisters in Christ who are charismatic and Pentecostal embracing the doctrines of sovereign grace, nicknamed Calvinism or reformed theology, is because you have people from those backgrounds and in those denominations hearing the gospel of sovereign grace and embracing it.

And they just haven't reached a point where they can abandon their charismatic or continuationist views. Les Lanphier, don't you think that that is one of those catch -22 situations where we rejoice that formerly Arminian brothers in Christ have seen the light about the doctrines of grace, but that also means that very often the charismatic baggage, if you will, and I know that may insult some listeners, the charismatic baggage is going to be brought into reformed circles because of.

That. Am I making sense there, Les? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's anytime somebody learns more about the Lord and their theology becomes more biblical, that's, you know, that's certainly something we always want to rejoice in and be patient with them, you know.

If somebody's improving in their understanding of the Lord, then that, you know, that means that they are truly seeking truth. And, yeah, the influence of those men has definitely been huge. And, you know, I made a film called Calvinist, which was about the resurgence of reformed theology in my generation.

And the hero of Calvinist, sort of, it all leads up, sort of, to personalities that were influencing people, and the hero in that movie is John Piper. So I have massive respect for John Piper, and it really kind of bothers me when people say nasty things about Piper, you know, now that I'm a confessional guy and I talk more with confessional people, I think that some of the things Piper has said are fantastic, and even the controversial things he said, like, I really appreciate them.

But for me, I kind of think that there's a sense in which these very respectable, theologically sound guys are, in a way, kind of more dangerous, because it's easy to look at Benny Hinn, and, you know, as long as you're just a little sensible, you can say, all right, that guy is crazy, and I want nothing to do with this.

But then you see these other guys who are legitimizing it, and, you know, it's probably my bias, because I've been editing this footage for over a year, and just seen some of the craziest stuff, but it still kind of boggles my mind that, like, someone like Sam Storms, they say, he says that he speaks in tongues every day, like, he prays in tongues every day.

That, that's just very hard for me to wrap my mind around, that, because I know what speaking in, you know, the modern rendition of speaking in tongues is, like, like, really? Like, do we really think that this is what, what the Holy Spirit inspires Christians to do, this essentially just babbling?

It's not what the Bible is describing, it's, and it just, to me, I don't know, like, again, yeah, I don't want to insult anybody unnecessarily, but it's just, I feel like it's so degrading to what we see the Spirit truly doing, these miraculous, wonderful, beautiful things that we see in the New Testament, and that we've sort of, like, because we want to defend some of these behaviors, we end up with, like, kind of an embarrassing thing that, like, churches are doing, that, so, yeah, I know I'm getting more on the defense, or the offense, I guess, but, yeah, they're.

Serious issues, that's all I have to say. Yeah, one thing that always baffled me is how level-headed, intelligent, biblically literate brothers in Christ could not see that, especially, I'm talking now about the denominations within Pentecostalism, and if I'm not mistaken, every official or major Pentecostal denomination, as opposed to the Charismatic movement, which is a much broader spectrum of often independent churches that have just embraced the modern-day sign gifts, but the Pentecostal denominations are more typically rigid in their doctrinal positions, and most, if not all of them, believe that the speaking in tongues is the sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the thing that's bizarre about that is, why would that be the sign when it can be very easily faked?

It doesn't even make sense, if you follow what I'm.

Saying, and any comments, David Loewy? Yeah, that's definitely a segment of the Continuationist movement is Pentecostalism, even Oneness Pentecostalism, which is a whole other... And of course, they would be far.

Outside the body of Christ, and in fact, at least initially, they were excommunicated from the traditional Pentecostal churches. Today, there's much more ecumenism going on between the traditional Pentecostals and the Oneness heretics, but there was a time when they were just as much, meaning the Pentecostals, the traditional Pentecostals, were just as much opposed to the anti-Trinitarians as we are.

In fact, they may have been more opposed vociferously because they were more likely to have their churches.