Sunday School - Teaching On Baptism (Cessationism) - Part 4

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Sunday School - Teaching On Baptism (Cessationism) - Part 5

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Heavenly Father, we open our day in worship, we pray that you would be with us this morning at Sunday school, that you would lead us and guide us and direct us according to your word.

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You would be with us this day as we offer throughout this day worship that is due to your name, and we come to you because of Jesus Christ, pleading his blood and his merits as our only access to you, and by that merit we come boldly to the throne of grace, even this morning, we ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen.

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So, show of hands, who has had someone come up to them and say,

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God told me to tell you? Now, I'm curious how you handled that.

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I just want to have a little discussion before we even begin Sunday school. We're going to talk about continuationism, which is, do the gifts continue?

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The gift of miracles, the gift of prophecies given to individuals, or do they end with the arrests?

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We as a church are what we call cessationists. We believe as cessationists that there was a certain time period where those gifts were extant for a particular reason, for a particular purpose, and their purpose has passed.

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So let me ask you again, just to introduce you, can somebody tell me about that word of God that somebody said that gave you away?

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Can you remember what it was about? It was something like,

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God told me to tell you that he's going to use you mightily. But it was the church where I went to was a charismatic church.

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But yeah, as they were praying for me, they were saying, God's telling me to tell you that he's going to use you mightily.

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Do you think he shared it with you? Not so much in that sense, but it was more in the sense of when

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I was sharing my story and what had happened to me. It was like, oh, so then God spoke to you, right? What did he say to you?

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And that word there will share their vision or their dream, you know, how

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God spoke to them. And generally out of respect, unless I'm willing to get into debate, I just kind of bite my tongue and just kind of smile.

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I had a Bible study when I was early in my Christian life. We had a Bible study at the house for converted

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Jews. And converted Jews tend towards, for some reason, I've never quite figured out, very charismatic sort of beliefs.

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And one of the contenders, I can't even remember her name, I always call her the loud person. She found out that I'd never spoken in tongues.

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She was pregnant. And she knelt down in my coffee table. I said, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I was early in my

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Christian life. And I just said, you know, God wanted me to have a tongue. He didn't tell me. And that's all I knew.

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It just made sense to me. I had no biblical background. I had no biblical support for that. So how do

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I get into that? Sometimes it says, God told me to tell you. But doesn't that mean that if God Almighty told me to tell you something, you couldn't believe me?

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You'd be better to do it. Because I'm not speaking on my part. God told me.

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And it should also come to pass. God told me to tell you that your baby's going to be fine.

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And I know somebody actually told me that she was like, I've got to tell no woman that. If you do that, that pregnancy goes into trauma.

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She has that sort of trauma. The question that we want to talk about is cessationism versus continuationism.

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And I want to give us some support to understand the biblical idea of why we believe that the horizons of gifts have ceased.

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And we're going to make a distinction between the gift and the man or woman in that sense who had it.

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I want to say right up front. As we talk about this question of what is signs and figures that were attributed to the apostles and manifest as a surge in the first century, what does it mean?

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By believing cessationism, there's something very important that we do not know. We say we don't believe.

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We say today we're not included in the apostles. We do not believe that God stopped working. We do not believe that God suddenly went to sleep.

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So it's okay. The last word of Revelation is written. John wrote the period there after that. That's my man. I'm done.

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We don't believe. We also do not believe that God has stopped working miracles.

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As cessationists, that's not what we believe. But positively, we believe that God is living and active and powerful.

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By his spirit, he is working miracles. And he's working miracles. We believe miracles of healing, miracles of conversion.

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He is working today. We do not believe he ceased working. We're very particular, we're very specific.

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There's a certain type of giftedness attributed to the apostles. It was for that purpose in them to establish the church that don't exist today because that purpose was accomplished.

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So the signs and wonders attributed to the apostles manifested in the first century continue.

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If they continue, if they manifest in the modern church, are they or should they be normative?

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How do we answer that? So we're going to look at this for a few weeks.

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Since we've got a full week's study. Because if those are ought to be normative, those miraculous gifts of speaking in tongues, the word from God, I told the people, please know you, if those things are normative, then that would also be another question.

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If those things are normative, then should we normatively experience them?

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And if we don't, are we really a church? In other words, if that super charismatic side is correct, that speaking in tongues is the second blessing of God, we're going to talk about this in some more detail.

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If those things are right, you're supposed to speak in tongues, you're supposed to have a word from God, and I'm going to be able to explain it.

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That's normative. Or it should. Are we a true church?

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Without God? Could you be monotheists who believe that they haven't ceased yet?

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Tongues, the nonsense, that's a separate issue. I feel in tongues, to me, it's sort of a rubric for the whole thing.

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All those gifts of the first century we see mainly in Acts.

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So it's the miracle work of healing. The benedictine stuff, it's smack in the head. It's slain in the spirit.

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Is that what you're getting at, Dale? Well, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of nonsense.

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Throughout all the nonsense, the speaking in tongues, the slaying in the spirit, you've got a lot of gifts.

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And to throw them all together and say, well, they've ceased, sort of puts two ideas together.

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I mean, gifts... I think

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I know where you're going with this. We're not saying that gifts have ceased. We're not saying that God has ceased working.

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We'll be very specific as we look at this. You don't want to satisfy

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Jim? No. We'll see. We'll see. I was going to ask.

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So we are saying that there's no walking healers anymore.

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Prophecy, you've got to walk around and speak prophecy. That's what we're getting at.

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Peter and John, even their own shadow raised people from death.

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We're not saying that's what we're saying. That's ceased in that sense. In a sense. Yeah, the claim is that the sign gives the cease.

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Not that all gifts, right? Like teaching, administration. First Corinthians 12,

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Romans 12, Ephesians 4. There is a gift. God gives each person.

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Each person has something to bring to the ministry. Do we believe prophecy has ceased?

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Well, we don't know. But we have to be definitive about that. When Connolly or Ryan or I preach, that's a prophetic history.

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We're not telling you anything new, though. We're telling you from the Scripture. And we're telling you truly what was meant to us today.

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That's a prophetic history in that sense. Thank you. I guess

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I'm saying miraculous gifts haven't stopped.

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But I want to make sure we make a distinction between legitimate miraculous gifts and nonsense.

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That at any time throughout history was nonsense or satanic. Okay. We do make that distinction.

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And this will come up today. I think in my notes as we do this. And I apologize, I have this only in my notes.

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I'm going to let her into it. But I have this on screen for you. Yeah. I didn't even freak out with the lengths like Pastor Ryan does.

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So the idea is not that miracles cease. The idea is that miracle works.

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So God is still working miracles. But someone doesn't have the authority anymore to say,

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I'm a miracle worker. I can smack you in the head and cure you of this or that or the other thing.

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Did you get a touch of the devil? Was it

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Peter or Paul? Are we dealing with that sort of thing? Those men, those existences. There's a distinction between a miracle worker and a miracle worker.

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We believe strongly, I believe strongly, I believe strongly that God works miracles today.

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There's a distinction between a miracle and a miracle worker. So again,

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Sam Walter wrote a little book called To Be Continued. The question of To Be Continued is to see how that goes.

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I've looked at this question as well. Wayne Murdoch is the most credible reform writer on this subject.

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He believes in the continuation of gifts. And Sam Walter incredibly uses him to bring forth the credible arguments in favor of continuations.

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We don't believe in it, but Wayne Murdoch is an intellect. He's a highly respectable man.

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He's written some really good stuff about it. We don't agree with him. He's the counterpoint.

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So why this and why now? We're going to do it for a few weeks here.

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One reason is just simply, just to be honest, because Brian is not well for a while.

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That's why he's bringing this forward. But also, has anybody heard of the third wave movement?

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Is that like N .A .R. or something?

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N .A .R.? New Apostolic Reformation? I'm sorry. The latter day brain?

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Oh, oh. It's the third wave of charismatic anti -Pentecostalism.

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Really charismatic. The first wave was the main guys who started in the early 20th century, the 19th century.

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Then you have the Isuza revival. The second wave was the Vineyard movement.

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Do you know the Vineyard? Okay, Vineyard movement. A little secretive, sensitive.

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It was the second wave of charismatic movement. And now today there's a third wave. People are getting caught up in what they call the third wave of Pentecostalism.

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And it's really igniting. That's my question. So we're going to hear more and more.

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And I said, has anybody ever told you God told me to tell you? We had a hand raised. Some of you came in later.

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Many of us have a problem with that. So it's a growing movement. I want to have answers for it. I want us to understand, even if you don't have to answer somebody who's told you, that God told me to tell you something, even if that has not happened to you, why does church believe in cessationism?

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And cessationism is not just a dry, dusty way of looking at things. It's stale.

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It's stale. We do believe in the power of the word of God. We do believe in the living and powerful and working in us, the

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Holy Spirit who's gifted us. We live in God who does miracles, which in this church we've seen. Okay?

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I want you to help us have answers from Scripture. I want you to understand why it's so common now that we form pastors of church.

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We have to do what we have to do. So cessationism does not mean you've got to stop working.

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It means people, by the Spirit, individually or corporately, don't go to miracles.

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Cease to when the last apostle died, when the Holy Spirit was alive and well. What we do hold is that the faith once delivered to us, in 2

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Timothy 3, is the faith of the rule of all practice that we have in the

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Scriptures. We do hold that we serve a risen and living Savior. He was born in 8, 5, 6, 623.

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Today Jesus lives, He reigns, He receives right now. We hold that the word of God is complete, it's powerful, and it's living and active.

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The issue really boils down to whether we have a complete and objective revelation from God regarding salvation and its after -effects.

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How are these being manifested? The continuation is resorted to, even expected of new revelation from God in a few hundred years.

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That's what I started out with. Has anybody ever told you that God told me to tell you something? More than that is the second blessing.

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The second blessing is part of this whole movement that started in the 1900s and is really important.

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The second wave, which was the beginning of the movement, and now we're at the third wave. The second blessing is that you're saved as you speak in tongues.

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I've never heard a tongue actually used in church. Can you describe it to anyone for us?

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Because I've never heard it. I suppose I could give a demonstration. No, I don't want you to speak in tongues.

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Just describe it in English, please. Yeah, I mean, it's just a lot of babbling, depending on the education of the person.

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I really don't believe in miraculous. I think the education of the person, a lot of times, would be a more advanced vocabulary.

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The farmer who would sit behind me in the Pentecostal church I was raised at would always say,

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Chicada, Chicada, Chicada. Just a word. That was the only word he said. Chicada, Chicada, Chicada.

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There's another man who just said, Shambhala, Shambhala, Shambhala. People with more education, they would say more things and so on.

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I should have brought this up earlier, but many years ago, I had an old diesel truck. I brought it to a mechanic in New York.

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I told him, it needs a few things. I wasn't familiar with diesels. He said, OK, I can do this, this, this. He says, you need new injectors.

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I said, OK, you take this. He said, no, you can do it. It's really easy. I said, I have multiple sclerosis. I can't feel my fingers.

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So I don't want to mess with this thing. I want you to do it. I'm going to give you money. You do it. That was about this tall.

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And I have multiple sclerosis. He says, Lord, we repudiate this demon of that man.

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Lord, we tell you you're going to be OK. Lord told me to tell you you're going to be OK. I've been a

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Christian for about nine months. This is totally new for me. I told you to do that.

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It didn't make sense. It didn't say chicken or whatever that was.

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I'm not trying to make fun of you. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to joke either. But he had something that he repeated there, too.

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So here's a key premise that the continuations must make. They agree that there's no more apostles.

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The last apostles probably all died. They agree that the men of that office that were personally set aside by Christ himself are dead.

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It's then held that there's a distinction between miraculously gifted people and the miracles that they performed.

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This is in World Tradition, Chapter 20, in page 12 of this book. A distinction between miraculously gifted people and the miracles that they performed.

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So the church has miracle workers who are not apostles. The continuation is sense.

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And there's a distinction between the person with the gifts and the gifts that they performed. So the

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Bible supports this. Are spiritual gifts separate from the one gifted? That's what's important.

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Are the gifts separate from the ones who's gifted? Look at Ephesians, Chapter 4, in verse 8 to 11.

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This is regarding the gifts that Jesus has given to his church. Look what he has as his distinction.

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Is there a distinction between the gift and the one who works for God? Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, that's

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Jesus, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to them. He's saying he ascended.

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What does it mean that he had also descended in the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all heavens, that he might fulfill all things.

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And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, and so forth, to the church.

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So what is the gift to the church? What's the gift to the church? It's the men themselves that are the gifts.

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It doesn't say that Christ gave a gift to a man to be used in the church. But the apostles, the prophets, and so forth are the gifts.

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So this is a quick excursus. There was a couple here that were members of this church.

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And then they objected that that entire list there had all one temporal context.

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In other words, when it says that the gifts that Christ gave to the church were apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, that all five of those should be extant in the church.

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Now, the concern was that they were having children, that their children would be limited by this church in their development, and in the development of their gifts, especially their growth.

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Their growth might be a prophet. And it says here that your church has prophets. A woman might be an apostle.

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It says here that they're appealing to scripture. But the answer to that really is, and I worked with him quite a bit, and that's when

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I was introduced to Wayne Gruden. When I read his book, I thought it was a spiritual gift to take with the church. It's entirely within the realm of Greek and Hebraic law and language to have less attention to precise chronology than Westerners are accustomed to.

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We like to line things up, one, two, three, four, five. And we take chronology as year one, finger two, finger three, and so forth.

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The Hebraic and Hebrew are almost like that. You get this really clearly if you read the

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Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. You see how they line up chronologically because that's just what they did.

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Then we have John, who has almost no concern for the actual order of things.

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I don't know if that ever states the case. He's less concerned with order, and that's Hebraic and Greek law.

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It's not quite so linear as we are. So the idea here is that you have, from all that's listed, those five gifts of the church.

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They don't all have to be in the church. All of them. It could have been a sequence of two gifts.

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It's not so certain. We're just talking about the establishment of the church. The prophets were until John.

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So if there are other prophets in the church, we would say that the prophets were until John. John was the greatest of them.

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That's what Jesus says in Matthew 11. The prophets were until John. A lot of scholars say

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John was the last, the oldest prophet. Here, you can call him a temporary prophet, the first, whatever that is.

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Jesus says he was the greatest. The end of the prophecy was with him. The prophecy of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah.

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And then the apostles clearly came after that, those who were first.

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The apostles came after the prophets, but they all list their inefficiencies before. They come first, so it's not chronological.

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So it's entirely possible for all to have given the order, just to make this point, that the church was founded by the apostles, and so they come first in that list because the church was built upon their testimony of the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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So evangelists, shepherds, and teachers could all have different time frames from the rest, and for apostles and prophets to have passed as offices, and the rest to remain.

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Here we get a little convoluted sound again. It came off my lips, but what we're saying is that list of the five, apostles, prophets, teachers, shepherds, and so forth,

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Paul is not trying to give us an exact sequence of events. They're not all in the same time.

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He's not concerned with the time frame of a prophet versus an apostle. He's concerned with this.

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What is the church built upon? The prophetic ministry of the prophet of the

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Old Testament, if you will, that led to an understanding of Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his birth, his resurrection, and the apostolic witness, eyewitness of that.

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We're trying to work out whether apostolic gifts are extant to today, which is expected.

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He gave gifts to men, not the church. Could this be...

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Again, I'm not sure I understand the question.

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The gift is a gift to the church, as it says. It doesn't say church. It doesn't say church.

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He gave gifts to men. He teaches, of course, about church and stuff. And he's leading up the whole argument of the...

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He teaches his own church. It's because it's quoting a psalm. The psalm's not going to mention the church.

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He's applying the psalm to the church, but he's not going to change the word men to church.

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Specifically, the idea is the victor, the king, giving the spoils to his troops.

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There are particular people that are the troops. That would be a church. Walter says on page 12 of his book, similarly, in 1

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Corinthians 12, 20 and 29, apostles, prophets, and teachers occur in lists of the gifts.

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He asks all the miracles. And he's asking there whether all of our miracle workers find that the miracle worker...

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excuse me, that the miracle worker was specific to the one who worked it. That is, the miracle cannot be distinguished from the miracle worker.

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The miracle cannot distinguish from the miracle worker. Who are the miracle workers?

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The apostles. The apostles work miracles. And I've got three. As Paul, Peter, and John are going to the temple, and you see the man who's laying there in the temple and he expects all.

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And Peter says, Gold and silver I have not, but if I have, I give to you freely. In the name of Jesus Christ, stand and walk.

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Okay? What's your miracle? The lame man was able to take up his hat and dance.

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He didn't dance. He was the miracle worker. It was Peter. John didn't.

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I'm not saying John was capable or incapable of doing it, but it was Peter. Miracle worker who worked the miracle.

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So the apostles, it's important to understand whether the apostles of the apostolic ministry or all of us is extant to today.

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Charismatics believe and will agree that the last apostle appointed by Jesus died.

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They're gone. It's the apostolic ministry. One of the last draws of my membership at my previous church was when the senior pastor had started from worship on Sunday morning and when the curtain came up, it was on Friday afternoon, and as it developed very dramatically, and from that chair, he told us that God told him,

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God told him that I, and the apostles of the

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Tri -City area, would frequently work in the city. What God told you,

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I guess you would never agree, because you read my Bible, about people who

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God told something and they ignored it. So God told you, and as it lightened very dramatically, he came right behind him.

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There was a son on the high back chair and I was his. And God told him, the son is the prophet of the

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Tri -City area. So God's still working in that way, appointing my dad.

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You know, we have a bit of a problem. At the time,

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I didn't know anything about cessationism or continuationism. I'm not sure that Jesus had spoken when the person was to him, and told him these things.

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And that's the problem. He was an apostle, and he spoke directly for God, and I couldn't do it.

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That's just a quick addendum. His son, who was the prophet in 2018, when

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Jesus came down. So, he was clearing the way to no longer follow the objective standards of the

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Bible. If God was telling him these things, and he was speaking apostolic free, then he should chart his or our own path as to church.

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And that was the third way that was especially configured. So, the question is still about the apostles.

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Are the apostles extant today? This has a lot to do with why we're cessationists, or don't believe in continuationism.

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Would the apostles specially give their commission for their particular task in time?

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I think our answer would be yes. This is key to charismatic and apostolic third -wave movements.

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They understand implicitly the new revelation, which works directly from the Lord to an individual that is not verifiable by the

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Bible, depends on the continuing apostolic offices.

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And the apostles may be there for them. So, first, we need to define apostles.

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And what it is, what it means. Apostle comes from apostolo.

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Apostolo, which means sent. This is just a Greek word. Sent, or sent one. As an apostle, as an office of them.

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It would be sent. Jesus could send, and they would use that word as an office of the apostle that can only belong to them for certain qualifications.

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They can't be met today. What are the qualifications of an apostle, a true apostle?

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They actually saw the risen Jesus. That's it. They actually saw the risen

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Jesus. In Acts chapter 1 verse 21 -22, when the 11 apostles crucified

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Jesus and killed themselves under Peter's direction, they looked to replace

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Jesus. So one of the men Peter says, so one of the men who has accompanied us during all the times of the

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Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, and to the day he was taken up from us, one of these men must become with us always in Jesus' resurrection.

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Now, did anyone see Jesus' resurrection other than the apostles?

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Yeah. A lot of people did. Paul says that it's 500 people who are still alive.

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He says, 500 people. You know them, they're your friends, they're your neighbors, they're your co -workers. They saw the risen

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Jesus. There were people who were disciples who walked in Jesus, and who probably were there at the cross, like His mother

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Mary was, and saw Him die, and saw His resurrected self later. Why weren't they all apostles?

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Another key to the 1st century apostles, not only as Emanuel says, rightly, that they can give witness to the resurrected

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Lord, but appointed by the Lord.

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John 15, 26 -27, Jesus says, when the helper comes, means the Holy Spirit, whom

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I will send to you from the Father as the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me, and you will also bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

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The beginning is important. The Spirit was not exclusively theirs.

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Again, it happens to all believers. Jesus is declaring, those who have been, those who have come, finally, 1st

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John 1. That which was from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon, and touched with our hands, and so forth, those are apostles.

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Now, you and I can bear witness to the resurrection, can we not? Because God has given us faith, and we believe what the

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Scriptures say about Jesus Christ, because the Spirit is witness to us, to bear witness to the truth of the resurrection.

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Can any of us say that we heard Jesus speak, we saw him with our own eyes, we looked upon him, we touched him with our hands?

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He's God. He's in heaven. Walton points out, I think he's pretty gracious in page 23 of the book, that most continuations do not lay claim to being apostles of Christ in the formal sense.

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I don't mean that they're determinants of God as Jesus, like the convent has, because he was raised in that way. That is a new revelation that does depend upon prophetic authors, which ended with John according to Jesus, or apostolic apostles, to be our arguments.

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So, the New Testament apostle had to be a witness, not eyewitness, to Jesus' resurrection and was personally appointed by Jesus.

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Now, this is pretty easy proof. Matthew 10, 1 through 4, and he called to him his twelve disciples, and he gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, to clear every disease and every affliction.

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The names of the twelve apostles are these. First Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew, who was called Robert, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother,

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Philip, and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector, James, the son of Alphaeus, that is,

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Simon the Zealot, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. They had the disciples. There were many others who were called disciples of Scripture who walked with him.

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Probably the front of the larger group of just the twelve were called up to twelve, and the ones he named personally, 613, with one here in the front, that's also

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Paul. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, 7, and then Jesus appeared to James, and he called all the apostles, and that's

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Paul to me, as one of the time they were born. Also, Paul, by his own position, is called the

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Apostle, but the testimony of Jesus, of the inherence of his apostolic position, is confirmed by the other apostles, as Acts chapter 9, verse 26.

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What we're getting at here, just to be sure we understand, the Apostolic Apostles wasn't there.

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It was for, eye -witnessed to Jesus' life, his death, his resurrection, and, on top of that, there were others who didn't make that testimony, but they saw him.

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It's easy to read synoptic gospels. On top of that, he went personally by Jesus.

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Okay? The Apostolic Apostles was confirmed by Marius.

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Okay? It was confirmed by Marius.

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I'll just run through Acts, and read these kind of quickly. And Paul came upon every soul,

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Acts 2 -43, and many wondrous signs were being done through the apostles. And the great power of the apostles were given at their testimony to the resurrection of the

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Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Acts chapter 5, and many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles.

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And Acts chapter 4, as I just read forward, So, what do we have here?

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We read the Acts of Marius. I don't know whether Marius is our normative church.

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And then, it was the apostles' hands that were the means of God's use for all of the confirmed miracles.

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In the evangelists, Stephen, who was one of the seven deacons in Acts chapter 6, they also did signs and wonders that confirmed their messages about Jesus' resurrection.

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And I've got a long quote coming out of him, but for the sake of time, I'm not going to read it. There were two that did miracles that were not specifically appointed apostles.

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A real reason for that, we want to know in the reference we're having. We might note that there are no further records of non -apostolic miracles in Acts.

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Only those two. Stephen and the evangelist

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Philip. 2 Corinthians 2 .12

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The signs of the true apostle according to you, the multiplications of signs and wonders my mighty works.

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Finally, we'll alter to chapter 3 in my two passages for a historically limited apostolic.

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We're working on the apostles. We're talking about whether that apostolic office ended in the first century.

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What was for it? What's normative for us today? Should we expect that office to continue and those miraculous gifts to be counter -normative here?

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Let me just give you, Walter says that he's making this case for that apostolic office to have been built.

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Jesus' church had been built. Something was done.

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The church had been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief apostle.

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Matthew 16 .18 I also say to you, Peter, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not be broken at all.

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The first rock is Peter's confession of Jesus Christ the son of God. Revelation 21 .14

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And all the city had twelve foundations and on them twelve names of twelve apostles above them.

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So all these are indicating the foundation was done. It's completely Jesus' turn.

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They actively, powerfully built this church today. It's a continuing process but the foundation is done.

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What's important about that? Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. How does that help us in this question that we're trying to develop as to what's important to the church?

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Are you kind of hinting that the foundation is laid and can't be laid again? No foundation is laid but Jesus Christ.

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Who preached Jesus Christ? The prophets preached his coming and the apostles preached his completion.

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That's the foundation that's laid. That's why we're so focused on the faith of the twelve deliverance saints which is scripture.

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It gives us that foundation. It tells us what we're built upon. He can't go any further than that.

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Jesus is building the church and it is continuous. It's active. I would argue a powerful activity.

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He's giving it to God right now. But the church that's being built has to be consistent with that foundation that's been laid.

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So only the men who are named apostles, persons by Jesus Christ can satisfy all the conditions of an apostle.

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That's pretty clear. Therefore, we accept no new revelation purportedly from God himself that claims to be something other than scripture that claims a knowledge or insight that scripture cannot confirm that in any way contradicts or adds to scripture.

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Indeed, men and women of the church are speaking for a new revelation from God. Woe to us if we don't believe it.

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But if it's not from God, woe to them if we're claiming that it is. Has anybody read

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Rudin's book, The Continuum of Gifts into Church? It's one for the conference they had years ago that talked about this.

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I can't find it. When I moved out of the office here when

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Brian was hired, I just can't find it. It's disorganized.

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Rudin is a continuationist. He believes that apostolic giftedness exists in the church today.

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And he doesn't make that distinction between miracle and miracle -working. It's an interesting thing that he does.

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I wish I had the book, if the attribution really should.

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The prophecies in the church. What does 1 Corinthians 14 talk about when someone is speaking in tongues and someone is making a prophetic word and others have to interpret it.

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You have to interpret it. It's interesting what he does with that. It's this idea that God is speaking through you.

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God told me to tell you. That's what he does.

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I'm really hard against his books. I think I'm missing it.

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I have a lot of respect for him. When a person says

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God told me to tell you or God Rudin calls it an under -profession from the

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Holy Spirit. He's giving you an under -profession. It's an interesting thing to think about.

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I've got to look at Jeremiah. Doesn't really name him. Hosea. God gave him words.

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God told him to speak. It gives you an impression. The interpreters then discern the accuracy or the applicability.

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As it goes from person who's getting that prophetic word to one or two interpreters and then to church.

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You get to decide whether or not to constitute. Anything wrong with that?

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If you get to decide then you're basically bypassing hermeneutics. Bypassing what?

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Bypassing hermeneutics. Bypassing hermeneutics. It's too subjective.

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I've alluded to this 10 times in my route. I start speaking in his tongue or I have a prophetic word and John Davis and Dale come and they hear it and they help interpret it and they make sense of it to you and then you hear it and you sit with your thoughts.

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You're saying it's not safe to ignore actual prophecy from the Lord for us. God told you to be in a society whether you're going to follow

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God or not. It's running the conflict of the authority of God's word which cannot be denied and how you can bring it into church going through a person who's on top of the scripture of the authority.

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It's an interesting model that Wayne Broody gets into. I have a lot of respect for him.

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I've read a lot of his works. I refer to him a lot. I'm not throwing him under the bus or anything like that but it's an interesting thing to have a continuing prophetic ministry that's

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God speaking through and holding the authority of God's word and yet it's coming through a person as the scripture is complete so we can't add to it.

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You see the conflict that he gets into here? The first hurdle in determining whether cessationism is correct or continuationism is incorrect.

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The first hurdle, this is all we're going to do today but we're going to put this somewhere next week.

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We're going to have a slide to make it more easy to follow through. Is apostolic ministry does it continue today?

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Are we working miracles in the same way today? Is it to be normative in the church? Can someone speak from God to others in the other professions?

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Our answer to all this would be no. I would say that it wasn't just the apostolic office that you've been here to re -ended in my last apostle.

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But also the way that God works his miracles. Maybe you can repeat what's the muddling of wavering?

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Can you repeat what's the muddling of wavering? That the scripture is complete and he would hold this and yet he wants to hold fast the continuation of the gifts the apostolic gifts in the church.

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Which means that individuals can be spoken to by God and speak to you in God's name.

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God gave me a word for you. He calls it an impression. God gives you an impression that then the one or two others interpret it and make sure it's right and then deliver it to the church.

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But because it's only an impression then you as an individual will appear to say okay this doesn't apply to me.

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And that's how he gets around adding to scripture. And yet having these words, these impressions that don't exactly agree with scripture.

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So it's a quasi form of extra -biblical revelation? Yes. Quasi is a good way to describe it.

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It's quasi but it allows him, I don't think successfully, but it allows him to say scripture is complete and I'm not adding to scripture and yet God is speaking through me to you.

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And it doesn't necessarily have to be my description. It's the one I heard where a person told me that she actually went to a person

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I think it was an airport and said God told me to tell you that your pregnancy is going to be okay.

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I have no idea whether the pregnancy was okay or not. It was a long time ago.

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Okay but I have no problem with that. If God tells me something then that doesn't mean that I'm adding to scripture.

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You have to say no if God whispers in your ear then we all need to take our

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Bibles out and write it in that God spoke this. I don't believe that.

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The scriptures are complete but if God wants to speak to someone I don't think that's a

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I would argue a little bit if God does with what we have to have something that specific and that insightful to take beyond scripture.

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I'd say the inconsistency isn't that scripture never says anywhere that everything that's promised must be recorded.

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Obviously there's a lot of promises that aren't recorded but inconsistency is what you have in Gertrude's model is something very different than Biblical prophecy.

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It's not verbally it's not verbal inspiration where the words themselves are inspired it's just inspiration without the verbal and then the verbal part is uninspired because it's me expressing that inspiration that I have.

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Like it says at the end of 2 Peter 1 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man but men spoke for God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. You know that describes the words themselves being inspired and this model where you're getting some inspiration but then your words aren't inspired it's something very different.

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Yeah, yeah. I write it in two because it's a separate work. It has the oil that's been dispelled it's been affected and the prophet tells him not to do it.

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It's like this person going up to a stranger and telling God to give it to me in a prayer because he's going to be okay. Because here we have a prophet of God whose works and his words are confirmed in history that they actually occur and he goes to the king and says you're going to live

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And then it brings about that healing, not some repression and not something that can't be proved later.

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But then in history, Hezekiah holds on to the oil and he's healed.

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I've read a lot about what that oil could have been, but apparently it's just a dead thing.

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So there is a difference, it's not the same. It's just, is it going to be spoken, is it going to be written down?

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I've often heard people speak of the sufficiency of Scripture. And is there a good verse point to on that?

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All Scripture is breathed out by God to 2 Timothy 3 .16. And it is,

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I was honored for a scripture that has been totally memorized. Sorry, my

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Bible doesn't have a second

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Timothy, I'm sorry. Look at this.

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All Scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, and be good for every good work.

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As far as, you know, can you go up to a person and God told him to tell you that your presidency is going to be okay, or anything like that, you would have, oh,

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Ecclesiastes 4. Where we're speaking words according to Scripture that are good for necessary edification.

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Scripture gives us the guidelines, the bounties for what is necessary, what is edifying.

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I've heard that from apostles with a capital

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A, as they say, they do little scare quotes with that. What they mean is the apostles in the first century who lived and were appointed by Christ.

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And then they make it a small a, so that they don't violate Scripture, and we still have apostles today.

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So if I'm an apostle, like my pastor, he made himself the apostle of Tri -City area. I'm an apostle, he might have used a small a.

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In order to confirm that he believes that if the apostles were appointed by Jesus Christ 2 ,000 years ago, or were a special group, then the apostolic process continued.

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I've heard that before. We're going to continue this, we're going to continue this for a few more weeks.

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We've got a million copies of slides, and we're going to get into this some more. The first issue, though, was the apostolic process.

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And as we go, we're going to see more about this idea of the miracle versus the miracle worker.

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And how those two distinguish the most important. Remember, too, as we go through this, we're arguing for stationism.

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And you'll often hear, okay, so you believe that God stopped working. That's the only conclusion.

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No, it's not the only conclusion. We believe that God is working today, he's working in miraculous ways.

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We've prayed for healing in this place, and we've known healing in this place.

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Not by me, or calmly, or any of you touching the person. And through, you know, me as a miracle worker.

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God, by spirit, doing it in answer to our prayers. So remember this, it's really important that by being cessationists, we're not saying

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God stopped. And that God doesn't do miraculous things. Last comments or questions?

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I've got a couple of comments. Did you end up talking about 2 Peter 1? I think

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I went into it. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, anyone who wants to study more like the requirements of an apostle, the last section of 2

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Peter 1 is really good. Where Peter says, you know, we're not following cleverly by this, but we were eyewitnesses of his glory.

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And then, the other thing, and I feel like someone who's hostile to the idea that apostles don't continue, someone wouldn't find this persuasive.

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But something I would add to the requirements is not just having seen Jesus be sent by him, but actually being taught by Jesus.

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And I think we can see that from Acts 1 where it said that we need to pick someone who's been with us from the beginning.

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Not just from the end, but from the beginning. And then, with Paul, you even see that he, in Galatians 1, it says,

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Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.

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Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained there for fifteen days. So, Paul, in pointing out that his apostleship is real, you know, that his gospel is not coming from man but from God, Paul points out that he went away for three years.

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Now, what was that three years for, if not to be taught by Jesus? Now, you know, there's not a whole lot written about that, but I do think every single one of the apostles was taught by Jesus for three years.

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And the idea that you could just get some little vision to be sent by Jesus without having actually been discipled by him for years is not in line with what we see of the apostles of the

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New Testament. The woman who was going to bring me up to Tonga, I stopped her, so I don't have a tongue.

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The guy who promised me that God would answer to the woman who disclosed to me that he was going to give me that demon, twenty -something years later,

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I still had it in me. A little louder.

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I have one verse that I'm very, um... Recently, it appeared to James.

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Because it says that he appeared to the Twelve, and then to James, and then to the apostles.

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Did he appear to them again? I'm not saying, but it's like...

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Yeah. For I have delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the

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Scriptures, that he was buried there, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, then to the

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Twelve, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, we talked about that earlier, though some have fallen asleep, then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

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Who does that mean? All the apostles. Is that like when you said, he appeared to them again? Yeah. This was simply,

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I would say so. If a certain sort of... Dozens and dozens of apostles,

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I mean, did Luke and Matthew make it clear that he named Twelve? That doesn't include

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Paul, right? No, no. No, he's in the next verse.

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That's Twelve. Last of all, still more than a time before, he also appeared to name, that's

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Damascus, but I think prior to that, Damascus was referred to in that verse, is immediately after their resurrection.

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Colleen, do you know how long it was after their resurrection that Paul was converted? A couple of years later?

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Yeah. And again, like I said at the very beginning, the

01:00:00

Greek condition is not necessarily so linear or chronological as ours is.

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Any last thoughts or questions? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day's meeting with us.

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And I pray that you continue with us and we continue with you in worship. And Jesus Christ, Christ of the

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Father, that you would be brought closer to us physically, that you would work these things in us by your