The King's Hall - Cessationism？

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00:00:56.600 while many christians were encouraged to see a president in donald j trump who was far more

00:01:07.900 favorable to the christian faith than his predecessors more than a few of us have been

00:01:12.240 concerned by the appointment of one of the worst women ever paula white a female pastor to the

00:01:18.600 role of spiritual advisor to the president representing the charismania of recent church

00:01:24.040 movements. According to Wikipedia, White is, quote, an American pastor, author, spiritual

00:01:29.980 advisor, and televangelist. She has written several books and is a leader in the charismatic

00:01:34.720 movement. White is also known for her roles in President Trump's two presidential administrations.

00:01:40.800 White served as a pastor of Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Florida,

00:01:45.520 a church she co-founded with her then-husband, Randy White, in 1991. From 2011 until May 2019,

00:01:54.040 White was senior pastor of New Destiny Christian Center in Apopka, Florida, end quote.

00:02:00.320 With a flair for the dramatic, White has said that when she walks on White House grounds,

00:02:05.380 God walks on White House grounds.

00:02:07.480 She's also said that to oppose Donald Trump would be to oppose God.

00:02:11.640 Take a listen to this brief compilation put together by NowThis.

00:02:16.120 Wherever I go, God rules.

00:02:19.680 When I walk on White House grounds, God walks on White House grounds.

00:02:24.040 I had every right and authority to declare the White House as holy ground

00:02:28.340 because I was standing there, and where I stand is holy.

00:02:32.460 To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God, and I won't do that.

00:02:38.100 We are in a spiritual war right now.

00:02:40.280 Let every demonic network that has aligned itself against the purpose,

00:02:45.040 against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken, let it be torn down in the name of Jesus.

00:02:50.060 You want me to tell you what my thoughts are?

00:02:52.320 The thoughts of the King of Kings.

00:02:54.020 The thoughts of the Lord of Lords.

00:02:55.660 I'm downloading heaven.

00:03:01.320 I kind of know I'm a little bit cute, all right?

00:03:07.880 I am Paula who is pretty.

00:03:10.980 Well, maybe I'm not going to be pretty when I'm 90 years old.

00:03:13.520 Here's this former messed up Mississippi girl.

00:03:16.300 Lived in a trailer that they called trailer trash.

00:03:19.220 Daddy committed suicide, got pregnant out of wedlock, been married, been divorced, not just once, you know, twice.

00:03:27.200 People go, well, how'd you become the spiritual advisor of the president?

00:03:29.920 We'll get to that later.

00:03:31.160 It's all in there.

00:03:32.000 Michael Jackson, Kid Rock, the president.

00:03:34.160 It's all in there.

00:03:35.000 All right.

00:03:35.580 Thank you, Paula.

00:03:36.260 What a great job you do.

00:03:37.420 The evangelicals.

00:03:39.140 I hear we're more popular than ever with evangelicals.

00:03:42.000 You're the only one.

00:03:42.720 And she'll tell the truth.

00:03:43.740 She'll only tell the truth.

00:03:44.960 Southern California is looking at, well, there's already law.

00:03:47.600 is passed through the governor that says the Bible is a book of hate speech and to ban the

00:03:52.360 sale of it. Snapchat was created as the largest human trafficking because the greatest people

00:03:58.860 on there were human traffickers because the FBI and because intelligence could not do it because

00:04:03.660 it's live and it's real time and they can track your kid in less than a second and take them.

00:04:08.460 There's a department of treasury in heaven that God is watching over everything you do

00:04:14.180 And you are storing up eternal treasure that will go so far beyond, I think, that we can even begin to imagine.

00:04:21.260 You need to send in $3,500.

00:04:23.320 You need to send in $35,000.

00:04:25.440 You need to send in that $100,000 check.

00:04:27.840 If you do not write that P.O. box and you do not call that toll-free number and you do not become a ministry of sustainer, you will never see sustainment in your life.

00:04:36.200 And your dream will die.

00:04:37.600 Your call will die.

00:04:38.760 Here he is, the nominee.

00:04:41.000 That has to be providence.

00:04:42.540 That has to be the hand of God.

00:04:44.180 my opinion and any tongue that rises against him will be condemned according to the word of god

00:04:48.640 it is god that raises up a king it is god that sets one down and so when you fight against the

00:04:53.560 plan of god you're fighting against the hand of god if we get two more we will be able to overturn

00:04:59.180 demonic laws and decrees that has held this nation in captivity i can tell you that our

00:05:05.440 president is doing absolutely phenomenal that he is in great health every way thank you for your

00:05:13.260 Courageous and bold stand for religious liberty and for your timeless service to all Americans.

00:05:19.180 We appreciate the price that you have paid to walk in the high calling.

00:05:24.780 History will record the greatness that you have brought for generations.

00:05:29.400 And so you sit back and go, oh, yeah, she crazy.

00:05:32.460 She up there in the White House praying.

00:05:35.300 You better believe I'm praying.

00:05:36.500 You better believe I'm up there saying in the name of Jesus.

00:05:39.700 You better believe that I'm walking around those parameters saying, I lift this up and I dedicate every ounce of this place as holy ground.

00:05:48.420 I release angels right now in the Holy Spirit and walls of fire.

00:05:52.100 I burn up every demonic altar in the name of Jesus and I call it to crumple.

00:06:00.260 How do we get to this point in American Christianity?

00:06:07.680 where female televangelists are spouting nonsense

00:06:10.800 but have access to the highest political office in the nation.

00:06:15.380 It's worth exploring some of the historical events

00:06:17.580 that gave rise to this newfound charismania.

00:06:20.800 In the 1700s, America saw what is now called the Great Awakening,

00:06:25.140 a movement that stressed true conversion and evangelism.

00:06:29.080 It was led by men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield,

00:06:32.480 and a lot of their desire was good, actually,

00:06:34.740 basically emphasizing the importance of real personal faith and not just being content with

00:06:40.380 the outward and external forms of religion. But this led to the Second Great Awakening in the

00:06:45.820 1800s with Charles Finney and the rise of revivalism. We spoke at length about this

00:06:51.380 movement in the first season of the King's Hall, but suffice it to say here that this movement

00:06:55.820 became extremely emotionalistic and manipulative with protracted and frenzied camp meetings,

00:07:01.340 camp revivals, mass conversions, and more. Revivalism led to the decline of sound reform

00:07:07.600 doctrine and gave birth to some particularly pernicious social and political movements

00:07:12.440 ranging from temperance to abolitionism to women's rights movements and more.

00:07:17.880 Fast forward to the 20th century and we get the Pentecostal movement with a revival of tongue

00:07:23.360 speaking, the Azusa Street Revival, and now a focus on all sorts of wild and historically novel

00:07:29.460 doctrinal ideas like a new baptism of the Spirit, a new Pentecost, etc. All of this led to the

00:07:36.420 charismatic so-called renewal of the 1960s and 70s, the Jesus movement, and everything from

00:07:43.020 fairly restrained charismatic churches like Calvary Chapel to wildly unhinged groups like

00:07:48.700 what you just heard in that prosperity gospel televangelist lady, and churches where you have

00:07:53.500 to speak in tongues to even be considered a Christian. Now, the fruit of these movements

00:07:57.940 has been deep harm to the Christian church,

00:08:00.940 with much of the harm converging on the fact

00:08:03.600 that these movements fundamentally taught Christians to doubt.

00:08:07.240 Unless you have a highly emotional experience of salvation

00:08:10.240 and then constant subsequent emotional experiences after salvation,

00:08:15.200 are you really even converted?

00:08:17.300 Are you really even a Christian?

00:08:19.160 And unless you speak in tongues and all the rest of it,

00:08:21.920 do you really have the second blessing,

00:08:24.440 the second baptism, the Spirit of God in you at all?

00:08:27.340 Are you really converted? And so, lots of people did one of two things in response.

00:08:33.640 One, they simply apostatized. Well, I guess I'm not a Christian. I don't speak in tongues,

00:08:38.220 and I genuinely don't feel super emotional about Jesus all the time. Oh well. Or two,

00:08:44.000 they faked stuff. Faked emotion, worked themselves up into a frenzy, faked spiritual gifts, etc.

00:08:51.200 Now, both of these are terrible, horrible, pernicious results of a fundamentally unsound

00:08:56.920 movement. Against all of this, here's my point. When the Spirit is present, and I mean for sure,

00:09:02.580 what do you see? What does the Bible actually teach us to think about this? Well, two things

00:09:07.780 arrive with the Spirit guaranteed. One, an intense focus on and belief in Christ as our Savior and

00:09:14.120 Redeemer. And two, a love for one another in the church. And that's why we decided to take an

00:09:20.800 episode of the King's Hall to talk about these issues. Why it's important for us to be clear

00:09:25.300 about this issue of what theologians call cessationism against the revivalism and

00:09:30.300 charismania of recent times. As with many other modern errors, what we need to do is go back to

00:09:35.680 the old paths and believe the old things again. And one thing that happens when you do this,

00:09:40.860 maybe surprisingly to you, is that you find that our spiritual forefathers, while they were largely

00:09:46.040 cessationists, were nonetheless earnest for the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit in their

00:09:51.460 lives. The reformed cessationist view doesn't excise the spirit from the life of the believer

00:09:56.960 today, not by a long shot. In fact, our spiritual forefathers strongly affirmed the ongoing

00:10:03.000 supernatural work of the spirit in the church, even in ways that, again, might surprise you.

00:10:08.700 And so by the end of this episode, we do hope that you land where the reformers and puritans

00:10:12.820 and Westminster divines landed because we think they were biblically and doctrinally correct.

00:10:18.800 Theirs is the kind of cessationism we would have you hold that we hold,

00:10:22.820 one which guards the flank from the errors of Pentecostalism,

00:10:26.760 even as it also embraces the leading and ministry of the Spirit in our midst

00:10:31.120 in an ongoing and vital way.

00:10:34.240 Garnett Howard, one of the leading scholars on the topic of cessationism,

00:10:38.120 was right when he wrote that,

00:10:40.600 quote,

00:10:40.900 Many of the authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith

00:10:43.540 accepted that prophecy continued in their time.

00:10:46.280 And a number of them apparently believed that disclosure of God's will through dreams, visions, and angelic communication remained possible, end quote.

00:10:55.020 To cite Ryan Denton, a modern-day Presbyterian minister who's written pretty extensively and helpfully on this issue,

00:11:01.480 let me read you an extended quotation from a piece that he wrote at Reformation21.org.

00:11:07.500 It has been well documented that many of the Westminster divines believed that dreams, angelic visitations, and prophetic impulses and motions

00:11:15.820 can all still have a role in the ordinary lives of Christians.

00:11:19.940 John Owen is representative when he states,

00:11:22.540 to say God does not or may not send his angels to any of his saints

00:11:26.220 to communicate his mind to them as to some particulars of their duty

00:11:30.160 according to his word or to foreshadow to them his own approaching work

00:11:33.820 seems to unwarrantably limit the Holy One of Israel.

00:11:37.720 William Bridge, a Westminster divine, said,

00:11:40.140 But you will say, may not God speak by extraordinary visions and revelations

00:11:45.180 in these days of ours? Yes, without all doubt, he may. God is not to be limited. He may speak

00:11:51.260 in what way he pleases. Richard Baxter agreed with both Owen and Bridge, but expressed his

00:11:56.900 views more candidly than either. It is possible that God may make new revelations to particular

00:12:02.540 persons about their duties, events, or matters of fact, in subordination to scripture, either by

00:12:08.380 inspiration, vision, apparition, or voice. Cotton Mather said about his grandpa,

00:12:14.500 Increase Mather did no less than three times as the year 1678 was coming on,

00:12:20.040 very publicly declare that he was verily persuaded a very mortal disease would shortly break in,

00:12:25.880 and the slain of the Lord would be many. Some of his friends were troubled at him for it,

00:12:29.940 but when the year 1678 was come on, we saw the mortal disease, the smallpox broke in.

00:12:35.860 George Gillespie, another Westminster divine, said that John Knox, John Welsh, Robert Bruce, and others were

00:12:42.680 Perhaps the most convincing of all came from John Flavel and Samuel Rutherford,

00:13:01.960 both prominent ministers in the 17th century.

00:13:05.520 What do we make of reports such as John Flavel's dreams, for instance?

00:13:08.900 Mr. Flavel replied that he expected much more because of his dream the night before,

00:13:13.180 adding that when he had such representations made to him in his sleep,

00:13:17.300 they seldom or never failed.

00:13:19.580 Accordingly, they were overtaken by a dreadful tempest.

00:13:22.980 Or what about Rutherford's report of the prophetical insight of men like John Knox and Jan Hus,

00:13:28.080 the latter apparently predicting both the rise of Luther and the time of his rising?

00:13:32.960 Considering Rutherford's substantial role in the Westminster Assembly, it's worth giving in full.

00:13:38.220 There is a third revelation of some particular men who have foretold things to come,

00:13:43.180 even since the ceasing of the canon, as John Hus, Wycliffe, Luther have foretold things to come,

00:13:49.180 and they certainly fell out. And in our nation of Scotland, M. George Wishart foretold that

00:13:54.440 Cardinal Beaton should not come out alive at the gates of the castle of St. Andrews,

00:13:59.100 but that he should die a shameful death.

00:14:01.560 And he was hanged over the window that he did look out when he saw the man of God burnt.

00:14:06.900 Mr. Knox prophesied of the hanging of the Lord of Grange.

00:14:10.280 Mr. John Davidson uttered prophecies known to many of the kingdom,

00:14:13.620 and diverse preachers in England have done the like.

00:14:17.200 Denton then concludes,

00:14:18.700 This is why the Westminster Divines who gave us the section on the cessation of certain types of revelation

00:14:23.800 also wrote Westminster Confession of Faith 5.3.

00:14:27.560 God, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means,

00:14:32.340 yet is free to work without, above, and against them at his pleasure.

00:14:37.200 If certain cultures and churches err on the side of enthusiasm, fanaticism, and hyper-gullibility,

00:14:43.640 others fall into the ditch of materialism and hyper-skepticism.

00:14:47.880 For many of our churches in the West, especially the cessationist ones,

00:14:51.380 this seems to be the situation we find ourselves in at present."

00:14:54.560 end quote. Now we believe Denton is right in his assessment, which is why in our own congregation

00:15:00.960 here in Ogden, we've so strongly emphasized the essential importance that we as a people

00:15:06.060 cultivate a love for and deep desire for the work of the Spirit in our midst. We live in a

00:15:11.420 supernatural world, not just a natural world. God is at work and so is Satan. God is at work

00:15:17.760 and so are the demons. The world is natural and it is supernatural, both. We must fight and live

00:15:24.980 and believe and profess as if this is so, because it is. So let me end this cold open by pointing

00:15:30.680 at one of the more consistent exhortations from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. To paraphrase,

00:15:36.320 we could say something like this, brothers and sisters, cultivate a deep desire to experience

00:15:41.860 the working of the Holy Spirit in your life. Pray earnestly for the Spirit's leading, power,

00:15:46.700 help, and ministry, and do not quench the Spirit. Understand that in doing so, the chief thing you're

00:15:52.600 asking for is faith in Christ and love for your brothers and sisters. In this episode of the

00:15:57.980 King's Hall Podcast, we'll work through these things in the hope of producing just that,

00:16:03.080 Christian love, the chief fruit of the Holy Spirit of God, and faith in Christ.

00:16:07.940 The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men rule well and win the world.

00:16:16.700 Well, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall Podcast.

00:16:22.780 I'm one of your hosts, Eric Kahn, joined by the very cut, Brian Silvey.

00:16:28.860 Yes.

00:16:29.420 Pastor.

00:16:30.680 I mean, pastor.

00:16:31.740 We are a musician, artist.

00:16:34.280 Cutting extraordinaire.

00:16:36.000 Philanthropist, practically.

00:16:40.340 Aspiring philanthropist.

00:16:41.740 No, no.

00:16:42.500 I need the album to go triple platinum and I could be more of a non-aspiring.

00:16:46.160 you once gave me a golf ball. That's true. So that's like philanthropy. Yeah, that's a good

00:16:51.960 point. We are here. We are hungry. Okay. You've been hungry since November, November 30th is when

00:16:58.620 the hunger began. It continues today here, week 23 of the cut. So it's good to be here with you,

00:17:03.360 Eric. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I appreciate that introduction. Yeah, absolutely.

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00:19:36.520 slash ncp to book a strategy call the one thing is brian i've been thinking we might need a

00:19:43.820 spiritual advisor for our team i can see where this is going and i'm gonna i'm gonna politely

00:19:50.020 decline i'm gonna politely decline inviting paula white to be our spiritual advisor first of all i

00:19:54.700 don't think we could get her secondly if we could then i would question a lot of things about us

00:20:00.440 and third she's a terrible person who may have a demon i don't know if you know this like her

00:20:07.560 husband was like in the band journey no yeah which one hasn't she had like several well it's

00:20:14.840 kind of i couldn't even follow but yeah like i think it's who she's married to now and trump

00:20:21.560 and i read the wikipedia entry and it was like her and her then husband from journey started this

00:20:29.280 church together because they have similar faith stories and then they they stopped believing

00:20:34.460 that no they never stopped believing they just were believing in the wrong things okay money

00:20:41.020 getting money from gullible christians wow okay that yeah paula white is a perfect example of

00:20:47.200 why this episode needed to exist and the fact that that paula white is the spiritual advisor

00:20:52.420 to the president of the united states of america the most powerful man on planet earth

00:20:58.500 yeah I was gonna ask you just right off the top like why do you think like I mean so many of us

00:21:05.880 in the reformed world we would look at someone like Paula White and we're like what a joke

00:21:08.940 but clearly people on the national level like they take people like this seriously yeah and so

00:21:14.860 like why what's the appeal I mean it's because maybe it's because when she walks on White House

00:21:23.840 grounds god god walks and the thing is god is omnipresent so like it's one of those things

00:21:30.840 you can say that is technically kind of true no matter who's walking where in the sense that

00:21:39.120 he's omnipresent and so is everywhere um i remember joyce meyer by the way she was talking about the

00:21:45.460 oh i think it's the psalms right when it's talking about like we're you are the sons of gods

00:21:50.260 and she like went into this whole extrapolation of like, basically you're God. Yeah. Like,

00:21:55.600 let me, let me get to the bottom line here. You're a guy. This means that I am, I am God.

00:22:00.100 And you're like, no, it actually doesn't. Okay. I do think that this is a, in some ways it's an

00:22:05.460 indictment really in two directions. Yeah. One of the gullibility and shallow nature of pop

00:22:11.920 evangelicalism as it is dominant in our country. Um, and in the West we have, so that's an

00:22:17.920 indictment right there. But in another direction, it is an indictment of conservative, doctrinally

00:22:25.080 rich, historically rooted Christianity in the sense that we have allowed ourselves for generations

00:22:33.280 to become disconnected from God's activity in the here and now, from applying the text of

00:22:41.320 scripture in ways that actually is relevant to the lives of the ordinary person, the course of

00:22:45.900 nations, politics, all of these different issues that are very important and definitely

00:22:50.540 dealt with in scripture and ought to be taken up by Christians.

00:22:53.940 I think that there has been a strong line or strain of reformed Protestantism that has

00:23:01.320 allowed itself to become pietistic and allowed itself to lose the rich heritage of things

00:23:08.700 like the political theology and theory of our Christian forefathers and their engagement

00:23:13.080 with these things and reduce the christian faith to something that just exists between our ears

00:23:18.760 doesn't really make much contact with the real world and if you try to say that it does you're

00:23:24.040 a legalist so really to me paula white is an indictment of both of those things at the same

00:23:29.660 time do you think part of it on the and we'll get into this but uh maybe this is more on like

00:23:34.780 potentially the cessationist or i i think the term was hyper cessationist ditch um ryan didn't

00:23:41.460 and other people have talked about you've talked about it recently too do you think it's because

00:23:45.820 of materialism or at least that's part of it definitely because it seems like in our culture

00:23:51.660 this has been sort of the phenomenon even with haunted cosmos the world is not just stuff right

00:23:57.140 and i i feel like most of my life we were kind of trained to think that it was yeah functionally

00:24:03.560 even though they're like oh no we don't believe in evolution we believe in creation there was that

00:24:08.780 christian vibe going on but i i remember even years ago like a more charismatic lady asking me

00:24:14.860 she was like like do you believe god answers prayer and it made me think like wow if that's

00:24:20.240 how we're coming across as reform people because as you read in the cold open the reform guys

00:24:25.800 obviously believe that oh yeah we we have this it's funny because the pietistic strain of

00:24:32.240 christianity i'm talking about it can tend to default to this like whoa whoa whoa stop with

00:24:37.340 all of this applicational political stuff. And like, that's all worldliness and muscular

00:24:41.320 Christianity. It's all cringe. And don't you know that we wrestle not with flesh and blood,

00:24:46.260 but with powers and principalities in heavenly places. And then you're like, oh, okay, let me

00:24:49.920 believe that. And then start living as if that is true. And all of a sudden I'm like, let me pray

00:24:54.700 as a pastor, for example, for the unction of the Holy spirit going into the pulpit. Let me ask that

00:24:59.400 God would supernaturally lead me even in, in subjective ways to know what my people need to

00:25:06.540 hear, to speak to them prophetically, to help them to know God's will for their lives, not just

00:25:12.900 even in the big, this is in the Bible type of ways, but also in the two lawful things are set

00:25:20.000 before you, which is God's will for your life kind of ways. Let me start doing that. And then it's

00:25:24.660 like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're not one of those charismatic, crazy people. And my position is that

00:25:30.500 if we're to be like our reformed forefathers and like the church fathers and like the great

00:25:35.820 history of the Christian faith, then we should, without ever putting our wheels in the ditch of

00:25:42.160 Paula White charismania craziness and like all of that nonsense that's obviously fake

00:25:46.880 and sometimes demonic even, but really desire and earnestly desire that the spirit would lead to,

00:25:54.920 would lead us even subjectively in our lives, that he would demonstrate his supernatural power

00:26:00.200 in us, that he would use us to do everything from rebuke the demons to, you know, bring to bear

00:26:09.900 God's presence in the world around us and our families, that he would help us as men lead in

00:26:14.540 our homes, help us to encourage and exhort one another as Christians, like all these things that

00:26:19.340 we don't just rely on a brute materialist sense of the knowledge of the scriptures, but the Holy

00:26:28.500 spirit bringing to bear the power of God in making the scriptures live in us, come to mind at the

00:26:37.000 right moments and supernaturally conform us to the image of Christ in holiness and in power in our

00:26:44.920 everyday lives. So like, I don't want the, the empty pietism that won't make contact with the

00:26:51.540 earth that tends to hide behind the supernaturality of the Christian faith, but then in strange ways

00:26:56.380 also deny it yeah or the crazy charismatic second blessing new pentecost crazy town revivalism

00:27:06.060 phineasim modern american emotional manipulation mass media tactics and all the crap that comes

00:27:13.560 with that it's like we just want to chart this course that is it is a deeply doctrinally sound

00:27:20.660 and deeply supernatural christian faith in everything that we do like i want both i want

00:27:25.200 that i want to ask you particularly about music we'll get into kind of the strains to the second

00:27:30.300 great awakening and some of the history behind this but one of the places it seems to show up

00:27:35.260 a lot is music um somebody had shared the other day on social media it was this video it was like

00:27:40.940 a spoof video of like how hillsong songs are written and it was pretty funny but it got me

00:27:47.280 thinking i was like oh yeah i've never actually really listened to much hillsong so i just went

00:27:51.680 to their youtube page and i was listening to the music and it was exactly what the parody

00:27:55.680 was talking about where you get like an attractive blonde lady she leads worship

00:28:00.840 the chord progressions the drums the like repetition repetition repetition but when

00:28:07.080 you evaluate the lyrics it's insanely shallow insanely shallow so and then and you can compare

00:28:14.940 that to you know reformed worship singing the psalms obviously going to be i think more robust

00:28:21.660 but but why do you think music is so important here in this conversation um especially for a

00:28:28.240 generation where like i grew up in mega churches i didn't know anything up for the longest time i

00:28:33.180 didn't know anything other than kind of big band big stage and i knew you were a worship leader

00:28:38.400 too so grew up in one heck i was the mega church worship leader let he who is without cringe cast

00:28:45.100 the first tweet let's just begin there okay and praise god that there were very few video cameras

00:28:51.500 around at this stage of the world when i grew up because man i'd have some call i'd have some

00:28:57.340 yeah i mean i don't deny any of it it was absolutely cringe a lot of it and wow

00:29:03.780 i feel like the helicopter means you know where the dog is sitting in the room and it's like red

00:29:09.560 as i recall these things no i mean here's the reality music actually is really important and

00:29:17.860 it does, it's not music. It's not just stuff. Music is not just airwaves hitting the drums

00:29:23.620 in your head that God put there and translating in your brain into some kind of, I don't know,

00:29:28.340 pleasant sound. Music is a real physical and supernatural type of thing. I mean, David

00:29:36.500 would calm Saul when he was under demonic oppression with music. We are, we worship a

00:29:45.160 God who sings, Zephaniah 316. God made a creation that sings. You see this in the Psalms, that the

00:29:51.980 creation itself sings. We are commanded as God's people, Colossians, Ephesians, to sing to one

00:29:57.200 another. The largest book in the Old Testament, in the entire Bible by chapter count, not by word

00:30:03.120 count, but by chapter count, is the Psalms. It's a collection of songs. So music is really important

00:30:08.420 and it doesn't stop working when people pointed at the wrong thing so like it doesn't stop doing

00:30:15.460 what it does when you point it away from truth goodness and beauty rooted in god's essence in

00:30:21.860 onto badness and error it still stirs the emotions it still moves the soul it still influences people

00:30:30.380 to believe what it's telling you to believe which is why it's so dangerous and powerful in either

00:30:36.740 direction. So we need to, like the answer isn't to flee from, well, Hillsong's doing bad stuff

00:30:43.320 with it or Bethel or whatever. So let's run from Christian music. We should actually make

00:30:47.140 really good Christian music, I think. And it won't be that really good Christian music is

00:30:52.360 like not emotional or it's not, you know, even the Psalms, there's repetition. It's not necessarily

00:30:57.320 all the forms. It's like, what is, is it, is the music treating as beautiful something that

00:31:03.700 really is beautiful is it treating as true something that really is true or is it treating

00:31:07.820 as evil something that really is evil and if it is doing that then you know thanks be to god

00:31:13.600 and let's use it but if not then it doesn't stop being powerful that where it goes off is that and

00:31:20.620 and like chuck chuck finney discovered this in the second great awakening i like how you heard him

00:31:24.380 chuck chuck finney he's yeah you know chucky chucky cheese uh mr finney he discovered this

00:31:30.740 with the second great awakening all the way through to modern times music is a great tool

00:31:36.840 for manipulation because it moves the soul and moves the emotions so the problem is that

00:31:44.000 some of the time it has been used and i think it's used quite a bit today to essentially counterfeit

00:31:51.880 the movement of god to manipulate people to the ends that are appointed by the manipulator

00:31:58.460 that's where it goes really off the rails yeah you mentioned it the second great awakening i

00:32:05.160 want to get into that now it's an interesting time period in america there's a lot of weird

00:32:10.140 things going on uh on the east coast particularly in new york uh with you have like the the shakers

00:32:16.640 we talk about this actually in a forthcoming book yep uh but a lot of weird like spiritism

00:32:22.660 oh yeah um you know elizabeth katie stanton is like writing her documents in 1848 over a spirit

00:32:30.120 table where they're like hearing like mediums which are witches are like hearing from

00:32:35.420 we need a female interpreter we need a lady to talk to the demons

00:32:42.100 pretty much what happens yeah that is pretty much what happens so there's a lot going weird

00:32:47.020 in that time period yeah but it ends up shaping a lot of what we now take for granted about modern

00:32:53.440 worship modern uh evangelicalism yeah so talk about that second great awakening what are some

00:32:58.800 of the dangers what are some of the problems with that movement yeah the second great awakening we're

00:33:03.180 talking about the 1800s you know finney is involved in this and this is where you take you have the

00:33:08.940 first great awakening in the 18th century in the 1700s with whitfield and edwards which in principle

00:33:16.260 was actually focused on some good things.

00:33:18.120 Like let's not just settle

00:33:19.560 for the external forms of religion,

00:33:22.040 a focus on real true inward conversion,

00:33:24.740 which is very important,

00:33:25.820 especially in a tradition of faith like ours

00:33:28.340 where you baptize infants

00:33:29.380 and we need to tell our children

00:33:31.980 the sign of the covenant is not enough.

00:33:34.700 The outward forms of the covenant are not enough.

00:33:36.760 You being in the visible church is not enough.

00:33:39.300 You must be inwardly a member

00:33:41.580 of the body of Christ through faith,

00:33:44.680 your own faith.

00:33:45.400 Originally meant to combat like a dead religion.

00:33:48.300 Yeah, we don't want dead religion.

00:33:49.840 And this is a perennial issue that human beings need to be warned against because we, the human heart, the flesh is very good at taking false comfort in dead religion, in the just the mere forms of things.

00:34:06.540 This is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ is rebuking in the Pharisees and the scribes

00:34:11.180 when he says, you are whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones.

00:34:16.280 They have the form, it's beautiful, but inside it's just deadness, right?

00:34:20.900 So that's not a bad thing.

00:34:23.060 Over the next century, though, and into the 1800s, you can see how this would quickly,

00:34:27.880 there's a seed there that can go really wrong.

00:34:30.480 It can, you know, go off in all sorts of terrible directions.

00:34:34.620 And it relates to the function of introspection, I think.

00:34:38.260 Yeah.

00:34:38.720 Where you have like, how do you know you have true faith?

00:34:42.300 Right.

00:34:42.820 How do you know that?

00:34:44.200 Well, the Christian answer is, do you believe the Lord Jesus Christ came, died for your

00:34:49.700 sins, rose again, reigns now?

00:34:51.800 Do you believe that?

00:34:53.260 And B, do you bear the fruit of that belief, which the chief of those fruits is love, the

00:34:58.740 Lord Jesus said, to love your neighbor as yourself.

00:35:01.440 But if you love your brothers, right, then God is in you.

00:35:06.700 First John.

00:35:07.340 Yeah.

00:35:07.640 Even think of like John 14.

00:35:09.620 Those who love me will keep my commandments.

00:35:11.880 Yeah.

00:35:12.180 So there are these fruits.

00:35:13.920 But but think about how easy it is from there to begin to look too much at yourself.

00:35:19.940 So instead of these very objective, like, again, love is not just do I inwardly feel a vague positivity towards my fellow man.

00:35:28.140 Let me just stare deeper and deeper into my own navel to try and find the assurance of

00:35:32.620 my faith.

00:35:34.040 That is, the Spirit's actually trying to direct you outward and upward in that exchange where

00:35:40.100 you're looking to Christ.

00:35:41.980 I believe Christ.

00:35:43.820 You're looking to, even the fruit of your hands should be expressed in like, no, I can

00:35:47.980 point to this thing where I laid my life down, I gave my strength and my resources to help

00:35:52.720 my brother and I'm growing imperfectly, but I'm growing in a practical desire to seek the earthly

00:35:59.980 and heavenly good of my brother. Okay. What you can start to do is instead of looking to the

00:36:05.460 objective fruit of your life that is outward and upward, you can start looking at the subjective

00:36:11.040 emotional state of your heart and mistake that for the other thing and start going,

00:36:17.460 do i feel enough spiritual emotional fervor about christ i i kind of felt like when i was in college

00:36:25.540 i read desiring god and it is you know john piper had been reading a lot of jonathan edwards

00:36:31.100 religious affections so there's some of that that's good yeah and i think the lord you know

00:36:36.040 used that book in my life to be like oh like what should conversion and regeneration actually look

00:36:41.120 like so that that's healthy um but it's also interesting because a lot of people have talked

00:36:46.240 about like the morbid introspection of puritanism yeah there was a weird thing happening i think

00:36:52.360 for guys getting back into puritan writings at southern seminary when i was there one of the

00:36:57.320 books it was joseph allen a puritan paperback and it was like on the assurance of salvation

00:37:02.540 but i remember we all read this in a church history class and the professor was like yeah

00:37:08.680 what a great book it will make everyone here doubt their salvation and i was like what wait

00:37:13.380 a minute is that a good thing are we supposed to but it was sort of like the paul washer vibe

00:37:17.520 where it was like every sermon was basically you know like total depravity and if you're not weeping

00:37:23.460 are you even a christian right and even uh we were talking about this i think on a recent trip but

00:37:28.740 because we were back in new england yep and jonathan edwards you read his biography and

00:37:34.140 it's like his father timothy is like you know you're 12 and you you have all the fruit of you

00:37:40.460 know, salvation, but on a Sunday you kind of frolicked with your friends. And so I doubt

00:37:44.560 your salvation. David Brainerd, very introspective, extremely morbidly. I spent 12 hours in prayer

00:37:52.740 and did not feel the love of God as I ought. Yeah. You know, that sort of thing. So then it

00:37:58.400 gets amplified though, by the second great awakening. Oh yeah. Like you pour gasoline on

00:38:02.500 the fire because all of a sudden that morbid introspection fundamentally is too much focus

00:38:07.380 on the self. It is a form of pride because instead of heralding and believing, simply believing

00:38:14.540 what God has said in his gospel, which is the good news that Christ died for sinners and that

00:38:19.660 by grace and through faith, you can be saved from your sins. That's a great objective reality that

00:38:24.720 notice, though it does require faith in the person, it has very little to say about staring

00:38:29.620 into your own soul. It's about staring objectively to Christ. So all of a sudden, well, not all of

00:38:35.800 of a sudden, over a century, we start to see people go, okay, if the problem is that people

00:38:41.700 aren't feeling adequately, they don't have these right spiritual affections, and then that just

00:38:48.180 becomes they don't have the right affections, and then that becomes they don't have the right

00:38:51.380 emotions. Well, what if we could produce those emotions through external practices and manipulation?

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00:40:44.400 i also think there's a huge crossover if you follow the history through the 1800s you have

00:40:52.600 guys like freud who are coming on the scene um you know in well under the 20th century as well

00:40:57.460 but edward bernays which i think is his nephew freud's nephew but uh kind of the father of

00:41:05.100 modern marketing and so they start finding out like hey if we put like scantily clad women or

00:41:10.400 like sexually illicit material it evokes a psychological response so i think there's also

00:41:15.660 this fixation with what we would call today like psychologizing the emotions yeah and like how to

00:41:24.540 mechanically stir them up you have charles finney with his anxious bench yep in a certain like

00:41:31.340 screeching type of preaching that is meant to stir up emotion um and then i think also in that time

00:41:39.060 period uh america is really losing its calvinistic patriarchal doctrinal moorings as well and so the

00:41:46.440 further you get away from the doctrine then the emotion dominates yep to the point where do you

00:41:51.300 remember a few years ago they had like the asbury yeah the revival revival legend and i was talking

00:41:56.840 to all my old old baptist friends they're not old but i knew them a long time ago and they were like

00:42:03.880 well how you know how can you how can you argue with how fervent the emotions are and i was like

00:42:10.000 well pretty easily i've seen this movie i've seen this before yeah um anyway i it seems like

00:42:16.680 emotionalism is at the heart of that uh a lot of bad theology yes but it takes root in america

00:42:24.440 it does it takes root it becomes mass uh exploded through mass marketing and media

00:42:29.760 Think about how how all the new forms of media then in mass print and then radio and then television and then the Internet just pours gasoline on this ability to manipulate outcomes through the right manipulative technique that that right there is is has explicit, you know.

00:42:52.040 Explanatory, explanatory power for a huge amount of the charismatic Pentecostal movement.

00:42:57.580 i think especially explodes then you get into the 20th century in mass media yeah because now

00:43:04.420 you know what was the book uh is it amusing ourselves to death where he talks about the

00:43:08.900 medium is the message yeah but like when you start doing video you actually change

00:43:12.980 what you're presenting yeah neil postman he talks about this so then you look at you know

00:43:19.000 it's amazing it was so long ago but like billy graham early 20th century the crusade movements

00:43:25.860 big tent revivals they really take a phineas principle yeah but then you put it on like

00:43:32.660 trend alone uh with mass media yeah and this is where pentecostalism is born it's where the

00:43:39.480 charismatic renewal is born in the 60s and 70s the jesus people movement with everything from

00:43:43.980 calvary chapel to crazy charismatic churches all the way through to its modern hyper palatable

00:43:50.360 hyper slick productions in things like bethel and redding california uh to even like there's

00:43:56.640 always a spectrum of like cancerous to the common cold yeah versions of this but they're all in that

00:44:03.540 same vein of again subtly and over time mistaking the ability to manipulate the emotions of people

00:44:12.200 for the work of the holy spirit when the work of the holy spirit is a very objective it results in

00:44:18.980 True faith in Christ and fervent love for the people, effective preaching of the gospel, the repentance of sin and putting to death the old man.

00:44:28.380 Confronting people in their sin.

00:44:29.720 Yeah.

00:44:29.860 And now none of this means that it has nothing to do with the emotions.

00:44:32.380 This is where we can go off the other direction and all of a sudden say emotions are bad.

00:44:36.540 This is where people will be like, Brian is evil.

00:44:39.320 I've heard people say this.

00:44:40.500 Brian, it's evil for him in music to try to stir up people's emotions.

00:44:43.840 And I'm like, well, but music, one of the lawful things it does is to affect the emotions.

00:44:50.240 Emotions are a good thing.

00:44:51.820 We've had feedback even on this podcast about like, hey, when you did that cold open and

00:44:57.640 you told a really powerful story and you use music behind it, you were emotionally

00:45:02.680 manipulated.

00:45:03.240 That was manipulative.

00:45:04.720 Like, look, this is where it becomes a matter of wisdom and where what you're aiming for

00:45:10.740 really matters.

00:45:11.260 Are you emphasizing and underscoring truth, goodness, and beauty with, that it encompasses

00:45:16.940 the whole person, the body, soul, spirit, emotions, all of these are good things.

00:45:21.340 And are things in their proper order?

00:45:23.400 Like, are we saying that the emotions are a good thing, but they are not a thing that

00:45:30.120 we follow?

00:45:30.920 They're a thing to be led.

00:45:32.320 Great.

00:45:32.800 That's wonderful.

00:45:34.020 And then truth can serve the emotions, which serve, like they can all link together into

00:45:38.780 the total person.

00:45:39.720 that's all wonderful but what's happened in the second great awakening the charismatic renewal a

00:45:46.160 lot of these things is we have actually gotten the substance wrong and in getting the substance

00:45:52.040 wrong we've begun to emotionally manipulate people to wickedness to error to falsehood and that's

00:45:59.120 born really really bad fruit like we talked about in the cold open doubt in the believer apostasy

00:46:04.280 and fakery a lot of those fruits have resulted from the charismatic renewal we talked about this

00:46:10.760 in season one a lot you know that it was like revival and revivalism yeah revivalism and how

00:46:16.860 many of us grew up with some aspects of it even in fairly restrained like that general evangelical

00:46:21.520 baptist backgrounds this is that thing where kids in the youth group are taught to doubt their

00:46:27.580 profession let's say your third generation christian family and you don't have this crazy

00:46:32.260 testimony. It's that thing where they're like, should I get baptized the third time? Because

00:46:36.400 I don't think I felt right. And then I sinned again after I did this. And man in youth group,

00:46:41.180 like, did I really lift my hands and sing the song with enough passion? And it becomes very

00:46:45.580 effeminate and manipulative. And it sows doubt. And then many of these youth group kids,

00:46:52.560 they fake or they apostatize because they go, oh, I'm not spiritual enough. I don't have the

00:46:57.800 right emotional fervor i actually remember this when we were in college it was one of the first

00:47:02.740 churches as a married couple we went to and i think now you would call a mix of like seeker

00:47:08.080 sensitive and like emergent church at the time which is a bit of a dated term but um you remember

00:47:14.580 like blue like jazz oh yeah miller yeah all that stuff was really popular yeah but i remember going

00:47:20.860 to church and somebody a guy in the church was like hey man like i'm really worried about you

00:47:25.440 and i was like why and he was like you know your your hands weren't raised in worship

00:47:29.740 um you know i just you didn't seem to be into it as much as and there were guys i'm telling you

00:47:35.600 like you'd go to church and there were guys who were like weeping all the time and i was like i've

00:47:40.720 heard this song like 572 times since last week right and like am i just supposed to stir up this

00:47:48.460 emotion and the implicit message was yes yes if you're really a christian and it was not

00:47:54.060 expositional preaching. Think about how this, this is, it's all related. Like think about the

00:47:58.780 leadership problem of the pastor in America today. Yeah. Both in not being able to fill pulpits with

00:48:05.380 good men, but also the men we do put in the office are not great men. Well, because who is selected

00:48:11.500 for in this process for leadership in the evangelical world? People who can be emotional,

00:48:17.060 highly emotional men, men who connect with women, men who can put on the forms of feminine display,

00:48:23.300 men who can't you know all of that you could just say matt chandler

00:48:27.460 sam albury you know it's like all of a sudden you are selecting for men who impress women and

00:48:39.240 conform to highly feminine not even feminine in a godly good way but like unrestrained feminine

00:48:45.340 energy this goes back to like the second great awakening a lot of the like key movement leaders

00:48:50.780 and with like suffrage and all that are basically hysterical women absolutely the more worked up

00:48:57.360 emotionally you get well and this is also like uh adjacent you're talking about the pastorate

00:49:03.400 and why it attracts effeminate men yeah it's also repellent to masculinity because men don't

00:49:09.360 generally behave that way unless they're extremely coerced yeah and and men will do what it takes to

00:49:17.440 gain leadership and attempt to dominate an influence in a thing. And so if you tell them

00:49:22.980 that the pathway to leadership and influence in the church is through this channel, many men will

00:49:27.340 conform to it and they'll seek to gain dominance or to gain prominence or climb the ladder by

00:49:34.860 adopting and perfecting these forms of emotional manipulation. Do you think that's why so many of

00:49:41.380 the pastor's like, it's the breathy tones. It's the gesticulations of the hands. Even we even

00:49:48.820 think of like Matt Chandler, like Jesus wants the rose, but it almost sounds like for a lot of those

00:49:53.640 guys, like they're almost always on the brink of like tears. Yeah. And I remember like growing up

00:49:58.780 in this world. And again, like he was without cringe cast the first stone, but I can go back

00:50:03.480 in my own life and history and even think like, I was absolutely not immune to this. You get,

00:50:09.060 you go, why did I like have that tone of voice and preaching or something in 2012? Well, I know why,

00:50:15.640 because that was the form that you heard, that you learned, that you were to imitate. And very

00:50:21.880 little of this is happening on a conscious level. Almost nobody, most of these are good. Like

00:50:26.380 quite frankly, most of these people are actual Christians. They love the Lord. I'm not trying

00:50:31.400 to make anybody ironically doubt their salvation because you're an evangelical and like you

00:50:35.200 lifted your hands in worship and liked Bethel or something like that. Okay. Your brother,

00:50:39.720 sister, like you can still be a Christian. A lot of this is unconscious and subconscious.

00:50:44.460 Yeah. It's, it's marketing. People generally don't know why they buy the product that they do

00:50:50.260 and why they have loyalty to the brand that they do. I also think there's a far greater level of

00:50:55.360 culpability for like leadership who's doing that. Oh, absolutely. Then say like the person in the

00:50:59.080 you yeah the apostles versus prophets so people might be listening to this and say well what does

00:51:05.180 this have to do with like cessationism because that's a that's a doctrinal debate i think we've

00:51:10.600 shown that some of the roots just in brief you could go very deep on all this and do your own

00:51:14.860 research and you would find i think that we're telling the truth here that the modern charismatic

00:51:19.080 movement is rooted in many of these really pernicious movements that have borne, you

00:51:29.420 know, tremendously bad fruit in the church. But even as a doctrinal foundation, the reason that

00:51:35.100 I am a cessationist, like I think the reformers were cessationist, is because I think it's faithful

00:51:41.040 to scripture and it is persuasively evidenced in church history as a doctrine.

00:51:46.900 I wanted to ask you that just giving a brief definition of like, what is reformed cessationism?

00:51:51.900 There's a lot of like misunderstandings about what that means.

00:51:56.240 So maybe just lay the groundwork for what that is.

00:51:59.180 And the other thing I will tell people, you've been preaching through this two parts in, was it chapter 12 and 14 through 14?

00:52:06.460 Yeah.

00:52:06.660 I mean, we went through, I'm preaching through the whole book of first Corinthians, obviously, as you know,

00:52:09.880 And I approached it by preaching expositionally through those 12, 13, and 14, those chapters where Paul deals with the spiritual gifts a lot and Christian love in the middle, which is not a mistake.

00:52:22.460 And then at the end of that, when we got through all the Bible text, I kind of looked back and did a two-part series on, okay, here's why, here's the debate, continuationism, cessationism.

00:52:35.280 Here's why I'm a cessationist, but here's what kind I am and think is correct and why.

00:52:39.880 Yeah. So people want to, you know, dive more into that. That's a good jumping off point. But yeah, just definitionally, what is reformed cessationism?

00:52:48.040 Briefly, Reformed cessationism is the doctrinal conviction that certain miraculous signs and certain gifts of the Spirit are not normatively given after the apostolic age, and that these signs and miraculous wonders and spiritual gifts were given for a specific purpose in that generation, following a pattern we see unfold throughout Scripture,

00:53:13.380 and then having done what God appointed for them to do, largely ceased.

00:53:18.860 It's not the view that God or the Holy Spirit couldn't ever give this gift or that gift

00:53:24.320 or do this miracle here in history.

00:53:25.860 He can and he does, I think, do that at his will, but that just normatively they've ceased.

00:53:31.480 So contra to the idea that you sometimes hear that basically what the Christian church needs

00:53:37.420 today is to return to the power and purity of the early church.

00:53:40.920 that back in the early church in the book of acts and beyond that was the church at the peak of its

00:53:46.360 maturity this is why there was such evidence of the holy spirit present giving the gift of tongues

00:53:52.020 interpretation of tongues prophecy for telling the future the gift of miraculous healing over

00:53:57.060 and over and over again um think you know things like this prophecy and the judging of prophecy

00:54:02.500 you know all those signs and that if we were as spiritually mature as them we would have the power

00:54:07.740 again. If we had their purity, we would have their power again. And so church history is

00:54:12.260 just a story of decline. And so what we need is this renewal of the purity and power of the Holy

00:54:17.220 Spirit. And that, you know, so this is the charismatic movement. Against this view,

00:54:22.800 I would give a cumulative case with a few points. One, I would say that's really funny to talk

00:54:29.640 about the power and purity of the early church if you read the pastoral epistles. Particularly

00:54:33.360 first Corinthians, like first Corinthians, this church, it was absolutely full of tongues and full

00:54:38.340 of the prophecy and all these things. Well, it needed more prophecy according to Paul, but

00:54:42.480 full of the gift of tongues. They had a guy sleeping with his father's wife. They were

00:54:49.980 divided into factions and wildly mature. In fact, Paul's assessment of the church basically was you

00:54:55.060 guys are a bunch of babies. Spiritually speaking, you think you're so mature. You need to go back

00:55:00.340 and drink the milk again because you're a bunch of babies you don't love one another isn't that

00:55:04.180 wild too like when you think about i mean imagine in a church today if like the pastor stood up and

00:55:09.380 he was like you guys are so immature you guys are babies i mean it'd be like refuge church some of

00:55:13.580 the time but a good pastor does this from time to time the point is that the first generation of

00:55:19.220 the christian church post resurrection of christ and today's generation we're all made of the same

00:55:24.060 stuff. We all have our errors, immaturities. We all need to grow in Christ. We all need to put

00:55:30.460 to death the flesh. It's a work that has to be done every generation. Yeah, sometimes the particular

00:55:35.820 sin of that generation or doctrinal error of that generation is different. Galatia had a different

00:55:41.700 doctrinal error in the Judaizers than Corinth in factionalism and other sexual issues related to

00:55:48.220 their region. Corinth is this crazy, sexually debauched port city with a huge intermingling

00:55:55.420 of different races and cultures. And it's like a very difficult place to be a Christian. It's like

00:56:00.040 Vegas in some ways or LA. So A, that whole narrative is stupid. We did not reach peak

00:56:09.720 maturity in the apostolic generation. In fact, every single pastoral epistle contradicts this.

00:56:15.060 Every single church needed to be rebuked, addressed.

00:56:18.960 The letters to the seven churches, yeah, you have mature churches that were doing well

00:56:22.460 that the Lord Jesus commends.

00:56:23.880 And then you have churches that he commends and rebukes.

00:56:25.700 And then you have ones he just rebukes.

00:56:27.280 This is just how people are in every generation.

00:56:31.340 So we shouldn't argue that like the Holy Spirit fled after the early church period

00:56:35.800 because people just all of a sudden became really immature.

00:56:38.980 That's stupid.

00:56:39.860 It's biblically contradicted.

00:56:42.340 Secondly, we see three distinct periods of a high concentration of miraculous signs in scripture.

00:56:49.660 One, during the period of Moses and his successor, Joshua, in the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan.

00:56:57.880 Then there's a lengthy period where you don't see a lot of miraculous doings and miracles.

00:57:03.180 You see some, but not a lot.

00:57:04.420 The second period is during Elijah's ministry and his successor, Elisha.

00:57:10.680 Now, in this period, God is calling Israel back from rampant idolatry and wickedness,

00:57:15.340 and he affirms their ministry with massive displays of miraculous stuff,

00:57:21.540 raising of the dead and all sorts of stuff, the widow.

00:57:27.080 There's a lot. Go read it.

00:57:28.840 And then the third period, again, you don't see a lot of miracles after that for a period of time.

00:57:33.140 The third period is during the ministry of Christ and his successors, the apostles.

00:57:38.060 christ and his successors the apostles is the greatest concentration of miracles in the history

00:57:43.680 of the world where christ comes down as the god man from heaven and as bb warfield says in

00:57:50.340 counterfeit miracles he drew heaven with him and and god just demonstrates his presence through

00:57:56.440 christ by doing things no one had ever done healing the blind cleansing the lepers raising

00:58:02.020 the dead over and over feeding the multitudes calming the storm on the sea of galilee over

00:58:06.680 and over. Christ dies. The greatest miracle, the resurrection of Christ as the first fruits

00:58:14.060 from the dead, not just revivification like Lazarus, but the glorified resurrection of

00:58:19.000 Christ to a glorified body occurs in the middle of history. And then his successors who bore

00:58:25.180 witness to these things, bear witness in the world to them, to the gospel of Jesus Christ,

00:58:29.280 his person, ministry, identity, gospel, all of this resurrection. And God again bears witness

00:58:35.540 to this, listen to these people, these men, they're telling the truth by doing all sorts

00:58:41.320 of miraculous signs through them. Like Peter's shadow could fall on people and heal them.

00:58:46.580 And the message behind the miracles, as was true of Moses and Joshua, as was true of Elijah and

00:58:53.440 Elisha, as was true of Christ and the apostles, the message is this, listen to these men or I

00:58:57.920 will kill you. That's what God is saying. Listen to these men or you're not listening to God.

00:59:03.860 Listen to these men or God will kill you.

00:59:05.740 Like that's what God is saying through Christ, through the miracles.

00:59:09.300 And then this witness bearing is to an objective historical reality, the resurrection of Christ, the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ and the writings of the apostles bearing witness to it.

00:59:22.700 So in that generation, just as with Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and then Christ and his successors, what happens?

00:59:30.520 God has borne witness to the revelation, to the thing that he was doing covenantally.

00:59:35.520 And then you don't need the miracles to keep going because the miracles have already happened

00:59:40.500 and already borne witness to the thing. And people say like, well, why doesn't God just

00:59:45.300 keep doing miracles all the time? And the answer is like, you, you're overestimating the power of

00:59:49.260 miracles to produce faith in people. They can't by themselves. Well, I was going to say, even

00:59:54.080 the, it's shocking the number of times in the gospels where the Pharisees will demand a sign.

00:59:58.840 yeah and they're like if you're reading from our perspective you're like they're everywhere yeah

01:00:04.600 like what do you mean there's a million of them and if they won't believe those they're not gonna

01:00:09.140 believe another one yeah even uh luke's gospel right with the story of lazarus oh yes what a

01:00:13.580 good story and he's like well could you send them you know yeah with the with the parable of lazarus

01:00:19.380 and the rich man yes and he's like if they don't believe moses they won't believe the rich man is

01:00:25.300 basically in torment awaiting hell and he's died and his servant lazarus who had nothing in his

01:00:31.100 life has now the inheritance in in his second in in eternity and the rich man says you know send

01:00:37.680 lazarus to my brothers who are still living and and then they'll believe and they'll repent of

01:00:43.480 all assuming they're walking in the same wickedness as the rich man and abraham i think it's abraham

01:00:49.140 tells him uh even if they saw someone rise from the dead they wouldn't believe and guess what

01:00:55.600 that's what happened yeah they did they saw christ the pharisees are the target of this parable

01:01:01.260 they saw christ rise from the dead in fact the other lazarus the one christ raised

01:01:06.580 they never the pharisees and scribes never deny that lazarus was raised from the dead

01:01:11.920 instead though what does john's gospel tell us they did they heard about it they knew about it

01:01:17.720 And they said, and they did not repent and believe.

01:01:19.660 They tried to kill him.

01:01:20.400 Instead, they said, we must kill him even quicker because people are going to follow

01:01:23.800 him.

01:01:24.060 And God is looking down like, of course, people are going to follow him.

01:01:27.660 That was why I gave this sign.

01:01:30.120 Yeah.

01:01:30.820 So people think like we need miracles all the time to induce faith in people.

01:01:35.960 And it's like, no, no, no, no.

01:01:37.640 Even if you saw a miracle by itself, that does not produce living faith in an unregenerate

01:01:43.960 heart.

01:01:45.000 It does.

01:01:45.720 It just doesn't.

01:01:46.540 No.

01:01:46.800 the other thing in the book of acts that i always think of with like modern televangelists or like

01:01:52.060 the benny hen types yeah is simon the magician yeah where it's like you have these charlatans

01:01:58.380 who want to produce counterfeit miracles you know they want to produce these counterfeit things

01:02:04.300 for acclaim for money um and so like we see that happening all the time yeah and you would think

01:02:12.180 like it reminds me of like in Christmas vacation where he's like, yeah, we lost all our money,

01:02:17.560 gave it to that televangelist. And you're like, oh, that's a real stereotype. Yeah, it is. Because

01:02:25.800 that actually happens. Oh, yeah. One of the questions I want to ask you is related to the

01:02:32.180 reformed cessationism. What is it not saying? Yeah, that's really important because one of the

01:02:38.100 I think Ryan Denton, he wrote that article we quoted at length in the in the cold open at reformation21.org.

01:02:44.040 It's like a three part series.

01:02:45.180 You should go read it.

01:02:46.520 And he talks about hyper cessationism, which a lot of people that it was pointed at, bristled at and said, that's not true.

01:02:55.460 That's not us.

01:02:55.920 But I actually think he has a really good point

01:02:57.740 and is getting at something true,

01:02:59.480 which is that a lot of modern reform types

01:03:02.480 will veer off all the way into the other ditch

01:03:05.320 and they will sound very little

01:03:08.200 like their actual reformed forefathers

01:03:10.080 who were cessationists.

01:03:11.440 Like they really did believe that those,

01:03:13.420 what I just said,

01:03:14.060 the miraculous signs and wonders

01:03:15.180 of the apostolic generation are not normative.

01:03:17.820 Tongue speaking today is not something we should expect.

01:03:21.000 You know, prophecy of identical type all the time

01:03:23.340 and especially in its concentration is not.

01:03:24.900 And yet the reformers and their successors, and I think we today, believed in at least some kind of ongoing work of the spirit in even things like dreams and visions, in things like prophecy of a certain type.

01:03:39.060 And the way that I distinguished this to our church was that, yes, there is a certain way in which we today participate in the spirit of prophecy, which at its most fundamental level is just words from God for others.

01:03:56.740 It can do a lot of things.

01:03:58.260 It can foretell the future.

01:03:59.540 It can rebuke sin, the sin of a people, of God's people.

01:04:03.280 It can call unbelievers to repentance and faith.

01:04:06.360 It can find people out in their sin, like cutting them to the heart.

01:04:10.000 And like, how did he know that I was sinning in that exact way?

01:04:12.460 Well, the Holy Spirit was talking through him.

01:04:14.380 So it's words of encouragement, exhortation, rebuke, you know, whatever from God through

01:04:20.320 a person to other people.

01:04:22.400 Yeah.

01:04:22.520 there are basically three tiers of prophecy in scripture that I think we can identify. One,

01:04:29.800 the ultimate tier is Christ himself, who is the prophecy of God incarnate. He is the word of God

01:04:37.620 in flesh. John 1, Hebrews 1. In these former days, God spoke to us through his apostles and

01:04:43.000 prophets. Now he's spoken to us by his son. Secondly, there are the prophets and apostles.

01:04:47.200 These are mere men, they're not the God-man, but they function in a particularly authoritative

01:04:53.140 mode whereby God gives them what we consider now scripture in the Old Testament and the

01:04:58.420 New, okay?

01:04:59.620 And God bore witness to this often with miraculous signs, not always, but often, and then bears

01:05:05.660 witness to the scriptures today ongoingly.

01:05:08.940 And then third, though, there are people even in the book of Acts we see, and in the Old

01:05:12.480 Testament as well, who participated in prophecy on some level where God was speaking to others

01:05:18.200 through them in ways that wasn't the giving of scripture. You know, Agabus is an example of this

01:05:23.580 in, and I think we have example, that was some of the quotes we gave from the reformers where

01:05:28.900 God would give an encouragement, an exhortation, a correction, et cetera,

01:05:34.260 to a person for someone else. That's the thing I think we should still be asking the Holy Spirit

01:05:40.480 to do in us today. And it basically looks like this. A, like think of a pastor. He should be

01:05:47.560 asking, God, please bear witness to the truth of your scripture, which is capital P prophecy

01:05:52.460 through my preaching today, which can be a kind of lowercase P prophecy. This is why the Puritans

01:05:59.200 wrote the book, The Art of Prophesying about preaching, because they identified preaching

01:06:03.500 with prophecy. But even beyond that, it's not just the preacher. The everyday Christian should

01:06:08.620 like be regularly praying, God, would you please use me today to encourage, equip, correct, rebuke,

01:06:18.220 whatever it would be, give me your words for other people in my life, whether it's my children,

01:06:23.520 my spouse, my friends in the church, and I'm going to be obedient if you call me to do something

01:06:30.700 uncomfortable. Like, for example, this might look like there you are minding your own business,

01:06:35.060 you're reading scripture, you're praying, whatever, and someone just comes to mind and

01:06:37.900 you're like i don't know this just could just be my own mind where i'm like hey bill's on my mind

01:06:43.080 my friend at church and i think that this this verse would encourage him today and so you you

01:06:49.940 fire up the old telephone and you you send him a text you give him a call and you say hey bill

01:06:53.640 you know i you were just on my mind this morning here here's an encouragement exhortation whatever

01:06:58.400 or or god literally says you know shows to you whether even just through your own observation

01:07:05.300 like the sin of a brother.

01:07:06.880 In Galatians 6.1, if anyone's caught in a trespass,

01:07:09.500 you are spiritual.

01:07:10.240 Restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness,

01:07:11.800 keeping watch on yourself, lest you be tempted.

01:07:13.920 And so you see a sin in your brother

01:07:15.960 and you think about it.

01:07:18.580 You think about what would God say to this.

01:07:21.160 You ask for the spirit's leading of you

01:07:23.200 and then you go talk to them.

01:07:25.480 And you're praying, God, please give me words for them.

01:07:29.540 And whether it's through scripture

01:07:30.940 or just like guide my tongue as I'm talking,

01:07:32.960 you made my tongue, just like God told Moses.

01:07:34.960 So help me speak to them.

01:07:37.340 And I believe that in a lowercase p way,

01:07:40.380 this is participating in the Holy Spirit's ministry of prophecy in the church today.

01:07:45.400 I think that's historically normal view, a historically normal view.

01:07:50.160 I think it accords with reformed cessationism,

01:07:52.580 but it also doesn't veer off into the other ditch of like,

01:07:56.580 the Holy Spirit doesn't speak to anybody today.

01:07:58.180 He doesn't work today because it's not scripture.

01:08:00.300 I'm like, well, you know, you're not giving scripture, test all prophecy.

01:08:03.560 don't be like, don't walk around all the time saying God told me that you're supposed to order

01:08:09.880 the grilled chicken sandwich today, not the fried one because you're fat. That could just be an

01:08:15.780 observation that you make. That doesn't have to be prophecy, but I think being humble and still

01:08:21.840 being open to the leading of the spirit. I think it's important. I think even with women, um, you

01:08:26.720 know, that's a huge topic in, in today's world. Cause they're like, well, if you're gifted by

01:08:30.860 the spirit you have to preach which is obviously nonsense no but i think of the ways that ladies

01:08:35.500 will comfort each other with hospitality or they say but to your point like hey i was praying for

01:08:40.760 you this morning um and and i also look at the ways which god answers prayer to as part of the

01:08:49.160 way the spirit is still active and i could think of many times where it's like i have trials this

01:08:54.360 week lord give me joy in work that is otherwise joyless yep and painful and hard paul said in

01:09:04.080 philippians 4 13 that he could do all things through christ and the list of things he includes

01:09:07.960 are like suffering hardship going without yep and so the sort of that king loon like i want to

01:09:13.800 rejoice at this meal even though i'm like pretty stressed out and it's amazing then that week

01:09:19.140 you're like, wow, I have like this unexplained joy about the things I'm doing. It's the Holy

01:09:24.080 Spirit. Um, I can also remember too, for guys who preach, um, in fact, there, there was one

01:09:29.380 sermon I was preaching on the Sabbath and I was just thinking through like, Hey, this is, um,

01:09:35.280 really important stuff, but it's stuff that I've studied a lot. And so maybe it doesn't feel as

01:09:39.380 fresh. Yeah. And I was just praying, Lord, as, as I go to preach, please use me to minister to

01:09:44.840 these people. And one of the, somebody came up afterwards and it was just like, that was exactly

01:09:51.880 what I needed to hear this morning. And we have that so often. And you think, well, surely God

01:09:56.340 showed up and we're praying for it. Like I said, I'm always praying every sermon. In fact, usually

01:10:01.880 during our confession of sin in the service, I'm confessing my sin. I'm asking, you know,

01:10:05.000 thanking the Lord for his forgiveness. And one of the things I'm always praying is like, Lord,

01:10:09.140 even with all of the sins that you know that I've committed and that you've forgiven me for,

01:10:13.160 and that you've separated.

01:10:14.360 Don't take your spirit away from me.

01:10:16.160 Give me the unction of your Holy Spirit

01:10:17.800 to preach to your people.

01:10:19.780 And preaching is more than just telling them

01:10:21.880 what the Bible says.

01:10:23.300 It's teaching them how to obey it.

01:10:25.180 It's asking even for the Holy Spirit to supernaturally,

01:10:28.560 not just naturally,

01:10:30.060 not just through the working of my mind

01:10:31.800 and my thought processes,

01:10:33.640 but for the Spirit to work in all of those things

01:10:35.700 to bring to light the sins

01:10:38.820 that are being hidden in this congregation.

01:10:41.180 Bring to light the ways that these people

01:10:43.040 need to be encouraged because they're downcast and they need to remember the grace of God,

01:10:48.700 lift your countenance upon them and use me for that. And my basic conviction is that all

01:10:55.760 Christians should be praying that God would do that sort of thing through them. Not that they're

01:11:00.740 all going to stand up and preach from the pulpit. They're not, they shouldn't, but that all

01:11:04.760 Christians should be involved in the ministry of the Holy Spirit to one another, which is what the

01:11:10.580 pastor exists to equip the saints for in the first place is to equip the saints for the work of the

01:11:14.500 ministry, which is loving one another and loving the Lord. Like we need the spirit's help in all

01:11:18.860 those things. And so we should be shamelessly asking, um, God by your Holy spirit, lead me

01:11:24.980 not just naturally, but supernaturally today so that I could bear the fruit of your kingdom

01:11:29.320 and be of service to your people. So do we, do we have time for like some brief Q and a from me to

01:11:36.660 you can i oh sure yeah why not why not okay so i have a couple examples one first example okay

01:11:43.200 i remember bob coughlin okay so sovereign grace a lot a lot of good brothers yeah definitely more

01:11:49.700 on the charismatic side of things uh you will see people raising hands in church and being like

01:11:54.680 pastor i have a word and in the old days josh harris would be like shut up okay but like bob

01:12:01.560 Coughlin was like you know as a musician it's good to learn how to prophesy and so he would like write

01:12:08.460 a song on the spot okay that he thought the spirit was like leading him to like minister to the people

01:12:15.500 and a lot of times it was it was basically like a medley of songs that he knew yeah so do you think

01:12:22.580 this is good is this unhelpful should I mean are you going to start doing that on Sundays no I'm

01:12:28.640 not going to start doing that. I'm a fan of, and I believe that the normative pattern for Christian

01:12:34.140 worship, like even in new covenant worship, I'm persuaded by the book, The Lord's Service by

01:12:39.880 Jeffrey Meyer. And I think that New Testament worship is patterned on Leviticus one and

01:12:46.440 remembering and renewing the covenant of our salvation, working through the five call to

01:12:51.900 worship, confession of sin, consecration by the word, communion at the table of the Lord, and then

01:12:56.100 the charge of benediction to go out and obey the lord so within that though there's lots of room

01:13:00.720 for the holy spirit to do the things i'm talking about i don't think that we necessarily need to

01:13:08.980 go back to like let's adopt the forms of charismatic of the charismatic renewal that's

01:13:14.360 actually not what i'm saying so another question uh i think martin lloyd jones would often say

01:13:20.100 stuff like this but like if you uh if you pray and you've written any of it down beforehand

01:13:25.800 And the spirit won't be active in that.

01:13:28.760 Well, I mean, that would that would mean that Jesus was sinning when he told us that pray like this and then gave us a scripted prayer that we sing every Sunday at Refuge Church.

01:13:39.260 Do you kind of see what I'm getting at, though, with like, I think there's this balance between we don't want to be the frozen chosen who reads the liturgy like a phone book.

01:13:47.760 Right. But at the same time, there's this other ditch where guys were like, you have to give a 10 minute extemporaneous prayer.

01:13:55.800 And a lot of times I've heard those prayers and I'm like, this is scattered.

01:13:59.500 It's incoherent.

01:14:01.720 It's not necessarily more or less spirit filled because you have order and structure.

01:14:05.560 Which Paul actually addresses in 1 Corinthians 15.

01:14:09.980 14, yeah.

01:14:10.840 14 is one of his main points.

01:14:12.420 All things sound decently in order.

01:14:14.100 Yeah, let him lead with zeal.

01:14:15.520 And he's like, God actually appointed authorities in the church to order the worship and discharge in a stewardship way, the worship of the people.

01:14:25.460 And so the people really are worshiping.

01:14:27.340 When we come together, we really are all singing.

01:14:31.640 We really are all participating in the preached and heard and obeyed word.

01:14:35.420 We're all participating in these things together.

01:14:37.300 It's not just someone dispensing religious goods and services to customers.

01:14:42.240 That's not what worship is.

01:14:43.620 It's the people of God worshiping.

01:14:45.200 But God appointed within the people of God, hierarchically, leaders who are to order and lead with zeal.

01:14:52.900 And I believe that that is perfectly harmonious with and actually requires forethought, planning, care, concern.

01:15:01.620 God can lead you by the Spirit when you're writing things down beforehand, too.

01:15:06.420 Like, I pray for both.

01:15:07.640 God, please lead me when I'm writing.

01:15:08.840 And then probably 40% of any given sermon on a Sunday is not in my notes.

01:15:12.740 Even though every sermon is manuscripted, I could read it and it would be a sermon.

01:15:16.880 But probably between 20% and 50%, depending on the Sunday, and even from one service to the other,

01:15:22.600 is different a because i'm a person i'm not a machine but b genuinely i believe because the

01:15:28.800 holy spirit's working and he knows who's there and who's going to listen to it yeah i think that's

01:15:32.820 important order and the spirit moving are not antithetical to each other it's one of the

01:15:37.340 evidences is that there's order yeah correct disorder uh final question it's probably the

01:15:41.860 most important question that we'll answer in this show wow i think today um if i were to come into

01:15:48.940 worship while at some point in the worship and blow a shofar. Yeah. Okay. Is that unleashing the

01:15:56.320 spirit on Ogden? You know the story. I think we only ever talked about it in after hours, but

01:16:05.220 one time there was a Christian in our community. This was like probably eight years ago. I can't

01:16:10.460 remember. And they organized this public evangelism night and they invited like five

01:16:14.940 different churches to participate, 10 different churches, bring a worship team, have a pastor

01:16:18.960 come deliver something. And they asked me to preach and they asked some, our worship team

01:16:23.320 to do something. This was like, we had a band back then. And, uh, we've, we've tried, we still

01:16:29.540 do make an effort to try to participate in a, in a cooperative way with other churches in our

01:16:35.520 region, develop, you know, have good relationships with them. We try to invite pastors to lunch with

01:16:39.560 us regularly, that kind of thing. And just how can we be praying for you from different traditions?

01:16:43.740 so we're like okay we'll do it like evangelism that'll be fine it's fine it's all okay brian's

01:16:49.680 you know i'll preach i'll say whatever i want whatever a guy who knew the organizer

01:16:55.840 such a good story showed up and he was like pestering the organizer like i've got a word

01:17:04.020 man i've got a word from the lord like please let me do this i need to go and i've got you know

01:17:09.280 God's telling me and the organizer to his credit goes, God is not telling you to do this.

01:17:14.320 You are a narcissist.

01:17:15.740 Basically, the answer is no, you are.

01:17:19.660 It's not about you.

01:17:21.560 Pray that God would work.

01:17:22.780 Participate from the audience.

01:17:23.980 You're not getting on the stage.

01:17:25.660 So he got on the stage.

01:17:29.020 So then he got on the stage.

01:17:31.260 No permission, by the way.

01:17:32.860 It's just like at this time, no security.

01:17:35.760 He gets a mic.

01:17:36.640 you know it's going to be good when you hear the accessory that you have foreshadowed that

01:17:43.980 he brought with him which was a shofar a a genuine authentic animal horn known instrument of the holy

01:17:51.500 spirit absolutely he gets up i can't remember what he says some nonsense but he ends with this

01:17:56.940 as i blow this shofar it will be a sign that the holy spirit's power has come perpetually upon the

01:18:04.720 people of ogden and then this spectacular thing happened in awkward silence because they were

01:18:17.300 filled with the spirit no absolutely nothing happened perpetually and probably you know he

01:18:23.260 said this crazy thing and then like nothing actually changed at all that we know of well

01:18:28.120 other than that i have a really funny anecdote yeah which did change ogden forever in a sense

01:18:33.360 in a sense. So the guy is like driven from the stage or whatever. And I think I went up like

01:18:37.980 pretty much right after this guy. That's a good intro. And then I just

01:18:41.220 preach the gospel. We do that at the conference. I was like, if you're an unbeliever, like I'm

01:18:46.060 really sorry about that. But in a very real sense, you should repent of your sins and trust in the

01:18:51.360 Lord Jesus Christ. And, uh, that was, um, that was a really good example of why I think the Holy

01:18:59.080 The spirit really likes order just last like in Genesis.

01:19:03.920 What is God doing by his spirit?

01:19:06.660 He's hovering over the waters.

01:19:07.940 He's bringing order.

01:19:08.940 He's creating.

01:19:10.260 He's setting things in their proper place.

01:19:12.860 He's like a wind in the heavens and on earth through a shofar.

01:19:19.720 Brian's like,

01:19:20.460 absolutely not.

01:19:22.720 I'm sorry.

01:19:25.100 Like I like to take this effort.

01:19:26.780 the spirit has told me to apologize no just kidding so okay be led by the spirit kids but

01:19:33.700 don't don't don't pretend like you're being led by the spirit and then bum rush a stage and blow

01:19:39.220 an animal horn final one okay yeah last last last one this is an old preacher trick okay one more

01:19:45.200 time yeah you thought play that verse one more time just run it back every head bowed every eye

01:19:51.120 closed. Um, when I was in, I think it was like charismatic Pentecostal church as a kid. Um,

01:19:59.620 I was told that if I didn't speak in tongues, I wasn't saved. And so they would actually teach

01:20:06.820 you what I now believe is a special language called gibberish. Paula White gave a good example

01:20:15.440 of this she did so anyway welcome to the whatever i'm doing so there are a lot of people in america

01:20:24.360 who are caught up in these movements um and it gets really personal i remember talking to a

01:20:30.340 friend once we'd become more reformed this is like post-college probably and i was talking to

01:20:35.140 a friend who was who's you know he he was in the speaking in tongues thing and it was like very

01:20:41.120 personal for him because he felt like i was calling his relationship with the lord in question

01:20:45.380 yeah and because i told him i was like why don't you just like pray in english and i even asked

01:20:50.820 him i was like do you understand what you're praying and he was like no the spirit knows

01:20:53.820 because the spirit's leading me um so like yeah how would you address that particular issue yeah

01:21:01.000 i would say specifically with my friend hope he lives with your friend i hope he listens um i do

01:21:06.700 not believe that god normatively gives the gift of tongues in the church today i don't think that

01:21:12.260 means he can't ever, and that there's no situation where God would do that supernaturally for his

01:21:20.540 own purposes, whatever they might be in that circumstance. But that tongues were given as a

01:21:25.880 multifaceted sign to do multiple things. One of them bear witness to the nations. One of them

01:21:31.700 serve as a sign of judgment to Israel, as Paul quotes Isaiah. Are you also going off the definition

01:21:37.620 that tongues were languages.

01:21:39.420 Tongues were known languages

01:21:40.320 that could be interpreted

01:21:42.620 and they shouldn't in any gathering,

01:21:45.520 even during this period,

01:21:46.820 they were not to be practiced

01:21:48.440 unless they were interpreted,

01:21:50.380 which is another supernatural gift

01:21:52.040 of the Holy Spirit.

01:21:53.220 And then only a few of them

01:21:55.680 and that was it.

01:21:56.840 And they should keep it to themselves

01:21:58.900 and then pray.

01:22:00.780 And Paul said he spoke in tongues privately.

01:22:02.580 Like that is something that happened,

01:22:04.040 but they were known languages.

01:22:05.580 They were not made up.

01:22:06.580 They weren't fake.

01:22:07.100 They were real human languages that the Holy Spirit gave someone supernatural ability.

01:22:11.780 So it was such a strong supernatural work that it bypassed the mind of the person speaking.

01:22:17.400 It wasn't even profitable for their mind because they didn't understand what they were saying.

01:22:20.840 That's true.

01:22:21.620 But it was a known language.

01:22:24.000 But I don't believe that it's normative.

01:22:25.720 I think it was given for these specific, a series of specific purposes in that time.

01:22:30.080 and that we first of all in church history they did largely cease except in weird movements like

01:22:36.940 the montanus who turn out to be heretics until these charismatic renewals in the worst centuries

01:22:42.860 of the christian church recently quite frankly like the worst and so again either that's because

01:22:49.080 we lost the power and purity of the spirit which i don't think is true or god just simply was doing

01:22:54.800 something in that generation and time that is explicable and understandable through scripture.

01:23:00.220 I think that's true. So to somebody like that, I would say, I believe that they have worked

01:23:06.740 themselves up and are counterfeiting it. Maybe not even knowledgeably, but that they have either

01:23:12.760 learned or people can do all sorts of things and work themselves up to all sorts of things and

01:23:17.000 feelings and emotions. You can also do a lot of things in sincerity, but you're sincerely wrong.

01:23:21.640 You're just sincerely wrong. And you've even, there's a category of something called self-deception where you've deceived even yourself. In charity, I believe that's what's happening. And I would urge that person to consider that and maybe study the issue and see where they land.

01:23:35.960 But I wouldn't want, again, I'm not actually trying to say that all Christians in the charismatic movement, that all Pentecostals that are not believers, look at the letters of the New Testament.

01:23:47.980 Paul called the Corinthians brothers and saints, even with all the things that they had going on in their midst.

01:23:55.920 Christians can be, are in every generation to varying degrees, some admixture of maturing

01:24:04.040 authentic faith and sins, immaturities, errors, and praise God, we're not saved by our own works.

01:24:13.040 We're saved by Christ and his good works and his death for us and his atoning sacrifice and his

01:24:18.900 resurrection and faith in that. So this is just another area where I'd go, man, really good thing

01:24:24.760 we aren't saved by our perfect doctrinal purity or perfect moral purity because we'd all be

01:24:29.000 screwed. But at the same time, we should desire to increase in our doctrinal purity and in our

01:24:34.500 moral purity, which includes both not counterfeiting the works of the spirit, but also

01:24:39.040 depending properly upon the spirit. So kind of everybody needs to heed that message. That's what

01:24:43.980 I would say. Someone's going to be offended, probably a haunted cosmos listener and

01:24:48.860 send us an email yes at new christian press.com no he wants evan wants your email yeah he does

01:25:00.420 he did not his words but there was a twinkle in his eye i would say go talk to your pastor

01:25:05.280 because i'm not your pastor i'm a podcast host and a pastor of a church here and if you're my

01:25:09.580 pastor then yeah i'm not your pastor though neither is eric unless i am in which case disregard but

01:25:15.860 yeah come talk to us go talk to your pastor study the word yeah i've been a great conversation

01:25:20.580 definitely encourage people to check out the i think on the refuge app you can just find the

01:25:25.000 sermons yeah refugeutah.org or we have an app for the church that's just a convenient way to

01:25:29.740 to listen or watch sermons yes they're not flashy they're just sermons on the bible

01:25:34.260 sermons on the bible go figure and brian we will jump now into the king's hall after hours

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01:25:44.600 today and you can get probably the most enlightening some of the greatest examples of two people or

01:25:51.840 more than that talking about tweets in the history of man in the history of man and current events

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01:26:04.340 how nobody ever could have seen this coming no one but we'll talk about that join us in the after

01:26:11.480 Hours. Thanks again for listening to this episode of

01:26:13.500 the King's Hall Podcast. Cheers.

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The King's Hall - June 19, 2026

Cessationism？

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