All right, this is part five, part five of the cessationism. This used to be a three-part series. Now it's become five. We'll see if it becomes six. I don't know. I would like to get through it tonight. I think we can, except there are a few video clips I would like to play, some that I've referenced before. So I don't know if we'll get through it all or not. But let me hit on, we were in the midst of speaking on, not in tongues, but on tongues. in their existence in the church. Like we've said, we've made the argument that we expect tongues, prophecy, words of knowledge in the early church, and we expect it to end with the apostles and with the closing of the canon because it is special revelation. And we expect the sign, wonders and miracles, the healings, that sort of thing to diminish as the apostles die out and to go away with the apostles as well. So we've made this argument. I guess it's probably the minority view in the church today, which doesn't mean anything other than the church is pretty weak theologically and has been for a long time. But I wanted to bring up the early church, what the early church and the reformers believed. Are we out of line with them? And I would make the argument that we are not at all out of line. The collective writings of the early church fathers overwhelmingly suggest that they associated tongue speaking with a supernatural ability to speak rational, authentic foreign languages, which is what we argued last time, not some gibberish, nonsensical language that's completely made up and sounds different to every single person that says it, but an actual, regular human language, which was always the belief up until the early 20th century when they tried it and couldn't speak real languages, so they made up a different understanding. That proposition is directly supported by Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Hegemonius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose, Ziaster, Chrysostom, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Leo the Great, and applied by multiple others like Tertullian and Origen. Origen's a little bit of a nutcase himself, so I don't know if that means much, but he was brilliant. And at least it's a testimony of what they expected. They even considered the private prayer language that some claim to practice as authentic prayer languages themselves. So not like there's some version of tongues you use in public and then you go in your prayer closet and you speak gibberish in there. No, they didn't expect that either. It's also worth noting that not one church father claimed to personally speak in tongues, and they did not consider it a normative part of the Christian experience. So there's no, what's the word I'm looking for? Where there's like a bad association with it. Yeah, there's no negative connotation in the early church with tongues. We don't have a whole bunch of years of frauds and fakes and TV evangelists making the Christian faith look ridiculous and mocking the Holy Spirit. So they still had this idea of like, yeah, they're gone. We don't do it. We don't expect Christians to do that normally anymore. So that was the normal expectation. It was normative not to speak in tongues. They don't expect it. The fathers agreed with the standard definition that the gift of tongues was supernaturally endowed ability given by the Holy Spirit to select Christians, enabling those believers to speak in previously unlearned rational foreign languages is what we argued that's what tongues are because we look at Acts 2 where you see tongues practice the first time and it's clearly regular human languages. The intended use of the gift involved either the translation of the message by an interpreter for the general edification of fellow believers, so they would still use it in the church, if somebody could translate. Remember, Paul says, don't let any more than two or three speak in a tongue, but only if there's an interpreter, because it's the same as prophecy, as long as it's interpreted. If it's not interpreted, don't speak. Stay silent. It's useless, because nobody can understand you. or it is the reception of the message by the hearer who heard it in their own tongue for the evangelism of unbelievers. So if they're out on the mission field, they don't need an interpreter because they're speaking the native language of the people they're trying to reach. So there's no interpreter in that case. The interpreter is only in a local church where you would be speaking with everybody that's basically speaking the same language or at least doesn't know whatever gift that you have. But in the mission field, you would just speak that language to the people that spoke that language. You wouldn't know it per se, but they would know it. So you don't need an interpreter. It's worth noting that the reformers likewise had unanimous agreement on this same definition of tongues along with the early church fathers. So this is the norm. The reformers agreed with this definition. The early church agreed with this definition. We're not out of line with defining things this way. This is historically the case. That is the understanding. I'm gonna give just some general evidence and general arguments on tongues. Recordings of someone speaking in tongues presented to various interpreters always produce completely different translations. This will always be the case. And this is so important to understand. This debate would end, it would absolutely end if a single recording were translated identically by multiple translators or interpreters. So there's people claiming to speak this nonsense language, there's people that claim to be able to interpret it. Great, we'll take one recording, give it to as many interpreters as you want. As soon as you come up with the same message from this person, then we know, yes, there's some genuine interpretation going on. This has never been done. It never will be done. It can't be done unless there's collusion. And they don't do this because they can't do this. It could easily be proven. Debate could end immediately if it were real. So that's just a fundamental argument. Just like raise someone from the dead, make a blind person see, regenerate an eyeball. I will be your first victim. I would gladly be proven wrong on this. I would love it. I would love to be proven wrong on it. Do it. This could end if they wanted it to end, if they could end it, but they can't. Not only that, but linguistic analysis by scholars detects no pattern of actual language. Modern charismatic speaking in tongues is mere gibberish. It shows no sign of being a real language at all, in spite of it necessarily having to be. If it were to be interpreted, that means it is a real language. It lacks any form of grammar or syntax. And this is why every tongue speaker kind of has their own version of what tongues sound like. You could, I mean, it all sounds like gibberish, but none of it sounds the same. Everybody makes up their own version of it. But if it were a real language, even if it's a heavenly angelic language, which why, of course, it's still gonna have a grammar or syntax, it would be discernible in the way, in its forms and the way that it's used. But there is, you can analyze it as much as you want, you will never find that because it's just made up sounds. Linguistic analysis proves it is a facade of a language made up of various repetitive sounds cobbled together in arbitrary sequences. That's important too. The ability to mimic the sounds is acquired over time, but those that listen to it frequently enough, speaking in tongues is faked, manipulated, or self-induced. It's nothing but nonsense. And this is why they can train people to do it, because it's nonsense. You can train anybody to speak in nonsense. That's the way we're born, speaking in nonsense. All you gotta do is learn how to do it all over again. It's the same thing. Here's basically five steps of how it goes down, how it works. So John Kilbell explains how this manufactured process works. There's five steps in the process of inducing someone to speak in tongues, generally speaking. I mean, they literally put on classes on how to do it. You can watch internet videos. This is how you speak in tongues. But generally, when they do it in an environment with a big group, this is how it happens. From a psychological point of view, First step seems to involve some kind of magnetic relationship between the leader and the one who is about to attempt to speak in tongues. There's always some charismatic leader up there, and I mean that both in the theological sense and just the plain adjective of charismatic. Second, the initiative, the initiate generally has a sense of personal distress, usually involving a profound life crisis. Third, the initiate has been taught a rationale for understanding what tongue speaking is. So they like teach them, it's not supposed to make sense. You're supposed to let go and just like let it flow. You'll hear him talking about that. Just like, just start making sounds and it'll start to form. Fourth, the presence of a supporting group of fellow believers enhances the possibility of eventually speaking in tongues, so everybody around you does it, so you don't feel as crazy. You don't think, well, I'm an idiot just making up sounds, because everybody around you is acting just as dumb as you are. So that's what happens, and it feels, it's the emperor with no clothes kind of thing. We'll all pretend this is happening. And the fifth, somewhere in the process there is an intense emotional atmosphere. It's usually couched with a lot of chaos. It's like you try to get caught up. It's almost like a mosh pit kind of thing. The things you do in a mosh pit you would never do outside of a mosh pit. And the same thing with these goofy services. You just get in there and get caught up in the chaos and do a bunch of dumb things. It's like that. In other words, tongues may be more closely linked to peer pressure and self-expectation than spirit endowment and true gifts of grace. Nobody just does this on their own unless they're completely making it up. It is not surprising then that studies have shown that people can be trained to imitate versions of tongues without detection. People can just, you can teach anybody to do this sort of thing. And maybe most significantly, there's numerous, I've mentioned this before, numerous former members of Pentecostal movements who retain the ability to speak in tongues even though they're now atheists or agnostic. They have no belief. They don't think there's supernatural gifts of anything. They don't even believe in God. I've cited Katy Perry as a good example of this, an unbeliever who still has this ability to speak in tongues because she was raised in a charismatic Pentecostal group, and she can still do it. Lots of people can still do it. Pagan groups still do it. Pagan groups, false religions employ the same practice of tongue speaking that's essentially indistinguishable from what we see in Christian groups. You can play the same videos and you won't even know the difference. Mormons even used to do it. And there's Buddhist, Hindu groups and a lot of, there's pagan groups that have done this. And there's pagan groups back then that did this sort of ecstatic type speech. And Paul talks about it as just babbling. Don't babble like the pagans do. Don't babble on like they do. where they do those repetitive words and they just say these, make these sounds. So it's not even unique to Christianity. It's unique to the charismaticism, but it's a made up practice in lots of groups. So Matthew 6, 7 is where Jesus is giving advice. Did I say Paul? I meant Jesus. Jesus gives, talking about prayer. When you are praying, do not use the meaningless reputations as the Gentiles do, for they supposedly heard for their many words. ESV. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases. NIV, I really like. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans. That's what it is. It's babbling like pagans. They think they're gonna be heard because of their many words. Modern tongue speakers from all religions then are seen practicing an act that is actually a learned behavior, learned either unawarely or sometimes consciously, they try to do it. And the tongue speaker is the product of considerable instruction. It doesn't just come on them and it happens the way we see in scripture, like in Pentecost. they're trained how to do it. And you can train anyone how to do it, and you don't need faith or even to know Jesus to do it. You can train anyone to do it, and it's completely indistinguishable. As long as the New Testament gift of tongues that is supposedly practiced today is equated with mere ecstatic, unintelligible utterance, it can be easily explained apart from the miraculous or from the Holy Spirit. And let me, I want to, I wanna show this, if I can. This is a documentary on a man named Marjo. I don't know if anybody would remember him. He was from the late 40s, early 50s, and he was a little kid evangelist. He had Pentecostal parents, and they put him out there as this little boy. They taught him how to mimic the style of preaching. I don't know if you did. They used to preach like, whoa, like this, and do this motion a lot. They taught him how to do it and mimic it. And he was like this little boy preacher and he became like pseudo famous and they made millions of dollars off of him. And then he grew out of it because he was like 14 and it's like, it's not that cute anymore. And his dad took all the money and ran away. Marjo, his name is actually a mixture, a blend from Mary and Joseph. They just took Marjo. So, but here's an, so. He abandoned the faith. He abandoned the faith, but he knew that he could do this for money. So he still kept doing it. Even as an unbeliever, he would do revivals and get invited and make money off it, basically survived off of it. And eventually he was like, all right, I can't keep doing it. So he filmed a documentary where they basically followed him behind the scenes, how he's an atheist. Going in doing these revivals and these talks and it's an interesting documentary if you want to just watch Marjo I think it's free online it won an Academy Award for like best documentary and Then he like went on to try to start a singing career and became an actor and stuff like that Anyway, let me see if I can get this clip to play So this is him basically He's with a documentary crew that is filming him behind the scenes. It's not great. You know what? I need to do something for the audio. I'm gonna play it through. There we go. I guess it'll play through there and I'll put the mic up on it. So he's at a revival, an unbeliever, and he's just getting caught up in it because you can fake this. You don't have to be a believer to do any of it. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! There's the experience we say, there's the fire baptism when you get the Holy Ghost, that's the constant. And they love to work people over. You've got to let them show you how. That's when you see people gathering around people and start laying hands on a friend or someone. You know, I tell people you can't repeat it. It's very important because they'll be laying hands on someone. The first person will be saying, you know, thank you Jesus. Now this is a person that's already sick, but they're getting the baptism. And someone will be saying, I'm going to have that. Hello, how are you? Oh I've got that lifestyle intensity, I feel like it's true. I've got that lifestyle intensity, I feel like it's true. I said, how do you know that a stalker is talking? Why? Jesus, I washed in the blood of the Lamb Jesus, it's so good to me to not have to do it like you Jesus, I pray in the Lord Oh, glory, glory, hallelujah, I feel good in my soul Praise the Lord Insurance will tell me it used to be that I loathed the Clown I really hated that Remember, I used to have to go down and work for my mother and father. The whole thing, money, money, down in those four years. I really supported them, you know, when I was a child. I didn't think about it. I remember, I used to send them down to the aisles, like boys, to go fill up the pens and the little pom-poms suits and satin shirts. But my mother would sew, like, extra pockets into the suits so that I could sell money. And they would announce to my dad, every once in a while, he gives $20. Little Marcus and I came down to give you a kiss. All of you little loving old ladies that wanted to get their face in my little curly locks. And after I filled my pockets, I got back to my father immediately and let me... I don't even remember what town he was in exactly, but I don't know why I didn't see him. He took off for a meeting that I didn't know of. He briefed a meeting one night, if I remember right, and he took me off there too. I don't know how much came in. As far as I can guess, maybe about $3 million in the title of the score of 14. I have no idea what happened with that money. I know that I never saw it or I never got any piece of it from my education or anything. I traveled with my mother for about close to two years. Not only the story of all of the child preaching, of running in and running out, it was a big event. I had a big meeting. The whole documentary is actually pretty interesting. Frustrating, pretty irritating, but you see that. He used to study Mick Jagger so that he, and if you watch the broader clips, you see him run across the stage and he kind of mimics or imitates Mick Jagger a little bit. And yeah, just milks money out of these people because they can't tell any different, right? They're caught up in the ecstasy of the whole event, pretending like they feel better and that it's all real and it's all fake. Continuationists are susceptible to these kind of scams because they have no way to distinguish between true and false tongues since they think they're not authentic languages. They're susceptible to this because they've made up this idea that it's nonsense. So anybody can do it. Nor can they detect true or false miracles because it's never objective outward healings. You saw that one guy with his leg, he's kind of bending his leg like, yeah, I think it feels a little better. My knee doesn't hurt as much. It's never like you can see what actually is getting healed. There's no objective things. Limbs are not regenerated, eyes are not reconstituted, the dead are not raised, the lame do not walk, the blind do not see, and the deaf do not hear. It's not real stuff happening. It's just stuff like my back kind of hurts sometimes. Or the leg lengthenings, all this nonsense that's just, parlor tricks and hype. Rather, it is back or knee pain that disappears, some other undetectable healing. Such pains often disappear with rushes of adrenaline. So that guy that was bending his knee, he probably did feel a little bit better because he's all caught up in the hype of it, right? This happens to athletes. When they have certain pains, you can power through a game through the pain because of the pump of adrenaline in the moment, and then afterwards, it kind of hits you because it's not better. You just, adrenaline can drown out pain or at least help you to push through it. So this is a normal experience. It's not unusual then to expect some genuine diminishment albeit temporary in pain in the midst of the flurry of healing. So those people that like their leg kind of hurts when they walk and they put down the cane and they take more steps and they act like they're healed, well they could walk, they just have pain when they walk, they're caught up in the moment, they're gonna go home and it's gonna hurt really bad and they'll probably be more swollen tonight. And that's the kind of thing that happens, especially if anybody follows up on these supposed healings, that's always the case. Oh, and I do have this one more, this one, this segment that I mentioned a few times back when Francis Chan is in the cessationist document. It's just a segment from that documentary where it's just very eye-opening, very worthy of a watch. It's short as well. This whole documentary is good. I would recommend it. It's called Cessationist. So if you get a chance to watch this, you should. But let's see, it basically speaks for itself. So for the last few years, I have believed in miracles and I have believed for healing them. And I'm so shocked because every time I pray, nothing would happen. It's discouraging. overseas to right here with all these miracles happening. Okay, let me at least see it. And I get there. We're in Africa, India, whatever. And then two weeks ago, we were in Myanmar, Burma. So I've heard of some evangelicals who have gone to a place called Myanmar or Burma. I can't even tell you This lady had built a relationship and somehow was able to work it out so that we could go into the village. And while there, I claim that they actually came along and healed everyone they touched. Everyone they touched was healed. People started coming forward for healing. Every person I touched was healed. It is such a craziness to me. I have never experienced this in 52 years. What's interesting about that story is I actually know of men who are church planters on the ground in that country who know the men who arranged these healings. Unbeknownst to the mystic preacher, poor people of all ages in a village are hired to act In this elaborate scam, the creature is actually tricked into believing that he is performing miracles. I'm talking like a little boy and a little girl who were deaf. We lay hand, she starts crying and sweat. These are not questions. These are people you've heard about Jesus. to heal, because what that does is that brings more American preachers and more money into the country, and so they arrange a series of healings, and they send them back with these stories. And when they lay hands on their little brother, you know, and they lay hands on him, and he starts hearing for the first time, like, you guys, this is how I want to come for Joe. This is how I grieve about my own ends. It happened. It happened. They're being suckered. Unfortunately, we go overseas and we lose all sense of discernment. Things we would never consider acceptable here, we just go overseas and something's gone, and we're just suckers for our shells when it comes along. I thought I had faith, but my faith was at a different level. One of the reasons I absolutely despise the charismatic movement and all that it does They don't just I think, yeah, that speaks for itself. This is often, it's the same as what you see with the cults. When people leave the cults, they don't just abandon Jesus, they abandon religion altogether. And the same thing happens with these, it trains these people to be gullible because they want to believe it so bad. They want to experience the supernatural. He wanted to heal those people. He's willing to be gullible. And it's not like this is something unique to them. Everybody is more prone to believe the things they want to believe. But their whole doctrine is built towards this. It's built to be susceptible to fakes and frauds and charlatans. Because it can be so easily faked. Because everybody's faking it. None of it is real. Healings really happen, but not like the miracle healings, the gift of healing kind of thing happening. We pray for people, and they're healed sometimes, but it's not like this sort of thing. It's all, sadly, a bunch of nonsense. The debate over speaking in tongues just as with the other signed gifts would not even exist if cessationism were not true. And let me point out one other thing, I'm gonna come back to it. Did you hear what he said on these people weren't even Christians, they hadn't even heard of Jesus? Okay, we'll come back to that, that point. Where am I at? All right, the debate over speaking in tongues just as with the other signed gifts would not even exist were it not true. Every church would have some distribution of charismatic gifting granted to their members, true churches, because the Holy Spirit gives gifts to the church as he sees fit. Like our faith, the reception of spiritual gifting is not of our own doing. We didn't choose to have faith, we received faith. These things just happen to us. The Holy Spirit does His work. It just, He does it. No amount of human exertion, initiation, or training can aid in acquiring what is endowed only by the Holy Spirit. Do you think the apostles in Acts 2, in those 10 days between Christ's ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, in those 10 days, were they training each other how to speak in tongues? Did they have to do something to initiate it, or did the Holy Spirit just come and do it? We just read it on Sunday, a couple Sundays ago. The Holy Spirit just comes and does it to them. That's how it works. That's how these gifts work. First Corinthians 12, four through seven. Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are a variety of services, but the same Lord. And there are a variety of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them all and everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. If those were still in operation, then we would have people empowered Amongst us. There would be a manifestation of the Spirit amongst us. You can't just shut down the Holy Spirit. You can't just do that in a real church. It doesn't happen. If we just determined right now we're not going to have any more conversions in America. You can't make him not do conversions. You can't make him not bestow gifts. He's going to do it. Paul is emphatic in asserting that the distribution of gifts is not to be attributed to human causes as if they were achievable by men. The very gifts of the Holy Spirit and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ are the work of the one and the same God. The same way that he saves because he chooses to save and he's gonna make someone be saved, it's the same way he distributes the Spirit. When Christ sends the Spirit, the Spirit's gonna come and do and distribute these gifts. Thus, the gifts, including tongues, do not involve any prior human effort or ability to attain them. That is not to say that speaking in tongues results in a lack of self-control, but rather that it truly was a gift given by the grace of God to whomever he willed. So there's no training, no education, or personal achievement that's necessary in order to do these things. The church in Acts 2 It's not like they knew what to expect, right? They know there's some gift coming. God is going to be doing something. It's not like they knew what the Holy Spirit was about to do and thus trained for it or initiated it somehow. They just sat there and waited for it and then, once it happened to them, they spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance. If you remember how it's worded, as the Spirit gives them utterance, they spoke. This is why the argument fails when continuationists explain the absence of charismatic gifts by asserting that the church somehow muzzled the Spirit's work after the apostolic age, because they also recognize that these gifts have not been in operation throughout church history. They recognize it, and that's why they say, well, now they've been poured out once again. That's their argument. Like, oh, it's come back. They recognize there's been this huge time in church history where it wasn't done except for amongst the pseudo-cults. And it's an oddly low view of the spirit, if I do say so myself. Think about it, they think they have such a high view of the spirit and yet somehow the entire church across the board just muzzled the Holy Spirit where he couldn't pour out any gifts or wouldn't pour out any gifts. The whole church did this for hundreds and hundreds of years? Seems like an oddly not that powerful Holy Spirit that can be so easily muzzled. Indeed, it could be believed that perhaps a few isolated believers sinfully quenched the spirit in not practicing their gifting, but it's beyond absurd to believe that the entire church and all its members somehow squelched the charismatic gifts exclusively for no apparent reason whatsoever for nearly 2,000 years. Why would we do this? There's no reason to do it. Why would we just be like, no, that's a tremendous, unbelievable, amazing gift. We're just not going to do that anymore. There's no motivation to not practice this gift if the Holy Spirit truly gives it and gives us utterance. There's no negative connotation to tongues or healings like in our modern day, back then. when such practices were prevalent almost amongst, entirely amongst charlatans and frauds like they are today, there's zero initiative to hide or withhold such gifts in the church if they were still being given. If somebody had a gift of healing and was just like, no, I'm not gonna heal anyone, that doesn't make any sense. But that's what they have to argue. Like, oh, everybody did that. The entire church did that for 1,800 years. They were just like, no, we're not gonna do it anymore. That's nonsense. It's an absurd argument. We don't see any of the early church martyrs being raised from the dead or their wounds being miraculously healed in the church. In fact, what we see is a marked diminishment of the charismatic gifts as the apostolic age came to a close. Even Paul, in the face of frequent ailments in the church, recommended not healing, but things like medicinal uses of wine, right? 1 Timothy 5.23, no longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. Use medicine. Don't go to your local faith healer. All your churches have faith healers. Go find your faith healer. No. Just use wine as medicine in that instance. James 5.14, is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the man that has the healing abilities. The guy, the worker of miracles? No. Let him call for the elders of the church. Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. What's the promise? Forgiven sins, future resurrection. There's no call to find someone for healing in the local churches there. There's preparation for potential death. There's use of medicine. The promises are forgiveness, not for miraculous healing. It's not go find the elders, they'll anoint you and you're gonna be healed if you have enough faith. No, that's not what he's talking about. There's that Tom Pennington lecture is really good, and he talks about how there's a decline in the frequency of these gifts in the apostolic era. So in other words, if the charismatic gifts were still in operation, then it would be patently obvious and undeniable the same way that the other spiritual gifts are, like gifts of preaching and teaching or administration. Those are clear, obvious things. We can all discern them, and there's no question that they still exist and they're still being given. We don't see apostles today because the gift of apostleship is over. The requirements can no longer be fulfilled. We don't see tongue speakers entering the mission field and sharing the gospel in foreign countries or translating the Bible into foreign languages for the same reason we don't see faith healers emptying out hospitals or graveyards. It's the same reason that a thief can never find a cop, right? He doesn't want to find a cop. They're all frauds and charlatans. At best, they're gravely deceived. If there was really, I mean, they said it themselves, they don't have to have even heard of Jesus. They don't have to be Christians or have even heard of Jesus. They could just be doing this all over the place. The idea that it's, remember, Tongzhu is obviously speaking rational human languages, but even if it was also speaking in this angelic language nobody could understand, that wouldn't mean that it's not the regular human languages, and yet you never see them practicing that. They never go out on the mission field and try to attempt to do that, thinking they have that gift, and the only time that they ever have done it has been a miserable failure because it's fake. Frequently, when continuationists are unable to prove their position through objective, verifiable healings or speaking in foreign languages, then they'll make the excuse that the person does not have enough faith for the miracle. So if I ask them, all right, well, heal my eye, they'll be, well, you don't believe in gifts and miracles anymore. I'm like, well, I believe in Jesus. Do I need to believe in you and your ability to do that? Or is believing in Jesus enough, right? This argument fails miserably because the faith Christ required to heal was in Jesus. A cessationist's disbelief in one's spiritual gifting to heal has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not they should be able to be healed by a continuationist. And does that not fit with, isn't that what Francis Chan said? Everyone I touched was healed, they weren't even Christians, they'd never even heard of Jesus. Did they have enough faith to get healed? What? But somehow you can't heal us, and you can't make some objective, verifiable one, because we don't have enough faith, but people with zero faith have enough faith, what? It doesn't make any sense. Their argument fails again. Remember what he said in Miramar. Everyone he touched was healed, but they didn't even know Jesus. We don't have to have faith in a miracle worker. We have to have faith in Christ. So why would we be excluded from any of these gifts if we obviously have faith in Christ? So in conclusion, I do have one little addendum on the end of this. It's short, though. The arguments defending continuationism are more emotional and experiential than biblical and exegetical. You're not going to see them making biblical and exegetical arguments. They're going to say things like, well, the Bible never says they're going to cease. And we say, yes, it does. And you just don't understand 1 Corinthians 13. But where's the case that they're going to continue? Where's it say this is going to continue on and on? Many have a romanticized idea of what tongues and prophecy are, and thus they find it hard to give up the idea that they have ceased, and we have a better and fuller revelation in scripture. That, for some reason, is boring to a lot of people. The fact that, oh no, you don't need prophecy and speaking in tongues because you have the Bible, and they're like, well, everybody's got the Bible. I want something neat. I want something supernatural, something unique to me. They don't say that, but that's how they operate. The Bible's not enough for them. It's just boring. It's old news to them. This happened amongst the Anabaptists in the Reformation. They would call the reformers the ministers of the dead letter because they just cared about the Bible and they don't have the spirit. I think it was, you know... Luther was criticizing one of these guys, and he's like, yeah, he swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all. It's some famous line. But this happened back amongst them, and they were all nuts. They were a bunch of nutjobs that believed this stuff, and they're just not satisfied with it. They criticized the Bible, shockingly heavily, like said really, really nasty things about the word of God because they wanted to criticize the reformers, this minister of the dead letter stuff. Most of the prophecies offered today are either too generic to be meaningful, It can't be evaluated because they're so generic, or they're just internal impressions that somebody gets in somebody's heart. But even if our internal impressions are spirit-guided, they're not revelatory. Even if it's like a godly thing to say, and maybe something you should encourage somebody, it doesn't make it revelation. Again, it's a romanticized view of prophecy that causes one to elevate such subjective feelings to objective revelation, as if the spirit actually gave this stuff. But if you've heard the kind of prophecies they make, They're like disproval. You can't disprove them because they're so generic. God is going to do something in the year 2024. I prophesy. It's like, oh, he's going to do something? So anything happens, God did it. There you go. It's that kind of generic stuff where they can't be. And it's so frustrating because they speak it as if they have kind of an authority. And it's just nonsense. Nothing to be taken seriously. Most continuationists even admit that no one is replicating the apostolic power that we see in scripture. The signs and wonders of the apostolic era have self-evidently not been duplicated. They'll even admit this. In other words, modern charismatics have already adopted a version of a cessationist argument or position. When pressed on the issue, all honest charismatics are forced to admit that the gifts that they supposedly receive today are of lesser quality than those of the apostolic era. They'll admit that much, but of course, self-evidently, this is the case. There's another excerpt. We're not going to watch that. It's longer, but the continuationist movement has been, has borne the bad fruit that one would expect if it is truly a false understanding like we claim as cessationists. Continuationism cannot stand the weight of biblical, grammatical, historical, or exegetical examination. The words don't mean what they say that they mean. The interpretations they offer fail the test of consistency. The grammar doesn't line up with the deductions they derive from the text. In every meaningful way, it is cessationism and not continuationism that stands the test of explaining reality via the scriptures. And that is why cessationism is the historic position of the church. And that's why cessationism has not produced the terrible fruit that Continuationists have. The Charismatics, the Pentecostals, the televangelists, all this nonsense and chaos and mockery of the Holy Spirit is exclusively amongst those that say these gifts continue. Not saying that we're flawless somehow, but we don't make a mockery of the Christian faith this way. And let me give one little addendum. This came, Wes raised some good issues, and I think I need to clarify something about apostles. So there's 12 apostles, right? There's the chosen 12, and we call these the apostolic gifts. But there are big A apostles, the chosen 12, and there's small A apostles, if you want to put it that way. An apostle is basically those that were specifically called, they're sent disciples, they're witnesses after the resurrection, they're witnesses of the resurrection, they were people that were with Jesus. But the term apostle is not actually limited to just the 12. So there are apostles in the early church that were with Jesus before. So when they replaced Judas, they were choosing from amongst the apostles to become one of the 12, the 12 chosen apostles. But they weren't making him into an apostle, They were elevating him to one of the chosen 12 apostles. Paul is called an apostle over and over and over. He's not one of the 12. He's an apostle. James, the brother of Jesus, who denied Jesus all the way up until the resurrection, denied his own brother was the Christ, he is called an apostle in Galatians 1.19. Now we do know for a fact that Jesus appeared to him, so he did meet the resurrected Lord. He met his brother after death. There's actually a legend that goes along with it, explains what actually happened. It's not scripture, but it's recorded in Christian history. We don't know what to do with it necessarily, but Paul talks about how Jesus appeared to James, talking about this James, his brother, and he is called an apostle. He's obviously not one of the 12. Barnabas is likewise called an apostle multiple times in Acts 14. Again, not one of the 12, but there are apostles that aren't the apostles, not the 12 apostles. So the qualifications for apostles seem to be a person that is called or appointed by Jesus Christ, accompanied by miraculous power. So they have apostolic gifts. that accompanied their message or their calling. So Paul and Barnabas are specifically called as to the Gentiles. Paul talks about that specific calling multiple times. And then they're a personal witness seeing the resurrected Jesus or were with Jesus before the resurrection and witnessed his resurrection after. Either or kind of thing. But we still see this, 2 Corinthians, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles. So they're categorized as signs of a true apostle. If it was what everybody did, then it's not signs of a true apostle, it's just signs of a Christian. Somebody that has the spirit, but they call them signs of a true apostle. Acts 2, and everyone kept feeling a sense of awe, and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. Not like only the apostles maybe did them, but it's through them somehow, some way, they're there, they're involved. Acts 4.33, with great power, the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord. With great power, that's talking about in reference to their ability to do these miracles and gifts. Acts 5.12, at the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were taking place amongst the people. And you read about the apostles throughout the, if you look up just apostle or apostles throughout the New Testament, you can tell it's a broader group than just the 12. Sometimes it's talking about the 12, sometimes it's talking about, in general, all the apostles, of which there were many. Then we do the same thing with disciples, right? There's the 12 disciples, and then there's disciples. We're disciples of Jesus, none of us are one of the 12 disciples. So it's sort of the same idea there with apostles. The 70 that are sent out in Luke 10, we can call them apostles. They're called to a specific calling. They're empowered to do miracles and healings, amazing thing, cast out demons and things like that when they're sent out on that little mission. So we would classify them as apostles. They're walking with Jesus. There's a large group of them, right? They had the healing and the power to prove that they were apostles. They performed true acts of apostles. 1 Corinthians 15 and 3 through 9. So just listen to this and let me draw some things from it. It's Paul talking about, you know, him giving the message of the gospel about Jesus first. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. And he appeared to Cephas, that's Peter, then to the twelve, that's the twelve apostles, the twelve big A apostles. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at a time. There's over 500 people that witnessed the resurrection. Minimum, minimum 500 people. Most of whom remained until now, but some had fallen asleep, so some had died. Then he appeared to James. So we know that his brother James had an appearance from Jesus. And then to all the apostles. You see how there seems to be a distinction between the 12 and then all the apostles? Because there's more apostles than just the 12. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also, for I am the least of the apostles. He's an apostle, but the least of the apostles because he persecuted the Church of God. But he had an appearance, he met the resurrected Lord, he appeared to him, so he counts as an apostle as well. So we see a distinction between the 12 and then all the apostles, and that means there's at least 500 that witnessed the resurrected Lord. That's 500 additional at least candidates of who could be an apostle in the early church. if they're called by God, right? Barnabas and Paul are called later and they're made apostles because they had met the resurrected Lord. They were there in some form or fashion. They have a special calling, they're apostles. And these 500, from that 500 multiple, I'm sure were drawn to go on specific missions, mission trips, speaking in tongues at these other places. and spreading the gospel. You know, Acts just gives us a few lines of missionary work between Peter and Paul, but there were tons of people going out and sharing the gospel all over the place. So like prophets, and you'll see this, it talks about apostles and prophets, these were common in the early church. There's 12 apostles, they're a big deal, right? But then there's apostles that knew Jesus in the flesh. And they were widespread in the early days of the church, and they're part of the foundation. The apostles and the prophets could speak authoritatively and revelatory gifts from God, and they're part of the foundation of the church. There's spoken, remember, Jesus is the cornerstone, with the foundation being the apostles and the prophets. There's the revelation. We have their authority remaining in the word of God, and we're all built up on that foundation of the word of God. Even some of the books of the New Testament, they're not all of the 12 apostles. Obviously Paul wrote half of them and he's not even one of the 12. But Luke is an apostle of sorts. He was there for a lot of this stuff. He's sent out to do these jobs. Other writers as well. Jude, the brother of Jesus. His brothers were converted. So, James, you know, he's an apostle. That's apostolic writing without being one of the 12 apostles, right? But, They eventually died off and there's no more eyewitnesses left, so we can't have any more apostles. Here's just a list of resources, and I'm gonna send these slides to a lot of the men have asked for them. I'll send them out on the Signal Group. So all of this is hyperlinked. The American Gospel Documentary is a really good one. The Cessationist Documentary is a really good one. There's cessationism.com, which is a good resource. Monergism's got a ton of them. That Strange Fire Conference that I mentioned that MacArthur's church put on, most of those talks are really solid. His book, Charismatic Chaos, they wrote a book, Strange Fire, based on that conference. Multiple gifts or articles here, books, things like that. So there's a ton of resources if you want to dive into this even more. We got through it though. We're done with it. That's all I had. So any questions before we wrap this up and are totally done? I only went five minutes over too. Any continuationists in this church? We need to run out on a rail. I'm kidding. Yeah, that's hard. I think most of the time you can just, the question being when do we basically stop saying they're a Christian? Usually it's You compare the rest of their doctrine, usually, I mean, if they're messed up on this and they're a false believer, usually the rest of their doctrine is complete trash. You know, like Benny Hinn saying, you know, the Trinity is each one, each member of the Trinity is a Trinity. It's like, all right, you're just making things up because you don't even understand the Christian faith at all. It's easy to say with guys like him or any of the guys on TV. It's harder to say with the guys like Sam Storms or or the Matt Chandlers or the Acts 29 guys or the guys on Remnant Radio that are continuations technically but they're not loopy nonsensical guys. They get the gospel right, they get a lot of other good doctrine right, they even get eschatology right sometimes. So I think you can evaluate it on that and you'll often see it You can almost tell by the way that they look. Most of the guys doing it for money are flashy. You can tell in their message it's almost always accompanied by the prosperity gospel and urging people to give, give money, all kinds of wild, ridiculous claims. So usually it's obvious. But that's usually how you can tell it's the rest of their message. And I mean, the really bad ones, they can't even hide it. They can't even help themselves. The stuff that they wear and the way that they speak, they can't help it. They're frauds, and it's obvious. It's a good question, though. Yeah? We need to leave room for, as well, we've got Sam Storms and some of the preachers that are online. But we all have friends and relatives who think they're really speaking to Tom. Yeah. Genuine. Yeah. And it's real to them. So we've got to leave room for that and be sensitive to. And it's just like there may be people that may have to give a teaching, and they don't. Yeah, that's exactly right. So let's just have a heart for those who love the Lord and maybe are just misguided. Yeah. to maybe come to that with dignity without, and I'm not saying this, but not everybody's like the video. And some of us have relatives that fit that category, who love the Lord, have a great faith, and I'll ever have. Anyway, I know you, I'm sure you, I won't speak for you, but. No, I've mentioned, I've got some friends that have told me they pray in tongues in their closet. Yeah, yeah tongues are you know getting this wrong is not the unforgivable sin people get deceived So I think it's a serious error and it leads to a lot of consequences, but so do a lot of false doctrines Yep Yeah, they usually have yeah when they're claiming revelation it's a serious thing like a What is that book, Jesus Calling? That was written by a PCA missionary, Presbyterian Church of America, which is not a false church by any means at all. A lot of them are really solid. And she claims revelation from God. God is saying these things to me. And when it's a true believer saying that, when it's somebody that you're discerning is like, they're sincere. What they really mean is I have these impressions and I'm attributing them to God. And that is a sin. I believe it's a sin, it's an error, but they think that God is speaking to them. And yeah, I think you go to the word with him and just say, no, he's not revealing anything to you. I think what Ken just said, you leave them their dignity. So we're not mocking them or trying to tear them down. But at the same time, we don't let that level of authority claim stand unchallenged. Because that is a, and I've talked about how if somebody's truly prophesying or speaking in tongues, then it's not that it should be added to the canon or should be added to scripture, but it's that it's at the same authority as scripture. It speaks with the same authority, because God doesn't speak in levels of authority. He speaks authoritatively, period. Inherently, infallibly, period. So they're inadvertently speaking on the same level of scripture, and that is something we should seek to challenge and persuade others that that is not the case. That's not what they're doing. They think they are, but they're not. I don't think most of them even realize the seriousness of their claim, from what I've seen. I think most of them just, they're encouraged by the fact that they think supernatural things are happening through them. And that's just super upbuilding to them. You had something, right? Yeah, I was gonna say, as a comment earlier, I'll put this in a similar conversation as Calvinism and non-Calvinism. Rejecting Calvinism doesn't make you not a Christian, but if you reject God's omniscience, embrace open theism. Right. These are doctrines that put you outside the canon. Exactly. Right, right. And that's like a logical outworking of Arminianism, but most of them don't actually, they're not consistent enough to get there. Some of them are, but yeah, you're right. You can have this air and it's pointing in a really bad direction and it can take you outside the camp if you keep going down that road, but most of them don't get that far, luckily. And we all have inconsistencies. But that's one that's, some are more dangerous than others, right? So you're right, Arminianism, we don't kick them out of the camp, we don't think they're false believers, but if they followed it all the way through to say that God doesn't know the future and he doesn't know all things and they deny classical theism to that degree, then yeah, they're not a believer. Yup. What you said about how some people don't, realize the seriousness of what they're doing, in terms of the revelations. I mean, I was in the church my entire life. 21 years before I could say, and then ended up coming here eventually. For 21 years, the concept of sola scriptura had never been uttered to me. So the concept of, if I said that God said this to me, that I'm speaking with the same authority as Scripture, no one ever said that to me. That was never brought to my attention. That concept was never spoken about. It was never even told, like, oh, some people think this about us. So now, looking back, it horrifies me that I used to do that. But at the time, I had no way of knowing that. And then I think about, well, they might have been there 50 years in a church like that. And that concept was never introduced to them. So they just have no idea. Yeah. Yeah, and this is something that I think we should be careful with because I think in heaven we are going to be shocked at how ignorant people were on earth, even amongst the Christian church. And it's irritating and we seek to undo it, but there is a lot of error in the church, especially the American church, especially in our day and age. And it does tremendous damage, but To be saved, you have to believe Jesus is God and he saved you. And you're relying on him. And you can get a lot of stuff wrong and still be saved. And that doesn't mean that there aren't consequences to these errors. It doesn't mean that we don't do damage with our error, but there's going to be believers that you're just gonna be like, you barely knew anything. And they'll be like, yeah. Yeah, I didn't. I mean, the thief on the cross, we talk about him. What kind of theology did he have? What would he get on a theology test? He knew one thing, that guy could save me. I will ask him for mercy. Couldn't explain the Trinity. There's no way he could explain the Trinity. Justification, sanctification, probably couldn't even explain how it like, he didn't even get to live out most of what you would learn of like, oh, this changes everything. But he was there. So I think there'll be a lot of people like that. Not that we ignore these heirs, because a lot of times these heirs point to somebody being a wolf, or a fake believer, or someone that's just, like most of these, a lot of these charismatic, the nut jobs are the ones that are out, they're just trying to get money out of people. They're backstage counting the money, mocking those songs, thank you Jesus, with counting the money. Not like they're literally doing that, but that's effectively what they're doing. So it's not that we let our guard down entirely, We gotta make room for air amongst the church as well. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we again thank you for the greatness of your mercy, knowing that when we see these errors in the church, we are reminded that there's surely error amongst us in our own beliefs, our own practice, Lord, and we do pray that you would reveal that to us and help us to improve and conform us to the word of God. Please continue to always reform us according to scripture and never let us be so set in our ways that we cannot receive any kind of correction. But we also at the same time believe that your word is clear. And you've made a lot of this very, very known to those of us that are willing to study your word and have been empowered by your spirit to understand what has been written. So we pray that we can communicate these things with truth, with grace, with love. and that we will stand fast in boldness, proclaiming the truth and denying error and trying to keep out the false teachings from the church. Help us to do these things well in a way that glorifies you and honors the work of Jesus as the only thing that saves. We pray it all in Christ's name. Amen.