On today's broadcast, we're going to talk about a very important subject, something that has been, over the years, has been near and dear to my heart. It is the subject of confronting the charismatics, at least that's the way that I have worded it out on the blog this morning, out on sermonaudio.com. And the reason why I say it's near and dear to my heart is because I was saved at 17 years old, 1977. I made my way into a little storefront church called the Bread of Life Center in Buffalo, New York. And I heard the gospel for the first time in my life, and God graciously and gloriously saved my soul. And I just praise Him every day for that wonderful truth. That church was a very good church, and they started with some really in-depth Bible studies. I learned a lot there. I turned on my radio as well shortly thereafter, and I started to listen to a man on the radio by the name of John MacArthur. And I was listening to some of John MacArthur's teachings, and at that time he was speaking about, or shortly thereafter, he was speaking about spiritual gifts. And so I remember that Well, the little church that I went to began to be influenced by some of the leading Charismatics like Kenneth Copeland and Jerry Saville and Charles Capps and Kenneth Hagin and all of that group of the hyper-faith movement, as I call it. But that group began to have a big influence on the church. and suddenly the message of the church began to change. It became a name-it-and-claim-it, or I like to refer to it as blab it and grab it, you know, a prosperity message type of church, and the gospel got lost in the whole thing. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't have enough discernment in me to understand. I just knew something was wrong. Well, a charismatic lady, we were renting an apartment from her. She lived downstairs and was a 700 Club counselor. She, one day, I was going up the stairs to our apartment and she came out the door, got in a conversation with me, said that she was reading a book called The Charismatics by John MacArthur and handed me the book. And so I began to read that book, and it just really opened my eyes to what was taking place, and eventually left the charismatic movement, went to a little Presbyterian church outside of Buffalo there, heard about the doctrines of grace and about just the gospel and its orthodox presentation of the gospel, and the rest is history. And so this subject is something that is near and dear to my heart. When I came to Greenville to get trained, I wanted to go back to the Buffalo area. There was a lot of Charismatics in that area as well as a lot of Catholics. I had come out of both of that and I had wanted to go back there, but the Lord saw otherwise and I stayed right here in the Greenville area and planted a church and so forth. This subject about confronting the charismatics is something that's very interesting to me. We're talking today about this subject because there's a conference that is coming up, and sorry to say to you that in the time that we set the program up and the time that we've actually, you know, were able to talk with Phil Johnson today on the broadcast, the conference has sold out. So you're not going to be able to go to the conference, but you can get other material, and we'll tell you about that as we go along. The conference website describes it this way. It says, the Lord causes people to honor him and to treat him as holy. Leviticus 10 pictures the consequences of not doing so, of offering to him strange fire. Over the last hundred years, the charismatic movement has been offering a strange fire of sorts to the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, and evangelical churches have chosen to be silent or indifferent on the matter. This hasn't served the church or the spirit of the church with honor. What should be our response Strange Fire is a conference that will set forth what the Bible really says about the Holy Spirit and how that squares with the charismatic movement. We're going to address in a biblical, straightforward manner what many today see as a peripheral issue. On the contrary, your view of the Holy Spirit influences your relationship with God, your personal holiness, and your commitment to the Church and evangelism. We're here to talk with us about this important subject today. My guest is Phil Johnson. Phil is the Executive Director of Grace to You. He's been closely associated with John MacArthur since 1981, and he edits most of John's major books. Phil also maintains several popular websites, including the Spurgeon Archive. I've used it many times. The Hall of Church History. and Pyromaniac's blog. He's an ordained elder and pastor at Grace Community Church, as well. Phil, it's a pleasure to have you on the Knowing the Truth radio program again. Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, Phil, I would imagine when you guys denounced that you were having this conference, I would imagine that a lot of people said, you know, this is very controversial. Why do we need to do this? Why do we need to say something like this and really confront the Charismatic Church in this way? Your answer to that would be? Well, it is an important issue. By the way, most of the response we got was the opposite. We did get some of that response saying, why are you doing this? Why are you stirring the fires of controversy on this issue, which is a secondary issue and all that. But the vast majority of people said, we're glad finally someone is addressing this issue because it's almost as if there's been a moratorium on looking biblically at some of the difficult questions raised by the charismatic movement for the past, I don't know, 20 years or so. There hasn't been a significant book critiquing the charismatic movement, despite the fact that the charismatic excesses are becoming worse and worse and worse. And so that really would be my answer to someone who would say, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't deal with this issue because it's controversial. My answer would be, you know, even if we agree that it's possible to be a charismatic and hold to the essential truths of the gospel, That doesn't mean that charismatic claims and all that, because they might be secondary, that they're not important at all. It's a very important issue, and often claims from charismatics, you know, that they're getting special revelation from God and new prophecies and things like that, that actually undermines the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. And that has been to the detriment of the Church. Someone needs to say something about it. You mentioned that there hadn't been many books about it, other than your co-pastor there, of course, with John MacArthur, writing the Charismatics and then Charismatic Chaos. After that, he did a great job of really addressing those issues. This conference seems to be built somewhat around one of John's latest books, Strange Fire, The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship. Is the difference between those books, highlighted by the fact that this one seems to specifically focus on the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit? Yes, although it is a whole new book. It doesn't rehash any of the material from The Charismatics or Charismatic Chaos. But believe it or not, it's been more than 20 years since Charismatic Chaos was written. So even from John MacArthur, we haven't really had a book on this issue for more than two decades. And I think he thought it was time to address some of the more recent trends in charismatic practice and Also, it's clear that there's this sort of creeping influence from the charismatic movement because controversy over these issues has more or less been set on the back burner. So we've got now a new generation of church leaders who I think really have never thought very critically about these issues. Hmm. I should tell our listening audience, this book has not been released yet. However, the folks that will be attending the conference in October, they will all receive a free copy of the book. According to Amazon that I'm on now, it says that the book will be released November 12th. That's the official publisher's release. The very first copies of the book will be given to those who come to the conference. That's excellent. And also, you mentioned that the conference is sold out. I just want to encourage your listeners to watch the Grace TU website, because our hope is we're going to be able to live stream all of those sessions. So even if you can't be at the conference, you'll be able to pick up at least the key sessions. Oh, good. I was mentioning that there would be some other resources and I noticed out on the website, you know, you have really good media out there so they can watch little, some little clips. Some of them are as long as an hour. Other ones are shorter than that. But I wanted to make sure that they knew that they could go out to that website to see material as well. Will the Strange Fire website be the website that they can go to then or should they go to Grace to You? Probably both websites will have information about where to live stream. I don't think all the details of that have been worked out yet, but we are working on a plan to live stream as many of those sessions as we possibly can. And I'm sure that information on how to do it will be on both websites. Let me go ahead, we're going to play a clip by John MacArthur talking about the Strange Fire Conference as well. Again, this is October 16th through the 18th. It's going to be held in Southern California right there at Grace Community Church. And so we're going to play a little clip of John MacArthur talking about it. It's just a couple minutes long, and then we'll come back to our conversation. Listen to this. There are non-charismatics, very prominent, faithful, blessed preachers and theologians who are open to the charismatic phenomena, that they're open to healing and miracles and prophecies and tongues and signs. And the question comes up, why do you say you're open? What is the motive for that? Well, I don't know what the heart motive is. Maybe it's love and acceptance or maybe it's kind of a personal longing for something more in their spiritual life. But these are non-charismatics who want to give place for this reality even though they haven't necessarily experienced it. What they do by that openness is provide a certain cover for the movement itself because the movement then can say, oh look here are these well-known mainstream prominent pastors and theologians and they're open to all of this and that then becomes a justification for something that is wrong. A couple things there, Phil, in the clip that we played by John, speaking on that subject. One, when he speaks about, you know, that gives cover to this movement, do you think that people have been so reticent to say anything about it because they're like, you know, these are brothers and sisters in Christ still, and we don't want to, you know, be seen as being critical of our brothers and sisters in Christ? And then is that combined with the spirit of the age, where everything has to be positive, and if it isn't a positive statement, then, you know, somehow you're some sort of a curmudgeon or something? Yeah, all of that is true, I think. And it's easy and convenient to say, look, I'm not a charismatic, but I'm open, and therefore I don't want to have to think critically about some of the claims that are being made. I don't want to have to be critical of it, and I don't have to engage in any kind of controversy. There may even be a hint of laziness at times behind that. It's an issue that's not comfortable to deal with, not easy to deal with, and if I can just set it on the back burner and ignore it, then that's just a comfortable position. And it's a popular position today, too. It's an easy way to sort of go along with the majority opinion and and not make any waves. There is, in our day and age, too, there was the resurgence of Reformed theology. Some people refer to it as the New Calvinism. And among that group, suddenly, the Charismatics seemed to be much more welcomed within that group. Is that going to be something that is addressed during this conference as well? yet definitely because that that really is one of the issues that provokes us to come back and say you know what we need to take another hard look at the charismatic movement because you've had some visible spokespeople in the in the new calvinism movement saying you know this is an essential aspect of neocalvinism if you're going to get with the times and and you know pia uh... and a new calvinist part of our group you have to you have to uh... except the idea that these apostolic gifts are still functioning and if you don't believe that then you're a deist or a skeptic or they've tried to put into the category of unbelief anyone who believes the apostolic gifts have ceased and the apostolic era is over. Phil, John was involved with the Together for the Gospel, where, of course, C.J. Mahaney was involved there as well. I think that is since, not the case, but what was the thinking there? Was the thinking that, you know, as the name implied, the thinking seemed to have been the Gospel is bigger than some of our differences on these issues, but this particular conference seems to be saying the opposite. How do we reconcile those? Well, it's not really the opposite. I think we can say both things, that when it comes to some of these men who their life and preaching is Gospel-centered, and they're clear when they preach the Gospel, we stand together with them on that. But That's not to say that our differences on the charismatic issue don't matter anymore. It still does matter. And we still think that biblical truth should be proclaimed, even when we disagree with good brethren on it. And particularly in an issue like this, where you've got others, in fact, some of the most prominent religious figures on television, who don't preach the gospel, never talk about the gospel, but they seem obsessed with money and show business and whatever else making claims uh... and based on the idea you know that they've they've got some kind of charismatic gifting or some anointing from the holy spirit and actually undermining the gospel with what they do we need to speak out on it and and this sort of agreement that nobody's gonna stir any controversy over this issue has been detrimental to the church because It's allowed these people who are making false claims to sort of just say whatever they want, make whatever claim they want, and no one ever challenges it. And that's, I think, what John MacArthur means when he says that attitude sort of provides cover to some of the worst mischief makers out there. in Christian media. Did he feel somewhat that it was a little bit confusing being a part of T4G then, or just that the point had been made about, hey, we can center on the main part of the—not the main part of the gospel, I shouldn't put it that way, but that as much as when the Gospel is centered on, we can agree with that, like you put it just a few moments ago, but once that statement had been made, did he then decide there's no longer any reason, then, for us to keep this thing going? To keep Together for the Gospel going? Together for the Gospel, yeah. Yeah, actually, he was never actually formally a part of the board or any of that. I think he still friendly towards that movement and you know as much a part of it is he's ever been uh... except that uh... i think he didn't speak at the last conference but that that didn't have anything to do with uh... is concerned about the charismatic movement as far as i know it he he uh... curtailing his speaking case but i don't think anybody looking at john macarthur could legitimately say he's sent a confusing message now i think he's been pretty clear on his stance on the charismatic I want to talk to you, Phil, about the guests that are going to be at this year's conference. It's a pretty great lineup that's there. Obviously, Dr. John MacArthur is going to be there along with Dr. R.C. Sproul, Steve Lawson, and others. I thought that maybe you could give us, and you're going to be speaking at the conference, too. I tell you what, before we go to the break, why don't you give us a little bit of a sneak peek at what you will be talking about the conference in particular, and then we can go ahead and take a break after that and get you to talk about some of the guests that will be speaking there as well. Okay. I'm doing two breakout sessions. One is called, Is There a Baby in the Bathwater?, and I'll look at the Charismatic Movement, sort of a big-picture view of the history of the Charismatic Movement, where it came from, what its pedigree is, why is this suddenly appealing to so many people with Reformed convictions, and And especially considering where it came from and what it's always stood for, it seems to me that to try to mix Charismatic doctrine with Reform doctrine is like blending oil and water. So that's one of my sessions. The other is... I forget the exact title, but it's something like, Providence is Remarkable. And it's a reference to an expression the Puritans used to use. refer to unusual events as remarkable providences. And, you know, we believe as Bible-believing people that God is involved all the time, right? He doesn't have to do a miracle to prove He's involved with us, but He governs everything that occurs by His providence. So God is constantly at work, and it's not a denial of the Holy Spirit's power or God's involvement to say, we don't believe those apostolic miracle gifts are ongoing today. We still believe God's at work, and God's at work in everyday details of life. And Providence itself can often be remarkable, and God can do unusual and wonderful things without it being a miracle. And I want to make that point because I think people have tended to redefine the definition of what is a miracle. And sort of dumbed it down so that anything that happens, you know, the illustration John McArthur used in a discussion I had with him about this was, you know, you go to the mall and the parking lot's crowded and somebody opens up a parking spot by leaving just as you get there. There are people who would call that a miracle. It's not. It's an act of providence. And it's important to make that distinction. Mm-hmm, and anything negative that happens, like if the parking spot isn't there, then that's also an act of providence. Yeah, they would then, though, interpret it as, the devil is working against me. You know? In fact, that's one of the points I want to make, that sometimes it seems like when you listen to charismatic people, that they think Satan is sovereign, you know? And the Christian life is about overcoming the sovereignty of Satan, rather than, you know, recognizing the sovereignty of God. Yeah, if not sovereign, certainly on par with the Almighty Himself, one being good and one being bad, but both of them being able to control all these events, no doubt about it. We're going to take a quick commercial break and when we come back from the break we'll go ahead and continue our conversation today with Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You. We're talking about an upcoming conference called Strange Fire and that conference is going to take place on October 16th through the 18th. and that'll be in Southern California and we'll talk a little bit more and I'll give you that website for that conference and a book by the same title and both of those you can find out at that website and I'll give you that when we come back from the break. You can participate in the program and I'll tell you how in just a moment. You're listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. 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Welcome back to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Information regarding the resources referenced on today's program can be found at www.knowingthetruth.org. Now here to continue with today's program is Pastor Kevin Bowling. Hey, welcome back into the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. This is Pastor Kevin Bolling, and during the first half of the program today, we're talking with Phil Johnson, who's the Executive Director of Grace to You. A lot of folks are familiar with Grace to You Ministries. I was familiar with the tape ministry. I received a number of the tapes. that Phil was responsible for making sure got out the door a number of the series by John MacArthur. I grew up listening in my spiritual life. I grew up listening to John MacArthur on the radio and on those cassette tapes that they sent out. Spiritual boot camp and spiritual gifts and Just one right after the other, reading his books and listening to tapes. So I have a high appreciation for John MacArthur. I told him that in person. He was here in Georgia. We went to Georgia for a pastor's fellowship that was there. There were less than 100 pastors. in the room and got a chance to talk with both Dr. John MacArthur and Dr. Steve Lawson very intimately there. And they said, you know, I remember specifically in a little interview that I did with John MacArthur, he said that he really enjoyed that type of meeting. I said, you know, you speak every week to thousands of people in your church, and here you are speaking to a hundred people in this little room. You know, how should we think about that? Do you enjoy doing this type of thing? He said, I enjoy this far better, far more, you know, being able to invest himself intimately in the lives, especially of pastors. He has a real heart for pastors. And so we're talking specifically in the first half about the upcoming conference that will be there at the church. And so we're talking with Phil Johnson about those issues that are revolving around having this conference there. Before we go back to our conversation with Phil, let me just bring you up to speed on a couple of other things. I just received an email just a moment ago that we have to change the date for our discussion with Askinnas. He's going to be, we're now looking to put him on Thursday's broadcast. They just said that he's not going to be able to be with us after all tomorrow, on the second half of the broadcast tomorrow. So I'll let you know about that tomorrow if that's been confirmed for Thursday. Also, Jim and I went over Thursday to a luncheon that was held over in Spartanburg, First Baptist of Spartanburg. Keith Getty was supposed to be there at the luncheon in order to talk to folks there at that luncheon, but Keith couldn't make it either. He was stuck in Atlanta. And so he ended up Skyping into the meeting. He was in a little room sequestered there in Atlanta. probably through TSA. Phil will get a kick out of that. But through whatever, the providence of God, he wasn't able to make it, and so he ended up Skyping in and spoke to us that way. But he did get a chance to convey to us some of the things that he'll be talking about at the upcoming conference. That conference is going to be taking place on October 12th. And that'll be at the same location. That'll be over at First Baptist Church of Spartanburg. So if you want to see both Keith and Kristen Getty, along with a large band, a large choir is going to be there as well. You can get a chance to see them. I don't know if we can make this out on the webcast or not, but I'm holding up their latest CD. It's called Keith and Kristen Getty, Modern and Traditional Hymns. And this was performed live at the most recent Gospel Coalition event. And so they gave us all a copy of that, and I'm going to be giving away a couple copies of this on the radio program. I'll go ahead and give away one CD today for your question or comment dealing with the issue that we're talking about. Maybe you've got a charismatic background, like I was mentioning in the beginning of the broadcast that I did. Or maybe you've got a friend or a family member that's involved, and you've got a question specifically on what's taking place in the charismatic movement. This conference is specifically geared towards dealing with issues related to the Holy Spirit, which is very important. And so maybe you've got an issue on that. There's a couple ways that you can get in touch with us. One, we've set up a toll-free number. It's good nationwide. That number is 1-888-660-WLFJ. That's 1-888-660-9535. I'd be happy to take your question or comment that way. Also, I have email up and running, and the email is very simply just kttradio at gmail.com. That's kttradio at gmail.com. I'll take your question or comment either way. And then if you're here locally, you can come by and pick up a copy of the, in fact, I have to leave the giveaway to just those that are here locally. You'll be able to come by the studio here at His Radio and you can pick up a copy here locally. Okay, with that, let's go back to our conversation with Phil Johnson about this issue. Phil, one of the things with—I want to get to the speakers that are going to be there, but during the break I was thinking specifically about the idea of this gearing towards the Holy Spirit of God. One of the things, after I came out of the charismatic movement, that I learned was one of the most disturbing things that was taking place was the idea of continuing revelation. And that was that people were standing up on a regular basis and saying, thus saith the Lord. To me, I felt that that was one of the most grievous errors that was taking place, because the canon is closed, and we have the Word of God. If people are standing up saying, thus saith the Lord, that should be recorded. And we're talking now that the canon is not closed. Would you agree? Oh, I absolutely agree. And it's ironic, in a way, that up until, you know, the middle part of the 20th century, and even after that for a while, the hallmark gift of the Charismatic Movement, of course, was the gift of tongues, speaking in tongues. But it seems to me that among Reformed Charismatics, the gift that's far more popular and that is far more abused, even, is supposedly the gift of prophecy, where people stand up and are encouraged even to stand up in church and say, you know, this is what the Lord told me. I think a lot of that is a response to a book Wayne Grudem wrote on New Testament prophecy, where he was trying to make the argument that under, you know, New Testament principles, the gift of prophecy is not as strictly regulated as it was in the Old Testament. The Old Testament If a prophet prophesied wrongly, he could be stoned to death. It was a capital offense. And Grudem's argument is that in the New Testament, prophecy can be fallible. So you can say, you know, this is what the Lord told me, or thus says the Lord, or whatever, and if you're wrong, there's no punishment associated with it. And so people have turned their intuition, their sense of intuition, into... They read it as if it was a message from God, and that is not only, you know, sinfully wrong, but to add to the words of God, your own imaginations especially, it's also terribly dangerous to think God is speaking to you when what you're really doing is imagining, you know, things in your own imagination and attributing it to God. If you follow those directions, sometimes that can be even dangerous. Mm-hmm. I had a friend when I was in the charismatic movement, and he would get his guidance for the Christian life in this way. We'd be walking down the street, and we would pass by maybe a news box or something that had newspapers in it. And if the headline said something about Chicago on it, then he would say, you know, I really feel that the Lord is leading me to go to Chicago. And he would literally traverse the nation, you know, going around on these whims of just feeling that this was the way that God was leading his people. And I'm afraid that that type of theology has crept into many people's way of thinking. I still, to this day, even people that aren't in the charismatic movement, they still refer to the fact that God told me this or God told me that. And I'll be like, you mean audibly? Yeah, that's been a problem in the Church for generations, long before the Charismatic Movement. Spurgeon warned against that. People who live their lives by feelings, thinking God is talking to them, you know, rather than listening for the voice of God in His Word, where we properly have it and can depend on it. But it's been a problem for a long time, and in fact, There was a famous sort of disagreement on this very issue between George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards during the first Great Awakening. George Whitefield had a tendency to think God was speaking directly to him, and Jonathan Edwards warned him that that's a dangerous tendency. And church history is filled with examples like that, where people, you know, followed their intuition and were either embarrassed or disappointed or or or led into disaster by it. It happened with Whitfield, by the way. He predicted that the Lord had told him his wife was going to have a son, the baby's name would be John, and he would be like John the Baptist, a great evangelist. And the child died in infancy, and Whitfield was disappointed, and it provoked him to go back and reflect and review on the notion that You know, God gives us these messages through our intuition directly into our minds. What's happened in recent years is that's been elevated almost to a sacramental level among Reformed Charismatics, where that does tend to be the primary way by which people get guidance, and it's confusing and dangerous. As you mentioned, it's very dangerous for them, and also damaging to the testimony of the Word of God and of God Himself, because... That's right. It undermines the authority and uniqueness of Scripture. And they take, in essence, they take the Lord down with them. If they're saying, hey, the Lord told me that, you know, whatever the particular instance is, the Lord told me I would get this job. And then you don't get the job. You know, by by default, you're saying that the Lord, what he told you wasn't true. And so. Right. I think that there are a lot of damaged people out there that got into this movement, and then they realize they may not be able to articulate what is wrong from a scriptural viewpoint, but they know that many of these things didn't work out the way that they thought it would, And then, now they're going around going, well, you know what? I tried Christianity, but it just didn't work. And I think that there are literally millions of people that are out there this way that have been exposed to this, many of these charlatans, and then are now wandering around going, yeah, if that was Christianity, I tried that, and that didn't have anything in it for me. Yeah, absolutely. I meet people like that on a regular basis. And in fact, you know, I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is sort of the uh... unofficial headquarters of the charismatic movement or robert university is in most big big televangelists have either been through there or came from there uh... and my best friend in junior high and high school was the son of a of a fairly well-known charismatic faith healing evangelist who went around the world holding healing meetings with you know hundreds of thousands of people who heard him preach and who he claimed to heal and uh... Then this evangelist himself got a case of sort of lingering bone cancer, and died after a three- or four-year ordeal of pain, uninterrupted pain. And his son, my friend, abandoned the faith over it. He figured all of Christianity must be a lie, because everything he'd ever been taught about how God works and what God does was a lie, and he abandoned the faith. And I think that story is told over and over again. You have Johnny Erickson Tata speaking at this event, and I know she tells the stories of when her accident took place, her diving accident that made her quadriplegic. that people tried to take her to various healing services and she talked about just how disappointing it was and having her in the back and all the people that really had something wrong with them that couldn't be healed at these meetings were then in the hallways way in the back listening to all this going on out in the general meeting where people were being healed of headaches you know, back pains and things that couldn't really be verified. And so, it's going to be quite interesting to hear her talk at the conference. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, in that very sense, the promises that Charismatics tend to make and the things they highlight in their theology—prosperity and healing and all of that—it's a cruel theology for anyone for whom Providence has assigned any kind of suffering or persecution or sickness or whatever to teach that those things are proof of a lack of faith, and God doesn't want you to live like that. It's just a flat-out lie, and it can't be reconciled with what Scripture does teach. Mm-hmm, exactly. Again, that's why I talk about him being wounded, too, because you're told that the problem is you. The problem can't be with God, and it can't be with God's Word, because we see in His Word in the book of Acts that people, Christians there, were able to heal people. So if you're not healed or your loved one is not healed, then you're the issue. And so, boy, when you start telling people that, Now you've got a group of people that are going around with a tremendous amount of guilt on them. If I only had enough faith, you know, my mother wouldn't be wracked with pain in the hospital with cancer. And if I only had enough faith, you know, my marriage could actually be solved here. So they just constantly put back upon whether or not they have enough faith to believe God for this utopia that they've been told God wants us to have here upon the face of the earth. Right? And that's only one of the cruelties of the doctrine. You know, the prosperity preachers prey on the people who can least afford it to send them gifts. This is a seed faith gift, you know? And so someone who can't even afford to pay his water bill sends a big check to a televangelist with the promise that he's going to get in return untold wealth and so on. And the only person who actually gets wealthy is the televangelist and these guys flaunt their wealth all over television. It's unspeakably both cruel and ungodly. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've seen the exposés done about people like Benny Hinn or so forth in the fancy jets and fancy homes and multiple cars and all this type of stuff and all on the backs of people that are going through suffering that have been told that if they will give this money almost like an indulgence or something, that somehow this will then increase their faith and provide them with different things, as well as God will be pleased with them and bring about the healing that they're seeking. I'm glad somebody is standing up and saying something, because this has been something that needs to be exposed and opposed for a long period of time. We mentioned that... It's a huge thing, too, by the way, for anyone whose only exposure to christianity is from television that's pretty much how they perceive the gospel, and that's what they think Christianity is all about, and it's not. Yeah, they've taken this show on the road, and they've even taken it over into places like Africa and so forth, you know, where you've got the poorest of the poor, and yet they're over there with this prosperity gospel. And, you know, I mean, it's just ungodly is the only term I can put on it. You mentioned that, or we mentioned that, John MacArthur would be speaking at the conference yourself. R.C. Sproul is going to be there. Tell us a couple of the other folks that will be speaking at the conference. Steve Lawson will be there, and Conrad Mbewe. Conrad is a pastor in Zambia. He's one of the best preachers I've ever heard, and his nickname is the Spurgeon of Africa. And he is an amazing preacher. And, of course, he deals with...you mentioned that the prosperity gospel has been exported to some of the poorest parts of the world. And it's true, it's a plague in Africa. And Conrad's going to deal with that. He wrote a brilliant article that I think is somewhere on the Grace to You website, suggesting that charismatic theology actually reflects some of the superstition of African animism and paganism more than it does biblical Christianity. So it plays to the superstition of people who've been raised outside the faith completely, and it's just a new name for the same old superstitions. And that article's really well worth reading. Tell us a little bit about Tom Pennington. I don't know of him. Tom Pennington is a graduate of Bob Jones University, a pastor in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And he was on staff here at Grace Church for at least a decade. You know, good friend of mine and a great preacher. Excellent. And then you've got Justin Peters. He lived in Oklahoma. This is a sort of a specialty of his. He monitors what goes on in the charismatic movement, and he's going to do a series of breakout sessions where he shows some clips that he, some video clips of Charismatics in action. I see from the website that Wretched Radio is going to be there. I guess it's now called Wretched TV. I don't know if they still have their radio program, but Wretched TV. Yeah, both TV and radio. That's Todd Friel. He's going to be the moderator in some panel discussions and Q&A sessions. Okay, and be lively. Yeah Everything he does is lively That should be excellent. Well, Phil, why don't you leave us with a last word? Let me give you a couple of categories here. If you could just speak to very quickly folks listening to the program today some of them may be in the charismatic movement maybe by the way a that you and I were talking, they might have even been slightly offended by the way we were talking about some of the, what we see as abuses taking place in the charismatic movement. Address that person first of all, and then second of all, address the pastor that's out there about why this is such an important issue for him to go out to the website, and I'll give that in just a moment, but to go out to the website to be able to watch these events as they unfold during the conference? Well, to the charismatic person who's perhaps even been a lifelong charismatic, and that's all they've ever known of Christianity, I just want to say, you know, this is not an attack on you personally. It's a plea for you and all Christians to evaluate everything we do by the biblical standard, not by our feelings, not by, you know, what's popular and what's getting a big numerical response, or who the most prosperous televangelist is, or any of those things, but we ought to evaluate truth by Scripture. And that's what we hope to encourage people to do on this crucial issue, which really colors everything you think about God and life and the obedience of faith. To the pastor, I would say, every pastor deals with the fallout of charismatic teaching and charismatic disappointments, people who are disillusioned because promises were made that weren't biblical in the first place, and when they weren't fulfilled, it has shaken people's faith. And what we want to do is equip pastors both to understand and to teach on these issues biblically. Amen. Well, Phil, thank you so much for the work that you've done for these many years with Grace to You. It's personally benefited me, and I don't think that I'm alone. I think many, many people have benefited spiritually from the work that you guys have done there at Grace Community Church and the Ministry of Grace to You. Second of all, thanks for being courageous enough to speak out about this issue and put together this type of a conference. And then I know you had to get up early just for this interview because of the time difference. So thank you very much for visiting with us here on the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. Thanks for having me, Kevin. OK, that was Phil Johnson, and we were talking about the Strange Fire Conference. There's also a book by John MacArthur that will be coming out in November. The folks that go to the conference, they'll actually get a copy of the book right then and there in October. But for the rest of us, we're going to have to wait till November to get a copy of that book. The website that gives you all the information that we're talking about today is the URL for it is www.tmstrangefire.org. I don't exactly know what the TM stands for, whether that's trademark or what, but it's tmstrangefire.org. And so if you go out to that website or just Google Strange Fire Conference, it'll come up for you there on your Google search or Bing or whatever search engine that you're using. Also, as I mentioned, the book will be coming out. I think the book is published by Thomas Nelson Publishing. So the book will be coming out there. I'll verify that here in just a second as I'm looking. But you can go out. Yep, it is Thomas Nelson. And so that will be coming out by them in November. And so you can go there to check out, you know, when that book is released and how you can get a copy. Don't forget, Phil was mentioning that that you can also watch the event as well and so you can go to that website or the grace to you website and you'll be able to watch the conference when that takes place in october i'm sure we'll be saying a little bit more about it here on this broadcast i think it's very important as As Phil said towards the end of the broadcast, it is all about taking things back to the Word of God, to the Word and to the testimony. If it agrees not with these, it's because there's no light in them. So we need to be faithful Bereans and do that very same thing. Remember this, the Lord Jesus Christ said, He said you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. We'll see you next time right here on Knowing the Truth. You've been listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. For more information about the church and radio ministry, visit us on the web at knowingthetruth.org. The opinions expressed on today's program are those of the announcers, their guests, and callers, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff and management of his radio network, the Radio Training Network, or Clear Channel Communications.