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Jan. 13, 2021 - Jim Bakker Show
06:14
Who Do We Believe - Rick Renner
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Through a Glass Darkly 00:06:14
We're going to introduce your brand new book today, right now, in fact, Testing the Supernatural.
Yes.
Rick, what prompted you to write this new book, Testing the Supernatural?
Well, you know, this is not a big book, and that's kind of unusual for me.
You know, most people get excited when they write a big book.
I get really excited when I write a smaller book, when I'm able to say something succinctly but powerfully.
And I really believe this book will help people because today we're living in a time when there are a lot of voices, many of them claiming to be prophetic.
Some of them are, some of them are not.
And people are confused.
And really, if you just look at what's on YouTube, it's easy to be confused because one person has a dream about this, another person has a dream about this, another person has a vision about this.
And if you listen to all of it, aya, it can get pretty confusing.
And I thought, you know, somebody needs to address the subject of how do you test these things to know whether they're from the Lord or whether they're just a byproduct of your own imagination.
And I'm sure that there's a lot of people out there that are very sincere, but what they teach is not necessarily correct.
So how do you determine what's right?
How do you determine what's wrong?
How do we keep our head on straight when it comes to what we're seeing and what we're hearing?
And you know, Brother Jim and Lori, Jesus made an amazing statement in Matthew 24, verse 11.
He said at the very, very end of the age, oh, that chapter is so amazing.
But in Matthew 24, verse 11, he said there would be the emergence of false prophets that would deceive many.
Well, when you think about false prophets, normally people think it's someone that has an evil or an ulterior motive, but not necessarily.
The word false is the Greek word saudes.
It really means bogus, not authentic.
Maybe they think they're prophets.
Maybe they think they have a prophetic word, but they really don't.
Sometimes they really are called of God, but they just see a little tiny piece of the puzzle.
And if all you do is just focus on one piece and you don't talk about the other pieces, then you present a truth that is not quite right.
And if I may, I just want to share a scripture.
In 1 Corinthians, I have my Bible.
I hope that you have yours.
You know, I always use the Bible.
If you're going to get Rick and Denise Renner, you just got to have your Bible.
But in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the Apostle Paul said this in verse 9.
He says, for we know in part and we prophesy in part.
But notice he says, we know.
There are some things we really know, but he says we know in part.
Well, guess what?
That word part means we know in pieces.
We know in pieces and we prophesy in pieces.
And sometimes what we teach and what we prophesy is just a piece.
We don't see the whole picture.
Or I like to think about when I was a kid, my grandmother Renner would have me over to her house.
And she would say, Rick, let's work a jigsaw puzzle.
And she'd pull out a jigsaw puzzle with 500 pieces or 750 pieces.
And I would sit at that table and look at all those pieces.
And every piece was interesting, but you can't see the whole picture till you begin to connect it to the other pieces.
And sometimes what is called prophetic ministry brings a piece, but it has to be connected to the other pieces to really get a balanced picture.
And Paul said something else.
And if I may just share this, I think this will be really helpful to listeners.
He said in verse 12, for now we see through our glass darkly.
This is the Apostle Paul speaking, who had more revelation and insight than anybody else.
And he said, we see through our glass darkly.
Well, today I brought some things to help me tell you what this means.
I brought a mirror because the word glass here is the word for a hand mirror.
And it wasn't a mirror like this because they didn't have mirrors like this, but they took pieces of metal that were highly, highly polished and they would look into that highly polished metal, but because it was just metal that was polished, at best it gave a blurred image.
So they would look from one angle and then they would turn it and look from another angle, trying their very best to see the image.
And Paul is really saying to get a clear picture of what God is saying to us, we need to see more than one view.
We need to hear what everyone is saying.
We need to look at it from one angle and another angle and another angle.
And there's something else.
That word glass is also the Greek word for a piece of Roman glass.
And I brought a piece of Roman glass.
This is about 2,000 years old.
It's a slag of glass from a glass oven in Jerusalem.
I bought this years ago.
But Roman glass was flawed.
It was flawed.
They really had glass.
But let me show you something.
I brought a little flashlight from the Russian army.
If you put a piece, if you put light behind the Roman glass, you can see light.
But you can't see through this glass very clearly.
And what Paul was saying was that sometimes we see through a glass, we see bursts of revelation, we see light, but we don't always see everything extremely clearly.
We have to look at it from every angle.
We have to really, really focus to understand and to see what God is saying.
And that's why we need to be open to listening to various prophetic voices and not just focus on one, because every one of them brings a piece of the puzzle.
But Jesus did say at the end of the age, there would be a lot of prophetic voices that would emerge.
And so we need to be able to discern which ones we should listen to, which ones we should not listen to.
And I know that people that are sitting at home today watching your program, they've been asking that question.
Who do we believe?
How do we know if it's really a word from the Lord?
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