Pastor Joel Webbin and Pastor Doug Wilson lead a charitable disagreement on sign gifts, contrasting cessationist views that apostolic authority ended with the church's foundation against continuationist claims of ongoing prophecy for edification. They debate healing mechanics, gender roles in revelation, and whether modern prophetic words require absolute accuracy or function on a pass/fail basis. While Doug asserts scripture and providence suffice without missing divine glories, co-hosts Joshua Lewis and Michael Roundtree cite specific instances of demon casting and numerical prophecies as evidence of active Spirit gifts. Ultimately, the discussion seeks unity across theological divides, acknowledging that both sides can experience God's breaking through despite differing interpretations of cessationism and dispensational premillennialism. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Apostles As The Foundation00:15:04
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome to the show simultaneously three different guests.
We have Pastor Michael Roundtree, Pastor Joshua Lewis, and Pastor Doug Wilson.
Josh and Michael are the co hosts for Remnant Radio.
And Doug Wilson, he's the pastor of Christ Church and works with Canon.
And Blog and Mayblog is probably where you're familiar with him.
So, what we're doing in this episode is Pastor Doug and I. Are on the side of cessationism, and Pastor Josh and Pastor Michael are on the side of continuationism.
And we are not having a formal, heated debate, but we are arguing.
We are disagreeing with one another in a charitable, loving manner and talking about where do we agree and also where do we disagree on the issue of the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit.
That's the conversation.
What do we think about prophecy?
That's where we spend the majority of our time on the gift of prophecy, but we also talk about healing, a little bit about tongues.
And that's the conversation for today.
Pastor Doug and I on the cessationist side, Pastor Josh and Pastor Michael on the continuationist side, hashing it out in a brotherly discourse on the gifts of the Spirit.
Enjoy the show.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
In this particular episode, I'm privileged to welcome three guests.
We have Pastor Doug Wilson from Moscow, Idaho, Christ Church.
We also have Josh.
Remind me your last name, Joshua Lewis.
It's right there on the screen.
Joshua Lewis.
And then remind our listeners, real quick, the name of the church that you're currently pastoring.
Sure.
I'm the pastor of King's Fellowship Church in Ada, Oklahoma.
Great.
And then we have Michael Roundtree, long friend of mine.
And you're the pastor of Sam Storm's Old Church, which I also don't know the name of.
So I call it Sam Storm's Old Church.
But what's the name of your church?
That's actually the name of it.
It's called First Sam Storm's Church of Oklahoma City.
So Bridgeway Church is the name of it.
And as you know, Joel, Michael Roundtree is my name.
Great.
On the sign, it says Ichabod.
Sam Storms used to pastor here.
True.
Great.
And so, and for those of us, probably most of our listeners recognize Josh and Michael, but they are co hosts of the Remnant Radio that focuses a lot on different things.
It's not just a one trick pony, but a lot of emphasis, it's fair to say, is gifts, sign gifts of the spirit, correct?
You know, we don't love the term sign gifts, but yeah.
Oh, you don't?
Okay.
Weird gifts of the spirit?
I'm just kidding.
What do you call them?
We're content with what we would view as the biblical categories as just gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
But yeah, we can talk about that.
Okay.
Fair enough.
And then Doug and I would be of the persuasion that God is dead, right, Doug?
That's your position?
That's right.
Holy Spirit left.
Yeah, he's gone.
He's gone.
We'll catch back up with him in 10,000 years.
You're on your own, guys.
Right.
So, Doug and I are, we're being facetious there, but we are cessationists.
But we don't believe that all the gifts have ceased.
I don't know of really any Orthodox Christian that does.
Doug, do you want to take a moment and just explain cessationism?
Sure.
I would say maybe we could find agreement on the phrase authenticating gifts.
So there are gifts that simply minister to the saints, gift of encouragement, gift of administration, and that would look the same in every era.
But then Paul says in Corinthians, the things that mark an apostle.
Wonders and various miracles were done among you with great perseverance.
So, those were authenticating gifts, they were calling card gifts.
This, if a man says, I'm here to speak to you in the name of God, and this is the word of God, I'm going to want to see some credentials.
And I believe that the authenticating gifts were part of those credentials.
And there comes a time when the credentialing is no longer necessary because the foundation is poured and the building is going up on that foundation.
So if you say sign gifts, then you're sort of excluding God doing anything marvelous.
Later.
I just don't want anything marvelous later that authenticates someone as an apostle who isn't one.
Okay.
Michael and Josh.
So, just for the listener, real quick, just because we're hopping right in, we're not, it's not a formal debate.
Mainly, we wanted to talk to our friends.
We love each other and have a lot in common.
And right now, I don't know, it seems like every 10 years you got to sell out a conference.
And, you know, we did Strange Fire.
And so now we're doing Strange Fire Part Two with the cessationism thing coming up.
And I was a continuationist for several years and I've got a lot of continuationist friends and continuationists in the local church that I pastor.
And I actually kind of like them.
And so I wanted to have a conversation with guys that I disagree with, but that I like.
But Doug's given his overarching definition of cessationism.
So, Michael and Josh, it only seems fair.
You guys go ahead and poke some friendly holes.
Sure.
Okay, absolutely.
So, I guess I'll start.
You know, funny, normally on our show, Josh will start and I'll.
I'll bat second, but here we go.
Yeah, I mean, I think what I would say.
So I heard you alluding, Doug, to several passages, 2 Corinthians 12 12, with the signs of the apostle.
There's obviously some, I say obviously, probably not all of our viewers know, there's some debate over that translation there.
And is he saying that these are the signs that authenticate an apostle, or is he talking about signs that accompanied his apostleship and in his ministry?
And Contextually, we would contend, and the NASB translates it in a way more along the lines of the latter than other versions, the former.
So there's a reasonable debate over that.
And what we would say is that 2 Corinthians 12, verse 12, he's not contrasting, say, apostle Christians versus non apostle Christians, but rather apostles with, but rather, Apostles who are Christians with complete non Christians, false apostles altogether.
And we would say that the signs are accompanying, but we can certainly talk about that and we'd have to get into Greek text.
But that's not the biggest.
I would just say that jumping into Ephesians chapter two, I would say that this is maybe kind of like the linchpin of cessationist arguments that I've heard that God gave apostles and prophets as the foundation with Christ as the chief cornerstone with this image of the temple.
Which is still being built.
And so the argument goes like, hey, you don't lay a foundation twice.
So I heard you use language like that, like the pouring of the cement in the early church.
And so what we would contend is contextually, these apostles and prophets are what their association with a foundation is explained in Ephesians 3 5, where it says that God gave his apostles and his prophets a revelation of Gentile inclusion into the church.
And since that's really the theme of Ephesians 2 11, toward the end of the chapter, I guess verse 22, and then continuing into chapter 3, since that's the theme, this Gentile inclusion, we would say that the apostles and prophets of the first century who received a revelation of Gentile inclusion were foundational in the sense that they brought this new revelation that had been a mystery before.
Old Testament prophets did not see this mystery playing out quite like it did.
And so we would say that that is different from the ongoing gift of prophecy in the church.
Not every time someone prophesied was it a foundation laying of joint heirs of Jews and Gentiles.
But when Agabus prophesied, or when the people in Corinth prophesied, or when Philip's daughters prophesied, or when the Sons and daughters, and men and men servants and maid servants, and so on.
When all of these people prophesied, this was not church foundation stuff.
This was, uh, so we would make a distinction there, but I've talked about this.
What you're doing is you're saying the foundation is a particular prophecy or set of prophecies that are foundational, and not that the office is foundational.
So, the Ephesians 2 20, when the was established on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, we would say that.
What was being talked about is the revelation itself was the foundation of the church that the Gentiles were included.
Now, we would say that I think that the ground that you're trying to say, hey, let's have some common ground, and we're like, ah, maybe not that common.
I'll help you build some of that common ground, and that we will acknowledge that there are only 12 apostles of the Lamb, if you will.
There's only 12 apostles of Christ being the 11, and Paul, maybe Paul and Matthias are half cheek in it on the throne in heaven somewhere.
I'm not really sure how that works, but those generally being the.
The collection of foundation laying, species unique kind of prophets.
Like there's lots of prophets in the Old Testament.
Moses is kind of species unique among them.
And Christ being this kind of second covenant keeper with humanity, he's like this second kind of prophet.
In the same way, we would say that the apostles of the Lamb are species unique.
Certainly, we would all acknowledge that there are people who are probably graced by God to go plant churches and establish elders.
And those would be missionaries.
They would certainly be sent ones, but we wouldn't.
Talk of them as apostles, such as Christ's 12 apostles.
So, if you're saying there are 12 apostles, they're completely unique, no one else has that kind of authority as those 12, we would concede that ground and say yes and amen to that.
Right.
Yeah, to me, the authority of the apostle is he's a sent one.
So, the question is who sent him?
If he's an apostle of the church, that's different than an apostle of Christ.
Go ahead, Pastor.
Sure.
Agreed.
Right.
So, apostelo is the verb that simply means I send.
So, an apostle has the authority of the sending body.
So, in Hebrews, Christ is an apostle of God.
He has the authority of God.
The 12 are apostles of Christ.
Paul and Barnabas and Paul and Silas were an apostle of Christ, but he was also sent out by the church at Antioch.
So you have the authority of the sending body, right?
So in that sense, there are small a apostles today, church planters, missionaries, that sort of thing.
But like you, I don't use the word because then you've got 10 minutes of explaining.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
People all the time are like, yeah, I believe in church planters.
And yes, technically, I think lowercase a apostle is perfectly fine.
It's a good word, but I don't use it just because I don't always have 10 minutes.
But the hurdle is.
We're on the same page on all that.
Okay, as far as that goes, we're good.
So there's our common ground.
There's one piece of common ground.
There you go.
So the hurdle I can't get over is when you have this distinction between foundational revelation and just ordinary Agabus or Philip's daughter's revelation, which wasn't of great enough importance to be included in the Bible.
So at least not that we know.
When you make that distinction, we have to recognize that there are.
Prophecies in scripture that are not foundational in the sense of the Gentiles will come in.
They're true, they're inspired, and they're tucked away in a corner of Haggai somewhere, or tucked away in a corner of the Old Testament somewhere.
But it's still the Word of God and needs to be treated as the Word of God.
I don't know how to have someone stand up in a Christian assembly today and say, Thus saith the Lord, and then not treat it as though God just spoke to us in English.
And you look around and say, why isn't anybody recording this?
Why aren't people taking notes?
Why aren't we going to publish it?
Right?
So the revelation has to have a criterion for distinguishing the foundational revelation from the ongoing or era specific revelation or This congregation's specific revelation, but I still have to treat it like it's the Word of God.
I can't, I can treat it like it's the Word of God, or I cannot treat it like it's the Word of God.
What I can't do is both.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, I think we still have some common ground in that we want to honor the Word of God.
We want to preserve the uniqueness of Holy Scripture.
And so we do have that common ground.
And so we believe the Scripture is authoritative, is inerrant.
Is inspired, is sufficient, is necessary, is clear, and all the doctrines of scripture historically by the church.
So we believe all of those things.
I would say.
Can I ask you about sufficiency in that?
Sure.
If it is sufficient, then what is the modern prophecy doing?
Well, I would ask the same question.
Every Bible verse that you would have to say those scriptures are sufficient, right?
Like 2 Timothy, 316, right?
Like every verse that you would find in the Bible that says the Bible is sufficient, all of those verses were existing during a time when modern day prophecy was taking place.
So the scriptures themselves that say that the Bible is sufficient coexisted during a time when modern revelation was taking place.
Well, modern as it was being written.
And it didn't undermine the sufficiency of scripture at that time.
So I would just make the case that the same kind of sufficiency it was in the day it was being written can still maintain today.
The canon can still be sufficient.
And there being present revelation taking place.
Is Scripture Sufficient00:04:40
I think that's a good answer, but I'm not sufficient.
Sure, sure.
Well, I mean, the question is like, hey, is the scripture sufficient?
And I would say, yes, the scripture is sufficient in all that it claims to do, right?
Like, we still certainly hold to sciences.
We certainly hold to categories of zoology, right?
The Bible's not like, there are zebras.
Well, there's no zebras in the Bible, therefore, there are no zebras.
It's sufficient in all that it claims to do.
It's sufficient for our life and practice and faith in Jesus.
But we could say that could God give a modern revelation?
And I'm kind of pulling on maybe one of your stories where the Lord might highlight something or expose sin so that you could confront something in order to call someone to repentance.
Well, isn't the word of God sufficient to call people to repentance?
Well, the answer would be yes.
But could God reveal something in a way to highlight a need in that moment for repentance, in that moment to call, you know, to apply God's word to someone's life?
Certainly.
And we would believe that as well when it comes to.
We've, in Michael's church, for example, prophecy takes place where people who've been vetted and seem to have a gift of prophecy, they would, hey, someone has this condition.
This is your name.
This is your age, your date of birth, that kind of thing.
Like they'll give some kind of specific prophetic words at times, and people will get healed and get transformed.
So, yeah, the word of God is sufficient to save us, to reveal the knowledge of Jesus, to give us normative practice in life in the church and our conduct at home.
But that's not to say that there aren't other things that God couldn't reveal.
In the first century, in the same way that he would today.
So, do you, with that last example, do you require 100% accuracy for someone to be treated as an authentic, vetted prophet?
So, and this is where things get maybe a little bit hairier.
Michael, please feel free to jump in if I'm going to overstep or overspeak here.
In the same way that I would say that a teacher is teaching God's infallible, inerrant word, in the same way, if a prophet is speaking, We believe that the word that God is speaking is infallible and inerrant.
But as like Joel, not Joel, Job, you know, 33 speaks of, hey, God speaks here way and there way, though man does not perceive it.
Or God speaks to Moses face to face, but with the other prophets, he speaks in riddles and in dark sayings.
You know, 1 Corinthians says that we maybe prophesy in part, we know in part, and that prophetic words are to be weighed and judged.
In fact, even in the New Testament, it seemed right to us in the Holy Spirit, like speaking in terms of maybe not.
All the time, there's being this level of perspicuity within revelation.
The scriptures seem to speak at times that prophecy might be hard at times to understand.
And I think that the measure of confidence in which a revelation is given to you should be the way that you deliver that revelation.
For example, you know, in the New Testament, we've got verses about head coverings, right?
Now, sometimes, you know, people take those verses and they go, Hey, I for sure know what this means.
And other times, people go, Maybe it means this, maybe it means that.
And I think the level of confidence you have when approaching the scriptures should be the level of confidence by which you deliver.
That teaching of that scripture.
Just to maybe take one moment to pause on that prophecy reference, a good example of that would be John 12.
In John 12, there is a voice that speaks from heaven.
Jesus is speaking to the Father.
He says, Lord, glorify your name.
Father speaks from heaven.
I have glorified it.
I will glorify it again.
John records that it was the voice of God.
Some thought it was an angel, others only heard it thunder.
What's really interesting is some people didn't know what was being said, even though it was God speaking.
I'm only making the case that at times, revelation, as it is inscripturated, can be hard to understand, as Peter tells people of Paul's writings.
But to the same capacity, the revelation of God, though it may be infallible, can be at times misinterpreted by the one receiving that revelation.
The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king.
As Americans, we hate the word king.
Civilian ownership of body armor is about helping people to have increased power.
To resist tyrants and criminals.
And so Armored Republic is about helping you to preserve your God-given rights to the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the King of Kings and he governs kings and he will judge them.
This is Armored Republic and in a republic there is no king but Christ.
Testing Prophetic Claims00:15:05
We are free craftsmen and we are honored to be your armor spread of choice.
Would you like to get control of your money and set up a system that will guarantee for the rest of your life tax protected compounding interest and growth?
How about having 24 7 electronic access to your money for funding wisely chosen investments, home improvements, and other large expenditures without going to the mainstream banks?
This is not a dream, but it could actually be a reality when working with our sponsor, Private Family Banking.
See their contact information in the show notes below.
To make this season even brighter, Private Family Banking is giving away a pair of tickets.
A $500 value for the upcoming Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 conference, which is taking place on March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of 2024 in Taylor, Texas.
To enter the ticket giveaway, join their email list by sending an email to banking at PrivateFamilyBanking.com.
Again, that's banking at PrivateFamilyBanking.com with the subject line of your email saying Tickets.
Then include your full name and mailing address in the body of the email.
The ticket giveaway entry period will end at midnight central time on February 13th, 2024, and the winner will be notified via email on February 14th.
You must be 18 years of age or older to enter, and only one email per person can be entered into this giveaway drawing.
Thank you, Josh.
Go ahead, Pastor Doug.
Take some time because I know you've probably got a lot to say.
So, William Perkins, the great Puritan, his book on preaching is called The Art of Prophesying.
And The historic reformed understanding of preaching is that preachers are the heir of the prophets.
And I think it's the Helvetic that says the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.
And the illustration I use is what the Neo Orthodox say about scriptures, where the scriptures are not the Word of God, but they're a place where you can expect to encounter the Word of God.
So, or the Word of God becomes alive to you there.
You can encounter the Word of God there.
What the Neo Orthodox say about scripture, I would say about preaching.
So, the preacher does not stand up and expect someone to record his sermon, typeset it, and transcribe it as the Word of God, Volume 2.
The Word of God doesn't come in preaching that way, but it's a place where the preacher should expect the Word of God to go forth, and the congregation should come expecting to encounter the Word of God in the proclamation of the Word.
All right.
So, what I'm claiming about the preaching office.
I'm just clarifying here.
I'm hearing you say something very similar about someone exercising the gift of prophecy.
Which would make sense, I think, because Paul tells, hey, I don't permit a woman to preach, teach, or exercise authority over a man, right?
So he didn't want people to teach, and even of not just women, but just of all people.
Man, it's probably not great that all of you be teachers.
There's a stricter judgment, and yet all are commanded to pursue prophecy and earnestly desire spiritual gifts.
So it actually makes sense, in accordance with what you're saying.
Yeah, teaching is a higher office for me.
Teaching is something that we're handling the word of God.
Not everyone should do this.
This is something that's exclusive for male eldership, but then also all of God's people should pursue prophecy.
So, to the same capacity, I'm saying, yeah, I think prophecy can be, and I think that we see a kind of patterning of that in the scriptures.
I think the point that you're making, Josh, is a point about authority that the one who prophesies doesn't speak with.
So, maybe we could put it like this.
So, we would distinguish between revelation, interpretation, application as we can with scripture.
Okay.
I mean, this right here, this Bible is the perfectly revealed word of God, and it is inerrant.
We believe that even if God speaks by a revelation that is spontaneous in nature, not a written revelation, but a spontaneous, a prophecy, we believe that it can be on the interpretation, application level missed.
That doesn't mean that God was wrong.
It means that we were wrong in interpreting what God was saying.
And so, And so I think you're right, Doug, to say there is some similarity in the preaching because you're not saying the person preaching is literally doing Bible part two.
We are saying the same with prophecy.
It's not Bible part two.
But to be clear, we definitely believe that when it comes from the mouth of God, it is his pure and true revelation.
So nor would we deny that prophets can, prophets, like 2020 prophets, Trump is president still.
You know, I went to a Jell O kingdom, right?
Like high on a kite prophet.
You know, can say that they're prophesying and it not be coming from God at all, right?
So, like, that is also an option that we will 100% agree that there are people who come in the name of the Lord saying they're hearing from God, and it's not the interpretation and application they're getting wrong, it is the revelation itself is not coming from God.
That is also an option.
Immediately, as he stands up and says, a meteor is going to hit Kansas City tomorrow, and right, it doesn't happen, doesn't happen, then you guys remove that guy from the roster.
We will, yeah.
I mean, we would, we would, we just did a video recently where.
We were reviewing like Kurt Landry.
We were reviewing prophetic words from 2023.
And we're like, these guys need to sit down.
They need to stop doing this because they're saying, Thus saith the Lord every year, and these things aren't coming to pass.
They need to stop.
So, can I ask a couple of questions?
Well, I'll make a statement and then ask some questions.
But one thing that switched for me when I ended up embracing cessationism as my view, for the longest time, I thought of like 1 Corinthians 2 or 3 should prophesy while the rest are what.
You know, weigh what's being said.
And so I didn't have a huge problem because I thought there was this built in mechanism, you know, with, for one, I would bifurcate, you know, Old Testament prophecy and then there's New Testament prophecy.
And that's somehow distinct and different, the very nature of it.
That was my view.
I would reject that now.
But, you know, I would say there's this different thing New Testament prophecy, two or three are prophesying, the rest are weighing what's being said.
And so there's a built in safeguard that at the end of the day, you know, we're weighing this.
And so we're not just going to swallow poison, hook, line, and sinker, but we're going to exercise discernment.
And we'll take the good and chew up the meat, spit out the bones.
But then one of the things I started to struggle with is I don't think that that's what the rest are doing.
The two or three are prophesying.
I don't think the rest, the congregation as a whole, is weighing one singular prophetic word based off of percentages in terms of, well, 70% of this word is correct and 30% is false.
I think the rest are actually weighing in a pass fail system is this a word from the Lord or is it not?
Now, I do concede that God speaks in various forms.
You have dreams, you have visions.
There are different ways that the Lord speaks in terms of the means by which the revelation comes.
And I agree with the basic premise of revelation, interpretation, application.
We do the very same thing whenever we preach the word of God.
Revelation is the written word, and then I'm going to interpret that to the best of my ability.
And that may be right, it may be wrong.
And then I'm going to apply that to the people of God in my preaching that may be right and helpful or wrong.
And so too with this idea of prophecy, you guys are using that same metric revelation, interpretation, application.
But for me, in my understanding, think of like Deuteronomy.
And other Old Testament texts that talk about what prophecy is.
In my assessment, regardless of the means by which the prophetic revelation comes, it could be a dream, it could be abstract, it could be really clear, it could be fuzzy, it could be, you know, it could be whatever, but regardless of how it comes, when the prophet opens his mouth, so not how he receives the revelation, that's God's prerogative, but when he opens his mouth and now speaks it forth, that the very utterance of his words is carried along by the Spirit to where when he says, Thus saith the Lord,
such and such and such and such, That actually is infallible.
So, not just the revelation, the dream, the means, but actually, when it comes out of his mouth to the people, God carried him along in such a way that he actually nailed it.
He nailed it.
And he either nailed it or he didn't nail it.
And there's no in between.
It's not a sliding scale, a percentage based point of accuracy, but rather a pass fail kind of system.
That became my view of, and there was nothing in 1 Corinthians that I was aware of that would.
That would refuse that as a fair exegesis of two or three prophesy, the rest weigh what's being said.
Nothing mandates me to say that the rest are weighing percentages rather than just weighing yay or nay.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it makes sense.
I'm not sure it changes much whether it's a percentage or a yay or nay, because it doesn't appear to me that Paul has in mind these are either poser Christian, wolves in sheep clothing, false prophets.
Or they're true prophets of God.
If so, we would surely expect some kind of conversation of excommunication in 1 Corinthians 14, especially in the chapter about order in the church.
But instead, he just says, weigh it.
That's all he says.
Same with 1 Corinthians.
And I think this is really key because it comes down to like, we don't see anything in the Bible that says, test the Bible, make sure it's really the Word of God.
What we see is the Bible.
The Bible does, it self authenticates the Bible because there is no higher authority.
And when Paul is in 1 Corinthians 14, he says in verse 37, like, by what criteria do we judge?
1 Corinthians 14 37, if anyone is a prophet or thinks he is a prophet, let him acknowledge that what I say to you is the Lord's command.
And so Paul has a space in his theology as he's writing to a Christian church, he has a space in his theology for now, could he have a false prophet in mind?
He could.
Could he have a Christian prophet in mind?
I think he also could because he's writing to a Christian church.
I think he's leaving that ambiguous.
Less ambiguous, even than that, I think, is 1 Thessalonians 5, where he says, Don't quench the spirit, don't despise prophecy.
So those go together, test everything, hold on to what is good.
And so, again, he's telling us to test prophecy.
And even if your point is true, Joel, hey, it's not about a percentage deal, it's about a true or false.
It doesn't change the fact that the context is he's talking to churches and he's talking to Christians who are in danger of putting out the spirits of fire by saying no to prophecy altogether or by refusing to test it.
And we're saying yes to prophecy, but let's test it by what criteria?
By the Lord's command, because written revelation always trumps spontaneous revelation, because the spontaneous revelation, unlike written revelation, the The spontaneous revelation has not been validated by centuries of church history as binding on the conscience for all people everywhere.
Those are a few things that I would say.
Why don't we?
I guess we've got tape recorders and we have video cams now, and the spontaneous prophecy can be recorded and then transcribed, written down.
And the thing that I'm, when we say cessationist, what is it that ceases?
What I'm arguing that I want to not be going on is ongoing revelation, ongoing propositional revelation from God.
I don't hold on.
And by propositional, are you talking like doctrinal?
Because we agree with that.
Yeah, we agree with that for sure.
Okay.
By no, propositional would be would include a meteor is going to land on Kansas City tomorrow.
Sure.
What I'm what I'm resisting is comma quotation mark verbatim close quote.
And that was God speaking.
That's the thing.
Now, everybody are joking at the beginning of the Holy Spirit being gone and everything.
Every Christian knows what it is to have a burden for somebody.
And you just can't shake them, get them off your mind, and you pray for them all day.
And then you meet them, and they say, Oh, I was hoping you would come.
And I really, and it's very obvious that God was moving you to pray for that person.
But what I don't want to do is say, God told me, quote, pray for that guy, close quote.
Because that to me is the threshold of, I don't know what to do with that quotation.
I don't know where to file it.
The greater problem is I do know where to file it.
And I'm a better Christian than wanting to have the Bible part two, right?
That's the issue with promptings and leadings and having a Calvinistic trip where everything clicks together and God's obviously in it and his hand is obvious.
All of those things I think should be more ordinarily experienced and expected by Christians.
Including George Mueller type answers to prayer.
Sure.
All of those things.
God's obviously at work.
But what I don't want is anything that I'm unable to distinguish from the Bible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would say I want to, as much as possible, like in, build that ground with you on those areas.
And maybe Michael can pick up on the second part here.
But when you say this is the kind of cessationist I am, and I'll be real honest, like yourself, Doug, Jeff Durbin, Even R.C. Sprouls got a story in the middle of the night.
Someone called him, Go take this.
You applied at this job.
You should go take this job.
He goes, I don't know what that was.
There are these kind of fun, mysterious, some people will call them leading.
Some of them call them, like Jeff Durbin.
I was thinking about adopting this kid and he keeps having these dreams.
People in the church are having dreams that you're going to adopt this kid and you're going to name him August or Augustine or whatever.
Open Canon Debate00:02:37
And him and his wife had had that conversation privately.
And it's just like, Oh, wow, how cool.
God is leading and guiding his people to confirm that God wants us to do this thing.
And people, I get it, don't want to call it prophecy.
I would just say that.
The Bible uses an umbrella of category for revelation, such as dreams and visions, such as leading, guidings that it calls prophecy.
And I just want to, I mean, this is the area where I am trying to be sympathetic to both sides here.
I don't want a kind of Christianity that says, you know, I am going to add a new chapter to the Bible.
I'm getting, you know, John chapter 26, 8, 9, 10, 11.
You know, like I don't need like extra books of the Bible.
I don't need extra chapters.
So the Passion Translation dude is, you know, talking about.
In heaven, God showed him an extra chapter of John, which I think is absurd.
We're all about, hey, let's shut that mess down.
We don't need it.
But at the same time, trying to submit to the kind of biblical categories that I see in scripture.
To your point, yeah, I see people get healed, and the Bible calls that healing.
I understand that we could call it a miracle, but like the Bible called it healing.
I want to call it healing.
You know, this is a leading, the guiding, the dream of providence.
And I go, but the Bible kind of calls that prophecy.
Like I'm just okay.
I just want to call it that while simultaneously acknowledging in the first century, there was scripture and prophecy.
And those two things were separate.
And I just think that they can still be separate.
We can have canonized scripture and prophecy, and those two things don't have to endanger one another.
Right.
But the scripture they had at that time was scripture that was being formed, and it was being formed by means of the prophecies that were being given.
And so I want.
Which one specifically?
Well, I don't have a category for a closed canon and ongoing prophecy.
What you're pointing to is an open canon and ongoing prophecy.
Right.
Okay.
So theoretically, if there was a tape recorder when the sons and daughters and the young men and old men and the men servants and maid servants and the women and 1 Corinthians 11 prophesying faithfully with that head covered and the two or three prophets in Corinth and all, you know, Thessalonians, all that, like if there had theoretically been a tape recorder, would we be obligated to include that as an appendix to our Bible or somewhere in there?
I'll make it a little bit simpler, but yeah, the answer is yes.
So if Let's say I'm an archaeologist and I find the file cabinet of Philip's daughters.
Gifts And Healing Patterns00:06:32
Yeah.
Okay.
And let's say we authenticate it.
Or let's say I'm back in the first century and I own the house where the file cabinet of their prophecies is contained.
My responsibility would be to treat those prophecies as though they were prophecies in the Word of God.
Now, if in the providence of God the house burns down, And I mean, it's the word of the Lord.
He can dispense with it, he can give it and withdraw it and dispense with it as he sees fit.
But as long as I'm in possession of it, and if I believe, if I'm in possession of a revelation, however narrow, however specific, that it is the word of God to a fallen man in my native language, I believe I'm obligated to treasure it and hold it and treat it like what I think it is.
That's the issue.
The other, I wanted to not let this get.
Scoot off to the side, but you mentioned healing.
I absolutely believe that God heals today.
The issue for me is not healing, the issue is the gift of healing.
So, when Jesus healed the woman with the hemorrhage, he felt power going out of him, like draining a battery.
So, the healing authority, the healing authoritative power flowed from Christ to the person being healed.
So, after a day of healing and casting out demons, Christ was exhausted.
You know, it was like a drain on him.
He had the gift of healing.
But I've been in situations where one time our elders gathered around a boy in a hospital with a raging fever, like 104.
And we gathered James 5 and prayed for him.
And within seconds, he was sitting up in bed asking for a cheeseburger.
And it was one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen.
But it was not God.
Power didn't flow from us to him.
It was not the gift of healing.
It was us making a request of God in heaven who answered the prayer.
And we could see the correlation between our request and the answer in a remarkable way.
But although I prayed over him and he was healed and healed immediately, I don't have the gift of healing.
Yeah.
Praise God.
Well, I would say that that was the gift of healing in operation.
But I wouldn't suggest that because you saw a gift of healing, that it would pre require you to be able to do that on command.
But it didn't tire me out at all.
But I'm saying sure, but like Jesus threw mud in people's eyes to heal them, but it doesn't mean that he threw mud in people's eyes every time he prayed for them when they were blind.
So just because one time when Jesus prayed for someone and power left him, I don't think we should approach that text reductionistically and suppose that every time you pray for a sick person that you feel power come through you.
I just, I don't, I, I think that's probably reading more into the text than the text is allotting for.
Well, there's, there appears to me to be a pretty consistent pattern of touching, you know, touching where the, The healing goes from the healer to the healer, as opposed to a vertical transaction where we pray to God and then God does what he wills.
So, one is an appeal to heaven, and the other is the authority to heal has been delegated.
Now, Paul was able to heal, and he left Trophimus sick and miletus.
And I don't know why.
That's right.
Yeah.
Right.
So, I know that there are glitches in this, and there's no tidy way of.
Wrapping it all up.
But it seems to me to be a pattern of the.
I just want to distinguish the gift of healing from the request for healing.
Okay.
Can we move back to the Phillips daughters?
Because I'm curious how, as a complementarian, which I think all four of us are, I mean, patriarchy, right, Joel?
Not a complementary.
But I'm just saying, generally speaking, distinctions between male and female roles.
I'm using that term for complementarian.
Very broad definition.
I know what you're doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So to say that, okay.
How.
How would you go?
Okay, Philip's daughters can inscripturate revelation, they have scripture level revelation, so they can speak infallible, inscripturated, canonized revelation, but they can't teach it.
No, they can, how does that?
I have a so long as their head is covered, yeah.
Okay, well, there you go.
Now, I get it, and the hair is enough, though.
I can see your ground, yeah.
So, I have an answer on this, but go ahead, you can go first.
The answer is the Magnificat and Hannah's song.
We, we have.
Scripture, Deborah's song, Hannah's song, Mary's song, we have scripture spoken by women, and they were submissive, godly women, so they were not usurping any kind of authority.
But the Bible does contain prophetesses.
Yep.
So my understanding of 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Corinthians 14, it's shameful for a woman to speak in church.
Philip's daughters never would have delivered a prophetic word in church.
I don't believe that.
The woman covering her head as she prophesies, I think, is speaking of all the women in the church.
That the church, the very nature of the church is that it is prophetic.
When the church gathers together, it is prayer and prophecy.
That's what the church does.
I think just about every function of the church in this Lord's Day worship gathering could be boiled down to one of those two categories prayer and prophecy, speaking to God or speaking for God in the preaching of the word or those things.
And so I don't believe that women were delivering like an individual.
A woman standing up, you know, on the stage in front of the congregation delivering a word from the Lord.
I do believe that there were probably several instances of people, such as Philip's daughters, who received a prophetic revelation and then submitted that prophetic revelation outside of the Lord's Day gathering to the proper male authorities of the church who then delivered the word for them.
Same with scripturation.
So that, you know, if you have Miriam or if you have, you know, a woman prophetess that God gives a revelation to, that that revelation could be recorded in scripture, but that's different than the woman actually standing up in front of men and telling them, Thus saith the Lord, this is God's authoritative word coming out of my mouth to you.
So I would just see that as different.
And then, of course, also the same Holy Spirit that inspires the scripture also is the same Holy Spirit who preserves the scripture.
Conveying Divine Revelation00:15:24
That we have.
We have that which the spirit sovereignly determines throughout the course of history to preserve.
Preserved or doesn't preserve.
Exactly, or doesn't.
And we have 40 books of the Bible, or 66 books of the Bible, 40 men as the authors.
And I don't think that's a coincidence that that's what we have preserved.
Finally, a coffee company that doesn't hate you and your beliefs.
Today's sponsor, Squirrely Joe's Coffee, is a thoroughly Christian company that ships seriously good coffee straight to your front door.
Owned and operated by Joe Morris and his family out of Olney, Illinois.
They believe that Christians should be building a thoroughly Christian economy by doing business with other like minded Christians.
Just go to SquirrelyJoe's.com and use promo code RRM for 20% off your purchase.
Squirrely Joe's Coffee Share coffee, serve humbly, live faithfully.
Did you know that fresh American black elderberries are naturally high in vitamin C, vitamin B6, phosphorus, and And vitamin A, as well as many anthocyanins that serve as antioxidants.
Regular supplementation with elderberry extracts has been shown to decrease the chance of influenza and lessen cold duration and symptoms.
The Kings Ridge fresh frozen elderberries are hand picked, destemmed, washed, and quickly frozen at their family farm in east central Indiana.
The Kings Ridge is a quality oriented family farm focused on building Christendom.
Our friends Trevor and Autumn truly hope.
That their elderberry syrup and fresh frozen elderberries bless your family this cold and flu season.
Don't buy dried European elderberries and support the global economic agenda.
Instead, visit tkrfarm.com and purchase your elderberry needs from the Kings Ridge Elderberries.
Again, that's tkrfarm.com.
The last thing, though, that I want to do, because I know that Doug is running out of time here, we're going to have to Land the plane, but I just thought it could be really helpful just getting into the practical.
Like, I wanted to ask Doug and, you know, I guess asking Doug and myself, but then also hear a response.
So maybe Doug gets to go first and then Michael and Josh respond.
But I wanted to hear, like, Doug, you know, at the practical level, what do you feel like you're missing out on?
You know, in 40 plus years of ministry, you know, and not having a gift of prophecy, despising prophecy over there, you know, what are the glories that you feel like you've missed out on?
All the people who, You know, who haven't been helped that could have been, you know, like because I'm being, you know, I'm being sarcastic in the way that I'm framed, I'm being funny, but that's that for me, that's part of the reason why I let go of the position that I used to hold because I just don't feel like I miss anything, not a single thing.
And I'd love to be able to talk about that.
But Doug, I'd love to hear you first.
I would want to frame it and divide it in two.
I think every Christian minister feels like he's missing something, in that if I had only understood more or preached more effectively or ministered, you know.
More could have been done.
We always feel like just a little bit, Lord, enlarge my heart.
I need more.
All of us feel that way.
But in terms of what I've seen in terms of fruit in our congregation and in our community, and I've been around and have charismatic friends and acquaintances and so forth, I'm not feeling at all shortchanged.
And I think that's what's behind your question, Joel.
Yes, sir.
If someone says, Well, don't you miss this?
And I say, Well, not really, because.
No, not really, because I don't know what the lack is.
I wouldn't know where to categorize it.
Right.
For me, I'll give my answer.
And then Josh and Michael, I would love to hear just phrasing the question in the reverse, saying, What are the glories that you believe by God's grace that you have got to benefit from because of, in your view, embracing these gifts of the Spirit?
But real quick, to give my answer, Um, part of this is you know, uh, I kind of came to a point where I felt like um, scripture plus discernment plus providence equaled prophecy.
And now, what I mean at that end of this little formula here is what I used to call prophecy, um, what I would have considered a prophetic word, a new testament prophetic word, a word of knowledge, right?
So, kind of think information or word of wisdom, think um, instruction, how you know.
In both of those categories, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, the best ones that I ever mustered, you know, I felt like good theology, an open Bible with good theology being able to interpret, read that Bible properly and apply it with wisdom and discernment plus providence.
That's a key ingredient in the equation because scripture would narrow things down substantially.
And then whatever was not narrowed down by scripture, like if I was asking a really specific question, like should I work for Dell or should I work for Apple, well, providence, you know, would get me the rest of the way there.
And so, you know, from scripture, And then discernment and providence.
It just, there was not one question pastorally as I'm seeking to counsel and shepherd and guide congregants.
There was just, I never came up dry.
There was not one thing that I did in my prophecy days that I couldn't do in my Bible plus discernment plus providence days.
And then when I started thinking about if there is New Testament prophecy, like we've already discussed on this episode, Um, you know, it always goes to the agabus and then the you know the age old question that we didn't have time to get to, but it was actually this wrong or was he right, you know?
But the but the point is, putting that aside for a second, we actually what what'd you say?
We agree with you on that, he didn't get a little wrong.
We're in Acts 21 4, but we didn't have time to get over there, but with that, my point is, agabus, you know, a famine, uh, that makes sense to me, like if you know, so that was one of the biggest things that I was still kind of grappling with was if there is new testament prophecy, ongoing revelation taking place a day, it's certainly not doctrine, it's you know, the foundation, uh, you know, Ephesians 2 20, the prophets and apostles.
That's my view in terms of doctrine and Jesus.
He's the final revelation, the exact imprint of the Father's nature, the final word.
But you know what?
It would be super helpful to know a famine is coming in seven years, that you could prepare, have seven years of plenty.
And so that totally made sense to me.
But then here's the problem.
And I recognize this is not an exegetical argument, but thinking of famines and disasters and those kinds of things, COVID felt like a big one.
Who got that one?
Whose bingo card was that on?
You know what I mean?
With all these profits out there, it would have been nice if one of them picked up on this thing that affected everyone.
But if he would have, I wouldn't have listened to him.
Amen.
I'm just kidding.
Okay, so Michael and Josh, why don't you guys land the plane?
Me and Doug have, you know, we've given our view.
But what do you guys think about that?
You know, what are we missing?
What have been the benefits that you guys have enjoyed?
Oh, sure.
Well, I mean, I think for me, like take this Sunday, for instance, after service, I talked to two different people who, because we have people come up for prayer after service, it could be for healing.
Or it can just be responding to the sermon, receiving prayer, whatever.
Two separate people who came forward and had demons cast out.
Now, I'm suspecting you guys are probably still on board for demons cast out, but I think you are.
But anyway, that kind of thing is, I think, can be more commonplace in a setting where it's talked about.
I mean, I was part of a cessationist church where that kind of thing was never talked about, and I'm quite confident plenty of people had demons who visited that church.
And, you know, another one from Sunday.
Someone had a prophetic word, and this one was from the stage of someone with the initials JH who was there who had some issue with their foot.
And somebody raised their hand.
Oh, and the number 62.
A 62 year old person with the initials JH had that exact same foot issue.
Another one was actually, this one, Josh, was from our Remnant Radio conference that we did at Bridgeway.
Somebody stood up and said, Gosh, there were multiple pretty profound ones I could share, but I'll just go with this one.
There's somebody here that the numbers nine and 17 are significant, and you have a healing need in your back.
And somebody raises her hand.
She says, Nine and 17 is significant for me.
It's my birthday, and that is today, and I have a back issue.
We prayed over her and followed up with her afterward, and her back was healed.
And And so, those kinds of things.
I mean, I just think for us, it's really about, I define a spiritual gift as empowered love.
And so, why the code?
Why the code?
Because we, yeah, yeah.
I mean, even the language of God speaks any way He wants.
Yeah.
Like for us, we're not determining how God speaks.
We're just conveying what we heard.
And I think that we would concede the ground that at times God speaks in ways that we don't understand.
Now, it is very, I would say it's uncommon.
At Michael's church, for people to get up and be like this number and that number and be very random.
In fact, the guy who gave the word was the same guy who gave a word that described a specific medical condition and I think the name of the person.
So, anyway, so like at times, yeah, sometimes it seems vague.
At other times, it seems very, very specific.
And it seems vague maybe in a small room of people, but to the person that it bears witness to, it makes a ton of sense.
Right.
Yeah.
I need to go in two.
So, I want everybody to know it's nothing anybody said.
Fair enough.
No, Michael, that's helpful.
Josh, go ahead.
Do you want to give a couple?
And then I'd love to just.
Yeah.
So I just want to say that I actually think that the things that you guys are benefiting are not necessarily from the cessationism per se, like Doug's story of reading his Bible one day while trying to get this lady out of a cult, and God supernaturally showed him that this lady was in a sexual relationship with this man.
He was able to address that.
And, Doug, do I remember the story correctly that this actually caused repentance in this lady?
Yeah.
And I know you wouldn't be comfortable calling that prophecy, but.
And I get that.
I confronted her with it.
She dissolved into tears.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, like the Bible said in 1 Corinthians 14, that when prophecy is given, it exposes the contents and intentions of people's heart, and they fall on their face and declare, Surely God is among you.
So, you're asking, like, hey, what am I missing out on?
That.
Like, not just because that can still happen.
And I would concede the ground that the story of Augustine being adopted by Jeff Durbin, or Doug's story of God supernaturally revealing this in Scripture, or the story of R.C. Sproul, someone calling him up from childhood, reminding him about a job opportunity he had at a seminary.
All of those are examples of God breaking through our theology, right?
And that's fine.
That's totally cool.
But the Bible also tells us to pursue these things.
And I think the pursuit of those things makes them more normative in our life.
We have not because we ask not.
And if we're knocking and asking, He'll give us a good gift.
He'll give us the Holy Spirit to those who ask.
And I would just say that, you know, what are we missing out on?
Like the Presbyterians in Scotland, like the crazy stuff that Alexander Peden was seeing, that Samuel Rutherford was seeing.
Alexander Peden, this story is probably familiar to you guys if y'all saw the.
Essential church documentary, which I thought was fantastic, by the way.
You know, there's a story of John and Elizabeth Brown and Cuthbert coming and shooting John Brown in the head because he wouldn't kind of recant and kind of give his life and devotion to the king's rules in regards to church polity.
Well, three years before this, Alexander Peden tells Elizabeth to keep a linen sheet nearby and to cherish her husband while she would get him because he'd come to a bloody end.
You know, time and time again throughout the Scottish Presbyterian revivals, supernatural revelation was given to these men to avoid certain areas, to avoid death, to avoid persecution.
To declare over specific individuals of the way that they would die and the time in which they would die, the location they would die in.
And this to the community exposed their hearts like, wow, surely God is leading us.
Surely God is comforting us.
The scriptures are enough, man.
The scriptures are enough to point us to salvation, to point us to Christ's finished work, the distinctions between law and gospel that, hey, this is how we are to please God, but Christ fully pleased God by fulfilling the law.
All of those things are sufficient in the scriptures and the scriptures alone.
But in the same way, That in times past, that God has led and guided his people.
I would just say, if you pursue those things, there is a greater possibility that you'll be used in those things.
And so I think that's why God is calling us to contend for that.
And I would say that wasn't because they were charismatic.
I would say it was because they were Scottish.
I mean, hey, if we all started wearing kilts, we might prophesy more.
There you go.
All right, well, thank you guys.
Thanks.
Yeah, Doug, thank you for coming on.
And Josh and Michael, thank you so much for your time.
I think this has been helpful for the listener, or I hope it has been.
And to recognize that I think at the end of the day, there is plenty of common ground that we have.
And for me, I guess, you know, the big thing, the reason I wanted to do it is because I think that, you know, I side theologically with a cessationist, but I don't necessarily side with the attitude of many cessationists.
I think that cessationists are often too quick to write off the lion's share of Christians.
And I, you know, maybe it's the correlation between cessationists and.
Dispy pre millennial theology, like they're already perfectly content to lose.
So it doesn't bother them to write off 75% of our teammates.
But I actually want to win.
I'm actually hopeful that Christ will be victorious progressively and gradually through human history, through the church.
And I don't think we win without the charismatics.
So now, of course, there's a sliding scale, and some of those charismatics are really, really, really crazy, but some of them are not.
And I'd like to think that the two of you are not.