Fading Miracles? An Interview with Andrew Rappaport

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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May 1, 2024

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00:30: Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I am your host Andrew Rapoport, President and Executive Director of Striving Fraternity and the
00:37: Christian Podcast Community of which this podcast is a proud member. We're here to give you biblical interpretations and applications of all things of the
00:45: Christian life. This episode is where I was on another podcast called
00:50: Doxologic. They have a podcast where they talk about many issues and they heard my message at the cessationist conference on miracles and whether we should expect to see them today or whether they faded from the
01:05: New Testament and so they had me on to discuss that. So we talk about the charismatic movement, we talk about miracles, whether we should expect them or not, and so this is a very packed interview.
01:19: A lot of things discussed. I hope this is very helpful for you and as we jump into it just be praying for me as myself,
01:28: Jim Osman, Justin Peters are right now in the Philippines ministering to many churches and to hundreds of people so we would appreciate your prayers.
01:38: If you find this episode helpful would you do us a favor, text it out to five people, share this with others so that others know about this great content if you actually think it's great.
01:51: If not, well, share it anyway and say listen to what this guy believes. Either way we hope that you get a lot out of it, we hope this is educational, we hope it's helpful, and we hope that you'll share with others and we look forward to you gaining something from this and Lord using this in your life.
02:09: So here is my interview on Doxologic podcast. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,
02:17: Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the
02:23: Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church go to strivingforeternity .org
02:37: Hey, I'm Scott. And I'm Chris. And this is Doxologic, where we help you think with your Bible. Well, welcome back to another episode of Doxologic, sitting here across the table once again with Pastor Scott.
02:55: How are you doing, brother? Doing great, Chris. How are you doing? I'm doing well. It's always good to be back at it.
03:01: Summer is, it's late July as we record this, it feels like it's flown by already. The heat definitely came eventually around Sacramento, 100 and what, 9?
03:12: Was that our hottest day? It's 102 hot. Jump in that water anywhere you can find it. It's actually the temp at the end of the day that's the worst, right?
03:18: Because it doesn't cool down. You can deal with the hot, but it doesn't get cool enough. It's like 101 at 9.
03:24: It's a breezy 101. You know, you're like, this is summer and dry, at least, in Sacramento.
03:30: Well, we want to welcome today a special guest.
03:36: Andrew Rapoport is joining us, and welcome, Andrew, to Doxologic. Thanks for having me.
03:43: Yeah, man, really looking forward to this. Been looking forward to this ever since we got connected a couple of months ago.
03:49: Just maybe by way of introduction, where are you, where are you calling in from, and what's the kind of ministry that you're doing out there?
03:59: I'm in Pennsylvania, a little north of Philadelphia, and ministry is striving for eternity.
04:07: So, we're a discipling ministry. We travel to churches. We have a very different model.
04:13: We actually go to churches that are typically smaller because no one else will go to them, and they're the ones that need to help the most.
04:19: You get some bivocational pastor struggling just to get a sermon ready while working, you know, work on the side to pay bills.
04:27: He doesn't have time to train people for evangelism, apologetics, how to interpret the Bible, things like that.
04:33: And so, we come in for a weekend, and if, you know, if you have a conference at your church, everyone gets excited.
04:40: It helps people grow spiritually. Well, we provide that sort of environment for smaller churches that typically can't afford to fly anyone out to come in and do that.
04:50: So, we do that. We have an online academy. We have podcasts. One of our ministries is the
04:56: Christian Podcast Community, where we have a bunch of 50 -plus podcasts that we disciple them to improve.
05:03: So, everything that we do about discipling, that's the heart of it. Well, sounds like that relates to our passion.
05:10: Yeah. Discipleship at the core. Exactly. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Well, very good. Thank you for that introduction, and maybe just a little background before we launch into our topic today.
05:21: Some of your testimony, just early, maybe the early years and coming to Christ and how you've grown.
05:29: Obviously, I know it's got a very long version of that story, but kind of a brief introduction to your life and background in Christ.
05:36: Yeah. Well, what most people seem to find interesting, I got saved like everyone else, but I got saved out of a
05:43: Jewish background. Okay. So, I also came to Christ in three and a half hours of conversation.
05:50: So, it wasn't like I heard it over. Being raised Jewish, and I'm sorry, listener, this is gonna be hard for you to hear, but this is the way that we're raised as Jewish people, especially a generation after the
06:05: Holocaust. But I was raised to believe Jesus Christ is Hitler's God, because we don't really make a distinction.
06:13: Everything's Catholic. We understand it's Baptism, but it's all Catholic in our thinking.
06:20: And so, the Catholic Church supported Hitler, and so there was no love for Christ. I wasn't looking for Christ, but the gentleman who was sharing the gospel with me,
06:30: I literally told him, hey, that's good for you, but I'm God's chosen people.
06:36: I'm in like Flynn, because that's what I was told. I was going to heaven because of that. And so, that basically became a thing that he,
06:46: I said, if you give me a logical reason to believe, I'll believe. And so, going through just prophecies,
06:51: I realized the New Testament had to have been written by God. It's just mathematically impossible to do those prophecies that would be in the category of coincidence, not self -fulfilling.
07:02: And so, I believed, okay, this had to have been written by God. What's New Testament teach? He talks about Jesus's death, burial, resurrection, and I'm like, yeah, dead people don't rise.
07:12: They rot. And so, when I realized there was no way to argue against the resurrection, that convinced me that Jesus had to be
07:20: God, and if Jesus was God, that I was accountable to him. And so, you know, on the steps of a
07:26: Dairy Queen in that communist country known as California.
07:33: In San Francisco. Hey, I'm from another communist country known as New Jersey.
07:40: We give you guys the run for the money. Being who could be worst in the Union. So, yeah, so in San Francisco and Dairy Queen, that's in 1984.
07:52: So, I was 16. Now, everyone could do the math and know that I'm only 25 years old. You've been following Christ for quite some time now, and just one or two of your particular maybe topics or subjects of passion for you in your ministry.
08:12: We were talking before we started here that you've been a pastor as well. What are some of your greatest joys to teach about?
08:21: Is interpreting the Word of God, hermeneutics. It is one of the things people don't teach, especially within church.
08:28: It doesn't really get taught, unfortunately, and yet it's the number one thing everyone needs to know, right?
08:35: What are you going to do when you have someone coming to you with counseling? You're going to give them the scriptures, and you're going to help them understand the scriptures.
08:43: And if they can go right to the source, well, you'd have a great time.
08:50: But no, it's a thing. Every time I preach, I'm teaching hermeneutics directly or indirectly.
08:57: So, basically, I love teaching hermeneutics and systematic theology. Those are two passions of mine.
09:05: Yeah, very good. Well, Scott, I'll kick it to you for a second here. Introduce the topic at hand for which we're interviewing
09:13: Andrew, and just why this is important that we would give the time to this.
09:20: Well, yeah, and given the background that Andrew just shared about having a Jewish background, you could see maybe going into that and how the kind of background as the people of God, the
09:31: Old Testament, Messianic prophecies, you could have a whole podcast on that, or we could talk about hermeneutics, or we could talk about evangelism and discipleship and all of this.
09:39: But we've actually landed on the subject of the doctrine of cessationism, which is kind of an unfortunate title for that position, right?
09:48: You just sound like a downer, right? Right out of the gates, but it's the issue of the work of the
09:55: Holy Spirit, and particularly as it pertains to the ongoing function of the apostolic gifts, and how do people understand that?
10:07: And this is a really confusing one for a lot of people. There are two sides on this.
10:12: Of course, the other side is continuationism, and we thought, man, this is a really important question for your everyday
10:21: Christian life. How do you understand the work of the Holy Spirit insofar as it pertains to how the
10:29: Spirit leads your life, governs your life, revelation? If He speaks to you, how?
10:35: Yeah, if He speaks to you, how? How do you understand that from a biblical perspective? And so, we knew that Andrew had had background in teaching on this, and we're very excited at the possibility of getting to interact with him.
10:48: And so, Andrew, we're so glad to have you. And on that, kind of turning the corner towards cessationism, why don't you give our listeners a working definition of cessationism before we get started here?
11:01: You mentioned a whole bunch of topics that some in the audience probably would like to hear better, because I'm going to upset people right out of the gateway, because this is a highly emotional topic, right?
11:15: I came out of a continuationist position when I went to college. The folks who were in college were to faith, charismatic, teaching to speak in tongues, things like that.
11:27: And that's really the issue with it. What's a definition of cessationism?
11:32: It's really based out of 1 Corinthians 13, 8, where it says, love never fails, but where there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away with, where there are tongues, they will cease, and where there is knowledge, it will be done away.
11:49: And so, it's really that one, tongues will cease, because tongues, the gift of languages is really seen within the charismatic circles as the indicator that you have the baptism of the
12:03: Holy Spirit, which goes against everything taught in 1
12:08: Corinthians 12, that we're not all going to have the same gift. And yet, somehow this has become the identifying marker that if you don't speak in tongues or languages, that you don't have the baptism of the
12:25: Holy Spirit. And so, cessationism is the idea that certain gifts have passed away, they've ceased.
12:33: And you'll hear them spoken of either as sign gifts, because they point to something, we could get into what that points to.
12:41: I often refer to them as either revelatory gifts or vindicated gifts.
12:48: And what I mean by that is revelatory gifts are gifts that coincide with revelation, which is, you guys had heard from the cessationist conference that was done up in Kootenai, Idaho, which is where you guys had heard about me with the talk that I did on miracles.
13:07: Well, what do miracles do? That they're vindicating, they vindicate something. That's the purpose of them.
13:12: So, those gifts, when the things that they're vindicating, or there's no more new revelation, those gifts cease, they stop.
13:21: Why? Because they don't have a need anymore. And so— They're fulfilled in their function, right?
13:27: And so, it's less of like, oh, you're putting God in a box, and you're keeping the
13:32: Holy Spirit from working and all that stuff. And it's like, no, no, the purpose for the gift actually reached its fulfillment.
13:41: And so, therefore, it's not an issue of us saying, like, no, the Holy Spirit can't do those things.
13:47: And I think that's often how—that's an unfounded, but often a common accusation. Yeah. Yeah, and you brought up an argument that you hear the most, which is, well, you're putting
13:57: God in the box. And let me just give a really quick, short answer you can have to answer that quickly.
14:06: If someone challenges you and says, well, you're putting God in a box, just ask the question, can
14:12: God lie? And they quickly say no, because that's out of Titus 1 -2.
14:18: God cannot lie. Oh, so it's not me putting God in a box. You're putting God in a box. You're saying
14:24: God can't lie. And once they say, well, he can't do anything opposite to his nature, okay, now we're talking the same thing.
14:30: So, God is limited by what he does. So, if God says, 1 Corinthians 13, that he's going to stop giving these gifts,
14:38: I'm not putting him in a box. Well said. Sounds like an apologist and someone who debates regularly, the way you were so just ready on hand with something like that.
14:53: And we can also say this, everybody is a cessationist to a degree. The question is what degree?
14:59: In part because, for example, we wouldn't say there are apostles today in the same, at the very least, everyone responsible will say there's not apostles in the same way as they were back in the first century.
15:12: So, we're dealing with the gradation of cessationism and not necessarily, no,
15:18: I'm not a cessationist at all. Yes, because the reality is that when people will try to be soft on this as well, you have people,
15:29: I think John Piper made it really popular to say that he's kind of open, but cautious.
15:36: And that became a way, well, that's a continuationist position. You're either a continuationist or you're,
15:44: I don't want to say that, I'm not saying this specifically about John Piper, but you're either a continuationist or a coward, right?
15:51: Because you're either just not willing to take a stand. And so I'm just open. I want people to think I'm open -minded to these things.
15:57: Well, people are typically not open -minded about other positions in scripture.
16:05: They take harder lines, but this one, because it is so emotional, and so I'm going to say up front for the audience,
16:14: I know I'm going to say things that are probably, if not, maybe already did upset you, and I'm sorry.
16:21: I'm just giving you what my study of scripture has led me to. And I get that it's emotional.
16:28: I get that people have an emotional attachment because this is their experience. And I've never had a discussion where I've disagreed with someone about this area of continuationism where continued discussion didn't end up leading to some experience they had every time.
16:49: Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of the conversations I have when people want to start talking about this, they blend categories together where they start talking about it, and I'm like,
16:59: I actually don't necessarily have a problem with this and this and this, but you realize that's not the same as the spiritual gifts, right?
17:07: Kind of idea. And so the way they'll talk about feeling led by the Spirit in a certain way that's...
17:14: To do something, just speak to somebody. Yeah, a relatively responsible way of talking about how the heart is, in a sense, prompted by the
17:21: Spirit, they're going to want to conflate those two things and say, that's the gifts of the
17:28: Spirit at play, and how could you say that's not at work? And it's a lot times really helpful to separate the categories out and make sure we're talking about the same thing, because I think this is a lot of where the confusion lies.
17:42: You're exactly right, Scott. It is exactly where it lies, because what ends up happening with people is we have gifts that exist today, and people go, well, see,
17:55: God still gives gifts. Why would he stop these? And you got to get into the category of what was the purpose of the gifts, which each gift, is mercy still needed today?
18:06: Yes. Is new revelation still needed today? No. So if you have a gift that was for the purpose of revelation, it's not needed.
18:15: So you have to figure out, we got to talk proper categories, and it's that conflation of categories that may sound good for argumentation, but what you have is people today who—so after this, later tonight,
18:30: I do Apologetics Live. It's a live stream where anyone comes in, asks any questions. We usually start with a topic.
18:36: Well, someone sent me a video. He says that the reason my evangelism is not quote -unquote effective, because he's claiming that he gets many people that come to Christ every time he goes out and evangelizes, because he is listening for the voice of God.
18:51: God speaks to him audibly. And it's like, there is a big difference between the doctrine we would call providence and a miracle.
19:02: And when you conflate these two, everything looks like a miracle. But then it's not a miracle, because miracles are supernatural.
19:12: My definition, yeah, I can't. Yeah. If it happens all the time, it's not a miracle.
19:18: But it's God's providence. God does do things in his providence where he's going to bring someone to your mind, and you're going to start praying for someone, and you didn't know that they got in a car accident at that moment.
19:30: That's not a miracle. That's God's providence. It's the way God works in the Holy Spirit working with us. That's not a gift.
19:36: What about praying for someone that they get healed, and then there's a response of the Lord in that sense?
19:42: Correct. Correct. Because if you look in the New Testament, right, every time they did that, they were always pointing what?
19:49: To vindicate something. Why did they heal? To vindicate. And so you have people, and you do have people that claim that they're apostles today.
20:01: I was in a hotel,
20:06: I'm evangelizing, I got this young 18 -year -old kid who's just, he is agreeing, he's like,
20:14: I need to repent right now. And there's this woman who is standing there, and now she had told me in a conversation
20:20: I had with her, she's an apostle. Which I'm going like, yeah, okay.
20:26: Scripture speaks against that in multiple ways, as a woman and as an apostle. But the reality is, is she was really upset.
20:34: Like, here's a guy going, I want to pray to receive Christ. And she goes, well, wait, you didn't tell him he has to get baptized first.
20:42: And I'm like, okay, now I know you even got a completely different gospel. Wow. Right?
20:49: But she knows she's right, because God spoke to her.
20:57: Her son was in surgery and wouldn't wake up. And God told her exactly what to say.
21:03: And when she said it to her son, he woke up. And so it vindicates to her that God speaks to her.
21:11: And I've said to her, I'm like, but you know, let me tell you a story. I told the story of a Mormon friend that I knew, who
21:16: God supposedly spoke to him. But she would agree he's not in the camp of Christian.
21:23: So all of a sudden, it's like, well, my experience, well, you're trusting your experience, and I'm trusting the Word of God, which becomes more important for us as believers.
21:32: Well, the Word of God, because that's actually the, what's it, Word of God, right?
21:39: Sure, yeah. Speaking of the Word of God, I want to ask this, and we are actually going to talk about miracles in a little more detail shortly, but when it comes to cessationism, we've described it as a certain maybe set of gifts that were operational in the apostolic era in the first century that faded or that ceased.
22:00: When you address this, maybe it's in churches or in general, what are some of the best arguments against your position, or what are some of the strongest ones?
22:12: Let's just say they don't go down the emotional and experiential route only, but they want to open the
22:21: Word. They're going to take you to a certain place, and how do you interact?
22:27: Let's open a couple of places and read and then hear about that and what you respond with.
22:34: Well, the arguments that they'll usually make is that the passage in 1
22:40: Corinthians 13, they're going to say that that is either the end times or that's future, it's not today.
22:51: I disagree with that because what ends up happening, if you, the only way you come to that is by not interpreting that passage consistently.
23:01: So in 1 Corinthians 13, where it says that these gifts will cease, and it only mentions three there, and the three seem to have to do with prophecy, tongues, or not languages, and then knowledge.
23:16: They seem to do with revelation. Now, the way they do that is to say, well, face to face must mean seeing
23:23: Jesus face to face. The word translated here is when the perfect comes in verse 10.
23:30: They'll say, well, only Jesus is perfect. And they'll say, well, see, knowing in part, but then knowing as you're fully known, well, you're only going to fully know when we're in heaven.
23:40: So this is either the second coming or when you die and go to heaven. And so they're going to argue these gifts continue today.
23:48: Now, just real quick, and we're putting together a cessationist seminar to go to churches and do like a full day, a
23:57: Friday night, Saturday seminar for churches to go through all of this and unpack it.
24:03: But I have a whole talk that we do just on this passage to explain why, walking through it, you have three illustrations.
24:13: They're illustrations of the Son partial to something complete. That's what you see there. It's throughout. And the key is in verse nine, for we know in part, we prophesy in part.
24:23: Well, what's the knowing in the prophecy? Well, it's the very things we see in verse eight. Those three gifts that are going to be done away with.
24:33: And there's a reason why the two are mentioned here as being done away and tongues or languages cease on their own.
24:41: There's just a difference there in the Greek. But what we end up seeing is he then gives three illustrations of something that is completed.
24:50: The word teleos that you see there is for ceasing, sorry, for perfection, is the idea of maturity, completion, or perfection.
25:00: It's not, or perfect. It's not the idea of perfection as much as it is something that's completed or matured.
25:07: And what do you see? Illustrations of a child to man looking in polished metal dimly. Let's not call it a mirror because that's the problem.
25:15: As Scott said, categories matter. The mirrors we have today is not the mirrors they had in the first century, right?
25:23: And so what they start to do is they, instead of looking at verses 11 to 13 as illustrations, they look at that as literal.
25:32: And I think that's not good. That's not the right thing to do with the text. Now, another passage that my buddy
25:39: Matt Slick would go to, and we've debated this as well. And he looks at first Corinthians 1 .7,
25:47: and it says, so you are not lacking any charisma, charismatic gift.
25:53: This is the idea where we get the charismatic gifts. They're called charisma gifts.
25:59: So it says, so that you are not lacking any gift awaiting eagerly the revelation of the
26:06: Lord Jesus. So he would make the argument that this right here is saying that the charismatic gifts continue until the second coming, till Christ returns.
26:19: And I'm going to argue from that and say that the key in this is that we're not lacking.
26:27: Well, lack requires a need. If we don't need it, we're not missing it.
26:34: We're not lacking it. So if we have a completed Bible, then we're not lacking these gifts that help us with revelation.
26:42: We have the Word of God. So we can just go to the Word of God and not have to rely on these gifts.
26:49: So we're not, the church isn't lacking anything. So those are probably some of the better arguments that I think get made.
26:58: And I think you see that I don't agree with them. ISKRA So I'm thinking, tongues is obviously one of the big ones, but miracles as well.
27:11: And one of the confusing things about miracles is this idea of people have very much, like you said, in their experience, and maybe this is a distinction too, between the spiritual gifts or the apostolic functioning gifts and like a
27:26: James 5, praying for someone and God providentially responds and heals them is not the same thing, right?
27:33: Even if you look in the New Testament, you don't see Paul praying over, oh
27:39: God, please heal this person. He simply says, in the name of Jesus Christ, like Jesus did and or had his handkerchief touched and they were healed.
27:51: In other words, that's the distinct difference. It's not to say, for example, that we don't pray for someone's healing and that God doesn't see fit or is able to respond by healing that person.
28:05: But no one's going into a hospital floor, touching his Kleenex and the whole floors is coming out without any scratch kind of idea.
28:15: And that's sort of one of the distinctions. And I know you have a lot of content on this and the nature of miracles in particular and fading and how you develop that theology, even how you look at it from a biblical perspective, actually fascinating to think of.
28:34: What we think of is like, oh, this is common. They happen all the time throughout biblical history, and it's actually not quite the case.
28:43: So give us a several minutes introduction to the idea of fading miracles.
28:50: I say several because I watched your 50 -ish minutes of teaching on it, which we can link the
28:55: YouTube to that for people to follow up with more. But yeah, introduce this concept to us. Yeah.
29:01: And I'll give you a good link to go to is if you go to strivingforeternity .org slash miracles.
29:10: My full talk is there along with links to the video and audio. So if you want to just listen to the audio podcast or if you want to watch.
29:19: But essentially what you see is that, and I do encourage people to watch that or read this article because I give a lot of data there and charts that really are helpful.
29:31: Because what I did is I went through all the miracles in the Bible and put them into categories of, okay, when are these happening?
29:39: Because I heard arguments made that miracles only occurred during Moses' time, Elisha's time, and Jesus' time, but is that true?
29:48: And so that's what I wanted to find out. And the answer is yes, it is true.
29:54: When you see miracles done by human beings, it's mainly only in those three time periods.
30:00: Why? Because what was unique about those three time periods? New writing of scripture.
30:07: So miracles are necessary to vindicate someone who's saying, thus says the Lord here,
30:13: God is speaking. We're going to write this down and you're going to know this is from God.
30:18: How? Because we're doing things that only God can do. And that's the purpose of the miracles.
30:27: And so I would argue that if there's not new writing of scripture, there's no need for miracles today.
30:34: Now, as Pastor Scott said, this is different than providence.
30:42: Providence we see, God's providence we see all the time. Miracles are something different.
30:49: Miracles are something supernatural. And so when we're talking of miracles, we have to be really clear on our definition of terms, what we mean by it.
31:01: And one of the things that we have to see is that do miracles occur today?
31:08: Yes. I mean, one of the arguments that people are going to have, they have it to me all the time is, so you don't believe in miracles?
31:16: Sure I do. The fact that God does miracles is different than a gift of miracles, right?
31:24: Anyone that tells me they have the gift of healing, the question I always ask is, is there a hospital near you?
31:33: Because if there is, then either you don't have the gift or you don't love your neighbor, right?
31:39: Because you should empty it out. That's what Jesus did. He healed everybody. Now, what you end up seeing is that they...
31:49: So this may upset people. I'm sorry. It's not... We're used to it. We're used to it,
31:55: Andrew. No apologies. It's all good. All of us struggle with pride. Every one of us.
32:01: Wait, what? Speak for yourself. Now I'm upset. Now I'm really upset.
32:08: That's the most offensive thing you've said today. I'm very proud of my humility, but no. Good for you.
32:16: No, the reality is that you see this in every denomination, every group. There's something they're prideful about.
32:24: You get saved, then you get the gift of tongues. And I'm a second level Christian because I have tongues.
32:29: If you're in the Calvinist camp, you get saved, then you get the five points of Calvinism.
32:34: Now you get those that are like, oh, we're in this special camp. We understand better than you. If you're a fundamentalist, you get saved, then you learn that the
32:41: King James Bible is the only Bible we should have. And people get this... You're moved off of studying things in scripture to these fringe...
32:50: They're not always fringe, but these issues that encompass them so much that it's
32:56: I know more than you. And so there is some of this within the continuationist movement.
33:03: And it is something that's so personal to folks because they experience that they speak in tongues.
33:09: And sometimes they don't realize... What I experienced in college was when one person suddenly got the gift of languages, someone else got a word from the
33:18: Lord. It's like everyone had to outdo each other. And there is some of that. And so we can even see this historically.
33:26: I would argue that by the time Paul's writing 1 Corinthians, you have people faking the speaking of languages with gibberish.
33:36: And we know that historically happened in the late 1800s, early 1900s, because you actually had in the founding when there's this resurgence, the idea...
33:47: I don't know if you guys know this, but speaking in tongues did not become more popular. It became more popular in Christianity after like 1905 in Azusa Street.
33:57: Before that, there was a different group that was very active in speaking in tongues. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
34:04: Saints. Right. It's in their history. Yeah. Yeah. Others were the occult. So just this gibberish is not proof that you're speaking in angelic language.
34:15: I would argue that they claim it's an angelic language because you can't prove it that way. If I say
34:21: I can speak Spanish, you can test that. I just speak something that I say is
34:27: Spanish and we see. Well, what ended up happening was that John Form had a bunch of people that he claimed they had the gift of languages.
34:38: And one went off to China because she believed she could speak Chinese. And within a few years, she said she could write
34:46: Chinese. And so she came back and you'd think they were all of these people that went on these missions because they could speak these languages.
34:55: They came back on all of them. Instead of saying, we must not have gotten the gift of languages. Instead they said, oh, we're speaking angelic language.
35:03: And so it suddenly changed. So it was just a gibberish. Now we actually have the handwriting of that woman and a friend of mine,
35:11: Justin Peters, my bride grew up speaking Chinese, writes Chinese.
35:17: So he said, hey, I want to send something to your wife to see if she could translate this. And he sends her a picture from this woman that has the gift of speaking
35:26: Chinese and writing Chinese. And he goes, is this Chinese? And she looks at that and says,
35:32: Justin, that's chicken scratch. And so she wrote in Chinese, this is not
35:39: Chinese. And you can, when you look at those two and Justin now has that in his, in his clouds without water, you can see the difference clearly.
35:46: This is when I, when I speak of the spiritual pride, this is what I'm hitting at. Instead of saying, oh, what
35:52: I experienced must be wrong. And we'll stick with what scripture says.
35:59: People interpret the Bible from their experience and then they reinterpret the Bible based on what they experienced.
36:08: And so there's a fact that miracles exist today is different than the gift of miracles.
36:15: We have to understand that there's a distinction there. So I'm not denying miracles. I don't think you guys would deny miracles.
36:22: Absolutely. Now, tease that difference out briefly, the fact of miracles and the gift of miracles.
36:27: Sure. And at that, in the article, strivingfraternity .org slash miracles, I'll actually have a chart there that lays these out.
36:36: The gift of miracles was limited to Bible times because it was for the purpose of vindicating something, the writing of scripture.
36:43: And we can get into more detail of what those other times and how, how infrequent the, we see miracles, even in the 4 ,000 years of biblical history.
36:53: But the fact of miracles, they occur anytime. God can do whatever he wants to do, but he's just not doing it through a person having a gift where they could do it whenever they want.
37:06: So, so that makes the gift of miracles temporary where the fact of miracles are permanent. And so the distinction is that it's who's doing it, right?
37:15: Gift of miracles are done through people where the fact of miracles is done through God.
37:20: So it's done without people. It's done to people. And so the gift confirms new revelation where the fact does not.
37:30: God, God can heal for whatever purpose. And so, so the gift of miracles is going to have an, a apologetic value because it's to prove something.
37:40: And the fact of miracles doesn't, is not looking to do that. So, so that would be the way we can see that the, this distinction.
37:48: And it's something we have to recognize because folks, if you say you're a continuationist and you talk to anyone or a cessationist and you talk to anyone that's a continuationist about miracles, they're, they're going to say, so you say you don't believe in miracles anymore.
38:03: It's the number one argument. And yes, we believe in miracles. And it doesn't matter how many times
38:08: I tell people I believe in miracles. They still tell me I don't believe in miracles. I actually had one person tell me
38:13: I was hiding my real beliefs. And I'm like, okay, look, between you and I, one of us knows better what
38:20: I believe. And I actually think that in this case, I'm the expert on what I believe.
38:29: Yeah, it's interesting too. You think of Ephesians 2 20, and that's another verse people struggle with the idea of like there being a foundation to what the
38:37: Lord is building and that foundation being laid, which is, you know, the apostles and prophets.
38:45: And you simply just don't have a foundation and then another foundation and then another foundation.
38:52: But there's actually an intention about a time to lay a foundation and then the building is built up.
38:59: After the foundation is laid. After that is established, you know? And so it kind of gets to that idea of, you know, that distinction with those men with those gifts and the purpose of that.
39:12: And once revelation is established, and it can be clear because that's the other thing, how manipulative, how manipulative in general is the idea of revelation even today with all the people saying they have the revelation, right?
39:24: This was God's protection to, as you say, vindicate, but validate or authenticate the messenger, the message, which was the gospel essentially, and the defense of the gospel from scripture, now the mystery being made known.
39:39: And I'm going to give you a supernatural expression that only I can do to prove that this is truly revelation from God, as was said.
39:49: So I think Ephesians 2 .20 is helpful for that, but oftentimes difficult for someone to kind of wrestle with and swallow down the idea of the apostles and prophets laying the foundation.
40:01: And that's exactly what Paul says in Hebrews. Oops. Wait, wait.
40:08: So what's your position on Paul in Hebrews? Who's the author of Hebrews? Maybe for another time. I believe it was a sermon.
40:15: It was written by someone else, but a sermon preached by Paul. That's my theory. Familiar with that one, yeah. Hebrews 2, the first four verses, but emphasized in verse four, it says,
40:25: God also testifying with them, with who? As you were just saying, with Ephesians, right?
40:33: You had the apostles, things like that, but it was confirmed by those who are speaking.
40:39: It says, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the
40:47: Holy Spirit, according to his own will. Well, how do we have that testimony now?
40:54: It's in the scripture. That's the testimony that we have now. So unless there's new testimony necessary, then we don't need the signs and wonders, various miracles and the gifts of the
41:06: Spirit that are all for those purpose of the miracles. Right.
41:12: And this is why we have to ask the question, what's the purpose of the miracle? This is why people called us the signed gifts versus the non -signed gifts.
41:20: So you have gifts of mercy. You have gifts of administration. You guys, your pastors.
41:26: Leadership, yeah. So we have the gift of giving. That's the one that no one wants to have, right?
41:36: That one, an exhortation. I don't want that gift either, right? But the thing is that you have these gifts that do continue for today.
41:47: The Holy Spirit does give those. But those gifts are given for the body, the church in its growth.
41:55: But these other gifts were gifts given for revelation and vindicating the revelation.
42:01: So if there's no new revelation, we don't need the gifts. And so we got to ask, what was the purpose of the gifts?
42:09: Hebrews gives us that purpose. Yeah, yeah. Well said.
42:15: Let me ask this, Andrew. What's at stake in the life of the corporate church and even the life of an individual believer when we don't embrace the understanding here biblically that there are gifts that have ceased, like the gift of miracles, and we could name others as we already have.
42:39: What's at stake? Maybe stage one in an individual's life, and then stage two corporately in the church if we're really not embracing this, but running with a continuationist perspective in all these signed gifts.
42:53: There's two major issues that I see when people are viewing the continuationist position.
43:01: One is the hermeneutics of it, because what they're doing is they're interpreting the by experience.
43:09: Well, this is what I experienced. Therefore, this is what the Bible means. And once you go down that road, and by the way, folks do that all the time.
43:19: Look, I've run into some Presbyterians that will hold the
43:27: Westminster Catechism as if that's equal to Scripture.
43:34: They won't say it's equal, but what do they do? That is what interprets Scripture. And so when they have something they disagree, they go back to, we got these confessional statements, and they say this about that passage.
43:45: Well, then that thing, whatever that thing is, that becomes more important than the
43:51: Bible. This is no different than Jehovah Witnesses have the Watchtower. If the
43:56: Watchtower is the only group that can tell you how to interpret the Bible, then the Watchtower is greater than the
44:01: Bible, because you need that to interpret. If you have confessional statements, if your systematic theology is defining your interpretation of Scripture, then you have the cart before the horse.
44:15: The Bible should interpret your systematic theology.
44:23: Before we went live, you guys asked me if I fit into a group. And I jokingly said that I'm a
44:28: Rappaportian, my last name being Rappaport, because I'm not going to fit into any system perfectly, because each of the systems are written by men, and they're all wrong somewhere.
44:40: I'm wrong in my theology somewhere. I mean, you can get my book, What Do We Believe?, and when we get to heaven, you're going to be able to point out that there's things
44:47: I got wrong, all right? It's a systematic theology. I don't know where I'm wrong.
44:53: Otherwise, I would change it. But we have to recognize we're all wrong. I say that to say this, when it comes to interpreting by experience, you'll have people that will say, well,
45:06: I have a, you know, I'm a female, and I'm a pastor. Therefore, women can preach.
45:12: Well, that's not what the Bible says. Now, what do they do? It's their experience.
45:18: The culture now defines the Scriptures. Because now, if you're not letting them preach, then somehow you're against women.
45:26: No, just going by what Scripture says, right? So, it becomes a thing, what's going to interpret
45:33: Scripture? Is it going to be culture? Is it going to be a systematic theology? Is it going to be experience? Or is it going to be the rules of interpretation?
45:38: So, the first major problem that it ends up causing is, it changes how we interpret
45:44: Scripture. But what that leads to, and more serious of an issue, is the sufficiency of Scripture.
45:52: Because people are no longer looking to the Word of God alone for their ultimate authority on everything.
46:00: They're looking to their experience. They're looking to hear a voice from God. And I'll tell you, a great book, if you have people that say they hear from God, they have feelings that are from God telling them, guiding and directing them, something outside of Scripture, get the book,
46:17: God Doesn't Whisper by Pastor Jim Osman. It's an excellent book. God Doesn't Whisper by Jim Osman.
46:25: That's a book to get for that. But what are they doing? They're saying, the Bible's just not enough for me.
46:31: I need something more. I need an experience. I need, I then know that God is in my life because I had this experience.
46:42: And what that does is, that is a very subtle way, and people don't realize it happens, but what they're doing is they're pulling away from the
46:49: Word of God as their authority and making themselves the authority. That's exactly what happened in the garden,
46:55: Genesis chapter 3. Eve removed God as the authority and started listening to herself.
47:01: Well, hey, this doesn't look so bad. In my mind, that's a major danger.
47:11: It's helpful. Yeah, yeah, appreciate that. It's helpful to just hear you articulate that. I would encourage folks to, we'll have several links in the show notes to read more about this, because no doubt you're putting forward a very brief version of something you've obviously spent a great deal of time on and teach regularly.
47:27: I will say it was remarkable as I was listening to the case for fading miracles in the
47:33: New Testament, that video that I watched from you, kind of enumerating, and I know there are charts that people can go find as well, just how few of miracles there are when you can sit...
47:46: If you understand, okay, let's... From Moses to particular prophets, Elijah and Elisha, to Jesus and the
47:54: Apostles, if we can at least agree that they were very unique periods of time and very unique people that God used in a redemptive history, not...
48:03: I mean, Christ being different, both God and man, but everybody else, yes, just a man in one sense, and yet used and called of God in a very particular way.
48:13: When you look at miracles aside from those people, you have,
48:19: I think you said eight in the entire Bible, a precious few miracles outside of those periods of time and or those people uniquely situated by God for those purposes.
48:34: Yeah, I mean, and with the time thing, I do... I'm working on a seminar that's going to be like between six to eight hours of teaching on this, so we put this into one hour, right?
48:45: But so this might surprise folks. There's only 265 miracles in the
48:51: Bible, total. Yeah, so for the people that say, well, miracles should be happening every day, well, in 4 ,000 years of biblical history, we only have 265, and 104 of them are done by Jesus, which makes sense because he's putting his deity on display,
49:10: God becomes a man, he's going to vindicate that he's God. So he does 39 % of all the miracles that we have in the
49:17: Bible. So when you look at the Trinity, the Trinity does 178 of those, so that's 67 % of all the miracles.
49:26: Okay, let's break them down by miracles done, because you have miracles that could be done by angels, but let's look just at human agents.
49:36: Human agents account for 81 miracles in the whole Bible, 4 ,000 years of history, we have 81 documented miracle.
49:47: Now, if it's a miracle, that would be something I would think God would want to put in his word, because he's doing something that's out of supernatural, you have 81 of them.
50:00: And so when you put them in that time period, as you mentioned, right, you put
50:06: Moses, put that period, you have Moses and Aaron do some miracles and Joshua, so you have that period, then you have
50:15: Elijah and Elisha, so what do we see? Moses is on the scene, he does miracles, he then later starts writing scripture, and those miracles fade in about 30, 40 years.
50:26: And then there's a period we don't see miracles, and then we see Elijah and Elisha come on the scene, they're doing miracles, and then you have, after a period of silence, you have new scripture being written, and those miracles fade after 30, 40 years, and you have a period of silence, and then
50:46: Jesus comes on the scene, and you have miracles going, and then after 30, 40 years, new writing of scripture, and those miracles fade away.
50:55: And so that's the pattern. So if you look at the miracles done outside of those three time periods in history, we have a total of eight miracles done by humans in 4 ,000 years.
51:11: So if someone's going to make a case that we should be seeing miracles, they've got to prove it with something other than scripture, because the scripture doesn't support that miracles are common.
51:24: We only have eight of them, eight out of 265 that occur outside of those three periods of time.
51:33: It's just not common. And again, we differentiate between the fact of miracles.
51:39: God is still sovereignly and providentially, and by the ongoing work of the
51:46: Spirit in our physical world in the 21st century, He is free, right?
51:51: We do pray, we do ask, we do believe, and we do know that God does miracles, not only in healing, right, but certainly in that, right, the miraculous third scan of the brain that somebody has the tumor and now it's gone.
52:08: Like, God does sovereignly work in those, but to say that the gift of miracles is evident there is what we're trying to differentiate.
52:18: Fair to say? Yeah. I mean, think about this. Miracles are only in 13 of our 66 books of the
52:27: Bible. It's not that common. I mean, there's not a lot of the
52:34: Bible where you see a miracle being performed. But which books have a lot of them?
52:41: Well, you're going to have Exodus is one. You have 17 in Exodus done by humans.
52:48: You have 2 Kings. 1 and 2 Kings actually in the
52:53: Jewish Bible would be one book, but 1 Kings has six and 2 Kings has 20.
52:59: Well, what's going on in Elijah and Elisha? And then the book of Acts has 20 of them.
53:06: So, the ones done by human beings, you just have those three periods of time, or those books that you see it in.
53:18: It's not something that is commonplace. Yeah.
53:23: Yeah, it's a lot to take in, and I imagine it's got a lot of people thinking, and maybe people wanting to go back to their
53:29: Bible and see it for themselves. But really appreciate this conversation, and we're going to wrap up this conversation.
53:37: Scott and I, in fact, are going to continue on another episode as a follow -up, but just really, really appreciate your knowledge base,
53:46: Andrew. Your understanding of this topic is really extraordinary. So, thank you.
53:52: So, Pastor Scott's going to correct everything that I've said. No, no, no. I would say no, just going on...
54:00: Well, now that we know that you listen to the podcast sometimes... Yeah, you can listen to it, by all means, by all means.
54:05: But it's actually a pretty common practice for us, when we have a guest, have kind of a part one, part two.
54:10: It's just so much appreciated, though. It's good for our people to be exposed to really sound reasoning like this.
54:17: It's very important. We like to end our episode, as I mentioned to you, I believe, I hope
54:22: I did, I think I did, over email, with two different, we call them honorable mentions. One thing is just something that's helping you today think with your
54:30: Bible, something you're reading, something that helps you study the Bible. We all three will briefly answer that.
54:36: And then something just for fun, get on a personal level, what are you enjoying these days, whether it's recreation or something you're doing as a family that you enjoy.
54:46: And so being our guest, Andrew, would love to have you be able to go first. What's something that helps you study and know your
54:54: Bible? Okay, so this may not be what you're expecting, but I've had health issues the past three years.
55:03: I'm not used to having health issues. I'm generally a pretty fit guy. I run about a half a marathon a day.
55:10: I'm just not used to health issues. And so, but I'll tell you something, the issues that I've been having, and, you know, just issues, as you guys know, in ministry, things happen, people will slander you, things like that.
55:26: I've had them both coinciding, and I've gotten to a point in my life recently,
55:32: I've been humbled, both physically and emotionally, spiritually, at the same time.
55:39: And it has helped because I've started to realize when people slander me now, I'm not getting upset with it.
55:45: I'm like, well, okay, that's the worst that's going to happen to me. Like, if that's the worst, like,
55:51: I have eternity with Christ. Suddenly, I'm having an appreciation for like, instead of being so wanting to defend myself on things,
56:01: I'm like, okay. I mean, it started sitting in an emergency room with my throat closing up due to medicine that I was given for blood pressure.
56:11: And I'm sitting there realizing, okay, you know, the doctor said, we're going to give you this medicine to counteract this.
56:17: And, you know, I'm like, what else are you going to do? We're going to, well, we're going to watch to make sure that your throat doesn't close up and you die.
56:24: Oh, okay, I'll just sit here for a few hours and wait. And it gave me such a better appreciation of the
56:30: Bible. Because now I'm reading, I am, I'm reading it. Yeah, I've also went to Israel recently.
56:35: So that's helping me read it differently too. Because I'm like, oh, I've been there, I've been there. But I'm, I'm no longer reading it the same way in the sense of reading it just to teach and to,
56:47: I'm, I'm really starting to realize, you know what? I don't deserve anything that God's given me.
56:54: I really don't. And so even the bad things that come my way, I'm starting to appreciate.
57:00: I'm starting to just be like, well, you know what? Like right now, as we've been talking, you guys may not know, but I've all of a sudden got double vision, which just is a real strain on the eyes.
57:13: I get headaches. I'm just, it's an all day thing. And I've never really appreciated my eyesight.
57:20: Well, when I come to the scriptures now, I'm like just being more appreciative that I can still read the scriptures.
57:26: And it, so it sounds strange. I know. I wouldn't, I wouldn't exchange the last three years because I've learned so much in, in being humbled before God.
57:38: And, but I never want to go through it again. Yeah. Appreciate that, brother.
57:44: It's good. Good perspective. Reminds me of Psalm 119, right? That it's afflictions God uses us to cause us to delight in his law more.
57:51: Yeah. It's good. Yeah. I would say one that comes to mind is a prayer tool.
57:57: Every Moment Holy has been really, really helpful. Heard of it. I have not used it myself. They've got a couple of different books now that correspond to like actually really specific either moments, parts of your day or elements of what you're doing that could seem like mundane.
58:11: They have one for like house chores and goes through kind of a robust way of reading someone else, connecting with God in a deep way that you can realize how much you can interact in prayer with the
58:26: Lord throughout whatever your day involves from the most like sacred moments to the most seemingly mundane moments and having a guide to do that.
58:37: So I'm, I'm really enjoying Every Moment Holy as a, as a guide alongside love praying the scriptures.
58:44: That's obviously the easiest go -to, but has been really enjoyable. Yeah. That's great.
58:50: For me lately, I've been getting into and starting A House for My Name by Peter Lightheart, which is a survey of the
58:56: Old Testament as I'm getting ready to start leading or teaching a theology class for our logic age students, which is basically middle school up to the 10th grade over at Eden Academy.
59:08: Getting into this book, it was recommended, I'm blanking on which pastor right now in our staff.
59:14: It might've been Michael Pagan who had referenced it and is an excellent introduction. It's not going to be a textbook for us, but it will be something very useful for me as I teach through that.
59:24: And so it's been really good. I continue to benefit from a greater and deeper understanding of the
59:30: Old Testament, particularly as it relates to helping me understand the New Testament, of course, as well, God in redemptive history.
59:36: So well, Andrew, what about something, something enjoyable? What's something you got, you like to keep yourself busy with for fun?
59:43: Well, in the last six months, I could tell you right now, his name is
59:49: James and it's my grandson. Oh, nice. You guys are too young for this. I'll tell you,
59:56: I now understand why grandparenting is so much fun because A, you don't have to, like when a baby cries, here you go, you give it back.
01:00:06: You don't have to deal with that frustration of something's wrong. You don't know what it is. You guys have children.
01:00:12: You know what that's like. It's just, I told my kids, the baby's going to cry and you're not going to know why he's crying.
01:00:21: By the time you finally figured out, oh, he's teething. He moved on to something else. He's still crying, right?
01:00:27: You're just constantly going, what's wrong? Communicate. But, you know, I'll tell you again, the perspective changes because when he's crying,
01:00:36: I used to freak out as a father when my kids cried. And he could cry and I'm like, oh, that's so cute.
01:00:43: So my bride and I, we sit and my kids send us little videos of him and we just sit on the couch and look at pictures of him and little videos and that's just been the greatest joy for us.
01:00:59: Good stuff. Congrats, man. It's awesome. So much fun. How about you, Scott? It's been fun to watch my kids go tubing for the first time.
01:01:07: Really? This summer, yeah. They've got to go a couple different times and I was trying to prep them the first day because they had no concept of what tubing was like.
01:01:15: On a lake, tubing behind a boat. All that stuff. I grew up, that was what I did because that's what my dad did.
01:01:21: So it was like, we were going to be brought into his fun. It wasn't just tubing for us. Actually, he got us up early. We had to do the skiing thing and all.
01:01:27: But then finally, we got to the tubing part, which is really fun. And I'm trying to prep my kids like, you have no idea how fun this is.
01:01:32: And they're looking at me going, what? Dad had no concept for tied behind a boat. How is this going to go?
01:01:39: And then to watch the joy on their faces as they got finished and be like, now do you see what dad's been talking about this whole time?
01:01:45: And they got it. I was like, yeah, that's been a sweet gift for this summer. That's great.
01:01:52: That's great. One thing that's been, we've had this for a little while but haven't gotten started until recently is pickleball.
01:01:59: I think you may have even mentioned this. You've got a set and a place to play in your backyard. We've got kind of a small court we've developed in our front yard area.
01:02:07: But also taking my son, my middle child, Mackenzie, also is enjoying it. They're both very hand -eye coordinated.
01:02:15: So if it's ping pong, anything they can swing, anything they can hit like that, they're just loving. And I'm like, the day will not be far from now where you're getting legitimately better than I am at these things.
01:02:25: So I'm holding my own right now. You know, dad can still whoop them right now. But the day will come when the tables will turn.
01:02:32: Chris, you are too young for pickleball. See, pickleball was an old person's thing. Well, I will say, ironically enough, though,
01:02:40: I actually was introduced in high school in my gym class, my PE class, 23 years ago.
01:02:47: Got to play it for the first time. It was nowhere to be found. Now they're building parks with pickleball courts in them.
01:02:53: So I hear you. I'm a little young compared to like, generally, you do see it's a 55 and up club, right?
01:02:59: But then again, look at all the gray hair you have. Yeah, I do have a decent number of gray hair. Thank you. I try to hide it, but it's true.
01:03:06: I've yet to play. So maybe when I come out your way next year, you know, we'll set up a pickleball game.
01:03:13: Let's do it, man. Hey, just want to thank you again, Andrew, for the time that you've given to us, that you're dedicating in a variety of areas of ministry to bless
01:03:22: Christ Church. And this has been very, very profitable for our people. So really appreciate you, brother.
01:03:30: Well, I'm honored to be on it. You know, as you guys know, I listen to the podcast, great, great stuff that you have and great content.
01:03:39: I encourage people to share the other episodes, maybe not this one. Do the review over the next one.
01:03:46: How spicy do you want to get? But no, I mean, I encourage people to share it.
01:03:52: Because if this episode or any of these episodes have been a blessing to you, then why don't you share it?
01:04:00: So someone else finds out what a blessing that could be for them. Crazy idea. Seems simple enough.
01:04:06: Yeah, sure does. Maybe it does. It really doesn't take long. Everyone will share memes and things like that because they just hit a button that says share.
01:04:14: Yeah. But like actually copying a link and then posting it all, that's so much work.
01:04:19: No, it's actually not that much work. Yeah. But hey, you took care of the outro for me, brother. You know, share these episodes, leave us a review.
01:04:27: Would encourage you to do that, whether you're on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, whatever your app is for podcasting.
01:04:35: We genuinely appreciate that. And yes, just share and get the word out about this. And so thank you again,
01:04:41: Andrew, and we will see you next time. You've been listening to DoxaLogic, a podcast by Doxa Church in Rockland, California.
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