Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Knowing the Spirit Pt. 4 - Cessationism, Apostolic Gifts, & the Ongoing Role of the Holy Spirit

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Jonny Ardavanis is the Lead Pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in Franklin, TN and the President of Dial In Ministries. He formerly served as the Dean of Campus Life at The Master’s University and as a Camp Director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. Jonny’s heart is to see people understand and love the Word of God and more so, to love the God of the Word. Jonny is married to Caity Jean and they have two precious daughters.Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode, Jonny Ardavanis and Costi Hinn discuss the often debated topic of the ongoing role and function of the Holy Spirit. What do cessationists believe? Is the Holy Spirit retired? What do continuationists believe?Does the Holy Spirit still speak?Are the gifts of the Spirit still active today?Costi Hinn is the author of Knowing the Spirit: Who He Is, What He Does, and How He Can Transform Your Life.Watch VideosVisit the Website Pre-order Consider the LiliesFollow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey folks, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. Some of you saw the exciting news this last week as we posted on our social media that Dial In is now officially a non-profit ministry. Obviously, we have been producing resources for several years and this has been supported by a very small group of private donors up until now. But now, with a growing team and expanded vision, we are eager to embark on this next phase and seek to be a steward of the opportunities and the burdens that the Lord has put in front of us. If you would please pray for us as we walk into this really exciting new venture, as we hire some additional staff to produce more content and curriculum and workbooks in the future.

We're also going to bring on another teaching fellow, which I'll announce soon, and it is really exciting as well. So please be praying for us and continue to share these resources with your friends and your family and your church community. That's our aim and that's my heart. I want to be a blessing

and I want to provide biblical resourcing for the church, obviously not at the expense of your own local church pastor. And then finally, if you would consider partnering with us financially, we would be so grateful. You can give a one-time or reoccurring gift on our website, dialinministries.org, and all of your donations will go towards producing biblical resourcing that is creative and strategic and yet uncompromising in its commitment to the Word of God. Now, without further ado,

in this episode, and in this series for that matter, my friend Kosti Hinn and I have been talking about the person of the Holy Spirit, who He is, what He does, and how He can transform your life. And in this episode, we venture into some of the more controversial waters regarding the person and function of God's Spirit. Many people ask today, how does the Holy Spirit work? What is cessationism? What is continuationism? Are the apostolic gifts still alive and active? We will cover this and more in prayerfully a biblical, clear, and kind way. So let's dial in. Kosti, I want to talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians says that there is one spirit, but there's a variety of gifting. I want to kind of talk about what are those necessary elements of the gifts of the Spirit by which the body of Christ is edified and encouraged

in that conversation, or maybe just kind of extrapolating off of that. I want to have this whole continuationist cessationist discussion. What does that even mean for someone that may be newer to those terms? Why is it important to come to maybe a biblical understanding of what those terms are trying to identify. Are those the right terms we want to use? Like, do I want to be, I'm a cessationist. Because does it make it sound like we've put a stamp on the way the Holy Spirit of God can work? So talk about the gifts of the Spirit and start just kind of like fundamentally. That's super helpful.

I appreciate that you picked non-controversial topics. Yeah, easy, easy. Just a softball. Really easy. Just a cruise. Yeah, lay up easy. Just a softball. Really easy. Just a cruise. Yeah, lay up here. Okay. Defining terms.

Continuationist, cessationist. Okay. There are lots of ists. And I want to talk about one other term that I want to propose. I'm going to lobby. That is the term I'm going to start using. So continuationist is that in the list of the spiritual gifts that we have in Scripture, which by the way, in all of the places, about five places that you're going to see spiritual

gifts mentioned or listed, none of the lists are the same. Yeah, they're all different. Showing us something really amazing about God and the Holy Spirit as he sovereignly distributes these gifts that no one gift or one person is identical. Like, oh, I only have this, right? Sure. The Holy Spirit, we see these gifts that are given this generalistic, almost categories you could call them.

And we all have some blend, some unique blend of those things. Like if you were to say, well, yeah, do you have the gift of teaching or do I? Yes, I would believe that. Other people would affirm that. And, but, but the expression of that gift, we lead to, well, I don't have administration. I'm not a leader. Well, what about mercy? Are you merciful?

Well, I'm merciful, but I'm only a T you don't like, it's, we don't want to be like, you're this one. Yeah. So I'm not saying that it's blasphemous or heretical or sinful to do one of those multiple choice, spiritual gifts tests. Okay. Those might be actually helpful for people. I didn't know those existed.

Oh, they're super popular. And every single personality test, you know, I'm like, bro, they're so, they're so popular. A lot of churches use them in their membership process. You take the test, you kind of find out your spiritual gift. If you're a certain kind of church, they're like, Hey, apostle prophet. Cool. If you're another kind of church, they're like apostle prophet. So basically you are, you are a foreteller of the truth, and you're obviously a very ambitious ambassador of the gospel. That's how we define apostles. And so you have that, but they put people in ministries based on that. I'm not saying that it's a sin

to do those, but careful doing multiple choice quizzes and being like, I'm this gift. In that list, continuationist, is all of these gifts continue as the normative, ongoing, expected pattern. Expected being the key word. In Christians and the church today. There's a certain kind of, I don't know, category we might call the signs and wonders gifts or the miraculous gifts or the supernatural gifts. I don't like that one because they're all supernatural. They're given by the Spirit. But let's just say like miracles and healing and tongues and prophecy and all those apostles, those are all continuing today. The cessationist view,

you can hear it in the term, cessation, continue and cease, those two terms. This view would hold that of all of the spiritual gifts in those categories listed, that the gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues, the gifts of healing and miracles, those gifts, the prophetic gifts, the apostolic gifts, those have ceased today. They're no longer in operation. So that's the two views. And just to pause before I move on. So both of those camps would agree that the gift of teaching or encourage, you know, the

gift of mercy and the gift of helps, both of these different viewpoints would agree that the gift of teaching or encourage, you know, the gift of mercy, the gift of helps, both of these different viewpoints would agree that all of those things are continuing to work today. Yes. Gifts of service. Gifts of serving. And as a believer, every single believer has been given a combination of gifts by the Holy Spirit that they are called to employed in the edification of the body of Christ. That's Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12. Why do you have a spiritual gift? Answer, to edify the body of

Christ so that each man would be presented mature in Christ. Precisely. Both viewpoints would agree with that kind of basic, right? Like those gifts are there not for you, but for each other. Your gifts are for me. My gifts are for you. Not so that I would shine, but so that you might become more like Jesus Christ. Totally. Both very much are, and both believe the gospel. I'm always careful. I think so many people should be to really label anyone like not a Christian or a Christian based on this, like that we should never do that. There are really amazing God-fearing continuationists. There are amazing God-fearing cessationists. Like we always talk about in pastorally, we need to have a lot of kind of careful discussion and make decisions even in light of this. The extremes are dangerous for us. So the hyper continuationist of like, everybody needs to be raising the dead,

signs and wonders will follow them that believe. you are not operating in the miraculous i can move mountains you're on the jv team baby like you need to step up yeah over here is like the god does nothing kind of don't expect anything just be a good christian study sound doctrine and wait for jesus to return and they get really weirded out by any type of supernatural testimony or, you know. And the zest and zeal is almost removed from the Christian life. A hundred percent. Yeah. And this is the rational, the hyper rationalist.

Yeah. And over here past just the continuationist normal view on it is your hyper. Emotion. Yeah. Or your hyper sensationalist. Everything's just a sensational show. Yeah. Again, ditches on all sides.

So those are the two positions. Yep. And good men hold both. Yep. Good women hold both. Good churches hold both. And I would be careful about setting each other on fire. Yep.

There's some key things we can debate and discuss, but yeah, we don't torch. We don't need to be torching one another. Is that kind of a helpful? That's good, yeah. Anything, what's next? So in that regard, what would be the apostolic gifts, you know, have ceased over in this viewpoint.

They continue, meaning that every single person who has been born again could have the ability then in this viewpoint to speak in tongues, right? Or to heal, or that's still present and active, you know? So someone could say, I have the gift of healing. So maybe talk about where we would land biblically. And if those terms are even the appropriate terms and maybe why the term cessationist might imply something we don't mean to imply, because sometimes I think we can get boxed into these categories by which we

are anchored to our terminology and our terminology carries with it connotations we're not trying to convey either. So what would be either a way to frame it in your opinion that would be differentiated from just the two? Okay, let's do boxes again, you know, like our compartments, just to organize and quantify. Let's first define the gifts just biblically, using basic kind of biblical definitions. And so much of this is in knowing the Spirit in the book. So like people want to take the deeper dive, and I'll even share how people debate how

many gifts the Bible would cover. And so I'll do that. And then let's define kind of where continuationists would say the gifts continue and then where cessationists say the gifts cease. And then that's one, two, three. And then a fourth thing, I'd love to talk about a term or like a way I approach this at our church and even in our conversations and kind of the way I discuss things differently. So number one, let's define the terms or the gifts biblically. I believe based on what Scripture says. I don't hypothesize this. I look at what Scripture says

and defines about these gifts. I look at the patterns and the use of the gifts specifically, and I see teachers teaching. They bring clarity with the Word of God. Gifts of mercy have this empathetic, merciful nature about them. People like that. The gifts of healing, the apostles would say, silver and gold have I none, that which I have give I thee. King James Version, in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. I don't know about you. You didn't grow up in the Pentecostal world.

I used to sing this song, silver and gold have I none, but that which I have give I thee. You know, nothing. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. He was walking and leaping. There you go. Yes. You actually are right. You're saved.

You know the song. Scott? Scott? What are you not telling us? Okay. So that song we sing, and I think about the gift of healing and of miracles. That's it right there. In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. It wasn't like he was limping and hoping and praying for more. It was like, no, he got it. And when Jesus tells the man in John 5, pick up your pallet and walk, picks it up. Healing, instant, powerful.

John 5 describes immediately. Demonstrations of the power of God. Yeah. Miracles. Let's define those. So I was just talking to a family member recently. It was a really great discussion. And he had said miracles and, you know, he was calling everything miracles.

And I said, sorry, can I just nitpick? He's like, oh, go ahead. And I said, I'm not saying God doesn't heal. Healings are God doing something that is a reversal of a situation or circumstance internally, the body, all these things that generally like could heal itself, might not, all that. But God doesn't intervene against the laws of nature or create new organic matter, but he heals. So like you have a broken knee or you have pain in your shoulder or you have cancer in the body and God removes that, that would be healing. Miraculously.

Well, supernaturally, but the definition of a miracle, a miracle is God intervening into the laws of nature. Water turning to wine. Yeah. Right? Cancer being removed. It's a sign. Yes.

There you go. The Red Sea being parted. Molecular structures changing. Axe heads floating. So you break the laws of nature. It's not against the laws of nature to have to have cancer go away so i the body for leukemia i went back and it was gone what do you call that healing but not a miracle i wouldn't say it's a miracle because god removed it and healed but for can't there are situations in which cancer goes

away as well in people yeah the body now so, so God heals. It's always supernatural. Don't hear what I'm not saying. But I wouldn't go, it's a miracle. But by biblical definition, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. Yes, where God changes and intervenes. Not him, his nature changing. Don't accuse me of heresy. God changes something that does not have the capacity or ability to happen.

It's like not there. A limb growing, miracle. Why? Organic matter just appeared. But God healing someone's arm that was withered, the arm's already there. He brings it back into its function. See the difference? So healing. So when people say like, it's a miracle, my back pain's gone. No, it's a healing. God just removed the pain. A miracle is you do not have a uterus and you had a baby. You didn't have half a leg and the leg just showed up. Axe heads don't float.

God broke the laws of nature, if you will. He made them. He can do whatever he wants. And he goes, I'm going to make it float. Philip getting teleported in Acts 8. Like, come on. He was there, then he wasn't. The Holy Spirit took him somewhere else.

You have all that. Raising the dead. Okay, you're dead. It's over. Flatlined. There's nothing there. And God makes life happen again. He restarts and reignites and puts you back

in, so to speak, to the shell. Miracles are those things. I would just define them that way. So if you could command the weather, miracle. You're controlling the laws of nature. If you could speak something into existence, that's control. That's a miracle. Speaking in tongues. I believe, and I know this is debated, I just want to share what I believe convictionally, exegetically. I believe that Scripture's strongest case is that they were known languages, not just at Pentecost, which many of us, if not all of us, agree because they were speaking in different dialects and all the languages are listed, but also in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 and 14, that those tongues were the same tongues, not different.

If you make them different, well, now there's a debate and there's going to be some other views introduced and, well, don't go too far, Kosti, and I believe in a private prayer language and all those things. I'm just saying that the baseline definition of tongues in the Word of God, unless you create new categories, in my opinion, that's wrong. They're known languages. So somebody goes to a country, and they never spoke in Cantonese or Taiwanese before, and they suddenly speak in Taiwanese, and they're like, what in the world? And somebody's interpreting, and the gospel's going

forth. That would be a definition of genuine tongues. If you were gifted in that, you'd say like Paul, I thank God I spoke in tongues more than all of you. Meaning he could do it all the time at will. It was a gift. Just like you can wake me up. I might be a little tired, but you can wake me up at 2 a.m. and say, what's the word, reverend? Give us the word of God.

I could teach. Give me my Bible. Okay, I'm gonna teach you the word of God. I don't even need the Bible. I want to have the word of God in me could teach. Give me my Bible, okay? I'm going to teach you the word of God. I don't even need the Bible. I want to have the word of God in me. Why? It's a gift. Or if someone's merciful, they're merciful.

They're generally wielding mercy. In the Bible, these gifts were wielded constantly and continuously. Paul the Apostle said, I can do this more than anyone. I'm super gifted at this. And so that's clear. So if someone were to say, well, I had this person I heard of in Papua New Guinea that they've never spoken in tongues before, and then they didn't even know the language and they just started speaking it. I would say, did you come back speaking in that language as well? You can still do that. Or that's a common

occurrence. Well, no, it just sort of happened randomly. I heard this story one time and then it never happened again. I might say, wow, it sounds like you had a real providential or supernatural moment there. You heard about that. And I never try to exegete people's experiences because I wasn't there. But the gift of tongues was the regular use of it ongoing. And so you have that. You have gifts of interpretation, the ability to hear a language. Not that you speak.

I'm not a Spanish-speaking individual who's interpreting someone speaking Spanish. I am a person sitting there hearing a tongue and being able to interpret it supernaturally. Why is it supernatural if I already know the language? It's a spiritual gift that's supernatural. So on and on, prophecy. Say that again. So you're not a Spanish guy in this scenario. The gift of interpretation is not,

oh, I speak that language already. No, it's listening to another language. And being able to interpret it. So then in that regard, just before you move on. So if the gift of tongues in the New Testament was a known language, which obviously it is in Acts chapter two. And then maybe the disagreement might be in when Paul says that he's got this prayer language.

Sure. So what's that? 1 Corinthians 14. Yeah, is that another language? But if you're saying no, just categorically, what we can know for sure is that it was a known language. Yes. Now, if we are to say tongues have ceased, are you to say then that some missionary couldn't show up in Indonesia and, you know, at that moment, you know, you don't want to exegete someone's experience. But would you then say God, that God doesn't really work in that way anymore in regards to the advancement of the gospel and potentially use the example of an unreached people group. It's a good question. So would we say that's not relevant or applicable today?

Can we wait like two more minutes to get into that? All right. Can we wait? We'll wait two more minutes. So let me just say a couple more gifts to define. Yeah. Prophecy. Yeah. The ability to for not forth tell just preaching because people say, man, Johnny, you have such a prophetic voice for this generation. You're like, whoa, what? Preaching is prophetic. Foretell. Yeah, it's to proclaim. There's the foretelling of the future.

The foretelling of events that come to pass. It's the ability to look at someone and say, this will happen to you tomorrow at this time. And it does. Prophecy was 100% accurate in the Old Testament and the New. That is clear. So the gift of prophecy, remember, we're just defining them biblically. We're not even taking a position yet. That's why I stopped you, is the ability to foretell what's coming with accuracy. The gift of being an apostle. Paul says the signs of an apostle were done among you, the apostolic gift. I'm not talking about apostolos, the Greek word to be an ambassador

or like a missionary, but the actual office of the apostles were the supernaturally gifted men who did signs and wonders. They wrote scripture. They received direct revelation from God. Everything they declared was true. Everything they declared was true. Everything they wrote was accurate. Backed up prophecy as well. Everything declared prophetically was true. It's not like baseball where batting 300 gets you in the hall of fame. You can't go three for 10, four for 10, six for 10, even nine for 10 and say, I'm a prophet. The biblical standard for prophecy was 10 out of 10, 100 for 100. You're

batting a thousand. And Deuteronomy 18 makes that clear. And we see that in the New Testament. There's no redefining of prophecy in the New Testament that says, hey, by the way, you can get it wrong. You can say like, Trump's going to be the next president. And then when he's not, be like, my bad. Sometimes you win some, you lose some. You can't say like, you're going to be the next president. And then when he's not, be like, my bad. You know, sometimes you win some, you lose some. Now you can't say like, you're going to have a baby tomorrow or next year or whatever. You're going to conceive and God's going to do this. And then they don't. You're like, man, you must, what often happens in spiritually abusive situations is people will say, oh, you must not have had enough faith. Or maybe you got around negative people, or maybe Johnny came and told you something against what I said, and that stole away that word. That's not prophecy. So with that defined, okay, that's just kind of a generally fair

definition. Maybe where a charismatic may disagree with me is they say, I'm going to define tongues a little differently with a little extra window for the prayer language, but generally we're all still in agreement. We should be. We're in the same boat. Continuationists would say all these things continue. Tongues, healing, apostles. Miracles, all that. But be careful because a lot, if not most continuationists, most, like I'm not talking about extreme charismatic circles. Most continuationists or charismatic types would say there are not apostles that that was the original apostles no one's an apostle today i have pentecostal friends that say yeah we're not down

with that that whole world that's like what would be that maybe extreme then to say like oh i go to the school of apostolic ministry like who does that today yeah yeah so bethel would have a puzzle would have apostles. Yeah, so Bethel, that would be, would they fit in the charismatic camp? I would put them in a little bit of that hyper charismatic. No, I wouldn't put them in the general Pentecostal, like assembly of God type of camp. I have Pentecostal friends that would say, like, I don't vibe with that. No, there's no apostles at our church. We just differ on tongues and these gifts and so on. So that actually becomes very important.

And in the book, my book, Knowing the Spirit, I actually give five categories. And I have the extreme, like hyper. I think a lot of them are in a lot of false teaching. And I would say that in love. I think then you have general Pentecostals. The Bethel stuff. The Bethel stuff I think is too far.

Yeah, for sure. And I say that in love, but it's true or and it's true. The Bethel stuff. The Bethel stuff I think is too far. Yeah. And I say that in love, but it's true or, and it's true. There's no, but then you got the general Pentecostalism, your assembly of God types that even growing up, I grew up in some of those subsets. They were very conservative. Some of them were very legalistic. Like you couldn't wear makeup. You couldn't wear earrings. You couldn't do nail polish. Like that, That conservative Pentecostal world was not into all the craziness. In fact, my uncle Benny got his papers revoked by the Assemblies of God. They said, you can't do all that stuff. So hat tip to those guys. Come on, we can't just broad brush

them all like, what a bunch of crazies. No, actually, they had the wheels on the bus in those circles, but my uncle and others were always out here. The next would be the reformed continuationist, or I would say just the biblically-minded charismatic or continuationist. They believe the gifts are still in operation, but they're very cautious. It's like a Piper. John Piper would be your open but cautious continuationist. What does that mean? It means I'm open.

All of these things I've just listed, except apostles, continue, but let's be cautious. I want to test everything. I'm not going to just jump in the river and go floating off some waterfall. These are our brothers, our friends. The Pentecostals that believe in the gospel are, too. I would just say philosophically and methodologically. Right here, we're getting close. Very aligned, yeah. Sovereign grace. Bro, are you kidding me? They lead the music at CHEPCON. They've led music at G3, all these conferences and everything. They're like super reformed. These guys, they are our friends. We're in the ministry together. And then when you move past that, we're at cessation. You want to talk about that? Yeah. Okay. Cessationism, or to be a cessationist,

is these gifts, this list, the signed gifts are no longer in operation today. They ceased when the apostles died. Why? They were for the purpose of establishing the church. They were the purpose of advancing the gospel through tongues to languages that never heard it before. Now we have people that can learn languages and go. They wrote scripture. They miraculously did these things to affirm they had been with Jesus. These were the actual men who were just with him. We can trust their message.

So it authenticated the apostles very early on. And those things have now ceased. So we look at these gifts and we teach and we evangelize and we are certainly filled with and led by the Holy Spirit. God does supernatural things. He does heal, but we pray the prayer of faith. We trust him. We actually suffer and we can go through trials and tribulation. And then a cessationist position would say, look at how these gifts started to actually

fade in the New Testament. You know, Paul the Apostle says, I left Trophimus sick at Miletus. He tells Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach. Doesn't say go find Bob. Yeah, or come see me and I'll heal you. Boom. In Galatians 4, he says, I was with you. I preached you in bodily illness.

He was actually going through a lot physically. So even Paul, which would give you the idea that if it was so simple just to heal himself. That it was winding down. Now that's the case. The continuationist says, I see nowhere in scripture, brother, that these gifts are done away with. I see great discernment being in need, but I don't see this hardline cessation. The cessationists would say, brother, you need to give serious consideration to definitions and practice. Because they used the gifts this way, when they were no longer needed to be used that way,

and look at the patterns of church history, and look at the patterns of Scripture, clearly there's something that changed. And now look at even today, we don't have a wide variety of genuine people that are raising the dead, like verifiably. Remember this, and this would be, I think, a good argument we should talk about. When the Pharisees were attacking Jesus, you know, they never denied the validity of his miracles. They never said that wasn't real. That's why they wanted to kill him. You just pulled his shoes. Yeah. Come on. That was power of suggestion. Yeah. Hey, he never said, go check with your doctor. Hold on. A real

healing is a real healing. So it's important to even say today, I think we have a lot of false faith healers. We've got a lot of people doing a lot of shenanigans and it's not to even say today, I think we have a lot of false faith healers. We've got a lot of people doing a lot of shenanigans and it's not like, oh, you just believe God does nothing and you're attacking everything and nobody's getting healed and nobody's anything. No, no, listen, when a real miracle happens and a real healing happens and something is that you, no one denies it. You may not like it. You may not like what comes from it or Or people, God does like one thing and

they're like, I'm going to start a healing ministry. I prayed for this guy and his shoulder wasn't in pain anymore. We should have a healing crusade. Like, no, why don't you just thank God that he answered your prayer? So this is where we're kind of now into the friendly and loving debate with those camps. But hopefully that makes sense. Continuationist, we have to have a spectrum, otherwise we're going to broad brush. There's extremes, there's Pentecostal, then there's the open but cautious. Then there's the cessationist, God still heals, he does miracles, but we see a case in which these things are not the normal pattern for everyone today. There's one more category I told you there's five. That's the full cessationist

position. I would say hyper. That was love a lot of his theology, thankful for some of his work on scripture. B.B. Warfield, the Princeton man himself, he was a hardline cessationist. God does not heal today. He does no miracles. He does not intervene. We preach the gospel. We anchor to sound doctrine and wait for Christ's return to call us home. That is where Thomas Edgar, there's some actual views where God... So I've heard jokes, even from some of my cessationist friends, they'll say like, so-and-so is a... Man, I thought I was a hardcore cessationist. He's more cessationist than, than so like, there's almost kind of a category of guys that get very extreme. I'm not saying they're heretics going to hell. I would say they can become sort of a new fundamentalist type where

everything is like super boxed in and really legalistic and intense or else you are. And I would say that, you know, they know the gospel, they love the Lord. They're just really myopic in their view. And this extreme over here, you start buying into and allowing false gospels. And so that's a dangerous spectrum and we want to be mindful of all that. But hopefully, can I lobby for one more term, and then we can wrap? I don't like the term cessationist, and I'm not being soft about it and overly worried about what people think. I'm like, oh, it's just so – no, listen. I don't like the term because it's not a negative thing.

We have apostles. I would negative thing. We have apostles. I would believe this. We have prophets. They are and were Paul, John, Peter, all of them, Andrew, Philip. I love my apostles. I love my prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea. I'm so thankful for my prophets and my apostles. I would buy into an Ephesians 2.20 view.

Built on, this is the church, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and Christ himself being the cornerstone. Then Paul says, you being built atop as the whole structure grows into a holy temple unto God. What's happening? Christ is the cornerstone. The apostles and the prophets were the foundation. Unless a home is poorly built, you don't go in, jack up the foundation, and relay it. It's been laid. You build the top. The apostles and the prophets were laid by Christ. He's the cornerstone, the foundation. That doesn't ever need to be redone. So respectfully, when men like C. Peter Wagner in 2004 say God told them in 2001, you can look this up, it's true and footnoted everywhere, that God was restarting the apostolic era and there were going to be apostles today. I take exception to that.

And I say, no, no, no, there's not a redoing and a renewing and like another foundation. They're built atop that. And what I would say is then my view of the gifts, it's not continuationist, cessationist. Those are all man-made labels. I would just say, take a word out of the Bible, foundational. I hold the foundational view that these gifts, it's not that, well, they ceased, they stopped, they this. That's actually a pretty short-sighted view of church history. I view, we are one church, one big C church. When we get to heaven, it's not like, oh, you were in this era. I was in that era, so you got this. If you're in the New Testament church, you are in the church.

We share that common heritage. So I look and I see the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and I'm grateful for that. My view of those gifts then is the foundational view is the term that I like to use now. It means that those gifts were foundational and have been foundational for us. And we are being built atop that. So we have a prophetic word made more sure. I have apostolic leadership and oversight. His name is Paul. His name is Peter. His name is John. And they are an authority in the sense that they have given scripture, and I want to be submissive to scripture. So, you know, I don't know. I don't care if that

catches on and whatever. It's just more at my church and in my conversations, I just, I want to talk more about positive things. Like it's foundational and the idea that it ceased or ceases or it's cessationist, it's so aggressive. It immediately starts the fight and it incites. It makes your viewpoint of what the Holy Spirit does by what he doesn't do. And that's why I may be the stickler over it. With the book and with everything, I want to relish in the Spirit's true work. So I don't want to have— And how he continues to work. Totally.

I'm a cessationist. It's like, no, I hold a foundational view of the gifts. Now no one thinks like, oh, you don't believe in the Holy Spirit, or yeah, you don't believe in that. No, I'm with you all the way. The Holy Spirit is alive and active today. But a foundational view keeps us unified with church history, with the apostles. It doesn't disconnect us. Like, I'm the new.

No, I'm the next layer of the church in this era being built atop the foundation of the apostles and the prophets in this era being built atop the foundation of the apostles and the prophets in Christ. I think these different terms and categories are important. I do want to go back to the question I asked you at the beginning, because if it's me and if you've grown up kind of in the middle spectrums, neither one of the extremes, I think the main question is going to come down to for someone like me or, you know, Bob, okay, can I pray for healing for someone? Which we would go, of course, you know, we can pray, but that doesn't mean you have the gift of healing. It means that God has answered prayer.

Yeah. So no, the gift of healing doesn't exist, you know, by which someone could say, I'm a healer. You know, if you did, you should go hospital ward to hospital ward. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But that is not to say, dear God, heal this person, show your power, remove this cancer, right? Absolutely. Yes and amen, pray that. The second thing I want to go back to is because I think,

even for me, I've read so many missionary biographies, my entire life is like missions, biographies. There is a part of me, I guess, just candidly where I would go, I don't want to confuse can't with doesn't. So I think when we say like, God doesn't work that way. I think sometimes if you talk about the hyper cessationists, the doesn't almost becomes a can't where if you go like, well, this happened in Papua New Guinea. No, it didn't, you know? And I would be like, yeah, we don't want to put God, I don't want to put God's spirit in a box. So even if you were going to go the normative expression of like, hey, in a missions context, you know, with the angels in Elisha, you know, and you're like, they were there. And I read the missionary biographies of, hey, we saw all the angels behind you when you were sharing the gospel. That's the only reason we didn't eat you in a cannibal tribe.

I'm not reading that biography going bogus. Yeah, right. No, I go, absolutely. So I think for me, I want to provide an allowance for God's spirit, it's this fair, to work differently in context and cultures that don't have the solidified word of God. Because we now are on this side of the revelation of reality. We hold it in our hands. I have it on my phone. But let's go back to Papua New Guinea as the example. I show up in Papua New Guinea as the example. I show up in Papua New Guinea. Even, you know, there are people in China that talk about how the Mormon missionaries learn Chinese in a month. And I would say,

I feel like that's almost demonically influenced, you know, like, because you're like, man, that's crazy. And they would, they marvel that they're already, they're preaching the Mormon Bible faster than anybody, even their own Chinese people can learn Chinese. So then I would go, well, there, there can be maybe some supernatural way, or maybe that's not the right term in your view, but to accelerate or to provide the necessary power in, I'm talking cross-cultural, unreached people group type of evangelism and preaching. Maybe just extrapolate on that. Can God do that is what you're asking. If I think, can God do that? Yeah. For me, I would be like, of course. Yes. God can. I'm not going to say that God can't. God can't lie.

God can't sin. But to say that God can't do something that has been a pattern in his nature to advance his gospel to his people, to say he can't, I don't want to tread on that ground. I'd rather just say the normative pattern is what we see in Scripture is this. What we're seeing today is. And so I want to stay in line with those pictures that we see in the Bible. In that regard, I said it before. I'll say it again. I've told you this time and time again, I don't want to exegete people's experiences.

Someone's like, yeah, I heard from so-and-so, so-and-so saw this and had this, you know, was that real or not? I'm going, I wasn't there, why are you asking me if it's real or not? I can't exegete your experience. I would say that God can. I would also say that I share your, what do you want to call it? Attention or like

just maybe a calmness or a reservation, a slowness. I'll call it that. That's a good word. I share your slowness in indicting certain things quickly, hastily, and here's why. I listen to a lot of missionary biographies with my kids. I'm like really down the rabbit hole here of almost every single audio book there is on every single missionary available. So you should probably do some more, or I should do some, and we should like make some more. If there's more missionaries, there always are. But my sons, my daughters, we go on road trips.

And there are some examples in church history of men and women we love and we hold in very high regard. The Hudson Taylors, the Amy Carmichaels, the Adoniram Judsons. I mean, you look at their biographies, read them in depth, and then listen to the audiobooks on them. Just soak your life with missionary stories, and you're going to run into a couple of references like, the Lord told me. I knew God had called me. God made it so clear. And so I remember one of my kids saying, hey, Dad, you said that God speaks today through the Bible. Well, that missionary just said that God told them to go to China.

So did God talk to them? Was it different? And it's a great opportunity to talk to my kids about the foundational nature of gifts, the normative pattern in the lives of believers, but the fact that in that missionary's life, there could have been some kind of experience or clarifying moment, not saying like God appeared out of there and was like, hey, now they need to look for that. Hudson Taylor's a liar. Yeah, I'm not saying that.

I don't want to do that. I want to, no, he's lying, son. Or, yeah, that's actually how it works. You need to go home today and ask God to do the same thing for you. What I want to do is help them see for that individual in their testimony, that's what was expressed. But don't go to your room today and think if God doesn't talk that way, he doesn't love you. Or that because you pray that God's going to draw on your wall where to go, we need to understand the word of God is the primary place God is going to speak to a son. Does that make sense? And he'll go, yep, that makes sense, dad. And we keep on rolling. I'm not going to-

It means that we're not pursuing those things. We're not, we're saying, we're not pursuing those things as kind of like this creme de la creme experience of direction from the will of, you know, from God. No, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, which of course not. We want to know the will of God. We do it with an open heart and an open Bible. I'm also not going to destroy and dismantle Adon Iron Judson, Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor,

Corrie Ten Boom. I'm not going to undo them and their faithfulness because they said they felt something. So I talked to a friend not long ago. I was convicted by this. I said, hey, what do you mean when you say, I've asked this to multiple guys. I asked it to one guy that's like really in that stuff. I've asked it to other people personally. This one was a more personal one. I said, what do you mean when you said that just a minute ago? You're like, the Lord told me. And the Lord told him something about me, he said.

And it was a really nice thing. I was like, I received that. It was about the gospel and ministry and things going forth. And I was like, cool. Okay. But can you help me understand, what do you mean when you say that? Like, did you literally hear the Lord just now? Like you heard a voice? He goes, no, Kosti. What I mean by that is I, that's just what I feel.

And I said, okay. He's like, sorry if that bothers you. I said, no, can I lobby for a language? Can I encourage you just privately? He's like, yeah, I'll take any encouragement. I said, what if you said like, I just have this strong conviction. Or what if you said, you know, I just want to tell you. Like, what if you said that rather than the Lord told you? Because if you were to do that and I didn't ask, you know that someone would think that the Lord told you with a voice and now if they're not hearing a voice, they're not hearing him. And he was like, you know, I never even thought of that. It's just an old habit. And that it's equal in authority to the scripture. Yes. That would be the danger. I would encourage people with that. When you hear this, what if that's really what one of these missionaries meant? What if it's not? I don't

know. I wasn't there and they're not alive. They're in glory. So I want to be sensitive to that. If people say, so you're telling me that you guys don't think somebody could be in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, God could move in power. You never heard about it, never knew about it. Not going expecting that, but like, hey, this happened. You know, like... I'll tell you a story, and Brooks Buser can get mad at us later for using him as an example. He would consider himself the foundational view of the gifts, but Brooks tells a story with the Yembe Yembe. You know the story? Remember, they're going to declare the gospel that day to the tribe. They took teaching hot. They've been laboring like seven years to get to this point.

And there was a storm coming in. And when the storms come in, these tribes are not like, oh, look, rain. We're used to this. Let's chill. I mean, it's a deluge. They're not going to hang around the teaching hut and they're not chilling. They're running. And they prayed that God would reroute the storm.

Yeah. Well, true story. They have photos of it and reroute the storm. Yeah. Well, true story. They have photos of it and he tells the testimony of it. He's like that, like, cause they're teaching at the teaching hut. They have all the, they have all the documented footage of this. It's awesome. And he said, I kid you not, we were looking around blown away. That storm like went around and over the teaching hut was clear.

You're telling me that because I hold the foundational view and I'm going to be way more conservative on the gifts, that suddenly I have to, that view comes with an expectation that I indict my friend to go, no, it didn't. That's just providence or it's just a coincidence. It's a wrinkle of wind. That's just providence, or it's just a coincidence. It's a wrinkle of wind. It's just rational. There actually was a northern eastern wind that day that could have blown the storm.

This happens all the time in pockets of Kansas where there's a tornado a mile away, and there's sunlight. And like, are you serious? You rationalist? You're going to tell me that God didn't answer the prayer? I ain't playing that game. So as people would call me a cessationist, you call me whatever you want. I hold that those gifts were foundational. I do. Well, that is that, that, that's more of an

answer to prayer, but I still think God answers amazing prayers. Yeah. And in a powerful way, demonstrative power. And that's kind of where I think I never want people to be confused when I say like, I don't believe in the apostolic gifts of today that I have a diminished view of the spirit of God. Come on. And I also think that like, we have a really weak perspective of the reality of spiritual warfare as it is in play today. Don't get me started.

So like, you know, we don't see people foaming at the mouth, demon possessed all the time in America, in our normal context. Internationally though. But internationally, I mean, I, I've seen people demon possessed. I mean, like in a real way where it was, it was transformative in the way that I viewed, man, this is a spiritual battle. And so I think, um, when you go, man, this is intense when Ephesians says like, Hey, our battle's not against flesh and blood, but against supernatural forces, then they go like, well, if we're in a supernatural battle and we've put the Holy Spirit over here

and he kind of only works to illuminate our minds to scripture. It's like, well, no, I'm not on. If that's what you mean by cessationist, I'm not a cessationist. You know what I think? I think that the devil is super pumped about that kind of myopic view, that he doesn't really attack those individuals much.

He's not worried about them. He actually is succeeding at that very moment by getting them to think. So you remember the old illustration of some people give the devil too much credit. Yeah. Well, it's CS Lewis. They find him under every rock. Kick over every rock. I rebuke you, Satan.

But then some people, they're completely clueless, and they don't think it's CS Lewis. They find him under every rock. Kick over every rock. I rebuke you, Satan. But then some people, they're completely clueless and they don't think he's even there. The devil applauds both. He just loves you to be over obsessed and completely rationalistic. So, hey, can we talk, I know this is your show, but can we do an episode on that? Which one? Spiritual warfare? That cessationist or non-normative or foundational views do not need to carry over into our view of spiritual warfare, where now we have this muted view of the demonic. We could do that after lunch. Let's go. All right.

Thank you, Kostya.