What About Tongues, Healing, and Prophecy? | Theocast

Have you ever had somebody walk up to you and say the Lord told me to tell you? What do you do with that phrase? That is a powerful statement. How do you process that? And not only that but what about all these modern prophecies and these miraculous things that seem to be happening?

And how do we process visions and dreams? Really? We're talking about the signed gifts. Like how do we as reformed people, conservative Christians, allow ourselves to look at the text and then have an explanation for what's going on?

That is the point of today's podcast. We want to have a meaningful conversation and it really is related to our assurance and the hope of Christ. Stay tuned.

Theocast, More Than Forgiven, and the Law-Gospel Conference

Hey guys, this is Justin. Maybe you know that you are forgiven because of Jesus Christ, but you're wondering what does Jesus have to do with my Christian life? How is he involved? In my sanctification even or is he concerned at all with the ways that I struggle and the way that my life goes up and down?

Is there any comfort for me in Jesus when it comes to all of that? Well, I've written a book called More Than Forgiven, How Being in Christ Changes Everything that deals with this topic from Romans chapter 6.

You can find this book at theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, Encouraging Weary Pilgrims to Rest in Christ. We have conversations here at Theocast about the Christian life from a confessional and reformed and we trust pastoral perspective.

What we try to do here is take the clutter off of the gospel. We don't want Christ to be obscured or hidden from our view and in doing that we understand ourselves to be reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

How is it that we live? What is it that we do? The gospel is everything. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I am Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

A couple of announcements. We're going to get right to this. I'm going to make the first one. John's going to make the second one. Look at us dividing up the labor. Sharing the load and sharing the burden.

Everybody's favorite segment, announcement time. One, we do have a conference coming up. We do have a conference coming up. By the time this podcast releases, it'll be a couple of months out. Not sure if there will be spots available still or not, but you can go over to theocast .org and learn all the information that you want to.

This conference takes place April 11 and 12 in Asheville, North Carolina. This is a conference on the law and the gospel, and in particular the distinction between the two. John and I are going to be speaking at the conference as well as our friends Chad Byrd and Ken Jones.

We have aimed to structure this in a way that will give you not only time to hear talks, but also time to be with each other, get to meet us, and get to be encouraged by the fellowship that we plan to have, and time to eat and drink and have a good time.

We hope it's just a good experience overall. We would encourage you to come. We'd love to meet some of you there in Asheville in April. So register if you haven't, and if you want to come, be sure to register.

So there that is.

There you go. At this conference, we are going to be giving out as a gift to all of those who registered a unique book, but this book is also available for those of you who would like to purchase it. One of the things that we told you last year that we were raising money for, as far as donations and support, was that we wanted to print more books.

And so Theocast, we have a publishing wing that we are slowly getting off the ground, and one of the first things that we're going to utilize that for is a book by Justin Perdue that he put together last year, and we finally have it finalized, and we are excited to roll this out.

And we're hoping that this is one of many. I'm excited for you to learn about it because it is right up the alley of who we are as Theocast. So Justin, tell them the title of the book and just give them a little bit of an explanation of what they can expect when they pick this thing up to read.

Title of the book is More Than Forgiven, How Being in Christ Changes Everything. So it's a book about union with Jesus, and it is effectively a treatment of Romans 6. So there's a lot of interaction with Romans 6.

So I'm not just giving you my opinion. I'm trying to—from the Apostle Paul, here's what he wrote, and then here's what this means for us, my sort of pastoral observations and thoughts about it. And the main emphasis, if people get anything from the book, really, it's to know that their sanctification, it is grounded and rests on the same foundation and comes from the same source as their justification does, namely Jesus.

And so it is not about your effort or your faithfulness or lack thereof that will make the difference when it comes to your sanctification, but actually the Lord Jesus Christ will see to it that you are transformed and conformed to His image, and so we really can rest in Him, not just for forgiveness and for justification, but also for sanctification.

And that's not something that we have been taught. And so I hope that it encourages the reader that Jesus is perhaps even better and more sufficient than you have been told that He is. And so, yeah, get a copy.

Justin Perdue. So go to theocast .org and our brand new website. So we finally updated that dinosaur, and it's slowly—it's a little behind. We're slowly getting all the material on there, but go check that out, theocast .org, and you could buy multiple copies there or on Amazon, have it shipped to you.

And we're just excited that, one, you guys, it's you, the listener and the supporters, you're the ones who made this possible. It takes money to do this, and I'll promise you right now we priced that thing at just enough money for us to take those proceeds for the next book.

So we're not expecting to make a lot of money off of that. But I'm excited for it. It's a great book. I think you're going to be encouraged by it. And then just one other comment before I throw back over to Justin is that if you want to participate in great, safe conversations, ask questions, and be a part of classes and online classes, we have a community called Theocast Community, and it's growing.

We're almost up over 2 ,000 people in there, and people ask for prayer requests. They share stories. They ask questions. It's been a really sweet place, and I dip my head, and Justin and I dip our heads in there once in a while to interact and say hi as much as we can.

But really, that community is for you, the listener. It's for you to be in there and enjoy each other. So go check it out, theocastcommunity .org .com, something like that.

I don't know.

Go to the website. Google it. I don't know my own stuff, Justin.

It's okay.

Google will never lead you astray.

Yeah.

All right.

That has something to do with our topic for today.

Oh, yeah?

How was that?

Well, just people claiming to hear things that may or may not be sound, and what do we do with this? And I'm going to leave it to you to tee this thing up, but what we're going to try to do in this conversation is what you would probably expect us to do.

We're not going to land in either extreme.

No.

We're probably going to be threading a needle, holding some things in tension. We hope it's helpful.

John? Yeah. Go.

False Prophets, Spiritual Gifts, and the Burden of Modern Revelation

So this is a subject that a lot of people have emailed us and sent us comments asking us to talk about the spiritual gifts and really charismatic theology. Not really completely in our lane as far as doing apologetic watchdog ministry, but it is related to, I would say, where we'd like to end up, which is resting in Christ and sufficiency of Christ and how things get drawn away from and we can put clutter on the gospel.

So that's kind of where this conversation will be going. But as I was preaching towards the end of 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter is dealing with an issue of the church swaying off the gospel and turning back into licentiousness, and one of it was who was bringing these messages.

They were claiming to be prophets speaking on behalf of the Lord and yet teaching things that were contrary to it. And when I started to think about this, even in modern day, we can get really lazy. And when I point this out, I want to be very clear that I think some of these people are genuine believers.

And so I'm not calling into question these particular, there's, I think, a difference between the person who says, the Lord told me, and it's like a means of encouragement. And then I'm speaking on behalf of the Lord.

This is a new revelation. Everyone needs to follow this new prophecy. We'll kind of delineate the differences that are there. But Jesus himself even says pretty clearly in Matthew 24, the false prophets will come doing signs and can even lead astray the elect, meaning that even believers can be drawn away by some of these weird, abhorrent teachings that have come from the false teachers.

The phrase, Justin, that I think is dangerous and it causes a lot of confusion in people's hearts because then it's like, I don't know what to do with this because you're telling me God told you this and I love God and respect him and I follow everything he says.

If he says it, I do it. At least that's my desire, right? I'm a sinner and I fail. But if you tell me this is what the Lord says, then man, I'm going to do that. And so people walk up and they'll say, the Lord told me to tell you.

Well, my ears perk up because I'm like, that's a big statement. That's a bold statement, right? So, I mean, go ahead.

No, I mean, the reason it's a big statement and even a problematic one is that it carries with it the implication of I am binding you and basically believers everywhere to abide by or live in light of what I'm about to say.

And so whether you've meant to do so or not, you are claiming for yourself a kind of authority that God has given you a special word that might not be contained in the scriptures, but he's given you a special word that should be binding on the person that they're about to tell it to, and frankly, for any believer, any place who might ever hear it.

And if it's true for this person, then it's in theory would be true for Christians elsewhere,.

Right?

And so that's really where this gets murky. And we all should feel, I think, like, oh, that's a big deal. I don't even quite know what to do. You've just said that, and you've teed this up in a way where I don't know what to do with this, and you haven't even said it yet.

That's right.

Because, right.

Right.

Yeah.

And this has happened to me personally. I can remember a young lady walked up to my wife and I, and she just said, hey, the Lord wanted me to tell you that whatever you're struggling with, you're going to make it through.

And, you know, I hear that and I'm like, maybe the Lord didn't speak to her. There's no way for me to know that. There's no way for me to really verify that. And then there's no way for me to know how to connect it.

Like what part of my story?

And what do you even mean by make it through? Because will the Lord keep us all unto eternal life with him? Yeah.

Yeah.

Does that mean that, or are you saying that circumstantially in this life, things are going to get better because that, that's a different thing, you know?

Exactly. So, and it's hard, um, you know, and there was a college student who was in my office and he was so distraught because trying to think through the spiritual gifts. And he's like, John, you're not, you're not going to believe what happened to me today.

I was walking from one class to another and this guy stopped me. And he's like, the Lord told me that, that, you know, you're struggling with lust and that I should pray for you. And he was like, how did he know that?

And I was like, well, I'm like, dude, I don't mean to be rude here, but I mean, the chances of stopping a dude walking from class to one class, another, and ask him if he struggles with bus, it's a pretty high probability that he is.

Cause that's just kind of normal for, for men to struggle with.

Or just even across the human spectrum here, it's like, ah, you know, the Lord told me that you're struggling with pride and that I need to pray for you or whatever, you know? Uh, or the Lord told me that you're struggling with, with covetousness, you know?

And, and I need to pray for you. It's like, yeah, nine out of 10 times you're going to be dead on the money. Cause this is so common to all of us.

Right.

That's right.

Yeah.

So that's, um, and I think we have to be really, really careful because at times people would consider that would be the gift of prophecy, right? Like where they can speak these moments of encouragement to people.

And, um, now I will say this now, I'll push pause and step back. There are times where the Lord has impressed on my heart, never heard anything audible, never, like there was never like words that popped in my head, but I've had feelings of affection or concern or like, Hey, I should reach out to this person.

And it kind of just came out of nowhere. It was just out of nowhere that I tell that person, the Lord led me to do this. No, I just thought, man, maybe I should do that. Um, and so I don't, I am not against at all that where the Holy Spirit can convict, can lead, can guide, can, you know, all those, I mean, Justin, I'm sure you've had those experiences too.

Um, but I am very careful to say that I, you know, the Lord didn't give me actual words of like guaranteed, Hey, you need to hear this. This is coming from God. Um, as I would say would be true of the new Testament, which we'll get to here in a minute.

Justin Perdue. I mean, I think the Lord does all kinds of things by his spirit directly upon the hearts of his people. And I'm going to speak to that more in a minute in terms of maybe even some things that I see in our own world that I think are concerning the other direction and make some room for God to, to press and all the things that you were beginning to outline there, but I'll save the comments for when we get to it.

So there's, there are brothers. We were on a podcast recently. There are brothers who are in the charismatic movement who I greatly love and respect. Um, I think they're godly. I think they love Jesus.

I think they're trying to do what is right. I should say they are doing what is right. And this is where we would disagree on a secondary level. That being said, they would agree with me when I say there are other people in the charismatic movement have caused immense amount of damage, huge damage.

Justin Perdue. Yeah, totally. I mean, and you and I, I guess this is as good a time as any to say it. I mean, you and I would be where I think the vast majority of reform folks are. I mean, in terms of how we view this and that we think the sign gifts of tongues, healing and prophecy were used of God to establish the church.

Like they served a very unique purpose in that era of redemptive history and that we don't see them commonly today, though you and I both leave room for the Lord to work, which we're going to get to maybe in a minute.

But, uh, but the reason why I wanted to bring this up and I will get there is that, um, man, there, there are people who are trapped and have all kinds of, I mean, they reach out to us, they've talked to us.

There's, I mean, on those like AGTV is this is kind of why they started their ministry because people are wondering like, oh, you know, I'm not being healed because I don't have enough faith or I'm not a Christian because I haven't spoken in tongues.

And it's like, um, or I don't know what to do. You know, like these people over here seem to be raising, you know, prophesying and speaking in tongues and they have this close connection to God and I can't seem to have it.

So there's something wrong with me. And all of that becomes a burden on people, which disconnects, I think, from the original design of the gifts and we'll get to it for sure. But, and, and also it's like, um, my, now my conscience is being bound by whatever the statement that you've made.

And that's different from what I would say a false prophet. And I think all of this needs to have the scrutiny of scripture and we always need to allow scripture to, to really guide and direct us. And I'll say this one thing I'll throw it to you, Justin.

Sometimes people say, well, John, I'm not willing to put God in a box. Like, all right, I'm with you on that one.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Uh, yeah, I'm with you. But that, that, that phrase, uh, I use this illustration and recently I said, all right, what am I, if my kids are having this conversation and the conversation is about what dad would and would not allow.

And my youngest kid goes, yeah, well, I ain't going to put dad in a box. And the older said, you're not putting him in a box. He literally said, he's not doing that.

Exactly.

That's kind of where we're saying, Hey, the Bible is not unclear here.

No, I mean, God is, is completely free and sovereign. Uh, we, amen. And there are things that the Lord has revealed about himself. Like I will not do X or I do not do Y, you know, and, or in this, just even the ways that he has set his heart upon his people, you know, and then there are people that react in, you know, in, in our world, they overreact against that because it's like, well, now God is like bound himself to us.

And it's like, well, he said that he did in his word. I mean, like, you know, so again, yeah, like you said, scripture is important. Briefly autobiographically, man, this is not this thing that you're some of the stuff you described is very close to home for me because many that have listened to the show for long know that, uh, I have since I was a young teenager, uh, wrestled with legitimacy and assurance and all those things.

And like was sincere in my desire to trust Jesus, follow him. And it's just like, yeah, but I'm plagued by things. I, I'm not, I send too much and I don't love enough. And, uh, my faith is sometimes weak and am I legitimate or is Jesus going to tell me he never knew me, you know?

And, and then I can remember my church upbringing was so here, there, and everywhere. I can remember being at a Joyce Meyer conference when I was 18 years old and being devastated by the fact that I could not speak in tongues.

Cause you know, it's the whole like, you know, baptism of the spirit, everything. And like, just here we are all of us in this arena and we're like asking the Lord to pour his spirit out. And like, you know, if you've never spoken in tongues today can be the day if you're, you know, and, and it's not exactly said this way, but it kind of is implied that like, if you're legit and if you have real faith, you know, and if you're really God's kind of, then you're going to, you're going to receive this gift even now.

And there I am. And apparently it's happening for a buku number of people around me and it ain't happening for your boy. And so I'm like, I knew it. I knew it. I, I, all of my fears are right. All of my fears are right.

I knew that I wasn't legitimate and it just, it unsettled me even further. Like maybe, like, why can't I, there's something wrong with me. Maybe, you know, Jesus is legitimate. I know he is, but it just didn't take with me or it didn't work for me.

And so I get it. This is something that definitely has robbed people of peace and assurance and comfort the Lord means for them to have.

Pietism, Assurance, and Resting in Christ

So if you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. Do you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy that you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you?

It's dread versus joy. Really? That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing. And we have a little book for you.

It's free.

We want you to download it. And we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism, reform theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ.

And when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it at our website. Just go to Theocast .org. Yeah, and we're not going to get a whole conversation into speaking in tongues, but I do want to mention our position in light of like, okay, well, why would we pick on that and say, hey, Joyce Myers is off here, or really the charismatic movement when it relates to kind of a second blessing of the spirit to where you need to have this outpouring of tongues and gibberish, really, speaking in an unhealing language.

And this is how I'll summarize it. Maybe in the future, we could do a class on it in the community or something like that. But I'll summarize it in this way. The Bible is very clear when the prophets were prophesying of the coming of the Messiah, that when he would appear, there would have to be a way for Israel, the followers of Yahweh, to identify who this man is.

Because there were, Jesus said it himself, there were many false Christs and there will be many false Christs. There are, we're just not used to it. Back in the day, there were a lot of people claiming to be the Messiah.

And Jesus shows up and in their mind, they're like, yeah, he's one more dude. And then they're like, whoa, stop. This guy's different. Wait a minute. And this is why his lineage, and not only that, it says he will perform, this is the prophet Isaiah and the Psalms, he will perform many signs and wonders.

The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will raise. Well, the moment he starts doing that, those are signs that no other prophet's been able to do, not in consistency. And so there's these comments that are being made.

There's no man who's ever spoke this way. There's no one who's done miracles this way. Now Jesus dies, he raises again, his apostles are there, and he says, you need to go out and proclaim the risen Christ and do so by signs and wonders confirming my message.

So you got the apostles going out and the churches, and as they're expanding to the Jewish culture and the ones who would be aware of this message, the signs and wonders continue as a confirmation. But as the message continues onto the Gentiles, you'll notice, and as it spreads out from the immediate Jews who would have been under the Mosaic law, and it spreads out past that, you see that the gifts start to go down.

Why?

Because there doesn't need to be a confirmation. These are converts now. There's no confirmation for those who've already believed in God. These are converts. And how does Paul say to the Romans that those would be converted?

It's by the preaching of the gospel, right? So we don't need signs and wonders because the miracle, the message, God's spell, the spell that comes out by words and hits the heart, that miraculous miracle, which I think is a miraculous sign, like, whoa, you know, dead soul, alive soul.

How did that happen?

Valley of dry bones.

Preaching of the gospel. That's right. So we, Justin and I, would call ourselves cessationist light, only in that the gifts have ceased because they've fulfilled their prophecy, like they fulfilled their role.

Correct.

Ceased in that original sense. But we're not convinced from scripture that that, you know, you will absolutely, under no circumstance whatsoever, ever, ever see it again. If it is evident, it's a lie.

It's false. You should reject it. We have a hard time embracing that because I know there's the passage about when the perfect will come. I'm not convinced that necessarily that is scripture.

Yeah.

And I'll throw this back over to you, Justin, because I've been talking a lot. So you can explain, like, what do you mean you guys don't think that they have ceased? You think you should expect them.

The Sign Gifts, Cessationism, and the Spirit’s Ordinary Work

All right.

So, yeah, I agree with you. What we're trying to prevent from happening is a rewinding of the clock to the apostolic era and the founding of the church. We don't think that the sign gifts of tongues, healing, prophecy operate the way that they did in that era of redemptive history.

Like, full stop. Like, John and I are there completely. What, yeah, you and I share the opinion that when the perfect comes, we think that that's actually speaking of Christ's return. We're not seeing that as the canon of scripture being closed.

You and I both would hold to a closed canon, just to be super clear. We don't think the Lord is revealing, like, divinely inspired binding revelation. Like, he's not doing that anymore. We have the book, and we can operate and abide by it.

We do, you and I, we both would have room for the Lord to work apart from ordinary measures and ordinary providence at any point in which he chooses. Our confession says this. And so, I've heard many stories from missionaries, for example, going into various contexts where very miraculous things have happened, and it has resulted in people coming to faith in Jesus Christ, like, as he's revealed in the gospels and as he's revealed in the scripture.

And I have no reason to think that the Lord has not worked in that particular way. This seems like a good time for me to say this. I'm going to just kind of speak against hyper-cessationism for a minute.

Sure, yeah, that's a perfect time.

Great.

So, I think that there is a kind of hyper-cessationism that exists amongst people in our tribe, in our stream, like, in the Reformed or even, like, Reformation theology camp.

Yeah.

And I think that, I mean, a few things I could say. The Westminster Divines, so the framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and I would throw in there very likely framers of the Second London Confession, you know, in this era of history, would have had categories for things that would make a lot of our Reformed friends very nervous, you know, in terms of they thought about the Lord coming to His people and ministering to His people in dreams, angelic visitation, prophetic impulses, as they would call it, unction of God, you know.

So, they had categories for all of this, and I think that you bring up any of that kind of stuff. So, we've already spoken about the Lord told me.

That's not what we're saying.

But we should have a lot of room for the Lord to press all kinds of things on our hearts. They're going to be in alignment with His Word, of course. That goes without saying. But for the Lord to press things upon our hearts, for things, you know, dreams, there are ways that angels minister to us that we just don't talk about very much.

We should think about it.

We should think about it. We should have categories for this. Not that I'm all the time looking around, like, where is my angelic visitation today? But that I've got categories for that, that God will give particular unction or a particular burden over something in a particular season because this is really good that I engage this way or that I pursue this individual.

God absolutely does those things. And so, I think what exists today is a kind of hyper-cessationism. To me, John, and we don't have time to flush all this out, but I think it ends up in a kind of rationalism, you know, over and against an appropriately, like, a supernatural perspective of how the Lord works.

I think it ends up in a kind of, it almost sounds like deism, where, like, the Lord is kind of distant. You know, He's not as intimately involved, even though nobody would say it that way. It still sounds like, well, God isn't going to get involved like that, and He isn't going to get, He's not going to do that.

He's kind of going to sit up there in the heavens and govern things according to His providence, but it's not this. Or, I think you fall into the trap of what I would call, like, hyper-textualism, meaning if it is not contained, even though Reformed folks, confessional folks, are against biblicism, which we are too, there's a hyper-textualism that can come into this conversation where it's like, well, if it's not a word that's written in the book, then we can't speak it.

You know, in terms of, like, the Lord impressed this upon my heart. Well, you can't say that, because that's not written in Scripture. And it's like, well, since when did we want to go that direction?

You know, did I have to have chapter and verse for everything? So, I do think that there are ways that you can fall off the other side of the horse, and yes, you and I absolutely have room for the Lord to work, even in the kind of prophetic sign-gift-tongues kind of stuff, particularly when the gospel is going somewhere where it's never been established before.

Yep.

I think we need to make room for that.

Yeah, I would agree. And that's why I would call myself a cessation of slight, in that I think the normative experience of Christians is just not normal. And I don't think it's because the Spirit has left or because faith has waned.

I think that their gospel has been extremely powerfully preached and is in many churches in the United States.

And has gone to the ends of the earth.

But that being said, there are times where you hear stories about Muslims having dreams of Jesus, and you talk to them, and their faith is not, like, it's legit.

I have that in my mind.

Yeah.

Like, converted even, because it's like, man, I've had this dream about Jesus combined with things that I've been told about Him. And it's like, what I heard of Him, and then this dream I had, I think I trust in Jesus now.

It's like, well, the Lord be praised.

You know.

Exactly.

In a country where it's anti-Christian, too. I mean, that's important.

Last comment. Last comment. We get real nervous, too, of anything that, like, smacks of the supernatural. We've already said that. But we get nervous over anything that sounds mystical. Well, because we don't want to be a Roman Catholic mystic.

And it's like, you know, guys, I really do think that, last I checked, union with Christ is a mystical union. We say that, right? And so then, what does that mean? That I think that the Lord works via our union with Christ that is mystical and vital, you know, to do things in and through us.

And I don't think anybody objects to that.

No.

Anyway. Well, I mean, to your point, John, here we go.

Yeah, dude, to your point, though, evidentialism has so influenced the conservative Christians that, you know, we want everything to be accepted by the unbeliever, and we want to be able to provide evidence for everything.

And that's why Paul has to say, like, I'm not ashamed of this. I mean, you know, this is nutty. This is nutty stuff. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And why would someone be ashamed of it? Well, because it doesn't line up.

It doesn't line up with the acceptability. I mean, if you were to have a man-related, a man-created religion, it would look nothing like what we have. Nothing, you know? And so that's where a lot of where I'm going to push back and say, hey, look, I think there's some damaging things coming out of the charismatic movement.

But guys, let's not swing so far that, you know, we're not allowing any work of the Spirit.

At all.

You know, like, hold on, let's back off here a little bit.

The church is one foundation. Love that hymn. And that line where it says, you know, and mystic, like, what is true for us? Mystic, sweet communion. This is true of the church with God, the three in one.

It's like, well, if we have mystic, sweet communion with God, the three in one, I think He's going to be working supernaturally. Mystically through this communion we have with Him to accomplish His purposes in our lives and to grow us.