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Oct. 5, 2023
Strang Report "Cessationist" comments
Stephen Strang gives his comments after watching "Cessationist" film
Transcript
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Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this live edition of The Strang Report
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for Thursday, October 5th, 2023.
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Well today I'm going to talk about the new movie, Cessationist.
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I watched it in the last 24 hours.
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I have some very definite thoughts to share so you're going to stay tuned.
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Interestingly I've mentioned it to some of my friends, you know, leadership friends,
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and nobody had ever heard of it.
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So I know it's brand new, they played it at a conference called the G3 Conference.
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It's only available on Vimeo.
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When you're in the business you only have to speculate why they don't have it on more.
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So I don't know that it's going to make that big an impact, but I do think it's important.
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It's an issue that's been in the church for several centuries at least.
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There are good things I can say about it and I have some deep, deep concerns.
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So it has the idea that the gifts of the Spirit ended, and they even specifically said with
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the life of the last apostle who was John who lived to be almost a hundred.
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I think a lot of their arguments are very, very weak, but then on the other hand they
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said a lot of things that we need to really think about.
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So to kick it off I want to show the little trailer that's on YouTube.
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It's only three minutes long.
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There's a lot of stuff it doesn't cover, but it does give you a feel for it.
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Professionally it's done well.
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It's very professional.
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They have some little dramatizations, even a little bit of cartoons I guess you'd call
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it to kind of break it up.
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A lot of talking heads and a lot of us kind of dry, but considering that they did a very
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good job.
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You judge for yourself and I'll be back to analyze what it was.
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It's not really a review.
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It's not that formal.
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It's more like Steve Strang's thoughts about this movie called Sensationist.
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A miracle is when the natural order is reversed.
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The demonstration of the power of God to authenticate the messenger that he is a man sent by God
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to speak on behalf of God.
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Reversing an illness, a sickness or death.
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It is an extraordinary, powerful operation of God that attests redemptive revelation.
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Sign.
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To be a true apostle, Jesus said, I'm sending you out to represent me and I'm going to give
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you the power to work miracles.
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Those gifts were given for a very specific purpose and so those gifts have now ceased.
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I've been in these meetings, five, 10,000 people all speaking in tongues at the same
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time.
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The charismatic movement is constantly searching after the next experience.
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It kind of becomes like an addiction.
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This is not optional.
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If you are not earnestly desiring spiritual gifts, especially prophecy, you are sinning.
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So what they've done with the gift of prophecy, they simply redefined it.
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COVID-19, you'll never be back.
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In biblical times, if you get up and you speak in God's name and that's not God's word,
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you were stoned to death.
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I really want to apologize, sincerely apologize for missing the prophecy about Donald Trump.
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The guy said it was wrong.
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Isn't a big deal?
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Isn't a big deal?
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Isn't a big deal?
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Isn't a big deal?
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If you believe these manifestations should be commonplace in the lives of every Christian,
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then you're going to want to believe that it's real.
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No one has the gift of healing today.
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No one has the gift of prophecy to foretell the future.
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No one is hearing a word from God.
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People are self-deceived.
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Every experience I have, everything that I might have labeled as the Holy Spirit in the
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past, I've got to test it all by the word of God.
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You know, there's a lot with this film that I can agree with, especially that last thing,
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that we have to test all of these things by the word of God.
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I agree with that 100%.
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But these people start with a point of view.
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Of course, we all have a point of view, including mine, but they start with a point of view
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and then they word everything to back up that point of view.
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Really, anyone in any situation with any kind of argument can do that kind of thing, whether
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it's a non-Christian religion, whether it's a secularist or the atheist.
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You can do that kind of thing.
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You set up a straw man, you knock it down.
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One of the things they did is this is from a very intellectual arm of the church, and
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that's probably good.
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The people that were in this are obviously well-educated, they're obviously thinkers,
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but what they do is they would define certain things a certain way—prophesy, miracles.
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And if you didn't go along with their definition, word for word, inference by inference, you
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were just wrong.
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And this is an oversimplification, but it'd be like taking a glass that's half full,
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and you say it's half full, and the other person says, no, it's half empty.
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How can you be stupid enough to think it's half full?
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Can't you see that it's half empty?
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Some of their arguments, to me, almost fell into that category.
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There were things in it that I agreed with.
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They had a little history of the miraculous in the Bible, they had a little history of
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the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement.
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Interestingly, they attacked the Charismatics more, partly because the Charismatics tend
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to be on TV and they can get the clips easier.
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Also, the Charismatics tend to be out there a little more.
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The Pentecostal denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Four Square, were like mentioned
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in passing, the Church of God wasn't mentioned at all, but really, any of the Pentecostal
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denominations could be blasted in this way.
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And frankly, they could have found more extreme examples than they did.
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I know that because I've been covering the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement most
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of my adult life, and if you've ever read my story, you know, some of which I tell in
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this book, Spirit-Led, Living in an Upside-Down World, which I'll talk about in just a minute,
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you'll know that I grew up in this.
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In fact, I'm proud to say that I'm a fourth generation Pentecostal, which meant that my
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grandparents came into Pentecost as either late teenagers or early adults, and they're
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both my grandmother and grandfather's mothers came into Pentecost as adults, and so that
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made my mother third generation, and I'm fourth generation.
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My grandson is sixth generation, so I grew up in it.
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I just, you know, this is my perspective.
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I did sort of run from the call of God, and I came back because of the modern Charismatic
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movement where the Holy Spirit was being outpoured in the mainline churches among Roman Catholics.
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And one of the things that I think is sensationalist are concerned because a lot of the things
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from the Charismatic Pentecostal movement are actually infiltrating the church more
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and more as time goes on.
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In fact, they even were, they said it kind of like, we can't believe this, but they
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figured that at least half of evangelicals would believe that miraculous things are for
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today, and this seemed to be a great concern.
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A lot of Charismatic worship has, you can go to a Baptist church, or at least some Baptist
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churches, and the worship service would be more, it has a Charismatic flavor, and some
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of the newer songs kind of cross over among different denominations.
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A lot of the cessationists come from very old denominations, very staid, very much into
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kind of a European type of worship, particularly the Presbyterians, you know, where the services
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have to be very quiet, the organs have to be very loud, the hymns are very traditional,
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there's no emotion.
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I mean, that's how the Europeans traditionally have worshiped, and it came over here on the
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boat with the immigrants who came from Europe.
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It's almost that simple, just like the Catholics brought their religion with them.
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Pentecostalism, on the other hand, came out of the African American experience, and came
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out of the revivalist experiences that go all the way back to John Wesley, then certainly
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the first grade awakening, the second grade awakening, the holiness movement, which would
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have been during the era of Dwight L. Moody and so forth.
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And a lot of those movements before 1900 were attacked by religious people of the day using
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some kind of the same arguments that these cessationists are using today.
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So in a way, this is the same old, same old, if you can understand what I'm saying.
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Also, as they went through and attacked some of the excesses, and there are excesses, it's
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the same kind of attacks that secularists and even atheists can make of Christians in
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general.
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And they also made some conclusions.
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They jumped to some conclusions based on the Word of God that seemed to make sense to them,
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but I think they were vulnerable to the same arguments, and I'll give an example.
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They showed a timeline in which the time of Moses and Joshua, there were miracles, parting
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of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho falling, etc.
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Then there were none during the period of the judges and David and so forth.
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Then again with Elijah and Jeremiah, and then there were none, and then during the time
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of Christ and the early apostles, and to them, because they believed the Word of God, or
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at least they believed the parts of the Word of God that go along with their doctrine,
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they said, those were real miracles.
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But then they come up today and say that Charismatics and Pentecostals, when they claim someone
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to get healed or prophesy or something like that, you can't prove them.
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Well guess what?
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You cannot go back and prove that Moses parted the Red Sea.
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You cannot prove that the prophet Elijah raised the child from the dead.
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You can't.
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In fact, there's only record of it in the Hebrew Scriptures, and there are people who
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say the Hebrew Scriptures aren't real.
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There are people who say that David, arguably the greatest king in Israelite history, didn't
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even exist, although archaeologists are starting to say that there is archaeological proof
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that he existed.
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Now fast forward.
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You know, not everything is a miracle, and sometimes people claim miracles.
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Sometimes people get miracles and lose them.
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They did not give any margin for error at all.
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They didn't give any margin for people trying.
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They didn't even give any recognition to some of the apologies.
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Chris Ballatin, who's a friend of mine, was very strong in saying that Trump would be
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re-elected.
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I actually believe the same thing.
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I personally believe that the election was stolen.
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I don't really understand the whole thing about the prophetic aspect.
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It was a black eye to the prophetic movement, no question.
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But Chris had the humility to apologize and say that he missed it, and they sort of damned
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him for that.
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There was a lot of humility.
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Some of the clips that they showed, and I knew a lot of the people.
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In fact, several of them are authors.
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Like Bickel, Alexander Pagani, or just two that come to mind.
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Even Sam Storms.
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Sam Storms is not that well known.
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He's highly respected.
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He moves within evangelical circles more than most Charismatics would be, and he's respected
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as a real thinker.
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He's also a former cessationist, and they seem to have particular animosity toward former
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cessationists who come over to our side of the street, so to speak.
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Most of their doctrines, and most of the doctrines of Pentecostal and Charismatics would be the
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same.
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We believe in Jesus.
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We believe his death on Calvary.
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We believe that he is resurrected and ascended to heaven.
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We believe in the Trinity of the God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.
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I could go on and on.
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In fact, somebody made a joke one time that some of these people seem to believe in God
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the Son and the Holy Bible.
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In other words, they don't believe in the Holy Spirit.
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And listen, I believe in the Holy Bible.
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The words Holy Bible do not appear in the Holy Bible.
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And listen, Charismatic and Pentecostals believe every word of God and make a big deal about
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it.
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In fact, there's a whole segment of the Charismatic movement called the Word Movement, or the
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Word of Faith Movement.
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And I had one of the sort of liberal Christians, there was a big controversy probably in the
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90s about was the Bible infallible?
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In other words, is every word true?
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And he asked me in a private social setting if this was a controversy within Pentecostal
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and Charismatic circles.
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And I said, not really.
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I was being a little bit facetious, and I ad-libbed this, but I actually said this.
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I said, not really, it's not a controversy, because if you don't believe the word of God
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is infallible, you're considered backslidden.
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And that is true to a certain extent.
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They did interview several people who claimed to be former Pentecostals who had changed
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their mind for a variety of reasons.
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But you know what, you can find people in every group who will be a convert and then
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change their mind.
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In fact, it's been a problem lately that some rather high-profile evangelicals have
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actually turned their back on the gospel and said they don't even believe in God.
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It's been a real embarrassment.
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It's sad.
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It's the work of the enemy, I believe, to blind people's eyes.
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I personally believe that if people are sensationalists, they're really blinded.
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They may be sincere, but they're blinded.
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And while I can agree with them on a lot of things, I think they're wrong, just in the
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same way they believe that I'm wrong.
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Interestingly, they didn't seem to reach out to any of the people that they criticized,
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most of whom were alive.
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They seemed to pick on some things that I thought were pretty minor.
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For example, they made a big deal about Jim Baker.
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They even showed a little sound bite of somebody saying that he was convicted and all the charges.
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Well, he was.
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And then it was thrown out as a travesty of justice.
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And I've talked about it before.
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I've written about it.
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I know Jim personally.
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I covered it as a journalist back in the day.
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But if the truth be known, it was an example of cancel culture.
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The powers that be wanted to get rid of Jim Baker.
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He was an embarrassment.
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He was very, very successful.
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He was a Pentecostal.
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And he was an embarrassment.
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And they were looking for any way to discredit him financially in a bunch of other ways.
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They couldn't find anything.
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But he did some missteps in which they were able to clobber him.
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And the man ended up in prison.
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They didn't even hint that he was let out and the charges were all overturned.
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I realize it's always hard to always show the other side.
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But they cherry picked and they picked the things that proved their point.
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And who can blame them?
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That's the nature of journalism and documentaries and so forth.
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They did it for a reason.
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I thought it was interesting that I have worked in the Christian community.
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And while I am both a Pentecostal and a Charismatic, we worked, I work in the Christian publishing
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industry, and interacted a lot in many, many different ways with people who weren't Charismatic
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or Pentecostal, some of whom were probably hostile to it.
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But I must say that my own experience is that people have been polite.
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I remember one time that things were being discussed about the kind of emotionalism or
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the excitement of the Pentecostal movement.
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And one fellow, and he was making a joke of course, but it was true, he said the only
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movement they had in their church was when people would cross or uncross their legs.
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And he was making light of the fact that in Pentecostal circles, man, you've got to be
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moving all the time.
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You're clapping, jumping, raising your hands.
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And a lot of that comes out of the black experience.
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I started to say this a minute ago, and when I commented on this in an earlier podcast,
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I did make the point, you know, in the same way that the Presbyterians brought—and I'll
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say something about Presbyterians in a second if I don't forget—but in the same way they
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brought over their worship style, even their architecture, even their terminology like
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the Westminster Confession and so on and so forth, all came from Europe.
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The Pentecostal experience came out of the African American experience of singing, shouting,
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saying, preach it, brother, saying amen, raising their hands.
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And when the revival—now revivalists, if you look at the first and second grade awakening,
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those people got excited too.
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Sometimes they fell on the ground.
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Sometimes the things that you read about sound an awful lot like the things we hear about
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Pentecostalism.
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Here is Jamie says, what I find most interesting is that this is what they're centered on,
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not spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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It's not their priority.
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Well, Jamie, I think you're right.
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The people in the documentary seem sincere.
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There were an awful lot of talking heads.
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Even though it was very well done, it was still very dry.
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I'm not sure that it's worth $24 to see it.
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I was shocked by the price.
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You can even only rent it for $10.
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I don't know.
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Maybe they had a big budget, but that is much higher than the normal fees.
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If you want to watch it, it's on Vimeo.
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And you know, I'm sure they want to spread the gospel in the same way.
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Interestingly, missionaries from that segment of the church, when they go overseas and are
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confronted by demon influences, especially in countries where there's a lot of paganism,
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they don't operate very well.
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There's lots of examples.
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See Peter Wagner was one.
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He went overseas and didn't have any power against the demonic forces he was up against.
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And it was the Pentecostals who were able to break through because there's a power in
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the Holy Spirit.
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There really is a power in the Holy Spirit.
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Now I made some random notes of little points I want to make, and I'm starting to run out
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of time.
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But it was interesting to me that they called our side continuationists.
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In my entire life, I had never heard that word, and I'm fairly well educated, and I've
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operated in evangelical circles.
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It was interesting also that of the people they had as experts, I'd never heard of any
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of them.
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Now I can be wrong a lot, and there's a lot I don't know.
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But I would say that within the Christian community, maybe John Piper was one.
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The people they interviewed, I actually knew most of the people, as I mentioned before.
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I just thought it was kind of interesting, and I'm saying that they talked a little bit
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about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
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The Bible says that's the only thing that won't be forgiven.
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And they said, you know, the other side says that we're blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
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We're really not because of this, this, and this, and this.
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You know what?
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Maybe they're right.
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But I would say I would be real, real careful in some of the things that they said.
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And it's not like these people thought this up originally.
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I mean, people were making these arguments long before these people were born, or certainly
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before they went to seminary.
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Now I have some Presbyterian in my background.
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My father, who was an Assembly of God minister, went back and got his advanced degrees.
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And back in that day, there were no Pentecostal seminaries.
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He went to a Presbyterian seminary.
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And I was in first, second, and third grade.
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And I can remember being, as a young child, being exposed to Presbyterianism.
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I thought it was very dry and kind of boring.
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So my family back in Europe were Huguenots.
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They were Calvinists from France.
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We would call them Presbyterians today.
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And so that's my background.
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Of course, it didn't really affect me all these generations later.
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But I mean, I have some affinity.
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And you know, there are a lot of good things you can say about the Presbyterians.
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For one thing, they aren't, at least a certain segment of the Presbyterians are not going
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to be woke, like a lot of the other mainstream denominations.
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They're very academic.
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They are studious.
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Most of the ones I know personally, and there's a seminary here in my city.
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And I happen to know a lot of these people socially.
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They're usually very nice people.
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I appreciate them.
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You know, there's a lot more than that I could talk about.
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You know, they wanted to prove the New Testament healings.
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And I actually started talking about this a minute ago.
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They show Eutychus, you know, he was a fellow that fell asleep and fell out the window.
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They can't prove he was healed any more than some of these other things.
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And there's a lot, a lot of times these things happen.
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And you can't prove them later.
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One of the reasons I wanted, I wrote God and Donald Trump is that there were prophecies
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going back to 2007 that God was going to raise up somebody that nobody expected who it would
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be.
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Later on, people started saying it was Donald Trump.
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As up to election day, it looked like it was going to be impossible.
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Yet he was elected.
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I wrote an entire book and I documented partly because it was one time where there were very
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clear predictions in writing and on video beforehand and then it came true.
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We published a book with Benny Hinn one time on some of the miracles in his, and we would
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only take them if there was medical proof.
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And a lot of times, it just had not been documented very well before because I guess maybe people
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didn't know what it needed to be.
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One time I saw a hit piece on Benny Hinn on one of these television programs and they
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said he even wrote a book on miracles and they didn't say anything about it.
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And I thought to myself, yeah, they checked that out looking for something to put on this
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show and they didn't find anything because we are very careful.
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Same thing with God and Donald Trump.
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I was very careful.
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Now some of those prophets did say he'd be in for two terms.
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We don't know if he'll be in for two terms or not.
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And it is an embarrassment, as I said, that he didn't win last time.
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You know what?
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They didn't mention my book, which was very carefully documented and it was come to pass.
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I'll say one more thing.
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They made fun of some leaders who were flawed.
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I even went online and looked up, like for example, they criticized John G. Lake, who
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I'd never heard about it.
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Early in his ministry, there was some accusations against him.
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There were some against Catherine Coleman.
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Whatever it was, these people repented, I believe.
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But the thing is the Bible is full of imperfect leaders.
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And you know what?
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I'd like to challenge them.
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Who knows what's in their background?
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Everybody's done something.
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And so when you watch The Cessationist, I think there's a lot we can learn.
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We need to be careful.
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We need to realize that people are watching.
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There is a lot of craziness that happens in Pentecostalism, partly because we have religious
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freedom and there's nobody to really put their thumb on it and squash it.
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It's a dilemma.
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It's something that I've dealt with my entire career.
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We've written about it so many times.
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There's got to be kind of a self-policing and there has been to some extent.
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They even referred to some of it.
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But like I said, they had a point of view.
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They wanted to prove something.
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They proved it.
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Now, I believe that my book, Spirit-Led Living in an Upside-Down World, is actually an answer.
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The Holy Spirit is for today.
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You can read the book.
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You can get it on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
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I actually bought a copy this week in Barnes and Noble.
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I wanted the experience of going in and picking it up off the shelf.
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And I encourage you to do the same.
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We will be dealing with this again.
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I went a little bit over, but I thought it was worth it.
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And I hope that you enjoyed it.
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Share this with others.
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I don't really want to get into a controversy with these people.
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They're probably very good people.
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But I may reach out and have a debate.
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I will also get certain...
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Michael Brown has already agreed to be on my podcast and maybe some others.
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My purpose is not to promote her documentary.
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I don't want to make a bigger problem of this because really this has been going on for
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years.
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But that's the way I see it.
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And I have a platform in order to share it.
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And I hope that I caused you to think.
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I hope you enjoyed it.
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And I hope that you tune in again for another edition of The Strang Report.
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God bless you.
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From 1975, Charisma has been at the forefront of reporting on revival, miracles, and the
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00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:21,440
move of God in our world.
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Charisma Magazine is now going exclusively online to reach beyond the physical barriers
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of a print issue.
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Charisma Magazine Online is committed to bringing you the very best spirit-led content to inspire
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your walk with God in this upside-down world.
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Go to MyCharisma.com for exclusive content today.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:17,160
Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this live edition of The Strang Report
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for Thursday, October 5th, 2023.
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Well today I'm going to talk about the new movie, Cessationist.
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I watched it in the last 24 hours.
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I have some very definite thoughts to share so you're going to stay tuned.
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Interestingly I've mentioned it to some of my friends, you know, leadership friends,
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and nobody had ever heard of it.
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So I know it's brand new, they played it at a conference called the G3 Conference.
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It's only available on Vimeo.
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When you're in the business you only have to speculate why they don't have it on more.
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So I don't know that it's going to make that big an impact, but I do think it's important.
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It's an issue that's been in the church for several centuries at least.
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There are good things I can say about it and I have some deep, deep concerns.
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So it has the idea that the gifts of the Spirit ended, and they even specifically said with
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the life of the last apostle who was John who lived to be almost a hundred.
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I think a lot of their arguments are very, very weak, but then on the other hand they
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said a lot of things that we need to really think about.
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So to kick it off I want to show the little trailer that's on YouTube.
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It's only three minutes long.
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There's a lot of stuff it doesn't cover, but it does give you a feel for it.
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Professionally it's done well.
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It's very professional.
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They have some little dramatizations, even a little bit of cartoons I guess you'd call
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it to kind of break it up.
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A lot of talking heads and a lot of us kind of dry, but considering that they did a very
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good job.
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You judge for yourself and I'll be back to analyze what it was.
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It's not really a review.
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It's not that formal.
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It's more like Steve Strang's thoughts about this movie called Sensationist.
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A miracle is when the natural order is reversed.
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The demonstration of the power of God to authenticate the messenger that he is a man sent by God
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to speak on behalf of God.
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Reversing an illness, a sickness or death.
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It is an extraordinary, powerful operation of God that attests redemptive revelation.
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Sign.
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To be a true apostle, Jesus said, I'm sending you out to represent me and I'm going to give
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you the power to work miracles.
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Those gifts were given for a very specific purpose and so those gifts have now ceased.
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I've been in these meetings, five, 10,000 people all speaking in tongues at the same
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time.
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The charismatic movement is constantly searching after the next experience.
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It kind of becomes like an addiction.
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This is not optional.
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If you are not earnestly desiring spiritual gifts, especially prophecy, you are sinning.
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So what they've done with the gift of prophecy, they simply redefined it.
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COVID-19, you'll never be back.
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In biblical times, if you get up and you speak in God's name and that's not God's word,
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you were stoned to death.
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I really want to apologize, sincerely apologize for missing the prophecy about Donald Trump.
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The guy said it was wrong.
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Isn't a big deal?
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Isn't a big deal?
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Isn't a big deal?
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Isn't a big deal?
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If you believe these manifestations should be commonplace in the lives of every Christian,
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then you're going to want to believe that it's real.
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No one has the gift of healing today.
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No one has the gift of prophecy to foretell the future.
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No one is hearing a word from God.
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People are self-deceived.
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Every experience I have, everything that I might have labeled as the Holy Spirit in the
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past, I've got to test it all by the word of God.
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You know, there's a lot with this film that I can agree with, especially that last thing,
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that we have to test all of these things by the word of God.
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I agree with that 100%.
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But these people start with a point of view.
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Of course, we all have a point of view, including mine, but they start with a point of view
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and then they word everything to back up that point of view.
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Really, anyone in any situation with any kind of argument can do that kind of thing, whether
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it's a non-Christian religion, whether it's a secularist or the atheist.
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You can do that kind of thing.
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You set up a straw man, you knock it down.
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One of the things they did is this is from a very intellectual arm of the church, and
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that's probably good.
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The people that were in this are obviously well-educated, they're obviously thinkers,
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but what they do is they would define certain things a certain way—prophesy, miracles.
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And if you didn't go along with their definition, word for word, inference by inference, you
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were just wrong.
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And this is an oversimplification, but it'd be like taking a glass that's half full,
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and you say it's half full, and the other person says, no, it's half empty.
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How can you be stupid enough to think it's half full?
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Can't you see that it's half empty?
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Some of their arguments, to me, almost fell into that category.
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There were things in it that I agreed with.
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They had a little history of the miraculous in the Bible, they had a little history of
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the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement.
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Interestingly, they attacked the Charismatics more, partly because the Charismatics tend
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to be on TV and they can get the clips easier.
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Also, the Charismatics tend to be out there a little more.
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The Pentecostal denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Four Square, were like mentioned
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in passing, the Church of God wasn't mentioned at all, but really, any of the Pentecostal
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denominations could be blasted in this way.
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And frankly, they could have found more extreme examples than they did.
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I know that because I've been covering the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement most
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of my adult life, and if you've ever read my story, you know, some of which I tell in
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this book, Spirit-Led, Living in an Upside-Down World, which I'll talk about in just a minute,
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you'll know that I grew up in this.
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In fact, I'm proud to say that I'm a fourth generation Pentecostal, which meant that my
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grandparents came into Pentecost as either late teenagers or early adults, and they're
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both my grandmother and grandfather's mothers came into Pentecost as adults, and so that
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made my mother third generation, and I'm fourth generation.
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My grandson is sixth generation, so I grew up in it.
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I just, you know, this is my perspective.
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I did sort of run from the call of God, and I came back because of the modern Charismatic
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movement where the Holy Spirit was being outpoured in the mainline churches among Roman Catholics.
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And one of the things that I think is sensationalist are concerned because a lot of the things
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from the Charismatic Pentecostal movement are actually infiltrating the church more
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and more as time goes on.
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In fact, they even were, they said it kind of like, we can't believe this, but they
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figured that at least half of evangelicals would believe that miraculous things are for
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today, and this seemed to be a great concern.
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A lot of Charismatic worship has, you can go to a Baptist church, or at least some Baptist
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churches, and the worship service would be more, it has a Charismatic flavor, and some
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of the newer songs kind of cross over among different denominations.
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A lot of the cessationists come from very old denominations, very staid, very much into
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kind of a European type of worship, particularly the Presbyterians, you know, where the services
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have to be very quiet, the organs have to be very loud, the hymns are very traditional,
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there's no emotion.
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I mean, that's how the Europeans traditionally have worshiped, and it came over here on the
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boat with the immigrants who came from Europe.
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It's almost that simple, just like the Catholics brought their religion with them.
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Pentecostalism, on the other hand, came out of the African American experience, and came
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out of the revivalist experiences that go all the way back to John Wesley, then certainly
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the first grade awakening, the second grade awakening, the holiness movement, which would
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have been during the era of Dwight L. Moody and so forth.
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And a lot of those movements before 1900 were attacked by religious people of the day using
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some kind of the same arguments that these cessationists are using today.
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So in a way, this is the same old, same old, if you can understand what I'm saying.
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Also, as they went through and attacked some of the excesses, and there are excesses, it's
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the same kind of attacks that secularists and even atheists can make of Christians in
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general.
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And they also made some conclusions.
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They jumped to some conclusions based on the Word of God that seemed to make sense to them,
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but I think they were vulnerable to the same arguments, and I'll give an example.
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They showed a timeline in which the time of Moses and Joshua, there were miracles, parting
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of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho falling, etc.
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Then there were none during the period of the judges and David and so forth.
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Then again with Elijah and Jeremiah, and then there were none, and then during the time
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of Christ and the early apostles, and to them, because they believed the Word of God, or
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at least they believed the parts of the Word of God that go along with their doctrine,
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they said, those were real miracles.
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But then they come up today and say that Charismatics and Pentecostals, when they claim someone
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to get healed or prophesy or something like that, you can't prove them.
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Well guess what?
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You cannot go back and prove that Moses parted the Red Sea.
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You cannot prove that the prophet Elijah raised the child from the dead.
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You can't.
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In fact, there's only record of it in the Hebrew Scriptures, and there are people who
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say the Hebrew Scriptures aren't real.
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There are people who say that David, arguably the greatest king in Israelite history, didn't
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even exist, although archaeologists are starting to say that there is archaeological proof
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that he existed.
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Now fast forward.
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You know, not everything is a miracle, and sometimes people claim miracles.
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Sometimes people get miracles and lose them.
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They did not give any margin for error at all.
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They didn't give any margin for people trying.
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They didn't even give any recognition to some of the apologies.
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Chris Ballatin, who's a friend of mine, was very strong in saying that Trump would be
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re-elected.
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I actually believe the same thing.
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I personally believe that the election was stolen.
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I don't really understand the whole thing about the prophetic aspect.
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It was a black eye to the prophetic movement, no question.
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But Chris had the humility to apologize and say that he missed it, and they sort of damned
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him for that.
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There was a lot of humility.
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Some of the clips that they showed, and I knew a lot of the people.
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In fact, several of them are authors.
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Like Bickel, Alexander Pagani, or just two that come to mind.
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Even Sam Storms.
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Sam Storms is not that well known.
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He's highly respected.
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He moves within evangelical circles more than most Charismatics would be, and he's respected
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as a real thinker.
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He's also a former cessationist, and they seem to have particular animosity toward former
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cessationists who come over to our side of the street, so to speak.
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Most of their doctrines, and most of the doctrines of Pentecostal and Charismatics would be the
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same.
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We believe in Jesus.
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We believe his death on Calvary.
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We believe that he is resurrected and ascended to heaven.
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We believe in the Trinity of the God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.
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I could go on and on.
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In fact, somebody made a joke one time that some of these people seem to believe in God
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the Son and the Holy Bible.
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In other words, they don't believe in the Holy Spirit.
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And listen, I believe in the Holy Bible.
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The words Holy Bible do not appear in the Holy Bible.
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And listen, Charismatic and Pentecostals believe every word of God and make a big deal about
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it.
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In fact, there's a whole segment of the Charismatic movement called the Word Movement, or the
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Word of Faith Movement.
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And I had one of the sort of liberal Christians, there was a big controversy probably in the
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90s about was the Bible infallible?
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In other words, is every word true?
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And he asked me in a private social setting if this was a controversy within Pentecostal
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and Charismatic circles.
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And I said, not really.
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I was being a little bit facetious, and I ad-libbed this, but I actually said this.
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I said, not really, it's not a controversy, because if you don't believe the word of God
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is infallible, you're considered backslidden.
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And that is true to a certain extent.
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They did interview several people who claimed to be former Pentecostals who had changed
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their mind for a variety of reasons.
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But you know what, you can find people in every group who will be a convert and then
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change their mind.
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In fact, it's been a problem lately that some rather high-profile evangelicals have
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actually turned their back on the gospel and said they don't even believe in God.
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It's been a real embarrassment.
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It's sad.
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It's the work of the enemy, I believe, to blind people's eyes.
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I personally believe that if people are sensationalists, they're really blinded.
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They may be sincere, but they're blinded.
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And while I can agree with them on a lot of things, I think they're wrong, just in the
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same way they believe that I'm wrong.
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Interestingly, they didn't seem to reach out to any of the people that they criticized,
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most of whom were alive.
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They seemed to pick on some things that I thought were pretty minor.
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For example, they made a big deal about Jim Baker.
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They even showed a little sound bite of somebody saying that he was convicted and all the charges.
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Well, he was.
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And then it was thrown out as a travesty of justice.
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And I've talked about it before.
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I've written about it.
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I know Jim personally.
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I covered it as a journalist back in the day.
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But if the truth be known, it was an example of cancel culture.
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The powers that be wanted to get rid of Jim Baker.
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He was an embarrassment.
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He was very, very successful.
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He was a Pentecostal.
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And he was an embarrassment.
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And they were looking for any way to discredit him financially in a bunch of other ways.
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They couldn't find anything.
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But he did some missteps in which they were able to clobber him.
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And the man ended up in prison.
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They didn't even hint that he was let out and the charges were all overturned.
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I realize it's always hard to always show the other side.
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But they cherry picked and they picked the things that proved their point.
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And who can blame them?
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That's the nature of journalism and documentaries and so forth.
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They did it for a reason.
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I thought it was interesting that I have worked in the Christian community.
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And while I am both a Pentecostal and a Charismatic, we worked, I work in the Christian publishing
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industry, and interacted a lot in many, many different ways with people who weren't Charismatic
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or Pentecostal, some of whom were probably hostile to it.
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But I must say that my own experience is that people have been polite.
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I remember one time that things were being discussed about the kind of emotionalism or
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the excitement of the Pentecostal movement.
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And one fellow, and he was making a joke of course, but it was true, he said the only
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movement they had in their church was when people would cross or uncross their legs.
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And he was making light of the fact that in Pentecostal circles, man, you've got to be
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moving all the time.
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You're clapping, jumping, raising your hands.
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And a lot of that comes out of the black experience.
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I started to say this a minute ago, and when I commented on this in an earlier podcast,
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I did make the point, you know, in the same way that the Presbyterians brought—and I'll
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say something about Presbyterians in a second if I don't forget—but in the same way they
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brought over their worship style, even their architecture, even their terminology like
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the Westminster Confession and so on and so forth, all came from Europe.
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The Pentecostal experience came out of the African American experience of singing, shouting,
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saying, preach it, brother, saying amen, raising their hands.
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And when the revival—now revivalists, if you look at the first and second grade awakening,
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those people got excited too.
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Sometimes they fell on the ground.
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Sometimes the things that you read about sound an awful lot like the things we hear about
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Pentecostalism.
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Here is Jamie says, what I find most interesting is that this is what they're centered on,
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not spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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It's not their priority.
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Well, Jamie, I think you're right.
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The people in the documentary seem sincere.
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There were an awful lot of talking heads.
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Even though it was very well done, it was still very dry.
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I'm not sure that it's worth $24 to see it.
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I was shocked by the price.
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You can even only rent it for $10.
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I don't know.
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Maybe they had a big budget, but that is much higher than the normal fees.
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If you want to watch it, it's on Vimeo.
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And you know, I'm sure they want to spread the gospel in the same way.
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Interestingly, missionaries from that segment of the church, when they go overseas and are
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confronted by demon influences, especially in countries where there's a lot of paganism,
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they don't operate very well.
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There's lots of examples.
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See Peter Wagner was one.
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He went overseas and didn't have any power against the demonic forces he was up against.
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And it was the Pentecostals who were able to break through because there's a power in
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the Holy Spirit.
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There really is a power in the Holy Spirit.
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Now I made some random notes of little points I want to make, and I'm starting to run out
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of time.
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But it was interesting to me that they called our side continuationists.
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In my entire life, I had never heard that word, and I'm fairly well educated, and I've
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operated in evangelical circles.
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It was interesting also that of the people they had as experts, I'd never heard of any
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of them.
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Now I can be wrong a lot, and there's a lot I don't know.
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But I would say that within the Christian community, maybe John Piper was one.
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The people they interviewed, I actually knew most of the people, as I mentioned before.
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I just thought it was kind of interesting, and I'm saying that they talked a little bit
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about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
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The Bible says that's the only thing that won't be forgiven.
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And they said, you know, the other side says that we're blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
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We're really not because of this, this, and this, and this.
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You know what?
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Maybe they're right.
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But I would say I would be real, real careful in some of the things that they said.
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And it's not like these people thought this up originally.
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I mean, people were making these arguments long before these people were born, or certainly
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before they went to seminary.
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Now I have some Presbyterian in my background.
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My father, who was an Assembly of God minister, went back and got his advanced degrees.
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And back in that day, there were no Pentecostal seminaries.
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He went to a Presbyterian seminary.
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And I was in first, second, and third grade.
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And I can remember being, as a young child, being exposed to Presbyterianism.
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I thought it was very dry and kind of boring.
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So my family back in Europe were Huguenots.
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They were Calvinists from France.
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We would call them Presbyterians today.
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And so that's my background.
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Of course, it didn't really affect me all these generations later.
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But I mean, I have some affinity.
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And you know, there are a lot of good things you can say about the Presbyterians.
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For one thing, they aren't, at least a certain segment of the Presbyterians are not going
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to be woke, like a lot of the other mainstream denominations.
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They're very academic.
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They are studious.
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Most of the ones I know personally, and there's a seminary here in my city.
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And I happen to know a lot of these people socially.
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They're usually very nice people.
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I appreciate them.
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You know, there's a lot more than that I could talk about.
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You know, they wanted to prove the New Testament healings.
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And I actually started talking about this a minute ago.
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They show Eutychus, you know, he was a fellow that fell asleep and fell out the window.
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They can't prove he was healed any more than some of these other things.
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And there's a lot, a lot of times these things happen.
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And you can't prove them later.
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One of the reasons I wanted, I wrote God and Donald Trump is that there were prophecies
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going back to 2007 that God was going to raise up somebody that nobody expected who it would
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be.
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Later on, people started saying it was Donald Trump.
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As up to election day, it looked like it was going to be impossible.
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Yet he was elected.
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I wrote an entire book and I documented partly because it was one time where there were very
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clear predictions in writing and on video beforehand and then it came true.
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We published a book with Benny Hinn one time on some of the miracles in his, and we would
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only take them if there was medical proof.
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And a lot of times, it just had not been documented very well before because I guess maybe people
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didn't know what it needed to be.
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One time I saw a hit piece on Benny Hinn on one of these television programs and they
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said he even wrote a book on miracles and they didn't say anything about it.
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And I thought to myself, yeah, they checked that out looking for something to put on this
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show and they didn't find anything because we are very careful.
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Same thing with God and Donald Trump.
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I was very careful.
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Now some of those prophets did say he'd be in for two terms.
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We don't know if he'll be in for two terms or not.
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And it is an embarrassment, as I said, that he didn't win last time.
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You know what?
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They didn't mention my book, which was very carefully documented and it was come to pass.
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I'll say one more thing.
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They made fun of some leaders who were flawed.
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I even went online and looked up, like for example, they criticized John G. Lake, who
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I'd never heard about it.
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Early in his ministry, there was some accusations against him.
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There were some against Catherine Coleman.
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Whatever it was, these people repented, I believe.
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But the thing is the Bible is full of imperfect leaders.
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And you know what?
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I'd like to challenge them.
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Who knows what's in their background?
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Everybody's done something.
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And so when you watch The Cessationist, I think there's a lot we can learn.
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We need to be careful.
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We need to realize that people are watching.
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There is a lot of craziness that happens in Pentecostalism, partly because we have religious
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freedom and there's nobody to really put their thumb on it and squash it.
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It's a dilemma.
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It's something that I've dealt with my entire career.
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We've written about it so many times.
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There's got to be kind of a self-policing and there has been to some extent.
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They even referred to some of it.
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But like I said, they had a point of view.
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They wanted to prove something.
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They proved it.
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Now, I believe that my book, Spirit-Led Living in an Upside-Down World, is actually an answer.
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The Holy Spirit is for today.
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You can read the book.
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You can get it on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
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I actually bought a copy this week in Barnes and Noble.
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I wanted the experience of going in and picking it up off the shelf.
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And I encourage you to do the same.
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We will be dealing with this again.
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I went a little bit over, but I thought it was worth it.
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And I hope that you enjoyed it.
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Share this with others.
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00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:36,720
I don't really want to get into a controversy with these people.
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They're probably very good people.
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But I may reach out and have a debate.
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I will also get certain...
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00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:48,400
Michael Brown has already agreed to be on my podcast and maybe some others.
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My purpose is not to promote her documentary.
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I don't want to make a bigger problem of this because really this has been going on for
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years.
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But that's the way I see it.
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And I have a platform in order to share it.
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And I hope that I caused you to think.
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I hope you enjoyed it.
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And I hope that you tune in again for another edition of The Strang Report.
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God bless you.
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From 1975, Charisma has been at the forefront of reporting on revival, miracles, and the
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move of God in our world.
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