Honest Christian Conversations
A weekly podcast dealing with cultural and spiritual issues within the Christian faith.
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Honest Christian Conversations
A Rebuttal to the End of Sign Gifts
In our latest episode with Johnny T, the insightful host of Refuge Freedom Stories, we explore the enduring presence and significance of gifts like prophecy, dreams, and visions in our modern lives. Johnny shares his personal journey and profound biblical insights to affirm that these spiritual gifts are not relics of the past but vibrant realities today.
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On today's episode. I have a friend and fellow podcaster, johnny T, on the show. You may recognize his name because I often mention him during Season 3. He is the host of Refuge Freedom Stories and a God-fearing man. I enjoyed this conversation so much.
Speaker 1:If you listened to last week's episode on spiritual gifts, today we'll continue on that, but from a perspective of believing the sign. Gifts are still around today. If you didn't listen to last week's episode, listen to that one too, so you have both sides of this subject. Before forming your conclusion, remember to leave your comments and questions with the link in the show notes. Let's get to it. Remember to leave your comments and questions with the link in the show notes. Let's get to it Before the episode starts. Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode.
Speaker 1:Johnny, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm so excited because I've been listening to yours for a while and poached a few of your guests from it, because you have such an amazing podcast. It's raw, it's honest and I love listening to it. I get something out of what you say. Just our conversations on Podmatch I get something out of that too, and yeah, I just I'm very excited to actually get to see your face today and talk to you. And yeah, go ahead and tell the audience who you are and what you do so.
Speaker 2:My name is Johnny T. I'm the host and producer of Refuge Freedom Stories. It's a podcast that shares stories about how people's lives have been changed by the power of God, and there are, as you've said, some incredible stories on there, people from all different walks of life. God is so intimately involved with everybody and has such a personal way of speaking to each of us individually that it just shows how real he is, because there are things and circumstances and connections and other things that go on in our life that only God can orchestrate, and it's amazing to hear those stories. So it's just a blessing to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:Amen to that. So you're in Canada. Right For those who can't hear the accent.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I'll use. I had my plaid lumberjack shirt on earlier, but it's a little too hot.
Speaker 1:What part are you in? Because my aunt lives I think she still lives in British Columbia, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's on the extreme west coast. I'm in Ontario, so about the middle of the country, largest province in the country actually.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, all right. Well, today we're going to be talking about spiritual gifts, visions, prophecies, dreams. Do they still happen? Because these are questions that I'm still trying to find answers to, because this isn't a subject that I grew up hearing a lot about. It was more of the hush-hush you know, that's for the charismatics only, or the crazy people I sometimes heard and my own opinion. The whole subject matter scared me so much that I didn't really start looking into it until I was well into my 30s and started trying to make my spiritual journey my own, rather than this is just writing on my parents' coattails. So what do you know about the subject of spiritual gifts and what would be your opinion on that? Is that something that still happens? People still have the gifts or do you believe that that's just something God can use people but they personally don't have those?
Speaker 2:gifts. Preface that a little bit, because if you look in the world you'll see a large amount of interest and participation in the occult, in New Age, in gurus and yogis and all those kinds of things right. And we know that the devil is a liar, we know that the devil is a counterfeiter, and so he wouldn't put so much effort into all those things if those spiritual gifts of God still existed, were still valid, were still being used today. So I looked up some scriptures you know, prior to our conversation today. And so in Acts, chapter 2, 17, it says and it shall come to pass in the last day, says God. So in Acts, chapter 2, 17,. It says and it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And then in Corinthians it tells us to pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy, it says he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men, and he who prophesies edifies. So Corinthians tells us.
Speaker 2:Again, in 1 Corinthians 12, it says there are diversities of gifts, there's differences of ministries, there's diversities of activities. Okay, so those all come from the Holy Spirit. I do believe they all exist today, that people do operate in those gifts and those ministries. And it says that one's given a word of wisdom. One's given a word of knowledge, one's given faith. There are gifts of healings, there's working of miracles, there's prophecy, there's discerning of spirits, there's different kinds of tongues, tongues and there's interpretations of tongues. And through my journey with the Lord over the last number of decades because I'm old- you don't look old.
Speaker 2:I'm in my mid-60s.
Speaker 1:Well, you look good for 60s.
Speaker 2:Praise God for that. So I've seen or experienced those things in my life. So from a personal level, I know that they exist. And when we talk about uh, prophecy, for example, the test of a prophet is if what they say comes true, if they're speaking on God's behalf, and he's very, he's very strict about what he says about people who are not speaking on his behalf. There's a lot of scriptures, starting from Genesis right through to Revelation, that talk about prophecy and he's very condemning about those who would raise themselves up as a quote, unquote prophet to speak on his behalf. So the test of what he says is a real prophet is when they say something on his behalf and it comes true. And if you think about it, if God is really speaking through somebody as a prophet, then naturally it will come to pass, because it's God giving them what to say and he's instructing them to say that to edify the church, to challenge the church, to bring people back to him, to warn them. You know all these different things that we see in the Bible.
Speaker 2:So that's definitely something that still happens today, in my opinion, and I think that the onus on us is to be in the Word continually, because we have to discern between false spirits, deceptive spirits, and the true voice of God, and the only way that we can do that is by reading his Word and spending time every day with him in prayer and getting to know him. That's not always an easy thing to do. You know, over the last couple of years I've really been seeking the Lord earnestly and it seems the closer I get to him, the further away he seems. It's kind of a paradox, like an anomaly, and I think that's because as we get closer to him, he brings more stuff to the surface in our heart. And because he's bringing more stuff to the surface, it creates that barrier between us and him until he releases us from it. Right, and we let him release us from it.
Speaker 2:But going back to the spiritual gifts, I've been in churches where somebody has prophesied in tongues or somebody has prophesied in English and I've heard, after somebody's prophesied in tongues, somebody else will give that interpretation, somebody entirely different, and it's kind of an amazing thing to see and be a part of. And there's been times where I've had people prophesy specifically to me about things that God wanted to do in my heart or God wanted to do with me. I actually, my wife and I actually have a tape of a prophecy that was spoken over us and it's on a cassette tape.
Speaker 2:If you don't know what that is. I can explain that to you.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know, yeah, I know what a cassette tape is. I'm familiar with betas. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm old too. I'm familiar with betas, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm old too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I have this cassette tape from 1991 with this lady's prophecy. That was recorded, and so I'm looking forward to finding a cassette player so I can listen to it, because 1991 is, you know, 2001, 2020, 11. That's over 30 years ago. Yeah Right, that's crazy. And the one thing that we both remember about her was that she said a bunch of things and then she said, but time is not yet. And we both remember she said that time is not yet. So I'm really interested to see what all those things were that she talked about. So I'm really looking forward to finding a concept there that she talked about. So I'm really looking forward to finding a concept there. But you can see churches today where there's true, real expression of all of those gifts in place. A friend of mine, aaron McGill if you want to read an amazing book it's called, I'll show it to you.
Speaker 1:It's called Sacred Fire.
Speaker 2:Northern Testimonies by the McGill family, and Aaron and his wife and family were called to the native Indigenous people's reserves in Northern Canada because they had suicide rates of almost 45% among their young people.
Speaker 2:One reserve they went to had 90% of the population is poisoned by mercury from processing plants in the area. The water's poisoned, the food's poisoned, their bodies are poisoned and so their suicide rate among young people was high because nobody wanted to live into their 50s, because they saw everything that was happening to these people. So God called him and his wife to go up there, and you can read testimony after testimony after testimony in there of how God spoke into people's lives. God moved, god healed them, god delivered them, god set them free from addictions. In this one county there was 2,000 people living there and they had 200 Coke dealers. One for every 10 persons there that had a Coke dealer and God saved the biggest guy there. So like those are miracles, those are things, and you know, I had a conversation with a guy named James Brown, just published his show last week and he's a scientist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was listening to that one.
Speaker 2:So I said to him about the reality of God. And how do you? Empirical science? Okay, empirical science, in layman's terms, means that you can see tangible evidence of things happening and that proves that that science is true, that it's accurate. Okay, and so I said to him you know, people say they don't believe in God. But yet you can look at yourself, myself, others, god has changed their lives and that's empirical science in itself. He takes an addict and turns him into a preacher, you know, and the list goes on and on and on. So God his word. It says that it never passes away. Right, jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father, but through me, and the truth shall set you free. If that wasn't true about prophets and apostles, evangelists, teachers, pastors and all these spiritual gifts, if it wasn't true, god wouldn't have put it in the Bible.
Speaker 1:That's a lot to think about. So I have a question in regards to prophets. I don't know a lot about this subject, but there are a lot of people out there who are saying a whole bunch of things and I know that you're in Canada, so this probably isn't something that maybe you listen to a lot but there's a lot of people who claim to be prophets, who are talking about the upcoming election we have, or, you know, in the past they prophesied that Trump was going to get his second term all these different things. They prophesy over the weather, that, whatever. Do you classify those as real prophets because they've never had actual anything happen or their prophecies are so vague that I think anyone could probably come up with what they come up with. How do you discern who you believe is a true prophet, as opposed to a lot of the ones that people follow who have been getting all their prophecies with quotation marks wrong for however long they've been on the trail doing it?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you said it yourself that a lot of a lot, or let's say some, we'll call it some. Okay, it says that here in. I just want to read this. It says in Jeremiah 28,. It says as for the prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet comes to pass, the prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent. We know that.
Speaker 2:The Bible tells us that there are going to be wolves in sheep clothing. We know that the enemy wants to deceive us and pull us away from Christ and pull us away from a real intimate relationship with Christ. There are going to be many false teachers. The Bible talks about false teachers and false prophets. We know that. So it's not out of the realm to believe that some of these people are in that category false teachers, false prophets. We also live in a world ripe with social media. People are far too worried about 15 seconds of fame and they need 15 billion followers and all that kind of stuff, right? So if somebody is being motivated by that, then they can go out on a limb and say whatever they want. They could call themselves a prophet, because they know there's a large evangelical population, that they may not necessarily do it intentionally to deceive people, but if they're doing it out of their own need for recognition, they can draw people in and give you know. The Bible talks. It says that God will give them teachers after their own years and I'm paraphrasing that because I don't know the exact scripture. But so if people want to hear things like that, god will allow those kind of prophets quote unquote to raise up and to speak to them so they fall into that alignment. I don't believe that there aren't prophets who are hearing from God about the state of either the American election or, hopefully, an upcoming election soon in Canada, you know.
Speaker 2:But we have to remember that the Bible also says that God is the one that establishes kings in the nations. Okay, he sets rulers up and he takes them down, but he also gives. If you remember back to Saul in the Old Testament, what did Israel do? They weren't happy to just continually have this relationship where God would instruct them and they followed the cloud by day and the fire by night. They wanted a king because they saw all the other nations have a king. So God gave them a king after their own heart.
Speaker 2:So I think they're kind of intertwined, because if a nation is going to turn its back on God, and vehemently turn its back on God, like our two nations have, then God is going to allow them to have leaders that rise up to meet that desire of the nation, of the people. But if you look at Nineveh, all God wanted to see was 10 righteous people. Right, you know. So there are.
Speaker 2:You know God's calling us to seek Him first and foremost, to draw near to Him, to pray for our leaders, as hard as that can be for us to do sometimes, you know. But what we really need to do is pray for God's will to be done. So, going back to your question about prophets, you're going to get both. You're going to get those who are truly speaking for the Lord, but you're going to get those who are also either misled by a deceiving spirit or misled by their own intentions and recognition. Right, and it's up to us to discern the difference. But we can only discern the difference by reading the Word and asking the Lord to show us, because we have to be dependent on His voice, you know, because nothing else really matters, right?
Speaker 1:Who doesn't love free? I know I do. That's why I created a free seven-day devotional for those who want to go deeper with God. It's a short devotional full of encouragement, guidance and impactful Bible verses related to everyday struggles we all go through. I know you will love this devotional as much as I enjoyed writing it and since it's digital, you can do it anywhere, anytime, perfect for the person always on the go. Get the free devotional when you sign up for my mailing list. The link is in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, there's so many voices speaking now, especially, like you said, with social media, everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. So there's people who are going to go on and they're like, okay, what's the topic du jour today? Let's talk about that and let's give a prophecy with quotation marks about that. And of course, it's going to be all fluffy bunny and everything that everyone wants to hear.
Speaker 1:But if you look at a lot of the prophecies that did happen in the Bible, they weren't exactly fluffy bunny, puppy dogs, rainbows. You know they were hard things to hear. You mentioned Nineveh. There's one Repent or you're going to perish. That doesn't sound very cuddly to me. That sounds like, ooh, I better do something about this. This doesn't sound good and nobody's going to want to preach that nowadays unless they're actually hearing from God and they know that this is what they need to say. And I think their voices get drowned out by all the other people who claim to be prophets, who make all these mistakes because all they're doing is trying to tickle the ears of everyone around that you can't actually hear when people might actually have something that God wants to say to people. You're too busy listening to the other ones that sound good.
Speaker 1:So I can understand that and it makes sense that there could very well be prophets, maybe not in the way that we're thinking Biblically. They travel distances to come and say repent now or you're going to die. Maybe it's not a. You need to repent. You were saying someone spoke into your life, yours and your wife's life on that tape. You want to see what came to pass, see how accurate this person was, see where God was really working. I think, as long as you're giving God the glory, as long as the person is doing it without a malicious intent, without a selfish ambition, and they're giving God the glory, I don't think that you have to go all fire and brimstone on them and say prophecy is no more. I mean, maybe you believe that or whatever, but you don't have to call them out if they're still giving God the glory and what they're saying is biblically true. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but don't forget, though, a prophet is there for the edification of the church, right, to call people back to God, and, like we know, in the last days. You can look in the book of Revelation. It talks about the seven different churches, right, and God says if you're lukewarm, talks about the seven different churches, right, and God says if you're lukewarm, I'm going to spew you out of my mouth. Right? So, god, we know where, or we believe we're in the last days, and everything seems to be pointing towards that, and we believe that Jesus's return is imminent, although we don't know when it is. So God is going to raise up prophets that are going to preach repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. He has to, because it's not his will that any should perish, but all should come to repentance. And if he's going to do that, he needs to send out his prophets, his evangelists, to speak to the world and confront them and say look, you know, the way you're living your life is not going to one get you in heaven and two, it's going to put you in hell, and here's the reason why. And explain to them about salvation through Christ. The other prophets can go to those lukewarm churches and rebuke them for what they're doing, just as it was written in the book of Revelation talking about those seven churches.
Speaker 2:Right, that prophet can go to those churches. He may be called. He or she may be called to go and speak to a particular denomination or speak to a group of churches in a certain area of the country, whatever it might be. And then you've got the prophets that speak into someone's life. Okay, maybe you go to a church service somewhere and one of these people who have that gift of prophecy and it doesn't always have to be the preacher, okay, it can be anybody in the body that operates with that gift of prophecy. Okay, because God is no respecter of persons. So there can be anybody in the church that could come up to you and say hey, god's given me a word for you. You know he talks about a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, and God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, can put that upon your heart. You might be in a church service somewhere and God could put that word on your heart and say you know, I should really go and talk to Sally, because I just feel like God wants me to tell her something, god wants me to tell her this, that type of thing, you know, and that can be a spirit of prophecy as well, on a smaller scale, right? So God can use that to bring his church back to him, to call sinners to repentance.
Speaker 2:If you're walking down the street, let's say, you come to a group of people and they're protesting something, and God gives you a word for an individual in that group.
Speaker 2:Like so you're looking around and you see somebody and you know what.
Speaker 2:There's just something about this person and you feel like God is telling you to tell them something. You go over and you tell them that and you really believe that it's from God. They're going to be shocked and it could be something that nobody else knows about, right, and that will show them, right then and there, that God is real, god exists, and so I believe personally that that is the gospel, as God wants us to walk in it in this day and age, because it's not a matter of just preaching a comfortable word. That's not going to get anybody saved. Churches that have a comfortable word, they're in a desperate place and there's a lot of preachers that are preaching prosperity and preaching you can be the best, you and all these different things, right, and that's not the gospel. The gospel is, you know, sin and salvation and the power of the spirit through the anointing, like the disciples had to go and heal the sick and raise the dead and open the eyes of the blind, and that's what God wants to do right now.
Speaker 1:When I'm hearing in what you're saying and what I'm feeling right now is that perhaps the word prophecy, as is used nowadays, is another one of those words. That's being what's it called? Misconstrued, I guess, or misused, like all the other words. We say we love pizza, but we also love our family. Do we love them the same? No, I mean, there's probably another word you could use for how much I care about my pizza, but we use that word liberally and I think it's sounding a lot like perhaps people are doing the same with prophecy, and there's been some other words that I've talked about on the podcast recently, but since I don't know enough about it and after talking with you and with another guest that I've had on, we also talked about the subject I've gotten both sides of it and I agree with parts from his side and your side, and that's what I'm just coming to. The conclusion of is that I think this word is being misused by both sides, maybe Because when those who say that prophecy is over and they have their biblical reasons why they say it's over, perhaps they're only thinking of the word prophecy in the sense of big event prophecies, like biblical proportion.
Speaker 1:We have all the books in the Old Testament, jeremiah I'm reading through, I think, zephaniah we have all those Daniel, all those different prophecies, the dream that he interpreted. All those things seem wonderful and too big and lofty for us to think about. Revelation is another one. I don't believe anyone's having anything like that. That's my personal opinion is that I believe that was the final revelation. We don't really need another revelation. Jesus gave it all, or God gave it all to. I think it was Paul.
Speaker 2:Peter John.
Speaker 1:I was close. This is one of them, but he gave that to him and I feel like that's the last revelation that we really needed. But when you talk about prophecy, it's something that is necessary to change a heart. What we were talking about with Nineveh he just wanted 10 people to be holy and there weren't that many In Nineveh. It was a terrible situation when it came to Sodom and Gomorrah. He couldn't find the people he was needing, so there had to be something big and harsh. That came of it.
Speaker 1:Nineveh repented completely after they heard what was going to happen to them if they didn't. That's maybe, on a smaller scale, something that is happening now, Maybe for our country. Someone is saying we need to repent. I've heard that on a few political podcasts from Christian politicians or whatever that we need to repent. People are going to chalk it up to oh, they're just religious or oh, they're crazy or whatever. But that could potentially be God speaking prophetically through that person that we need to repent before something happens A Nineveh situation, but instead of us getting it like Nineveh did, we're just chalking it up because we've heard all these other prophets with quotation marks who are getting their staffs and they're going out there and pretending they're Gandalf and they're saying we're stopping this storm and all these other things that have nothing to do with anything, and they're failing time and time again, which is discrediting anyone's ability to have any sort of prophetic speaking, that God may actually be speaking through those people, and that angers me, now that I'm understanding more of how even God can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 1:He can raise somebody up to be a prophet for a specific moment, and then they don't have the right to say, oh, I'm a prophet, Give God the glory, because that's who gave it to you in the first place, because you didn't have this gift before you knew God. But there's so many areas that I'm finding out in my Christian faith that are being tainted by people who maybe mean well, but they're doing it wrong because that's how they were taught or they just have malicious and self-seeking intent and because of that they're giving Christianity, Christians, true believers, true, whatever you want to call them. They're giving them a bad name, a bad reputation, and it's not fair, it's not right and it's certainly not glorifying God. And I wouldn't be surprised if our countries are getting judgment because we've neglected what God's been trying to tell us for years.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'm starting to be a little more in the middle in regards to prophecy, because it's just something that in my mind I thought of biblical time, prophecy, that's it. Those things were crazy. So much imagery that I was like I can't understand that. And then there's people now who are saying you need to repent, you need to whatever. Well, that doesn't sound like prophecy. That just sounds like God's talking to you. But isn't that actually what prophecy is is God was talking to somebody and he told them go tell these people what I'm telling you.
Speaker 2:It's still God talking, so I hope I made any sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, yeah, I was thinking out loud, if I made any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, I was thinking out loud. Yeah, no, absolutely, and I would say that our countries are headed down the path more of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, with all of the focus and the agendas and the prescriptive laws and restrictions and everything, and what you can and can't say and what you, when a country turns their heart, it turns away from God. The devil's right there to invade and take people's hearts, and you're right. You say that a lot of people say, well, I'm going to stop this storm from happening in the name of God, and things like that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I would be cautious about saying something like that because, unless it was wholeheartedly, you knew 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, that God had given you that word to say. And it's a terrifying thing to go and believe that. Or it can be a terrifying thing to go and to believe that God has given you something to say to someone, either individually or to a group, because the responsibility to know that it's God really speaking through you is enormous and you just can't glibly go and say, hey, god wants you to know. This God's telling me, to tell you that you really have to know and you really have to be intimate with God to understand that that's His voice, that he wants you to express to them. And I think you're right, like a lot of people may not understand that and may not respect that responsibility enough. And just, it's easy for people to get proud, it's easy for people to pride is, you know, one of the devil's greatest traps. And it's easy for ministers.
Speaker 2:The Bible says that God's going to shake everything. He's going to shake the heavens and the earth. And where is he going to start? At the house of God. And you're seeing that now, where all of these different ministries are starting to unravel, the revelations come to light about the church itself or even people in high positions, whatever it might be. God's stripping everything away right now to get back to a true, unadulterated bride without spot or wrinkle, because that's what he's coming back for.
Speaker 2:He's not coming back for people that are half-hearted or people that are glibly saying they're speaking for Him, you know, operating in these gifts, he's coming back for a bride that is in love with Him and is willing to lay down everything in their life for Him to move when he wants us to, what he wants us to say, what he wants us to do.
Speaker 2:And it's a challenge, as you said. The world is so busy trying to occupy our minds with so much that we need to just kind of shut the doors on those things and take time away from them, maybe even permanently in a lot of cases, to get rid of that noise and to get quiet before God and to hear his voice. And I believe, as more and more people do, that you're going to see God start to raise up this army of people who are walking in that anointing and walking in those different gifts that we talked about, because he wants to show the world that he really is real, that he really can change someone's life, he really can heal people and he does. You know, we don't see it in the Western world very much because of all the unbelief, because we're not in a place of destitution yet like they are in some of the third world countries where God is doing that on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. I will put a pin in today's conversation because there's still so much we didn't discuss. Come back next week to conclude the discussion.
