Discussing Prophetic Abuse: with John Thomas

hey everyone uh my name is joshua lewis and you're watching the remnant radio today we're having a conversation with john thomas on prophecy he's gonna be our guest who is skype calling in but before i address uh some of these prophetic mechanics and abuses and prophecy uh man uh we need to address why i am located here uh if you're not new to the show uh you know that we have a studio in dallas fort worth it's a beautiful set a great table and lights and cameras and all kinds of great stuff but today i'm actually located in my daughter's room and the reason i sound like a chain smoker and i'm located in my daughter's room today is because i was exposed to coronavirus and tested positive so just a few days ago tested positive but fear not we're taking all the necessary precautions my wife is bringing me three square meals at the door every day my family is quarantined to the opposite side of the house so we're doing everything that we can to keep everyone safe which is why i'm not in the studio well last week i happened to film this episode with john thomas at my buddy's church first baptist lake guacamole and while i was there preaching revival which is possibly where i got kovid not sure um i filmed this episode with john thomas we had some technical difficulties and weren't able to stream so we decided to use that recording and use it today for our broadcast so i hope you enjoy the conversation keep in mind as you'll see in this video john and i do disagree on other prophetic issues and the mechanics of prophecy but the conversation with john is both edifying and encouraging so i hope that you can use this conversation in your day-to-day life to help you process through some of these uh conversations that we have with prophecy in the mechanics of prophecy john is a brother and a friend and i love him dearly i hope that this conversation was as encouraging to you as it was to me john has been on remnant radio a couple of times uh he's discussed with us uh in dream interpretation he's talked about prophecy with us a couple of different times uh and we love having john on the show he's a good friend we respect him john thank you so much for coming on the show today man yeah thank thanks for having me well and funny enough i actually the the pastor is accurate we we've started a community here um in the last year and so i'm actually planting in the process of planting a church and pastoring so that that would be accurate um great but yeah so we had upstream's ministries which is a you know teaching and equipping we're trying to bring health and maturity to the prophetic movement and help people to understand the ways of god and specifically when god speaks in the more metaphorical ways so we do a lot of teaching on dream interpretation and and provide those resources so that that's what i'm doing right now it's it's great john how do people get contacted to your church how do people get connected with what you're starting out there yeah so right now streamsministries.com is our website it has all the information we will have the information for the church we are still we're building very slowly so we will have a landing page about streams healing house which is the name of our church uh soon but we meet right here in the offices so the address is there we meet every sunday morning at 11 a.m okay good for you i mean that's super cool um i didn't do an intro a bit for the show if you guys want to know about us or theology broadcast we interview pastors and teachers from all over the world you can check out more information about us we stream every monday tuesday wednesday uh we stream from four to five p.m and every wednesday we come out with a show on the gifts of the spirit so typically our monday and tuesday shows we're going to mix it up today we're going to be talking about prophecy and the abuse of prophecy and prophetic abuses um john is a great person to have on the show as john paul jackson started the streams ministry that that john thomas now leads uh and he was a voice that was trying to rein in a lot of the hyper charismatic practices i'm using the term hyper it might not be the perfect word uh but but uh charismaticism without a seatbelt right like the charismatic practice that might be going a little too far john paul jackson did a great job of help pastoring and shepherding that movement as we are we're a baby movement we've only been alive for 100 years as far as the earliest pentecostal denominations in america but we do have a rich history um throughout christian history of the practice of the gifts of the spirit so we're trying to re-examine these things we're trying to man what would what is the the safety of uh of prophecy because paul didn't say hey uh uh church of corinth prophecy is this dangerous thing that you should you should be careful of and despise but he's like hey this should be embraced and weighed and tested so uh john when we're talking about uh man the the abuses of prophetic ministry what's what's something that comes to mind that you would want to address i you can go a lot of different arenas but one of the one of the things that really hurts a lot of people that i've had to help people walk people through pastorally people in my church and then as i travel is times when people use prophecy as a way to control other people or control their church rather than allowing it to be a tool that encourages and builds and so i'll give a couple quick examples when i was first learning about prophetic ministry as part of a church in phoenix arizona and there was a local church in that area that was no longer this was near mid-90s when i was being discipled they had already died fell apart uh but they were known because the there was a lot of prophetic activity there and what blew up the church was the pastor would make it a prophetic word hey next sunday the great move of god that we've been praying for is going to start make sure that you're here next sunday the next sunday they would have a service there wouldn't be a great move of god and then he would berate the people because they didn't pray enough and they're the fault why his prophetic word didn't happen and you know you do that once and people can forgive you but this was a consistent pattern that happened and ended up everybody left and he he was uh exposed by some very um well-known leaders for the abuse that was going on and i mean it killed the church but the number of people that that affected and and what it had done so that that's one example in that arena another example i i was pastoring up in the boston area we had a young lady who was kind of new to the prophetic she was hungry she was a worship leader god had touched her life she started coming to our church started getting really hungry for the prophetic so she was going anywhere where there was people prophesying she ends up going to this meeting and there was a guy there um who who had his title prophet so and so and he had given a number of prophetic words that were crazy accurate i mean he's telling people secrets about the prayer life the things that they prayed for and what had happened in their past and and so there had been this beautiful demonstration of astounding gift and he prophesies to her that she's supposed to marry this other guy that's there now this other guy had kind of been pursuing her and she wanted nothing to do with him and she didn't know what to do with that and so i i noticed a few weeks that she hadn't been at church so i called her up like hey what's going on how are you doing is everything okay and she tells me this story and she hadn't been to church because she didn't know if she could trust god if god was telling her that she needed to marry this guy that she didn't like and wanted to have nothing to do with and didn't trust and you so you get those kinds of issues where people are manipulating controlling through the prophetic and using yeah controlling yeah controlling and manipulating using the gift to do so um using the gift to get what they want to happen uh it always ends up bad this is something that you and i have talked about in the past um you and i have talked about um uh prophetic words that are binding on the conscience is the phrase that i use and i would say that privacy is not binding on the conscience and i think you and i disagree on this and people know that we disagree on the show that's no big deal um but what i would want to specifically look at um uh is is how prophecy functions in our lives um uh personally i don't think prophecy binds on the conscience i think there may be hypothetical situations where you have an overwhelming amount of clarity um again if an angel shows up to me speaks to me if i'm getting a bunch of prophetic words there's just an overwhelming amount of clarity i would have to look at that situation i would be afraid to disobey god in a situation like that and i would be inclined to call it sin but it would make me really really uncomfortable to categorize that as sin because then it does sound like that that manipulating kind of power if right disobeying prophecy is sin then why can't the pastor say you go marry so and so you know help me help me work through that and maybe maybe i misunderstood you or misarticulating you and saying prophecy disobeying prophecy would be sin help help walk me through that from your perspective well let me use the the phrase it used prophecy binding on the conscience is prophecy binding on the conscience if you mean prophetic revelation that someone else has given but god has not spoken to you never okay um but if somebody gives you a prophetic word and you've recognized this is god's speaking and you know that it's god because god has made that clear to you for you not to obey what god is saying that is clearly disobedience and um you know what i'm not sure what some of the theological definitions of sin i'm sure there's more than one but to me i i simplify it it's like if you disobey god if you do things contrary to his nature and his ways and his revealed will that's that's sin it's it's wrong right uh and so in that context i would say yes god has the right to tell us what to do and we will be held responsible if we do not obey him but we're not going to be held responsible if we're not sure if it's god we're not going to be held responsible if somebody else is telling us hey god says you need to do this well when he talks to me then i will do that and that is one of those areas i mean that this is one of the clear things as i was thinking but we're going to talk about prophetic abuse but this is one of the areas that has to be talked about how because people will use that it's like no you've got to you know believe the prophets and you will succeed and okay well that's that's great if the prophet is actually that's right and the environment technically discern and just because somebody says this is the word of the lord doesn't mean that we have to believe them okay so and if we have that that that that would be the caveat that i put in that like that's an essential piece of that that whole conversation would you so again i'm i'm i'm with so the most the clearest moment and i know this makes people comfortable probably the second time i've brought this up in two weeks i have to bring it up because it's the only example that i could look at and go man that was so clearly god telling me to tell people something right or that was so clearly god like it was so clear like i've never had an open vision in my life with the exception of this one time i'm sitting in my bed um at the foot of my bed i i lean up like as if i woke up from sleep and i'm looking down and there is an angel at the foot of my bed it's glowing it's got muscle tissue and it's just like no face just muscle tissue it's emitting light from every strand of muscle tissue it's just crazy looking um and it's shiny and it's bright and i'm looking at this thing and i'm thinking wow like this is this is a marvelous angel no wings just just like a humanoid with light emitting from it i'm going wow this is crazy and then i think when his face is shining like the sun jesus's face shines like the sun in the book of revelation and then i thought maybe this is jesus and i heard the voice of god speak oh no i saw him i turned over i saw my wife in bed and she is she is tormented by like a demonic force if you've ever seen people being tormented like you know what that looks like and then i look over and i heard the voice of the lord say um angels of darkness portraying themselves as angels of light and then i kind of came out of this vision and i'm in the same place in my bed that i'm i was at and that thing is gone my wife's not being tormented and i was just like i was blown away um so clearly i've never had an experience like that in my entire life it was so clear it was so vivid and god was clearly speaking to me that it's so easy for me to be deceived and i'm so eager to just assume that everything's supernatural is god and god was clearly speaking to me right and like i i continued to proclaim that message and i felt like to not do that would be wrong right so there is levels of clarity in these moments where i go man but i don't think that's normative i've been around the pentecostal charismatic movement for i mean as long as i've been alive you know so 20 20 something years 29 years um and that's the only time that's ever happened to me i'm not trying to walk around saying angelic visitations from god and visions from heaven are normative and maybe they are for some people but like that is personal for me i would want to submit that to a local church and this is what i want to ask because yes you said if they believe that's for them that's what god is speaking to them as an individual for them not to do it would be sin when we talk about prophecy being weighed by the church now let's say god clearly speaks to you wouldn't you still want to have a posture of like submitting that prophetic word to your local church because we're pretty fallible like we can be there's a lot of prophets right now that are convinced without a shadow of a doubt that god spoke to them that trump would be reelected right like how does how do we work that in to this system um because they feel like it would be sin if they started saying well i guess biden's president like they're so convinced that if they say biden as president they're in sin um that's concerning you know what i mean um so again just talking into that issue yeah well and then it's it's how you understand um convinced that this is the word of the lord we actually have to have a good biblical understanding of how to come to that conviction and part of it is that there's a company there is a community that is supposed to discern revelation together if i am um if i'm part of a local church and and i was i was part of another local church here in the area while while i was here my ministry was completely submitted to my pastor right now i've got a board of people that are overseeing spiritually they're overseeing streams ministries when i share something and i think this might be the word of the lord i submit it to them i have a community of people around me that know me that love me that that hold me accountable if i had something that was a big decision now if i've got a little decision oh i feel like i'm supposed to go knock on this door and lead somebody to the lord i don't actually need to know whether for sure that was the lord or not you still here in scripture that that's a good thing um just try it and if it happens and i lead this person to the lord then i might have a testimony and say man i felt like god was calling me to do this i did this here's the fruit of it i believe that that was the lord that's fine if i get a prophetic word that says i'm supposed to quit my job and pray and people send me money so that i can be supported because this is the call of god in my life i'd better submit that one to a bunch of people yeah i need i'm i'm in covenant relationship with my wife i've been covenant relationship with people around me i'm going to need that corporate discernment and i think this is one of the areas that the prophetic it desperately needs to get it doesn't matter what level someone's gift may or may not be i don't even like the term level of gift but sure it's used it doesn't matter everybody needs to be a part of the local church whatever that means and you know i've done enough ministry in africa that i know our definition of local church in america um is is not quite the definition that is going to work in every place that the church is and every place the church has been but there's a community of believers that are together seeking the lord seeking to live out faithfulness and fulfilling what the bible says in releasing that great commission corporately as a family as a loving group of people so i would just like for for clarity's sake for people who watch the show here like what's your definition for for me it's anywhere where the the bible is taught um the sacraments are administered and there's church discipline that is practiced so if you have a community of believers that are together and they're reading god's word they're teaching god's word they're practicing uh communion they're practicing baptism and when someone in the community is out of line with the step of the gospel through immoral teaching immoral action the church collective determines this is this is immoral we love you but we can't fellowship with this church discipline and that can be on so many different levels church discipline um they're they're for example the prophetic community right now that's that is prophesying um so much error there would need i would think that that any kind of prophetic community would need to be submitted to a local church so the local church could be hey brother we love you but but we need to ask you to to pull this word or something like that because you're you're making the gospel um out to be a mockery like you got to be careful of what you're doing so so when when you say a local church that's what i'm thinking would you be comfortable with that definition definitely that that definition actually works and i i went to the definition because of conversations i've got with a friend that's been a missionary in africa for 30 years sure i asked him well how many churches have you planted he goes well it depends on what you call a church right um that definition would fit what's going on in these tribal areas and that see that's a good historic definition i think of the church at fit in any culture yeah yeah and that's we we wanna we wanna define the church um uh in a broad sense um yeah yeah so so so we're in agreement there so so what i use the illustration to talk about knocking on someone's door not to say should i do it because again i would i would be right there with you i'd be like hey if you feel the leading of the lord to do something you know even my cessationist friends i'm out here in north carolina my good friend matthew's church i was in his wedding we're very very good friends and he would call himself a cessationist and many in his camp would say like look um i believe the prophetic gifts have ceased but i believe god speaks to us i believe he leads us and guides us and he doesn't want to use the word prophecy and i'm i'm comfortable with that i understand why he's in that position but he'd be like yeah i believe god could speak to me as i'm driving a car hey turn right right now you're like okay and you turn right and the wreck happens right in front of you um i'm comfortable with like just saying that's prophecy uh but but that's okay um uh i'm only mean to say that when god speaks to us to knock on that door that if we don't do it is it sin you see what i'm saying it's not to say that should i do it it's not to me i'm right there with you it's not a question of should i or should not but if i go on the day of judgment the lord was like i really wanted you to knock on that door i had a plan for that person's life i told you to do this thing and you didn't do it and and i have a friend a friend of a friend i suppose that did have um some really serious like mental health issues because of the charismatic community he was raised in where he was just constantly thinking he was hearing the voice of god and felt like he was going to be judged for it and it drove him mad and he became a cessationist out of self-preservation um and it was a really it was a really really sad story and there's actually stories in history of people like i'm pretty sure evan roberts has happened to him the welsh revival he just couldn't tell what was god's voice and what wasn't and he went mad um so so help us out with that like for people who are out there they're like man i think this is god i feel like i'm going to be judged if i don't like what would be that process of like pastoring that person out of that really destructive mindset yeah well i'm trying to think of our how far go to to get to where i'm at so i would start with this um if i was having this conversation somebody was in my church like okay hey okay so you said this um this is a situation it's okay so let's start with this what's your definition of sin to me the definition of sin is disobedience to what god has revealed if that's a definition of sin then yes that fits in if the definition of sin means a direct violation of the moral code that is clearly communicated historically and in church uh and in the bible excuse me uh then we've got a different definition of sin and this doesn't fit in that definition of sin and so is there a cost a judgment for not obeying yeah i mean that that cost could be there was a reward you got to be a part of someone coming to the lord and you will never get that reward because you didn't obey that is that that is a form of judgment does it mean that there is a liability to the fires of hell that's a whole different issue now we've got to talk about once saved always saved we've got to go into that whole arena which is not at all what we're talking about so if it's about an issue it does is this going to affect my salvation no is it going to affect your life yes it is because there is sowing and reaping and so if you sow disobedience you're going to reap things in your life that is not good you're going to miss out on joy you're going to miss out in confidence before the presence of god you're going to miss out on the rewards that are on the other side of that that victory that god was inviting you into that there's going to be a cost to it so how do you define sin and what do you mean by judgment uh that has to come into the conversation sure sure and i would say um just trying to make sense of what you're what you're talking about um because like again witnessing to someone is one thing right there's reward that's in heaven you know but like taking this job moving to the city quitting your job living from home those kinds of things if you're having these ideas that are popping into your head right you're like maybe i should do this maybe we should do that and you can't tell if it's god or not and you feel like man i am going to be judged accountable um because some of these thoughts are god and some of them aren't and you just feel trapped in that kind of that circular pendulum um you know i think and that go ahead you said exactly the issue that that clarifies it all i'm not sure if it's god or not if you're not sure god is not going to hold you responsible if you if you don't know that it's god if you're not sure he's not going to hold you responsible for obedience to something that you don't know now i didn't know it was wrong to murder yes there's going to be a responsibility that that's not what so i'm not going back to the 10 commandments the the clear moral law but on these issues that are not about that the the issue is i know that i know that this is god has spoken i know it because i i've wise counsel i have history with god god has made it clear to me and i'm not questioning whether or not it's god i just don't want to do it that that's where where i'm at if somebody doesn't know like i think i kind of think it's god i think it's not god well if how much is it going to cost if you're obedient well it'll make me a little uncomfortable well just go for it it doesn't hurt anything and even if it wasn't god you sacrificing that little bit of comfort is actually a form of worship that's going to build something in your life and you're in your trust and who you are with god um but if it's gonna if it's gonna be a big cost i need to quit my job uh then don't do it do not do it until you're absolutely sure you've got that wise counsel you you have it proven this is actually what god is saying this not this might be what god is saying but this is actually what god is saying those are two very different arenas uh i genuinely do not believe god would ever hold somebody responsible if they had a heart to obey and they genuinely were not sh too over and they missed it gonna say missed it and it's just okay that's a very different issue than willful disobedience because i don't like it i know god's asking me to do it but i'm uncomfortable two completely different issues yeah and and this is where we would say that it seemed right right like it seems it seems right it seems fitting to do this and i would i would encourage people that are out there like you have so many resources um um consumer evangelicalism has made the christian faith um so consumer based that we don't have we don't have um means by discerning these things because there really is a community that's supposed to be around you there's supposed to be a plurality of teachers that are encouraging you and equipping you and you should be able to first and foremost if you feel there's a leading from the lord know what the scripture says about said issue if the scripture is silent about whether to move to massachusetts or to move to oregon you don't know which one it is man that's cool you the scriptures aren't explicit on which which job to take you can then begin to pray into this you have a community of people who are around you you're asking for the leading of the lord in these different areas and we would say this again our cessationist brothers would be in a situation just like this and they would say yeah we believe the lord leads us and we believe the lord guides us into situations we're asking for wisdom we're praying for wisdom god gives generously with that reproach so you don't have to make decisions um on a dime without sufficient information um and that would be that would be um i mean the main council the main direction i would give again i'm i am one who's really uncomfortable calling disobedience to prophecy as sin in the new testament and the reason i i have this issue probably is because it hasn't been fleshed out enough i need to have more theological conversation i need to have more theological study because i can see how quickly this can be a snare i don't want to say no it's not a thing to avoid the snare that's theology determined by pragmatism right because it works let's do it i don't want to do that but i also don't want to run to the other side and be like oh yeah this is for sure sin and see people jump into um jump into a destructive life pattern because i've seen that as well so i really want to hold these intention and prayerfully consider you're just you're just kind of along the journey with me as i'm trying to understand prophecy for those of you who are out there like what what are we doing here um uh uh john what would what would you think some other um i guess prophetic abuses be um you know right now the prophetic movement is is really under an overhaul we've got a very wide swath of the charismatic movement we have people who are saying hey this is way out of bounds we have other people who are saying you know we really need to have a reset we really need to re-examine some things i'm really respecting people who are looking at this and saying we really need to reevaluate uh we have another group of people who are like man i don't think anything's wrong we need to double down on some of these prophecies uh you have to speak to any one person i'm not asking you to just a name drop here but man what what do you think um there are more abuses in the prophetic space that we need to be aware of and address and navigate carefully yeah well so we've dealt with community if somebody's a prophetic person and a prophetic voice and they're not actually part of a loving community that can hold them accountable um just just ignore them move on to someplace else so that that would be one that's good but another one is the humility one one of the things that you recognize in cults in movements that go wrong is it it's people usually that have a genuine hunger for god or the things of god but don't have the nature of christ and so there's a lack of the fruit of the spirit and and humility is one of the things that i look for to trust someone and there are people that i will listen to because i know they often hear the lord or i've seen enough that if they say something is the lord i'm going to actually give it the time to look through it um but i would never submit myself to them because i don't see the level of humility that would give me the trust that god's going to use them and they're actually going to hear him in in being able to take me to where i'm at so i'm always looking for where i'm supposed to go i'm looking for that level of humility am i able to admit it when i've made a mistake if i am a teacher can i talk about you know i used to teach this i was wrong i i've changed my view on this yeah if someone never has changed their theology and their either perfect or they're lying or they refuse to admit they're wrong like there's there's something there that's that's not good well the same thing with a prophetic person if someone's never willing to admit that they missed it or where they missed it and talk about those times and talk about those places you can't trust them to tell you when they get it because they don't know the difference or they're going to lie to cover themselves and i've actually heard someone teaching about the prophetic that said if you're convinced that god has spoken to you and what you said is going to happen doesn't happen don't apologize and say that you missed it just say the prophecy didn't come to pass yeah like that that is so dangerous if you can't admit that you might think that something is god and it's not god um if you don't have that level of humility there's there's a self-deception that is built into that that makes someone not safe and they will use that to manipulate others because they they have to convince people that they're gifted and so there's going to be a level of manipulation whether it's low level or high level it depends on the other woundedness in that person's life um you know there's there's going to be those things that lead to that prophetic abuse and so those would be issues that i would be very aware of so you're talking about character you know there's there's a lot of um there's a lot of people online that say hey these these kind of miraculous gifts they don't pass the character test right these people are practicing these gifts these people are practicing these gifts and they don't pass the character test and i like that you brought in teachers because that's that's always good when talking about prophecy right is to put teachers right next to him and say well the bible says if you're going to teach you're actually going to be held to a stricter judgment uh we want all to prophesy but few to be teachers right so here's this kind of like this dichotomy so the teacher let's use that because it's even more extreme than prophecy right so so as that is the foundation say okay this person's teaching god's word and they have a bad character right they have outbursts of anger they look manipulative they look they want to shame people and discourage people they don't want to correct carefully they don't want to um to to steer someone in the right they enjoy making everyone a heretic right so there's just a character problem right um yeah there's there's that and then you've got um uh uh i mean would you place and this is this is just a question because people want to know right um so that's obvious you wouldn't listen to that teacher but that teacher could be right right that teacher could could really have some some really wicked motives but like teach the scriptures and be like banging on all cylinders you know i mean there are guys out there like they open up galatians one and they're like this is what galatians one says you read it you're like man i never saw that way to go you've got a gift but like your heart is wicked you know like uh uh so so so that's what you're saying they can have a prophetic gift and still not have good character but don't follow those people and i think that's weird that's wisdom and it is it's separating out the difference between um can i learn and can i recognize what god is doing versus submitting to um so you know there are teachers that are some of the best well i don't i don't know i wouldn't say it that way but like there when they teach the bible it's astounding they they are um wise they've done the study they get it they they can understand context they can bring in viewpoints there's a love for the text of scripture that is beautiful but then the way that they talk about people that they disagree with um is hateful it's spiteful yeah it's demeaning it doesn't look like jesus at all and so i will read when they talk about what the text of scripture is saying and i will learn from that but i'm going to do it with a okay god help me to recognize if this is polluted and i'm testing it to scripture and i can grow from that but i would never submit myself to their ministry or or put myself in a place where i was relying on them for an aspect i wouldn't trust them to pastor me yeah and there's a strong difference between i want people to know that like i am not saying that anyone on youtube that has ever been critical is is has a bad spirit because i'm not i'm not saying that at all because i do think that there are people online who speak very strongly right but they're speaking strongly to strong issues right they're things that really really care about and they're speaking with a level of sternness because of the urgency of the issue right and and i don't want people to walk away thinking like oh anytime that someone's harsh because i really want you to listen to other programs people who watch remnant radio i want you to listen to other programs of people who are critical um who critical of us critical of others and i don't think people who are critical of us or people who are critical or others that they're all these mean-spirited people like you know who these people are right like you you can listen to someone and like they have this monolith of the christian faith like this is correct and everything else is wrong and and everything is heresy and there's only just one sliver of orthodoxy that's the christian faith and everything else is blasphemous like i would just really encourage you that like there's there's some serious pride manifesting that you can see in individuals lives when they they live in this monolith they live in this just us for and no more the holy huddle club and uh and you want to be careful and aware of those people but there are other people who are really concerned they're people speaking out against the prophetic movement like and and this is going to split here john might even disagree with me on this but like john mcarthur like i think john mcarthur is just legitimately concerned and is seeing a lot of people really really hurt by the prophetic community and that's what's spurring his spirit on like the way he talks about the charismatic movement i think that's spurred on by wanting to protect people um i don't think that it's spurred on necessarily by like i hate these charismatics um yeah so so i think it takes even discernment to kind of hear criticism and be like why is this person so worked up you know this person's worked up because they see this issue they see what's at stake here um so um just just be careful in your discernment being charitable with people who are critical i would encourage that what do you think about that john well i think there's a big difference between someone that is firm this is the truth if this is not held to it's wrong i mean there there's that strong yeah versus oh they're so stupid i can't believe they would ever believe that that's right like do they even have a brain like what now that is wrong right like that that's demeaning a person that is that that kind of that enmity oh i don't agree with this person so look how evil they are i'm going to make fun of them i'm going to put them down so that nobody ever has the thought of thinking them anything even okay i don't want people to even try to discern because they're just so wrong i'm just going to make everybody think that they're puny and ugly like so that it's the heart behind it and it's the way that you talk about people uh people are image bearers of god yeah hitler was an image bearer of god i hate what he did i hate his actions his his standpoint his viewpoint but as a person that's very different i i would i would be careful of oh he's you know i i mean i almost i don't i don't like even saying like oh he was just a pig and he was like like you you can't say that even if they were that demonically oriented like daniel talking to nebuchadnezzar i mean what nebuchadnezzar did the level of witchcraft that was norm in his rulership the the things that he did to israel and he enjoyed it the the brutality so now that was there well i feel like we're getting off topic a little bit but i almost want to back up because like didn't jesus tell her you go tell that fox or john the baptist like those why sep lookers full of dead men's bones these are pretty unrighteous guys and they're pretty heavy-handed with these guys um i don't want to get too far off of the prophecy bit but i do want to know like what your thoughts are on some of that yeah you know i need to think about that place you you tell that fox yeah i'm not sure um there there was something there that jesus wouldn't even talk to him um but when jesus talked to the pharisees they heard him they were there he was talking to them not about them right and i think that one of the important things with those is like jesus gets more and more harsh right jesus jesus doesn't come out the gate swinging jesus is like hey this is the truth and then like like nicodemus comes to him in the night and is like talking to him and it's like he is witnessing with people and he has a measure of grace with these people and people are getting one out of this this theological trap this theological movement and he's counseling them out one by one and then the people that are left are like this group of just like the their their the wheat is becoming quittier and the chaff is becoming chaffier and man were they chafing you know they were they were they were getting hard after the paint they were not liking jesus and and jesus began to speak to them harder and harder because they because of their opposition because they were resisting the way that they were speaking of the holy spirit's work um it's not like jesus came out of the gate overnight and was like swinging it wasn't like john the baptist was like hey your white supple crow's full of deadman's bone he'd been ministering with these people for so long and they were opposing the work of god for so long um there there was a progression of language with these people and i think that's important to realize and yeah and there was a difference in how they'd done it um jesus had talked to them they had been there they'd heard the teaching so it wasn't that he was over here talking to his crowd and they'd never heard the message and he was just saying how evil they were he was trying to confront them with their own hardness so that they would repent that's right so that they would recognize and he just he keeps on getting more and more clear because they're not catching the hint until he's like this is where you're at like your tombs and you've washed yourselves white and you think that that makes you okay like he was he was very clear but he was talking to them and i think it's very different when you're talking about somebody that you've never communicated with there's never been an interaction with um that that way of demonizing someone to create an us and them because these people hate that person already and now i'm going to show them that i'm with them and that i'm leading them and so i'm going to give them more reason to hate this person but then there's never been an interaction there's never been a communication there's never been yeah who knows if they've ever heard or they ever will hear but that's a whole different issue i think than what was going on yeah in a very small nation small community where everything was i mean they were part of the conversation the conversation wasn't about them they were in it yeah i think that there may be a difference like personally again with public speech um because you know we we're not a discernment mr ministry per se that's not the majority of what we do but we do do response videos to certain things that i think that are beyond in their public teachings right now could i like for example robert henderson right i would do a response to the courts of heaven because i think it's just really really out of bounds um and you know we've done did i reach out to robert henderson personally i have not people have said hey i know him we can reach out to him go for it i'd love to sit down with him that kind of thing um but but i think that there is an entire audience that he's reaching again i'm not targeting him as a person i'm not going after um uh his his character his love for christ what i'm saying is what is what he's teaching is not only wrong but it's super super dangerous and it's gonna hurt people so like again i think you have to separate some of this and saying like yeah um we're not talking about character assassination for the sake of character assassination i think that's what john is talking about we don't we don't start with um hey before we examine this person's teaching let's go after them as a person so that we can wash away all of their teaching um you know when it comes to character make sure that you're aware of their character um and i think that that's fair um and we don't end with that either so i mean just just very quickly just on that same point like robert henderson you go through this is what he teaches this is why i don't agree with it this is wrong i think it's not good i may even think that it's dangerous okay but i'm not going to say robert henderson is such a slimy person he's just like i would never say that because that that's different than talking about the issue yeah and so that's where i would that's where i would separate those kinds of things i think it's fair but like i i i i also don't want to die on that hill like i mean because again there may be situations where um again like looking at the life of jesus looking at the life of john the baptist looking at the apostle paul um there are times again where the situation is strong enough to where paul's like hey those who want to circumcise you i wish they would just chop it off entirely they just completely emasculate themselves i mean like that's strong language paul you know like uh uh uh jesus is saying um uh you know again you tell that that that fox john the baptist says why did sepulcher is full of dead men's bones um you know hymenus in alexandria made shipwrecked the faith um talked about the blacksmith he he done me dirty you know like there's so many different situations in the scriptures where people's names were mentioned and their characters were weighed um and we i think that there is some um there is some responsibility the church has to say like hey we're supposed to judge fruit and the fruit is bad in some of these areas um i think that it would be irresponsible of me i think to judge robert henderson's fruit when i have his teaching and i can judge his teaching i don't have any evidence about his character i don't have any evidence about how he treats his wife and his kids i have no evidence about whether he loves the lord or doesn't love the lord i've got no evidence about i don't know how he does finances um so so i want to be careful about making character assessments when i don't know anything about him as a person what i do know is about his teaching i can make a response to that so i think i think that's what we're talking about yeah that yeah yeah so i would agree with that let's talk about this next one because this is an important one i mentioned just now finances um the dadake mentions false prophets right as people come to you looking for money um what's one of the things that people are looking at right now when they're looking at prophetic abuses they're looking at individuals who you kind of have this like jeremiah complex where if you prophesy enough good things you actually get really close to the king and in this last um election cycle we saw a lot of prophetic people sitting really close to to to former president trump we had a lot of people who were releasing books and going to conferences because of these prophetic revelations that they got about what was going to be held in 2020 a lot lot all of those things didn't happen but they're still getting invitations to go speak at places they're still getting book deals these these things are still happening and they're making lots of money from it and people are really concerned about their character how would you speak into this i mean you you sell content i sell some content very very limited content on our end but but even then like how do we how do we make sense of the character piece as it involves with money i know that's a really loaded question i didn't prep you that for this beforehand if you want to say like hey hard pass i totally would respect that let me know if you have any thoughts it's kind of a a shot in the dark question sorry well i mean it's it's interesting just this this last saturday um which was what was that the 23rd whatever that that day was um we did our monthly gathering and i ended up talking about this whole issue and i brought up the dedication and what it talks about as far as like a prophetic voice if a prophet says in there comes to town he's visiting he's not from there and he comes lay your offering at their feet like that's appropriate you you should honor them financially um i mean that the language you know lay the offering at their feet that's the language that it was used in there but if that profit then decides that they need to stick around they're a false prophet do not give them any money and and i think they were trying to protect from people that would you know they're coming and they're doing what they're supposed to be doing and so they should receive support like that that's appropriate but then they find out oh i'm getting a lot of money here i'm just gonna i'm gonna camp here and continue to milk this thing because this this is great and i'm living better than what i have been um no if you recognize that don't do that and there's different things if they actually were moving there and it was a part of the community then they became a part of the community but they weren't a leader and so they wouldn't be receiving offerings unless they had been recognized as an elder or a leader if they were living there in that place so that there's issues of people that use the gospel for for monetary gain um josh hoff josh hoffert used the the dadake reference i don't have it personally if you just taught on it like on saturday do you do you have the reference i'd love to look it up i i need to pull it up i've i've actually i i've got the whole set of the nicene antenna seen fathers so i've read it a couple different times so i did that off of memory i actually i was not planning on time yeah yeah yeah well i was i was super impressed you're like hey you came up in the moment okay um i was thinking about you know how do we discern uh prophetic which is i mean what we're talking about here yeah um so i if i i i will i will look and see if i have notes on that after we're finished if i do i'll send it to you yeah josh is on soon too i might ask him because he's got a lot of that stuff um yeah and he does a really good job of cataloging it and knowing how to find it yeah i see it and then i've got to go find it again you've got a lot of books notes and like that guy he's i love him yeah he's got everything digital and i like i've seen your library like it's you know i i've never seen his because it's all digital and i like walking into here it's like so many books so so uh you go ahead yes i mean that issue um if someone is is somebody that we're looking at and we've bought their books we've went to their conferences and they are found out to miss it you know what i missed it this is how i missed it i'm sorry great i'll still buy their next book maybe um you know but like there wouldn't be anything that would be doing it i might still go to their conference uh that type of thing i might still support their ministry in some way uh but if they just keep on digging in their heels i'm going to stop supporting them yeah and the thing is people are able to make money on false prophetic words because of the lack of the discernment in the church and if we had greater requirements there would be a lot less of that happening it's it's way too easy to monetize the gospel in today's world and and it doesn't require the the the history and the faithfulness and the backing of the church like it did even 50 years ago even 100 years ago in the church because of virtual youtube sure anybody can get on youtube and develop a following monetize their their things if they get enough people then what happens is you when once that begins to happen you actually have to continue whatever it is that gets you there and john paul taught me this years ago he goes john however you build your ministry is what you're going to have to do to keep it going so you know there's people that built their ministry on having the next prophetic word well if they don't get the next prophetic word they lose their mercy so if god doesn't give him the next prophetic word it's it's going to be a real temptation to not come up with it and so that becomes an issue um we have to be careful of continuing to support those i i don't get to you know say hey this person nobody should ever support him again now if it's somebody that i have responsibility for i people that i influence people that i lead i i do give them warnings like hey stay away from this person they're a false prophet you do not want to have anything to do with them um i will do that but i don't create a video explaining that in in that way that that's for the people that i'm responsible for which is how paul did it he was writing to people that he was responsible for so i mean that that's my own my own thing like you know you you've got a people that are following what you're doing you have a responsibility to be clear and fulfill what it is that you've done so you're you're providing discernment in some times but you're really trying to foster healthy conversation and think about things theologically so you're going to be doing that and that would be normal the people that are following that's who's following yeah and people people don't realize you know what what we do here is so unique in that um we we believe in the gifts of the spirit so i have my my my my groups of i would say hardline continuation is because there are those there are those cessationists that are like um they're they're barely cessationists right they're using the term because they believe the apostles have ceased right and then you've got like the the cessationists who are like god's never gonna do a miracle he's never gonna do a healing he's never gonna do he's never gonna lead us so hardcore um uh closing of any of the gifts that we're we're never gonna consider anything to be god right uh and that's not that's very very rare but there's such a spectrum so there are people that i'm trying to to bring towards the center because i believe the gifts of the spirit are for their good and for their edification so i'm trying to bring these groups in right and then i have this group over here that i think is so hyper charismatic that they're practicing the gifts in a way to leave a trail of bodies behind spiritually they're just people who are leaving the faith people who are have been abused and hurt and confused and they don't know how to make sense of the christian life after they've left these movements um and it's hurting people so deeply and so badly that's really my main hardest for this group so there's like these two sides i'm trying to bring in and say look we believe in the gifts of the spirit but this has to be defined like it was in the early church and not in the culture that we want to we want to create right so so we're trying to create that balance so you'll hear us calling balls and strikes on both sides because i feel like there really needs to be um honest voices that are brave i i'm getting hit on both sides the hyper charismatics think i'm too mean the the the hard-line cessationists don't think i'm mean enough right like uh i'm getting i'm getting criticized on both sides but but i'm okay with that like i understand i'm putting a target on myself for that um so but we also want to be known as a ministry that's very patient and is very kind and is not picking unnecessary fights right we're really going to try to pick our battles and when people are watching i just want to encourage you like when you see us having uh conversations with todd white when you see us having conversations with bethel people when you see us having conversations know that like you know that we see at the beginning of every show we don't agree with all these people but part of this is really just bringing these people in and saying like hey you're brothers we we love you but we're also going to speak some truth into some of these areas that we're concerned about and todd knows that you know he's come on the show he's super brave to have a conversation with us on theology and we have to be willing to understand that other people aren't where we are right so so even though there are things that we think are prophetically abusive they're not aware of those things and as you begin to talk about these things openly it's shocking how many people are going wow maybe like we made videos on the 2020 prophecy and there are people that were angry i mean they were angry that we were even doing this and then after the video after they watch it they send me these emails going yeah my bad like that was pretty balanced and uh yeah i think i've got to really reflect on myself and my ministry and really reconsider some things uh so so we've we're trying to be careful and i know that we're not always falling on the right line for some people give us grace as we're trying to give other people grace and navigating these waters um john i love that you guys do that's the reason why i actually send a lot of people to different videos that you guys do for that very reason because there's clarity and there's generosity to both sides of the issue which i think is key to having the conversation yeah and we want to do that if there's people out there who are like hey you know we're on the cessation aside we want to challenge you come on like let's have that conversation i'm cool with that um i want to push you a little bit further on on the money question you know because people are gonna uh i see manipulation we can see that in a local context but what if you're like further back you know and you see the cnn report and you fly over and this guy's got a mansion and this guy's got cars and it's obvious we could talk about the the jets but like that's that's not even we don't have to talk about that like what about the people that are like they're just they bleed money they're just so so wealthy and they're doing ministry stuff like is that a character problem as far as you can tell i haven't really spoken into this much because i know i know ministers who actually don't take salaries from their churches and don't take salaries from their ministries and they invested in real estate early on in their ministry days and they actually don't take money from their ministry and they're very very wealthy and people on the outside who see ministry they don't realize that the ministry money is going 100 to missions 100 to um helping other people get started uh but they're just really good stewards of money um so so i don't always speak into this issue because it's kind of it's kind of confusing for me um but but what would you say like hey there are people out here they have this image of wealth they have this image of prestige in the eyes of the world um how would we discern whether we should follow people that look like they got it all together in the finance space yeah i i would unless i knew whether or not there was a love of money um i i wouldn't actually use somebody whether they had money or didn't have money as part of a discernment i i would look at what do they actually teach what's their practices what's the fruit in the lives that are following them and you know is there is there abuse is there manipulation is there control um you know one one thing that you know i i clearly like i think this is always wrong you know if you give me a thousand dollars today i promise that god's going to bless you right and you're you know like all right if you're going to prophesy money out of people i i've i had a conversation with a friend of mine who she'd come to some of the classes that we did her dad was a pastor in mexico love the gifts of spirit love the prophetic there were a couple guys that were becoming well known clear i mean like prophetic words words of knowledge they're miracles like so he brings them into his town gets pastors and leaders in his town they come in and god begins to move powerfully yeah in in things that are happening but within two weeks and they stuck around like they didn't go with because everything was going on everybody was so excited like look at all this within two weeks they had prophesied themselves into the beds of numerous women and taken money some people every penny that they had and and just used up and then once they that stopped working they just left and disappeared nobody ever heard from him again yeah um you know if somebody's going to use a prophetic word to get money like you you should give me this uh i mean can it happen yes hey i i know that you only have that little bit of oil that little bit of flour yeah i know you're that you're gonna die give me some first and then eat the rest and die right and that's biblical example did that happen was it the word of the lord yeah uh do i trust that well does it happen once and is there fruit or is this something that they do and who is their life so i mean that would be an issue like yeah i wouldn't even play with it that's probably the love of money and i would never do that but because it's in the bible i can't say god would never do that sure i just don't want to have anything to do with it no and um i understand that i would say that though like again you've got the character test the doctrine test you have you have areas where it's like um hopefully i really really believe firmly like can we have guest prophets come in yeah maybe i i've got no problem with that but like really prophetic ministry i would really really encourage it to let those who labor among you be known among you like know the character of the person that's ministering your pastor who's teaching you right like know the character of that guy right and if you've got a person that's a prophetic voice and you know that person you know there's not love of money you know who that person is that they love jesus with their heart mind soul and strength like they're they're biblically committed they're biblically submitted they're biblically um you know like again i think of agabus activists was like hey there's a drought um what if acaba said hey there's a drought and we should save some money like would that have been all that horrible the thing to say and to ask of people um i don't know um but i would say that again not necessarily but this this needs to be a context of community and i think this is one of the primary things that the prophetic is missing right now is prophetic is this platform ministry that we get to wow and shock people from the stage but it's not done within the context now it's possible you bring in a prophetic person you do the teaching but hopefully that's happening on your local context hopefully that's happening in your local church to such a way that that thing gets passed on and that we stop having the superstar christianity and we have like actual christians who are able to operate in these gifts yeah one of the things that that i've done i mean just even how i do ministry and where i go um if if i'm invited to go somewhere i'll go there yeah but if i'm invited to go and they have me come in and i do the meeting and it goes great and then i leave and i'm not relating with the leaders i'm not relating with the elders that are in that church if they invite me again i'm probably not going to come back simply because i don't think it's safe to have ministry itinerant ministry that's not built off of relationships that's good man um uh most of my travel is full before the year starts not because i get so many invitations but because i have places where i know and i love the pastors i know and i love the leadership and i go in and i'm there for a day or two before and usually a day after just to hang out have fun we play games we go out to eat we talk we talk about what's going on in the church and we do meetings as an extra to that so that i can help them build their church that i think is is a healthier way of doing prophetic ministry and but too often prophetic ministries especially becomes christian entertainment yeah some churches have the the christian comedian and some people have the christian prophets like christian fortune teller yeah so it's there there's a there's a problem in how we engage with the gift and as a pastor if i'm gonna have somebody come in and minister in my congregation i'm going to have developed some level of relationship uh will i have somebody that i've heard of that i don't know depends on how i heard of them do i know somebody that has relationship with them do i have a a strong enough confirmation that their character is good do i know enough about their ministry to to recognize they're actually they have good relationships they they have good doctrine and that's there if so i will trust a friend to tell me i can trust this person to come in yeah but if i don't have that like i made this mistake early on when i started pastoring matt i was so excited i mean anything if god was moving like i heard about this guy he had a couple miracles i get hold of him i'm like can you come to the church and it was awful i didn't have any relationship didn't know him and it just it i did that a couple times and it's been six weeks cleaning up every time right yeah i'm like i'm no if i don't know you if i don't know what church you belong to if i i want to build a health in a body of christ and i think if we as prophetic people did that i think it would change things a lot yeah i don't know if this would help to to some extent but one of the one of the things one a free resource is one of the things that we have just clarifying yeah um on our website under what we believe we've got a statement of doctrine but we have this biblical protocols for healthy new testament ministry uh and it was put together by john paul jackson and mark dupont spent a year talking through this and starting to put it together and they sat down with john sanford who's passed away a while ago and lauren sanford who's his oldest son uh a number of prophetic people and just worked through like what what are some healthy protocols uh i think i think some would find it very interesting i highly suggest it to pastors that have guest speakers in like make sure it fits this i mean it talks about character it talks about how you handle money how you talk about it whether or not you sell the prophetic gift um or you know it's there's no problem with getting an honorarian for coming to minister but you know somebody that charges somebody for prophetic word um i i have a real problem i don't know how someone can keep their heart right and do that um i mean that's up to somebody else i just have i'm not comfortable with it yeah i think uh so there's some helpful things that would be worth looking at that's super helpful man and i appreciate you and i've i've always enjoyed our conversations i feel like uh uh you stretch me in a lot of areas you've thought through this a lot you live in the prophetic space um so i'm always encouraged by our conversations i always learn quite a bit um and and it helps me think through this stuff and i think that's one of the things that's really important for our audience to know is like man you gotta you've gotta have people outside of your space because if you live inside an echo chamber you're not going to consider um the different aspects of this and the church universal has really understood prophecy in different ways and we really need to to try to grapple with this and understand this to the best of our ability so i encourage you have conversations you'll find that you probably agree with people more than you disagree with people people are going to wear the badge continuationness and sensationist pentecostal charismatic um i believe all the gifts of cease but after you're having actual conversations you might actually all be practicing the same way but just wanting to call things different so uh just just be aware of that as as the days go on i've learned there's a lot more similarity than differences with these people so uh john man thanks again for coming on it's an honor i really appreciate you taking time out of your day people don't know uh i rescheduled you rescheduled i rescheduled i feel like i rescheduled three times and you were scheduled once because you got sick but man it's been crazy it's been i'm so thankful and we even had technical issues we almost canceled today so uh man i really honor you i respect you thank you so much for your time and energy um uh i think it's super helpful um to our audience to help think through these things um how do people get in contact with you so they can follow up with your ministry man yeah streamsministries.com we've got like i mentioned the you know the what we believe those protocols i really think that'll be helpful but we have links to all of our social media um we we put a lot of stuff on our youtube channel um and yeah so streams ministries.com it's the best way to get hold of us and love to be a blessing to to people that are interested amen yeah and uh we're we're really considering we've been talking about this for a while we really want to in the next four years five years put together a statement um on the gifts um we really want to have a comprehensive statement on the gifts of the spirit that churches can accept um there's a lot of denominational statements um that people don't fit into very strictly and we want to create a broad statement so when someone says hey i'm charismatic or hey i'm i believe in the gifts they can say what does that mean and you can say i believe in this statement of faith this is the way tongues are operated and not this way this is how prophecy operates and not that way and creating boundaries and language so that when we say this is what we are there's actually a statement that we can back and say this is what i mean by this this and not that because right now there's been just a lot of just unfair characteristics of cessationists and unfair characteristics of continuationists and we really need categories to think and talk in and that's why i'm encouraged i have to check this out i've never seen this before john this this privacy uh guideline but i'm looking in i'm really interested in looking at it so uh send me the link i'll put it in the description of this video as people watch it later on well i hope you enjoyed that video from john thomas and i from last week i'm praying for you i hope that you are all well if this video was encouraging to you you were blessed by this i would ask please give on patreon it's one of the ways that we support the ministry here uh just so you know where we're at financially uh there was a large check that was given to us that would cover six months of my salary here at remnant um and that was about four months ago we've got two more months of salary left on that donation and we're hoping to get patreon up to the point where it can support my family and i full time just cards on the table youtube the last couple of months and patreon together would have been sufficient to support that salary but recently um as of january the youtube algorithms for some reason have gone down our view count is still up our view count is still very good um but our income has almost cut in half from what it was um last last month not sure why that is um our content is still the same maybe the algorithms have changed but what i'd like to do is just ask man if you're out there if you love the ministry man donate as low as five bucks a month there on patreon you get some extra content kicked back but you also support me and my family so that we can continue doing remnant radio every single week like two or three times a week um so your donations are much appreciated um as as they help us continue uh to create this content uh secondly if you're out there and like hey i can't give five bucks a month i totally get that been there i've been so broke my baloney didn't have a first name uh so what i would ask you to do is grab the video links of your favorite videos share them with some of your friends and family and encourage them to watch because as we get views here on youtube we do actually get revenue that comes in from that sometimes it's cents per view but man every little view counts so i would thank you so much for your continuous support in the channel help share our content so we keep creating great content just like this i hope this video blesses you and we will see you tomorrow with our good friend anthony scuma picking up our second conversation on the assemblies of god and discussing the race relations that took place in their history it's very very interesting and i hope that the sound of children in the background isn't too distracting blessings and we will see you tomorrow

Channel: The Remnant Radio

Views: 8,811

Rating: 4.8222222 out of 5

Keywords: Discussing Prophetic Abuse, prophetic abuse, streams ministries, John Thomas, john thomas prophetic abuse, john thomas and prophecy, prophecy john thomas, john thomas streams ministries, john e thomas streams ministries, john e thomas

Id: yOjl2U72obM

Length: 73min 58sec (4438 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021