Ep. 193 - Pentecostal People
Welcome to this week's episode of Tell Me More. We are marching through Eastertide, and we're talking about Pentecostal People. It's fascinating conversation. It's challenging where it ought to be, and we're really glad you're here. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Tell Me More. It's Monday, and we made it into the studio, which sometimes feels a bit like a miracle. Just get all of us in one place at the same time. It doesn't always happen actually, so it maybe is a little bit of a miracle. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But we made it. We did. We have some things going on at First Baptist Arlington Mhmm. Who it turns out does indeed sponsor this podcast.
Speaker 3:Yes. Yes.
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Speaker 1:We live, eat, breathe. First Baptist Church Arlington.
Speaker 3:We do. Which is an awesome thing.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 3:Isn't it? Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1:What's going on around here, Luke?
Speaker 2:Midweek is Popping. Popping. I was gonna say still kicking but that makes it sound like it's just barely hanging on. Yeah. That we're trying
Speaker 1:to kill it.
Speaker 2:It's actually doing really great. Yeah. Midweek's great. Midweek's awesome. Still going.
Speaker 2:There is a kind of wrap up celebration on the North Lawn. I think I heard about inflatables.
Speaker 1:I did hear. Bounce houses.
Speaker 2:Bounce houses on April 29, normal midweek time.
Speaker 1:Which my boys will love.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be great. You should come.
Speaker 1:April 29.
Speaker 3:Correct. Then
Speaker 1:North Lawn. Great share and divorce care. I think we're wrapping up right either that or the next. They go at their own pace. I believe that they're done on that day.
Speaker 2:And then we kinda hit May.
Speaker 1:Kinda crazy, though, to think this semester is gonna be done soon That's wild. In terms of our programming. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It is wild.
Speaker 1:And May is, like, celebration month.
Speaker 3:Covers Graduate Sunday is the April. That's true. Normally, this is in May,
Speaker 2:but we're doing it in April. Think we're celebrating
Speaker 1:that Sunday.
Speaker 3:Yes. I'm a
Speaker 2:be in Alabama. And then we have Mother's Day, high school graduation.
Speaker 1:And then it's camp.
Speaker 2:And then it's camp.
Speaker 1:And then we turn our face toward camp. Speaking of camp.
Speaker 2:It's not too late to register. No. Or invite a friend.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Registration's open. Scholarships are available. If you have a kid at home in the house, don't don't miss camp.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's
Speaker 1:It would be a mistake.
Speaker 2:So for connect camp
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's for kids. That's going into Into grade.
Speaker 1:Into fourth grade. Finishing third grade.
Speaker 2:Third grade going into fourth and then youth camp encounter week would be those going into
Speaker 3:seventh? Eighth.
Speaker 2:I know about connecting because I have a kid doing it.
Speaker 3:Eighth.
Speaker 2:Great. Don't talk to me about it. Counter week, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I know the dates. I don't know the demographic. Eighth grade. But I know they're great and you don't wanna sit on your couch when you could be at camp.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:So sign up for that. Other than that, I think let's you just come here on Sundays. We're trying to let God spiritually form us every Sunday, every Wednesday night, really every day, is our readings. Mhmm. So catch the daily bible readings.
Speaker 1:Kurt has worked hard on thinking through what it means to be a Pentecostal person.
Speaker 3:I mean, they're so
Speaker 2:good.
Speaker 1:So don't miss that as well.
Speaker 3:So good.
Speaker 1:Well Here we are. Oh, I wanna start us before we get into Pentecostal People. Mhmm. We had a question submitted. Oh, we did.
Speaker 1:Might I ask it to y'all?
Speaker 2:Go for it.
Speaker 1:A man who will remain unnamed that I actually don't think would care, he asked if I'm a Thursday crucifixion or a Friday crucifixion gal And I said
Speaker 2:Did he say gal?
Speaker 1:No, that's my wording. And I said, let me ask the pastor what he thinks. Who cares what I think? So there's a little bit of debate. Jesus died and rose three days later or on the third day.
Speaker 1:Obviously we celebrate Friday, the crucifixion on Good Friday. Correct. And then you would call Saturday the second day, you would call Sunday the third day, and he rose on Sunday.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 1:So what is the Dennis Wiles official take on that? Last thing I would say is there is kind of a caveat. Not much happens on Holy Wednesday. So you could you could speed up the
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:The the actions of Holy Week and put the crucifixion on Thursday Mhmm. Which will put the good the what? The good supper. What am I trying to say?
Speaker 3:Good Friday. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The upper room, discourse, all of that, you would put that on Wednesday. Anyway, that's the that's one school of thought. Mhmm. And what's the Dennis Weil School of Thought?
Speaker 3:I'm a Good Friday person.
Speaker 2:So we don't have a Good Thursday service.
Speaker 3:That's correct.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I think some of this depends just looking back. You know, John, his chronology, sometimes is a little bit challenging to reconcile. And that's usually where that came comes from, is you're trying to figure out what John means with some of his terminology. What what day was it. And, but I think the preponderance of evidence is Jesus was crucified on Friday is what I would say.
Speaker 3:Tried on late into the night on Thursday evening, early into Friday morning, and then put to death on Friday is what I'd say. Boom. Buried on Friday. You know, they all they all tell it just a little bit differently. I was looking back because Matthew
Speaker 1:He's flipping through his bible. Yeah. Matthew. Audio folks. You know?
Speaker 1:Right. There's a little bit of a difference of
Speaker 3:Matthew says on the first day of the festival of unleavened bread, the disciples wanna know where you're going to go. Well, then you start counting from there and then eventually you're going to have Jesus, you know, arrested. You've got to figure out when when were the when was the trial. You get the timing in the in the in the gospels is shared with us about the time of day, you know, where you have the earth turning dark in the middle of the day, those kinds of things. But I'm I'm gonna go with Friday.
Speaker 3:Some people go with Thursday. I get that. Just like there are some people that believe Jesus came into Jerusalem on Monday, not on Sunday. So there's
Speaker 1:Palm Monday.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's there's a little bit of discrepancy. You're trying to put together the harmony of the gospels, which, which actually to me even makes them more believable Because you have four different people writing from four different perspectives to four different audiences. And they have their own reasons for writing. And so, yeah, I think that adds to the credibility of it.
Speaker 3:That it's not all just rote in terms of how they share the narrative. I'm gonna go with Friday, Sunday.
Speaker 1:Okay, you heard it here.
Speaker 3:Sunday, Friday, Sunday, the more traditional view.
Speaker 1:Sunday, Friday, Sunday. A lot of a lot of events in between.
Speaker 3:Oh, man. Yeah. Okay. And we don't know everything that week because there as you said, there's we're not sure about Wednesday. You know, sometimes it's called silent Wednesday.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's called spy Wednesday. Trying to
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Understand what Judas was all about Mhmm. At that point in time. And so, you know, I I don't think it's hard to say that you don't think it matters. That's not the right way to put it. I think it's okay to have some differences of opinion about it.
Speaker 3:Long It as matters
Speaker 1:up to a certain point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but as long as, here's the thing, Jesus was crucified, just outside of prison, died bodily, was placed in a tomb bodily, and on Easter Sunday was resurrected from the dead bodily, because we believe in the bodily resurrection
Speaker 1:of
Speaker 3:Christ and the ascension of Christ, that he was in a physical body that you could recognize when he ascended. That heaven earth connection takes place in the incarnation and even in the ascension, that's what I would say.
Speaker 1:And if you get that right.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Then I'm I'm good with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Everything else would be somewhat secondary.
Speaker 3:For the most part. But I would still hold to the traditional view.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, you heard it here. But Easter's in the rearview mirror.
Speaker 3:It is.
Speaker 1:It's never
Speaker 3:in the rearview mirror. It's Easter.
Speaker 1:It's never in the rearview mirror, really. We are entering this season that we've never really called Eastertide before. No. But now we are.
Speaker 3:I mean, I I have personally, like, usually this time of year for the last few years, if I send you an email, it's not uncommon for me to end it with Eastertide blessings. You
Speaker 1:haven't ignored it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But it's just not something I've embraced publicly.
Speaker 1:Well, because it's a bit it's not it's not very accessible It's for the not.
Speaker 2:So liturgical seasons, and I think this is always worth unpacking especially if we're like using the language publicly for the first time.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Why is it called Eastertide and how long is it? Why was why was it determined to be that length? Why would we acknowledge Eastertide and not just Easter Sunday?
Speaker 3:Well, we're we're in the season after Easter, so that's the meaning of Eastertide, obviously. We're we're we're flowing in the season beyond it. But originally, as best we can tell, the the earliest indications are, just like there was a season of preparation, there was a season of celebration after the resurrection of Jesus. And historically, it was a forty day celebration just like the forty day preparation was. So you've got the forty days getting you ready for Easter, so to speak, which eventually becomes known as Lent.
Speaker 3:And then you have forty days from the resurrection of Jesus to the ascension of Jesus. And so typically, at least in the ancient, as best we can tell in the ancient church, there was some type of acknowledgment of that forty day ministry of Jesus as mentioned in the book of Acts, and then he ascends. But over time, the church, the western church in particular, the eastern church still has a forty day period. Yes. The western church decided to add the extra ten days, signifying celebration.
Speaker 2:And the eastern church celebrated Easter yesterday. Yeah. They celebrated I'm talking on Monday.
Speaker 3:Sunday. Yeah. They celebrated differently than us. But so eventually, the Western church decided to include Pentecost as a part of Eastertide, so it was expanded to a fifty day celebration. And that's what I've asked us to do this year, just to acknowledge that because it's my view theologically, that Pentecost is actually a part of the saving work of Jesus.
Speaker 3:It's a part of his redemptive activity. So
Speaker 1:Tell us more.
Speaker 3:We need the gift of the spirit to seal us into the family of God and to also bring, if you want to call it this, was kind of hard to put it in vernacular, but I guess I would say somewhat of a different form of the incarnation, if you will, of incarnational ministry. God is still with us. He was with us in the presence of Jesus. Well, now he's with us through the presence of his Holy Spirit. So connecting Pentecost to Easter just makes sense to me theologically.
Speaker 3:It's almost like the, it's an exclamation point and it's the beginning of a new era. You've ended the physical incarnation of Jesus. He's now been enthroned. He hasn't left us. That's a little bit, I mean, on the one hand, okay, I guess you could say, he did leave, but he didn't abandon the church.
Speaker 3:That's not what happened. He's been enthroned as the risen savior, lamb of God. And now the spirit has been given to us, and when the spirit is given to us, it comes at a at a feast where at least we think, we're not really sure exactly when when did the Jews start incorporating the celebration of the law at the Pentecost feast, but at some point they did. So, you know, Jesus is the is Excuse me. He's the fulfillment of that of the law.
Speaker 3:And so Pentecost is a is a a is a beautiful time for the spirit of God to be given and for the church to embark now on onto a new era as the new covenantal people of God. And so that's why I think the salvific nature of Pentecost is connected to the work of Christ. And it introduces us now to a whole new era of the incarnational presence of Christ through his spirit within the church. It's also to me, and I'm going to preach on this this coming Sunday, is the inauguration of the new temple era. That's where we live now.
Speaker 3:You know, that Jesus was alive during the era of the second temple. But as I pointed out Sunday morning, you know, when you when you read about the dedication of the tabernacle, the glory of God descended on the tabernacle. And so much so that, you know, that that the Jews couldn't even go in it for a while. It was just it was just they were overwhelmed by the glory of God and his presence. But then they eventually will, decide to make Jerusalem their capital, and Solomon will build the temple for the Jews.
Speaker 3:And historically, you know, just in in the ancient world, if you think about it, temples were kind of the homes of the gods. It was it was it's where you went to meet them. It's kind of I mean, realize there's idol worship there, but I mean, was kind of in the mind of the people. That's why you would have a temple. I mean, if you didn't go there to meet your God, well, there would be no reason to have a temple.
Speaker 3:You know, that that's what you did. And so the temple in Jerusalem became that place where heaven and earth meet. And so when it's dedicated, second Chronicles seven, the glory of God descends upon it. And the priest couldn't even go in. So, obviously, marking that, okay, the tabernacle now long is no longer needed.
Speaker 3:Now we have the temple. It gets destroyed in May by Nebuchadnezzar. And so you read in the book of Ezra how Zerubbabel and this group of Jews returns home, rebuild the temple. They build the second temple, and it's dedicated in the book of Ezra. But what's interesting is we have no record in the Old Testament where the glory of God descended into the new temple.
Speaker 3:So it's somewhat glaring in its absence. There's no mention of the glory of God in the temple, in the second temple. And so by the time of Jesus, as you all know, Herod has now added to, what I've forgotten how many years, sixty years of building just this massive structure. Herod didn't build the temple. Some people get confused by that.
Speaker 3:Zerubbabel built the temple built the temple. He built this structure around it and decorated it and these huge towers, it became this incredible edifice. The Jews were very proud of it. I think he did it to placate the Jews and in some ways make it look like he was one, even though he never really was accepted, but regardless. So you have this massive structure, but there's no record in the scripture that the glory of God descended.
Speaker 3:It doesn't mean God wasn't present. It doesn't mean God wasn't accepting the sacrifices of Israel. I'm not I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is, it's interesting to me that you just don't have any comment about that. And so Jesus comes, he's born, and John says, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God.
Speaker 3:And then he says, the word became flesh and tabernacled
Speaker 1:among us.
Speaker 2:You
Speaker 3:can use that English word to translate that Greek word because it is the word that's connected to the word for tabernacle, the noun. And then John says, and we beheld his
Speaker 2:glory. And
Speaker 3:so John seems to be saying, the new temple has come and the glory of God has descended now in the person of Jesus. And so then Jesus ascends to the father. Then on the day of Pentecost, and then and and then John the Baptist said, Matthew three verse 11, John the Baptist said, now I'm a baptize you with water, but the one who comes after me is going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Well, okay. You read the ministry of Jesus and you're thinking, okay, where's the where's the fire?
Speaker 3:You know, Jesus, he I mean, there is record in John's gospel of Jesus participating in his ministry through baptism, but not him personally baptizing. Okay? In fact, John even says he didn't, which makes sense to me because if you ever got baptized by Jesus, I mean, what would you know what I mean? You would be able to I don't know what glow in the dark. I'm not sure what you would I mean, would wouldn't that it would've created a caste system among Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Christians, you know? So that just didn't happen. But Jesus ascends to the father. Where's the spirit in the fire? I mean, we've not really seen that or the evidence of that.
Speaker 3:And then on Pentecost, Luke says all of a sudden there was a mighty rushing wind from heaven. Y'all know wind and spirit's the same word in Yes. There's this there's this In Hebrew. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 3:So there's just this from heaven and all of a sudden tongues of fire are on Let's go. All of these disciples. And then the next thing you know, they're all speaking in languages in which they weren't trained. And you've got Jews in Jerusalem, Luke says, from all over the world and everybody is hearing in their own language. And it To me, what that seems to say to us is that Jesus is establishing what N.
Speaker 3:T. Wright calls his global dominion. It's the reversal of the Tower Of Babel. So now the spirit has come, the fire has come, and the gospel is given to the church for the whole world. And we are now filled with the spirit of God, we become that new temple, if you will.
Speaker 3:So now the glory has actually descended through his spirit. So it's completing the salvific work of Jesus and launching this worldwide missionary movement. So, yeah, Pentecost is
Speaker 1:Kind of a big deal.
Speaker 3:It is. It's a one time
Speaker 1:Kind of a thing.
Speaker 3:Unrepeatable event.
Speaker 1:And it's
Speaker 3:one of the challenges I think you face from an interpretive perspective. When you're studying the book of Acts, you know, you you you have to let the text be the text. It's authoritative. It's the word of God. But it may not necessarily be normative and that's where the challenge comes in trying to interpret the book of Acts because like if like if I read Saul of Tarsus conversion story, I might be led to believe, well, the only way to become a Christian is to be struck blind when Jesus himself appears to you.
Speaker 3:Well, that's that's obviously not normative. That's what did happen to Paul, but that's not necessarily what's going to happen to us. But it is a powerful moment in history. We would all agree. As I said Sunday morning, I would pick Paul out as next to Jesus.
Speaker 3:If you remove Jesus from the conversation, I would challenge anybody to find a more influential human being than the Apostle Paul. I'm sure there may be one, but I think it would be Short
Speaker 1:list, right?
Speaker 3:His bum fellow she said about Earl Campbell, he's he may not be in a class by himself, but it's it doesn't take long to call role.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well D. Dub, can I can I pause this?
Speaker 2:Well, actually, I have a question too.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You go first.
Speaker 1:I wanna know the lit, like the world's most influential people.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Mean, Okay. The whole Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the whole world.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're a historian.
Speaker 3:Mean, I would Hit us with it. I would put Mohammed in there simply because Mohammed has, you know Yeah, You
Speaker 2:would have to include
Speaker 1:him influence, sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But Paul, think about Western civilization, even philosophical thought. I mean, somebody like Plato, I mean, Paul collapses a lot of Greek philosophy into a system that makes sense theologically in some ways. I just can't imagine anybody's writings being more influential than Paul's. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, he's touched almost every sector of Western civilization after he died. So I'll put him in that category. Maybe Abraham, just because of Abraham's progeny.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was trying to say Moses
Speaker 3:is doing the Yeah. And maybe Moses
Speaker 1:But that's I mean, most writings
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Torah, but it's Abraham that really is the imp yeah.
Speaker 3:Man, all of a sudden, you have gotten really, really small if you wanna talk about Just global impact. Impact. It's just a few people. And Paul, so think about it.
Speaker 2:He's like up there with
Speaker 3:He's up there. Yeah. Is. So granted, it does not surprise me that he has this incredible conversion experience. I would almost expect that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know?
Speaker 1:He didn't just come up through the tradition of
Speaker 3:what Exactly. That might So but that's not normative.
Speaker 2:And that's where I wanna come
Speaker 1:back Here's to a more relevant question I'm sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. From
Speaker 2:listening. Well, we'll let the viewer decide. Yeah. Or the listener. It doesn't matter if it's Yours looks great.
Speaker 1:No. It's just great. I understand by my question.
Speaker 2:You know, because I think there's a tension here in how do we decide what's normative in acts Mhmm. While not, you know, we've I think talked in church. You have for sure. We've talked on the podcast about we're not a cessationist church. Sunday morning we had an operatory video featuring some of the work we do in Sierra Leone.
Speaker 2:We saw a video today in staff and we're talking about people who have had experiences where they've been freed from evil spirits
Speaker 1:where Demons.
Speaker 2:You know, I think a couple weeks ago on the podcast you talked about you know, a Baptist leader being prayed over in tongues and a scent.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So how do we balance Mhmm. The maybe not everything in acts as normative Right. Without falling into a cessationist framework. So affirming we can live the life that's written in the pages of the New Testament Mhmm. While recognizing that all not all of it will be our experience.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. That's a very hard question.
Speaker 1:Ask the question again. The last part
Speaker 2:of How do you balance the fact that not everything in access normative?
Speaker 1:Right. Such as Pentecostal.
Speaker 2:Such as we're not going to have a rushing wind with tongues of fire every day.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:With or without falling into a cessationist interpretation of scripture.
Speaker 3:That's good.
Speaker 1:How do you balance those?
Speaker 3:I think it's a great question. I think that I'm
Speaker 2:I don't have a good answer to
Speaker 3:it right now. We
Speaker 1:are sitting at your We didn't
Speaker 2:talk about that before.
Speaker 1:Didn't talk about anything before we start. I think
Speaker 3:probably what I'd say is that you have to balance the book of Acts, I believe, with the more prescriptive scripture in the New Testament. Mhmm. And so the good news is we have Paul's
Speaker 2:Yeah, early says not what
Speaker 3:we have. That's right. You've got Paul's explanation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You've got Acts giving us the narrative of the gift of the Holy Spirit and then the spread of the work of the Holy Spirit in the early church and just how that played out in real time.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 3:so then we've got to try to decide, alright, how do we decide? Well, this appears to be a one time unrepeatable thing. This tends to be more normative. And I think we have to take the rest of the teachings of the New Testament to help us do that. So, for example, when, and here's kind of a rule of thumb when it comes to, let's just pick tongues as an example.
Speaker 3:If you can insert the word language when you read the text and it makes sense, well then it means language.
Speaker 2:Yeah. In Acts two, it's not a spiritual language. No. It's not. They're speaking Cypriot or
Speaker 3:That's right. They're speaking languages in which they weren't trained in. Persian or whatever it perfect sense when you read it that way. Just put the word language. But when you go to first Corinthians and you try to put the word language in, well, that just doesn't make sense because Paul's not talking about languages in first Corinthians.
Speaker 3:He's talking speaking in tongues as in the gift of tongues that are imperceptible to us. It's if you wanna call it a heavenly language that you're not going to understand. I think Paul
Speaker 2:calls it praying in the spirit
Speaker 3:in first Corinthians 14. And you even have to have somebody interpret that for you. There are no interpreters in Acts two. The spirit was the interpreter, not the people. There's nothing there that the spirit of God empowered these people.
Speaker 3:So that's a one time unrepeatable event. That's why we know it's not normative, but we still can learn from it. And then as we start making our way through Acts, there are going to be times where we see the reality of the work of the spirit of God and the power of the gospel, and it just appears to us to be more of a, not just a descriptive text, but also there's some at least some level of prescription involved in it. So for example, the text I read, Sunday one and Acts two, these people that are converted at Pentecostal, they are the witnesses of all this. They have seen and heard the gospel being proclaimed.
Speaker 3:And it had to be overwhelming to them because so for example, let's say you're a Jew and you are from
Speaker 2:Let's pick on Barnabas because he's probably one of the Cyprian Jews who's present at the crowd So based on what we know about his
Speaker 3:let's say he's there, and then you've got more common Jews who might be monolingual. Maybe all they speak is Aramaic. That's just their world. Maybe you understand a little bit of Greek, and all of a sudden they hear these men up there preaching and women preaching, and it sounds to them like gibberish. They must be drunk.
Speaker 3:I mean, what are they doing? Meanwhile, there are people like Barnabas and others standing there going, oh my gosh. They're preaching in language me I completely understand it. And they're obviously not drunk. I'm not sure how they're doing this because these are, these are Israeli Palestinian Jews.
Speaker 3:And we're here from the diaspora. These aren't diaspora Jews for the most part. These are just local people. Some from Northern Israel, but they're still local Jews.
Speaker 2:Somehow They're the local yokels.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They're proclaiming the good news of Jesus in multiple languages and everybody is understanding it in their own language. Well, that's obviously an unrepeatable event, and it's the gift of the spirit of God. So look at that and go, okay, that's that's obviously a one time thing. But then the the birth of the church in Acts two, Luke says, now here's what they did.
Speaker 3:They devoted it, they devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles. Apostles. Okay. Now we're starting to sound like, well this this feels a little more descriptive with some prescriptive, idea tied to it. If we're going to be a church, we probably need to be paying attention to the apostles' teaching.
Speaker 3:And they were committed to prayer, they were committed to fellowship, they were committed to the breaking of bread, they were they were worshiping, they were communing with each other. Alright? Well, now I'm starting to think, well, this seems like the kind of thing you probably need to have woven into the fabric of your church. Well, then I keep reading and you see similar examples in Acts four. And even when you get to the church at Antioch, they're worshiping God.
Speaker 3:They're telling the good news of Jesus. They're sharing in an offering. They're fellowshipping with each other. I mean, I'm beginning to see, oh, okay. This seems to be happening everywhere.
Speaker 3:They're not all speaking in tongues. I'm talking about languages. That's not happening. Okay. That that's obviously not yet, but they are doing some very similar things.
Speaker 3:Now I'm beginning to catch on. And then I've got the epistles to help inform me.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So that's kind of the way I would I think you'd be I think you'd to be careful because there's a ditch on both sides of the road. If you say, well, everything that happened in the book of acts ought to be happening now. Okay. I just don't believe that's valid. Well, nothing that happened in the book of Acts could happen today.
Speaker 3:Well, that's also just as invalid.
Speaker 2:Religious experience isn't everything and it isn't nothing. That's right. And not only that,
Speaker 3:we're we're we're very provincial in our biblical interpretation. You know, for for example, I can remember when I was younger. I can let me just say that for I can remember when I was younger. That's good. Let's for you.
Speaker 3:Let's just let that hang in there for just
Speaker 1:a second.
Speaker 3:But I was very, in my earlier days, I I would say I was very, conservative on on a number of issues that, may not have warranted me holding them so tightly, but I did hold them tightly. And some of it was out of my concern for protecting the validity of the gospel. Some of it was my desire to demonstrate my commitment to the authority of the scripture. So if you started talking about God revealing himself somehow, I was very, very leery of that type of a conversation. So much so that I would discount it.
Speaker 3:But I'm a Western American Christian. Never been at that point in time, I'd never been anywhere outside of my Western context. And so then all of a sudden, I began to get exposed to what God's doing in the majority world. And so I'm in Morocco years ago, and I'm on a mission trip. We actually were in Spain, in Algacer, Spain is where it started.
Speaker 3:And there's a huge migration that happens. It's the largest annual migration in the world. It's Moroccans who go home for holiday from Europe. And they travel to these ports in Spain, and they typically ride a ferry across the Strait Of Gibraltar and go home. And they travel in huge vehicles, small vehicles.
Speaker 3:And it's somewhat humorous when you see it physically because they are bringing things to their families. And so you'll see like a a little Toyota, and on top of that Toyota will be a blue tarp. And what's on top of the Toyota is bigger than the Toyota. You know, it might be a chest freezer, three television sets, know
Speaker 1:Just packed.
Speaker 3:Car noir. You know? And you just look at this car that's just barely It's
Speaker 1:a cartoon?
Speaker 3:Yes. It's barren. You go to Algaceras, and they have these huge parking lots where they park in blocks to fill up the ferries. And my first thought when I got there that morning, I said to one of my friends, I wish I sold blue tarps. We we would all be rich because everybody had one.
Speaker 3:You know? Dennis Wiles tarp salesman. That's what I was thinking. Is that all, dude? It's not too late.
Speaker 3:Maybe. So I'm standing there. Yeah. And there are just literally for two weeks, thousands of cars. I I was I was just I I didn't even know what to do with it.
Speaker 3:I've never seen anything like it. Well, I'm meeting with a group of of missiologists. So we're in this prayer meeting to get ready because we're going to actually spend some time in Morocco. And in their prayers, they're working among the Berber people, which are fiercely Islamic. And they're praying for Jesus to appear to these Berber chieftains in dreams and visions and to speak to them so they'll be open to the gospel.
Speaker 3:Well, in my spirit, I quit praying because I thought to myself, I don't believe this. Jesus doesn't appear to people like We have the word of God, and we had copies of We had, I don't even know how many thousand copies of the scripture, y'all. I've forgotten. We handed out, who knows how many.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But in my I could feel in my spirit, well, I'm not praying that. You know? I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything. I didn't jump up and run out of the room.
Speaker 3:I was more respectful than that, but I just remember thinking, you know, I'm I'm not I'm not joining you in that prayer right there. So when it was all over, I had a conversation with a couple of these missiologists, and I just said to one of them, I said, hey, man. I'm just going tell you right now, I'm Baptist. Okay? Jesus does not appear to people like this.
Speaker 3:That's not I know what y'all are doing and why you would be praying this, but I'm just telling you, next thing you know, he's gonna give he's gonna be giving you scripture, I guess. Is that what's about to happen next? And he looked at me like I had two heads. He said, what? He said, have you ever been in in the part of the world where Islam has such a grip on culture and people?
Speaker 3:I said, yeah. I've been here for two weeks now. And he said, I live here. He said, Dennis, you don't know what you don't know what God's doing? And I kinda looked at him, he said, Jesus is appearing to people all over the world.
Speaker 3:And it's breaking down barriers, and it's opening the doors of the gospel, and we're begging him to do it. And it's happening whether you want to join us in the prayer or not, he said and so they start showing me these videos of of these Muslims giving testimony. I'm standing there. Next thing you know, I'm I'm starting to I'm getting very emotional because it's challenging my everything in me actually. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I came to realize that is exactly what Jesus has been doing and he didn't ask my permission. You know? So Jesus, the book of Acts, in other words, is alive and well in the majority world. Just because we're so provincial in the Western world about how we view everything,
Speaker 2:I you I wanna lean into that, you know, and a lot of my doctoral studies are around secularism in the West. I think as Christians in The United States, Canada, Europe, we underestimate just how secularized we've become. Mhmm. So what that prevents it keeps us locked in a framework that's, you know, Charles Taylor wrote this mass book on secularism that we don't have to get into. Right.
Speaker 2:But I mean the idea is secularism traps us in what he calls this imminent frame. If I was gonna put it another way, it traps us in viewing life as two dimensional. Mhmm. And what Pentecost shows us and what I think our brothers and sisters around the world get is life's not two dimensional. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's three d.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And the whole spirit's moving. At least three.
Speaker 3:At least, yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But we we try to live as if it's flat.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And that's what secularism does to us. And so
Speaker 3:And it it robs you without realizing it.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's so insidious. Yeah. We don't see
Speaker 3:it. Right. But it robs you of a dynamic. And and man, once once that broke inside a knee
Speaker 1:When was that about?
Speaker 3:Good night. That was like let me think about it. '19 probably, '90 maybe. Unless I know
Speaker 2:what say call the it was last millennium.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was in the nineties, somewhere in the early nineties. I was in Garland, I guess. Trying to remember. Anyway, yeah, it was in the nineties.
Speaker 3:I was in Garland. So probably '93 or so. And, you know, I come home and I mean, I'm just different. I've realized that my provincialism has just so and and you'd think I would've been better because I I'd been to Central America, to a very cultic area, and we encountered spiritual warfare. But I just kind of took it like, yeah, that's how it is in Belize.
Speaker 3:I mean, there's so much witchcraft, and man, who knows what goes on there? I just thought, okay, that's kind of an anomaly. Well, yeah, it really changed me, and it helped me loosen a little bit of my grip on being so provincial. I think that's what we have to be careful of. It doesn't mean we can't hold on to our core hermeneutical principles of things that we really believe in are sound Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And interpretive skills. But to always force the scripture into our mold and all and only use, you know, those western eyes, you know, to interpret the scripture. Man, you you First of all, the bible's not a western book, so deceives you a little bit in Greek because Greek's a western language. You You know what I mean? But it's not written by Westerners.
Speaker 3:So for me There's a
Speaker 2:great little book called Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. It's written at an accessible level.
Speaker 3:It is. It's really good. I would just say I myself I deal with that a lot, and I think that's one of the reasons I love Greek and not Hebrew because I'm a westerner and Greek's a western language. I love that. I love the fact that it makes sense.
Speaker 3:Its cadence makes sense. Grammar makes sense. It's very precise. Granted, there are some Greek sentences. Paul, come on.
Speaker 3:Paul's German. Paul writes these sentences that are five paragraphs long. There's got to be a verb in here somewhere. It's just hard. I get it.
Speaker 3:So we need to talk to him about that. But for the most part, you've got this Western language embodying this global message written from an Eastern perspective. That's really what you encounter in the New Testament. And so we can't just somehow hold the bible on lockdown. That's why the book of Acts is so refreshing to me for the western church.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Read this and let it let it somehow challenge you.
Speaker 2:Now Well, and I think too You
Speaker 3:don't do that. I think you you put God in a box.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I remember the the first ascent meeting or second ascent meeting you took to, and I started hanging around some charismatic Christians and I thought
Speaker 1:Yeah. I
Speaker 3:know. It's questionable. I get it.
Speaker 2:I trust God. And they challenged me to go back and reread what Paul says about the gifts of the spirit. I mean, you read and I'm a Baptist. I went Mhmm. Been to a Southern Baptist University.
Speaker 2:I went to a Baptist seminary. Right. And you learn, you take scripture at its plainest
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Most face value interpretation.
Speaker 3:Do that.
Speaker 2:If you go reread Paul, he says explicitly, desire the gift of prophecy, ask for the gift of prophecy and don't prohibit speaking in tongues.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And it's So
Speaker 3:it is challenging to us.
Speaker 2:It's so challenging if you're coming out Which of this
Speaker 3:is why I'm not a cessationist. I don't believe the gifts cease. I just can't reconcile that with the scripture. And it's certainly there's just so much of the spirit where he's just operative. And that's why I think being exposed to the majority world
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:From a
Speaker 3:Christian perspective helps us. I mean, like right now, when you think about our our ladies that were just in Sierra Leone, if if you were to go there and tell them tell these pastors' wives there, they would The spirits aren't real. Yeah. I just don't I just don't know that I believe all this, the spiritual stuff. They they would they would think you have lost your mind.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. They would say because they live in that world. Don't know the bible. Mhmm. I think that's what they would say, and you have no idea what reality is.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, just like they're clipping the little amulet or whatever you call it off the baby, that mom thinks this baby is going to die. We do you're talking about a step of faith. I don't know. I'm so desperate. I don't know what else to do, but if you do this, my baby's going to die.
Speaker 3:And you can't say the baby's not going to die because those forces of darkness are powerful. And so they don't say that, they just say we don't believe that. We just don't believe it. We believe right now your whole family is caught up and gripped by this this demonic force. You need to be set free from it, and that includes everybody in your family, including this innocent baby here.
Speaker 3:And then she allows them to clip that off, and she is thinking, What's going to happen to us? What's my family going to think? And for her to see that her baby did not die and her baby rests in her arms and sleeps peacefully that night, when she shows up the next day, she can't believe it. God's real. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She can't believe it. God is powerful.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So that, you know, that's why the book of Acts to me Let it challenge you. I do. I love reading it. I think it's important to us.
Speaker 3:And, and then, you were teasing me before we started, Katie, about
Speaker 1:having I was. What a
Speaker 3:slide. This salvation history.
Speaker 1:19 different theological terms.
Speaker 2:But around here, call that a Kurt Greiss slide.
Speaker 1:One slide. But
Speaker 3:it but it it is to me the reason I wanted to do that Sunday morning was to make sure our people know this is what's going on right now. It's it's not just the polarized political system we're in
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:The machinations that are at work, forces of economic greed, all those those things have always been with us, and they will always be with us. But underneath all that and really pervasive in it all in terms of what God is up to, this to me, the the the the salvation history that's being played out on the on the cosmic stage, that's what's really going on. That's why I appreciated that astronaut saying on Easter, I'm looking at the earth. I'm in a spaceship. I'm out here in this vast expanse.
Speaker 3:But he said, so is the earth. It's just a spaceship also. It's a little bigger than the one I'm in, but it's out here in this vast expanse of space. Only God could have done this right here. What a good perspective for him, you know, to see, oh my goodness, this thing is so much bigger than I ever imagined, you know.
Speaker 3:So that's what I want our people to understand. There's something really big going on here. We need to be in on it. We need to be discerning. We need to be asking God, what are you doing?
Speaker 3:You know, John Stott used to say, read your bible. He would have said your newspaper. Read them at the same time, but read your bible first. Always read your bible first because that's what's really going on. And then then help you interpret what's happening.
Speaker 3:Don't don't do the opposite. Don't don't interpret the scripture through what's going on. As you do that, and you're constantly gonna be led into into paths that aren't deep enough for us. Mhmm. They just don't bring anything
Speaker 2:to you.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. So, yeah, I'm I'm I'm excited about this season. I really am. I'm looking forward to Sunday, you know, talking about this new temple and what God's up to. And, yeah, I think it's gonna be an informative time for us.
Speaker 3:And and we're Pentecostals. If you're a Christian, you're Pentecostal. I mean, we we believe in what happened at Pentecostal. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Think about it. Chew on it. It's gonna be a fun season.
Speaker 3:It is. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thanks, everyone.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Tell Me More podcast today. You can subscribe to this podcast on your app of choice, or you can visit us at fbca.org to find out more information about the podcast and our church. Thanks for listening. Have a good day.