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A teenage girl healed of deafness at an 80,000-person revival? When Philip Anthony Mitchell, pastor of 2819 Church in Atlanta, announced that she had removed her hearing aids at the Access event in Arlington, Texas, the claim spread fast, picked up by Malachi O'Brien and Charisma Magazine.Justin Peters has questions, starting with the wording of the post itself. Anyone helped by a hearing aid, he points out, was not completely deaf. He explains the difference between a psychosomatic healing, a temporary relief driven by adrenaline, expectation and emotion, and an organic healing that has no medical explanation. Peters credits Mitchell for preaching sin and repentance, but shows how his promise that every sick body could be healed puts him squarely in the charismatic camp.Along the way, Peters revisits John G. Lake's supposed healing of a deaf teenage girl, which the Spokane Press debunked. He also plays 1990s documentary clips of Benny Hinn showing how easily people are convinced they've been healed. Then he turns to Acts 3 and 4, where a man lame from birth walked, leaped and praised God, and even the Sanhedrin admitted they could not deny it.As a cessationist, Peters believes God still heals when it is his sovereign will. He also believes no one possesses the gift of healing today. This episode matters because it equips believers to test sensational miracle claims against Scripture rather than headlines.➡️ Click here to find all of Justin’s essential links.

Randy Clark once invited Benny Hinn to speak and pray for impartation, despite Hinn's decades of problematic teaching on healing, because Clark wanted the anointing. Afterward, Clark had to privately correct Hinn's theology for his own people. Brandon Kimber shares that story publicly for the first time here.Justin Peters sits down with Kimber, producer of the American Gospel docuseries, to talk about American Gospel 3: Spirit and Fire. It's an 18-episode project, six years in the making, on the Holy Spirit, the New Apostolic Reformation and Bethel Redding. Kimber grew up in a church swept up in the Toronto Blessing, and Peters came out of word-faith prosperity teaching himself.They go through the errors underneath the recent scandals. These include Bill Johnson's mandate to do greater miracles than Jesus, physical healing guaranteed in the atonement, and a "charismatic deism" that makes man responsible for answered prayer. They also cover Matthew 3:11 pulled out of context, prophetic packages sold to businesses, and guided trips to heaven that Kimber calls necromancy. Jesse Westwood's story shows what dead-raising theology does to grieving people.Against all of it, Peters and Kimber point to the sovereignty of God. They draw on Job, Isaiah 53, Nabeel Qureshi's story and the death of Kimber's own father from Alzheimer's. Sometimes God is most glorified in us when things are not going well.This isn't cessationists attacking charismatics. It shouldn't take clergy sexual abuse or a cover-up culture to expose these red flags. Bad doctrine hurts people, and this conversation shows how to recognize it.➡️ Click here to find all of Justin’s essential links.

When a country music legend dies, roughly 99.5% of conservative evangelicals become practical universalists in a day. That line, from pastor friend Mike Stone, frames Justin Peters' response to the death of Dolly Parton at 80 and the many — pastors included — who have ushered her straight into heaven.Peters lets Dolly speak for herself, playing clips from a 2016 Larry King interview where she affirms the LGBTQ movement and says "if you're gay, you're gay." Then he goes to the text: Romans 1:26-27 and what he calls the wrath of God's abandonment, when God gives people over to depraved minds; and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, where Paul lists the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers and swindlers among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Romans 14:22 lands too — blessed is the man not condemned by what he approves.He also addresses Parton's Playboy appearance and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the difference between stumbling into sin and swimming in it, and why singing "He's Alive" settles nothing when Satan believes Jesus is alive too. A Jesus who does not say what the Bible says, Justin warns, is an idol.It does not end in condemnation. Verse 11 — "such were some of you," washed, sanctified, justified — is where Peters preaches the gospel and calls homosexual and heterosexual alike to repent and trust Christ. This matters because eternity is not decided by a hymn well sung, and loving people means telling them the truth.➡️ Click here to find all of Justin’s essential links.