Join us on Classic Christianity Radio as Bob George navigates through the intriguing topic of modern-day prophets, what the Bible says about their roles today, and why their existence is unnecessary when we have the Word of God. We dive into caller questions, starting with the notion of prophets in the modern era, the centrality of Christ, and how believers can rely more on the scripture for guidance rather than seeking prophetic revelations.
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George. Today we are pleased to present a special radio show featuring call-in listeners from Bob’s original people-to-people daily radio program that was on the air for over 30 years, offering real answers for real-life problems as he addresses common questions as well as the tough issues of today, directing callers to the centrality of Christ in you, your only hope of glory. We want to remind our listeners that Bob George Ministries needs your financial support to continue to have Classic Christianity Radio on the air. Please visit BobGeorge.net to find out how you can help support us financially. Let’s now join Bob as he presents practical biblical insights as he helps people experience a life of faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re going to go to Brampton, Ontario, listening on Joy. Joan, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, I wanted to know about the modern-day prophets, if you could speak on that, please.
SPEAKER 02 :
There aren’t any.
SPEAKER 08 :
There aren’t any?
SPEAKER 02 :
No.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, good.
SPEAKER 02 :
The prophets, what would you need a prophet for when you’ve got the Bible? And a prophet can’t tell you anything that the Bible doesn’t tell you, so there’s no need for it. That’s why it says when the perfect comes, those things will disappear, and the perfect is the completion of the Word of God. We have everything that we need for life and godliness through Christ Jesus, and that’s all been revealed to us through the Word of God. So there’s really no need for a modern-day prophet. And if you had one, how would you know he was real?
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, you’ve answered my question.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, in the Old Testament, if a prophet told a prophecy, it didn’t come true. They stoned them to death. Of course, these people that claim to be modern-day prophets, forget about that one for sure. They’d all be stoned.
SPEAKER 07 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 02 :
But no, there aren’t any modern-day prophets. We have the Word of God. We have teachers. We have evangelists. We have people that are therefore able to teach the word of God. But again, Joan, in the final analysis, you have the greatest teacher in the world living inside of you. He’s called the Holy Spirit. And it’s his job to teach you all truth, to take the things of the Lord Jesus and make them known to us. And so all of us have the ability of understanding the truth of the word of God today. taught by the Holy Spirit if we’ll trust him and allow him to teach us. But we have such a reliance upon people. See, we want to look to the big prophet. Boy, he must really have a hotline with God. It’s like people will call me sometimes, Joan, and say, will you pray for me? And I say, yeah, but I’ll pray with you, but I’m not going to pray for you because I want you to understand that you have the same hotline to God that I have. Just because I’m a minister on the radio does not make me a big deal in God’s eyes. And the same God that listens to me listens to you. And you don’t need me to pray for you. You need to pray for yourself. I’ll be glad to pray with you, but I’m not going to pray for you. I want you to pray for you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, that’s great. You’ve answered my question 100%.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Joan. Well, God bless. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye now. We’re going to go to Hartford, Connecticut. Rick, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, yeah. I’m a follower. I’m a Catholic. I go to church all the time. I always have this guilty feeling that I’m doing something wrong, you know? It’s like, God, you know? And I go to church, and sometimes I can be secular, too. I like to go to, like, the gamble casinos, you know, have a drink here and there. And it’s just like, you know, But I was always depressed, you know. As a kid, I see a psychiatrist now. I take antidepressants just at night to go to sleep, but I always had a problem with sleep. And I’m not working now. I got laid off from my job. And all these things are just like eating down on you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Rick, I’m going to ask you before we go ahead if you’ll turn your radio down because we’re getting a little backlash there on that. But there you go. Rick, one of the things that is a problem in Catholicism, and it’s also a problem in Protestantism, so it’s not one over the other. It’s just teaching that has gone down through the ages, both in the Protestant community and the Catholic community, that is totally contrary to the Word of God. uh… when Jesus went to a cross two thousand years ago he said he died not only to free you of your sin but free you from your guilt uh… because the only reason that uh… you uh… are guilty is if someone’s accusing you and Christ is not accusing you anymore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because the law of the spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death and so but when you’re in a system Whether it be going to a confession booth continually dealing with your sin or going to an altar call in an evangelical church continually dealing with your sin or sitting around in your home confessing your sin in order to get forgiveness. Or if a Jew going back to the Day of Atonement and killing a bull and goat in order to get your sins forgiven year after year, day after day. It doesn’t make any difference which one of those you’re involved in. You’re totally sin preoccupied. Now, in order to keep man from being preoccupied with sin, and rather being preoccupied with life that comes through Christ Jesus, that’s the reason that Jesus took away your sin. He didn’t come to cover it until the next time. He came to take it away. And so, for a person to come to faith… true faith in christ jesus i’m not talking about intellectual belief i’m talking about true faith in christ jesus we have to come to faith in the jesus of the bible not the jesus of our tradition And the Jesus of the Bible didn’t provide an opportunity for you and me to keep giving forgiven.
SPEAKER 07 :
There is no Jesus.
SPEAKER 02 :
He did not. The Jesus in the Bible did not die for the opportunity of you and me keeping ourselves forgiven over and over and over again. That Jesus isn’t in the Bible. The Jesus in the Bible hung on a cross and said it’s finished, didn’t he? And what he meant by that is it is finished. It’s finished in Hebrew. It’s finished in Greek. It’s finished in Latin. It’s finished in English. It’s finished. It means he meant exactly what he said. There is no more forgiveness of sin. I’ve taken it. I’ve done it. It’s over.
SPEAKER 05 :
So as I sinned. It doesn’t matter. He just takes it, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, he doesn’t take it. He’s already taken it.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, he’s already taken it.
SPEAKER 02 :
He did that.
SPEAKER 05 :
How come I repeat my censor? I repeat this.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, because you’ve got flesh. We all repeat our sin. It would be like somebody saying, when you understand what sin is, that which is not of faith is sin. Worry is not of faith. So it would be like somebody saying, how come I continue to worry? Well, because you’ve got flesh. That’s why. It’s not a big deal, isn’t it? But it isn’t that sin does not matter because there’s destruction there. Not from God, but just natural repercussion. But it’s the case that what God wants you to see is, Rick, I took care of that sin 2,000 years ago. And if there was any further forgiveness to be executed on your behalf, I’d have to die again because without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. And I’ve already told you there is no more shedding of blood. There’s no more sacrifice for sins left. So when I went to that cross, that is the final sacrifice for sins. There isn’t any more. And so now the issue is, what are you going to do, not with sins, because I’ve already taken care of that, but what are you going to do with the wages of sin, which is death, and the only solution to that is the gift of God, which is life? Now, that’s why his resurrection, Rick, is such a vital issue because the resurrection is the only cure to the wages of sin, death. So, Rick, again, when you enter into, in other words, there’s a relationship that God wants you to enter into. And that is a relationship that can only come as a result of exercising faith in the truth of Christ Jesus. So when I come to Christ, it’s not just coming to him and then making up what he did for me. Because that’s not coming to Christ. That’s coming to a straw man that you build yourself. The Christ Jesus of the Bible is the one who hung on a cross, and it says, There he who knew no sin became sin for you, so that in him, that’s his resurrected life, you could become the righteousness of God. The Jesus that hung on the cross said, Rick, you don’t have any righteousness of your own. There’s none righteous, no, not one. But I will give you my righteousness. And when you come to me by faith and you are in me and I am in you, you become the righteousness of God. The Jesus that was buried, that was proof of his death. That meant that he was now had fulfilled the entirety of the demands of the law that you and I could not fulfill. The old covenant now fulfilled and now was able to enter into a new covenant because it says in the scripture that unless a man dies, that the will that he makes does not go into effect. You know that today. Until you die, your will will not go into effect. So when Christ died and his burial was proof of that, then he ushered in the new covenant. And that new covenant said their sins and lawless acts, I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins. Sacrificial system has ended. All these systems that man and her man-made religion has developed to keep themselves forgiven should have never been established. It’s over. It’s done. Now, with that having been accomplished, we’re still under the wages of sin. In other words, sin is what caused death. So in order for him to give you life, he had to deal with what caused death. Because if he didn’t deal with what caused death, and he gave you life, next time you sinned, you’d die again, wouldn’t you?
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So in order to give you a life that was totally protected from the wages of sin being death, he dealt with sin once and for all, took it away. Having done that, now ready to offer you the solution to your real problem, which is spiritual death. And the solution to that was, Rick, I came that you might have life. Why do you need life? Because we’re born dead. And I am the resurrection and the life. And if you believe in me, though you were dead spiritually, yet shall you live. And if you live and believe in me, you’ll never die. And he said, do you believe this? Now, when we come to him by faith in that truth, saying, Lord, if you said I was born into this world dead spiritually, that means I’m dead. And if you came to offer me life, I want that life. I don’t want to remain dead. I want life. And if that is the heart’s desire of a man, then by faith is where man merely says, thank you for the death that you provided, the taking away of sins on the cross. Thank you for offering me your life, and I now accept your life into my heart as my Lord and Savior. Now, Rick, I don’t know where you are or whether you have ever done that by faith, not by any outward act. There’s no outward act that can bring that about. I did it by faith. That’s by faith, yeah. And you’ve accepted him by faith. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
I believe it. I mean, it seems so real to me.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Well, that means you’re a child of God. Right. Now, as a child of God, it says in him you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So are you in him?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Then what do you have? Redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He didn’t say in him you get redemption. You get forgiveness of sins, did it? It said something you have. So if you have forgiveness, then that means Rick is a forgiven person.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
You’re not a person who gets forgiveness. Right. You are a forgiven person. That’s good news, isn’t it? Yeah. So is there anything that he’s going to accuse you of then?
SPEAKER 06 :
Nothing.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, nothing. That’s why there’s no condemnation awaiting you who belong to Christ Jesus. Now, if he left you there, just that alone by yourself, why, you could say, hey, whoopee, that’s a good deal. Because I’m a forgiven person, I can go out and do anything I want to do. Right. You say that’s true, but because Jesus lives in you, he’s going to change your wander.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
And because Christ is alive living in you, he is not living in you in order to lead you into a life that’s going to get you back to where you were before.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
So you see, it’s the living Christ living in you that enables you to approach him without any fear, without condemnation, without having to sit there and try to con him. Right. But to be able to say, Lord Jesus, I just blew it. Or, Lord Jesus, you know I’ve got these desires to do what is totally contrary to what you know is good for me and what I know is good for me. And, Lord, I need you to renew my mind and teach me to yield to you and to realize that there’s nothing out here in this world that’s going to replace you. It’s like that song says, I’d rather have Jesus than silver and gold. And that’s what enables us to start walking now in a newness of life, you see. Not in the old way, under the law, but in the new way, under the grace of God.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Wow. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Does that help, brother?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, it does. It helps a lot.
SPEAKER 02 :
Rick, do you have our book, Classic Christianity?
SPEAKER 06 :
Uh, no.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, I’m going to send that to you. Okay. You read through that book and it’ll solidify an awful lot of what we’ve talked about tonight. Okay. And just keep going over that and the scriptures connected with it. I’ll tell you, your life will never be the same.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, thanks a lot.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, my friend. Okay. All right, Rick, you hang on. We’re going to get that information. We’ll send that book to you. Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
Aurora, California, listening on KLT. Chad, you’re on the air. Colorado. Colorado. I knew that when I said that.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know you did. I’ve been listening to you a long time, and every now and then I get confused by that you talk about born-again Christians who are living under legalism for 20-some years. Is that accurate? I mean, is that possible, I guess, is my question.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, Chad. Again, there are people that just don’t know better. Many times they’ve never heard.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, but I’ll be born again, though, is my question.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, sure, you could be born again. Look, yeah, you could be born again and be under legalism. Absolutely. Legalism is just a form. You know, you could say, I have accepted Christ for my life. I’ve accepted him for my forgiveness. I know that Christ lives in me, and I live in Him, and now what do you do? I said, well, study the Word of God and go to church. So you go to church, and here you’ve got someone up there preaching legalism, and you don’t know. They know more than you do.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I agree with that, and I guess the thing is that you said that they understood that they came to the Jesus of the Bible, that you and I live inside of us, and that Jesus is the one that forgave all their sins, and so… I mean, that would be knowledge for them. So living under legalism, wouldn’t the Holy Spirit just make them so sick to their stomach every day that they would, you know?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I think ultimately that does take place. But once again, that’s where, you know, I could look at this type of thing and say, look what, first of all, look at the opposition that grace teachers have had for 2,000 years. Every place that Paul went in, he wasn’t talking to lost people. He was talking to people who had come to Christ through his ministry. And then the Judaizers came in right behind and put them back under the law again. Even Peter, look what happened with Peter. He was certainly saved. But Paul had to chew him out and humiliate him in front of the people for being a hypocrite. So, yeah, that’s totally possible. And not only is it possible, it’s very probable. But look what happens. And if anyone ever could ever get a clue of the pressure and everything else that is upon people who are teachers of grace, if people think that this is an easy go, they just don’t have a clue what’s going on. You’re accused of everything under the sun. You’re accused of being easy on sin. You’re accused of… Just say you’re just accused. It’s not popular, I know. It is about as popular as a Titanic sinking.
SPEAKER 03 :
I know, but I mean…
SPEAKER 02 :
So what I’m saying is there’s not been a widespread accepted teaching of the grace of God. There are very, very few people. I think, and again, we don’t have to dot every I and cross every T. You can take a person like McGee who taught on the radio for years. Well, he taught an awful lot of grace. He would throw in his little bit of legalism every now and then.
SPEAKER 07 :
I know that, but that’s what…
SPEAKER 02 :
horrible yeah but that’s uh that is what happens so did i i taught grace too but i threw in my first john one nines and everything i didn’t know any different but god ultimately brings you to to understand those things and when you do you say praise god for we bring up a good example and i won’t mention the other you know individual name it’s just that as a born-again believer when i was first born again and i’m still a babe in christ it’s been only two and a half years but um
SPEAKER 03 :
When I heard an inconsistency with grace, it’s just so obvious. I mean, it’s just so obvious that that’s legalism and that’s not right. And so that’s what I’m saying is that, I mean, it makes you sick.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Chad, I’ll tell you what you have to realize. You have to have very deep compassion on where people are coming from. Now, I’ll give you an example of that. When I came to Christ at 36 years of age, I don’t ever remember ever having a Bible open. The churches that I went to were more liberal churches, and nobody would have carried a Bible to church who hadn’t even known what it was. A hymn book was tough enough. So when I came to Christ, I had nothing to unlearn. I had not been steeped in legalism. I’d been steeped in just nothingism. And so I had nothing to unlearn at all. So for me to approach the word of God, it was all due. It was fresh. It was exciting. And even though that as I continued, and there’s always that thing of wanting to listen to a teacher and someone that you respect and some of the people that that I listened to would bring in these areas of legalism. I didn’t know they were legalism. And also the work for Jesus deal. That was the biggest form of legalism I was under, was trying to go out and do Jesus’ work for me.
SPEAKER 03 :
And this was after you were born again?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, sure. Absolutely. And so, well, why? Well, because I thought, well, that’s what we should be doing. You know, it made sense. That’s what I ought to be doing. I wasn’t consulting the Lord on that. I was consulting man. Okay. And so, yeah, I went out like that, but still, because of my background, I was never steeped in heavy legalisms like some people. And I thank God for that.
SPEAKER 03 :
I never was. And maybe, you know, your ministry has been so wonderful. I mean, I bashed onto it really quickly, and, you know, that may have helped me out more than others. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
But what if you had been steeped all of your life in legalistic teaching before you were born again? Just steeped in it. And here your head’s full of it. Now you come to Jesus. Now what problem do you have? Getting rid of all that garbage. And you don’t get rid of that garbage overnight. That’s hanging in there. And Satan’s making sure it’s hanging in there. So a person like you and a person like someone who grew up in sheer… They’ve got two different problems altogether. We’re very fortunate, to be real honest with you. I would much rather lead someone to Christ that didn’t have a clue about anything.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s how I was. It came to me just through reading the Gospel and the Gospel alone. And then that was it. And then everything else… you know, was explained to me by Paul. And then I started listening to the radio, and then there you guys were. So fantastic.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, be very compassionate. It’s hard for people like ourselves to be compassionate with legalism because it sounds so stupid to us because we’ve never been emaced in it. But have compassion on those who grew up in it, that God’s pushing that out slowly but surely. Yeah. Thanks, Bob. Okay, brother. Thanks. Have a great evening. Thanks, Chad. Same to you, pal. Bye-bye now. We’re going to go now to Eileen in Santa Cruz, California. Listen on KKMC. Eileen, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello, Bob. Hi, Eileen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Can you hear me? Yeah, I sure can.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. It’s a little windy where I’m at. My question was, actually it is, I had called you about a month ago in my husband’s passing, and we were married about 34 years and believers in the Lord and believed our best relationship was to have the love of Christ within us throughout our marriage, just through our daily endeavors, thinking, reading, talking, thinking. And is it possible that when a loved one’s gone and you were so spiritually in tune with each other all those years that just by praying or whatever you can get the feeling from the Holy Spirit of them, you know, not talking audibly to you, but, you know, maybe betraying a message to you that they’re okay in various things?
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely not, Eileen. There’s nothing in the Scripture to deal with that. And for a person that says they were deep in Christ to think that you can talk to the dead, that’s a contradiction of terms. How are you going to talk to someone that’s dead? Now, the issue is we know that when we come to the point of death, we really don’t die. We just go to sleep in Jesus and wake up in the arms of Jesus. But they’re on a different realm. They’re in the presence of Christ Jesus. They’re not communicating with us at all. You know, I hear people say, oh, people are looking down on us in heaven. I say, if they are, it wouldn’t be heaven looking down on this trash heap that we live in called the earth. So believe me, when you depart from this earth, you’re more preoccupied with who you’re in the presence of, and that’s Jesus, than down here. So no, there’s no, you can get feelings on that type of thing. You can conjure those up, but it’s not God doing that at all, Eileen.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you don’t think it’s anything to do with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER 02 :
I know it isn’t. I know it isn’t. God doesn’t function that way.
SPEAKER 04 :
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 02 :
There’s nothing in Scripture about talking.
SPEAKER 04 :
I find that very interesting.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, of course, you know, because you lost a loved one. But again, don’t ever change your theology because of losing a loved one, Eileen. That’s how people get into cults. is all of a sudden you know all of a sudden you know it’s like a guy had a daughter go to a legalistic college and got mad at me for saying the college was legalistic uh because my daughter went there well i’m glad she did but don’t gauge your appraisal of a university based upon the fact where your daughter went my daughter went to a good university too but i want to tell you there’s a lot of bad teaching going on there uh-huh well no i’m not getting this teaching from anybody i just just Just curious, yeah. No, it would not be.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, it’s not curious. It’s just stuff that has actually came to me, and I’m in no way a believer of Satan or the occult.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Eileen, talking to the dead that has departed is not biblical at all. Not biblical at all.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. I’ve heard people mention that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. No, there’s nothing you’re going to find in the Bible.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, the thing is, there’s nothing audible. It’s not like they’re audibly talking.
SPEAKER 02 :
Ellen, if you want to believe that you’re talking to your husband and stuff and those type of things, you certainly have the right to do that. I’m just saying that when in so doing, you’re giving yourself over to error. And when you give yourself over to error, Satan’s going to take you further into error.
SPEAKER 04 :
Satan for my weakness.
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, that’s an important thing.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, it sure is.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
I don’t blame you at all for that. You know, you loved your husband. You guys had a great relationship.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, everything I get, though, is strange because I get so much scripture. So it’s like I don’t understand.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
So it’s different. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
I just wanted to talk about it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, thanks for your call, Eileen.
SPEAKER 04 :
I hope that helps.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
