LIVE DISCUSSION: (Job 15:17-19) "Trusting Tradition & Antiquity" Part 1/4

Start with Job 15 and something familiar happens: Eliphaz anchors his counsel in what he has “seen,” then insists Job accept it as authority. That move—experience elevated over revelation—feels uncomfortably modern. We pressed into that tension and traced how the same pattern fuels claims of oneness, modalism, tongues as a test of salvation, and the endless refrain of “God told me to tell you.” The through line is simple and urgent: experience can confirm truth, but it must never define it.

We open the text in verses 17 to 19 and watch how Eliphaz frames credibility without exegesis. From there, we connect his approach to our moment, where recycled doctrines return under new names. History matters here, not as trivia, but as a map that shows where false turns lead. Along the way, we talk about the royal priesthood—every believer indwelled by the same Spirit, standing on equal ground. Teachers serve the church, but no one has a special hotline that outranks Scripture. If it cannot be shown in the text and in context, it cannot bind the conscience.

Listeners share vulnerable stories of confusion, pressure, and being told that without tongues they lack the Spirit. We walk through why that standard fails the biblical test, how emotion can masquerade as authority, and why Hebrews anchors God’s speech now in the Son and the inscripturated Word. Personal guidance is real, but it guides application, not revelation. We end with a call to courage and humility: become a student of the Word, test every claim, welcome correction, and speak with clarity and mercy. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs ballast, and leave a review telling us one belief you’ve recently tested against Scripture.

Transcript

Returning To Job 15

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Christians, good evening. I hope and trust that you're having a good start to your week. And uh I am, and uh I'm looking forward to getting into this exposition of Job, continuing what we have been discussing first by verse in the book of Job. So we're going to continue with that. Um last night we had a good conversation where we discussed the problems and the errors that are associated with oneness and the modalism movement, which is really not a movement, has actually been here for a long time. And it's important that we understand these things because almost everything you get you would you could possibly hear today, almost everything that you can possibly hear today, every false doctrine has already been here. Has already been here. And so it's really important that we as students of the Word of God become acquainted with these things so that we can recognize it when it resurfaces with a different head. Um, for many of you who are part of one of the groups that I've set up, um, I am beginning to put a lot of historical sketches, is what I call them, on my profiles so that Christians can begin to get a snapshot of where a lot of these things that we have been discussing and that we well will discuss where they come from. There is nothing new under the sun, nothing at all. But tonight we're going to continue in the book of Job, and we are in chapter 15. So uh welcome and I'm glad you are here. We're gonna start in verse 17 of Job 15, and I'm gonna read the first three verses in this section, beginning at verse 17. Job 15, verse 17. And it says this I will show you, hear me, and that which I have seen, I will declare. Unto whom alone the earth was given, and no stranger passed among them. I'm sorry, let me back up again. Verse 17, I will show thee, hear me, and that which I have seen I will declare, verse eighteen, which wise men have told from their fathers and have not hid. Verse 19. Unto whom alone the earth was given, and no stranger passed. Now a few days ago, when we were um uh in Job, the last time, uh it was Mariah, my sister Mariah, who pointed out to me um that something wasn't reading right in the verses that I made, and I realized when I went back in my my notes that I had somehow um, you know, when you cut and paste something, if you don't clear it and you think you're pasting something, you're getting it from the wrong notes. So anyway, what I did was I posted, I posted a verse where I had notes on Job 25, verse 6, I believe it was, and somehow I pasted it accidentally into my notes on Job 15 instead of 25. So that was the mistake. Turned out to be a good thing because um the truth is that my notes on that verse were correct. I was just presenting them in the wrong chapter. So I owe much to my sister Mariah, um, who is obviously diligent and present with the word of God at the time, and it was a good thing because we didn't go on with that whole message because of a disturbance that we got, which caused us not to get any deeper than that's that one verse. So anyway, thank you, sister Mariah. I appreciate that. And uh, but that's what happened. I didn't clear the clipboard and it posted something that I didn't intend to post um in the right place. So anyway, so now we will continue at verse 17 in Job 15. Now, Eliphaz, as we know, he is still the one talking here. He's the one talking here, and he says, I will show you in verse 17. I'm gonna show you Job. So listen to me. And that which I have seen, I will declare. So Eliphaz begins here by making this solemn sort of summons to Job, demanding his attention, so as to say to Job, stop whatever you've been thinking and listen to what I have to say and absorb this. Because I'm going to declare to you what I have seen. I'm going to speak to you, Job, about my experiences. And then we see here that what follows is presented not as speculation, but a testimony by Eliphaz, which is, excuse me, which is grounded purely in his own observations. And what he is telling Job says, listen, I'm going to tell you from my own observations how you can understand what is true. I'm going to, I want you to hear what I have observed. I want you to hear the conclusions that I have come up to. And I want you to hear them. And Eliphaz's appeal is to his own personal experience. Notice what he says in verse 17: I will show you, so hear me. And then he says, in that which I have seen, I would declare unto you. So here's what he's doing. He's telling Job, listen, I have had experiences. And my experiences are what will help you shape your understanding of what is true. My experience is going to tell you and convey to you what is true. And this posture asserts confidence and authority, implying that the doctrine about which he is to deliver has been tested in real life and verified by his own observation. Now, here's what we need to understand here. Because I try to, what I what I want to try to do is to have us look at these scriptures and to see the context that they were in and then apply them to the context that you are in presently. This is what the scripture is intended to do. It is not intended for you to just put yourself back in that that that context specifically in the past, but you do have to understand the context in which all things in the Bible were conveyed. Why? So that you know how to make adjustments in your present and in your future when you see things of like things, of like events happening. So you understand how to deal with it. And this is one of those kinds of things where Eli Foss is telling Job, listen, Job, I have seen this, I've experienced this. So I'm gonna teach you based on my experience, and we see this today. So many Christians will tell you, using the strength of their own experience, to communicate to you why you should listen to them. This is what he says. I will show you. Listen to me. Hear me, Job, because I'm going to tell you what I have seen, and what I have seen, I'm going to declare. He's not pointing Job toward the Lord or toward the word. He's pointing Job to his own experiences. And he believes that his experiences are so spiritual, particularly with how he interprets them and how he uses them and annexes them to the situation that Job is going through. And he wants Job to say, Yeah, man, that was cool. That was so great what you went through. Now I get it now. But we need to understand that the experiences that other people have are not to be how we are to establish our understanding about what is true when it comes to God's word and his leanings and his guidance. Don't follow what men say unless what they say is consistent with the word of God. And let me say this. Listen, every true believer is a constituent component of the royal priesthood, which means every single one of us is a minister. Varying degrees, yes. Varying degrees of understanding, yes. However, we are all ministers of the Lord. We are all teachers, we are all to be communicants of the word of God to all people. No one is above another. No bishop, no priest, no pope, no pastor. None of us are above any of us. We are all on equal footing. There is nothing that you that somebody else can learn that you cannot grasp. My whole goal is to make you understand that. That is my goal. Every single one of you is a walking ministry. And if you will apply yourself to understanding God's word, you will have the right to serve him in the way that he is leading you to do it. And no one should tell you whether or not you have the right to be a teacher or a preacher or an evangelist or whatever. We are all indwelled by the Spirit of God, the same Holy Spirit, and no one has a greater measure in terms of authority than another person. You may have a certain measure in terms of what your capacity, and generally that will be predicated upon your willingness to apply yourself to understanding his truths. We are all ministers. No preacher, no bishop, no reverend, whatever they want to call themselves, they are not greater than you. If you will apply yourself in the word of the God, in the word of God, you don't need somebody else to teach you. One of the things that I want to teach you is that you can teach. That's what I want people, Christians, to understand. This is what great men of the Bible, and this is what great men in church history have done. Try to encourage believers to understand that they are not less, they're not inferior nor superior to any one of us. So here, Eliphaz is trying to tell Job that he should understand certain things based on his own observance of things he has experienced. Observing things that he himself has been witness to. And yet, embedded here is a very subtle danger that a lot of us might not notice readily. And that is that experience sometimes is treated as a final arbiter of truth. And it should not be. We are not to make wholesale assessments and respond to things based on the experience of others and or even of our own. And the same thing can be said about man's feelings about things. Feelings are not to determine how to assess and interpret truth. Just because you feel something that you believe is spiritual to you doesn't mean that it is the way or the lens through which truth should be understood. People have many feelings about many things. People get emotionally excited about many things. And just because you are excited and overwhelmed doesn't mean that the thing that made you over excited and overwhelmed lends itself to anything that is true. Let me give you an example. Years ago, early on in my own personal ministry, years ago, fighting against the same things that I'm fighting against today. In this particular instance, it was tongues. And this woman was fighting me and telling me about her tongue speaking. And her her idea was that because this is what she experienced, that I need to accept it as being true. And I told her, I do not accept it as being true. It is not biblical. It is not. So then she asked me the question. Very simple, very pointed. And she says, So what are you saying? What are you saying? She says to me, she asked me the question. So if you are saying that my tongue speaking is not biblical, then where do you where are you suggesting that it came from? And I said, Satan. Satan, that's where it came from. The tongues you are speaking comes from the devil himself. He's deluding you. He's fooling you so that you will lean on the lie of experience and emotionalism and not on the Lord's truth. And sometimes, no matter how gentle you say it, no matter how soft you say it, they will hear what they want to hear. And they don't like it because they value their experiences above the truth. They value their experiences. Experience can confirm a truth, but it cannot define it. Experience can confirm a truth, but it will not, never define it. So Elifa's here. He intends to establish credibility at what he says to Job. And he is pressing Job into submission by asserting his experience. He is using his experience to establish certainty in the mind of Job. He's telling Job again, this is what I know, because this happened to me. The Holy Spirit is working with me, Job, in a way you don't know. The Holy Spirit is working with me, so I'm going to tell you what he is telling me. My sister told me about an hour ago in a message, on my direct message. And she says, I'm tired of these people telling me that God told them this and God told them that. And I know exactly what she means. I feel the same exact way. I get sick and tired of people trying to tell me what God told them this. And I always tell people, whenever they come to me with that, God didn't tell you anything. Whatever he is going to tell you is in his word. Which means that if I have his word and I'm reading it, he's already told me too. Because the only place that God is going to speak to any Christian is in his word. No one is receiving some special revelation that God has not revealed to us in his word. That's why he gave it. So that he can shut the mouths of people who lie and deceive. That's why I will tell you with boldness and absolute confidence, there are no apostles, there are no prophets, there are no people speaking in languages that they didn't learn by birth or was bred to speak. All of these people claiming to have some supernatural experience, they are lying to you. And I'm telling you, every one of them. Every single one. Because if any one of them is true, then the word of God is not true. I don't care if you like it or not. I don't care. It's the truth. I'll take the word of God over your experience any day. And I want to encourage every single believer who's listening, understand something. There is whatever it is that God is going to say, it is all contained in his word. And he wants you to study it. He wants you to learn it because in doing so, you are learning and studying about him. You are he's revealing to you his mind. And his mind is encapsulated in terms of what he wants us to know in his word, not in the mind of some cuckoo puff who wants to tell you that they're speaking in tongues or they received a word of knowledge. They did not. They did not. None of them. We all belong to him. The Holy Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ lives in every single one of us, which makes us part of the universal priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are all ministers. Every single one of us. Those of us who believe, those of us who trust in him by faith, and have been adopted as his sons. Every one of us. So do not allow yourselves to fall into some situation where some man or woman is trying to bind your conscience so that you may be submitting, submitting them yourself to the whims of their stupid and silly experiences and not the truth of the word of God. Don't listen to any of these people. The Spirit of God will show you what is true. If I say something, if I say anything that's crazy and off, run for the hills. Run for the hills. Never listen to me again. Never. And so the truth is that we have the same spirit in each one of us, and we are all part of the ministry of reconciliation, and we are all part of that royal priesthood, and we are all part of. That universal priesthood that is able to witness to men and to be able to speak with fervency and confidence and boldness, expressing the word of God and not having to rely on our own experiences to dupe people into getting them to submit into cow o tao to our whims and our ideas. Whatever you say, be able to defend it from the word of God or keep your mouth shut. Before I go to verse 18, I will let everyone give me a brief opening. Brief opening. And uh, you know, just give us your opening remarks. So I appreciate all of you guys and thank you for being here. Brother Rod, Brother Rodney, your opening remarks, and good evening, brother.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Good evening, everybody. Um, good evening, brother John. Uh I don't really have much. No, I'm here. I I've got it. Okay. Um I do, I mean, I mean, I talked with you earlier, so I kind of came in like right at right at the perfect time. So I appreciate that. And, you know, the situation, you know. Um, but like you say all the time, I don't gotta be a scholar to kind of have common sense about. And me being in this specific topic that I keep seeing coming around, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, I get it now. And then applying common sense to it. It's like, all right, well, it only makes sense. And then, like you said, I'll put the word over your experience any day. So that's kind of yeah. I'm here, I'm listening. So that's all I got right now.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Amen, brother Rod. I hope I hope I can keep you coming around, brother. I really do. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you. Sister Meg, opening remarks. Good evening, sister.

“God Told Me” Claims Examined

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Good evening. Um, I could not agree more with what you said. As a matter of fact, when I sit and I hear people say, God told me to tell you, or I've I've heard even people say, Thus say it the Lord, my spirit, I'm gonna tell you something. My spirit uh cringes, and it's because it's like, forgive them, father, for they know not what they do. Do you know that when people spoke for God in the old testament, he did not play about that type of stuff at all? You are speaking for me? It it we have to understand that there are Christians out here, you know, we need to get the fear of the Lord back. People are losing their reverence for the Lord, so much so that people are people have more fear of Satan than they do the Lord, and that's a big problem. So, man, we just need to keep our heads in this Bible. If it's if it doesn't line up with the word of God, we need to throw it out. That's that's that's where our authority lies.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yep. I mean, we we write this too. We have to make sure it's just like whenever somebody tells me something, anybody tells me a thing, you know, it's like, okay, well, show me where that is. Show me where that makes sense. And I'll tell you the same thing. I I owe it to all of you. If anyone asks me why I'm saying what I'm saying, I owe it to you to explain it. I owe it to you to explain it. If I don't explain it, hold me accountable and do the same thing for everyone and do the same thing for yourself. When somebody asks you a question, don't just tell people, well, this is what I know, this is what my experience is. This is what people do. They want you to see them as spiritual so they can give credibility to their lies. Lies which they may tell intentionally, and lies which they may tell unintentionally. It doesn't matter. The truth is the truth, and if it's not the truth, it is a lie, regardless of your state of mind. God doesn't have God doesn't like hold out, like and say, well, you know, he didn't understand or whatever. That's not what that's not how it works. To him, all sin is sin, whether it is done ignorantly, whether it is done with the right motives or the false motives. If it is not true, it is a lie. And that's why I have no problem calling false truths or or things that aren't aren't true lies. That's what they are, lies. And and and and I can tell you that you may find a time where sometimes you'll hear one from me, and you, you know, I hope not, but you might. And it might not be intentional, but that won't make it not a lie. Just because my heart is good or your heart is good, doesn't mean you're telling the truth about a certain thing, especially if you haven't examined that truth and really proven it out. And so we have to be students of the word of God. We need to be those who sit at his feet constantly so that we can not run the risk, so that we can reduce the risk of being subject to error. Certainly not being subject to the to the whims of other people. And so, yes, we can make a mistake, we can misspeak, we can do those kinds of things. But I can tell you, there is nothing that frustrates me more than to find out I've been wrong about something, biblically speaking, especially. It really eats at my soul. It eats me at my soul in a way you can't imagine, and so the whole thing is strive to be right, get it right. We all need to do that, Sister Jody. Opening remarks and good evening.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I just want to say one more thing, Jonathan. Could I?

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

All right. When you said that, when you are wrong, I'll tell you what, it won't happen again. I will search the scriptures until I get it right. And I thank the Lord when I get corrected, because like when you corrected me that one time about baptism, I said, I am never going to, no one will ever get me in a position like that again.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

And so it makes you go back, you know, and there's a blessing in error sometimes. And it's because it makes you go back to the scriptures, restudy, and make sure it will never happen again.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

So glory to God for that.

Scripture As The Only Revelation

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Amen, sister. And that's and that's what reverencing the word of God is. That's what reverencing God is. To treat his word with the utmost reverence and not trifling with his word of God is what we need to do. Sometimes you may have the truth right, but your problem may be in exercising or being able to speak it out. And your mind is you got it figured out, but sometimes the words don't come out right. And so, you know what you have to do? Sharpen the way you present it. You know, but this is what we are called to do. To learn to understand the truth and to learn how to, like Brother Oscill says, to articulate it. That's what we need to be able to do. Don't just shoot from the hip. So many Christians can't stand to let an empty moment go by. They're gonna fill it up with a bunch of noise no matter what. Ugh, just saying stuff. You should be able to say the the the way to really drive yourself to get to a certain point, you need to you want to get to the point where you can say the most in the least amount of words as possible. You want to be able to say the most in the least amount of words possible. That should be your goal. To be concise, to be articulate, and to be, and to be um pointed in establishing the point and addressing the issue that you're talking about. And this is what, and I'm I'm I'm saying this not to shoot, not to go off from what we're talking about, because this is consistent with what we're talking about in Job. Eli Faz, even here, he's these guys are saying a lot of true things, and I've said this a thousand times. They are saying a lot of true things, but what they're doing is they are misappropriating the application of them. They missed the mark when it came to Job. Speaking truth, applying it in a wrong setting, is not making use of the truth for the way it was intended. And so there needs to be a a reverence for it. You know, the truth should give you the wherewithal and the desire to want to exercise compassion and mercy, not to use it to be a billy club over people. And this is something that we all we will all learn. I know that if I if the Lord blesses me with another 10, 20 years, I'm still going to be learning this lesson. I'm still going to be learning this lesson. It never becomes a lesson that you you grasp and and and you never have that problem again. It just never does. Sister Lisa. I'm sorry, uh Sister Joni, and then Lisa. Joni, you there? All right, Lisa, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 31:38

Hey, good evening, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Good evening.

SPEAKER_04 31:41

Yeah, I was gonna say, Jonathan, I agree 100% with you on certain things and going off experience. You know, as a new believer, I was on this app and uh ran across those those tongue speakers. And it wasn't just that they were saying they spoke in tongues, they were saying if you didn't speak in tongues, you didn't have the Holy Spirit. As a new believer, you know, um it it's it's it was it was frightening. Again, I'm so grateful that God placed uh you in my path and others in my path um because these people they don't know the damage they're doing. I know if you hadn't been there. I mean, that could really terrify someone. And the thing is, is I think that's why a lot of those people in those churches, they believe that and they'll pretend to do it until they believe they're doing it. And it it it really is, it come it becomes a delusional thing. Um so yeah, experience is you know is a very personal thing, but you always gotta take that back to what scripture says about it. You know, if it doesn't line up, I mean, you you gotta question, you know, where was that coming from? You know, like yeah, you know, we get messages. I believe I've received messages from God and um they're in scripture. Things that I didn't know were in scripture, and then I went and found it, and it was I it was amazing because it was right there. And so God will always work that way. So I believe He can talk to us personally, let it take us to where we need to go in Scripture. But um, yeah, you're right. I would never, never um listen to anybody who said, I got a message for you, or or God told me this to tell you.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Um Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:32

I'd be like, get far from me.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Absolutely. Somebody somebody comes to tell me, well, God told me to tell you this. I'm like, well, until he tells me that, there's no conversation here, brother. I don't want to hear nothing. I don't want to hear nothing God told you to tell me, because it ain't gonna be anything for my good at all. And so, and so you know, and and that's what that's what that's what Elli Fazer is doing right now. I'm gonna show you. Listen to me, Job. Listen to me. I'm gonna tell you what I have seen, and I'm gonna declare it unto you. Listen to me. Brother Jeffrey, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

I ain't I'm on now.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Go ahead, go ahead, uh uh Joni. Go ahead then.

SPEAKER_03 34:14

Hey, sorry about that. Uh I don't know what happened with my phone, but when I hit the speaker down here, it wouldn't work. So I went into the square and then I messed it all up. So that's all right.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

We got we got you now, sister. So go ahead.

Accountability, Correction, And Clarity

SPEAKER_03 34:27

All righty. So um I get that God's not gonna tell me what to tell you something. I get all that, but like Lisa said, like I believe God speaks to me, and sometimes he shows me, like if I ask him to show me something, he does that. And I'm not necessarily those situations are not in the scripture, but he's still he's guiding me when I need assistance. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Yeah, that makes sense. And and you know, most people will call will call that. See, the problem is is that is is when people say, uh, God speaks to me, God's speaking to me. You know, and and what I'm saying is this God teaches us, he teaches us in his word. And we see this in Hebrews because he says, in various times and times of the past, God spoke this way and that way. Now he speaks to us through his son and through the and through his word. And so, yeah, I do understand what you're saying. And and but what happens is we start learning when we when we learn the truth of the word of God, when we learn these truths in the word of God, like we go through verse by verse in these passages and and other books of the Bible and other messages, and then what happens is this stuff gets embedded in our hearts and in our minds. And then when circumstances happen, we are able, the Holy Spirit draws from what we have learned, that He taught us through our learning and teaches us how to apply it. And so, and that's how how kind of uh you know I look at it. What but when I what I what I try to what I deal with a lot, and I don't want to over I don't want to overkill is is that when people go, oh, you know, God spoke to me, because when you say that, a lot of people take it as you are saying basically that God is speaking to you with this externality, this voice. With this voice. And yes, we do hear a voice, but it's a hard spiritual thing based on what we've learned, based on what he taught us, what based on what he has shown us in his word, and we're able to respond that way. But it is a delicate, it is a delicate difference that sometimes can be misunderstood, and we can lead people to believe that we are telling them that we have some special voice like Moses, where God is speaking directly to us, and that's what we need to be careful about making people believe.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Right.