The Remnant Radio's Podcast

Joe Rogan's latest viral guest claims the Catholic Church genetically eliminated psychic ability from humanity through the Inquisitions. But is that true?

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Joe Rogan recently hosted Dr. Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, to discuss his "psi gene" theory. During the interview, Radin claimed that the Catholic Inquisitions systematically targeted and killed people with a genetic predisposition for psychic ability, effectively removing that trait from Christianized populations over centuries.

It's the kind of theory that sounds compelling on first listen. Joshua Lewis did the historical review to test it. Is this true? Josh also explores the theological question underneath all of this. Why did the early church oppose occult practice in the first place? Was it a power grab as Dr. Radin suggests?

Join us to better understand the full discussion. Don't get caught flat-footed when secular podcasts make "confident historical claims" about Christianity.

0:00 – Introduction
0:14 – Dean Radin's Psychic Research
1:28 – The Psi Genetic Project
5:50 – Joshua's Historical Analysis
7:20 – The Four Inquisitions
9:57 – Spanish Inquisition & Witchcraft
13:03 – Scientific Problems Examined
14:12 – Church, Magic, & Scripture
17:02 – Closing Thoughts
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
Support the show
ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
📧 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER
📚 COURSES & CONFERENCES
🛒 SHOP MERCH
💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
• Leave a Tip
• Become a Patron
• Make a Tax-Deductible Donation 
 🌐📧 Check Out Our Church Pages
Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church

What is simony? And where do you draw the line? Here at Remnant Radio, we do sell courses and conferences teaching people about the gifts of the spirit. We want to be honest and upfront about that, and it's exactly why we're discussing simony in this episode. We want to examine whether what we do holds up under Scripture. 

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
The word "simony" comes from Acts 8, when Simon Magus tried to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit and Peter answered him: "May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money" (Acts 8:20, ESV). That confrontation gave the body of Christ an important category for thinking about money and ministry that we're going to explore.

What did Peter actually condemn, and what didn't he condemn? Scripture is more specific than most people realize, and the early church, as documented in the Didache, wrestled openly with where the line sits between legitimate support for ministry and exploiting the gifts of God for personal gain.

This episode takes a hard look at that line. There are things that should never carry a price tag. Prayer ministry and deliverance ministry are on that list, and we'll walk through why Scripture draws that boundary so clearly. But the conversation doesn't stop there. What about seminary or Bible college? Christian books and music? The Bible itself? 

Join us for a biblical exploration of simony and where Scripture draws the line.

0:00 – Introduction
0:21 – Ethics of Charging for Ministry
8:53 – Scripture on Giving Freely
12:20 – Isaiah 55 and Matthew 10:8
17:47 – Payment for Healing Prayers?
18:55 – Compensation for Itinerant Ministers
23:12 – Honorariums and Speaking Fees
27:18 – Bibles, Seminaries, and Simony
32:03 – Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8
37:37 – Suggested Donations for Deliverance?
51:38 – Didache on Itinerant Prophets
56:02 – Dangers of Full-Time Itinerancy
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
Support the show
ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
📧 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER
📚 COURSES & CONFERENCES
🛒 SHOP MERCH
💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
• Leave a Tip
• Become a Patron
• Make a Tax-Deductible Donation 
 🌐📧 Check Out Our Church Pages
Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church

Was America's founding a genuinely Christian project, or has that idea been read backward into history by people who want it to be true? Dr. Ben Carson, famed neurosurgeon, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and founder of the American Cornerstone Institute, joins Joshua Lewis to make the case that the founders' faith wasn't incidental to the American project, but was foundational to it.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Carson walks through the well-known stories: George Washington's providential survival during the French and Indian War, Benjamin Franklin's call to prayer at the Constitutional Convention, John Adams' conviction that the Constitution was built for "a moral and religious people." Carson recounts these as evidence that the founders understood their rights as God-given rather than state-granted and argues this conviction is what allowed the young nation to move as fast as it did.

But this episode tackles some of the harder questions about America's Christian roots. In fact, many Christians today are wrestling with where the line falls between honoring faith's role in government and slipping into theonomy or Christian nationalism (using the Bible not just to inform conviction, but to enforce practice). Josh and Dr. Carson walk through the difficult cases, including Thomas Jefferson's private letters calling Paul "the first corruptor" of Christ's doctrine, the Treaty of Tripoli's explicit statement that the U.S. government is "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," and the uncomfortable reality that some founders held views far messier than the Sunday-school version of American history.

What emerges is a conversation about the difference between a Christian moral framework shaping a leader's conscience and a Christian theocracy shaping a nation's laws and why the founders, having fled state-enforced religion in Europe, were careful to avoid recreating it here. Dr. Carson also addresses the founders' inconsistencies head-on, including slavery, and how a constitution "inspired" by Christian conviction could coexist with such a profound moral failure.

If you've ever felt caught between two unsatisfying camps with "America was a secular Enlightenment experiment" on one side, and "America should be governed by biblical law" on the other, this conversation gives you a third way to think about it: historically honest, theologically grounded, and avoidant to both extremes.

0:00 – Introduction
0:51 – Built on Faith Children's Book
1:00 – Washington's Providence Stories
4:34 – Christianity Twisted by Marxism
6:09 – Founders and Deism Debate
8:00 – Declaration vs Constitution
11:06 – Theonomy and Theocracy
12:47 – Christian Ethics and Lawmaking
19:12 – Washington's Christian Faith
20:50 – Jefferson's Mixed Beliefs
26:49 – Benjamin Franklin's Faith
33:39 – Treaty of Tripoli Question
35:32 – James Madison and Constitution
38:05 – Christian Political Involvement
 
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Dr. Ben Carson's children's book, Built on Faith (co-authored with Kirk Parrish): https://www.amazon.com/Built-Faith-Ben-Carson/dp/1967002711
- American Cornerstone Institute: https://americancornerstone.org
- Andrew Wilson, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West: https://www.crossway.org/books/remaking-the-world-hcj/
- Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: https://www.crossway.org/books/rise-triumph-modern-self-hcj/
- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), Article 11 (full text): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
Support the show
ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
📧 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER
📚 COURSES & CONFERENCES
🛒 SHOP MERCH
💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
• Leave a Tip
• Become a Patron
• Make a Tax-Deductible Donation 
 🌐📧 Check Out Our Church Pages
Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church

Can a prophetic word reach someone an argument never could? What if the most effective evangelism tool in Scripture is a detail about someone that only God could have known?

JonMark Baker of the Minor Prophets Podcast joins Remnant Radio to talk about the gift of prophecy and words of knowledge as on-mission tools for evangelism.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
We live in a culture that's heard plenty of arguments for God and built a callus against most of them. Apologetics still matters. But what do you do with someone whose heart hardened against Jesus before you ever opened your mouth?

That's where a word of knowledge does something logic can't. A divinely-given word proves to a stranger that God sees them, knows them, and has His eye on the actual details of their life. Paul described exactly this in 1 Corinthians 14:24-25: an outsider walks in, the secrets of his heart are laid bare through prophecy, and he falls on his face declaring that God is really among you. It's the New Testament's own case study for prophecy as evangelism.

This is a conversation about giftings doing what they were always meant to do: building up the body of Christ, and pushing back the darkness in a culture that needs reminding God is real, and still speaks.

0:00 – Introduction
2:27 – JonMark Baker
4:36 – Prophesying & Availability
9:54 – God Speaks Subtly
20:49 – Spirit, Mind, Thought
25:33 – Prophetic Evangelism Steps
36:38 – Parable of the Soils
44:36 – Power & Evangelism
49:30 – Closing Thoughts
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
Support the show
ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
📧 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER
📚 COURSES & CONFERENCES
🛒 SHOP MERCH
💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
• Leave a Tip
• Become a Patron
• Make a Tax-Deductible Donation 
 🌐📧 Check Out Our Church Pages
Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church

Samuel Rutherford helped write the Westminster Confession. He also developed a four-part test for evaluating prophetic words. That's not a charismatic running loose, but a Westminster divine doing careful pastoral theology on the gifts.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
There's an assumption that the debate over spiritual gifts is a recent one: a 20th-century Pentecostal invention set against centuries of Reformation clarity. But the historical record tells a different story. John Knox was called "the prophet and apostle of our nation." John Welsh reportedly prayed a dead man back to life. George Wishart publicly predicted Cardinal Beaton's death from the pulpit. These weren't fringe figures. They were architects of the Scottish Reformation.

In this episode, Joshua Lewis responds to a four-part viewer question that cuts to the heart of what cessationists often ask about continuationism:
 
1. Did any Protestant Reformers — Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley — actually affirm the continuation of miraculous spiritual gifts?
2. Are there accredited seminaries that teach continuationism, and if so, why don't more charismatic leaders pursue formal degrees?
3. Did the lack of denominational accountability in charismatic churches contribute to the scandals the show has covered?
4. Are continuationists mostly Arminian, or do Calvinists hold this position too?

Joshua works through each question with the historical and theological care. Join us for an informative episode.

0:00 – Introduction
0:34 – Questions
2:23 – Reformation-Era Continuationism
5:26 – Continuationist Seminaries
7:01 – Charismatic Anti-Intellectualism
11:27 – Denominational Accountability & Scandal
14:52 – Calvinism vs. Arminianism

RESOURCES MENTIONED: 
- Scots Worthies by John Howie (unedited, Project Gutenberg): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28272/28272-h/28272-h.htm
- Spirit Hermeneutics by Craig Keener: https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Hermeneutics-Reading-Scripture-Pentecost/dp/0802874398
- Barna Research — "Is There a Reformed Movement in American Churches?": https://www.barna.com/research/is-there-a-reformed-movement-in-american-churches/
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
Support the show
ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
📧 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER
📚 COURSES & CONFERENCES
🛒 SHOP MERCH
💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
• Leave a Tip
• Become a Patron
• Make a Tax-Deductible Donation 
 🌐📧 Check Out Our Church Pages
Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church