The Remnant Radio's Podcast

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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The early church didn't just baptize new believers. They delivered them first. For the first several centuries of Christianity, exorcism wasn't a dramatic spectacle reserved for extreme cases. It was woven into the baptismal rite itself, practiced across traditions, and considered a normal part of welcoming someone into the body of Christ. Somewhere along the way, we forgot.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Matthew Esquivel returns to Remnant Radio to walk us through overlooked chapters in church history. We'll examine the deep and consistent link between baptism and deliverance in the early church. From the Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus of Rome in the third century, to the Seventh Council of Carthage in 258 AD, to the near-universal practice of renouncing Satan as part of the baptismal liturgy, the historical record is clear. The church fathers didn't see deliverance as a crisis intervention. They saw it as part of what it meant to cross from one kingdom into another.

This episode is for believers who want to understand deliverance ministry historically and theologically. It's for people who've seen something real in deliverance prayer but haven't had the church history to back it up. And it's for the skeptics who wonder whether any of this has any grounding in Christian tradition.
0:00 – Introduction
4:52 – Baptism & Deliverance Overview
7:31 – Defining Christian Initiation
13:29 – Baptism in Scripture
21:36 – Acts 8 & Typology
31:03 – Tertullian on Baptism
40:45 – Cyprian's Baptismal Rite
58:16 – Augustine's Exorcism Account
1:05:40 – Practical Application Today
1:11:42 – Closing Thoughts
INTRODUCTION TO DELIVERANCE MINISTRY:
https://www.theremnantradio.com/intro-to-deliverance-ministry
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.
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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.
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When reading the Bible, Christians are often trained to do one of two things: submit their interpretation to an authority or trust their feelings. Alli Patterson's new book makes the case for a third way - one where the Holy Spirit is not an alternative to good hermeneutics, but the reason they work at all.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
The conversation happening inside the body of Christ right now isn't just about cessationism or spiritual gifts. It's about authority. Who gets to interpret the Bible? The trained scholar? The anointed preacher? You?

Alli Patterson, seminary grad, teacher and author of a new Spirit-led Bible study, lands in a place you might not expect: all three, held together, under the actual leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Her six-practice method takes observation, context, prayer, and listening seriously as spiritual disciplines, not just academic ones. In this conversation, she and Josh work through how to apply a text personally without leaving Scripture behind, how to test a reading in community, and what to do when you've done everything right and still don't understand what you're reading.

This isn't a call to choose between your study Bible and your prayer life. It's a call to stop treating them as separate things.

0:00 – Introduction
2:44 – Spirit-Led Study Defined
14:18 – Six Practices Overview
20:08 – Observation and Context
25:01 – Listening to the Spirit
32:43 – Testing Personal Application
49:35 – Scripture-Guided Prayer
53:45 – Handling Difficult Passages
1:03:44 – Closing

ABOUT THE GUEST:
📖 Spirit-Led Bible Study https://a.co/d/08IpTSnd
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.
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💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
• Leave a Tip
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Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church