People think they can look at the world in an objective way, totally impassive, unabated by bias, “just the facts, maam,” except that people are messed up.  One important value to the holiness of God is that He has remained  and remains separate from the mess.  His Word retains the same holy quality.   The Word of God continues outside-the-box so-to-speak.

When I talk to most others about our church, I characterize it with the Lord Jesus Christ, His identity. We deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus.  I might explain the Trinity.  I could talk about a Christian worldview, where God is separate from and not part of His creation.  The world has been ruined by sin, but redemption is found in Jesus Christ and our lives and future are wrapped up in Him.  God is loving, but He is also holy and just, and sin must be punished.  Jesus died for us.  We can’t be saved by works, but through faith in Christ.

Our church has unity around the truth.  We love God and we love our neighbor.  We want to obey the Great Commission, making disciples, true worshipers of God.  We are a congregational form of church government with authoritative, not authoritarian leadership, building up the people in the faith through careful exposition of scripture.  The pastor leads, feeds, and protects.  We are historic Baptists.  We believe in the sufficiency of the Word of God. Those are what characterize our church, how our church could be described.

A Great Creationist Video

A Powerful Video Refutation of Jesus Mythicism in a Debate

Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four   Part Five   Part Six

Very often through the years, I have witnessed or heard professing believers speak about “waiting on the leading of the Holy Spirit,” and what they meant actually was “waiting on circumstances that they interpreted as the leading of the Holy Spirit.”  The terminology, “waiting on the leading of the Holy Spirit,” is very ambiguous.  What does someone even mean when he is saying that?  When someone does say or write it, I’ve seen people nodding their heads with understanding, but I’m very sure that people don’t really understand.  It is almost utterly subjective and allows for a great many outcomes with ultimate interpretation being that God told someone to do what he was doing almost without question.

What are people expecting when they say, “I’m waiting on the leading of the Holy Spirit?” Sometimes they mean they are waiting for an impression or a feeling or a strong desire, some kind of nearly irresistible urge.  It isn’t much of a different experience than the LDS “burning in the bosom.”  It can’t be a burning in the bosom if the person isn’t Mormon, but it carries with it equal authority to the LDS experience.  The Mormons, however, use James 1:5 as a biblical basis for their experience, essentially saying that the feeling is the wisdom they were asking for.

The language of waiting on the Spirit isn’t in the Bible.  I’m not sure where it originated.  Spirit-filling isn’t waiting.  It is active, even as “be filled with the Spirit” is present tense, continuous action.  A believer is never to be waiting as it relates to his relationship to the Holy Spirit.  “Walk in the Spirit,” another biblical teaching, is to be continuous.  The biblical idea of waiting is to wait for our reward, wait for the coming of the Lord.  We don’t wait to start obeying what He said.

Sometimes the “leading of the Spirit” is a series of circumstances that form a picture to a person like a mosaic, a version of “reading the tea leaves” or “reading of the coffee grounds” in Middle Eastern tradition.   I admit, it is funny to me, but then I stop laughing, recognizing that it shouldn’t be funny because many people are deceived in this way.  I estimate that more than half, maybe three quarters, of independent or unaffiliated Baptists, and many more evangelicals and fundamentalists, label this kind of approach to decision making as “the leading of the Spirit.”

I recognize that people have instinct and gut feelings, but they shouldn’t call that “the leading of the Spirit.”  Gut feeling can’t rise to the level of God talking.  Some people have better instincts than others, for which they should be thankful.  I’ve driven along a road, trying to find some place for which I’m looking, and then see enough landmarks to know that I’ve arrived.  That isn’t the Holy Spirit. It is a combination of my own experience, thinking, knowledge of city planning, road design, and memory.  Police detectives use the same type of instincts for solving crimes.  They look at a body in a murder investigation and clues narrow their search to a set of specific individuals that they call suspects. You’ve heard someone say, “Follow the money.”  That isn’t the Holy Spirit.

I played little league and then high school baseball.  Baseball is a slow moving game that requires some focus and concentration that at times I did not either possess or practice.  In the middle of a practice, or even a game, while my mind was wandering, a shadow would move toward me in the field, and I would duck.  My instincts said, “duck,” because a ball was coming.  It wasn’t a ball, but a low flying bird.  People in the stands saw someone convulsing and wondered what was wrong, since a pitch hadn’t even been thrown.  My arm raised in self preservation.  I had this happen several times in my childhood.  What my mind interpreted as a baseball was actually the shadow of a bird flying over.  Some of you reading know what I’m talking about.  I shouldn’t call that a baseball just because of an impression I had.

I’m not saying that circumstances have nothing to do with decision making.  I’m not saying either that the Holy Spirit isn’t involved in circumstances.  The Bible teaches the providence of God.  I’m fine with someone calling circumstances the providence of God.  Everything that happens is either allowed or caused by God.  It wouldn’t happen without Him.  However, how someone reads circumstances should not be called “the Holy Spirit leading.”  The Holy Spirit leads through the Word of God.  When we practice scripture we are being led by the Spirit.

Circumstances can and should be read.  If the price goes up on a particular item, you might not buy it. It’s now too expensive.  You were going to take a trip, but you put the necessary money into a repair of your water heater or the car is acting up, so you can’t trust it to take you out of town.  When you are talking to someone in evangelism, he keeps looking at his watch or looking back over his shoulder.  You ask him if he wants you to continue.  He says, “No.”

Furthermore, you candidate as a pastor for a church.  The committee or the church members ask you what you believe and practice.  You tell them everything.  They believe and practice different than you do.  They don’t want you as pastor, so you don’t get the percentage of vote required by their church constitution.  Someone has a sign that says, “No soliciting.”  You don’t solicit.  You visit every house in town and no one receives the gospel.  You start on a different town. Jesus approaches a Samaritan town and they tell Him to leave.  He leaves. Are all of those the leading of the Spirit?   The Holy Spirit is not disconnected from the above decisions, because the Bible has something to say about all of them, but I know that isn’t what people mean when they say they are “waiting on the leading of the Spirit.”

I watched some Olympic pole vaulting on the internet.  Certain participants would skip a height to reduce their potential number of misses, since that is a tie break in the competition.  It also saves on energy to make less attempts.   Skipping heights isn’t a good decision by a pole vaulter if he can’t clear the height he has skipped to.  His decision should be based upon some knowledge that he can succeed at an attempted height.  Many Olympic events require strategy.  The Kenyan long distance runners unsuccessfully took the 10,000 meters out to a very fast pace to wear out Britain’s Mo Farah. He still had enough in the tank to pass them at the end and win despite even tripping and falling at one point in the race.  Decisions Christians make take in similar considerations for decision making in their lives and its good to give God credit for enabling a good decision, but these are not “waiting on the Spirit to lead.”

The people of Israel were to recognize the arrival of Jesus.  To do that, they needed to be sensitive to biblical cues from the Old Testament.  A lot of evidence existed to point to Him as the Messiah.  Jesus talked about this in Matthew 16, when he excoriated the Pharisees for their application of meteorological knowledge while failing at scriptural evidence.  He was saying they had the ability to make good decisions — they just were taking that ability and not using it where it counted most.  Judging the sky for good weather is appropriate decision making for a fisherman.  That is not “waiting on the Holy Spirit to lead.”

Jesus uses a similar illustration as the one in Matthew 16 in Luke 14, where He speaks of men calculating the cost of building a tower before they start to build it.  He uses the analogy for the consideration of following Him.  He doesn’t deride the basis of calculating cost.  He uses it as an illustration for the right way of making a decision.  Jesus did this all the time.  He said not to cast pearls before swine.  That’s a waste of time, so it’s a bad decision to do it.  You don’t need to “wait for” those to make a good decision.  They are the kind of basis one uses to make a right decision.

Charismatics among others often teach a concept they call “praying through.”  The idea, as I have read, is something like trying to get satellite radio while under an overpass.  Your prayers are being disrupted by demonic or Satanic activity, but they will get through or God will get the answer through to you if you go through enough sacrifice for that to occur.  The idea is that you might need to go without food and spend hours praying to get the leading of the Holy Spirit you need for a right decision.  God removes the disruption, but only if you pay the price.  Applying the “praying through” concept to purchasing a house would be to fast and pray, asking God to show whether you should buy the house, and then the Holy Spirit talks to you in your head, telling you what to do.  That is very often what people mean by “the leading of the Holy Spirit.”

What people will “pray through” to get in the way of “the Holy Spirit leading,” they already have. You don’t have to wait to find out if you are supposed to evangelize somewhere.  The next person is fine.  Just do it (my apologies to Nike).  It’s fine to talk to the first person in town like Paul did Lydia in Acts 16.  When we started here in the Bay Area in 1987, I went to the person closest to us, and my next person was the next closest person to us.  I didn’t skip those two to get to the third closest person, because of a feeling I had.  A huge part of the decision where we started was that there was no church in the entire town.  None.  No church.  It was a town that had no church (and no gas station).

We have the Holy Spirit’s leading.  We are led by the Spirit, if we are saved.  We don’t need to wait on it.  It’s already arrived.

If I buy a piece of furniture at IKEA, which requires assembly, I wait to read the instructions before I start putting it together.  I have to wait for certain supplies or tools to do a project.  Usually you don’t marry the first man or woman you meet.  I can talk to the first person I see in class, but that doesn’t mean he’s my new best friend.  Scriptural thinking precedes decisions about marriage, about friendship, and about many activities.  It doesn’t tell me how to put together IKEA furniture.

I could preach the gospel to several people a day for a month without anyone receiving Christ.  I’m not seeing any results, but I don’t give up.  I’m doing what God wants and I’m waiting on Him for the results.  God has put His love in my heart for these people.  That’s how you wait on the Lord.  You take fulfillment in your position in Christ, the hope of eternal reward, and enjoy the multifaceted and plenty of the goodness of God.  You don’t become impatient and do something unscriptural to speed up the results.  That’s how you wait on the Holy Spirit.  I waited until I had done all of the above.  I’m now ready to move on.  I waited until now to do that.

I take complete, thorough records.  I have knocked on every door in town and left literature three different times.  By following up, I have preached to someone at every door twice.  In addition, I have preached to all my neighbors who would listen and every person who would listen with whom I do business.  No one has received Christ.  That is legitimate waiting.  It’s up to the town now whether they will follow the Lord Jesus Christ or not.  I don’t feel guilty.  I don’t take the blame for their indifference.  They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do, and they haven’t done that.  I’ve waited for them the amount of time I’m supposed to wait and I have a biblical basis for moving on, which is how the Holy Spirit leads.

What people call “waiting on the Holy Spirit to lead” can be disobedience to God.  They shouldn’t be waiting.  Their waiting is not working or not serving or not loving.  It’s an excuse.  It can be spiritual pride.  Someone says he’s waiting on the Holy Spirit, so that people will think he’s got some type of elite channel to the Holy Spirit beyond others.  God talks to him directly unlike others, perhaps because he has sacrificed more.  The people saying they are receiving these messages from God operate out of a wrong understanding of scripture, making apostolic and prophetic activity normative for today.  They aren’t.

There is a kind of deniability to the described signs “evidence” of the Holy Spirit.  They aren’t the fraudulent tongues or healings of Charismaticism.  They are just not enough signs to deny they’re signs, at the same time being signs.  People are waiting for something.  This “leading” is something. They are a unique voice in the head, validated by some circumstances or series of circumstances, that are a sign that the voice is authentic.  Enough people believe in this kind of activity that they validate one another.  They point to each other as a confirmation of its reality.  They accept each other for saying they are getting these experiences.   It spreads to others.

When I confront Charismatics on their lies, they huff and puff with offense.  I’m unloving to doubt their experience.  I haven’t found it different with Baptists and their special means of advanced revelation. In addition, they throw down autonomy.  You think you’re the pope if you question them. It’s going to keep going and get worse at this rate.

I consider the “waiting on the Spirit” language to be verbal and theological gobbledygook, essentially erroneous reliance on circumstances.  Deny it.  Leave it.

Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four   Part Five

The Lord Jesus showed Himself to the Apostle Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration.  In 2 Peter, Peter reaffirmed that truth, but then he went on to say that scripture was more sure than that.  The apostates challenged or questioned supernatural divine intervention in 2 Peter 3:3-4.  Peter’s answer wasn’t, “No, God still talks to you.”  He didn’t bring that up.  If God was still talking to people other than through the written Word of God, what Peter said was superior in 2 Peter 1:19-21, why would he not bring that into the argument?  Peter didn’t want believers or unbelievers expecting God to talk to them directly.  That wasn’t going to happen.

In answer to uniformitarianism, a closed system, propagated by the apostates as a basis for rejection of Christ and scripture, Peter gives two types of divine intervention.  He doesn’t mention God speaking directly to individual believers.  He surely would have included that if it were to be expected.  Instead, Peter says, scripture (2 Pet 3:2).  When he said that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,” he was referring to inspiration, such as Genesis, Isaiah, 1 Corinthians, etc., not, “God told me to go to France.”  God doesn’t intervene in that way.

Creation and Conscience

God communicates still through creation to a general audience, what is called “general revelation.” God still uses conscience to speak with “the law written in [men’s] hearts.”  Believers are free to be amazed and moved by God’s creation, the heavens declaring His glory.  They can tap into that multifaceted and complex expression of God’s handywork every moment without running out.  The conscience can do its part at accusing or excusing, as the Apostle Paul reveals in Romans 2.

The psalmists say a lot about God speaking through creation.  The old hymn writers wrote about God’s speaking through creation, testifying to the revelation of God to men through creation. Creation isn’t enough, but the Apostle Paul relied on it in his preaching on Mars Hill in Athens.  An ebb of creation proceeds from the attention on naturalism and uniformitarianism.  The founding fathers made their case based upon “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” an emphasis of a vastly different era.  The departure from creation brings chaos and confusion to individual, family, church, and government today.

Even though scripture says a lot about conscience and it was very important to the Apostle Paul with all his references to it, I heard very little about it growing up, almost nothing about it in high school, college, or even grad school.  I didn’t understand the conscience until I was a pastor.  I wasn’t clueless, but I didn’t understand the conscience enough to explain it right.  God does speak by means of the conscience through the law of God written in the heart.

Scripture

The Holy Spirit, God, speaks through scripture.  He inspired scripture, but He also continues to speak through it, even as Ephesians 6:17 says that the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit.  The Word of God is the instrument of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture doesn’t say, the voice in your head is the sword of the Spirit.  If God speaks in your head with authority, telling you specifics not found in scripture, then Ephesians 6:17 isn’t the full truth, thus not the truth.

When Romans 10:17 says that faith comes by the Word of God, it isn’t saying that faith comes through a voice in your head.  If that were the case, then a basis of faith is not just scripture.  If God can tell you to go to France in your head, and you can depend on that as an authority, then it is a basis of faith.   If it is God talking, you must believe the voice in your head.  You can also be sanctified by a voice in your head as a source of sanctification, even as Jesus said believers are sanctified by the Word of God.

Someone might ask, “What about being led by the Spirit?”  What is it to be “led by the Spirit?”

All believers are led by the Spirit of God.  Besides Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness for temptation by Satan, the only language of “led by the Spirit” is in Romans 8:4 and Galatians 5:18, which read: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” and “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.”  Both of those verses say that if someone is not led by the Spirit of God, he is being led by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and is under the condemnation of the law.  There is no middle ground there.

Being led by or of the Spirit is to be characteristically living a righteous life, living a life obedient to the Word of God, to have left the way of doing what one wants for doing what the Holy Spirit desires. I’ve heard people use the terminology, speaking of the voice in the head, as “following the leading of the Spirit.”  Following the leading of the Spirit is obedience to the Word of God as a practice or lifestyle moment by moment in one’s every day life.  It means we’re not in charge any more, but the Holy Spirit is.  Every time you sin, you are not being led by the Spirit, so that is how you are not led by the Spirit.  You were led by something other than the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

Following the leading of the Spirit isn’t hearing a voice in your head that says, “Go to France,” so you go to France, because the Holy Spirit told you to go.  I’ve heard people saying that the Holy Spirit led them somewhere and He was doing that leading while that person was disobedient in numerous ways to the Word of God.  The leading of the Spirit looks like obedience to the Word of God, not the Holy Spirit telling someone chicken instead of beef.

You can fill your life up with the Word of God and you will be fine.  That is as personal as it can get. You can guide your life by biblical principles, depending on the Holy Spirit for that — that is to be guided by the Holy Spirit.  You are under His authority.  You don’t divert from the biblical path He has set.  You keep following everything He wants.  If someone does that, He is guided by, led by the Spirit.

Providence

Perhaps no other means by which God speaks today has been ignored by this generation more than the providence of God.  When Peter speaks of the prophets in 2 Peter 3, he also speaks of the fulfillment on earth in history of God’s Words.  God intervenes in history to fulfill the prophetic texts. Those fulfillments speak.

Providence also speaks through day by day and hour by hour events of the life of a believer.  Jesus looks to the providence of God in Matthew 6 when He references the notice of the care of the Lord for the sparrow and the grass of the fields.  God is in charge.  Men can trust in God.  God speaks that message through thousands and hundreds of messages anyone should notice through history and everyday events.

Consider the revelation that is God’s providence through the poetry of William Cowper:

Paul writes in Romans 2:4 that the “goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.”  Men see God’s goodness in providence and that leads them to repentance.  Micah the prophet wrote (6:9), “Hear the rod.”  God speaks through judgment and chastisement, messages of His providence.  The psalmists said they learned through God’s affliction (Psalm 119:71).  The entire book of Esther provides a veritable travelogue of God’s providence, journeying through many of its sights and sounds.

All of the above are the means by which God still speaks to men today.   Even though God speaks through creation, conscience, and providence, His Word still stands as the final arbiter of those three. Any message contradictory to scripture cannot be God speaking.  We know they are God speaking, because God says they are when He speaks in His Word.  With that being said, men should depend on these and not, due to a kind of idolatrous discontent, upon other unscriptural means, such as a voice heard in one’s head, giving instruction outside of the truth of God’s Word.

Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four

Last week out evangelizing door-to-door in the Carson River Valley in Nevada, I talked to a professing pagan, who confirmed her faith with inner divine messages from Mother Earth.  She referred to her god as “she.”  This might surprise you, but I’m open to the potential truthfulness of such people, which means that I’m open minded.  What I tried to do was understand whether such thinking could be validated as true.  I couldn’t.  There was no reason to believe it, because it was so entirely subjective.  The only way to believe it was to presuppose it and then invent it, afterward referring to its teachings like Mother Earth delivered them.  I believe that the teachings of Mother Earth are nothing but doctrines of demons, even as the Bible, which is confirmed as truth, tells us.

I also talked to a man, who one could characterize as a late fifty-something hippie, who has spun his own religion, which is a combination of what is called NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, and some form of Buddhism.  In this hybrid personal belief, no one can judge anything, because absolutely everything is only a perception.  No one can move outside of this perception, as NLP is the way by which everyone interprets what he encounters or doesn’t encounter, depending upon whether it is real. In common with me, this man accepted supernaturalism.  However, his “god” leaves everyone in a similar condition — assigning meaning based only upon his perception of reality.

As is fairly normal, I talked to a few Charismatics.  Charismatics hear God speaking to them, which is confirmed by their experiences.  I talked to a woman who was directed by a feeling in her intestines, which sent her messages she interpreted as divine.  That reminded me of the LDS “burning in the bosom.”  Both the signs and the voices Charismatics hear are lies.  Even if what someone “hears” is a true message, that does not authenticate it as God Himself.  We know it is a lie because the signs contradict scriptural signs, sign gifts have ceased, and God has concluded His special revelation with the last book of the New Testament.

Although I reject Mormonism, the Mormons attempt to impersonate witnesses by including them at the beginning of the Book of Mormon.  They say that Joseph Smith got that book from God and that they were there to validate it.  The inner voice of many, including independent Baptists, has no validation except for the person hearing the voice. When I have questioned Charismatics, they almost unanimously accuse me of lacking in love.  The only acceptable manifestation of love to them is acceptance of their experience as true.  That also contradicts scripture in a number of ways, but that is not different than independent Baptists, who think I deny their personal relationship with God, when I question the voice in their heads.

Independent Baptists, fundamentalists, and evangelicals will say that their experiences and the voices they hear line up with scripture, which validates them as true.  I have often found this not to be the case.  I hear messages preached that are unscriptural given to the Baptist by God through the inner voice.  It sometimes has the imprimatur of the “leading of the Spirit.”  I’ve heard it called “Holy Spirit preaching.”  If you doubt it, you are questioning the authority of the man of God or in my case intruding in the autonomy of a church.

The fraudulent signs of Charismaticism are lies.  They are not true.  God is the God of truth, Who does not lie.  True worship is characterized by truth, not lies.  It cannot be of God if it is a lie.  Saying that you hear the voice of God or are called by God in some type of inner voice is not true.  It is a lie. There is no basis for believing it.  Even if the teaching were to line up with scripture, the experience itself is a lie.

Normally, if someone has an experience, I tell that person to judge it based upon scripture.  He will believe right and do right if he does what God’s completed Word says.  However, there is still the matter of the experience itself.  A person perceives God speaking to him.  I recognize that some might be semantics here.  When someone says “God spoke to his heart,” he means that the Holy Spirit convicted him through the Word of God.  That’s fine.  However, there is such an overlap between these acceptable descriptions of God’s work and the untrue ones, that the untrue ones are given credence by the true ones.

Even if someone agrees with what I’ve been writing in this series, the theological and exegetical sloppiness harms discernment in many.  They do not confine themselves to scripture as divine, authoritative, and sufficient.  They open the door for people to add or take away from scripture, take more authority upon themselves than what God has given, and to validate false doctrine as being true. Even if you deny specific instances, you should admit that this happens on a regular basis in churches and in the world.  This is how Satan and his demons start false religions.

I was talking to a Roman Catholic lady this week, who said she wouldn’t leave the Catholic church, but she wished to continue in a parachurch Bible study led by one of her children’s mother-in-law. She feels comfortable in this study, she said, but she didn’t want to leave the Roman Catholic Church, even though she disagrees with a lot in and with it.  I asked her if she would reject Roman Catholicism where it contradicted the Bible.  She said that’s what she was trying to learn, that is, what the Bible taught and how it differed than her religion.  I also told her that the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t say that the Bible is its authority.  It says that tradition is its authority.  Tradition alone, of course, if it is not scriptural, has no authority, so tradition itself has no authority.  There is a danger looking to something as an authority that is not authority.  The Roman Catholic Church became a false religion by depending on tradition instead of the Bible.

There is danger too for any Baptist, fundamentalist, evangelical, or where the former three will overlap to look to something as an authority that is not an authority.  A voice in the head is not an authority.  I know in fact that allowing for that as the possibility of God speaking has led to an abundance of false teaching and practice.  It is itself a false teaching and practice.

I surmise that many do not want to repudiate what I am exposing.  They might even characterize what I’m writing as false, perhaps with the designation of it as cold, intellectual, logical, or unspiritual.   They do not want to lose their doctrine of the voice in the head being God speaking to them.  If they say what I’m writing is true, they will have to admit that they have been at least less than precise in their speaking.  Often church leaders, who fear admission of at least their imprecision, think that admission will result in a diminishing of their authority and/or an exodus of a family or more that enjoy hearing from God directly in their heads.  They don’t know if either will happen, but they will continue embracing these “revelations” to avoid these two threats.

Part of church growth includes closer alignment to scripture.  Church leaders should lead their people to anticipate changes in light of biblical teaching.  If the Bible really is the sole authority for faith and practice, greater understanding of the Bible will bring changes that please God.  This is living by faith.  Living by faith is not a threat to the church.

The voice in the head takes less work than studying the Bible according to the ordinary means.  The voice in the head bypasses the labor and the accountability.  When someone depends on the voice in the head, at that moment he and those who agree have canonized the message of the voice.  They have agreed it is God talking, saying something not found in scripture.  Someone might say no new scripture has been written.  However, something given the authority of scripture has been practiced. This rejects the sole authority and the sufficiency of scripture.  That itself is a false doctrine.  It also rejects a biblical and historical doctrine of canonicity.  No one is allowed to continue to canonize new words from God on the spot and in this age since the completion of God’s Word.

A professing evangelist or missionary could go to Mexico or Brazil or Belize.  He goes to Brazil and he says that he went because God told him.  How did God tell him and how did he know it was God? What is the basis for knowing?  I contend there is no basis for knowing, except that the doctrine of God talking to a person individually is true.  He says God told him or called him.  That has become an acceptable means for discerning God’s will.  It should be repudiated.   God talks only through scripture.  He is free to go to Mexico or Brazil or Belize according to the liberty he receives from Christ and the ordinary scriptural means that God uses to direct people in a church.

Part One    Part Two    Part Three

In certain ways, I don’t want to write about this subject, because I think it should be obvious, but it obviously isn’t obvious.  People think God is still speaking to them, and those people aren’t just Charismatics.  They are also independent Baptists.  The latter say that hearing God speaking to them doesn’t make them Charismatics.  They don’t want to be considered Charismatic.  They just want to continue believing and saying that God is speaking to them.

There is a weasel type quality in my opinion to claiming not to be a Charismatic, but still receiving direct revelation from God like Charismatics believe.  If Charismatics took the same position, which they do, they just take the same belief to a different extreme in practice.  People who are Charismatic in belief and yet not Charismatic to the Charismatic extremes are still Charismatic.

This issue I’m addressing is a doctrinal and practical one.  God speaking to someone directly in his head is a doctrinal issue.  It is a belief about God’s revelation, under the doctrine of bibliology, that is a false belief.  Does that matter?  Should we just ignore it?  It is a practice, because someone is declaring that God spoke to him.  What he says that God has said to him is supposed to be taken as a message from God.  It can’t be doubted because it’s God’s Word.  That’s very practical too, because his practice will change based on that belief that God is speaking to him.  Should this difference in belief and practice matter to fellowship?

God spoke and continues to speak through scripture.  At the end of the book of Revelation, He told us not to add anything to that last book of the Bible.   God was done.  The faith was once and for all delivered unto the saints.  The Bible has everything in it that men need to be everything they need to be and to do everything they need to do.  It throughly furnishes for every good work.

The canon of scripture is closed.  God isn’t creating any more scripture.  He said He was done.  We don’t get to reopen the canon for 1st Kent and 2nd Kent, even Two Kent.  Revelation ends it.

When someone says that God speaks to him, he denies the last two paragraphs, that teaching.  He is not trusting God.  He is not pleasing God by faith.  He is discontent.  He covets more from God than what God has sufficiently and completely given to him.  He’s not being thankful for what God has given him.  He is doubting God.

When a person claims that he has heard directly from God, based on his testimony, that means that he is hearing from God.  What about those people who are not hearing from God?  Why are they not hearing from God?  Somehow those who do not hear from God are lacking in something spiritual.  They are a kind of spiritual have-not.  In truth, the man who says he hears from God doesn’t hear from God.  He says he does, either because he is deceived or is lying.  The person who doesn’t hear feels like a spiritual have-not because of someone deceived or lying.  You can see how that this affects greatly the judgment of true spirituality and spiritual discernment.

I could go further in describing the effects of this particular denial of the completion and sufficiency of scripture.  It hurts people and churches, and it dishonors God.  It should at least be discussed as to its veracity in a serious way or just eliminated from belief and practice.

I don’t know how people are taking this series.  Some are agreeing.  You can see that.  I know I have people reading, because the numbers are large on the statistics on my dashboard.  For some, I’m sure that they see this as a matter to “agree to disagree,” but “it shouldn’t affect fellowship.”  Some will disagree and say they don’t like it, but it isn’t a separating issue.  Others will throw down the autonomy card and say that they don’t like the intervening into their church belief and practice.  They want to keep their conviction that God is talking to them directly in their head, and they don’t want to be bothered with changing.  Changing will mean telling everyone that God hasn’t been doing this in numbers of different ways, a kind of repentance involved.  That might make a church and its leader look like it and he didn’t know what they were doing.  They think that will hurt credibility. Credibility loss will diminish success.

I’ve talked to people who say that what I’m writing is a separating issue, but not from the position I’m taking.  Churches won’t support a missionary if God hasn’t told him something.  He must report that God told him to be a missionary and told him to go to a field among other messages from God.  Men know that if they don’t say these things, they aren’t getting support.  If they said the position I’m espousing, they won’t’ get support.  Those churches make it a fellowship issue.