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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | How does God speak to us? | Heb 1:1 | kalos | 154232 | ||
How does God speak to us? 'I am a bit distressed even talking about this issue because my comments are meant to try to rein Christians in a little bit, to keep them off of the fringe... 'But whenever I have to rein Christians in a bit and talk about this kind of thing I feel badly because I realize that some people are straining at the bit for the best of reasons and with the best of intentions...They want to experience more of the working of the Holy Spirit in their life. And here is Koukl coming in, apparently throwing cold water on the whole operation. 'I feel bad about that because I have no intention of quenching the work of the Holy Spirit. My entire goal is to be very, very careful and look closely at the specifics of what's being held to be true to see if they do, in fact, line up with the directives given in the Scriptures. Or, are we drawing some wrong conclusions that cause us to go over the edge and maybe do some spiritual damage to ourselves and others?... 'I think I'm somewhat of an evangelical iconoclast because I'm always breaking up people's parties, so to speak. An iconoclast is an image breaker, someone who kind of attacks, to some degree, cherished notions. Sometimes that bothers people and I 'm sorry about that. I don't mean to cause trouble for the sake of trouble, but I do mean to force people to think clearly and Biblically, even about those ideas they cherish the most. And, to many of us, the thing that we cherish the most is this idea that we have a personal hotline to God and we ought to expect Him to speak to us about our decisions. 'I had a very stimulating conversation last week about this. I talked about it on Sunday in some detail, and then a friend of mine wrote me a note and offered me eighteen references from the book of Acts that seem to contradict my point of view. So what I want to do for just a few moments is to talk about these particular references and see if they do contradict what I was saying last weekend. 'I have to make clear what my point of view is so that it's not misunderstood. Let me capsulize it for you very quickly. My point of view is basically four quick points: 'First of all, learning to hear the voice of God is not taught as a Christian discipline that we must learn in order to live the optimal Christian life. This is the "hotline to God" view in which we get specialized and tailor-made instructions for our personal lives. That is not taught in Scripture. 'Secondly, God sometimes does give specialized instructions, so I'm not saying that God can't do that and I'm not putting God in a box. He does sometimes give specialized instructions. He did in Biblical times and He does in the present. But when we read in the Bible especially in the New Testament, which is what our discussion is about today when He has done it, such specialized instructions are clear first of all. They are not mumbled. They are not whispered. They are not nudged. And they are, almost without exception in the New Testament, a sovereign intrusion by God into the circumstances rather than something that is first sought by a Christian. 'Thirdly, God's intrusion in these cases is sometimes through special gifts in the body that I believe are in full operation today, but are by very nature individual. In other words, every person has his own gift and each person does not have every gift. So this working through gifts can't be a means of every Christian hearing from God. In other words, sometimes God intervenes with a prophetic word, but since prophetic words only come through those people who have the gift of prophecy, it's not the kind of thing we all have to cultivate, to learn to do. 'Finally, there are clearly workings of the Spirit in the area of teaching, conviction of sin and comforting of individual Christians. I admit that those workings are private, individual and tailored to individual people. Those kinds of things are not in question here. 'We're going to do a little Bible study. We're going to look at eighteen references suggested in the letter to me that was an attempt to offer contrary evidence from the Scriptures to the point of view that I just described for you. All of these references come from the book of Acts. We will see if these references actually undermine the basic point I have been making or not. In a sense, I hope the Bible study will go beyond just the meaning of the passages because what this will do, as we walk through it, is help us to learn how to be more precise and particular about our Bible study and not draw conclusions hastily or inappropriately from the Scriptures. But take a close, methodical look to get a clear idea of what is actually being averred here about Christian disciplines and God speaking.' ____________________ Acts and the Voice of God by Gregory Koukl To read more go to: (www.str.org/free/commentaries/theology/actsvoic.htm) |
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2 | How does God speak to us? | Heb 1:1 | kalos | 154235 | ||
Does God talk to you personally? "A Private Hot Line to God?" by Gregory Koukl 'Does God talk to you personally? Would you bet your life on it? Claiming to receive personal messages from God on a regular basis places subjective experience on the same level as Scripture, Greg argues. This is the claim of a prophet, and not even Old Testament prophets did so unless they were willing to die for the claim. 'I've made what I think is a telling observation about those who hold to a dual source of special revelation. Whenever an organization says, "We believe the Bible is inspired plus we believe our leadership is inspired," or "We believe the Bible is inspired plus we believe this other book of ours" (like the Book of Mormon, for example) "is inspired," the Bible always ends up taking the back seat instead of being on equal footing with these other sources of special revelation. 'I think most Christians will be comfortable with that assessment. This, though, raises a question about Evangelical claims to multiple sources of special revelation. For all our talk about sola Scriptura, many also hold that God speaks to them on a regular basis giving true information about Himself and specific directions for their lives. Their claim is, essentially, "I believe the Bible is a bona fide source of information and the Spirit also gives private information directly to me." The second step frequently follows the first: The personal, subjective sense of what a person thinks God is telling him trumps the objective Scripture. 'I was teaching from the Bible recently in a large Evangelical church here in Southern California, and I was publicly opposed by a woman who challenged my view not on the basis of a better interpretation of Scripture (she completely ignored my exegesis), but on the basis of what she was convinced the Holy Spirit had told her. She called me a heretic and said I was sinning because I was "analyzing and dissecting the Bible" instead of letting the Holy Spirit speak to me. My view was merely "man's interpretation." You'd be amazed at how often I run into that kind of response by otherwise orthodox Christians. 'Note that I have a very robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I'm charismatic in that I believe in the perpetuity of spiritual gifts and in energetic worship. The real question is-- and this is vital-- Are we justified in claiming that our personal, private, first-person, subjective experiences give us authoritative knowledge about God, or about what God wants us to do? 'If a woman said, "God told me to marry this man," that wouldn't be contrary to Scripture unless he was a non-Christian or already married. Even if he was a Christian, though, the statement begs a different question: Does Scripture give us the liberty to assign the authority of divine fiat to our subjective experiences? 'My answer is nowhere does the Bible give us that liberty. It does not enjoin us to assess our feelings and then judge whether they are a manifestation of the voice of God or not.' This is an excerpt from the article. To read more go to: ID# 85421 at this website (StudyBibleForum) and/or: (www.str.org/free/commentaries/life/aprivate.htm). |
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3 | How does God speak to us? | Heb 1:1 | CDBJ | 154255 | ||
Hi Kalos, You have been doing your homework!! Good job, CDBJ |
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4 | How does God speak to us? | Heb 1:1 | kalos | 154277 | ||
CDBJ: Thank you for the kind words. As for others, why is it that every time I post anything about the authority of the Scriptures, someone always posts back implying that I am not depending on the Holy Spirit to illuminate the meaning of the Bible text? This is just plain silly. I have never downplayed the role of the Holy Spirit in our understanding of the Scriptures. It is not I, but others who act as if the holy Scriptures and the Holy Spirit are mutually exclusive -- that you have either one or the other. For the record, I do not advocate legalism OR mysticism. There has to be a balance. I have never said otherwise. I know that you are in agreement with me here. I merely mention it in this Note for the benefit of others. Grace to you, Kalos |
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