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NASB | Matthew 24:11 "Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Matthew 24:11 "Many false prophets will appear and mislead many. |
Subject: Part 1 Testing "New" Revelation |
Bible Note: Part 1 Testing "New" Revelation "Any prophet speaking for Jesus, in other words, as a conduit for Jesus' own words, with a clearer explanation of spiritual things than the Bible gives us, is going to be false." Part 1 Testing "New" Revelation '[Daniel] showed me a book that he had found, Fundamental Principles of Life , which includes the writings of Jacob Lorber...In the mind of Daniel, as he was reading through this, he found that it not only made the Christian case, but it made it better than anything he had heard before, in particular with regard to the nature of the Trinity, which was an issue he had been struggling with... 'Daniel found that he had stumbled upon, in this book, an explanation of things that made more sense than he had ever encountered before. We had a conversation about it and as he began telling me about this book, The Fundamental Principles of Life, and describing to me the format and what it really entailed, I realized there was a problem immediately because this was a record of Jacob Lorber's conversations with or revelations from Jesus Christ. In other words, the book was a "thus saith Jesus" kind of thing. Jesus is speaking to Lorber and Lorber is writing down what Jesus says. So we have the gospels and we have Lorber's revelations which purport to be the actual words of Jesus explaining these other kinds of things. 'Now, I have a rule of thumb...Any prophet speaking for Jesus, in other words, as a conduit for Jesus' own words, with a clearer explanation of spiritual things than the Bible gives us, is going to be false. All I need to know is that much. Jacob Lorber is giving us a revelation in which he is writing down the words of Jesus as communicated to him for us--I know it's false. Not because there is no theological possibility that Jesus can speak in revelation to someone today, though I think a case can be made against it. Even if I granted that as a theological possibility, I have never seen the real McCoy. These modern day revelations have always followed the same kind of pattern. I know when such a revelation is offered to me it's going to be false. I know it from experience. 'And I told Daniel that. I said, "Daniel, you don't have to read me any more. All I need to know is that this person claims that he has revelation directly from Jesus Christ that explains things like the Trinity in better detail and more accurately than the Bible can. All I need to know is that, to know this is a false prophet..." ( . . . ) 'Whenever you hear that kind of thing, there is a very important question you have to ask. I know what the truth is, and when I compare the first revelation to the second revelation, I know the second revelation couldn't be Jesus speaking through whoever that prophet is. It is not enough for someone to say, "Jesus told me this thing, therefore you ought to believe the revelation." Though many people leave it at that, quite frankly. I'm really surprised that there are so many so-called prophets of Jesus here now in these latter days, and they make a bald-faced authority claim and say, "You ought to believe this." Why? Because Jesus is speaking here. Well, the very question is...Why should I trust that any of this new material is a genuine revelation of Jesus? Why should I trust that? 'Now, the Biblical answer to that is signs and wonders and miracles, and the authority of the resurrection, and the authority of the apostles, and all those other things that substantiate the Scriptures. The apostles themselves walked with Jesus. They could speak first hand for His teaching. Now, Paul was an exception here, but even in his case he brought his teaching before these same apostles who had actually walked with Jesus during his earthly ministry and these same apostles authenticated his gospel as being sound. We read about that in Galatians 2. He received the right hand of fellowship, and it was demonstrated there that he had not run in vain, and God had indeed spoken to him and that he was preaching what was true. Peter even referred to Paul's writing as Scripture in 1 Peter 3. So you have this tight group of people close to Jesus that can authenticate what is true. 'What about people who pop up nearly 2000 years later and claim to have the most recent word from Christ after a couple millennia of silence? Often times you will get this response, "Well, it feels right. I really have this feeling that it's true. I have a burning in my heart that authenticates the truth of this alleged revelation." This response just won't do because what they're offering is a mere subjective test for something that is supposedly objectively true. Yet this objective truth is not patently obvious on the face of it.' ____________________ 'Testing "New" Revelation' by Gregory Koukl. To read more go to: (www.str.org/free/commentaries/apologetics/other/testnew.htm) |