January 26, 2021 Show with Jim Osman on “God Doesn’t Whisper: Is God Trying to Speak to You Through Signs, Impressions, Subtle Promptings or a Still, Small Voice?”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions and now here's your host

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 26th day of January 2021.

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I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest. His name is Jim Osmond and he is pastor and preaching elder of Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho and today we are addressing his new book with a forward from John MacArthur, God Doesn't Whisper and the theme basically is going to be covering the questions is

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God trying to speak to you through signs, impressions, subtle promptings, or a still small voice and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jim Osmond.

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Thank you Chris, I sure appreciate the opportunity to address your listeners and to partner with you in this broadcast.

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Thank you. The pleasure is all mine brother and joining me as a co -host today to interview

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Pastor Jim is one of my favorite guests of all time in fact

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I'm looking forward to having him back on the program for part two of a discussion on false prophecies for 2021 which we began a couple of weeks ago with Andrew Rappaport of Striving for Eternity Ministries but it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Justin Peters of Justin Peters Ministries.

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Chris, it's an honor to be back, an honor to be with both of you brothers. Thank you so much. Well, I appreciate you at very short notice agreeing to co -host this program with me and I am very excited about our discussion today.

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Before we get into the discussion, Pastor Osmond, can you tell us about Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho?

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Yeah, Kootenai Community Church is a small church up here in rural North Idaho. We're about an hour south of the

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U .S.-Canadian border. We've been in operation since the late 1970s, early 1980s, and I am only the third pastor of this church, and I grew up in this church, and we are

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Reformed in our soteriology, though not in our eschatology, and we have a commitment to expository teaching, sound doctrine, and exhorting the saints through exposition of scripture.

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Praise God. And if anybody wants more information about Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho, you can go to their website,

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K -O -O -T -E -N, as in Nancy, A -I -Church .org,

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that's K -O -O -T -E -N -A -I -Church .org, and God willing, if I remember,

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I'll be repeating that information later on in the program. So this is, I think, a very much needed book in our day and age,

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Pastor Osman, and the church owes you a debt for writing it. In fact, I am going to read

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Justin Peters' endorsement for it, and Justin Peters is our co -host today, but since I have his quote right in front of me,

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I figured I'd read it. Many teach that God is whispering private revelations to His people.

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The spiritual harm and theological mischief spawned by this errant doctrine is incalculable.

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In God Doesn't Whisper, Jim Osman has written what is, in my estimation, the definitive work on this subject.

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Read this book carefully, consider its arguments, and rest in the sufficiency of scripture.

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I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. And coming from somebody of the caliber of Justin Peters, especially because of the focus of his ministry, that is some powerful endorsement, if I do say so.

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Yeah, it certainly is. And he used a very key word here, or phrase, the sufficiency of scripture, because that is really at the crux of what we are discussing today, it's really at the crux of the issue, and the reason why

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I say this is that there are many people who believe in sola scriptura, they believe that the scriptures are the only infallible, inerrant rule of faith over the church today.

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We don't have apostles receiving divine revelation and so on. But there are many who claim to embrace and defend and declare sola scriptura, but in the practice of their lives and the function of their congregations, they really are not, and perhaps this is something that they are unconscious of, but they are not really believing in and depending upon the sufficiency of scripture.

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Would you say that I'm right on that? Yeah, I certainly would, and I think that many of the people that I quote in the book and critique, like Mark Batterson, Henry Blackaby, Priscilla Shire, Robert Morris, Beth Moore, all of those people and many more,

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Charles Stanley, for instance, all of them would affirm that that's their filing cabinet theology, that they believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

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They would say in their books, we believe that the Bible is the only sufficient, inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God.

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But then they go on to promote a method of hearing from God in a paradigm of theology that advocates listening for the voice of God outside of scripture through all of these various means—still small voice, promptings, nudgings, dreams, visions, signs, things of that nature—that really practically, in terms of their day -to -day walk, demonstrate that they don't rely upon scripture and scripture alone.

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Because if we are to say that scripture is sufficient, then we don't need any of these other means for God to lead us and direct us in decision -making or in our day -to -day lives, and yet all of these people that I've just mentioned would all advocate a method of hearing from God that is a means of hearing

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His voice and receiving direction and revelation outside of scripture. And some of them, like experienced

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God—Henry Blackaby—some of them like Henry Blackaby would say that if you don't have that experience, if you're not hearing

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God in that way, you are—something is fundamentally wrong with your Christian life. You're in fact addicted and unable to live a

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God -glorifying life. Wow, that's something. And the reason why this is an important issue to discuss is because there is even difference of opinion and confusion amongst those that would consider themselves staunch cessationists.

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We are not only dealing with a problem that the wild -eyed, fringe, lunatic, word -of -faith frauds are declaring and promoting.

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There are even within our circles of theology, Reformed theology, where you have—of course you do have charismatic folks who are theologically

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Reformed in the soteriology. But I'm speaking of Reformed cessationists.

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There is a question mark. There's a misunderstanding or a confusion or an unsettledness on how to approach certain issues when it comes to this whole topic.

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And we'll, I'm sure, at some point, get involved in more specifics on this.

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But also, I want to remind my co -host, Justin Peters, since I cannot see you, since you are on the phone, you're not in the studio with me,

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I can't see you waving your hand. I can't see facial expressions. Just when you sense a lull in the conversation, if you have a question, or if you even want to add something to what

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Pastor Jim Osmond has said, feel free to chime in immediately. You don't have to wait for me to call upon you.

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But first of all, what was it that compelled you to write this book, since there have been works already written by opponents of New Revelation, extra -biblical revelation, the charismatic movement, the

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Pentecostal movement? There have been critiques written before. Even the brother in Christ, who is one of my modern -day heroes,

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John MacArthur, wrote a book called Charismatic Chaos. And he had a conference on a strange fire and wrote a book that related to that whole issue.

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But if you could, what was the compelling reason you wrote this book? Well, I wanted to put something in the hands of people that would be very accessible, that some of the language, the verbiage, the references that they hear in not even your charismatic churches, but could be your average

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Southern Baptist church, about hearing the voice of God. And sometimes some of this language, like, the Lord led me and I had a peace about it, or I felt the

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Lord speak into my heart, I felt the Lord prompting me or telling me, or God gave me an impression that I was supposed to do such -and -such or go to such -and -such a place, that language is just so much a part and parcel.

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It's woven into the fabric of modern evangelicalism. And not just in charismatic churches, but also in what you would consider, recall, cessationist churches.

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And really what I was targeting was putting something in the hands of your average believer that could give them the tools to assess some of this and to answer some of the language that they hear and give them that ability to see from Scripture that these things, these practices are not at all biblical, and they're built upon a number of false assumptions.

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And other good books on the cessationist arguments have been made and written, like John MacArthur's Charismatic Chaos, which

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I think is fantastic. But in my book, I'm not arguing for cessationism, though I am a cessationist.

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But what I am gearing it toward is the person who thinks that they are a cessationist, would call themselves a cessationist, and yet they're listening for the voice of God.

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Charles Stanley would call himself a cessationist. I don't know if Priscilla Shrier would call herself a cessationist or not, though.

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Her dad went to Dallas Theological Seminary, which was certainly a cessationist college years ago when he was there.

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But a number of the people that use this language would call themselves cessationists, though they're actually not.

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So I don't deal with the cessationist, non -cessationist argument. I'm really dealing with the methodology itself by which people think that they're hearing from God.

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And I think once you divorce people of the false assumptions, and you show them that the passages pressed into service to support this methodology are taken out of context and sometimes abused and misapplied, and then you answer or critique some of the methodologies that they're employing, that they're left with no other conclusion except that we can go to Scripture and Scripture alone to hear

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God's voice, and then that would make them a cessationist, I think, almost by default. Though there are people who would agree with me, like Greg Kokel and Gary Friesen, who would not call themselves cessationists, though they would affirm all of my critique of the methodology.

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Now, perhaps we should make sure that our terms are clear for our discussion today.

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There are those that are charismatic, or at least continuationists, or continuists, or non -cessationists, who insist they don't believe that they are receiving new revelation from God when they speak in what they believe is an unknown tongue or an angelic tongue, since they themselves don't even know what this language is saying.

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Some of them will use this as a private devotional prayer language and so on, so that there are differences even amongst those that would be continuationists, or continuists, or charismatics, or Pentecostals.

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In fact, I even recall—I can't remember his name right now—oh, in fact, as I was speaking to you and I looked it up,

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I did find the book. There is a book that was written some time ago by Robert Lee Whitworth, and I believe

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Pastor Whitworth is a Pentecostal, and yet he wrote a book titled,

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An Exposé on the Word of Knowledge as it is being misused today.

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So, you have those that would be in agreement with you to a degree, but not necessarily the whole package.

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So, what specifically are you talking about when we are delving into this subject today?

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Are you talking about the cessationists? The whole issue of that we are not to be guided by—

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The methodology? Yes. Yeah, the methodology. So, I take issue with three assumptions that are often brought to bear upon this subject.

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First is that we need to hear from God outside Scripture, that God is needing and wanting to communicate to us, to give us direction for our day -to -day lives, and so we can't be obedient, we can't know

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God's will, we can't be obedient to Scripture unless we're hearing the still, small voice and responding to promptings and impressions and nudgings and discerning

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His will and the signs that He sends our way, as if God is trying to lead us down a path of life by dropping breadcrumbs, and we're supposed to interpret the tea leaves and make decisions on the basis of things like that.

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Then I take issue with the second assumption is that we should expect to hear from God outside Scripture, because Jesus promised that my sheep hear my voice, and so He has promised to speak to us outside of Scripture.

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If you're not hearing the voice of God, you're not hearing the voice of the Shepherd, you either don't belong to Him, or you're either intentionally or unintentionally ignorant or disobedient because you're not listening for it.

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And then third assumption is that we must hear from—we must learn to hear or can learn to hear from God outside of Scripture, that this ability is a discipline that we can engage in or a practice that we can cultivate, a skill we can cultivate, and that it all involves listening to God from outside or for God's voice outside of Scripture.

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And then I critique many of the common methodologies that are employed. You hear people talk about hearing the still, small voice, which is kind of a catch -all phrase that people use for everything from an impression, a nudging, a word that pops into their head, or even what they think is an audible voice rattling around in their cranium that they attribute to be the voice of God.

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I talk about the practice of the verse jumping off the page. You've probably heard people say, you know, I was struggling with whether or not

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I should get involved in children's ministry, and then I was reading through the book of Genesis, and I saw the word children, and it jumped off the page.

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And so that was the Lord telling me that, yes, I should be involved in children's ministry. And so I prayed about it, and God gave me a peace deep in my heart.

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And so we're supposed to be led by the peace, and since I had a peace about it, I felt that that was the voice of God.

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Or people look for the voice of God in open and closed doors. You know, they say, God opened a door here, and He closed a door there, and therefore this must be the will of God for me to go through this door.

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Or they look for the voice of God in a sign, some sort of a physical or a spiritual manifestation that catches their eye.

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It might be a license plate, or a bumper sticker, or a billboard, or a newspaper article, and something that sort of brings to their mind something that they should do.

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And they call that the voice of God. Jack Deere even talks about God speaking to him through the lyrics of a country music song.

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Some people put out a fleece, have the idea that they pray about something, and say, God, if it's your will that I do this, like Gideon, you know, make this happen, and if it's your will that I do the other, then make this happen.

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And so then they think that that is God's determination of which one they should do, that God is obligated to answer that prayer.

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And thus, once He reveals His will through the fleece and gives you the clear indication of which of the two paths you're to take, you're obligated morally to obey that and to take that path.

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And another way is people having dreams. Some people say they had a dream or a vision, and that God led them through this dream.

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And they try and interpret the dreams to try and divine the voice of God in a dream.

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So those are some of the methodologies. A lot of people just use the language, I felt led, I felt the

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Lord impress upon my heart. And they take these things, the feelings, the hunches, the nudges, impressions, intuitions, they deem this to be the voice of God, and they deem it to be

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God speaking to them and giving them guidance outside. And all of these things, of course, are outside of Scripture.

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Their methodology is not derived in Scripture and not based upon the meaning of a Scriptural passage.

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No, Jim, everything you've just described is almost universally accepted amongst evangelicals.

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And I've talked before that I think in large part this comes from some of the erroneous teachings in Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby.

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He has introduced this mysticism slash charismatic thought even into non -charismatic churches.

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But what you've just described is almost universally accepted. A couple of those you mentioned, the one that I hear so often is the still small voice, that God speaks to us in a still small voice.

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So that is in Scripture. Why does it not teach what most of us think that it does?

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Well, you know, we read about the still small voice in 1 Kings 19. It's the account of Elijah who, at the low point, he goes into the cave and God doesn't speak to him through all of the fire, the wind, the earthquake, etc.

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that happened outside the cave. And then it says that Elijah heard a still small voice, 1

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Kings 19. The ESV translates it as a low whisper. And so what we're not allowed to do or what we should not do when we're handling passage to Scripture is just find some phrase isolated from its context that describes how

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God spoke to or what a prophet heard and say, well, therefore that becomes the model of how

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God speaks to us. God speaks to his people in a still small voice. And not

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Henry Block, but Priscilla Schreier makes a huge deal out of the still small voice. So does

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Charles Stanley. For Dallas Willard, it's the catch -all phrase that he uses to describe what he calls the

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God's primary way of speaking to his people. And yet that phrase, still small voice, is used nowhere else in the

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Old Testament, that exact phrase. It's variously translated from everything from a gentle whisper by the

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NIV. The NASB says the sound of a gentle blowing. It's called a voice or a soft whisper or a low voice or a murmuring sound.

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Those are the different ways that it's translated. And it simply means something that Elijah heard that we're not exactly sure what it was.

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But the fact that it was not inside of his head is evidenced by the fact that he went outside of the cave to speak to God.

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He heard something, some murmuring, rumbling, what sounded like a voice or a whisper outside the cave, and Elijah left to go out and to hear that.

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And a lot of people then—and now that's obvious that it's not something inside of his mind. It's not an impression or a nudging.

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It was something external to him. If it were something inside of his own head or heart, Elijah could have stayed inside the cave to hear it or to converse with God.

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But he didn't. He went outside, and that's when God spoke to him, and God spoke to him audibly and clearly.

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And what a lot of people try to do is to use that still small voice phraseology to describe the vague, mushy, kind of indeterminate impressions that they get that they think could be from God, are not really inspired, might be fallible, could be errant.

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They're not quite sure about it, but this is God trying to speak to them in some sort of a whisper, and that they're supposed to discern that.

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And they use Elijah as the template for that, almost the example du jour of how we hear

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God. Let me throw at you— And Elijah elsewhere, before that,

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Elijah's method of hearing from God was very clear. God spoke to him. The Word of the Lord came to the prophet and said unto him.

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The Word of the Lord came to Elijah and said unto him. It was all clear, discernible, quotable,

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God speaking audibly to Elijah. He understood exactly what it was. That's the pattern of Elijah's life. And then what hearing from God advocates try and do is to take this one really fuzzy, indiscriminate, kind of—we're not quite sure—it's a vague reference to a sound he heard, and they try and make that the model for us today.

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And that's not the model for us today. When God spoke to his prophets, it wasn't in still, small voices. It was clear, audible, direct divine revelation that the prophets understood very clearly exactly what

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God was saying. Now let me throw something at you that happened to me recently, and I'm not asking you this as if I think that you're omniscient and know exactly what this means, necessarily.

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But I am not the kind of guy, and I've met people who are like this, who can't wait to tell you about a dream that they had, and they import into it some very important spiritual significance.

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But even though I'm not that kind of a guy, a number of weeks ago, I had a dream about a classmate of mine in elementary school, and he was also a classmate of mine in high school.

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And I haven't thought about this individual in many years. The last time

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I think I even thought about him was when I bumped into him somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 years ago in a restaurant.

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And I had a dream about this individual, and it was a vague dream.

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I don't even really remember the substance of the dream. And I woke up from the dream looking at texts that I had received, and I had a text that my friend had gone home to heaven.

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And he had died, apparently, before I had this dream.

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And I was just wondering. I was baffled by that. I've had things like that happen a few times in my life that were uncanny.

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The average person would call it a coincidence. We know that God is in sovereign control over all things.

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Nothing happens by accident to God, but I think that sometimes the word coincidence is appropriate because the things that are occurring don't necessarily have the importance or the meaning that we think they have.

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But when something like that happens, how should I view that? Because I didn't have any direct teaching about this in my dream.

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I didn't have a call to action in this dream. There wasn't some kind of new teaching or theology in this dream.

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Could God have used this for some reason just to let me know or to remind me that, yes,

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I am still God, I'm still here, etc.? And beyond that, I couldn't tell you.

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But is this completely out of the realm of appropriate thought amongst

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Christians who are biblicists and cessationists? Yeah, the way

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I handle experiences like that is I'm quite open to the notion that God is free to work into our lives what

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I think that the Puritans used to refer to as extraordinary providences, things that are not just coincidental.

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There are things that we just think, man, there must be a God who's orchestrating the events of this world because all of these things happened in just such a way and the timing was more than just coincidental.

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Though I don't think it's wrong to use the term coincidental because we're just simply meaning that these incidents have happened coordinatedly, you know, at the same time.

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So in the event of your dream, what is the purpose of God in allowing you to have a dream about this person who at the same time, or very close to the same time, died and went to heaven?

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I don't know what the possibilities are, what God might be doing through that. I do think He's the one who allowed you to have the dream, and I do think

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He's the one who orchestrated the day or planned the day of that person's death. And is it completely coincidental?

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I don't know. It was God trying to tell you something? I don't think God was trying to tell you anything, because God doesn't try to do anything.

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He just, He does or He doesn't. Excellent point, because I was going to bring that up, and I was going to bring that up because of your title, or actually not in your title, but in the description of your book,

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I was going to say, does God try to do anything? Yeah, no,

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I don't think He does. There's no examples in Scripture where God said something to somebody and they couldn't get the meaning of it.

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Because if God speaks to us, He always speaks to us with the point that we are going to hear Him, understand Him, and thus be able to obey

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Him. And so God is not whispering things that are vague impressions and clues that we are supposed to try and interpret or divine the meaning of, because then the revelation fails to meet its point, to accomplish its purpose, which is to give us guidance and understanding and action to do something.

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So I don't think that God was trying to communicate anything. It may be just that God is reminding you that, yeah,

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He's the giver of, He's the one who watches over you even at night, and it just happens to be that this person you were thinking of also died that very evening.

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I've had extraordinary providences in my own life where I think about somebody and then I run into them in the store that day, and I don't say to myself, what was

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God trying to tell me, or was God trying to warn me of something? God's not trying to do anything. If He wanted to speak to me,

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He would. I don't believe that He's going to. I don't expect Him to, and I'm not saying that He can't speak if He wanted to.

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God can do anything He wants. But my argument is that we shouldn't be taking dreams and impressions or ideas that pop into our head or names that occur to us while we're praying and think that this is in some way

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God whispering or trying to get our attention or trying to communicate to us or giving us impressions to give us guidance.

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There's nothing I can do with that interpretive -wise other than to just simply recognize that, wow, that's an interesting supernatural providence.

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When we come back, I want to ask Justin Peters a quick question, because he can only spend an hour with us.

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Justin, in fact, you can ponder this question while we have a break here. I want you to let our listeners know why you think this is such a vital issue we're discussing, because there are many people who think that we are doing nothing more than inciting sectarianism and division and nastiness and bigotry and all these kinds of things into the

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Christian faith by bringing up something prominent that divides us sharply. So when we come back,

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Justin, since you have to leave in the not -so -distant future, I'd like you to address that, and then we'll continue our questions with Pastor Rosman.

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If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of their own, our email address is chrisarmson at gmail .com.

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chrisarmson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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If 2020 has proven anything, it's that big pharma, big tech, and big government knows nothing about how to treat people naturally without poisoning them with synthetic drugs and experimental vaccines.

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And don't forget, folks, if you contribute to the Historical Bible Society, which is a not -for -profit organization sponsoring this program, if you contribute a minimum of $35 to them at historicalbiblesociety .org,

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you'll receive a beautiful 44 -page book, 9 by 12 inches in dimension, of the genealogies of Jesus, and it is gorgeous.

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I mean, it is taken from direct prints from the artwork from a first edition 1611

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The Genealogies. We are now back with our discussion with Pastor Jim Osmond, who is the author of the book we are discussing today, and that book is titled

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God Doesn't Whisper, and we have with us as a co -host, at least for the first hour, and he has to leave shortly,

39:24

Justin Peters of Justin Peters Ministries, and as you may recall, Justin, before the break, I asked you to let our audience know why you think this is such a vital issue.

39:33

This is an issue that takes up a very large percentage of your main mission with Justin Peters Ministries, so why don't you tell our listeners about why it's so important.

39:45

Yes, Chris, it truly is, and I'm so grateful for Jim's book, because the bookshelves in our

39:53

Christian bookstores practically sag under the weight of all of the books that have been written on how to hear

39:59

God's voice, you know, follow these steps, five steps, ten steps, to hear the voice of God, do this, do that. I mean, there's literally dozens and dozens of them, but Jim's book is the only one of which

40:09

I am aware that directly takes the opposite view, and the biblical view, and addresses this movement, and I believe it's going to be used by the

40:18

Lord to bring a great deal of relief to people, because one of the dangers is that it makes

40:27

Christians unnecessarily doubt their relationship with Christ, because we hear this from, as we've said, even theoretically non -charismatic preachers and teachers saying you should be able to hear the voice of God, it's a regular part of the

40:44

Christian life. As Blackaby says, if you don't hear God's voice, you're in trouble at the heart of your

40:50

Christian experience, direct quote. And so everybody's saying, well,

40:55

God told me this, God told me that, Lord, let me get this on the heart, blah, blah, blah. And many

41:01

Christians start to wonder, well, what's wrong with me? I don't hear God talk to me like that.

41:08

I don't hear God speak to me as clearly as he seems to be speaking to all of these other people.

41:14

What's wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my walk with the Lord? Am I not even saved?

41:20

And so a lot of people unnecessarily are made to doubt their relationship with the

41:26

Lord simply because they're not hearing this quote -unquote still small voice, which they're not supposed to be hearing anyway from Scripture, so according to Scripture.

41:35

And so that is one of the things. And also it introduces a mystical element to the

41:44

Christian life that is not biblical. It introduces a kind of a pagan mysticism.

41:52

It's almost taking like a Lion King version of mysticism, you know,

41:58

Rafiki the baboon and all that kind of stuff. It's introducing that kind of philosophy into the

42:05

Christian life where it has no place being there. And it also, another one of the primary dangers of this is that it divorces people from their complete reliance upon Scripture.

42:18

And so they start seeking after the still small voices, the hunches, the dreams, the visions.

42:24

They start spending their time reading books and listening to sermons, how to interpret your dreams, and they listen to other preachers give their dreams and their visions and relay all of that to them so that their attention is diverted away from Scripture through all of this mystical nonsense.

42:43

And anything that serves to divorce our attention from Scripture is not the work of the author of Scripture.

42:52

That is the work of the enemy, whether people realize that or not. So it's a very, very dangerous thing.

42:59

I'm so grateful for Jim's book. Excellent. Well, Jim, obviously there are many people, well -intentioned people, who want to keep hearing the voice of God.

43:14

And in fact, it's somewhat humorous and tragic at the same time. There is a very liberal leftist apostate church in my community here in Pennsylvania.

43:28

And they have a sign, a big sign outside that said, God is still speaking. And every time

43:34

I pass it, my first thought is, yes, and he's calling you heretics, and he wants you to repent.

43:43

But people want to continue that belief, perpetuate that belief, that God is still speaking in a fresh way, in an extra -biblical way, because in their mind, it solidifies and coincides with the truth that God is not dead,

44:03

God is still existing. He's still functioning and operating. We're not deists.

44:10

We don't believe in a cold, aloof, distant God who is just watching the world that he wound up like a clock and set into motion.

44:20

And he's not just a spectator sitting there watching. So people think, and I think that this is also true with the entire charismatic phenomenon, the healing and the tongues.

44:32

People want to perpetuate this because they believe that this is what involves us in history in the

44:43

Christian church. They get excited about the fact that we are, when we demonstrate and tell the world, or tell at least those around us, that we are having dreams, that we are having visions, that it is giving us a role in God's continuing functioning in this world that we live in.

45:12

And we don't need new revelation to do that, do we?

45:19

No, we don't. In fact, one of the two responses that I typically get when I teach on this, mention this, or have written on this in the past, and certainly from this book,

45:28

I get one of two responses from people. People will either say to me, so they'll either respond by saying, thank you for relieving me of this burden.

45:38

I thought that I was one of the only Christians who wasn't hearing God speak to him audibly, and I doubted my salvation as Justin mentioned, or I just felt like I wasn't as close to the

45:47

Lord as I should be, or that I was being disobedient because I wasn't hearing God tell me where to go for lunch, or which house to buy, or which job to take, or which shirt to wear, or which carpet color to choose.

46:01

I wasn't hearing these personal revelations, and I was expecting them. So thank you for relieving me of this burden that people put on me, that I should be expecting this and hearing this regularly.

46:11

The second response I get is from people who say, so you're telling me that the Holy Spirit's not involved in my life at all?

46:18

And now I have believed that God has been involved in my life because I hear him speak to me.

46:23

I've heard his voice, and he guides me each and every day. He's so close to me, and this voice is proof that he's close to me.

46:31

And now you're telling me that that's all unbiblical, that's all nonsense, and so now I feel like you've taken away from me my personal relationship with the

46:38

Lord. So people have two opposite reactions to the notion when you challenge them that God's not speaking to them in a still, small voice.

46:49

One of the mistakes that people make sometimes is thinking that you've taken away from them their personal connection to the

46:55

Lord. And I'm suggesting that you still have a personal connection to the Lord. It is just mediated through Scripture.

47:03

That is where God speaks to you, and the meaning of Scripture is the voice of God. And when you hear the

47:09

Word of God, and you are reading the Word of God, and understanding its meaning, that is the voice of God, and that's all you need for life in Godliness.

47:16

He has already provided that. And we don't need to have personal, supernatural, extraordinary, extra -biblical experiences to see the hand of God in our lives.

47:27

We ought to be able to see God supernaturally working in His acts of providence, and through Scripture, and in my life, in ways that are not just supernatural.

47:38

And I ask people, who's the more spiritual one? The person who thinks that God is only at work if they can see the supernatural?

47:47

Or the person who sees God always at work, even through the ordinary things in life? And I think that that second option is a better view of divine providence.

47:56

That God is always working, and we don't need still small voices, nudgings, promptings, and impressions, and Scripture has not promised us that this is how

48:04

God speaks to us. What Scripture says to us is that the Word of God is the written Word of God that we have in the 66 books of our

48:12

Old and New Testament. And Scripture has not promised, and Jesus has not promised that God is going to speak to us outside of that book, apart from the meaning of the passages of Scripture.

48:22

We have an anonymous listener who says, How do you believe providence plays a role in understanding the will of God, in particular circumstances that are not spelled out in detail in the

48:36

Scriptures? For instance, if you have fallen in love, or at least have become infatuated, with a woman that you would like to marry, and you are praying for God's guidance on whether you should pursue her, to court her, and propose to her, and then she begins to manifest things that you find to be unattractive or ungodly, and you know as a result that this is not the woman for you.

49:06

Perhaps she begins to curse, or perhaps she begins to behave in a way that she didn't behave before you prayed, and she is revealing to you that you must move on and find someone else.

49:19

If the Lord has someone for you, how do we describe this as far as providence that occurs in our life?

49:27

The key thing is that the person is saying, when we pray for God to reveal to us about a certain person, and so on.

49:37

Yeah, so God can make, I think, wisdom clear by giving us the ability to see things that maybe we would not necessarily see on our own, and I think that that's one of the fruits of just praying for wisdom in a situation.

49:51

It's appropriate to say, Lord, here's what I want to do, and now I'm asking you to open my eyes and see what my options are, and help me to discern whether this choice is a wise choice or not.

50:02

So it might not necessarily be a sin for him to marry a woman who does things that irritate him, but it might not be the wisest thing in the world for him to do something, or marry somebody who does things that irritate him.

50:13

So by praying for God to guide our steps, what we're really praying for is for the

50:20

Lord to open our eyes to see the choices that we have, to apply his word and wisdom to the choices that we have, and to make a decision that is honoring to him.

50:29

And by his providence, he may put us in situations where we see things that we normally would not have seen, or we're in a position where some of our options are narrowed down, and some of them are removed, and other options become open to us.

50:44

That's all part of what I would say it means for God to direct our steps. And so that's his scenario that he laid out there is entirely in keeping with providentially how

50:55

God works in our lives. We pray for an opportunity to do something, and that opportunity may never come to fruition.

51:01

I've known men who have prayed for opportunities to go into ministry, and they're still waiting for those opportunities, and yet God has not providentially directed their steps to a point where they can step into certain positions.

51:11

And I think that's all just all part of seeing how God is moving, and allowing him to direct our steps, being patient, and applying wisdom to the decisions that we make.

51:21

And I know that Justin Peters has some... Do you have another question you'd like to ask before you leave,

51:26

Justin? Yes, yes, Chris, before I leave. Jim, I'd like you to engage one of the other commonly used texts, and this one is probably at least as much, if not more so, than the still small voice.

51:39

But John 10, 27, My sheep hear my voice. I hear that verse quoted all the time when people push back against me when

51:46

I teach that God speaks to us only through Scripture, and they always quote John 10, 27,

51:52

My sheep hear my voice. Can you walk through that text for us? And Justin, we'll have Jim answer that when we come back from our midway break, because we have to go to our break right now, and I guess we're saying goodbye to you because you have to leave.

52:05

So perhaps you could listen to Jim's answer on the internet. Okay. Because I understand you have to leave now, correct?

52:13

I do. Okay, well, I want to give your website to our listeners. It's justinpeters .org, justinpeters .org.

52:19

Thank you so much, Justin, for participating in at least half of our program today.

52:25

Thank you very much, Chris. It was my honor. God bless you, bro. God bless you, too. And we'll have Pastor Jim Osmond answer that question about My sheep hearing my voice, the words of Christ.

52:38

After we return from our midway break, I hope that you folks will be patient with us, because the midway break is always the longer break in the middle of the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they have to obey

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FCC regulations and localize Iron Trump and Zion Radio and all of their programming geographically to Lake City, Florida, with their own public service announcements and other local announcements that they air, while we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

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So please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as possible for as many of our advertisers as possible, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them, so that they,

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God willing, will more than likely remain our advertisers, which will mean subsequently,

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God willing, that we will remain on the air for a longer future, because we absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers to exist, so please try to patronize them, or at least reach out to our advertisers and thank them for sponsoring this program.

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Also, send in a question for Jim Osmond at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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01:17:15

Last but not least, if you want to go to the Votie Baucom conference, they may already be sold out.

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Thursday in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, for the Votie Baucom conference on critical race theory.

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He is opposing that heresy. He's exposing it and refuting it. This Thursday in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, from 8 a .m.

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to 12 noon, and as I said, I will be there manning an exhibitors booth. If you want to go, and I'll find out if they have any more tickets left, send me an email as quickly as you can to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:18:07

and I will let you know if they have any tickets left. That's also the email address where you could send a question to our guest

01:18:13

Jim Osmond on what we are discussing today, God Doesn't Whisper, his new book, which is basically a book refuting the notion that we still have extra -biblical divine revelation in our day.

01:18:29

The email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Jim, I'm sure you remember

01:18:38

Justin Peters, who was co -hosting with me in the first hour, but had to leave. Before he left, he brought up the fact that he said that either non -cessationists, continuationists, continuous charismatics,

01:18:52

Pentecostals, or anyone who uses still small voices as a guide to their lives, or any other kind of voices, or so -called revelations, they will quote from John 10, verse 27, where Christ says,

01:19:10

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them. How do you respond to people who use that verse in that way?

01:19:19

Yeah, that's actually part of, or right behind, an extended discourse that Jesus gives called the

01:19:26

Good Shepherd Discourse there in John 10. There's a reference to it in verse 4 as well, when Jesus said, when he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

01:19:35

And so often, here in the Voice of God teachers, they will use those two verses.

01:19:42

Verse 16, Jesus says, I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they'll hear my voice, and they'll become one flock with one shepherd.

01:19:50

And they use those references to the sheep here in the Voice of the Shepherd to teach that Jesus has promised to speak to us, his sheep, that we should therefore expect regular communications from him through impressions, promptings, feelings, and that all

01:20:04

Christians possess this ability to hear and recognize the shepherd's voice. And the key to that passage is found in verse 6, where John gives an editorial note in the middle of that discourse.

01:20:17

He says in verse 6, this figure of speech, Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which he had been saying to them.

01:20:23

And there, John is telling us that Jesus, because John calls it a figure of speech, he's not talking about literal hearing or literal speaking.

01:20:30

Instead, Jesus is using the metaphor of a shepherd calling his sheep to himself, and the practice comes from something that would have been very standard and regular in Palestine, in the land of Israel.

01:20:42

I shouldn't use Palestine because that's a word that we use to describe Israel that wasn't used back then, but in the land of Israel, where a shepherd would put all of his sheep in with other sheep of other shepherds into a pen with high walls that had one door, and that walled enclosure provided shelter from the elements and protection from predators.

01:21:00

And then a hired man would spend the night with the sheep, and one person would guard multiple flocks of sheep.

01:21:06

But then in the morning, the shepherd would gather together his sheep simply by calling them, and the sheep would recognize the voice of the shepherd, and they would come out of the sheep pen, the fold, and follow after him.

01:21:16

And so that figure of speech that Jesus is using, he's not speaking of giving us revelation. He's not describing there us literally hearing his voice inside of our mind as he whispers to us or gives us some promptings.

01:21:29

Jesus is describing there not actual hearing in any way, but his own call to his elect.

01:21:35

He's describing his work as the good shepherd in calling his sheep out of the fold of the world and calling to himself for salvation, sanctification, and ultimately security all those whom the

01:21:47

Father had given to him. He's describing in that passage the same group of people that he speaks of in John 6 when he says, all that the

01:21:54

Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. He's describing the same group of people, the elect, that he describes in John 17 when he prays for those whom the

01:22:04

Father had given to him for the foundation of the world. So Jesus is not describing the ability there of believers to hear whispers of the shepherd in their daily lives by impressions and nudgings.

01:22:13

Instead, he's describing the Savior's work of bringing his sheep to salvation.

01:22:19

And the sheep hearing the shepherd's voice is that figure of speech. It describes his call to those whom the

01:22:25

Father had given to him. And he is using that analogy there to explain to the

01:22:31

Pharisees, actually as a reproof to the Pharisees, because they are the ones who are addressed by the Good Shepherd Discourse.

01:22:36

You go up into chapter 9, which was the healing of the man born blind, and then Jesus confronted the

01:22:42

Pharisees at the end of that chapter. And the continuation of that confrontation is that Good Shepherd Discourse.

01:22:48

He is describing to the Pharisees why it is that the man born blind came to him and believed and worshiped him.

01:22:53

And they won't. They couldn't. They couldn't believe in him. They would not believe in him. And Jesus explains their unbelief in verse 26 when he says, you do not believe because you're not of my sheep.

01:23:03

And all he's saying there is that if the Father had given you to me, you would hear my voice.

01:23:08

You would come to me and you would believe. But you do not believe because you don't belong to me. You don't belong to me because the Father hasn't given you to me.

01:23:14

Therefore, you're not my sheep. And therefore, you don't believe. Whereas the man born blind had believed, not because of any inherent ability in him, but because he belonged to Jesus by virtue of a gift from the

01:23:24

Father. So that's what the analogy is describing. It's not describing personal revelations. It's describing salvation.

01:23:30

And people who use that passage to say that this describes us listening to the shepherd and hearing his voice in impromptings, impressions, and nudgings and things of that nature, they're abusing that passage of Scripture.

01:23:42

And I don't, as a rule, I don't think we should take instruction from people who cannot interpret the clear meaning of Scripture.

01:23:49

I don't think we should take instruction from them about how to interpret vague signs and impressions that ring around in our head when we're thinking about things.

01:23:57

You know, I am immediately transported by, or should

01:24:05

I say, to Luke chapter 16, 19 through 31, which refers to the rich man and Lazarus.

01:24:17

And the rich man is in hell, and he is basically convinced that a miracle of some kind, some kind of a manifestation is going to lead his siblings to the truth.

01:24:37

And in particular, that miracle is the resurrection of Lazarus to go to his family, his five brothers specifically.

01:24:53

And he says to Abraham, I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my family for I have five brothers.

01:25:00

Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment. Abraham replied, they have

01:25:07

Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them. And the rich man says, no,

01:25:14

Father Abraham, he said, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.

01:25:21

He said to them, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

01:25:29

So there you have the Bible. And in that sense, it was obviously the

01:25:35

Hebrew scriptures that was sufficient to lead men to repentance.

01:25:43

And even something as amazing and as radical and as phenomenal and miraculous as a dead person rising from the dead, that is not even going to convince someone unless they are going to believe the scriptures.

01:26:05

It not only approves the sufficiency of scripture, it also, I think, is a proof of particular redemption, unconditional election, because the idea that a man, a human's free will can be convinced to lead them to a saving faith in Christ, that their free will that they were born with, not the free will that comes from a new heart given by Christ, but the free will that they allegedly innately possess can conjure up a faith and a repentance that is pleasing to God, that we see that that is false.

01:26:51

Am I making sense here? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you see the same thing in John 11 when

01:26:56

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Some of the Jews who saw that miracle went and told the Pharisees the things which

01:27:01

Jesus did. And their response was not, wow, that's, man, of all the signs, that's the most convincing one.

01:27:07

We really should believe on it. Instead, they said, look, we have to deal with this man if we let him go on like this. All will believe in him, and the

01:27:14

Romans will come and take away our place in our nation. So then they hatched this plot to kill

01:27:19

Jesus because it was better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish at the hands of the Romans. And so even seeing the sign of Lazarus raised from the dead did not convince the

01:27:29

Pharisees. And in fact, later on in chapter 12, it says that those chief priests had planned to put

01:27:35

Lazarus to death also because many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus because of that miracle.

01:27:41

So the problem with the Pharisees, and I said this when I preached through the Gospel of John, unbelief is never due to a lack of evidence.

01:27:48

It's always due to a love for darkness. And it must be sovereign grace that delivers us from that love for darkness. We need a change of heart, a change of mind, the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, and we need regeneration before we will embrace and love the truth because we are so lost in it that even in the face of a miracle, and so lost in darkness that even in the face of a miracle, we would reject the clear teaching of Scripture and the clear evidence of the miracle for our loving embrace of darkness.

01:28:16

By the way, I think I forgot to tell our anonymous listener earlier, you have won a free copy of God Doesn't Whisper, compliments of our guest today,

01:28:27

Jim Osman, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:28:33

who will actually be shipping it out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

01:28:38

So please make sure you give me your full name and address so that cvbbs .com can ship it out to you as soon as possible.

01:28:46

And obviously, since you requested it to remain anonymous, your identity will not be revealed, so don't worry about that.

01:28:52

Just send me your full name for the shipping purposes and your full address. We have

01:28:59

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and he asks something that I should have asked in the very beginning of the show.

01:29:08

But what do you mean by whispering in your title, God Doesn't Whisper? Well, my title actually was a response to Mark Batterson's book,

01:29:21

Whisper, where he's alleging that one of the ways that God is constantly whispering to us, and he whispers to us for the purpose of us drawing near.

01:29:30

You know, if I'm whispering to you, Chris, the only way you can hear me whisper to you is if you draw really close to me and put your ear next to my mouth and we draw near to one another, then you can hear my whispers.

01:29:40

Well, Mark Batterson in his book, Whisper, talks about that very thing, that that's why

01:29:47

God whispers to us, because he's drawing us near to himself. And so the method of this whispering is the vague impressions, the promptings, the feelings that we get that people attribute to the voice of God.

01:30:02

They say that the nudging that we receive, somebody, you know, thinking of a voice in the middle of the night, or a name pops into your head while you're praying for someone else, or you're suddenly driving down the street and you hear that song,

01:30:17

Africa by Toto, and you see a cloud shaped like Africa. Well, is that God whispering to you, trying to tell you that you should be a missionary to Africa?

01:30:24

Or is God trying to whisper to you to tell you that you should send some money to Africa? What's God trying to tell you there?

01:30:29

And is God communicating to us through these voices, these impressions, these whispers?

01:30:35

That's what I'm trying to capture there. The methodologies that we laid out earlier in Hour 1, those

01:30:42

I critique in the book, and all those are the various ways that people like Mark Patterson and others say that God is whispering to us through signs and impressions and still small voices.

01:30:53

Now, I could never understand, even as a new Christian, when

01:30:58

I would watch The 700 Club and Pat Robertson would be getting his so -called words of knowledge, and this is supposed to be the

01:31:09

Holy Spirit communicating with him, and yet it is a very fuzzy message that he is getting, which also,

01:31:18

I think, goes back to our issue before that we were talking about, that God doesn't try to do anything.

01:31:28

And it also goes back to what you were just saying about whispering. It's not a clear, bold voice that Pat Robertson is receiving.

01:31:37

He's sitting there saying, I see a woman, I believe she is wearing, if I'm not mistaken, a purple dress, sitting on a plaid couch,

01:31:49

I think, and she has some kind of a mass, I think it is in her left lung, and I always thought, why on earth, if he is receiving a message from God, the third person of the

01:32:05

Godhead, where does the signal in his house get poor reception to God, or his studio,

01:32:15

I should say? Is the wiring or the fluorescent lights in the building, in the studio, causing some kind of static with the

01:32:24

Holy Spirit? Does that make any sense at all? Did God ever communicate in the scriptures with people where it was a very vague and uncertain message?

01:32:35

Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I do go into some detail on in the book. Charles Stanley makes the point that God has always been a communicating

01:32:43

God. In fact, all of these authors that I critique make this point that God has always been a communicating God. And so, just as God spoke in the

01:32:50

Old Testament, and just as God spoke in the New Testament, so God continues to speak today. But yet, when you compare the ways that they say that God speaks—still small voices, words jumping off a page, signs, billboards, song titles, etc .—when

01:33:04

you compare that to what Scripture, how Scripture describes God speaking, the two things are not identical at all.

01:33:12

When God spoke in Scripture, it was clear, it was understandable, it was specific, it was authoritative, inerrant, infallible, it was inspired, and yet when

01:33:22

God speaks today, it's supposedly errant and fallible and not necessarily inspired, not canonical, not necessarily authoritative for anybody except for that person, if that person can get the message right.

01:33:34

And it has to be confirmed, you know, we have to hear a voice from God, we have to confirm it for two or three witnesses, we have to have a piece about it, we have to put out a fleece to confirm that this is the voice of God, does

01:33:44

He want us to go this way or that way, we have to check it against Scripture. This entire methodology that is promoted by hearing from God advocates, it bears no resemblance at all to the way that God spoke in Scripture.

01:33:56

And Harrison Mechanicsburg, give me your full mailing address because you have also won

01:34:01

God Doesn't Whisper by Jim Osman, compliments of Pastor Jim, and also compliments of cvbbs .com,

01:34:09

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will ship that out to you when we get your address there.

01:34:16

We have, let's see here, Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania.

01:34:23

And Joseph says, I have often heard cessationists say that if charismatics are really getting new revelation from God, we should staple it right next to the book of Revelation in our

01:34:36

Bibles. Have you ever heard a response from a charismatic to that very statement or question to them?

01:34:47

Yeah, typically, charismatics will say that God is speaking today, but it's not in an inspired sense or a canonical sense, they would say, it's not infallible and inerrant.

01:34:57

Really? God is giving today. Yeah, some of them would say that, like, for instance, Wayne Grudem would make that case about prophecy, that the nature of prophecy has changed, so that today prophecy can be wrong, prophecy can be off, and prophets can misinterpret or misunderstand things.

01:35:13

Sam Storms makes the same case. So modern continuationists, and I'm not talking about, like,

01:35:18

New Apostolic Reformation, those guys would say that they're speaking authoritative revelation on par with the

01:35:24

Apostles, some of those guys would. I'm talking about the continuationists who would be closer to where we're at on the spectrum, who might say that they are cessationists, or they might say that they are open to new revelation today.

01:35:36

They would say that it's not inspired. God speaks to us, but it's not in an inspired sense. And what

01:35:42

I like to point out to people is that what makes Scripture inspired is not the fact that it's written down, and it's not the fact that it was given to Apostles, and it's not the fact that it's old.

01:35:53

What makes Scripture infallible and inspired and inerrant is the fact that God spoke it, and because God speaks it, it has those qualities by necessity.

01:36:03

It must be authoritative, it must be infallible, and it must be inerrant, because God can never speak an unauthoritative, fallible, and errant word.

01:36:12

So if God is speaking today, my question to the charismatics of the continuationists would be, how is it possible that God speaking today is not inerrant, infallible, and inspired?

01:36:23

How can God speak in a way that does not have those qualities? And they might want to say, that God is...

01:36:29

we might misunderstand that revelation, or God is trying to speak to us today, but again, it goes back to what the

01:36:35

Scriptures say. How does... when God speaks in Scripture, does He ever struggle to get His message across? Does He ever have difficulty communicating?

01:36:41

Is He trying to get something through to us? Does He ever speak in Scripture in such a way that it's confusing, and the people who heard

01:36:48

Him speak did not understand what He was saying, and so they just kind of, you know, they might have gotten it wrong as well.

01:36:55

None of that characterizes what we find in Scripture. When God speaks, it's always authoritative, inspired, and inerrant, and it can't be anything other...

01:37:04

and infallible, and it can't be anything other than those things, by virtue of the fact that it is God who has said it. Yeah, if anything, it is going to lend doubt to the inerrancy of Scripture.

01:37:15

It's the idea that people receiving divine revelation can get it wrong, because that's why we have the

01:37:25

Scriptures. They came from divine revelation, so it's just...

01:37:31

Yeah, and God has the power to ensure that not only does He speak clearly, but He has the power to ensure that those who

01:37:38

He intends to hear Him will also hear Him clearly. And that's also an example of somebody thinking that God tried to do something that failed, because He tried to give a word to a prophet, a word so important that it wasn't specifically contained in the

01:37:54

Scriptures, and yet the person is messing it up, you know?

01:38:00

Yeah. I'm sorry if I'm laughing, folks, but some of this is just so insane, and it's sad, though, when it comes from somebody as brilliant as Wayne Grudem and Sam Storms.

01:38:11

They are brilliant people. They're not from the lunatic fringe of craziness.

01:38:17

In fact, perhaps you would be interested in doing this, or if you have a recommendation.

01:38:24

I was contacted probably two years ago now, I can't remember how long ago it was, by Sam Storms' publisher asking me to interview him, and I told them

01:38:35

I would not interview him, but I would air a debate with him on tongues, because that was the subject of his latest book, at least at that time.

01:38:43

So I would like to have a debate on my program with Sam over that issue, and perhaps either if you are willing, or if you could find someone for me that you trust,

01:38:55

I'd love to hear about that after the show. Let's see here, we have

01:39:01

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says, I have heard from some cessationists that although they do not believe we should add anything to the

01:39:14

Bible, and that is a serious sin and heresy, at the same time we should not be misusing

01:39:21

Revelation chapter 22, 18 in order to teach that fact.

01:39:26

And that verse, as you know, says, for I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things,

01:39:38

God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. I have heard from even cessationists that that is specifically referring to the book of Revelation, not to the canon.

01:39:49

So how do you respond to that? I've heard the same thing, from people that are scholars, who know the biblical languages, even though they are cessationists, and they don't believe we can or should add to the canon, that that is a misuse of that text.

01:40:10

What do you say about that? Well, at the end of Revelation, I would say that directly,

01:40:18

John must have in mind the the reference to that book being the book of Revelation.

01:40:25

I don't know that John would have necessarily known that those would be the closing words of however the

01:40:30

Bible would be later arranged in order of the canonical books, you know, Gospels first, and then Acts, and then

01:40:36

Epistles, and then Revelation. John could not have known what would be intended by the way that we would use that.

01:40:43

He would not have been able to foresee, for instance, that that would be at the end of the book. But I do believe that providentially

01:40:49

God has placed the book of Revelation and that warning right there at the very end of the book of Revelation, because I think that in John's intended meaning, in writing that down,

01:41:01

I think he probably would have thought very narrowly in terms of Revelation. I think in the Spirit of God's intended meaning, and especially in the placement of that book in our canon, that the

01:41:10

Spirit of God, that that certainly applies to all of Scripture, simply because the principle is that we should not add or subtract from God's Word.

01:41:18

That when God says that He has said something, when He has spoken, we ought not to misquote that and add to it or take away from it.

01:41:25

That that is a curse that applies to everything God has written, not just the book of Revelation. So I think that there's a dual intention or a dual meaning there that applies not just to the book of Revelation, but also is true of all of God's words, because that's not the only place where we read of that warning.

01:41:42

There's another warning similarly in Proverbs, the speech of God reproving the man who would add to His Word. And I think that that principle just applies to anything that is inspired.

01:41:51

We have no business adding any books to Scripture or saying, thus saith the

01:41:56

Lord, when He has not said it. And this is one of the dangers of this movement of trying to hear the voice of God and say, well, the

01:42:02

Lord spoke to me and said. What you're doing is you're putting words in God's mouth, and if God has not spoken that and you're saying that He has spoken that, then you are claiming to be a vehicle or a recipient of divine revelation, because God is revealing to you something not in Scripture, and you are in a sense adding to the

01:42:19

Word of God by doing that. You're saying that God has spoken and He has said, quote, and then you give the message, end quote, and if that's what you believe that God has spoken, then again, you are adding to something that is inside Scripture, and I think it's something you should do with great fear and trepidation.

01:42:32

I don't think you should do it at all. It should cause you fear and trepidation, the thought of doing it, because you're running the risk of receiving

01:42:40

God's displeasure because you're quoting Him. Susan, Margaret, thank you for the excellent question, and you have also won a free copy of God Doesn't Whisper, which will be mailed to you by cvbbs .com,

01:42:52

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Make sure we have your full mailing address. We're going to our final break. It's going to be a lot more brief than the last breaks.

01:42:59

If indeed you have a question that you'd like to send in, send it in immediately, because we are rapidly running out of time.

01:43:05

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com, and I will read for you,

01:43:11

Pastor Jim, an anonymous email, and then we'll have you respond to it when we come back.

01:43:17

The anonymous listener says, I have friends that were Muslims who converted to Christ because of a dream or a vision they received, allegedly from Christ Himself, that convinced them that Jesus was indeed the

01:43:35

Messiah, and they do not continue to have extra -biblical revelations now that they're

01:43:41

Christians. These were seemingly one -time events in their lives. Can you explain this?

01:43:48

And we will have you respond to that when we come back from our last break. Don't go away.

01:43:53

We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpman's Iron Radio.

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LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back and Pastor Jim, as you may recall, an anonymous listener said that personal friends of his who were

01:49:33

Muslims who converted to Christianity, that conversion experience basically was initiated by a dream or a vision of Christ identifying himself as the

01:49:45

Messiah and that is what led them to salvation and yet they were not, for the remainder of their

01:49:52

Christian walk, ongoing charismatics or people who heard voices and saw visions.

01:50:00

They, in some sense, were after that initial revelation allegedly cessationists, for lack of better terminology there.

01:50:13

But how do you respond to those things when you hear about that? In fact, I know of people who work extensively and primarily with Muslims who say that the vast majority of people they know who are

01:50:26

Muslims who convert have heard a voice, saw a vision, or had a dream that was used by God.

01:50:32

So if you could respond to that. Yeah, that's something that would take a lot more time than probably we have left here, but I'll give you four quick responses to that.

01:50:44

Well, before I do, let me preface it with this. I think that many of the stories are just stories and it's sometimes difficult to chase down the sources of some of these stories.

01:50:54

I have no doubt that people are having experiences over there, whether those experiences are from God or not, whether God is using attempted satanic deceptions to, in fact, bring

01:51:05

Muslims to salvation, that is possible. I have no reason to believe that some of the visions that they're seeing of a man dressed in white is actually

01:51:12

Jesus. I think that such an affirmation should be rejected and dealt with with extreme skepticism for a few different reasons, and I'll just give you four of them because I have a whole chapter on this in the book.

01:51:25

Number one, God has already revealed His evangelism strategy, and it doesn't include dreams and visions.

01:51:31

1 Corinthians 1, 18 through chapter 2, verse 5, Paul talks about the preaching of the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, but the power of God to those who are being saved.

01:51:41

That God's elect are saved through the gospel message, faithfully, boldly, and accurately preached by human messengers and not through dreams of visions and shining lights.

01:51:49

Paul said, how will they hear without a preacher? In Romans chapter 10, you know, he encourages us to go out and to preach the truth and to evangelize and to go into all the world, and if God were saving people through dreams and visions, then there would be no need for evangelism and the preaching of the word.

01:52:05

God would just save them through dreams and visions. So the lost are saved through the God -exalted, God -ordained,

01:52:11

God -exalting, God -ordained, Spirit -empowered preaching of the gospel. Second, the fullness and the finality of the revelation that we have in Christ, according to Hebrews chapter 1, makes visions unnecessary.

01:52:23

God spoke in those ways long ago into the fathers in the past days, but in these latter days,

01:52:29

He has spoken to us in His Son, and so the finality of that revelation in Christ and the fullness of it makes the visions and dreams unnecessary.

01:52:37

And third, I think that there is evidence in the New Testament that the explicit expectation of the apostles was not that people after them would see visions of Jesus.

01:52:48

They wanted people to rely upon the written word of God. Paul did, John did, Peter did, and not upon visions and dreams.

01:52:56

And then a fourth reason I think we should reject the claims is that the apostles warned regarding the dangers of those kind of experiences.

01:53:03

Paul talks about, in Colossians 2, he warns about false teachers who keep defrauding you of the prize by delighting in self -abasement, the worship of angels, and taking a stand on visions he has seen inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.

01:53:17

And so if that were part of the evangelistic strategy, then, and methodology, we would expect in the

01:53:25

New Testament to have some instruction on it. How would we tell if a vision is a heavenly vision or a demonic deception? Who should we expect would receive these visions and under what circumstances?

01:53:34

And really concerning the church embracing visions, the only apostolic instruction we have on it is a warning against the dangers and deceptions that are inherent in them.

01:53:44

So while I would say that it's possible that some of those people are having those experiences, I think that many of the experiences are probably overblown.

01:53:50

They're probably stories told third and fourth and fifth hand through a missionary who knew somebody who knew another missionary who was in a village whose aunt had a dream.

01:53:59

And dreams are part of the Muslim worldview, and so we would expect Muslims to talk about dreams that they have and to maybe even use dreams that they have of a messenger to embrace those dreams as part of their

01:54:12

Muslim worldview, and their sort of a synchronistic or syncretistic blend of Islam and Christianity in their attempt to explain how these two things can go together.

01:54:23

So I think that there are a lot of dangers with embracing those stories without any kind of skepticism at all.

01:54:30

Now I assume that you have an openness to the possibility that many of these former

01:54:40

Muslims are indeed born again and true believers, but they are misunderstanding the things that they thought were supernatural that led them there.

01:54:51

Yeah, yeah, I would affirm that entirely. I think that some of them are saved. I think that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, and so if they had a vision, even if it was attempted demonic deception, that God can in fact use that for His purposes and even save somebody in spite of that vision.

01:55:06

I would just, I doubt, or I would reject the notion, I should say, entirely out of hand, that Jesus Christ is actually appearing to these

01:55:14

Muslims in a vision and giving them the Gospel. That what they're saying is actually the, or what they're seeing is actually the risen

01:55:20

Christ. I would have no reason to believe from Scripture that that is actually the case. In fact, I think the

01:55:25

Pole was the last one, the Apostles were the last ones to see Jesus in His glorified state. In fact, I was invited years ago to a

01:55:32

Pentecostal church where there was a guest speaker who was a former Muslim, and a part of his testimony was this vision he saw that he, this vision he saw, allegedly, because he had been staying in the home of Christians who had a relationship with God that he had never witnessed as a

01:55:57

Muslim, where they were treating God and speaking to God as their Father. And apparently he prayed that Allah would reveal this

01:56:09

Father, this Heavenly Father to him if indeed this

01:56:14

Father existed, and then Jesus appeared in the room. Now, I immediately rejected this man's story because Jesus is not the

01:56:25

Father. Yeah. Jesus is indeed God.

01:56:31

He's the second person of the Godhead, the second person of the Trinity, but He is not the

01:56:36

Father. But anyway, well, we have time for one more question here.

01:56:45

We have another anonymous listener. A lot of anonymous listeners today. The anonymous listener says that, how do you respond to those who claim that new revelation is still possible today?

01:57:02

And they say that the difference between new revelation that is true and claimed revelations that are false is that the false revelations contradict

01:57:12

Scripture. We have no reason to dismiss those things that confirm Scripture.

01:57:18

How do you respond to those statements? Well, I would go to the heart.

01:57:24

The assumption behind the question is that we, in some way, need new revelation. If it doesn't contradict

01:57:30

Scripture, and it is affirmed by Scripture, if something Scripture already reveals, then we don't need the new revelation.

01:57:36

Scripture is sufficient, so why would God give a new revelation? If it contradicts Scripture, then it's in error.

01:57:41

And if it doesn't contradict Scripture, then it's unnecessary. Those are the two options. So, somebody who claims, who says that, what do

01:57:50

I make of the claim at the beginning of your question? You said that God can continue to reveal things today.

01:57:56

I'm not saying that God can't speak to us today. If He wanted to, I think that God certainly can, because I believe that God is sovereign.

01:58:04

I'm saying that Scripture doesn't teach that He does speak to us through whispers and impressions and nudgings and promptings and visions and dreams and signs and open and closed doors and still small voices.

01:58:14

That is not how Scripture says that God speaks. These methods are man -made methods, propped up by verses taken out of context, and Scripture nowhere promises us that God will speak to us today, nor does it encourage us to listen for that voice or to expect

01:58:29

Him to speak to us. Instead, Scripture points us back to Scripture and says that God has spoken to us in His Word and it is sufficient for life and for godliness, and therefore nothing else is necessary.

01:58:38

So the issue is not what God can do or what He can't do. I've often said God can speak to me through a leprechaun in my refrigerator if He wanted to, and a whole bunch of very good reasons to believe that He won't.

01:58:52

So you just brought back some very unpleasant

01:58:57

St. Patrick's Day memories of mine before I was saved. But anyway, thank you so much,

01:59:05

Jim. I'd like you to return to continue the same discussion if you are willing, and if you could hold on when we go off the air,

01:59:12

I'd like to book another interview with you, because we just scratched the surface, I believe, of this topic. And if anybody wants more information about the

01:59:20

Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho, where our guest is the pastor, go to kootenaichurch .org,

01:59:30

K -O -O -T -E -N -A -I church .org, and if you'd like to order the book that we have been discussing,

01:59:37

God Doesn't Whisper, you can go to cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

01:59:44

If they don't have it in stock when you call them or go on their website, they will order it for you. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater