February 11, 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?” (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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.

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, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 11th day of February, 2021.

I want to thank those of you in social media who are already sending me birthday wishes.

Keep in mind that it is a bit premature. My birthday is on Valentine's Day, so if you plan on buying that Mercedes -Benz that I've been eyeing for a long time,

I appreciate hearing from you. But seriously, I am thrilled to have back on the program two men who are going to be entering into Part 2 of a discussion we began not long ago, a very important discussion.

This would be on the theme of a new book, God Doesn't Whisper, and to basically summarize the questions being asked of you, the reader of that book and you, the listener of this program.

Is God trying to speak to you through signs, impressions, subtle promptings, or a still small voice?

And I speak of the guests, Jim Osmond, the author of that book, who is also a pastor and preaching elder of Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho, and also

Justin Peters, who's going to be co -hosting with me, and Justin is founder of Justin Peters Ministries.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both back to Onyantrip and Zion Radio, Jim Osmond and Justin Peters.

Thank you, Chris, it's a privilege to be here. And Jim, let's start with you for another brief summary of Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho, since there may be people hearing you for the first time today.

Yeah, I'm a pastor of a small congregation in rural north Idaho, and I've been pastoring in this same church since 1996,

I got saved as a result of the ministry of this church, and I've been in the church since I was a teenager, and now it's my joy to shepherd the very congregation that I grew up attending as a kid.

Praise God, and what would be the theological background of the church? Oh yes, thank you, we are

Reformed soteriologically, not eschatologically, we would be a non -denominational church that is centered around expository preaching.

If anybody wants more information on Kootenai Community Church, go to KootenaiChurch .org,

and that's spelled K -O -O -T -E -N -A -I Church .org,

K -O -O -T -E -N -A -I Church .org. Justin Peters, please let our listeners know, especially those who are hearing you for the first time, something about Justin Peters' ministries.

Sure, Chris. I suppose I'm most known for a seminar that I've developed in Tidal Clouds Without Water that is a biblical refutation of the

Word of Faith movement, New Apostolic Reformation doctrine, that there are modern -day apostles, and it's always

God's will to be healed and financially wealthy, but that's what I'm most known for, but I'm committed to expository preaching and teaching the sound doctrine, repeating those who contradict me,

Per Titus 1 .9, and I'm in full time evangelism. And if anybody wants to find out more about Justin Peters' ministries, go to JustinPeters .org,

JustinPeters .org. You know, I wonder, Justin, how many people would be clamoring for the title apostle today if the life expectancy for an apostle was the same in the

New Testament era as it is today? Yeah, if they would study the life of the apostles and how their lives ended, that might give them a bit of a pause before they scramble to hold that title in office.

All right, but we are, as I said, addressing the theme of Jim Osmond's new book,

God Doesn't Whisper, which comes with a foreword by John MacArthur, and this is basically a refutation of extra -biblical revelation and also a defense of the sufficiency of Scripture.

It is quite a healthy -sized book, very thoroughly researched and documented, nearly 300 pages long, and I am delighted to promote it today on the program.

And if anybody wants to hear Part 1 of our discussion after this program is over, or if you have missed

Part 1 when we did it live, just go to www .IronSharpensIronRadio .com and you will look in the podcast past shows section, and if you type in Osmond, O -S -M -A -N, not like the

Osmond Brothers, but different spelling, O -S -M -A -N, that interview will come up, and any other interviews, actually, that we did with Jim in the past.

Today we are going to focus our discussion, although we won't exclusively discuss this, but we are going to focus our discussion on an element of the phenomenon of alleged extra -biblical supernatural divine revelation to the specific genre of that subject when it comes to Muslim conversion to Christianity.

I know a number of fine Christian folks who are very heavily involved in the study of Islam and evangelism to Muslims, and I have been told that a great number of Muslim conversions to Christianity involve a vision and or a dream.

And I even called into the Trinity Network, I believe it's called, and I'm not talking about TBN, the

Word of Faith Heretical Network, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, this is a different television network, and I believe it's just called the

Trinity Network or Trinity Christian Network, I can't remember right now, but they heavily, predominantly address the issue of Islam from a

Christian point of view, and I remember I called in during a program that was featuring a

Reformed Baptist host, and I said to the host, one thing that troubles me about a lot of testimonies of conversion to Christianity by Muslims is that nearly every time

I've heard one, they involve a dream and or a vision, or a claimed dream and or vision that has led the person to Christ, an appearance of Jesus even before their very eyes, allegedly.

And I said to the host, I, like you, am a Reformed Baptist and I am a cessationist, so I don't even know what to make of this phenomenon.

And this host said, I'm a cessationist too, but I give allowance to this phenomenon for one reason, that the

Muslims that claim these visions and dreams as a part of their testimony of coming to Christ, nearly every single one of them say that that was a one -time experience that led them to Christ when they became

Christians. The vast majority of them that I know personally are not even charismatic, they are not those that have dreams and visions that continue in their life.

So, it gives it more credibility to me, as far as the host saying that. But it still left me not settled over the issue, and perhaps,

Jim, if you could pick up right from there. Yeah, it is something of a phenomenon, it does seem to be reported with quite a bit of excitement, and it's repeated quite often, there's a lot of reports, there's a whole book that was written,

I'm trying to remember the name of it now, I have it in my Kindle library, and I'll try to look it up maybe during one of the breaks, but there was a book that was written by a couple of Dallas Theological Seminary graduates who were arguing for this phenomenon being a legitimate way that God is reaching the

Muslim world today. And then you had David Platt at the

Southern Baptist Convention, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention stood up and related one such story,

Ravi Zacharias was very fond of telling some of these conversion stories from his experiences in the

Muslim world, and even Nabeel Qureshi, who's probably one of the most well -known Muslim converts in the apologetic realm in America today, his testimony from, what was the name of that,

Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus? Right, right, I knew Nabeel, actually. What's that?

I knew personally Nabeel Qureshi, and even though I always felt extremely high and fond of him, it never settles right with me when anybody has a testimony that includes that.

Yeah, yeah, and Nabeel mentioned that in his book, and I read through his entire book just to hear his conversion account and familiarize myself with it in preparation to write the subject.

So it's quite frequent we hear this from missionaries that are reaching out to Muslim lands, or in Muslim lands, and I think that as Christians we typically tend to have, you know, the reactions to this are really on extremes.

You have people on one side who will say they reject all of this from a cessationist perspective, they reject all of it out of hand, but then they really struggle to come up with a

Biblical reason, a Biblical paradigm, for that rejection of those testimonies. And then you have other

Christians who willingly embrace those testimonies and are excited to hear about them. I mean, when

David Platt stood up and gave that missions report in 2018 in June at their annual gathering, he was greeted with a standing ovation, a loud applause, from those who were there at the convention.

And that's striking, because the Southern Baptist is not really known as a denomination that would readily believe or accept modern revelations, visions, and dreams.

And yet, when it's told from a missionary to, or we hear a story told to somebody who tells it to somebody who tells it to somebody else, you know, and it could grow over time and the telling of it, when those stories come back, people who normally would reject modern revelations, visions, and dreams seem very quick and at least undiscerning enough to even greet them with the skepticism that they deserve.

Yeah, a lot of it... So, I would... Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, a lot of it may...

Let me just finish a sentence. A lot of it may be because they know that there is great risk involved in many

Muslim conversions. Not all. There are people whose Muslim families are very nominal.

They are so Americanized. They may be second, third, fourth generation immigrants to the

United States, or the sons and grandsons, or daughters and granddaughters of immigrants, and there's just very little of real, chronically faithful Islam that they've been raised in.

But there are some who either overseas actually risked execution, or in the

United States risked being shunned by their own family. So, there is that added credibility for the person coming to Christ at great sacrifice and risk to their own lives, and so on.

If you want to just pick up right there. Yeah, that's what makes Nabeel Qureshi's conversion an interesting one from this perspective, is because he did sacrifice a great deal of shunning and rejection from his family, and yet he remained faithful to his profession of faith in Christ all the way until cancer took him here just a few years ago.

So, his conversion becomes a credible one in terms of, I do believe that Nabeel Qureshi was genuinely born again.

I do believe. I have no reason to suspect that, and I'm not suggesting that in my encouragement of caution regarding dreams and vision.

I'm not suggesting that any of these people have not been genuinely converted, though I do think that there's probably reason to believe that some of them were not.

But I'm not suggesting that all of them were not. In Nabeel's case, in reading his testimony, here was a guy who was being evangelized by his college roommate for a long period of time, ended up going to a

Bible study with Gary Habermas, and there was another famous apologist that he was also in that Bible study with.

And these men began to give him apologetic reasons for the New Testament's reliability and faith in Christ and sharing the gospel with him, and by his own confession, before he had any of these revelatory dreams that supposedly were instrumental in his conversion, he was already wrestling in great angst over the reliability and truthfulness of the claims of Christ that he found in the

New Testament. He was reading the New Testament, he was trying to poke holes in the New Testament, he was praying for God to reveal himself, he was wrestling with this issue and rejecting it and yet feeling conviction and starting to come along in his own understanding of the truthfulness of Christianity.

So all of that was happening, then he started to have visions, or sorry, not visions, dreams. And if memory serves, in his book he mentions having three specific dreams that led him to faith in Christ.

And these dreams were highly symbolic, from what I understand, and I'm not by no means an expert in the

Islamic worldview, Dr. James White would be far better to answer this issue than I would be in this term, but as far as I understand, in the

Muslim worldview, revelatory dreams and visions are central to many Islamic communities and many

Islamic tribes. And so, you know, he would be himself, any dream that he had would all of a sudden take on any kind of revelatory significance just by virtue of the fact that they were somewhat spiritual dreams.

Well, Chris, if you've ever had an issue that you're wrestling with to the very core of your being, the soul of your being, that is causing you great angst, what are the chances that you're going to have some kind of a dream about that?

Chances are good. Yes, exactly. Chances are good you're going to. And if you're already predisposed to wake up in the morning and begin to try and interpret the dream according to whatever symbols first hit you in the face in the morning, then

Nabil would begin to interpret these things, maybe not necessarily in light of any kind of hermeneutical grid, but maybe in light of just the things that he's already wrestling with and the things he's learning from the

New Testament. Yeah, if you have a presupposition about the value and the role of dreams that already exists in your mind, that they can be revelatory, then having dreams or being plagued by dreams or having consistent habitual dreams, there's going to be a tendency to look at those through the lenses that you already have.

Exactly, exactly. He's already expecting that God is going to be answering his prayer, or at least speaking to him in some way through those dreams.

And to my knowledge, at no point in the book and at no point in Nabil's life did he ever go away from that idea that God was revealing stuff to him in his dreams, even after he became a

Christian. I mean, there's some videos out there online of him in the last few years of his life still talking about dreams that he had as if God were speaking and giving specific direction through those dreams.

So that is a hangover of his Muslim worldview that he never questioned the legitimacy of at any time in his

Christian experience. And let me ask a question to both of you.

I'm sorry? Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to ask a question to both of you, since this is very much a part of what you both do, both you and Brother Justin, who's my co -host today.

The thing that you will very often hear from people, even from some very strong cessationists, or I might even include in that some conversations

I've had, and I don't say that this would be the typical answer given by an independent fundamentalist

Baptist, but I've even had conversations with people from that background who are known for being extremely rigid cessationists, who have said, when put in a corner, do you believe

God could reveal himself through a revelation that is not a part of the canon in our day and age?

And very often, because of the hesitancy of Bible -believing

Christians, authentic evangelical people who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and so on, the hesitancy of wanting to appear like they limit

God, they limit God's ability, they limit God's power in any way.

Very often you will hear the answer, well, sure, if, and it's always the jungles of Africa, and almost every time

I hear this, if, for instance, a Christian who is in the jungles of Africa is trying to communicate the

Gospel to somebody and he doesn't know the language well and he doesn't have a

Bible in their language, I could see God giving them either the gift of tongues to speak to these people in their own language or even give the person who is the object of evangelism some kind of revelation when they go home at night to contemplate what had occurred with the evangelist.

So it is a common thing and it seems to be the fear of limiting

God, of trying to take away somehow his omnipotence, his omniscience, the glory and the power of God.

But if you could both answer that, because that seems to be the root of a lot of this outside of where you normally expect people to wholeheartedly buy into this, like the charismatic movement and the

Pentecostal movement. Jim, maybe you could start. Go ahead, I'll let you take a swing at it.

Okay. Yeah, sure. Well, you hear these stories a lot. You know, someone, some missionary went into some unreached people group in a deep, dark jungle of South America or Africa or something, and they could all of a sudden speak their language.

Well, a couple of things to say about that. Number one, none of us is saying that God lacks the power to do that.

Of course he has the power, the ability. That's not the issue at all. He spoke the universe into existence.

He certainly has that ability. So it's not that we're saying God can't. The question is, is he doing that?

And with all of these accounts that you hear, it's kind of like a theological

Bigfoot. You hear lots of rumors, you have some grainy pictures, but they're all out of focus, and there's no real proof that any of these, you know, that Bigfoot actually exists.

And when you start trying to track down these accounts that people talk about, they're notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to track down and actually prove.

Now, I would say even if, let's just say even if a missionary at some point in time actually did do this and that he was able to communicate the gospel in the native tongue there of the people group, even if that has happened, and I very much doubt that it has, but even if it has, that still would not be the biblical gift of tongues, or better said, the biblical gift of languages, because the gift of languages, the gift of tongues, as it's more commonly known, had a purpose, and the purpose was as a sign of God's judgment against unbelieving

Israel, which is far too much, I would imagine, for us to get into the details of that for our program here, but the real gift of languages, tongues, had a purpose, and it was a sign of judgment against unbelieving

Israel. And so, if something like that did happen today, I would certainly say that would be a miracle, of course, but it would not fall within the biblical parameters of the gift of tongues.

Right, and that leaves the charismatic in a difficult position, because the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority are

Zionists, so it would leave them in an uncomfortable position today to believe that this was an ongoing expression of God's judgment against Israel.

Right. Right. And do you have anything to add, Jim? Yeah, Chris, I would add to that, that when we're talking about whether God speaks to us or not, we're not talking about His power again, because what we're not doing is putting

God in a box. We're not saying God can't do this, doesn't have the ability to do this, but the question is really, what has God revealed that He does do?

How has God revealed Himself, and what has He told us are the means by which

He speaks to us, and the ways that we should listen for His voice, and it's not through nudging and promptings.

He always directs us to His Word, and so we're not saying God cannot do that, we're saying that God has not revealed that He will do that, or that we should expect that, or that this is how

He speaks to us today. He has revealed to us how He speaks. We're not putting Him in a box. We're simply saying, here are the confines, the box in which

God has placed Himself when He has already described to us how it is that He speaks, how it is that He works in history.

So, He is free Himself to say, this is how I will work, and this is what I will do and won't do, and when we affirm that, we're not putting

Him in a box. We're simply saying, this is what God has revealed about Himself and His own way of working. And we're going to go to our first break right now.

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

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And we are now back with my guest, Jim Osmond, who is the author of God Doesn't Whisper.

And we also have as my co -host today, Justin Peters of Justin Peters Ministries. And I know,

Justin, that you wanted to follow up with a comment about the

Muslim dreams that lead to, allegedly, that lead to conversions to Christianity.

Yes, Chris. Three points here real quickly. One, just to dovetail on what

Jim was saying before, that it is to be expected that Muslims have dreams about Jesus because Jesus is part of their religious fabric.

And they don't believe he is God, of course, but they do revere him as a prophet, wrongly so, obviously, in their view.

So it's to be expected. I've had a dream about Muhammad before, but I don't believe that was Muhammad trying to.

So we shouldn't read anything into these dreams. So that's one point.

Number two, Romans 10, and it's just some very strong theological headwinds to this.

Right after the well -known verse in Romans 10, verse 13, For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Paul then says in verse 14, How then are they to call on him in whom they have not believed?

How are they to believe in him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a creature?

How are they to hear without a creature? Not without a dream or a vision. How are they to hear without a creature?

And I don't find any exception clauses in that for the

Muslims, or for the hard prisoners, or for anybody. In fact, if there were, somebody could respond to that with a dream or a vision.

How can anybody hear with a dream or a vision? That's right. Yeah, so Paul makes that very clear.

So Romans 10, very strong theological headwinds against this whole notion of Muslims having dreams.

And the third point I would like to make is this. If I were Satan, and I wanted to come up with some belief to get into the heads of evangelicals to throw cold water on evangelizing

Muslims, I honestly could think of nothing more effective than to convince people that Jesus is showing up to Muslims in dreams and visions.

Because when we start believing that as evangelicals, then we get the notion, oh, wow,

I don't need to go and witness to my Muslim friend, or I certainly don't need to go to the

Middle East and do any kind of mission work there. I don't need to do that because, hey,

Jesus has got it covered. He's showing up in dreams and visions. And so I can honestly think of nothing better to throw cold water on the great commission that we have in Scripture to evangelize everyone,

Muslims included, than to get Christians to believe, oh, Jesus is just showing up in their dreams and visions, so I don't need to risk anything personally by evangelizing

Muslims. I really believe that this is a scheme of Satan to prevent us from fulfilling the great commission, the commandment we have in Scripture.

I think it is a diabolical, satanic scheme. And going back to something

I believe that we were discussing on part one of this discussion a number of weeks ago, all three of us believe in the sovereignty of God.

We believe that nothing happens apart from His ordaining it, that nothing happens by happenstance.

So therefore, could we justify God using dreams?

I'm not talking about as revelation, not as forms of revelation, not like the manner in which

God breathed the Scriptures through the authors, the human authors of the

Scriptures. But just as He does with other things in life, could a person not be plagued with dreams that are not revelatory, but they are just driving a person to despair or a person to reach a point when they know something needs to change in their life, and it doesn't even need to be specifically in regard to conversion to Christianity.

It could be a person who is plagued with dreams about his adultery against his wife.

It could be a person plagued with dreams that convicts him further of his thievery from his business where he works.

You know, you could go on and on and on. Could not God use dreams? And of course, we have to be very clear on how we define using dreams.

Could He not use dreams to bring about the conversion of a Muslim that does not involve revelation?

Yeah, Chris, this is Jim. I don't see any reason why God could not use a dream just as He would use something else, but we would not say that that's a revelatory dream just because somebody has a dream does not mean that God Himself is necessarily the author of it in the sense that He is speaking through the dream like He does speak in Scripture or through a vision or through a prophet, nor do we have to say that Satan himself is the author of every dream.

Our dreams could just come from our own psychosis, our own psychology, our own mind.

It could be something that we are tormented in conscience, and so we dream about something. Or, you know, we just bought something recently, and then we have a dream about how horrible the decision that was.

Well, maybe we were just in anxiety over that decision at some point, but I wouldn't say the Lord is speaking to me through that dream, nor would

I assume that every night vision that I have or any nighttime dream that I have of my slumbering consciousness is the voice of God.

We're not warranted in Scripture to attach divine fiat to every imagination of our nightly mind.

And so a Muslim having a dream about something he's been thinking about, maybe Jesus, maybe he's read something, heard a missionary, read a gospel tract, and then he has a dream about that that night,

God could use that to bring the Muslim to faith in Christ. It could be part of God's providential drawing, but we would not call that revelation.

We're not justified in calling that revelation, nor are we justified in allowing the fact that that dream was a real thing to overturn a belief in the cessation of supernatural revelatory sign gifts.

Yes, and I think this goes back to how we must be very careful how we articulate things.

Like, for instance, there's a difference between someone saying, if they're giving their testimony, for instance, that I was plagued with dreams that I was going to hell for rejecting

Christ, and I was going to hell for all the sins in my life that I knew

I was going to pay the penalty for those sins, and these dreams just burdened me with a convicted conscience and depression.

And I just knew that I finally reached the point. I knew that I had to repent and believe upon Christ to finally experience the peace that surpasses all understanding from the

Holy Spirit so that I could get this burden off my back. Now, there's a difference between saying that, and God spoke to me through dreams

I was having. Sometimes people use those euphemisms, and they don't even really mean what they're saying.

Even as we have said, I believe, in the last discussion, there are even cessationist pastors, even

Reformed cessationist pastors, who would ascend into a pulpit and say, you know,

I believe the Lord has laid this subject upon my heart today. We have to be careful about how we communicate things like that, correct?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. A lot of the stuff is woven into the vernacular of our Christianity, and we use phrases like, the

Lord led me, the Lord spoke to me, the Lord told me, the Lord impressed upon me. And it could be the pizza

I ate, it could be, you know, something I'm upset about my own conscience, it could be just a series of events that caused this.

We use languages if God is speaking to us, and that's not the language the Scripture would use. And we should use, we should be careful to use, biblical language to describe biblical phenomena.

So, if I feel convicted about something, I don't say that the Lord spoke to me,

I say I felt convicted about this, or, you know, the Lord encouraged me in this, I just felt encouraged, and I felt suddenly a lifting of my conscience, or I felt at ease about this, or I felt comfortable with this rather than saying, well, the

Lord just told me that I should feel this way, or the Lord just told me that I should be comfortable. You're putting

God, you're putting words in God's mouth when you use language like that, and you need to be very careful with that, because you're claiming that you're hearing

God speak and say something when He may not have said it, and He didn't say it.

And we need to be careful when we're doing that. You probably hate to be misquoted, if you're like any other

Christian in any kind of leadership position, you've had people misrepresent you and misquote you, and I don't like being misquoted and misrepresented, and I don't think the

Lord takes too kindly to it either. So, we need to be careful when we use language like that, that we're not putting words in God's mouth that He has not said.

Now, if you could, mention some other ways that perhaps people defend this phenomenon, or just more examples that you have that are

Biblical that would bolster a cessationist understanding of this.

Are you talking about in connection with Muslim dreams specifically? Well, if you wanted to continue on that thread, yes.

Anything else that you wanted to add to the conversation, whether it's on Muslims or not, that's up to you. Yeah, let me just revisit, before we get too far afield off of the

Muslim thing, Justin mentioned the text there in Romans 9, there's another passage in 1

Corinthians 2 where Paul talks about the preaching of the Gospel and how that is the power of God unto salvation, and I think that when we're talking about Muslim conversions and dreams, that we need to understand that what is being claimed by many missionaries who come back from the

Muslim field who are advocating this is that they're actually claiming in some cases that people are being saved out of the

Muslim religion apart from the preaching of the Gospel, or apart from a God -ordained,

Spirit -filled Gospel preacher. And they're suggesting that the dreams and the visions themselves are the means of salvation and the way that this message is being communicated, and yet if you look in Scripture at what

Paul says and what the expectation of the Apostles was, they would say that the lost are saved through the

God -ordained, Spirit -empowered, Christ -exalting preaching of the Gospel, not through visions and dreams. And it was not the expectation,

I would add just another further line of argument to that, it was not the expectation of the Apostles that people generations after them would be receiving these dreams and visions or testimony from dreams and visions, angelic messengers, or Christ Himself.

And John, in his Gospel, says that his testimony is what is to be believed. He talked about being an eyewitness, one who had handled the

Word of Life and touched the Word of Life and heard and saw the Word of Life. And then he said, this is our testimony as those who have been firsthand eyewitnesses of these things.

We are testifying this to you so that your joy may be full and you may have fellowship with us and our fellowship is with the

Father and with Christ. The Apostles based their expectation was that those who would come after them would base their faith upon what was revealed in Scripture and not upon modern -day dreams and visions that would come after the lifetime of the

Apostles. The Apostle Peter speaks of an experience he had and never suggested to any of his readers that they would be able to hear the

Father's voice from Heaven or see Jesus manifested Himself from Heaven. In fact, he says in 1

Peter 1, 8, though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.

Peter never suggested anywhere in his writings at the end of his life that people should just be open to possibly seeing

Christ for themselves. But instead, they always pointed back to their own apostolic testimony as being the basis for faith from that point forward.

Now, that's a powerful line of argument against people. I think that's a powerful line of argument against people suggesting that we should be open to this.

The Apostles themselves did not seem open to it at all. Now, one of the things that has occurred to me about this phenomenon is that the

Scriptures teach us that God is no respecter of persons. And it would seem to me that if this were true,

I'm talking about true with the defense of it from cessationist brothers and sisters, those that agree with us that this is not the norm of Christian life, but with the

Muslims, He is doing remarkable things that He has not typically done after the apostolic era, because the

Muslims are so hard to reach with the Gospel, and the Muslims risk their life very often by believing in the lives of their family members.

And it seems that there is a preferential treatment or a view, and it could be totally unconscious on the part of the people saying these things, but they are acting as if God is going to use these revelatory actions with Muslims in ways that He wouldn't do with anybody else.

In fact, if you could answer that or respond to that when we return from our midway break, because we are already at that point, folks, please be patient with us as we take this midway break, and the

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It's ChrisArnsin at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. It's also the email address where you can send in a question to Jim Osmond and our co -host

Justin Peters. We are discussing God Doesn't Whisper, the new book by Jim Osmond which is basically a defense of the sufficiency of Scripture, the sufficiency of the canon, the closed canon of the

Bible that we, by the grace and mercy of God, possess as a church and further bolstering that we are in no need of extra -biblical revelation.

We are in no need of visions and dreams and voices.

And right before the break, as you may recall Jim, I was saying that there seems to be, even if it's unconscious, a favoritism being demonstrated towards Muslim people even by cessationists who would say, well, in the case of the

Muslim, I mean, we're going to give them a pass on this one.

Yeah, we'll buy their story about the divine revelation that they've received outside of the

Bible because they are, after all, Muslims and the Muslims are being persecuted by other Muslims everywhere in the world.

So, they're really risking their lives like most of us are not. And therefore,

I can accept their stories of the extra -biblical revelation. Isn't this the danger of ethnic favoritism?

Yeah, that's one element of it, ethnic favoritism. I think another way of looking at it is to question the presupposition that goes behind that.

Why is it that Muslims, or do we think that Muslims are harder to reach than any other pagan? Where in scripture do we see the

Apostle Paul, for instance, accommodating doctrine and theology for the sake of those to whom he was seeking to minister or to reach?

He reached his own share of really hard -to -reach people groups himself. He went into Athens in Acts 17 and walked away with a few people who believed after preaching that message on Mars Hill.

So it's not like everybody up until the establishment of the Muslim faith was easy to reach.

They were the easy mission field, and now we have this really hard mission field that's hard to reach. Well, the gospel itself is the power of God and the salvation.

To any who will believe, to the Jew, to the Gentile, to the Muslim, to the Buddhist, to the Hindu, we don't need some special accommodation necessary to reach a particular people group.

Now, that's not to say that we don't take the gospel and try and communicate it in their language in a way that's understandable, in a way that's clear to them, but we don't say that God has to do something special, something theologically different than what

He does with other people groups to simply reach this other people group. So I would answer it that way, and then

I would add to that, since when does God accommodate His method of reaching the lost people?

Since when does He accommodate that, accommodate, I should say, a pagan worldview in order to reach that worldview rather than calling them to abandon their worldview?

The gospel would come to the Muslim and say, you need to abandon your Muslim faith, the lies that you've believed, your views of extra -biblical revelation, your view of God, your view of Jesus, your denial of the

Trinity, you need to abandon those and repent of those things. But we don't suggest that God, in order to reach the

Muslims, would accommodate Himself to their unbiblical or pagan worldview in order to do so, and that's what really people are suggesting, that God is using dreams because they are very accepting of dreams.

Well, God doesn't accommodate pagan worldviews. He calls people to repent of them. Yeah, and an interesting fact of history is that during the days of the

Protestant Reformation, I don't know of any large -scale stories of Roman Catholics who were one to Christ and who were one to the biblical gospel, even though their lives were at stake, even though gruesome, horrific tortures awaited them possibly, and execution, including being burned alive, it was the

Scriptures that spoke to their hearts, not a divine revelation that is not in the Scripture, and not a dream, and so on.

In fact, many of these Catholics were abandoning a false religion that did rely upon dreams, at least by their beloved saints, allegedly, who had their dreams and visions, and they are still clung to this day as extra -biblical revelation.

But do you have any comments on that? Yeah, God has ordained throughout

Church history the gospel preaching by a spirit -filled human messenger.

That is God's revealed, ordained way of reaching the lost with the gospel. And it's a little late in the game now to come along and say, well, now

God's doing something different in this new time. Now He's using dreams and visions. Now He's accommodating other people, and it's not just preaching, but all these other ways that people are getting saved.

If that were the case, God would have revealed that in Scripture, that we should expect that or accommodate that, and I don't see anything in Scripture that suggests that we should.

Instead, I see that the biblical pattern is that spirit -filled men and women preach the gospel, and God uses that to convert the lost.

Do you have anything to add, Justin Peters, or anything to ask? Well, not really, other than I firmly agree and enthusiastically,

I should say, agree with what Jim was saying. Muslims in Islam pose no more of a hindrance or threat or challenge or obstacle to the gospel than does any other false religion.

It's not like Muslims are more difficult to reach with the gospel than an evangelical, for that matter, who was reared in a kind of an easy -believism church and has never truly been converted.

So no one religion poses a bigger challenge for God to deliver one out of than any other religion.

So I think this whole premise that Muslims are somehow more difficult to reach and they require special provision on God's part is just, it's bad theology.

Okay, we have a listener named Christopher, love the name Christopher, in Suffolk County, Long Island, western

Suffolk County, and Christopher says, Jim, I heard you say earlier on in the program when you were first describing your congregation that you are reformed in your soteriology but not in your eschatology.

I'm assuming that means you may be a dispensationalist, and I was wondering how you would then interpret

Acts 2, 17 through 21, which is a favorite verse of Charismatics, Pentecostals, and all non -cessationists, which says, and it shall be in the last days,

God says, I will pour out my spirit on all mankind, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will have dreams, and even on my male and female servants

I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will prophesy, and I will display wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below.

And since most dispensationalists I know refer to the last days as meaning the very last days before a rapture or tribulation, which would be in our day, how do you discount that these things will be happening in our day?

Yeah, most dispensationalists that I know or that I have read would say that we are in the last days and have been since the ascension of Christ and the birth of the

Church in Acts 2. That the last days is simply a reference to the Messianic age in which we now live that began with the

Messiah's first coming and will culminate with His second coming, whether you think that's pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib, or whatever.

So I think that we are in the last days now, I think we have been since Peter preached this sermon. I think that was the point.

I'm sorry, I think that was the point of the listener. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Right, so I was just clarifying that I do affirm that as a dispensationalist.

So the way I would handle Joel 2 is Peter was quoting from that passage in Joel 2 and he was quoting from a passage that describes the end time that actually has chapter 3 verse 1 of Joel describes the judgment in the

Valley of Jehoshaphat. And so I think Peter is quoting from Joel for the purpose of showing that this last days now has been ushered in.

It did start back then and it is going to culminate when the Messiah returns. And Peter quotes that passage and refers not just to old men dreaming dreams which he says in verse 17 and the spirit being poured out which he mentions in verse 18 but in verse 19 he talks about wonders in the sky above, signs on the earth below, blood and fire, vapor and smoke, sun will be turned to darkest, moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the

Lord. Well, those things did not happen on the day of Pentecost. There is no record that those things happened nor is there record that people dreamed dreams and had visions on the day of Pentecost.

But the pouring forth of the spirit which is the beginning of that Messianic age that did happen. So Peter is simply quoting a larger context from Joel 2 that describes phenomena that will that started on the day of Pentecost but the rest of these phenomena, the earth turning the blood and the fire the vapor and the smoke the sun being turned into the darkest those things will precede the coming of the day of the

Lord when Christ returns. So those are the things that we ought to expect with the according to my theology, my eschatology the establishment of the

Messianic kingdom that was promised in the Old Testament to David and to the Jews the establishment of that kingdom will see these phenomena in the heavens and on earth.

Those things were not fulfilled on the day of Pentecost though the pouring out of the Spirit was.

So Peter sees the pouring out of the Spirit as something that initiated that Messianic age the rest of those signs will culminate at the culminate the

Messianic age and I do think that there will come a time in connection with the coming of the kingdom of Christ when the pouring out of the

Spirit will involve dreams and visions and prophecy of some sort. I think that Scripture allows for that but as part of the kingdom age not as part of this part of the

Messianic age. Well Christopher if you please give me your full mailing address in Western Suffolk County you have won a free copy of God Doesn't Whisper compliments of our guest today

Jim Osmond and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will be shipping it out to you.

CVBBS .com CVBBS .com is the website of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service so look for that return address on the package in the mail that will be your book.

Thank you for contributing to the show. Let's see we have an anonymous listener who says

I have developed close friendships with a number of Muslims who have converted to Christianity and I am somewhat hesitant to offend them when they start telling me that one of the reasons was a dream that they had.

How do you breach this in conversation with a way that perhaps will be easier to be speaking to anybody that we disagree with with humility and love and compassion and not be barking at them and mocking them or going out of our way to insult in ways that the gospel doesn't already insult and that would even go with brothers and sisters in Christ on issues that divide us.

Isn't that just something that has become too much of a especially in our day it's become too much of a concern for people not to offend others.

Of course we live in a time when people are so easily offended. I would want to offend them with the truth and I think one of the ways of doing that is to maybe ask them why do you think that you have this hangover attachment to dreams and visions that come from your

Muslim worldview. Why have you not abandoned that commitment to your Muslim worldview if you've genuinely converted to a

Christian worldview? Right, if they have seen the fallacy of Islam altogether why even cling on to a remnant of it?

And of course a lot of that may be because Christendom has been saturated with the same kind of reliance upon extra biblical revelation.

So they don't think it's exclusively a part of Islam. They probably don't and unfortunately that's true.

A lot of modern day Christians and evangelicals use that language and so it sounds very similar to what a

Muslim would hear in his own worldview that God is continuing to speak through dreams and visions. Amen.

And so Anonymous, make sure you give me your full name and mailing address through email of course, not on the air.

And we will make sure that CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, ships you a free copy of God Doesn't Whisper.

And thank you for joining us with that very good question. And for the sake of our listeners, especially that missed our first part of this discussion several weeks ago, please explain the title again.

Yeah, so the title of the book, God Doesn't Whisper, I'm making the case that God is not trying to speak to us.

He's not whispering revelations to us, and still small voices, impressions, promptings, nudgings, visions, dreams, signs, circumstantial signs.

God's not trying to communicate to us. There's a whole world view in Christianity amongst, sometimes charismatics, but even unfortunately amongst some people who would call themselves cessationists who would say that God is really trying to get your attention.

He's trying to communicate to us. And so you not only need to hear these whispers from God, but you need to draw near to God and quiet your life and still yourself so that God can get his messages through to you.

And if you don't do this, you're going to be cut off from a living, vibrant relationship with God. As he's trying to talk to you, you're not going to be listening, and so you're going to be missing his quiet whispers, the things that give you comfort and encouragement and the things that give you direction for your day -to -day decision -making.

God needs to get those messages through to you, and he's trying to do so. And the gist of my book is, no,

God has no problem communicating. When he speaks, he is not missed. He can ensure not only that he is able to speak, but that he's able to make sure that you hear it, no matter what's going on, if he wanted to speak to you.

But he speaks to us through his word. We ought to look nowhere else other than in Scripture for the voice of God.

And not that we're plucking verses out of context when some phrase jumps off the page at us, and we consider that the word of God.

No, what God has spoken in Scripture, Genesis, Revelation, is his word, it is his revelation. And when we understand the passage and we understand the text and we read it, we are hearing

God speaking, because that word is the living and enduring and powerful word of God.

And it speaks to us today just like it did to them 2 ,000 years ago, 3 ,500 years ago, when those books were written in the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant. We need nothing further. We need no whispers. We need no impressions or promptings.

These are unreliable visions, fantasies, and unfortunately many Christians have regarded them as the fiat voice of God giving them direction, and they're not.

So I boldly say God doesn't whisper. He doesn't need to whisper. Amen. And we have

C .J. and Lyndon Hurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, Is this not, even if it is unconscious on the part of those who make the claims of the necessity of dreams and visions, a diminishment of the power of the

Bible as if it is some kind of insufficient, ineffective, and impotent book, the very fact that planting seeds and watering them is what

God uses to bring about new life in Christ should be sufficient for all when we evangelize and know the power that God has implanted within the very words that he breathed out to the authors of the

Scriptures. It's more of a comment than a question. I agree with what he said. How about you?

Yeah, yeah, I certainly would. I think Scripture is powerful, and God has not promised to use dreams and visions and nudgings, promptings, and still small voices to sanctify us or to change our lives or to leave the lost faith in Christ.

He has promised to use his word to do that very thing, and we do undermine the power of Scripture and our confidence in it when we place our faith and our confidence in other things or even look to and anticipate

God to speak through other things. He's given us his word, and that is all we need. It is sufficient for life and for godliness and for everything we need.

Going back to something you were doing. Go ahead, Justin. Yeah, sorry, if I may,

I would just like to point out and get some folks listening to us something to chew on a little bit.

I went through and I've got screenshots of, gosh, at least thirty -five books that are current in the

Christian publishing world. They're all on how to hear the voice of God. You know, five steps to hear the voice of God, ten steps, you know, this,

I don't know, God's voice, on and on and on. At least three dozen of them. And under this, if hearing the voice of God is such a vital and important part of the

Christian life, why is it that there is absolutely no instruction anywhere in Scripture on how to do it?

And just consider the New Testament. In the Gospels, we have the record of the life and ministry of Jesus in Acts.

We have the growth, the birth and the growth of the Church. We have the pastoral epistles that are loaded with doctrine and theology and how a

Church should be structured and elder qualifications, how to deal with conflict.

We have eschatologies sprinkled all throughout the New Testament, of course, primarily in Revelation.

So we've got all of this instruction on all of these different issues, but there is not one syllable uttered anywhere in Scripture on how to hear the voice of God.

If it's so important, then why is the Bible completely absent of any instruction on how to do this?

And the reason is, is that when God spoke, He spoke with crystal clear clarity, as Jim says.

God doesn't whisper. There was no need for any instruction on how to hear the voice of God. Everybody knew who it was who was speaking and knew exactly what

He said. And also, today, God is simply not speaking outside of Scripture.

He speaks to us in His words. So think about that. If it's such an important part of the

Christian life, why does the Bible give us absolutely no guidance on how to do it?

Yes. And going back to something I believe I brought up in the first part, when we have the story of the rich man and Lazarus, when the rich man in hell wanted

Abraham to have Lazarus resurrected to warn his brothers about the doom that awaits them,

Abraham basically said to them, they have their Bible. If they don't listen to that, they've got no hope.

I mean, that's a paraphrasing. That's a Chris Larson paraphrase. But isn't that basically what Abraham was saying?

Absolutely. I point people to Luke 16 quite often. If they will not hear

Moses, if they will not hear the prophets, neither will they believe, even if someone were to come back from the dead.

And so there is an inherent power in the gospel that is found nowhere else, not in miracles, not in signs and wonders, nothing else.

The power of God, Romans 1, 16, the power of God is the gospel, and there is an inherent power in scripture that is simply not found anywhere else, nor do we need any other source of power.

It's all right there in the word of God. Now, all of us involved in this conversation, all three of us, are

Calvinists, and in spite of our eschatological differences, we believe, probably, not even probably,

I think that we believe in the Holy Spirit's necessity in our hearts, or the activity of the

Holy Spirit to bring us to salvation, is far more crucial than the

Charismatics and Pentecostals believe about the involvement of the Holy Spirit, because we believe that it is impossible for a man, a totally depraved man or woman or child, born with the sin of Adam, with no inclination to, or no ability to please

God in the flesh, that a miracle of the Holy Spirit has to occur in the hearts of anyone who comes to faith, because there needs to be a heart transplant.

We need to have our hearts of stone removed and replaced with the hearts of flesh.

So, this idea of God trying to do anything is a total falsehood, because the all -powerful, all -knowing, almighty

God, who loves His own and loves His when He has

His sights on someone, one of His elect, to bring out of their idolatry and out of their false religions and their wickedness,

He doesn't fail. He doesn't try to save them. He saves. That's why, even though you may typically see this sign in an

Arminian church, Jesus saves. We who are Calvinists believe that more than anybody, because He doesn't try,

He saves. That's right. Yeah, Chris, when you say that God is trying to do something, to use the word try, you can only use the word try if you're describing somebody who has the possibility of failing to do something.

If failure is a possibility, then you can say that He's trying to do it, just like I might try to dunk a person in if God as a being is omnipotent, meaning that He has all power, and He is sovereign, and can do anything that He wants, and if He lacks no wisdom, and He lacks no knowledge to bring

His chosen plans to fruition, then you can never say that He tries to do anything, because failure is not possible for God.

Contrary to the Word of Faith theology, the doctrines that Justin sometimes addresses, God cannot try to do anything.

He either does it or He does not do it. So, you're right, He's not trying to save anybody. He's not trying to work good out of evil.

He's not trying to get our attention. He's not trying to teach us anything. He's not trying to speak to us.

God just does. And if He doesn't do it, it's not because He tried and failed, or because He tried and was unsuccessful because of some failure on our part, but only because God did not do it.

Amen. We're going to go to our final break, and it's going to be much more brief than the other breaks. If anybody has a question, please send it in now before we run out of time.

That's ChrisArmzen at gmail .com. ChrisArmzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

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Well, Jim Osmond, I want to make sure before I take any listener questions that you have about five minutes at least of uninterrupted time to really go through and give us a summary of those most vital things that you want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about this entire topic today.

Thanks, Chris, I appreciate that. I think the one thing that I would want to leave everybody contemplating is the sufficiency of Scripture.

I think that in our day, what the church struggles with is not affirming the sufficiency of Scripture verbally.

I think that we do that just fine. I think that where the struggle lies, where the battle's being fought right now, and I think where the battle's being lost in most evangelical churches, is on this issue of sufficiency.

Many people would affirm the sufficiency of Scripture in word, in their doctrine. They would say, yes,

I believe the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, inspired word of the living God. It's profitable.

They would believe all of that. They would affirm all of that. But yet, when they look to practice their

Christianity, when they look to express their faith, they don't actually practice the sufficiency of Scripture.

They will look to other sources for instruction, for leading, for guiding in their day -to -day lives.

They'll look to the still, small voice. They'll look to nudging or up -prompting. Most Christians do not turn to Scripture.

Most Christians in most churches do not turn to Scripture as their primary source for life and godliness.

So they would affirm that. That's their orthodoxy, their stated orthodoxy. I think that most

Christians do not practice the sufficiency of Scripture. You see it in pulpits all the time when men preach and they don't stand up and turn to a passage of Scripture and read the book and then interpret the book and apply the book.

Instead, what they do is they get up and they do what I call trampoline preaching, where they read a passage of Scripture and they bounce on it just long enough to draw people's attention to it and then bounce right off it onto some other subject, some other theme, whatever the

Lord's laid on their heart, whatever they want to say for the week. And most preachers in evangelical churches today across the country do not ardently preach as if they believe in the sufficiency of Scripture.

They're not resting on Scripture and Scripture alone for the power of the gospel to save, for sanctifying people in counseling situations.

And on every front, we have given up the battle over the sufficiency of Scripture and we've given up that doctrine and we've adopted other things as a source of authority and sources of truth.

And we just need to come back to Scripture is all that we need. It's all we need for counseling. It's all that we need for preaching.

It's all that we need for discipleship. It's all that we need for our home Bible studies. We don't need other books. Scripture is what we need to get back to in our churches.

And in this area of personal guidance, making decisions, and hearing from God, we hear from God in the pages of Scripture, rightly interpreted and rightly understood.

His word then is His word today. And it's all we need and we need to rest in it. Well, let me have you clarify something that you said, that all we need for our

Bible studies is the Bible and no other book. I believe, yes, it's

I knew that might flag you. Yes, it's true. That's all we need. We don't need any other book.

But, at the same time, you wrote a book. I mean, these things can be extremely helpful. Wouldn't it be helpful if a pastor is doing a

Bible study on the sign gifts? Wouldn't it be helpful as a part of the

Bible study to recommend that the students or the congregants at this Bible study pick up your book and start reading it?

Yeah, books can be great resources for study. I mean, I've got several of them sitting on my desk right in front of me as I'm preparing for a

Sunday sermon or studies that I'm doing. I'm not discounting the value of other books, but what

I am saying is that most people, when they want to have a Bible study, they will turn to something else.

I'm going to take this person through a study of worldviews, and I'm going to take this person through a study of the culture.

We're going to do a study of something else. And a lot of times, the emphasis of home group Bible studies is more on books that other people have read and written and not

Scripture itself. So, the value of a book, the book's value only comes back to whether it is faithful to Scripture and is an explanation of a concept in Scripture.

So, yeah, I don't mean to discount all books in that way. I'm simply trying to emphasize the sufficiency of Scripture itself for small group studies and the holding to Scripture and what it teaches.

And using other books as resources to help us understand that is fine. You know, it is ironic that most people who are interested in non -Cessationists,

Continuists or Continuationists or Charismatic or Pentecostal, they have this craving and excitement over being connected to the first century church.

And to believe they are no different at all in any way in the operation of the church and the way it functioned and the first century as it functions today.

And yet, having that enthusiasm and excitement over that, they believe that those very words written by God's chosen oracles to write the

Scriptures that were God -breathed, they find them insufficient and inadequate.

Even if they would never dream of saying that, it's basically you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's you know, it's on your experience, keep in mind that whatever you think you may have experienced, it didn't come close to what

Peter, James, and John experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration when they saw Jesus transfigure with Moses and Elijah.

And if they can say of that that the written Word of God is more certain than that, it's certainly more certain than all we need.

Amen. And I want to give our guest's website again.

It is for Kootenai Community Church in Kootenai, Idaho. It is kootenaichurch .org,

K -O -O -T -E -N -A -I church .org. And Justin Peters Ministries' website is justinpeters .org.

I want to thank you men for being such superb guests today. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater