DEMONIC Things Are Happening to TONS of Christians...

TreasureChrist

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

God told me. We hear this phrase everywhere in the Christian world.

00:07

I heard this funny story. I don't think I have all the details right, but it's close enough. You'll get the picture. This family is driving on a mountain road and their little boy just out of nowhere declares there's a big rock in the road right around the turn.

00:20

And the father was driving, was somewhat stunned by the word and went around the corner a little slower than normal. And sure enough, there's this huge rock in the middle of the road.

00:28

They were so impressed that their kid could hear from God. God told me, even though all these people hate me,

00:33

I still love you. And God told me to tell you this, it's always been in you. The Lord spoke to my heart.

00:40

Been very few times I've ever heard God be this articulate with me. Standing in the office of the prophet of God.

00:48

Are Christians who supposedly hear directly from God more spiritual than those who don't?

00:55

Is there something deficient in Christians who don't hear directly from God in this way?

01:01

It is difficult to find a biblical understanding of seeking, knowing and walking in the will of God.

01:11

And the overwhelming majority of the instances to which we point are absolutely pagan and not

01:19

Christian in their origins. Let's consider 10 things related to hearing from God.

01:30

Much of what God supposedly says to people today is extremely trivial, weird or just plain wrong.

01:39

God has told Beth Moore to brush a male stranger's hair. The Lord spoke to my heart.

01:45

Been very few times I've ever heard God be this articulate with me. And I'm telling you word for word, these words came into my heart.

01:53

I'm not asking you to witness to him. I'm asking you to brush his hair. God has also said he wants to play with Beth Moore.

01:59

I heard the voice of God speak to my heart, come and play. I love that he said, come, not go, come.

02:08

That meant he was already there. I also love how I could tell by the sweet tone of his silent voice whispering to my spirit that he was smiling.

02:19

So she built a snowman with God. I built a snowman. I laugh with the

02:24

God. He laughed with me. I am so in love with him. God told

02:30

Charles Stanley how to buy a Thanksgiving turkey without waiting a long time in line.

02:36

Against sort of my will, I went. I walked right in, straight to the right place, the right pound of turkey, walked right out, paid it, got back in the car in less than about 25 minutes.

02:48

Did God tell me to go? Yes, he did. God told Marcus Rogers that Donald Trump would be reelected.

02:55

I was praying about it and the Lord told me Trump was gonna win. And everybody was mocking me and attacking me and things like that.

03:02

This is the first election? Yeah, the first election. And so I never claimed to be a prophet. And you know,

03:08

I was just like, hey man, this is what God is showing me and I wanna share it with you guys. For now, let's just consider some questions.

03:16

Do we see in scripture, any examples of God speaking to people about such trivial or weird things?

03:24

Is it even conceivable that God would ever tell someone something that was untrue?

03:34

When Christians today say that God told them something, what do they really mean?

03:40

The vast majority of the time, they're not saying that God said something audibly or even verbally to them.

03:48

What they mean is that they felt or sensed something or they got an impression from God.

03:56

This is from a book by Bruce Waltke called Finding the Will of God, A Pagan Notion.

04:02

Listen to this. Margaret is a successful career woman with a desire to please God. She worked her way up to a supervisor's position in the accounting division at First National Bank and married rather late in life.

04:13

Now in her late thirties, she is struggling with the importance of her job. She would like to do something significant for Christ, but feels that her job prevents her from making any changes.

04:24

Margaret's church recently held a missionary conference in which the speaker challenged Christians to become involved in world evangelism and encouraged everyone to justify why they are not, quote, serving the

04:35

Lord overseas, end quote. Those words stay with Margaret as she ponders, spending the next 25 years at her desk doing the same old accounting tasks.

04:46

The next day, she reads in the paper about a hurricane devastating the Marshall Islands. The accompanying photograph of two children crying over the death of their parents vividly captures the destruction and deprivation.

04:58

And Margaret prays for those poor souls left to fend for themselves. That very afternoon, a coworker making plans for his vacation leaves a brochure on the

05:09

Marshall Islands. And Margaret decides to pray that the Lord would make his will clear to her.

05:15

That night, her husband comes home complaining that the best lawyer in his office, a young man named

05:21

Marshall, has just been transferred to their East Coast office. Honey, Margaret says to her husband,

05:27

I've been thinking about what the speaker said in church yesterday, and the funniest set of circumstances occurred.

05:33

Do you think God could be calling us to be missionaries in the Marshall Islands? Now, here's what would happen if Margaret and her husband went to the

05:41

Marshall Islands as missionaries. They would come back from time to time and they would go to churches and they would stand up before churches and tell that exact story.

05:48

And it would be the evidence that God called them to be where they are. And people with tear -stained eyes would applaud the way

05:57

God used those circumstances to reveal his will. Now, let me first just give you the shocker, and then

06:05

I'll explain myself. That is paganism and not Christianity. That's paganism.

06:10

That's reading tea leaves. That's not discerning the will of God. That's looking at the stars in the heavens trying to discern the story that they tell.

06:21

That's horoscope reading. That is not biblical Christianity, but it is absolutely the most common approach to finding, discerning, and following God's will among Christians.

06:33

And some of you are incredibly uncomfortable right now because that story is absolutely fine with you theologically.

06:39

And if someone told you that story, you'd just shake your head and marvel at the goodness of God in being so clear and so specific with his people.

06:47

That is why we need to know Romans 12 too. And when someone argues that God did speak audibly or verbally, there's simply no way to confirm that.

06:59

We are supposed to simply believe them even if there's really no compelling reason at all to believe them or to care at all if we believe that scripture is sufficient enough for us.

07:12

Hey, this is Michael. Yeah, the real Michael. If you like these videos, would you consider subscribing?

07:18

It helps YouTube spread this message to more people. I'm giving away a beautiful handcrafted leather Bible every week, and I'm trying to pass

07:24

Kenneth Copeland in subscribers to show that truth wins over false teaching. Where? Rome!

07:31

Rome! Thank you so much for your eyeballs and support.

07:41

Sometimes what God supposedly tells Christians is simply what the

07:46

Bible already teaches. These instances of God supposedly speaking directly to Christians aren't as concerning, but we should ask why would

07:57

God tell you directly something that he has already revealed in his word? What's far more concerning is when

08:04

God supposedly reveals things that he hasn't revealed in scripture. Sarah Young says this.

08:10

She says, during the same year, in 92, I began reading God Calling, a devotional book by two anonymous listeners.

08:16

These women practiced waiting quietly in God's presence, pencils and papers in hand, recording the messages they received from him.

08:23

In these instances, since God is infallible and can't ever reveal anything that is untrue, shouldn't we always write these new revelations down and put them alongside of the

08:35

Bible? These things cannot coexist. A belief that God still speaks today outside of scripture and a belief, an affirmation of a closed canon of scripture.

08:47

Those two things cannot exist. If God is still speaking today outside of scripture, then whatever he says, just as authoritative as any verse in this book, and so we should add it to this book, and so we have an open canon of scripture.

09:00

If God is still speaking outside of scripture, then this is not closed. This is still an open canon.

09:06

You cannot have your canonical cake and eat it too. Of course, we don't do that, which says much about the nature of these supposed new revelations from God.

09:20

A major reason why Christians are so eager and desperate to hear from God directly is because they don't feel that scripture alone is enough.

09:31

They need something more exciting, something more powerful, something more compelling.

09:36

And there are a lot of you out there today who either have struggled with this or you struggle with it right now. And you got friends who use all this

09:43

God told me language and this high and mighty form of spirituality where they walk around and don't have to make decisions or pray about anything because their life is just a series of God going that way, that way, that way, that way.

09:57

And you sit there and go, what's wrong with me? What do I have to do to get there? What's sad is not just the fact that that person's not telling the truth and that you're desiring something that even if it does exist, is pagan and demonic and not

10:11

Christian. But what's worse is you have been bought with a price, precious blood of Christ.

10:18

You have been taken from darkness to light, from death to life. You have been utterly transformed and are being conformed to the image of the son of the living

10:29

God. And yet you're not satisfied. You may have even come to question whether or not you're really saved because your experience doesn't look like those people.

10:39

It's bondage and it's pagan and it's the spirit of the age and it's to be rejected. God is in control.

10:44

His secret will is his business. Trust me, you and I have enough to worry about with his perceptive will, amen?

10:51

Nevermind that scripture says that scripture is completely sufficient. A major concern about people saying that God spoke to them directly is that you're not allowed to question them.

11:07

By the way, what that means is I'm doing something. It's not biblical and I know it's not biblical but I don't want you to question me about it.

11:15

So when you go opening up your Bible, I say, okay, well, wait a minute. All right, whatever. I know what that says, but hey,

11:21

I prayed about this. I fasted. I have peace. Therefore, my decision trumps whatever you just found in that book because we all know that the ultimate example of finding the will of God is inner peace.

11:35

They are certain that God spoke to them. So doubting what they say is equivalent to doubting

11:42

God. Of course, this is problematic because it circumvents being good

11:47

Bereans and examining everything according to scripture. Another major concern regarding the phrase

11:58

God told me is that it creates a special class of Christians who supposedly hear directly from God.

12:07

And all other Christians who don't have this special privilege are in a lower class that needs to depend upon this special class of Christians to tap into the true power of God.

12:20

We see this especially in ministries such as Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, and more.

12:30

Why are Christians so unsatisfied with the sufficiency of scripture that they feel they need to hear directly from God?

12:39

Oftentimes, the answer is mysticism and anti -intellectualism.

12:44

How do Christians find the will of God? Romans 12 too. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your, let's say that word together, mind.

12:56

Here's the irony. The pagan concept of finding the will of God is to circumvent the mind, turn off the mind, alter the mind, not trust the mind.

13:07

Biblical way goes directly through the mind. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

13:14

And then, what's the result of that? That by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

13:23

Now, let me lay it out for you before we go back and exegete this text further. What do we find here as the process?

13:31

The pagan process is get away from your mind. Get away from the human realm into the transcendent realm.

13:39

Either read the tea leaves, have your fortune told, have your palm read, or meditate until somehow you have an encounter with the divine that allows you to know with certain, and here's how we say it in Christian terms.

13:55

We don't say transcendental meditation and nirvana and achieving all this. The Christian word for this kind of meditation and the result of this kind of meditation, the

14:06

Christian word for this kind of pagan mysticism is finding peace about it.

14:12

Inner peace, inner peace. It's paganism. I know this is what I'm supposed to do. Why? Because I have a peace about it.

14:20

As though God would never lead you to do something about which you would not feel peace.

14:26

Has God ever led you to confront somebody about sin? Trust me, you don't feel a peace about that.

14:36

The purpose of scripture is to be a complete collection of God's revelation to the human race.

14:42

The completed canon is both inerrant and sufficient, which means no further revelation is needed.

14:50

This is clearly what scripture itself teaches. If we want to hear from God today, we should read and study the

14:59

Bible. Here's how we get there as Christian. We search the scriptures. We read our Bible. I wanna know what to do.

15:06

Pastor, can you help me know what to do in this situation? Yeah, let's read your Bible. Yeah, but the Bible's not gonna talk about this particular situation.

15:13

Read your Bible. Secondly, think biblically. Read your Bible, think biblically. Yeah, but I wanna know if I'm supposed to go to the

15:19

Marshall Islands. Read your Bible, read what your Bible has to say about going places and preaching the gospel and so on and so forth, okay?

15:26

And then learn to think biblically about things like counting the cost and so on and so forth. Read your Bible, think biblically.

15:32

Dear friends, if you wanna hear God speak to you, there's one way I guarantee you, you will hear God speak. Read your

15:37

Bible. If you wanna hear God speak to you audibly, read it out loud. Christians often say that scripture teaches us to listen to the still, small voice from God.

15:54

However, first, the still, small voice occurs in a narrative that is not necessarily normative for believers today.

16:04

And second, the still, small voice wasn't a vague impression or dream, which is what we mostly hear about today.

16:13

It was an actual voice. Dear friends, the still, small voice was not some inner impression inside Elijah's head.

16:21

It was not internal to him. It was external to him. Notice it says that he went out of the cave to the entrance and there he clearly heard the voice of God.

16:32

So it's not something internal. It's not some notion inside of his head. It was an external voice.

16:38

So can we please do away with this whole still, small voice thing? It was never intended to be some inside impression.

16:49

It was external, not internal. But this is something that has worked its way into our evangelical lingo and few people understand what this really is.

16:58

It's a terrible misuse of it. Another argument is that prayer is a conversation, which means it involves both speaking and hearing from God.

17:12

But let me remind you that hearing God is the second half of prayer because if you can't hear

17:18

God, why would you pray? However, that's not actually what the Bible teaches about prayer.

17:25

Lord, teach us to pray. What did Jesus say? Okay, here's how you do it. You talk to God and then you get real quiet and you listen for that still, small voice.

17:34

Is that what he said? No, he didn't say that at all. He said, when you pray, say this, Lord, hallowed be thy name.

17:41

Nothing about listening for some still, small voice. Nothing about listening for God to speak back to you.

17:46

So this whole notion of prayer being a two -way street, that is foreign to the word of God. There's nothing in the Bible about that at all.

17:54

Please trust in the sufficiency of scripture and stop saying