WWUTT 210 Subjective Experiences vs Objective Truth

If you teach a person to listen for a voice from God, or look for some kind of vision from God, well you're teaching them to rely on subjective experiences.

We don't need subjective experiences, we need objective truth when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text, as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. It is Friday, responding to questions from listeners and viewers.

Best way to get in touch with us if you have a question is to email it whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

I may not respond to every single email, but I read all of them. And sometimes I read emails to the congregation as well.

Once a quarter we'll do a Q &A sermon where we're taking questions from the congregation, responding to them in a sermon.

And this coming Sunday is one of those Q &As. We're covering Romans 12 and 13 this

Sunday. So I'm also going to take an opportunity to read some what emails from folks that have written to us from around the world.

So the congregation gets to hear about the impact this ministry has made, not just here in the United States, but around the globe.

So if you like a story or if you have a story you would like to share, we'd like to hear from you.

And again, email is whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. Now, while I do read every email, and I think for the most part

I read everything that I get on Twitter, I'll be point blank honest with you. I don't read everything that comes over Facebook.

In fact, it'd be fair to say I don't even read half of it. So if you're trying to get a response from the ministry by shooting a

Facebook message or commenting on a video or even doing the private message feature, there's a pretty good chance you're not going to get a response.

Facebook's just not my bag. I know it is for a lot of people, and so that's why we have a

Facebook page. But I'm not usually the one that traffics that site, and so I don't read and respond to a lot of those comments.

But anyway, so again, the best way to get in touch with us is by email, and I'll give it to you again whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

For the first time in a while, I think that I can say that I have responded to every single one of the emails that I'm going to read today.

There's three of them that I've chosen for this particular episode, and I've answered all of them. The first one is a criticism.

This comes from Brett in Arvada, Colorado. I do read the criticisms sometimes, even featuring them on this program.

Brett says, was just wondering what type of education you went through to earn the right to call yourself a pastor.

My grandfather, a Lutheran pastor, had a Ph .D. from a university, went through a

Lutheran seminary, and spent time as a vicar at a Lutheran church before he could be considered a pastor.

I didn't know that by telling people you were born again at a young age made you an expert on God.

It is interesting to read you criticizing other pastors as if you are somehow the ultimate authority on religion and God.

Please list your education and experience and training that makes you so special. Anyone can say they were born again.

Does that make all those people experts on God? Sounds like an easy way to support your family off of hardworking church members who can't see past your lack of education and training.

Hope you can sleep at night. Brett from Arvada, Colorado. I'm sorry, I kept a straight face through most of that, but I finally cracked.

Anyway, I had a little bit of fun with Brett. I responded to him and I said, Dear Brett, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I think you will be delighted to know that I completed a rigorous process of filling out an online form and mailed it in to a generic ministerial alliance.

For just the price of postage and a small processing fee, I became an ordained pastor. I did tell

Brett that I was just kidding with him. I also said to him that I don't think it would matter if I had a doctorate. It sounds like you have your mind made up about me and I'm not going to change your mind one way or the other.

Now, while I didn't say this to Brett, I will say this to you. I believe I've said this on this program before. I have not completed seminary.

However, I've never recommended to anybody that they become a pastor without having attended seminary.

I've had several young men come to me and ask me if they think they should go to seminary or not.

Some of them have probably heard my story or they've heard about men like Matt Chandler or maybe greats like Charles Spurgeon.

He also didn't go to seminary. And they'll say, can I do that? You know, can I become a pastor without having to go to seminary?

And every single time I've been asked that, I've said, no, you should go to seminary. In fact, at the interview that I had with the congregation, this was the same day that they voted on me for the head pastor position.

When the congregation was asking me questions, one of the things that I said to them was, if I was sitting in your position,

I would not vote for me. Because one of the things that I would look for on a person that's becoming a pastor is if they have had seminary training.

Now, I will say that I applied for the job because I knew that I could do it. And this also wasn't the sort of a thing where I was looking to be a pastor.

I wasn't looking for churches and sending out applications to different places. This church actually invited me to apply for that position.

I was an associate pastor for two years. And then after the senior pastor left, the church then encouraged me to apply for that senior pastor position.

I had been invited by churches in the past to apply for a pastorship, but I just wasn't interested in doing that at that particular time.

And several pastors were behind me applying for this position at the time that I did as well. I had filled in pulpits and churches from the time that I was a teenager.

I have a very unique experience. I was in Christian ministry for over 20 years, had been in Christian radio and had been the general manager of a

Christian radio station. I had counseling experience. I was very knowledgeable in the scriptures. And so these are the

I will say this, though. One shortcoming that I had coming into being a pastor is I did not know church history very well.

And that's something that a pastor should be knowledgeable of as he's leading people in doctrinal and theological teaching.

These are the kinds of experiences and the kind of learning that you get at a seminary. So I absolutely encourage young men that if you desire to become a pastor, you should go to seminary.

Had the chance to meet a seminary president a couple of years ago, somebody that I always wanted to meet. I won't say who this was or what seminary he represented because that would give away who it is.

But anyway, I introduced myself and I said, I'm a pastor of First Southern Baptist Church, Junction City, Kansas.

And I said, can you give me a compelling argument as to why I might want to leave the work that I'm doing as a pastor and go complete seminary and then go back to being a pastor again?

And he said to me, no, I don't think that I can. It sounds to me like you're doing everything that you that a seminary would prepare you for doing.

And so I don't think that a seminary could necessarily equip you with more tools unless it was teaching you languages.

And I don't know Hebrew and Greek. And so that would be one of the things that I could learn at a seminary better than what

I've just taught myself. But he said, otherwise, what a seminary would prepare you for, you're already doing.

So unless you have a conviction in your heart to leave that position and go complete seminary and then go back and resume your pastoral duties,

I wouldn't want to convince you to do that. So I was like, great, you know. So anyway, the three seminaries that I most often recommend,

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City and the

Masters University in California. It is Masters University, not

Masters College now. So young men, we need sound, solid gospel

Christ centered teachers in the church. And and so if you desire, if you feel the

Lord placing that upon you and becoming a pastor of a church, please look toward attending seminary, completing a degree.

And then that seminary is also going to help to find you a church to become a pastor of as well.

OK, this next question actually has to do with the latest what video that featured

Beth Moore. So I'm going to go ahead and play this video before reading the question. I have gotten to see something that I think is huge.

And I'll also suggest to you, I am not the only one. And tonight I'm going to do my absolute best to illustrate to you something that God showed me sitting out on that back porch.

He put a picture I've explained to you before. I'm a very visual person. So he speaks to me very often and putting a picture in my head.

And it was as if I was raised up looking down on a community as I saw the church as Jesus sees it in a particular dimension.

There are plenty of teachers who want you to believe that they heard some kind of voice or received some kind of vision from God.

How can we know whether or not what they're hearing or seeing is truly from the Lord? Well, there's a very simple test you can apply.

Does their personal revelation agree with the Bible? If the answer is no, they're either making stuff up or the voice they're hearing isn't from God.

If the answer is yes, then you don't need their word or vision. It's in the Bible. Many will say, but I hear

God speak to me in a still small voice just like he spoke to Elijah. Well, Hebrews 1 .1

says, long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. In the Old Testament, God spoke through burning bushes and talking donkeys and still small voices.

But today, he speaks loud and clear through the word of Christ. Everything we could ever want to hear

God say is already right here in the Bible when we understand the text. This question comes from Sean in Tennessee.

He says, Dear Pastor Gabe, your latest video about Beth Moore receiving visions from God was very appreciated.

I especially like the quote from John Owen that was included. But I have a question about the extent to which we can say that God does not speak to a person or show them something.

Are we to understand that he does not do this at all? What about when a person says that the

Holy Spirit speaks to them? What about stories of people who say God spoke to them in a dream and everything they say does line up with the

Bible? What about those for whom the Bible is not as readily available and they will later claim they heard

God drawing them to him? I do believe that if anyone in America especially says that God spoke to them, we should be very skeptical.

But I guess I'm just trying to figure out how skeptical we should be of the more legitimate claims.

Well, thank you very much for your question, Sean. So basically, do we just dismiss any and all claims about I heard a voice from God or I got a vision from him?

Let me give you a couple of stories here. One is a voice from God and one is a vision from God.

OK, there was a woman at one time who shared this story about she was sitting in a pew in church and she wasn't listening to the sermon, wasn't paying attention, didn't even really want to be in church.

Her life was a mess at the time and she knew that she should be there, but didn't really want to be. She had the money envelope in her hands, that little envelope that they put in the bulletin.

You're supposed to put your offering in and then drop it in the offering plate. She was just holding that envelope and was fidgeting.

And she started tearing up the envelope, little tiny pieces. Before long, she was holding the whole envelope in her hands in just these crumbled up pieces, just this massive trash in her two hands.

And she felt like God was saying to her, this is your life and you're trying to put it back together on your own and you can't do it.

I am the only one that can get you back together. And so at that point, she started listening to the sermon, started hearing about her sin, the need for repentance.

And on that day, repented before God and became a Christian. Now, that is a story that really doesn't help me at all.

And I can't give that story to somebody else as if to say God is going to speak to you through crumpled up envelopes.

God speaks to us through the word of God, through the Bible. There's nothing that she said to me that I cannot find in scripture and cannot find in a greater degree.

But that was something that I guess in whatever illustration of that envelope helped her in that particular circumstance.

And she turned her ears toward listening to the word of God and was convicted for her sin.

I don't have any reason not to believe her story. She didn't hear an audible voice from God. It was just she felt like God communicating to her through this illustration of this envelope that she was not listening to him and she needed to be.

OK, so there's an example of, you know, God may be using something to draw your attention toward him.

But that story is not necessarily going to bring a person to salvation. It works for her personal testimony, but it's not something that that we find in in addition to the scripture.

It's not something that we need in addition to the scriptures. OK, does that make sense? All right. Now, here's the vision illustration.

And this story is hearsay. I don't know how true this actually is. But given this scenario here, here's the vision illustration.

There was two men who were doing an inner city ministry and they were specifically trying to reach out to Muslims.

They wanted to convert Muslims from Islam to Christianity. So they rented this apartment and then they would go out on the street and evangelize and invite those

Muslims that they would talk to up to their apartment so that they could share more about Christ with them.

Well, they did this for almost a full year. And then the lease was coming up on the end of the apartment. And in that year, they had not had one single

Muslim that they had witnessed to come up to the apartment and desire to know more. They wanted to start a church and it would be out of that particular apartment.

So this was their outreach that they were doing. Well, the two men were meeting together and they were praying, deciding whether or not

God was going to have them continue this ministry or they should just let it close down. And while they were praying, a man came and knocked on their door.

And he said that an angel had appeared to him in a dream and said to go to this apartment building and knock on the door and ask about Christ, the apartment number and everything.

He did not know anything about these two men, at least according to his story. And so he said that I feel like I'm supposed to be here and ask you about Jesus.

And the two men were just flabbergasted. And so, of course, sat down with him and shared the Lord with him.

And they did end up starting their ministry with that one man that eventually blossomed out to others who would hear about Christ and be saved as well.

OK, so here's here's the summary. Then this woman who feels like she's hearing from God and an illustration with a crumpled envelope.

And then she turns her ears toward the sermon and hears about her sin is convicted, repents and gets saved.

You have a man who sees a vision of something in a dream. He goes to a place. He knocks on the door.

He hears about Christ. He gets saved. And some other people end up getting saved as a result of that testimony as well.

Are those stories based on what was said in that video? Are those stories true or false?

My answer is, I don't know. I really don't know. And here's the thing. I don't have to verify whether or not that woman truly heard from God or that man saw an angel in a dream to know anything about God.

Anything we could ever want to know about God is already in the Bible. And our understanding of God is not enhanced or broadened in any way by stories like that one.

Like those, anyway, those situations worked for that woman and that man, but it's probably not going to help anyone else.

Everyone needs to hear the gospel of Christ according to the scriptures, not according to voices or visions.

And so that is what our commitment needs to be. Our world does not need to hear about voices and visions.

When you teach people to listen for a voice or look for a vision, you're teaching them to rely upon subjective experiences.

We need to give people objective truth, and you only get that through the scriptures.

We have plenty of people talking about visions and voices. We don't need any more.

What we need are solid Bible teachers who are telling others what

God has said through his word. We don't need anything more than that. So anybody's voice experience or vision experience is needless in that way.

And what John Owen said is quite true. And again, if somebody's vision or voice experience contradicts what the scriptures say, then their experience is completely false.

It either came from a spirit that is not from God, or they're just making it up.

And in that particular quote from Beth Moore at the beginning of the video, I know for certain, matter of fact, that this vision that she got sitting out on her back porch absolutely did not come from God.

Because when you hear that quote in the context in which it is given, she's talking about this church in this particular dimension, like it said in the quote, this unified church.

So people from different denominations unified together in Christ. Well, one of those churches that she was saying is unified in Christ is the

Roman Catholic Church. No, that is an apostate church with an antichrist at the helm, talking specifically about the

Pope. There ain't no way that God was giving Beth Moore a vision of a unified church that included

Roman Catholicism. So anyway, one of those instances where we can test her vision against the scriptures and see it's clearly false.

She's lying now, and she's either telling a deliberate lie or it's a lie of a false spirit.

But one way or the other, it's still a lie. We can test this according to the scriptures as we should test all things.

First John four, one test the spirits for not every spirit comes from God.

And there are many false prophets that have gone out into the world. How do we test the spirits, folks?

Objective truth with the word of God. That is anything and everything you could ever need to know about God.

It is right there in the Bible. So I come back to something that I said earlier. Young men, we are desperately in need of sound, solid teachers in the church.

So go to seminary and learn. But let me also say to young women, we need sound, solid women in the church that are also teaching the other women.

It's a woman should not be a pastor, but she can still be a teacher in the church, a teacher of women and of children.

And that's something else that the church desperately needs. Solid women ministry. So we can stop playing

Beth Moore Bible studies. Ladies, you can go to seminary as well. And I would encourage you to do that very thing, particularly young ladies.

If you're looking for a husband, maybe you can find him at seminary. That's not the reason to go.

But, you know, anyway, just be committed to the Lord and to his word, because what we need there is sound, solid teachers in the word of God.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I said I was going to answer three questions, but I'm already over time here.

So I'm going to save this question for next week. I've already responded to him by e -mail, and I'll just answer it on the program another time.

If you would like to ask a question when we understand the text at gmail .com. On Monday, we will resume our study of Romans, finishing up Chapter 13.

Talk to you then. God bless. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals and other resources online at www .utt