God Doesn’t Whisper Again

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I've never even met Andrew in person. The one thing I've picked up on is everybody picks on the man.

And so here's my take as an outsider. Oh, that's not true. Who picks on everybody else? No, no. See, I think he's an innocent victim of just ruthless people who harshly judge him.

He just seems to me so innocent. I don't know. I need to meet him to find out. But yeah, that's just my impression.

He'll have to tell me whether I'm right or not. That's hilarious. Wow. I don't trust Chris's opinion on it.

I mean. One, two, three. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right. Well, I am your host, Andrew Rappaport. The executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a member. I have another podcast member with me today, and that is

Pastor Jim Osmond from Kootenay Community Church. You should be checking out the

Kootenay Community Church worship service. That is one of the podcasts on the Christian podcast community. Welcome Jim.

Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for having me on. We'll get to why you and I are recording today, because we had to have you back as a return guest, not as a co -host, but as a guest.

But the clip in the beginning was from Apologetics Live when I was not there, and that was

Israel Wayne disagreeing with Anthony Silvestro on whether, you know, I'm the one that picks on others or I get picked on, and the

Chris he refers to is Chris Hanholds of Voice of Reason Radio, another Christian podcast community member.

And so I tend to think that Israel's right. I'm the one that gets picked on. I don't think

I do the picking on. Well, I don't, I certainly don't pick on you. No, but I think,

I do think before I preached at your church this last time, you did pick on somebody else, other than your mother -in -law.

Yeah, other than my mother -in -law, yeah. I picked on somebody who took me on that ATV ride and tried to kill you. And the mother -in -law joke didn't go over so well when you wanted to bring your mother -in -law out for a ride with the same individual.

From what I understand, your mother -in -law loves when you pick on her, though, so. She doesn't mind it.

She feels like, she knows that it's a way that I endear myself to her. Yeah, but there were some oohs in the audience when you did that.

I can't believe that I would say that. Yeah, well, your church has like, it's tripled since the first time that I was there for a conference.

And probably tripled since the last time I gave a mother -in -law joke. So I dropped it for a while, and then a bunch of new people came, and they're just not used to hearing me kind of throw her under the bus.

So when your mother -in -law was there, did you throw her under the bus again with her present? No, I didn't.

In fact, I didn't preach this last Sunday. She was here this last weekend, and I didn't preach. Another gentleman in our church did. Yeah, and that's because you had some big event in your family.

Yeah, my youngest daughter got married on this last Saturday, which was pretty neat. We're blessed to add a godly young man to our list of in -laws.

So your family is growing in both ways, right? They're in competition of having children, too.

Yeah, and my oldest son had a son on June 19th, and now my youngest daughter is pregnant, and she is due at the end of October.

So we have two grandchildren and a wedding all within this year. You feeling old yet? No, I feel younger and better than I've ever felt.

All right, well, let's get into the topic we have and why we wanted to have you back on. And folks that may be asking where Bud is,

Bud and I will be recording back again. His computer's back and re -established, as long as this hurricane,

I guess, doesn't throw him off, because we plan to record this Saturday. But we got a review,

Jim, and I sent this to you, and this was a zero star, so this is just no rating.

Just wanted to give some feedback. This is, I can't even pronounce the name from Nigeria.

Well, Esther, the middle name is Esther, that I can pronounce. The middle name is Esther, yes. So I can't pronounce the name.

Last name is A -R -I -Y -O from Nigeria. But let me just read the review.

This is back from the last time that you were here on the show, but then it was changed and they recently left a review, and so we wanted to have you come back on and engage with, because they do ask some questions.

So let me read the review, and then what we could do is go back over some of the things for people, discuss your book,

God Doesn't Whisper, because that's what this came from. But let me read the review first, and then we could dig into a discussion of your book.

It says, at first, when I listened to this, I was upset.

Like, why shouldn't I expect to hear from God audibly? I had to ask

God, please help me keep an open heart and teach me what

I need to know, which he did. I still have questions, by the way, but at the end of this podcast,

I can truly say I've learned something fresh. I don't know if I agree with all that was said, but I definitely see what

I need to work on in my walk with Christ. I've had to ask myself, is the word truly sufficient for me?

Why exactly do I desire to hear God's voice? I do have a question or two that I need answered.

I was disappointed it was not really talked about, or perhaps I missed it when it was discussed.

But question one is, does God speak audibly in this day and age?

Two, is it wrong to desire to hear from God audibly, even knowing that it is not compulsory part of the

Christian walk and should not be expected? But are you saying we don't even think about it?

Thank you. So that's what we're going to end up talking about. And by the way, I should give a shout out to a listener that I got to meet this week.

I was out at the James White debate, showed up for that, walked in. I was speaking at a men's retreat and rushed right out of there, down, made it just before cross -examination during a break of the debate.

So I got to watch the cross -examination of James White's debate. Have you heard

James' response podcast to the debate? Oh yeah, it was bad.

It was really bad. They put it this way, you know it's bad when the opponent, in his closing remarks, basically blamed

James White and other scholars like him for homosexuality in the church. Oh my goodness.

And he also admitted he was doing it for resume building. Is that kind of like cross -politic blaming Credo Baptist for the transgender movement?

Is that kind of the same thing? Did they do that? Oh no. Well, a listener on cross -politic did, or sorry, a guest on cross -politic did.

Oh wow, okay. Yeah, I guess it would be like that. But yeah, I mean, it was bad.

His whole argument, the argument was that the Texas Receptus is equal in authority to the autographs, to New Testament autographs.

And my, oh my, oh my. I mean, I'm going to talk about this on Apologize Live this week too, but it was bad.

I mean, the guy, I talked to him afterwards because his whole argument was, well, we know this is, that the

Texas Receptus is the Word of God, that is the Bible, because it's been accepted.

He prayed about it. And he first said he prayed about it. And I turned to my bride and said, that's

Mormonism. He's got a burning in the bosom. And immediately James White goes, that's

Mormonism. I said to James afterwards, either I've been listening to you too long or we think alike, because that was like exactly what

I said to my wife is what he said to this guy. So the guy says, well, no, it's not just a prayer.

It's different because it's accepted by the church. It's the Holy Spirit. But how do you know it's the

Holy Spirit? James ended his cross -examination because what he ended up saying was, he just responded and said,

I'll yield the rest of my time because I just hope everybody heard what he said, because the guy basically appealed to a subjective argument that he knows it's the

Holy Spirit, not based on any evidence, but because it's the church. The church accepted it.

I, being my sarcastic self, walked up to him afterwards and said, I really,

I didn't get to hear the opening. I came just after the cross -examination and I got to tell you,

I prayed about what you were saying throughout the cross -examination and the

Holy Spirit has spoken that you're wrong. And in fact, the fact that you're in the minority of the church, that should reveal you should really repent.

And he just shrugged his shoulders like, okay, whatever. Those were his two arguments though, weren't they?

Oh, they were. And I asked him, I said, okay, let me ask then, do you think that, because he admitted that Erasmus was not inspired, he just happened upon the right text.

So it's not that he was inspired or infallible. And so I said, well, where did we have the

Word of God before Erasmus? I mean, we had it in the Greek autographs, but what about the

Latin Vulgate? The church accepted that and he agreed. He basically said that was the right text at that time.

The inspired Word of God changed this manuscript tradition. Thank you. Yeah, that was my point, because we know that there's things in the

Latin Vulgate that we don't have in the Textus Receptus, and we don't have in any other

Greek manuscripts. And so he's appealing to the church. I didn't say this to him, but the thing

I thought of afterwards, after I walked away, is to say, well, then why are you upset with James? Because the church has changed and we now accept the manuscripts that we look at instead of the

Textus Receptus. Yeah, that's right. He's confessing that the church changed back then. Yeah, and so how can you really trust, in that argument, my thinking is, how do you trust the

Textus Receptus and say that's the Word of God if you accepted that the

Vulgate could have been the Word of God? Yeah. I mean, so if the church was to suddenly accept the

Book of Mormon, would that be the Word of God? Right. I mean, but as soon as I got there, as soon as I walked in,

I had a guy that recognized me. But you ever have this, Jim, where someone recognizes you, it's out of place, they know they know your face, but they haven't figured out who you are yet?

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah, well, that's what happened. The guy looked at me, he wagged his finger at me, he's giving me the look, so I stopped.

I was actually just trying to get in after a two -hour drive to get into the men's room, and he was walking out.

He's waving his finger, he's looking at me, so I stopped because I figured he recognized who I was, but he didn't.

And he goes, you're someone famous. And I said, no, no, I'm not. And then he realized who I was. He's like, wait, you're

Andrew Rappaport. I said, yeah, that's who I am. I'm not famous. And he's like, oh, I listen to your podcast.

So I should give a shout out to Chris. It was great to get to meet him and talk to him as a listener.

That's always a great experience. I don't know if I shared this with this podcast group, but when

I was out in Ohio, one of the guys who listens to Apologetics Live knew

I was coming to that area in Ohio, wanted to get together. We had breakfast together. What I didn't know, Jim, was

I remember him. His name's Ethan, and he's been a follower of Apologetics Live for a long time, a student there over at Cedarville.

But what I didn't know is when he first came into Apologetics Live, it was because his brother was in a cult, and he was trying to get his brother out of a cult.

So he started learning about apologetics. And in the process, he got saved and then started talking to his brother about the gospel.

And so now his brother's out of the cult and is saved. So it's just crazy to think. I was like, wow, from listening to Apologetics Live to get his brother out of a cult, he got saved.

So that's, it's just neat. I mean, here we're going to talk about someone in Nigeria that listened to us talk about your book.

And you have spoken often with Justin Peters, who travels to Africa, talking about the

NAR, Word of Faith. How prevalent is

Word of Faith and NAR there in Africa that we've heard from Justin?

And also, can you define those terms for folks? Yeah, so let's define the terms first.

Word of Faith is the belief that we can create our own reality or create things out of our mere profession, that our profession coupled with faith as an active force has the power to make us healthy, cancel disease, conquer

Satan, create prosperity for us, make us wealthy in this world, that that is what faith is, so that those who are blessed by God are those who are wealthy and healthy.

That's the Word of Faith. New Apostolic Reformation, or the NAR, is kind of a hyperized version of that, where they take the charismatic gifts and issues to a new level and have modern -day apostles and modern -day prophecies.

Of course, the Word of Faith movement believes in prophecies as well, but then they add to that modern -day prophets and apostles, believing that the new apostolic office is actually more powerful and more dynamic and more spirit -filled than the original apostles were, and this is, of course, necessary to usher in their end -times eschatology.

That is, so those are just two strains, as it were, of the charismatic movement.

In the continent of Africa, on the continent of Africa, from what I've been told by people who are there pastoring churches, it is not just a form of Christianity.

It is the dominant, visible form of Christianity on that continent, so many of the reports that we hear of revivals in Africa and the work that God is doing is really nothing more than people pursuing

American Western ideas of Christianity that are rooted in the prosperity gospel.

Yeah, I mean, I remember a pastor in Ohio that contacted me years ago, wanted to use our harmoneutic syllabus with another local pastor.

He met a pastor that came to his church, the pastor was planting a church here in America from Africa, from South Africa, and he was planting a church in America as a missionary, and he was getting together with this, but he first just wanted to meet the pastor, just so he knew, got to know pastors in the area, and what ended up happening was they got together for lunch and he started using our syllabus for our harmoneutics class with this pastor who didn't know how to interpret the

Bible, and the guy started to realize he was misinterpreting the Bible. He started employing proper harmoneutics, which got him actually in trouble with the sending church back in Africa, and they actually told him that if he did not start teaching word of faith theology again and get out of teaching just the

Bible, they were going to bring him back home. Unfortunate sad part to the story, the guy,

I guess, wanted his job more, stopped meeting with this pastor that had gotten our syllabus and went back to teaching word of faith.

That's the sad part of it, but one thing the pastor said to me that was interesting was when this guy that got our syllabus was meeting with this

African pastor, he said the African pastor told him he never knew there was any other way to understand the

Bible than word of faith because that is the only way that they discuss it there, and so he didn't know there was any other harmoneutical principles to apply other than what they were taught in word of faith.

And I think that when we look at your book, and your book is God Doesn't Whisper, available by the way at jimosman .com,

I believe, com .org, so jimosman .com, and it's not Osmond, like the

Osmond family, he's not Mormon, it's no D at the end. Yeah. You can skip all the confusion, just go to Amazon, you can order it on Amazon at amazon .com,

God Doesn't Whisper. Yeah, but then Amazon gets more money. We'd rather you get more money. Oh, okay.

Because for folks that don't know, your books don't go to, the profits don't go to you, do they?

No, they don't. My profits don't go into any fund for me. So why don't we, because we're going to be pushing the book, so why don't we explain to people, if people buy the book through jimosman .com,

where's that money going? Well, no matter where they buy the book, the profits, the royalties go into a fund that supports retired missionaries.

So we have a number of missionaries in our church that have retired, and it goes into a fund that gives them a little stipend every month, and eventually it will support retired pastors from our own church, and the goal is that people who have served long on the mission field will eventually be able to kind of be supported into their retirement years after that.

Even though the missionaries continue to be supported, often when you leave the mission field, their support sometimes dries up or goes away entirely, or at least drops significantly.

So we didn't want that to happen, and we wanted to just add a little bit of support for them in their retirement after they've served faithfully. So that's what those royalties go to support.

Yeah, and that's an important thing. So the book God Doesn't Whisper is really addressing, very much like we see in Africa, where they don't know any other way to interpret

God's word. Well, I would say in America, as well as Africa, people don't know any other way than to explain that they're expecting to hear the voice of God audibly, or through nudges, feelings, dreams, all these ways that people, even here in America, have this expectation to hear from God.

Yeah. Yeah, they look at God speaking throughout the Old Testament and the

New Testament, and they look at the supernatural manifestations of God speaking audibly to Elijah, audibly to the prophets, audibly to Adam and Eve, to Noah, to Moses.

And then they extrapolate that into the present day and say, well, if God needed to speak to them, then certainly He needs to speak to me.

And if God loved them enough to speak to them, certainly He loves me enough to speak to me. And if God did that under the Old Covenant, then why shouldn't we expect even more and greater manifestations of the

Spirit and revelations under the New Covenant? That's the assumption. So they read that in the Old Testament, New Testament, and then they bring that into today and say, well, we should be experiencing the very same kinds of experiences.

Yeah, and I don't know if I shared this story when we reviewed your book on the previous episode, but we had a gentleman that worked for the ministry that I met on the streets in New York City.

He was in a Word of Faith church. He had been saved for, I want to say, just a few months, maybe one to three months.

But he was in Word of Faith, and he picked up very quickly the Word of Faith lingo. And I didn't remember this, but he told me this many years after.

He would come and sit and watch me do open air, and he would go to the Whole Foods right outside where we do open air, and he came and would listen, which is not a good thing to do.

I told him he really should go shopping after because his ice cream would usually melt. His little biscuit thing blew up one time.

We heard a pop. It was a biscuit that just got in the heat of an August day.

But when he first met me, he heard me do an open air. He came over. He listened. He came up to me afterward and said, the

Lord spoke to me and told me to come here and listen to you. He said,

I had the feeling within me, and I just must have turned to him and said, it was probably heartburn.

And he said the fact that I just discredited him claiming he heard from God, it bothered him.

And he came back week after week. He said what he ended up realizing was anytime people would ask me a question about Scripture, I would back up and read context.

Well, he started doing that in church, and he went, wait a minute. They're not following context. And so he left that church and eventually got into a

Reformed Baptist church. And so, but he told me years later, it really bugged him because he expected this to be something that I was going to agree with.

Oh, God has spoke to you. And instead of reaffirming God speaking to him,

I dismissed it. And this is something in our culture, Jim, that, well,

I'll ask it as a question. Do you think that this idea of God speaking to us, whether through feelings or nudgings, circumstance, audibly, dreams, is this becoming commonplace, or is it commonplace even in America?

It is the default view of evangelicalism in America. And it is embedded into Baptist churches.

It's, of course, in Pentecostal, Charismatic, Word of Faith, New Apostolic Reformation churches, but even your small community churches, your independent churches, your mainline churches, anybody almost who names the name of Christ believes and has been taught that they can expect to hear

God speak to them through still small voices, promptings, nudgings, impressions, signs, dreams, visions, and a whole host of other things.

Almost anything becomes a vehicle through which God gives direction. And people are told that this is the way that God normally, naturally works, that he speaks to his people in these ways.

And they are sort of discipled into this simply by the vernacular of many

Christian teachers, even ones that we would consider or would call themselves cessationist teachers, like Charles Stanley and others.

So it is the dominant and predominant view in evangelicalism, this expectation.

Okay. Well, you just mentioned one thing right off the bat that we see.

You quoted scripture. So let's deal with that. I mean, we see in scripture that it says that we should be expecting to hear still small voice, shouldn't we?

I mean, we see that. It says that Elijah heard the sound of a silent whisper.

It's translated as still small voice in the King James Version. Unfortunately, even though it's an odd Hebrew phrase that's used nowhere else in scripture, that has become the template by which people say that God speaks to us.

And so that phrase, still small voice, is found in 1 Kings 19. But the question is, is that the normal way that God speaks to us?

And does scripture teach that all Christians should expect to receive revelation through still small voices? And the answer to that is no, we shouldn't.

That phrase just simply means the sound of a silent whisper, the sound of a gentle breeze or a blowing. And Isaiah heard that from, he was inside the cave in 1

Kings 19. He heard it outside the cave and he went out to hear God speak to him audibly. What Isaiah heard was not an inner impression or an inner nudging or a prompting or some thought that popped into his head.

What Elijah heard was something outside of the cave that caused him to come outside so that he could hear clearly.

And then what he heard was the audible voice of God. As a prophet, that's what Elijah could have expected. But you and I are not prophets, nor should we expect that, nor do we need that, since we have the written

Word of God. Okay, but we see examples in Judges of people putting out a fleece.

So, I mean, when we have a decision to make, shouldn't we put out fleeces or put out things of saying,

Lord, if you want me to do such and such, make this happen? Something that's, in the case of a fleece, make just the fleece wet and the ground dry, and then reverse it, make the ground wet and the fleece dry.

Shouldn't we be able to do things like that so that we could determine God's will? Yeah, in Judges chapter 6, that is what

Gideon does, but that is a description of what he did in his desire for a sign or a fleece.

There's a couple things to note about that. Number one, it was a supernatural sign that he was asking for. It wasn't the way that many

Christians typically put out fleeces today. If you want me to date Susie, then when

I come home, please have mom make a pot roast. And if you want me to date Abigail, then when

I get home, we pray that it's ham. And if it's pot roast or ham, that will tell me your way of indicating who

I'm supposed to date. That's kind of the way most Christians use fleeces. But Gideon was asking for a supernatural sign.

So, if you wanted to have a modern -day equivalent, then you should say, if you want me to date Susie, then cause the car to levitate.

And if you want me to date Abigail, then cause the truck to levitate. That would be a fleece that's in the spirit of what

Gideon did. But most Christians don't do that. Instead, they sort of read into their, or they write into their fleece test the parameters that will be most likely to give them what they want to do in the end anyway.

And unfortunately, a lot of decisions have been made in that very way, people putting out what they call fleeces like that.

Gideon did that, but it was an expression of his unbelief, not his faith. That's key. Because God had already clearly spoken to Gideon and said, you are to deliver my people from the

Midianites. And he had already described how it was going to happen and what he was going to do and that he was the man to do it.

And then Gideon gives the fleece test to God and gets the supernatural sign that indicates, yes,

God was confirming this. And then Gideon prays, Lord, don't be angry with me, but here's another sign

I want you to give me. You see, Gideon already, Gideon was cowardly in responding to God's command to be the man to lead

Israel in their rebellion against the Midianites. And his testing of God with that fleece was an expression of his unbelief and his lack of faith, not his faith and resolute trust in God.

Gideon already had clear direction on what God wanted. So then what would we say? It's not given to us as a prescription.

Nowhere in the passage is it given to us as a prescription. And nowhere in the New Testament do we see people doing that in a desire to know or discern the will of God.

Okay, so there you're getting into an issue of hermeneutics, right? The fact that we have a historical narrative, and as such, it's recording what did happen, not what should happen.

And so just because Gideon did this doesn't mean we should be going and seeking this.

We would interpret something in Paul's epistles different, because that's instructional. So if Paul was to instruct us on that, then we say, okay, we should be doing this.

But that's not what we see in the New Testament. And so... For instance, in 1 Corinthians 7, when Paul's talking about whether to marry or not to marry and whom to marry, he doesn't say put out a fleece, wait for a nudging or a small voice.

Instead, he says, look, here's the moral will of God, what is revealed in Scripture. You don't marry an unbeliever. You don't marry somebody who is divorced and unqualified to be remarried.

You don't do that. And instead, then apply wisdom to the situation. You know, look at where you're at and understand persecution is coming.

So it might be right for you to marry. It might be not. You might want to discern whether or not you should marry based upon are you able to be single and serve the

Lord better? Is that really what you desire? Or do you desire a wife or a husband? And at the end of the day,

Paul says, look, if you marry, you haven't sinned. And if you don't marry, you haven't sinned. So apply the moral will of God and apply wisdom to the situation and then do what you want.

Yeah. It's the biblical model. I think it's very interesting in my years of studying different world religions, cults, that most of the cults focus much of their time in the

Old Testament, and it's in the historical narrative, and they take the historical narrative and make it instructional.

And there's a big mistake in doing that. But what do we do then with all the passages where we see people who had dreams?

Because this is a big one. People will say that God revealed things to them through dreams, and we do see that in Scripture.

So is there something wrong with expecting a dream? Yeah, there's two kinds of dreams in Scripture.

There are ones that required no interpretation, and then there are dreams that required interpretation. The dreams that required interpretation were also given supernatural revelation to interpret the dream.

So an example of a dream that required no interpretation, Joseph had a dream that he was told that Mary and the baby

Jesus were going to be hunted by Herod, and they needed to flee and go to Egypt. So Joseph did that. Joseph didn't wake up after the angel appeared to him in the vision and say, well, you know,

I kind of think that what that is is the Lord telling me to take the family out for Egyptian food. He didn't interpret it that way.

He didn't have to. Nothing in that dream needed interpretation because it was a direct revelation that he needed to go, that he was supposed to obey immediately.

Then there are other dreams, like the dreams given to Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, the dreams given to Pharaoh.

Those kinds of dreams required supernatural revelation to interpret, and there is nothing in Scripture that suggests or promises that God would speak to us through dreams.

Yes, it did happen in times past, and in fact, Hebrews chapter 1 says that that was the ways in which

God spoke in ancient times, in the old days, back then. But now, in modern times, he has spoken to us in his son, and so that's the fullness of revelation that we have is in Jesus Christ.

And we're not told how to interpret dreams. We're not told to wait for dreams. We're not told to expect dreams.

And again, going back to the pattern that is given to us in the New Testament, dreams, even in the book of Acts, were not common in terms of everybody getting them.

Paul had a couple of visions. Peter had a couple of visions. Cornelius had a vision. But these were uncommon occurrences that were attached to the apostles and their ministry, and there's nothing in Scripture that suggests that this should be a regular occurrence for Christians.

In fact, Paul warns against visions in the book of Colossians, and he says you shouldn't trust in those things because people have these visions, and then they get all puffed up and want to make these visions revelatory for everybody else.

So there's a danger in it there. So the only instruction that we're given regarding dreams and visions in the

New Testament epistles is warnings about them, not encouragement or instruction on how to interpret them.

Yeah, now the way that when we speak of hearing the voice of God, the way that I have heard people use it the most is the phrase,

I felt led, which I've, and I always use this example with it. I remember a gentleman who was in church talking about an incident at prayer meeting, and he wanted prayer for a coworker.

Now his coworker had done something wrong at work, I forget what it was, but the boss came to this professing

Christian and said to him that the reason he came to him is because he was a

Christian and wanted to know the truth, and this guy lied to the boss to protect the guy.

And he said he did it so he can evangelize this person, and I said to him, you blew your testimony with him, what do you mean?

Like, your hope of evangelism is now shot because the guy knows you lied to protect him.

You lost all your integrity. But his response was, well, I felt led to do this so it's of the

Lord. Yeah, I've seen some of the most unwise, foolish, and sinful behavior excused with that phrase.

Well, I felt led in the moment to do it, and so I did it believing it was the Holy Spirit, and so who are you to criticize the wisdom or the morality of that decision in the moment?

That phrase, led by the Spirit, comes from Galatians chapter 5 and Romans chapter 8, and in both contexts the

Apostle Paul is not describing decision making or receiving impressions, he's talking about putting to death the deeds of the flesh and walking in the power of the

Spirit. Being led by the Spirit is equal to, it's synonymous with, in Galatians 5 and Romans 8, it's synonymous with the putting to death the deeds of the body, the flesh.

The lust, the immorality, the impurity, the covetousness, and all of those things that are listed in that passage, and Paul says if you have the

Spirit of God, you're led by the Spirit of God. That is, the Spirit of God will sanctify you out of that error and out of that sinfulness, and those who have not the

Spirit are not led by the Spirit, so they fulfill the lust of the flesh and are in violation of the law of God, and those who are led by the

Spirit do not. They put to death the deeds of the flesh and instead walk in holiness and produce the fruits of the Spirit.

So it's holy living that's being described in Galatians 5 and Romans 8. It's not some inner inkling or nudging or prompting that we get from random thoughts that pop into our head that seem good in the moment.

That's not what it means to be led by the Spirit. So again, like with the still small voice, people take these biblical expressions, these biblical phrases, or phrases that we find in Scripture, I guess would be a better way of saying it, and they import a meaning into it that would be completely foreign to the author and the original audience, and then they build a theology of divine guidance and personal revelation off of it, and that's just not how we should treat

Scripture. You know, you just mentioned at the beginning of that where you talked about peace, and this is one of the things that I find a real struggle with people that are believing in that they're hearing from the voice of God, because part of their argument is that they have a peace about whatever the decision is.

Yeah. How do we answer that? I think it's Joyce Meyer who says she can't imagine making any kind of important decision without consulting the peace, and by that she means the peace that she feels in her heart.

In Colossians 3, I believe it is 15, it mentions let the peace of Christ rule within you or among you, and they take that phrase, peace of Christ, and they say, see there, if you're doing something that is wrong or outside the will of God, you will not have a peace about it, but if you're following God's will and about to make a right decision, you'll have peace about the decision.

And all that does is point people to an inner subjective feeling or experience that they have.

I have had peace in times of sin in my life, and I have had great distraught in my spirit in times of perfect obedience in my life, so how

I feel about something I'm doing in the moment or decision I'm making is no indicator as to whether or not it's in keeping with scripture or whether it's being obedient.

And so that phrase, peace of Christ, is not describing there some inner subjective experience or feeling that we have in times of decision making, there it's describing the peace that is to rule in the body of Christ.

In that context, Colossians 3, Paul's describing the Scythians, the Jews, the slaves, the

Greeks, all who are existing in that same body in Colossae, and he is saying, amongst you who formerly were at enmity with one another, there is to be peace and harmony that is to be the rule in the body of Christ.

And then he goes on to describe that peace and harmony in the home relationship between the husband and the wife, there is to be peace in that relationship.

Harmony between children and parents, peace should be the rule, between bosses and servants, peace should be the rule, between people of different nationalities, peace rather than hostility should be the governing principle of church body life.

That's what should characterize the body of Christ. Paul's not talking about personal feelings in your decision making process.

So again, there's another example of somebody who takes a phrase found in Scripture and imports into it a whole theology of decision making that's not there.

You know, and where this leads to, I'm going to play a clip that I have from Apologetics Live. We had a guy who came in and he was, he has, on the show, this is a longer clip so I won't play a two minute clip, but he actually said that he is in the top 1 % of all

Christians because he has read his Bible for 20 years and meditated on it, which right there gets you nervous.

But before he said that, before, but this is, we're talking about the difference of work, like law and faith.

And so his whole thing was everything is in faith, in faith, in faith. And let me play what he actually said and get your reaction to it.

So you're saying, and while I'm clarifying, make sure I understand, you're saying that as believers, we no longer are under the law, meaning there's no right and wrong.

No right and wrong judgment upon your conscious.

So let me give a scenario. Law has no authority to judge your conscious. It has no right to condemn your conscious, like all the people, because you are not under its dominion.

Okay, so if a believer, because you are dead with Christ, then law doesn't have authority to speak the dead.

Okay, so as a believer, are you saying that someone, a believer can go sleep with a prostitute and it wouldn't be right or wrong because he's not under the law anymore?

So if he sleeps with a prostitute but has faith in doing it, then it's okay?

Yeah, it's okay. Okay, I'm going to ask this again, because I want to make sure that I heard you correctly.

Yeah, it's okay. It would be as long as you have faith. He can do that. He can do it.

Wow. Okay. You're saying that as long as we have faith, whatever we do in faith is not sin.

Yes. So Jim, that's where this leads, to a gentleman like that. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, that's horrible hermeneutics. I mean, again, he's taking a phrase there that we're not under the law, and he's importing it into it, his own licentiousness, his own antinomianism, and he's failing to understand the biblical and proper use of the law.

So yeah, we're not under the law in the sense that we have to keep the ceremonial aspects of the law, or the different dietary aspects of the law, or even the sacrifices contained in the law, but that doesn't mean that the law has no value for Christians as far as revelation of the moral nature of God and his expectations for what it means to walk in the

Spirit. That's horrible. Yeah, and this guy still wants to come back on Apologetics Live, because he said that I didn't properly recognize who he is.

In his book, he says he's the angel that spoke to Daniel and to John in Patmos.

And I said, so you're not a man? He says, angel means messenger. I said, well, then you're a really, really old messenger if you've been around since Daniel's day.

Wow. Yeah. So one of the things we talked about both last time and I want to get into now is we look through the different arguments people have, and you deal with all of these in your book,

God Doesn't Whisper. And one of the things you do with each one and more, you explain the biblical argument, you look at it in context and explain why these phrases we hear from people are not biblical and are being misused.

But we spent a lot of time in the last episode talking about sufficiency, because this is really at the heart,

I believe, of what this individual's questions are and what we focused on, because I think a major reason that people are struggling with this whole thing of hearing from the voice of God is because they don't think the scriptures are sufficient for us today.

Like somehow maybe we're just too advanced, we have all this technology, the Bible's an old book, we need something more.

Can you speak to the sufficiency of the word of God? Yeah, and it's not that many of the people who promote this practice of hearing the voice of God, it's not that they would overtly deny the scripture's sufficiency.

They would say the scripture's sufficient for what God gave it to do. But they look and they read in scripture and they say the scripture doesn't directly address whether I'm supposed to marry

Sue or Abigail. Scripture doesn't specifically tell me whether I should take the marketing job in Seattle or the production job in New Jersey.

Scripture doesn't tell me whether I should send my child to Hillsdale or Master Seminary. These specific things are not revealed in scripture.

Therefore, in order for me to make the right decision, I need God to reveal specifically his will to me specifically for these specific situations the scripture doesn't address.

And yet when scripture says that God has given to us in his word and his precious promises everything that pertains to life and godliness, it really is an affirmation that I don't need the specific details laid out for me of whether I should marry

Sue or Abigail. All I need to do is know what kind of woman to marry, who's eligible for me to marry, what are the qualities that I should be looking for, what are the ways that I should be pursuing this woman, what is the relationship that she has with God, what does that look like, and how should

I be pursuing that relationship in a way that honors God. All those details are already given to me.

So they're not going to come out that David, not David Jeremiah, Charles Stanley, Priscilla Shrier, some of those guys that I critique, they're not going to come out and say scripture is insufficient.

They're just going to say that it's sufficient as far as it goes. It's good as far as it goes. But we need that personal touch. We need that personal voice of Jesus revealing to us specifically in that situation what

I need to do. But I completely disagree with the assumption behind the question, which is that the principles revealed in scripture are not enough for me to make my decision.

And I reject the premise that I need specific information in order to make a

God -honoring decision. I believe that God has given to us his moral will revealed in scripture, the wisdom that he has revealed in scripture, and then that I can make a decision based upon the information that God has provided, and then trust him for the outcome, and that that itself will honor

God, even if the results of that decision are not necessarily what I would consider good.

Bad things may happen as a result of me making that decision, but I can trust that God is working out his will for me, even when

I make a decision, and that decision ends up being something that causes me grief or pain. Yeah, because this is, when we say that the scripture is sufficient, as you said, it's for faith and practice, not for every decision in life.

I remember someone who told me that they were trying to make a decision about a job.

One was north and one was south, and they were going through the scriptures, couldn't decide, and they just saw the phrase, go north.

And that was conclusion. I remember telling that story to Greg Kokel one time over lunch, and he told me about a story that he had in church, where there was a guy who liked a young lady in the choir, and he ended up reading the verse, grace be unto you.

So he knew God's call was for them to get married, because her name was Grace.

Grace. That's how people think that God speaks to you through scripture. If some verse jumps off the page or some idea pops into your head while you're reading the word of God, that must be personal divine revelation.

It must be God's direction. Yeah, and now most of the things we've talked about so far in this episode have dealt with more of the feelings, the subjective feeling, which, by the way,

I've never seen any of these cases where people hear from the voice of God that is not in line with what they want.

Yeah, typically the personal revelation that they get is exactly what they already wanted to do anyway. Yeah, I mean,

I find that to be a little bit of an issue that people should think that through, but it's always that that's their desire, and they're just making it sound spiritual.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're spiritualizing it because they don't want to think that they made this decision all by themselves.

And so they want to know that they've had God's imprimatur on that, that this is

His stamp of approval on their decision. And then they can rest if they feel at least that God revealed that this is what

He should do, that they should do in obedience to Him. Yeah, and the fact that how can you criticize it?

I mean, the Holy Spirit has said this. Are you going to criticize God? And it's like, well, I'm not criticizing

God. I'm criticizing that it was God. Yeah, that's what

I'm taking issue with. That your feelings are God, and that's where they have a hard time rationalizing it.

It's kind of like in the debate with James White. This guy was referring to the text of the Receptus as the

Bible, and so he'd say, well, God's Word says, and you have to realize when he says God's Word, he's not speaking the

Bible we have in our hands. He's speaking of the King James Version of the

Bible, just that version. And so anything else he wouldn't say is the Word of God. Well, that's what you're dealing with.

Someone who, when they have this, they're going to say, this is the Holy Spirit who's, like, you can't question this, because this is from God.

And we're not questioning God, we're questioning whether it was from God, because it's all subjective.

But let's get into the questions that we do have from this listener from Nigeria about hearing from God audibly and expecting to.

You know, there's a famous quote from Justin Peters that he's very well known for.

It's now literally a bumper sticker and a t -shirt. But he says that if you want to hear the voice of God, read your

Bible. And if you want to hear the voice of God audibly, read it aloud.

That is really what the issue is. We have the Word of God. It's contained in 66 books that we know of as the

Bible. We don't need to go outside of that to hear from God. And as Justin says in his seminar, unless you've mastered the

Bible, all 66 books, and none of us have, we don't need more. Like, master that first, and then let's talk about it.

But this person's asking the question of, should I expect to hear from God audibly?

So let's ask that first. That's their first question for you. Okay, so he says, does

God speak audibly in this day and age? And my answer to that question would be, no, he does not. And there's no need for him to, because as the author of Hebrews 1 -2, he says this,

God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, that means through many different means, visions, dreams, personal revelations, audible voices, still small voices, fleeces, miraculous signs, et cetera, in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his

Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom also he made the world. So the author of Hebrews differentiates between how

God spoke back then and how God speaks now. And he says that back then,

God spoke through all of the different means, and now he has spoken in his Son. And the author there is distinguishing between the imperfect and unclear revelations that God gave under the old covenant and the perfectly clear, brilliant and bright revelation that he has given under the new covenant in his

Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice that the author doesn't say in these last days, he continues to speak to us in many portions and in many ways, or he continues to speak to us through still small voices, impressions and nudgings and promptings and visions and dreams versus jumping off the page, et cetera.

No, he points to the revelation in Christ. And that revelation that we have in Christ is given in the incarnation and that it is explained in the

New Testament scriptures, which explain the dynamics of the new covenant relationship. And after that revelation, there is no need to expect any other.

So does God speak audibly in this day and age? Outside of the Word of God spoken audibly?

No, he does not. The Word of God is God speaking. And I would make the case, and I know you agree with me on this and others would disagree, but we can look in scripture,

I believe in 1 Corinthians 13 verses 8 and following, where it says, love never ends.

As for prophecies, they'll pass away. As for tongues, they'll cease. As for knowledge, it'll pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the teleos comes, the partial is passed away.

And so the question is, what is the teleos? The completed thing that he's referring to there. And I believe it's the canon of scripture.

I believe what he's saying there is that when the canon of scripture is complete, when we have a completed

Word of God, we no longer need things that reveal God's Word, like prophecy and knowledge and even speaking in tongues.

They pass away. They cease to exist because they're not needed anymore. And so the question is that this person asks is, does

God audibly speak today in this age? I would say no, because he has said there's not a need for that, because he speaks through his

Word. So the second question that's asked then is, is it wrong to desire to hear from God audibly?

That's a bit of a tougher one, because that one deals with the hard attitude behind the desire to hear

God audibly. I would love to—I'm looking forward to the day of stepping into heaven and hearing

Christ say, well done, good and faithful servant, hopefully. I'm looking forward to standing in God's presence and hearing

God speak and hearing Christ speak. So I have a desire to hear that. But when

I'm here in this world, in this age, with 66 books of revealed scripture in front of me, and then

I desire something more than that, that desire expresses something about my view of scripture.

So I have said to people before in our church, from the pulpit, would you rather hear

God speak to you audibly, or would you rather read the book of Amos, for instance?

And of course, most Christians are going to say, well, of course, I'd rather hear God speak audibly than read the book of Amos. And yet Peter, in 2

Peter chapter 1, and yes, for 2 Peter chapter 1, he says that the written word is more sure than even a voice from heaven.

So ironically, Christians today would rather hear a voice from heaven than read the written word. And Peter says the written word is a more sure testimony than a voice from heaven.

It's more reliable, it's better. And so I would say that a desire to hear from God audibly in this age, yeah, that can indicate a lack of belief in the sufficiency of scripture, a dissatisfaction with what

God has revealed in scripture. That could indicate an ignorance of what scripture says about itself, a lack of hunger for scripture, and a lack of just being satisfied with what

God has given to us in scripture. So all of those things could be wrapped up in that desire. So it's a bit of a, do

I desire to hear God speak to me in this world right now? No, I do not. But I do desire to stand in his presence and see him face to face.

And I'm content to take his word, his written word, as his voice to me at this time in this life until I step into his presence and see him face to face and hear him.

Then I will be satisfied when I awaken his likeness. But for right now, I am satisfied to have his word revealed to me and him revealed to me in scripture, the written word.

So you're saying that though we could desire to, as we all do, to be with Christ and we would desire to hear him, but the question of why do we desire it?

Is it because we want to be with Christ? We want to be able to, the one we love, we want to hear?

Or is it that we're looking for something more than the Bible makes a big difference in answering that question?

Yeah, it does. So I would say if you desire to hear God audibly today because you just, you would rather have that than scripture, then that tells me something that is sinful in your own heart regarding your attitude towards scripture.

Yeah, and that's really what we have for a lot of folks is they don't think it through. They're not thinking, well,

I'm putting my desire to have God answer my specific things over scripture.

They think it works along with scripture, even when, as you heard, someone that can make a statement that is so against scripture.

In fact, the reason I ended up asking that gentleman about the prostitutes, sleeping with the prostitutes, because he was teaching

Gnosticism. He was explaining Gnosticism, and that was one of the arguments they made with the Gnostics was that you can go and sleep with a prostitute, and as long as you didn't give your spirit over to that act, it wasn't sin.

That's what they were teaching. So I figured I'd ask him that very thing that scripture speaks about, 1

John, and he totally didn't get it because he hasn't really dug into what's behind the scripture.

That radical spiritual material dichotomy that the

Gnostics promoted led to that very thing, the complete plunging into sin, believing that only the body participated in sin, and since the body and the spirit never touched, my spirit could remain pure even though my body was involved in immorality, and that is definitely a

Gnostic heresy, part of the Gnostic heresy. Yeah, so I do want to encourage everyone, if you haven't gotten a copy, get

God Doesn't Whisper by Jim Osman. Go to jimosman .com. There you can see some of his other books that he has available.

He has books on finding the stairway to heaven, right? Isn't that what it's called? No. Selling them.

I was just trying to throw that, see if I could throw them off, but no, you have, and that's dealing with all these claims of,

I don't know if it was you or Justin that started the term, or maybe someone else, the heavenly tourism, people that say they've...

Yeah, it was Tim Challies. Oh, was it Tim Challies? I think he coined that term. Okay, that's another one of these things where people, it was a genre that people really got into, and so I really want to recommend folks to get the book

God Doesn't Whisper, jimosman .com. I'll put a link in the show notes, but it is something you want to pick up a copy.

You want to read this because even if you are in line with us as far as our view of hearing from the voice of God, you know someone who is not.

I mean, I don't care how solid your church is, there's someone in your church that's going to use this language, this lingo.

They heard from the voice of God. God spoke to them. God led them. They were at peace with, they put out a fleece.

These different things we talked about. There's someone in your church that will use that language, and so get the book

God Doesn't Whisper by Jim Osman today. Actually, what I'll recommend you do is

Christmas is coming, pick up many copies, and so that would be a good

Christmas gift, and speaking of good Christmas gifts, what you could do is go to strivingforeturning .org

and go to our store because from now until Christmas, we are running our

Christmas special again. It was very well received. People liked it, so you can get as many copies of What We Believe at 50 % off with the promo code

CHRISTMAS. So if you want to get What Do We Believe at 50 % off, it is something you can get for everybody on your

Christmas list because it's a book everyone should read. So get

God Doesn't Whisper from Jim. Get a twofer. Give them also What We Believe.

Go to strivingforturning .org and use promo code CHRISTMAS to get 50 % off that book. If you want, we are also still running the special for until we run out of supply of the books

Sharing the Good News with Mormons, you can get that at 35 % off with the promo code

LDS, that stands for Latter Day Saints. Hey, Andrew, one thing

I would just add to that is if people are interested in buying bulk copies for their church or putting in their bookstore or something like that, they contact me directly through the jimosman .com,

that's O -S -M -A -N, jimosman .com website there, and I can arrange to have them drop ship to their location at a much cheaper price, and they'll be able to get it on Amazon.

If you're just getting one book or two books, you can buy it on Amazon, that's fine, but if you're looking at buying any kind of number of copies to give away or to make available for a

Bible study or a men's group or something you just want to have in the hands of people, then I'm happy to work with them in order to give them even a better discount, a really good discount, as well as like $10 to $12 a book, depending on where we have to ship it to in order to make it feasible for them.

$10 to $12? You charged me $50. That's because I autographed it.

That depreciated the value. Wait a minute. Wait, actually, is this autographed? I don't even think it is. Oh, I got to bring this out to the next time

I see you. I need an autographed copy. So, Jim, thanks for coming on. Thanks for answering this listener's question.

I think that this was important even for folks to relisten to because this is something we deal with over and over again.

So, I appreciate you coming on, appreciate your time, and I'm looking forward to having you and Justin Peters on Apologetics Live for the

Great Debate. We have to set that up. The Great Debate, who is the 12th Apostle?

I will speak to that other man, and we'll get a time set for that. We'll see what happens.

Thanks for coming on. Appreciate all your wisdom, Jim. Folks, that's a wrap.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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