Sing4Him
August 4th, 2007, 02:48 PM
A Biblically based commentary on current issues that impact you
The Problems with Personal Words From God
How People Become False Prophets to Themselves
by Bob DeWaay
The Bible tells us that God has spoken, infallibly, finally, and authoritatively through people He chose as mediators of His revelation. This is summarized in Hebrews 1:1, 2: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets 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, through whom also He made the world.” The Bible further tells us that Christ’s words to us were confirmed through eyewitnesses, the apostles. Hebrews 2:2, 3 says, “For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.” The apostles were responsible for giving us the New Testament that constitutes Christ’s authoritative words to His church—the revealed truths that remain binding on all.
In this article let us consider this question: Can a believer receive special revelations that become God’s personal, revealed will for his or her life? Many believe that this special revelation is real—that God provides it today. I contend that they have not thought through some of the concept’s problematic implications. In this article: I will defend the idea that God, since the days of the apostles, has been ruling providentially rather than through further specific revelation—whether through authoritative mediators or directly to individuals.
Personal Words From God
In considering the issue of God speaking to us, it is helpful to focus on knowledge and divide it into two large categories: that which can be known through observation of the creation using our physical senses, and that which can only be known through revelation. We are free to study and learn what pertains to the first category by using the rational minds God has given us. The second category can be further divided into two parts: that which God has revealed and the secret things that belong only to God (Deuteronomy 29:29). What God has revealed is contained in the Bible. That leaves a second category—the secret things.
With these categories established, then let us consider how to categorize “personal words from God.” These words are not observable aspects of creation (called general revelation in theology1) so do not fall into that category. Therefore, according to our categorization, they are either special revelation from God or unrevealed secret information (the occult). Since nearly every Christian would consider occult knowledge illegitimate, then those who claim special words from God must consider them to be special revelation from God.
Considering personal words from God (throughout the rest of this article PWFG or PWsFG will designate “personal word(s) from God”) to be special revelation is exactly what makes them so problematic. In the last issue2 we showed from Scripture that special revelation came through God’s chosen mediators who spoke authoritatively for God. The only exception was when God gave ordained means of guidance such as the Urim and Thummim (Exodus 28:30). But even those revealed God’s will only because they were ordained by God as spoken through an authoritative mediator (Moses). The truth of God came to the people of God through His ordained mediators. If we take PWsFG to be special revelation, then we are implying that every believer has become an authoritative mediator of special revelation. Now that is really problematic.
I have discussed this matter with people who strongly believe in divine guidance that is specific for each individual. Their answer to my challenge is that they are not claiming to mediate special revelation to the church; they claim these words only as personal words for their own lives. But consider this: Prophets who spoke for God had to be 100 percent accurate (Deuteronomy 18:22). So if indeed PWsFG are specific revelations from God to the individual, are these also inerrant? I have yet to speak with someone who believes in PWsFG who claimed to know that the words were perfectly accurate and infallibly from God. Neither do they claim that these words have the same quality as inerrant Scripture.
If PWsFG are a mixture—some of which may be from God and some of which are in error—then some means of telling the difference is necessary. But what possible means are there? Since these PWsFG are specific to individuals and cover conceivably any aspect of life, they cannot be tested by Scripture. For example, suppose I receive a PWFG that tells me to move to Iowa and start a church. How am I to test it? Some would say to consult other Christians. But this really doesn’t change the problem, it just diffuses it. If the idea of moving to Iowa and starting a church may or may not be a true word from God and it cannot be tested by scripture, since the Bible does not dictate where we must live, then what remains is a group of people who are not infallible prophets of God trying to receive special revelation. The group is no more inerrant and authoritative than the individual.
In practice, people who believe in PWsFG tend to rely on pragmatic tests. One often hears what I call “miracle guidance stories.” Generally someone claims to have received a PWFG, took action and the result was something significant or extraordinary. Some leaders tell so many miracle guidance stories that they convince followers of their special status with God like Moses or Elijah. But when pressed to defend their practice, these leaders usually admit that if a course of action that was taken based on a PWFG did not appear to work out well, the result was no proof their personal “word” was not from God.
Let’s look at a pragmatic test. A person gets a special revelation to take a certain action. This revelation is not infallible, and the person does not claim to be an infallible prophet. The person takes the prescribed action and something great happens, or nothing special happens. In either case they still do not know if the word was an inerrant, authoritative word from God because good things happen sometimes to misguided people, and bad things happen to well-guided people. Pragmatic tests for truth are not valid.
Consider Jeremiah for example. He was an ordained prophet of God and spoke authoritatively for God. But his true guidance brought him a lifetime of continual misery and personal rejection. The whole nation failed to listen to him and in the end he was hauled away to Egypt by people who refused to listen to his true word from God. If judged pragmatically Jeremiah would be deemed a failure. But his true words from God were inerrant and comprise a book of the Bible.
Miracle guidance stories, used to make certain people appear to have “heard from God”, are of no value. They are not the Biblical test for prophets and cannot be because they are not specifically Christian. Psychics and New Agers have their own genre of miracle guidance stories that enhance their credibility. My friend Brian Flynn tells testimonies of how, before he was saved out of the New Age, he gave some very accurate psychic readings that created “miracle” guidance stories for people.3 The requirements in Deuteronomy 18 and 13 are there to protect us from “words from ‘God’” that are not from God. These tests require perfect predictive accuracy and the teaching of correct doctrine about the “God we have known.”
The failure of pragmatic tests means that in the end, once someone has received a PWFG, whether something favorable or unfavorable resulted, the person still cannot be sure that it was truly God who spoke. Such personal guidance is impossible to test. This creates a very troubling side effect. People suppose themselves to be authoritatively bound by a “will of God” that is revealed specifically and personally to each Christian. But the Christian can never be sure that he knows he has found this “will of God.” How can errant, non-authoritative words that may or may not be from God be binding? They cannot. To make them so is abusive.
Someone might counter that if a person thinks a word is from God, then “whatever is not of faith is sin.” In other words, believing something to be from God binds his personal conscience to it; and since his faith is in that word, it would be sin to not follow it. But this means that any person who has placed faith in a misplaced object of faith is bound to stay in that condition. Luther argued against that position, for example, when he claimed that people who took special religious oaths (like monks) had sworn to what is bondage and not from God. Therefore they should renounce those vows as based on lies and falsehood. Lies and falsehood are not proper objects of faith.4
Becoming a False Prophet to One’s Own Self
We have argued in previous editions of CIC that to prophesy is to speak authoritatively for God.5 Special prophets that God raised up to predict the future had to be 100 percent accurate. If they were not accurate to that degree, people were commanded not to listen to them. If we claim to have heard a word from God that He gave in order to direct our lives, then the same standard applies. It is as if we prophesy to ourselves in God’s name. Doing so must meet all the Biblical tests for prophets. If we fail the test, then we have become false prophets to our own selves; consequently, we should not listen to ourselves! If we were wrong even once, then we are unreliable and cannot be trusted to speak for God. Period.
Some may object that people who prophesy in the manner of 1Corinthians 14 (unto edification, exhortation, and comfort) do not have to meet such tests. They speak and the others judge. But this type of prophecy is to bring out implications and applications of Scripture. Everyone has the Bible as an objective means to judge such prophecy. If they have claimed that a certain passage implies that certain actions or attitudes are binding on the church, everyone can judge this because implications and applications are logically connected to the meaning of the text.
But PWsFG are of a different sort. If someone claims that God told him to start a certain business, by what means are the others to judge this? The type of prophecy that is derived from the meaning of the text is controlled by the inerrant and authoritative word from God. So if it is a true implication of Scripture it, too, is authoritative. But subjective words about matters not bound by Scripture cannot be judged in this way, as we showed earlier. These subjective revelations are neither inerrant nor authoritative.
So the person who got a PWFG that really was not from God is binding himself to what God has not spoken. It is a sin to bind what God has not bound, or loose what God has not loosed. Let me give a couple of examples. Consider this passage:
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. (1Timothy 4:1-3)
If someone spoke to the church and forbade marriage in God’s name, clearly he would be a false prophet teaching a doctrine of demons. But what if the person speaks this word to himself? That is he determines to have a PWFG saying he cannot marry. Why is he any less a false prophet than if he said the same thing to the church?
A man is free to marry in the Lord or to not marry. If he chooses to not marry as Paul did (see his discussion in 1Corinthians 7) that is within his Christian liberty. If he marries, it is within his Christian liberty as well (“if you marry you have not sinned” – 1Corinthians 7:28a). But what if a man says, “God spoke to me that I must not marry but remain single”? According to 1Timothy 4:3 he is teaching a doctrine of demons to his own self. The only way to escape the logic of this is to claim that anyone can speak in God’s name to his own self without those words fitting any Biblical test. But that would open the door to any possible error and bondage. This same argument applies to taking oaths such as the oath of chastity that monks take.6 One has bound oneself in God’s name presumptuously.
Let us consider another issue from the passage in 1Timothy 4. Suppose someone spoke in God’s name to the church, forbidding the eating of pork. According to our passage, that is a doctrine of demons. Suppose someone said, “God told me I am not allowed to eat pork.” How is it any less a doctrine of demons when spoken to one member of the church (i.e., one’s self) than to the whole church? Any person is free to not eat pork without recrimination. But if they try to add God’s imprimatur to this they make themselves an invalid lawgiver.
Therefore, PWsFG that are taken to be binding and authoritative, whether given to the church or one’s own self, are false. All words that claim to be God’s inerrant and authoritative word when they are not are false prophecies. Those who speak false words in God’s name to their own selves and thus bind themselves to those words have become false prophets to their own selves. They should quit listening to themselves!
continued...
The Problems with Personal Words From God
How People Become False Prophets to Themselves
by Bob DeWaay
The Bible tells us that God has spoken, infallibly, finally, and authoritatively through people He chose as mediators of His revelation. This is summarized in Hebrews 1:1, 2: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets 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, through whom also He made the world.” The Bible further tells us that Christ’s words to us were confirmed through eyewitnesses, the apostles. Hebrews 2:2, 3 says, “For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.” The apostles were responsible for giving us the New Testament that constitutes Christ’s authoritative words to His church—the revealed truths that remain binding on all.
In this article let us consider this question: Can a believer receive special revelations that become God’s personal, revealed will for his or her life? Many believe that this special revelation is real—that God provides it today. I contend that they have not thought through some of the concept’s problematic implications. In this article: I will defend the idea that God, since the days of the apostles, has been ruling providentially rather than through further specific revelation—whether through authoritative mediators or directly to individuals.
Personal Words From God
In considering the issue of God speaking to us, it is helpful to focus on knowledge and divide it into two large categories: that which can be known through observation of the creation using our physical senses, and that which can only be known through revelation. We are free to study and learn what pertains to the first category by using the rational minds God has given us. The second category can be further divided into two parts: that which God has revealed and the secret things that belong only to God (Deuteronomy 29:29). What God has revealed is contained in the Bible. That leaves a second category—the secret things.
With these categories established, then let us consider how to categorize “personal words from God.” These words are not observable aspects of creation (called general revelation in theology1) so do not fall into that category. Therefore, according to our categorization, they are either special revelation from God or unrevealed secret information (the occult). Since nearly every Christian would consider occult knowledge illegitimate, then those who claim special words from God must consider them to be special revelation from God.
Considering personal words from God (throughout the rest of this article PWFG or PWsFG will designate “personal word(s) from God”) to be special revelation is exactly what makes them so problematic. In the last issue2 we showed from Scripture that special revelation came through God’s chosen mediators who spoke authoritatively for God. The only exception was when God gave ordained means of guidance such as the Urim and Thummim (Exodus 28:30). But even those revealed God’s will only because they were ordained by God as spoken through an authoritative mediator (Moses). The truth of God came to the people of God through His ordained mediators. If we take PWsFG to be special revelation, then we are implying that every believer has become an authoritative mediator of special revelation. Now that is really problematic.
I have discussed this matter with people who strongly believe in divine guidance that is specific for each individual. Their answer to my challenge is that they are not claiming to mediate special revelation to the church; they claim these words only as personal words for their own lives. But consider this: Prophets who spoke for God had to be 100 percent accurate (Deuteronomy 18:22). So if indeed PWsFG are specific revelations from God to the individual, are these also inerrant? I have yet to speak with someone who believes in PWsFG who claimed to know that the words were perfectly accurate and infallibly from God. Neither do they claim that these words have the same quality as inerrant Scripture.
If PWsFG are a mixture—some of which may be from God and some of which are in error—then some means of telling the difference is necessary. But what possible means are there? Since these PWsFG are specific to individuals and cover conceivably any aspect of life, they cannot be tested by Scripture. For example, suppose I receive a PWFG that tells me to move to Iowa and start a church. How am I to test it? Some would say to consult other Christians. But this really doesn’t change the problem, it just diffuses it. If the idea of moving to Iowa and starting a church may or may not be a true word from God and it cannot be tested by scripture, since the Bible does not dictate where we must live, then what remains is a group of people who are not infallible prophets of God trying to receive special revelation. The group is no more inerrant and authoritative than the individual.
In practice, people who believe in PWsFG tend to rely on pragmatic tests. One often hears what I call “miracle guidance stories.” Generally someone claims to have received a PWFG, took action and the result was something significant or extraordinary. Some leaders tell so many miracle guidance stories that they convince followers of their special status with God like Moses or Elijah. But when pressed to defend their practice, these leaders usually admit that if a course of action that was taken based on a PWFG did not appear to work out well, the result was no proof their personal “word” was not from God.
Let’s look at a pragmatic test. A person gets a special revelation to take a certain action. This revelation is not infallible, and the person does not claim to be an infallible prophet. The person takes the prescribed action and something great happens, or nothing special happens. In either case they still do not know if the word was an inerrant, authoritative word from God because good things happen sometimes to misguided people, and bad things happen to well-guided people. Pragmatic tests for truth are not valid.
Consider Jeremiah for example. He was an ordained prophet of God and spoke authoritatively for God. But his true guidance brought him a lifetime of continual misery and personal rejection. The whole nation failed to listen to him and in the end he was hauled away to Egypt by people who refused to listen to his true word from God. If judged pragmatically Jeremiah would be deemed a failure. But his true words from God were inerrant and comprise a book of the Bible.
Miracle guidance stories, used to make certain people appear to have “heard from God”, are of no value. They are not the Biblical test for prophets and cannot be because they are not specifically Christian. Psychics and New Agers have their own genre of miracle guidance stories that enhance their credibility. My friend Brian Flynn tells testimonies of how, before he was saved out of the New Age, he gave some very accurate psychic readings that created “miracle” guidance stories for people.3 The requirements in Deuteronomy 18 and 13 are there to protect us from “words from ‘God’” that are not from God. These tests require perfect predictive accuracy and the teaching of correct doctrine about the “God we have known.”
The failure of pragmatic tests means that in the end, once someone has received a PWFG, whether something favorable or unfavorable resulted, the person still cannot be sure that it was truly God who spoke. Such personal guidance is impossible to test. This creates a very troubling side effect. People suppose themselves to be authoritatively bound by a “will of God” that is revealed specifically and personally to each Christian. But the Christian can never be sure that he knows he has found this “will of God.” How can errant, non-authoritative words that may or may not be from God be binding? They cannot. To make them so is abusive.
Someone might counter that if a person thinks a word is from God, then “whatever is not of faith is sin.” In other words, believing something to be from God binds his personal conscience to it; and since his faith is in that word, it would be sin to not follow it. But this means that any person who has placed faith in a misplaced object of faith is bound to stay in that condition. Luther argued against that position, for example, when he claimed that people who took special religious oaths (like monks) had sworn to what is bondage and not from God. Therefore they should renounce those vows as based on lies and falsehood. Lies and falsehood are not proper objects of faith.4
Becoming a False Prophet to One’s Own Self
We have argued in previous editions of CIC that to prophesy is to speak authoritatively for God.5 Special prophets that God raised up to predict the future had to be 100 percent accurate. If they were not accurate to that degree, people were commanded not to listen to them. If we claim to have heard a word from God that He gave in order to direct our lives, then the same standard applies. It is as if we prophesy to ourselves in God’s name. Doing so must meet all the Biblical tests for prophets. If we fail the test, then we have become false prophets to our own selves; consequently, we should not listen to ourselves! If we were wrong even once, then we are unreliable and cannot be trusted to speak for God. Period.
Some may object that people who prophesy in the manner of 1Corinthians 14 (unto edification, exhortation, and comfort) do not have to meet such tests. They speak and the others judge. But this type of prophecy is to bring out implications and applications of Scripture. Everyone has the Bible as an objective means to judge such prophecy. If they have claimed that a certain passage implies that certain actions or attitudes are binding on the church, everyone can judge this because implications and applications are logically connected to the meaning of the text.
But PWsFG are of a different sort. If someone claims that God told him to start a certain business, by what means are the others to judge this? The type of prophecy that is derived from the meaning of the text is controlled by the inerrant and authoritative word from God. So if it is a true implication of Scripture it, too, is authoritative. But subjective words about matters not bound by Scripture cannot be judged in this way, as we showed earlier. These subjective revelations are neither inerrant nor authoritative.
So the person who got a PWFG that really was not from God is binding himself to what God has not spoken. It is a sin to bind what God has not bound, or loose what God has not loosed. Let me give a couple of examples. Consider this passage:
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. (1Timothy 4:1-3)
If someone spoke to the church and forbade marriage in God’s name, clearly he would be a false prophet teaching a doctrine of demons. But what if the person speaks this word to himself? That is he determines to have a PWFG saying he cannot marry. Why is he any less a false prophet than if he said the same thing to the church?
A man is free to marry in the Lord or to not marry. If he chooses to not marry as Paul did (see his discussion in 1Corinthians 7) that is within his Christian liberty. If he marries, it is within his Christian liberty as well (“if you marry you have not sinned” – 1Corinthians 7:28a). But what if a man says, “God spoke to me that I must not marry but remain single”? According to 1Timothy 4:3 he is teaching a doctrine of demons to his own self. The only way to escape the logic of this is to claim that anyone can speak in God’s name to his own self without those words fitting any Biblical test. But that would open the door to any possible error and bondage. This same argument applies to taking oaths such as the oath of chastity that monks take.6 One has bound oneself in God’s name presumptuously.
Let us consider another issue from the passage in 1Timothy 4. Suppose someone spoke in God’s name to the church, forbidding the eating of pork. According to our passage, that is a doctrine of demons. Suppose someone said, “God told me I am not allowed to eat pork.” How is it any less a doctrine of demons when spoken to one member of the church (i.e., one’s self) than to the whole church? Any person is free to not eat pork without recrimination. But if they try to add God’s imprimatur to this they make themselves an invalid lawgiver.
Therefore, PWsFG that are taken to be binding and authoritative, whether given to the church or one’s own self, are false. All words that claim to be God’s inerrant and authoritative word when they are not are false prophecies. Those who speak false words in God’s name to their own selves and thus bind themselves to those words have become false prophets to their own selves. They should quit listening to themselves!
continued...