The need to internalize more and more of Him—His essence, His being,
His character, on and on—is an inexhaustibly deep process that can ONLY be done
through faithful study of His Word, applying it to life in the sincere
believing of its truth.
As Bullinger points out, “Unbelievers and Christians who don’t know God’s Word can rely only on their imaginations and thoughts to tell them who God is. God is therefore based on their own tastes. How boring and useless is that!”
*****
Out of deep-seated loneliness and misery
associated with being separated from God and not wanting to know who He really
is, non-believers try to escape themselves through “secret” ideologies and identification
with some “special” group. This explains the perennial appeal of cults and
secret societies.
As Bible scholar Gail Riplinger writes in her 1993
book New Age Bible Versions, “The
carnal spirit of Gnosticism, that is, the desire for hidden knowledge others do
not have, is prevalent in the New Age and the church.
“New Agers try to get a word from ‘God’ through
some ‘hidden’ wisdom from ‘far off’ gurus living ‘beyond the sea’. Christians
search for the ‘hidden’ meaning of a word in Greek lexicons from ‘far off’
Egyptian manuscripts from ‘beyond the sea’.”
In another passage, she notes, “New Ager Vera
Alder say of the ‘New’ world religion: ‘It is likely that a new kind of
religion will develop in which man will discover and work out his own sermons
for himself’. . .Seth, an entity now being channeled in New Age circles echoes:
‘There is no authority superior to the guidance of a person’s inner self.’
“This wizard ‘peeps’ as cultists and textual
scholars ‘mutter’ the same monotonous declamation. Hare Krishna devotees listen
to see if a Bible version has a ‘ring of truth.’ Hort (the Bible
revisionist behind the corrupt modern versions) used his ‘instinctive’ powers
to determine if a verse had a ‘ring of genuineness.’
“J.B. Phillips touts the reader of his forward
to the NASB Interlinear Greek-English New Testament to ‘try to
make his own translation,’ looking for The Ring of Truth (the
title of his autobiography). Westcott (the other Bible revisionist from the
late 1800s) recommends using your ‘intuitive powers’ as a sounding board. . .
“Westcott thinks Plato has a clear source of
‘truth,’ which for us is ‘blurred and dim.’ He writes that this ‘truth’ stems
from Plato’s, ‘. . . communion with a divine and super-sensuous world. . .
[with] those beings who occupy a middle place between God and man. . . [A]ll
fellowship which exists between heaven and earth is realized through this
intermediate order. . . These spirits are many and manifold’. . .
“One of Plato’s most well-known philosophies
is his concept of ‘the Idea’ wherein the outside form of things merely veils
‘the idea,’ which alone is real.
"Westcott expresses this Eastern and
Gnostic world view saying, ‘There is. . . a serious danger in the prevailing
spirit of realism which leads us to dwell on the outside form, the dress of
things, to the neglect of ‘ideas’ which are half-veiled. . . Eternal life is. .
.the potential fulfillment of the ‘idea’ of humanity.’
“The TV mini-series The Power of Myth ‘programmed’
potential New Agers with Plato’s concept of ‘the idea’. Joseph Campbell, its
author, also wrote Hero with a Thousand Faces. Both try to
popularize Westcott’s Platonic idea that, as Westcott says, God appears, ‘not
in one form, but in many.’ [Buddha, Krishna, Mary]
“If you missed the mini-series reruns, your
college psychology class will present the same concept under the guise of Carl
Jung’s ‘archetypes’ welling up from the ‘universal unconsciousness’. ”
*****
Preachers will tell you that if you want to know
God and His will for your life, you must carefully scrutinize your
circumstances and listen for Him to interpret the events and give you
directives through an “inner spiritual voice.”
Jordan says, “I’m sorry, but that inner voice you hear isn’t God.
God doesn’t speak with a Southern accent. That’s the voice in my head that’s
speaking. He doesn’t speak with the accent you hear in your head, either. That
voice in your head is only and always you.
“It’s never the devil. You ever watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho?
Norman’s hearing all these voices in his head—momma talking and stuff. No, no,
no, that’s just you.
“The devil doesn’t put thoughts in your head and God doesn’t put
thoughts in your head. You put thoughts in your head. I’m sorry if that bursts
your bubble and disillusions you, but it’s true. It’s always your mind, your thoughts.
So, that inner voice you hear when you have a hunch or inner impression, that’s
just your inner impression and your feeling.
“If circumstances were the means of divine revelation, then
what is the Bible? Chopped liver?! You say, ‘Well, the Bible’s the
primary means, but. . .’ No, it’s the only means! Because anything God is
communicating and revealing to you outside of the Bible is extra-biblical.”
*****
Paul says in I Corinthians 2:9, “But as it is written, Eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
“In other words, left to yourself you’re never going to find out on
your own the things God has prepared for you. But God revealed them to you.
It’s revealed truth. He reveals them through His Spirit speaking through His
Word.
“I got a real wicked email from a person this past week, and they
just went on and on and on, calling me all kinds of terrible invectives,
telling me what kind of a heretic I am because I tell people (they’d heard me
on the TV program) that the Spirit of God speaks through His Word, and that He
doesn’t speak outside of His Word; He’s not communicating to any of us
through circumstances, inner impressions, events, physical things, etc. He uses
words.
“Oh, this man was just as mad as could be at me about this. He
said, ‘You’re limiting God! God speaks into your heart and He doesn’t just
speak with the cold letter of His Word; He talks to you and He leads you.’
“Well, I simply wrote back, ‘This just isn’t how God says He
communicates, and every contact you have with Jesus Christ outside of the Word
of God is on an inner subjective level inside of you, so how do you know that
communication—that feeling, that impression, that thought, that word—you get in
your spirit is from the God of the Bible and not from the devil?’
“ ‘Well, I just feel’. . . Listen, every
Mormon who ever lived, the way he got converted was he got the ‘burning in the
bosom’ and he feels that way. Every Muslim you know, they went
and got the feeling.
“I had plenty of feelings about God talking
to me before I ever got saved. Religion does that. That’s what it’s based on!
Religion is designed to satisfy the lusts of your flesh and your flesh lusts
for feeling.
*****
“So how do you know that the contact you have is the God who
created all things and not some evil spirit? Well, you need some objective standard
outside of your own intuition to know that.
“That’s why Paul writes, ‘Which things also we speak, not in the
words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing
spiritual things with spiritual.’ (I Cor. 2:13)
“Where do you find the words that the Holy Ghost teaches? That’s what the Book is! ‘Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’ ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God.’ ‘The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David.’ ‘The Holy Ghost spoke by the prophet Esaias.’ The Bible’s full of that!
“So when the Holy Spirit wants to speak, He speaks through WORDS
and those words are recorded on the pages of God’s Word. I Corinthians 2:10
says, ‘But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.’
“When it says ‘for the Spirit searcheth the deep things,’ God the Holy Spirt knows the mind of the Godhead. Verse 11 says, ‘For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.’
“That’s a verse you don’t want to read over too quickly. ‘What man
knoweth the things of a man.’ You have a spirit that gives you a capacity to know
things beyond simply the physical world around you. You have a spirit of man
within you. I’ve got the spirit of man within me.
“And when I speak words, those words come out of my mouth. They
tell you what’s inside of me in my spirit. Those words are a spiritual
medium of communication that go into your ear and are translated . . .
somewhere in the mystery of your makeup it’s translated into words that your
spirit hears. And words—the communication we engage in—is really a spiritual
thing.
“When we talk back and forth (as Believers), there’s a spiritual ministry
going on. Now, when what we’re speaking is the Word of God, there’s more than a
spiritual medium being transpired as with when we’re just communicating human
viewpoint. We’re really communicating the things of God!
“If you read verse 12, it says, ‘Now we have
received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we
might know the things that are freely given to us of God.’
“As the teaching ministry communicates godly edifying to you,
there’s a spiritual ministry that’s developed inside of you, and you literally store
up the capacity in your inner man and are built up.
*****
“In Galatians 4:19, Paul talks about Christ being ‘formed in you.’
There’s a form of sound doctrine built up in your inner man.
“That’s what ministry is designed to accomplish. The preacher’s purpose is not simply to be at the church and entertain you, or have a place where you can come and feel good about being there.
“Our purpose is to take some godly edification—some sound doctrine
based on our identity as members of the Body of Christ in the dispensation of
grace—and impart that information into your inner man so that it builds up that
edifice of sound doctrine inside of you, and your frame of reference (your
thinking, your conscience, your inner man, all of the processes that go on
inside of you) is renewed.
“The shorthand terminology in Romans 12 is the ‘renewing of your
mind,’ that you might be ‘transformed by the spirit of God from glory to
glory.’
“II Corinthians 3:18 says, ‘But we all, with open face beholding
as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory
to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’
“Paul’s not talking to you about getting saved; he’s talking about the edification process. There’s this inner-man transformation and it’s the Spirit.”
*****
In worldwide evangelist Oscar Woodall’s 1993 book, My
Journey from Law to Grace, he tells of how when he’d frequently ask the question,
“What’s most important to God?”, individual responses typically included,
"souls, love, family, truth, justice, righteousness."Woodall writes, "Most important to God is His inspired, preserved Word(s) written on pages of a book we can hold in our hand . . . Satan from the Garden until now, by lies and human reasoning (scholarship, so-called), seeks to destroy, corrupt and craftily handle the words of God."
(new article tomorrow)
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