"People say today, 'Well, God spoke to me.' So how did He speak to you? A lady told me one time, 'Jesus appeared at the end of my bed.' I said, 'What did He say?!' She said, 'Well, He didn't speak in an audible voice.' Well, how did He talk? None of that stuff makes any sense.
"In Isaiah, it was revealed in his ear--God spoke to him audibly," explains Richard Jordan.
Isaiah 22:14: [14] And it was revealed in mine ears by the LORD of hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
II Peter 1: [20] Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.[21] For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
"When it says they spake, there's an audible communication God is doing with men often back there and that isn't happening today.
"Here's a passage looking toward the deliverance of Israel into the kingdom. That's future from where we are right now. Isaiah 29:18: [18] And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.
"Notice, it's the individual words of the Book. Out there in the future from where we are, something written back in the past is going to be there. That helps me because I'm in between the past and the future; I'm in the now.
*****
"The profession of all of the evangelical schools, seminaries, bible colleges is all the profession of neo-orthodoxy. All of a sudden the Word of God discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart and it's clear what's going on.
"Neo-orthodoxy is the great discussion about the Bible: 'Is it the Word of God or does it contain the Word of God?' Is it the Word of God when it speaks to you, or is it the Word of God when it lies on the page? Is Adam a real person or does it really matter?
"They go to the passages to get the lessons and the teaching, just not believing the underlying historicity of the passage.
"I once wrote a missionary in the grace movement after an article of his appeared in one of the magazines. I asked, 'Do you really believe in verbal plenary inspiration because your article doesn't indicate that?' He wrote back, 'Yes, I believe it.'
"I wrote back, 'Harry, I'm glad that you do, but the people who you're teaching aren't going to believe it because you aren't teaching it and they can't believe anything but what you teach.'
"That idea is where liberalism got its roots in the church today. It's when that Book became less than the absolute authority.
"There's a whole doctrine about inspiration and there's also a whole doctrine about preservation.
"A number of years ago I went through a real controversy with some brethren in the grace movement about these issues and they kept saying, 'Well, Jordan's just got this philosophical commitment.'
"And I kept saying, 'No, no, no. There's a Bible DOCTRINE!' Some of those people never would sit down and consider the doctrine.
"If it isn't based on a doctrine, folks, it isn't based on some understanding of some verses; it's then just human viewpoint.
"The things we teach about these things have nothing to do with what we always believed. I didn't always believe what I believe now. I started out in that other camp but some verses in a Bible began to form my thinking and changed it."
(new article tomorrow)
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