When we look at the claims of the apostles recorded throughout the New Testament, they appear to follow this same approach. Rather than appealing to their own feelings or internal experiences, they continually pointed to that which they heard with their ears, saw with their eyes, and touched with their hands (1Jn 1:1, 3). In Acts 2:22, Peter says this: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.” In verse 36 he went on to say that we can know “for certain” Jesus is the promised Messiah, not because God will reveal this to each of us through some kind of personal encounter, but because Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection were seen by numerous eyewitnesses, and also happened to be foreseen by the Hebrew prophets of old.

In 1835, just a few years after the initial release of The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith published a supplemental volume called Doctrine & Covenants in which he claimed to have received the following revelation from God:
Cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things; did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?… Behold, I say unto you that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right, I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you: therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right, you shall have no such feelings…
This, of course, is the origin of the popular Mormon doctrine of the “burning in the bosom.” As a result of this verse, most of the Mormon missionaries who’ve arrived at my doorstep over the decades have encouraged me to pray to God, asking him to confirm the truth of The Book of Mormon by means of an internal experience of this kind.
What’s fascinating is that last year when I conducted a poll of nearly a hundred Christians at a variety of different events here in the St. Louis area, the majority of those I interviewed ended up describing faith as a kind of subjective feeling or experience. When I discussed this topic on Episode 4, “Is Faith a Feeling,” I mentioned the fact that in my own study of this issue, I wasn’t able to find a single occurrence of the word “feeling” anywhere near the word “faith” in most English Bible translations. Even when I searched for different versions of the verb “to feel,” and substituted alternatives for the word “faith” (such as “faithful,” “belief,” “believer,” etc.), I still couldn’t find a single passage in which “faith” and “feelings” were within 200 words of each other.
On episode 28 of The Humble Skeptic podcast, I discuss the relationship between “faith and experience,” and in preparation for that program, I decided to run a search for any appearance of the word “experience” within 200 words of “faith.” Only one verse appeared across a variety of English Bible translations, namely, 1Peter 5:9. Beginning at verse 8 this passage reads as follows: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (ESV).
Read More
Related Posts:

Even though I am distressed, I am not broken. Even though I am overwhelmed and all I feel is despair, there is hope. Keep me from losing heart. Paul says that though my outer self is wasting away, my inner self is being renewed every day. Help me to see this. Help me to look not at the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. Give me grace to lift my eyes off my here and now and know that the battle I’m fighting in this moment isn’t pointless; it carries eternal weight (2 Corinthians 4:8, 16–18).

The following is meant to help those who are weary in their battle to overcome sin and need to know how to pray and cry out to God for help.
Father, help…help, God. I don’t know what else to do to get rid of this thing—why won’t you take this away?!
Sexual obedience? Integrity? How is that possible when the temptation chases, hounds, calls out to me day after day? Why do you allow me to feel these things and not have them satisfied? Will it ever get easier? Will I ever be free from this? Is this the cross to bear that people talk about, something that dominates every day of my life? How is this fair? These questions haunt me.
My feelings seem to have the loudest voice right now, so I’ll start there. Looking at porn last night felt good! Sure, it was horrible two hours later, but even though I know that stuff is evil, somehow it does help me forget about the rest of my broken life… so much that I can’t find the words to pray. I earnestly desire to fix my eyes on Jesus, but how do I do that when my feelings are just a swirl of inner turmoil? I feel like the man in Mark’s gospel who cried out to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24). I admit that it feels so hard to believe right now. Oh please, help me to feel differently, to think with the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) and to trust you. Help, God! My unbelief is wrecking me.
I resonate with the words of the Psalmist when he says, “My heart throbs; my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me” (Psalm 38:10). My attempts to help myself have failed.
Read More

The Gospel is not that God “accepts people as they are.” The Gospel involves radical repentance and change. The “progressive” Gospel involves no change, no curing of our sinful hearts, and no suppression of evil within us. Instead, we become as God.

One of the most influential books in the 20th Century Church was J Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. Machen was prophetic in his analysis of the crisis facing the Church in the US in the first half of the century—some would argue that it was because of his (and others’) stance that the US Church did not go down the path of decline that Churches in most other Western countries did.
In his prophetic book he warned: “A terrible crisis unquestionably has arisen in the Church. In the ministry of evangelical churches are to be found hosts of those who reject the gospel of Christ. By the equivocal use of traditional phrases, by the representation of differences of opinion as though they were only differences about the interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the Church was secured for those who are hostile to the very foundations of the faith.”
These words came to mind as I listened to the latest debate on conversion therapy on Premier’s Unbelievable, between Jayne Ozanne, the chair of Ban Conversion Therapy, and Peter Lynas of the Evangelical Alliance. Ozanne is, like Steve Chalke, a former evangelical who has a significant voice in the Anglican church and beyond.
As I listened to the somewhat (one-sided) heated discussion, I realised that this was not just a disagreement between two different versions of Christianity, but a disagreement between two different Christianities—which is why there was no possibility of agreement.
Francis Schaeffer, another prophetic writer who saw what was coming down the road, argued in The God Who Is There, that a new theology conditioned by modernistic and post modernistic would infiltrate the Church and create chaos.
He said that this new theology would have certain advantages because “the undefined connotation words that the new theology uses are deeply rooted in our Western culture. This is much easier and more powerful than using new and untraditional words.”
Ozanne used Christian words, but within progressive ideology they have radically different meanings:
1. Love
Ozanne told us, “God is love, anything that harms a child or adult goes against that.” But she never defines what love is. It’s so easy to say ‘love is love’, but without definition, that statement is completely vacuous.
The Bible on the other hand makes it explicitly clear. 1 John 4:10 says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Furthermore, our love is also clearly defined: “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:2-3).
When people reject the commands of God, they are being the opposite of loving.
2. Harm
Ozanne kept accusing Peter and the EA of causing harm. Helen Joyce in her book Trans lays out how accusations of harm are used by trans activists to emotionally bully people into accepting their agenda. It always ends up with accusing those who disagree with them of causing suicide. Yet there is no evidence that the teaching of Jesus is the cause of suicide.
But Ozanne went further: “There is no evidence of Jesus teaching something that is going to cause people harm.”
I would have thought that most modern people would regard telling people to pluck out their eye if it is going to cause them to sin; to let the dead bury their dead; to hate their own father and mother; and to cast people into Hell as somewhat harmful! Perhaps Ozanne should heed his warning in Matthew 18:6 about those who cause people to stumble?
Read More