God Told Me: The Pentecostalization of Evangelical Theology of Revelation
No prophecy of Scripture comes from a human source. Rather, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (v. 21). Peter is saying that we ought to trust the sufficient Word because it is revelation from God’s Spirit that is even more sure than if he spoke to us directly. Trust the sufficient Word. It’s all we need. We do not need supernatural subjective experiences, we do not need the voice of God from Heaven, we do not need a still small voice in our hearts, we do not need visions or dreams or impressions or “nudges from the Holy Spirit”—we have something better than all of that. We have more sure the written Word of God. Scripture is sufficient.
I am convinced that contemporary Evangelicalism has been Pentecostalized in significant ways that even many non-charismatics don’t recognize. One significant way this reveals itself even among those who would claim to be cessationists is in common evangelical expectations regarding how God speaks to us and how he reveals his will to us. It is very common in modern evangelicalism, for example, to hear Christians talk about how God “spoke” to them, revealing his will in mystical ways outside his Word.
This teaching characterizes charismatics to be sure, many of which believe that the Holy Spirit still gives revelation with the same level of authority that he did to prophets like Elijah and Isaiah and apostles like John and Paul.
However, more moderate charismatics like Wayne Grudem and Sam Storms argue that while the authoritative canon of Scripture is closed, we ought to still expect “spontaneous revelation from the Holy Spirit” today. In this more moderate view, prophecy today does not have same sort of inerrancy or authority as biblical prophecy or inspired Scripture, but it is still direct revelation from the Spirit. I am thankful that these men defend the closed canon and the unique authority of Scripture, starkly differentiating their teaching from that of other more dangerous charismatics. Nevertheless, we must still measure their teaching against what the Bible actually teaches.
On the other hand, even many prominent evangelical teachers who claim to believe that prophecy has ceased nevertheless teach that we ought to expect the Holy Spirit to speak directly to us, not with words, and they don’t even call it prophecy, but they teach that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through impressions, through promptings, a still small voice, or an inner peace.
Perhaps no single book has done more to spread this kind of expectation among evangelical Christians than Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God. Blackaby says, “God has not changed. He still speaks to his people. If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience.1 This is someone who claims to be a cessationist. Other teachers like Charles Stanley and Priscilla Shirer have taught that we need to learn to listen for God’s voice outside of Scripture, we ought to expect to receive “personal divine direction,” “detailed guidance,” and “intimate leading.”2
Another way this expectation appears is in common beliefs regarding the doctrine of illumination. Often we hear prayers like, “Lord, please illumine your Word so that we can understand what it says,” or other similar language. Intentional or not, many believers seem to expect that the Spirit is going to help us understand what Scripture means or that he is going to “speak” to us specific ways that the Word applies to our personal situations. However, neither of these are what the biblical doctrine of illumination means.
The fact is that many Christians today think that supernatural experiences were just the normal, expected way God spoke to everyone in biblical times. Here’s Henry Blackaby again:
The testimony of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that God speaks to his people, . . . and you can anticipate that he will be speaking to you also.3
Charles Stanley argues,
[God] loves us just as much as he loved the people of Old and New Testament days. . . . We need his definite and deliberate direction for our lives, as did Joshua, Moses, Jacob, or Noah. As his children, we need his counsel for effective decision making. Since he wants us to make the right choices, he is still responsible for providing accurate data, and that comes through his speaking to us.4
These are not charismatics or continuationists. These are teachers who claim to be cessationists, and yet they insist that we ought to expect to hear from God outside his Word. And yet, this really is no different from how moderate continuationists define prophecy today.
In fact, Tom Schreiner admits as much in his book, Spiritual Gifts. Schreiner says this:
What most call prophecy in churches today, in my judgment, isn’t the New Testament gift of prophecy. . . . It is better to characterize what is happening today as the sharing of impressions rather than prophecy. God may impress something on a person’s heart and mind, and he may use such impressions to help others in their spiritual walk. It is a matter of definition; what some people call prophecies are actually impressions, where someone senses that God is leading them to speak to someone or to make some kind of statement about a situation.5
And Schreiner even admits that this is not much different from the moderate continuationist theology of prophecy:
The difference between cessationists and continuationists is in some ways insignificant at the practical level when it comes to prophecy,for what continuationists call prophecy, cessationists call impressions. As a cessationist, I affirm that God may speak to his people through impressions. And there are occasions where impressions are startlingly accurate.6
I respect Tom Schreiner greatly, but the problem is that teachings about Holy Spirit impressions such as these are not based on any Scripture at all. Rather, they use phrases like, “We have all experienced this kind of thing,” “these impressions are startingly accurate, so they must be from God,” or they quote a few vague statements by Spurgeon, Edwards, or Lloyd Jones that sound like they believed in such impressions.
I would estimate that a vast majority of evangelical Christians today believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through promptings and impressions, especially with regard to his will for our lives. If you want to truly know God’s will, then the Bible is not enough. The Bible does not tell you specifics about God’s “secret will” for your life, so if you want to know it, you need to learn to listen to God’s voice. Not audible words of course, not prophecy—we’re cessationists after all, but we ought to expect to receive nudges or impressions from the Spirit, an inner peace that will give us guidance.
But what does the Bible actually say about how we should expect God to speak to us?
The More Sure Word
In understanding the nature of the Spirit’s work of giving revelation, it is important that we understand the relationship between the revelation that he gave through prophets and the revelation that he inspired in the sixty-six canonical books of Scripture.
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A Personal Report from the Ukrainian Battlefront
Every time you tell me about the great Russian painting, I will tell you about the peaceful Ukrainians shot in the back in the Makariv district. And before they could shoot, the orcs tied their hands. About hundreds of corpses on the streets of Bucha, Irpen, Gostomel. About mass graves in the yards of residential neighborhoods. Until recently, the mass graves of civilians were cozy and safe cities. Mass graves. In the 21st century. Here is what I will tell you in return about the great Russian painting.
Dear heartbroken Europeans and other connoisseurs of great Russian culture !!! (including Ukrainians), today I watch photos and videos from liberated cities and villages of Kyiv region all day. My native Kyiv region. And here’s what I want to tell you:
Every time you talk about the great Russian ballet, I will tell you the story of a young teacher from Brovary who was repeatedly raped in front of her parents and then kidnapped by Russian villains. About dozens, maybe hundreds of raped Ukrainian women. Often in the eyes of children. About 15-16-year-old girls from Borodyanka who suffered terrible violence from the Kadyrovites. About the bodies of five raped young girls who were killed and left on the road. About this abomination “we will spend * hohlushek” in interceptions. Here is what I will tell you in return about the great Russian ballet.
Every time you tell me about great Russian composers, I will tell you the story of a girl in front of whom and her little brother in the basement of Mariupol, their mother died more than once. And then with the corpse of a dead mother, the children were forced to continue to hide in the basement from the shelling. About a boy from Gostomel, in front of whom Russian soldiers shot his father. And then they wanted to kill their son, but he survived. About a girl who was shot directly in the face. About a kid who ran away with his grandmother in a boat. Grandma drowned. And the boy has been wanted for almost a month. Here’s what I’ll tell you in return about the great Russian composers.
Every time you tell me about the great Russian painting, I will tell you about the peaceful Ukrainians shot in the back in the Makariv district. And before they could shoot, the orcs tied their hands. About hundreds of corpses on the streets of Bucha, Irpen, Gostomel. About mass graves in the yards of residential neighborhoods. Until recently, the mass graves of civilians were cozy and safe cities. Mass graves. In the 21st century. Here is what I will tell you in return about the great Russian painting.
Every time you tell me about the great Russian theater, I will tell you the story of a woman from the Brovary district, from whose house Russian marauders retreated and removed metal tiles. About tanks and armored personnel carriers of the “Second Army of the World,” loaded to the brim with robbers in Ukrainian homes. Stolen phones, tablets, TVs, washing machines, carpets, jewelry, bottles of alcohol, pans, clothes, toys, shoes – everything that happened to these freaks. When they got to Belarus, they sent their loot to Russia in advance. About how they stole stolen goods in Belarusian bazaars. Here is what I will tell you in response about the great Russian theater.
Every time you tell me about the great Russian cinema, I will tell you about the brutally shot horses in the stables in Kyiv region. About the animals of the zoo in Yasnogorodka, frozen by hunger and thirst. About deer skin burned after the explosion. And now the maximum savagery… About the alabai killed and eaten by the Russian occupiers. Yes, alabai. Yes, dogs. Yes, eaten. Here is what I will tell you in response about the great Russian cinema.
Every time you tell me about the great Russian literature, I will tell you about dozens of interceptions of conversations of Russian soldiers with their mothers and wives. Conversations in which there is nothing but naya. Conversations in which wives order them to steal in Ukrainian homes. Conversations where mothers laugh when their sons tell how their cousins rape hohlushek. And if all mothers are thrown out of these conversations, they will be left with “hello” and “while.” Here is what I will tell you in response about the great Russian literature.
There is no longer any great Russian culture, literature, cinema, painting, theater and ballet. There is a country of freaks, marauders, rapists and murderers. Wild people who have no place in the civilized world!
And long-suffering new Russian dissidents in the cozy apartments of Berlin, London, Larnaca, Milan, Tbilisi, Astana, Vienna and other temporary shelters, let them follow the route of the Russian ship, proudly carrying in their hands the great Russian culture!
From a Ukrainian Woman on Facebook -
Deconversion Is Apostasy
Those who deconvert are apostates, and they are in danger of Hell and the righteous judgement of God. We don’t need to sugarcoat this. Those who deconvert should feel no comfort or pleasure in their decision. But there is hope. And I hold out this hope for anyone who has deconverted, who knows someone who has deconverted, or is considering leaving the faith. Listen to what God says He will do for backsliding Israel: “I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them” (Hos 14:4). Here is the hope: You can turn from your apostasy, and God will receive you.
The word “deconversion”, defined simply as the loss of faith in one’s religion, seems to have become popular recently. People have become weirdly comfortable, almost boasting, in the fact that they have deconverted from Christianity. I think part of the comfort with deconversion is that the word is new enough to lack the sober connotations its meaning should convey. We often do this: we soften language to appease our consciences. So I want to say it out loud for those who might be dodging the seriousness of what deconverting from Christianity really means: Deconversion is apostasy.
When someone says, “I’ve deconverted” or “I’m an exvangelical” or “I’ve deconstructed”, I’m convinced that they choose this heady, pseudo-intellectual language because it allows the conscience to miss what they’ve actually done. Those who deconvert are leaving Christ. They are those whom the Spirit says, “will depart from the faith” (1 Tim 4:1). They are the ones who have, “an evil, unbelieving heart, leading [them] to fall away from the living God” (Heb 3:12). This is a serious and dangerous decision.
The Seriousness of Deconversion
Deconversion/Apostasy has terrifying consequences. Consider God’s word:“in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess 1:8-9).
“‘And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.’ Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus” (Rev 14:11-12).
“It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched’ (Matt 9:47-48).Read More
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3 Things You Should Know about Numbers
We can all have confidence that the Lord Jesus has faithfully pioneered the perfect pathway through the wilderness in our place, and now He walks through the desert alongside us, reminding us of the Lord’s faithfulness and His forgetfulness. When necessary, He picks us up and carries us in His arms as the Good Shepherd, bringing us to the heavenly inheritance toward which the promised land pointed Israel.
1. The Book of Numbers is not a book simply about numbers.
The Hebrew title of the book is “In the Wilderness,” which is a much more descriptive and engaging title. The book charts Israel’s experience from the time they left Mount Sinai after their exodus from Egypt until they arrived at the brink of the promised land. It should only have taken Israel a few weeks to cover the distance from Sinai to Canaan. The problem was that they sent twelve spies to check out the land, and the majority came back with a negative report: the inhabitants of the land were too big and their cities too well-defended. There was no chance of victory (Num. 13–14). Joshua and Caleb told a different story, arguing that if God fought for Israel, they could certainly take the land, but their minority report was voted down. As a result, the Lord condemned the people to wander in the wilderness for the next forty years, until all the adults had died. Only then would they be able to enter the land and receive what He had promised.
2. The most important number in the Book of Numbers is two.
There are quite a lot of numbers in the book of Numbers, as well as long lists of people in two separate censuses (Num. 1; 26). It can be easy to get lost in the lists of names and numbers, which seem as obscure as sports statistics to a non-sports fan or the business listings to a non-accountant. They all have their part to play in telling the story of Israel’s wilderness years, however.
The most important number in the entire book is two—as in, two generations. The book of Numbers is about an unbelieving generation that failed to trust God and paid the price of a lifetime of wandering in the wilderness, followed by a new generation that stood on the brink of entering the land. Would the new generation be like their parents and give in once again to unbelief? Or would they chart a new course of faith in the Lord and receive the land that God had promised the patriarchs? The signs were good, with some initial victories over the Canaanites (e.g., Num. 21), but the jury was still out. That enables the stories in this book to challenge us as well: to which generation do we belong—the people of unbelief, whose bodies were scattered in the desert, or the people of faith, who would press forward to inherit the land (see Heb. 3:7–19)?
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