In circles of people with extremely charismatic language, I often hear people say things things like, “The Lord is telling me…” or “I feel like the Lord is saying…”. Whether I agree with that or not is not so much in discussion right now. But what is actually said is.

Before Jesus’ death, he told his disciples that his death was necessary that the Holy Spirit would come. He explained the Spirit’s function in John 16:14:

“When the Spirit of truth comes…[v14] He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

When the Spirit of God speaks to us, it is about Jesus; of Jesus. It is about God’s Word. The Spirit will not speak to us about things that aren’t taught to us from God’s word. This is why the Puritans understood that the modern gift of prophecy is when a person, usually a teacher, is given insight and understanding of God’s word.

You might not agree with that last paragraph, and that’s alright.

What bothers me is when people use the concept of the Spirit’s speaking to a believer as a means to make a point, or convince hearers of their opinions or personal beliefs.

For example, If you’ve dated within the Church, you’ve probably heard something like, “God is telling me I need to be single.” Or maybe you’ve just heard of people saying that kind of thing. In charismatic worship settings (which I tend to enjoy, by the way), you might’ve heard someone say something like, “The Spirit is telling us we need to lift our hands,” or “The Spirit wants us repent of [fill in the blank].”

I strongly believe this language is an abuse of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Well, at least about 90% of the time anyway.

When the Spirit speaks, it is to glorify Jesus—namely in the Word of God. It is more sound to say, “God’s Word says [fill in the blank]—I believe we are guilty of this, and should repent.” If this message is truly from the Spirit, this language will still cut people’s conscience and lead to repentance. And if it doesn’t, either people’s hearts are hard or else the Spirit wasn’t highlighting that issue in specific.

Or, perhaps, “I have been reading the word of God and praying and I feel that I need to be single for some time.”

When the Spirit speaks, it is from God’s word, which is about Jesus, of Jesus. And the language chosen is important. There are at least two major dangers in speaking with this kind of hyper-spiritual language.

1. Human beings are a complicated mess of flesh and emotion and ideas. Unless the the word being spoken can be thoroughly confirmed by God’s written word, it can only truly be spoken with some marginal level of confidence. Anything more than that is probably a confidence conjured from elsewhere inside us. Speaking with such presumption is clearly dangerous. Prophets of the old testament who prophesy falsely were to be put to death. That’s not the case today, but the principal stands. Speaking for God when God may not be speaking is big deal.

2. Human beings are also rational, intellectual creatures. These are gifts given to us by God. And, we have a thorough and complete written Word from God. When language such as “God is saying…” is used, it effectively closes the door to disagreement and rational discussion. It makes it impossible for “iron to sharpen iron”.

It is wisdom that we would use our language carefully when talking about the Spirit’s speaking to us and to our congregation. When the Spirit speaks, he is teaching what he has already said in God’s Word to the church.

We should be so hasty as to assume the Spirit is saying what we might think he’s saying but be confident that if he is speaking, it will be heard even if we don’t use such confident language.

Here’s an interesting little bit of prophecy. Revelation 16:10-11:

The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.

People often find the book of Revelation frightening. Especially with the warnings about those who are given the mark of the beast. It’s not hard to get caught up in thinking that maybe somehow you might be one of the one’s who gets the mark. Like, it were an accident or something.

But, here in Revelation 16:11, we get a pretty clear picture of who’s getting the mark. The people who will not repent.

Have you sincerely repented of your sins and trusted in Jesus? Then you won’t be getting the mark. God’s grace is bigger than our ability to do the right thing and he will not lose a single one. The saints will definitely persevere, while those who will not repent, even under the excruciating wrath of God, continue to refuse.

Jeremiah 28:8-9:

The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet.

I think this generation of God’s people ought to be more spiritually discerning. I hesitate to use the word skeptical, but that is exactly what I mean.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always been kind of superstitious about “prophetic” predictions of calamity and disaster. Like, as a kid I’d see magazines on the shelf saying, “Nostradamus says the world ends in 2001” or something like that. It’d always shake me up for a few hours. Of course, we didn’t have the Internet back then, and I wasn’t nearly ambitious enough to investigate such claims.

Some fiber of that still exists in me. Deep down, I don’t easily dismiss claims people make; particularly when the claims are aggressive enough.

“Prophetic” claims will often arrest me. I don’t mean to say I blindly follow the whims and predictions people make, rather, I cannot peacefully abandon them without sufficient refutation. Reliable refutation. I need to know the falsity of a claim before I leave it behind.

I experienced this tonight.

If you’re familiar with Harold Camping you’ll know where I’m going with this already. Harold Camping is the founder of Family Radio. If you ever listen to Family Radio in the evening time, you’ve probably heard the call in show where people ask questions and Camping answers them. The majority of the time the questions are relatively basic faith-type questions. Like, “the bible says that if you ask for things in Jesus’ name, they will be given to you. How come sometimes prayers aren’t answered?” Frankly, Camping’s answers have always seemed acceptable, as far as I can tell.

Until tonight.

I was driving home and I didn’t have my ipod. I rarely ever listen to the radio, but being that the sound of passing wind was unappealing, I decided to turn on the radio. Camping’s show was on. One or two questions came through and Camping gave pretty solid, biblically supported answers. But then…

A gentleman called in and started asking about the end of the world. Apparently camping learned from the bible that it was going to happen on May 21st, 2011. I was a bit taken back because I read the bible quite a bit and frankly that information is just not there. Well, at least not obviously.

But, keeping with my tendency, I had trouble letting the notion go. It was easy to come index several scriptures that would seem to refute such a claim (i.e., Jesus would return like a thief in the night), but what really results is who has interpreted correctly? Such pressing matters cannot simply be ignored. What if God really has communicated such a thing to us? How foolish would it be to ignore? I wouldn’t be satisfied until I could make a confident assertion Camping’s delusion or my own error.

I quickly learned that Camping also predicted the end of the world was in 1994. It wasn’t. At least I don’t think it was. Simply being wrong before is not sufficient reason to completely discard a person’s future claims.

So, I spent a good amount of time researching the topic. Reading responses, opinions, supports and refutations. I found what I expected to find. Camping indeed found it in the bible, but only because he put it there through an awefull habit of eisegesis (or reading things into scripture). Camping has questionable, at best, hermeneutical methods.

That pretty thoroughly satisfied my concern. But it got me thinking too.

Our belief shouldn’t be stubbornly firm. It should be verifiably firm. We shouldn’t ever hear something that contradicts us and think, “that’s wrong because it’s not what I believe” we should say, that’s wrong because of A, B and C. I could likely have buckled down and said, “I don’t agree with Harold Camping and that’s that.” But perhaps its the grace of God that I cannot be satisfied with that. Now that particular challenge cannot shake me because the Word of God has verified my foundation, not my resolve.

I think this kind of thinking ought to be adopted, not just in the face of heresies and cults, but also in the face of doctrines we don’t understand or newly approach us. It will not do us well to stubbornly believe our own foundation, the Word of God should verify it for us.

“Be a Berean”.

If you’d like more information on Harold Camping’s errors specifically, these seem to be some pretty useful links:

Harold Camping Refuted
An Exercise in Exegetical Convenience
Allegory: It’s Use and Abuse

I was trained to read the bible as though it were always speaking to me personally. I think that’s the way most are taught to read the bible. When a “you” or “they” or “we” is introduced, we usually substitute “I” or “me” in there. It makes each piece of scripture personal, addressed to the individual reader. I think this often can be good, especially in the New Testament and reading through Psalms. But ultimately as a whole, I think it’s the wrong approach to scripture.

Just a few days ago my bible reading plan started me in the book of Isaiah. It’s a long book written by a prophet who is, considered by most to be, one of the greatest. The book is essentially a collection of prophecies and oracles concerning God’s promises and judgements on Israel. At the time, half the nation was in exile and the other half was in over their head in some pretty raunchy sin.

Basically, Isaiah’s message would be that God’s promises of salvation would stand, but not without the purification of Israel—which would come through the neighboring heathen nations.

As I begin to read through Isaiah, I find that I’m quickly stirred up emotionally. The words sound and feel so heavy (indeed they are). But upon closer examination, I can see that I’m failing to read the scripture appropriately. Now, I don’t mean to claim that scripture shouldn’t stir us up. It should. But when it does, we have to be discerning as to why and to what end.

Reading Isaiah with each piece of scripture personally addressed to "me" or "us", the words burn hot in my ears. The judgement of God looms and dangles just above the church’s head. His wrath mounts as his patience seems to be reaching a breaking point. What’s more, so many of the sins Isaiah cries against in Israel are the sins America embraces and wears on its sleeves.

Reading the book of Isaiah in this method has the affect of making every reader feel like a prophet of God with a warning of judgement for the church or for America. Sit long enough in an unchecked study of Isaiah and you’ll hear your language shift, but more importantly, you’ll notice the Gospel grow dim.

The fact of the matter is that Isaiah was a prophet to Israel who communicated to Israel the very words of God. Words that God indeed saw fit for us to hear because he put them in the bible. But that does not mean that the words spoken to Israel through Isaiah are also intended for us in the same way. In fact, I contend that the warnings in Isaiah do not stand to loom the danger of provoking an angry God, but rather to further beautify, brighten and highlight the grace, salvation, justification, propitiation and sanctification that we experience only as children redeemed by the blood of Christ—what we now call the Gospel. A hope that apostate Israel could not fully understand.

Now, to be sure, Scripture will be used by God in many ways. To bring about conviction and change. To encourage and strengthen. To save and to condemn. So for what purpose the book of Isaiah stands today, I won’t make any specific claims. Only that in reading scripture, namely Isaiah, we must use great discernment as only provided by the Holy Spirit.

We must not act on our assumptions and must remember that for the true Church of God, Jesus is the completely sufficient savior. Through whom God now feels no wrath. Through whom there is now no condemnation.

The perfect authority of Christ. If I could submit to it actively, rather than just passively. If only I could question, every moment, the actions and motions of my heart and hands and inquire of my perfect ruler whether they be good or not. I was thinking of this today as I was reading from Isaiah, chapter 9. Most specifically verse 6:

 “For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called…”

This prophecy concerning the coming of Christ has always kind of perplexed me. For one, I’m not sure that I know of any “government” that rests on Christ’s shoulders at least not in any kind of really overt sense. I mean, I suppose that if the authority on earth is chosen by God, then that would certainly include our various governments as well and in that sense the government would rest on his shoulders. But that doesn’t really seem to speak clearly enough; earthly authority has always been selected by God, even before Christ’s incarnation. It just makes this prophecy seem somewhat erroneous if that’s all it’s talking about.

I also considered the government of the church; the Catholic Church, the various denominations of protestant churches, the just very basic structural hierarchy of non-denominational church leaders. That seems to make sense also, but it just seems too plastic. What about false prophets who wield authority within the church, what about the places and times when the church has clearly not leaned on or built itself upon Christ’s shoulders (i.e., the crusades)? I mean, certainly in some sense, authority in the church must be passed down by God, but what does it mean for the “government” of the church to be on his shoulder?

I think on some level these things are all true; authority in the world and in the church comes from Christ. But I think John Gill said it well when writing of the government of Christ:

“not only of the world in general, but of the church in particular; this child is born to royal dignity; he is King of saints; his government consists in ruling in the hearts of his people, in enacting laws for them, and causing them to submit unto them, in subduing their enemies, in protecting them, their persons and properties, rights and liberties, and in supplying them with everything necessary; and this government is delegated to him from his Father, is devolved upon him by him, is not of this world, but is spiritual; it is righteously administered, is peaceable, and will continue for ever…”

Christ is the ruler of our hearts specifically. The government rests on his shoulders in our hearts. We are to purpose first and foremost to Him and his ruling; and actively. Every moment, choosing to submit to Him and what He will say we ought to do or make mention.