In the course of the current apostasy certain congregations that still refer to themselves as churches of Christ no longer “call Bible things by Bible names.” In some places a mongrel spiritual race has developed, and “half of their children” are now speaking “the language of Ashdod.” Some have developed vocabularies that now include words and phrases such as our spiritual heritage, personal witness, and even religious ordinances, a word frequently defined as “a rite.” It would not be surprising to see some referred to as Rev. Lucado and Pastor Shelly (just as there is already a “Pastor Mayeux”).
The latest denominational error embraced by churches who have lost their Biblical moorings and are aimlessly adrift is the Calvinistic notion that the Holy Spirit is personally and directly guiding and leading us. This false doctrine goes beyond the Scriptural notion that God guides and directs us by His Word and through His providence (Pr. 3:5-6); the leaders of this error would have us believe that the Holy Spirit speaks to us apart from the Word, though not in opposition to the Word.
Some churches (of Christ) are now using in some of their classes a book called Experiencing God: How To Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God. The primary author is Henry T. Blackaby, who on the back of the book jacket is described as “one of the foremost revival leaders of our time.” Claude King (not the one who sang “Wolverton Mountain”) writes the “Preface” and apparently assisted in expressing the teachings presented therein. He states: “Henry and I wanted the study to help people experience God, not just learn about Him” (xii).
That one statement should forewarn the reader that the contents of this book are designed to promote subjective and experiential religion. But some brethren are so far removed from a knowledge of the Word that they no longer see the red flags signaling danger ahead. This book makes no pretense of doing anything else than what the statement in the “Preface” suggests, and they steadfastly pursue this goal. Consider the following assertions made in the “Introduction”:
He [God, gws] wants you to experience an intimate love relationship with Him that is real and personal (1).
Knowing God does not come through a program, a study, or a method. Knowing God comes through a relationship with a Person (2).
…spiritual matters can only be understood by those who have the indwelling Spirit of Christ (2).
Ask God to speak to you as you read the following Scriptures (2).
To interact with God, take time as you read to pause and pray, asking God to speak to you, to guide you, or to reveal to you His desires for your response (5).
The Holy Spirit at work in you will confirm in your own heart the truth of Scripture (5).
The emphasis on one’s own experience (presumably supplied by the Holy Spirit) is unmistakable. Notice that God is expected to be “personal” with His child: He is said to “speak,” “interact,” and “confirm” truth in us.
Although the author claims: “The Scriptures will be your source of authority for faith and practice” (6), he nevertheless moves the reader as far away from the Word as He can by affirming that the Spirit will speak and interpret what the Scripture says to him in a personal and direct way. When a person starts listening for the voice of God to speak to him, what is he going to hear, besides his own thoughts? The fact that the author keeps being questioned by those he teaches about this “knowledge” should have indicated to him the difficulty of what he suggests.
His answer involves the following points, assuming that a person has a loving relationship with God (69, 138) and is seeking to do His will, which the author says he gleaned from observing what happened to God’s saints in the Scriptures:
1. When God spoke, they knew it was God. 2. They knew what God was saying. 3. They knew what they were to do in response (50).
Most of the book consists of chapters that will elaborate the following paragraph:
In our day, God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. He uses the Bible, prayer, circumstance, and the church (other believers). No one of these methods of God’s speaking is by itself a clear indicator of God’s directions. But when God says the same thing through each of these ways, you can have confidence to proceed (56).
A thoughtful reader might ask, “Why does God need to reveal something in five different ways for it to be valid? Would not one method be sufficient? And what if two of these means of revelation indicate one thing and three point the opposite direction?”
But the author has much more to say on this subject. He affirms, as most Pentecostals and charismatics believe, that God must speak today–or else He has changed. “Has God changed? No!” (95). He also avers:
We live as if God quit speaking personally to His people. We fail to realize that an encounter with the Holy Spirit is an encounter with God. God clearly spoke to His people in Acts. He clearly speaks to us today. From Acts to the present, God has been speaking to His people by the Holy Spirit (136).
Does God really speak to people in our day? Yes!…God has not changed (136-37).
Does the fact that God has spoken to some at various times in the history of the world prove that He always has and always will? For 13 years He did not speak to Jacob and tell him that Joseph was still alive. There was no prophet in Israel for 400 years. Apparently, the author does not realize that if God still speaks, then we have new Scriptures today. If not, why not?
What, then, happens when people become convinced that God is speaking to them continually? They become confused because they “hear” contradictory thoughts within their heads and do not know what to make of them (which the author acknowledges).
Frequently, I am asked, “How can I know whether the word I receive is from God, my own selfish desires, or Satan?” (150).
I suggest that you know the ways of God so thoroughly that if something doesn’t measure up to God’s ways, turn away from it (151).
As you walk in an intimate love relationship with God, you will come to recognize His voice. You will know when God is speaking to you (163).
Despite all these reassurances, most people will still have no clue as to which of their thoughts allegedly come from God; therefore, they will assume that if the thought is not a negative or immoral one, it must be God speaking to them. G. K. Wallace was accosted by a man as he was walking down the street of a city. “Are you a Christian?” the man asked. He affirmed that he was and that he was in that location to preach the gospel. The man seemed surprised, “Oh. The Holy Spirit told me to ask if you if you were a Christian.” Brother Wallace said, “The Holy Spirit knows that I belong to God; it must be some other spirit that spoke to you.” Such is the problem with those who “listen to God.” They imagine that their every righteous or neutral thought (one that does not deal with morality but is primarily a hunch) is God speaking to them.
Super-Spirituality
This kind of thinking often gives rise to the view that some people are much more spiritual than others. After all, God singles them out because they have this “intimate love relationship” with Him. Notice some of the rationale presented in the book:
I seek the will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them (112).
This certainly sounds safe–on the surface. There seems to be respect for the Word of God, but the door has been opened to subjectivity; despite the affirmation of adhering to the Word, notice what this kind of thinking produces:
Have you ever been reading the Bible when suddenly you are gripped by a fresh new understanding of the passage? That was God speaking! (164).
I have found that as I pray about a particular matter, the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and applies it to my heart and my mind to reveal the truth. I immediately stop my praying and open the Word of God I believe the Spirit of God brought to my mind (175).
I started to read on, but I sensed that the Spirit of God said, “Henry, did you see that?” I went back and began to meditate on that Scripture. Under the guiding, teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, I began to see a wonderful truth (178).
The kind of thinking expressed above could lead one to arrogance or madness (or the author of a bestselling book). As an example of the arrogance produced by this position, we note that in the accompanying Workbook, the author mentions how he prays for college students (which itself is not unusual). But he reports that he told one. “I want you to know that God has laid it on my heart that I need to pray for a husband for you.” She replied, “Are you serious?” (58). Of course he was. God not only tells him what Scriptures to study for himself; He also tells him who needs a husband. [Actually, this is no great mystery, since women usually need husbands, just as men need wives.]
Someone might be thinking, “Well, how do YOU know that God does not continually talk with this man?” If God were speaking regularly to this man, he would have had him take a look at Acts 2:38 and other passages that include baptism as part of His plan for saving man. As the reader might expect, this book contains a number of “testimonials”; three of these are striking.
As he illustrates faith and having confidence in God (which is well worth emphasizing), he cites a community in which he met with several parents at the conclusion of a Vacation Bible School and stated his intention of starting a Baptist Church there.
From the back of the hall came a lady. She was weeping. She said, “I have prayed for thirty years that there would be a Baptist church in this town, and you are the first people to respond” (121).
Why did this woman not pray for the church described in the New Testament to be established there? In another testimonial the author speaks of a man who “had been pleading with people to start a Baptist church” in a certain location for 24 years (126-27). They found another group of people in still another town who had been trying “to start a Southern Baptist church” for more than two years (261). How amazing that no one ever said, “We have been praying for a Lutheran Church.” Equally incredible is that the Holy Spirit never said, “Henry, Look more closely at Matthew 16: 18.” For all these years he has never noticed that baptism is part of salvation or that Jesus established only one church over which He is head. God probably has never spoken to him about acceptable worship, either.
CALVINISM
The Holy Spirit has also never revealed to the author that Calvinism is false doctrine. The book is filled with these erroneous ideas, and the author credits the Holy Spirit with virtually everything that happens. First, no one can become interested in God or the Bible; He has to draw that individual to Him. God calls all men; Jesus invites all men to come to Him (Matt. 11:28-30), but in Calvinism God issues a personal call.
You began to experience a love relationship with God where He took the initiative. He began to open your understanding. He drew you to Himself. What did you do? …you would never know that love…if God had not taken the initiative (88).
Furthermore, God has an assignment for each person who belongs to Him:
He calls you to an assignment that you cannot do without Him (58).
As he fills you with His presence, He will guide you to do things (36).
Not only does God take the initiative by pursuing a love relationship with you, but He also initiates the invitation for you to be involved with Him in His work (99).
God always takes the initiative. He does not wait to see what we want to do for Him (110).
We do not even pray on our own, according to the author: “God takes the initiative by causing you to want to pray” (175). Furthermore: “You cannot understand the Word of God unless the Spirit of God teaches you” (143). “Unaided by the Spirit of God, the ways and things of God will be foolishness to us (1 Cor. 2:14) (165). All we need to do to believe this heresy is to forget what Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “…when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:4). Notice that Paul did not say, “The Holy Spirit will interpret my words for you.” Words have meanings that we all understand. The idea that we need some sort of special understanding is just one more indication of the super-spirituality mentality.
The author thinks people need that Divine help because we are totally depraved. “Sin has so affected us (Rom. 3:10-11) that you and I cannot understand the truth of God unless the Holy Spirit of God reveals it” (137). The Holy Spirit reveals the Word; then He must interpret it to us: why does He not also need to interpret the interpretation? Seriously, if someone writes down the correct interpretation of a passage of Scripture that the Holy Spirit has given him, why would not the Holy Spirit need to interpret the written word again, ad infinitum,/I>? What need is there of the Written Word, period, if God needs to interpret it to everyone?
Misinterpretations
The Holy Spirit (had He actually been instructing Mr. Blackaby) would have been remiss in allowing him to misuse Scriptures. Even a novice preaching student is taught the fundamentals of interpretation (such matters as “Who is speaking?” and “Who is being spoken to?”). Yet the author fails to discern that Jesus promised the Comforter to the eleven in John 14-16.
God speaks through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will teach you all things, will call to your memory the things Jesus said, will guide you into all truth, will speak what He hears from the Father, will tell you what is yet to come, and will glorify Christ as He reveals Christ to you (136).
Great! Memorization should be no problem. Whose fault is it if, when we quote Scripture, we get it wrong? Jesus made these promises of inspiration to the eleven, not to the church (John 14:25-26; 16:12-13). One can only wonder how many people have been influenced by this book and think God is speaking to them.
The author says: “Don’t accept what I have to say unless the Holy Spirit confirms it and it is in keeping with the teaching of Scripture” (73-74). Mr. Blackaby, we have examined your teaching in light of the Scriptures, and we find it wanting, not to mention appalling. It does not square with the teachings of the Bible, and if your doctrine were true, you would already know you are in error on every important element of Christianity. But your doctrine is false, and for that reason you preach a false gospel–and are accursed (Gal. 1:8-9). Everyone should abide by the objective Word–not voices that arise from their own thoughts and imaginations.