Modern Prophets ...

How do you sort out the nuts?  In the last days your young men will dream dreams, and your old men will prophesy.  Scripture foretells that the supernatural will increase before the Lord returns.  Many believe that a “latter rain” will fall before time ends, where the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will combat the forces of Satan in attempt to turn the hearts of men to the true God.  All of these beliefs predict that there will be forces of the supernatural at work in our world, both for good, and for evil.  Even using the Bible as the basis for truth, there are those who claim the Bible and yet still prophesy of things and events that seem bent on destruction or greed.  So how do you sort out those who are “touched” by God from those who are simply “touched”?

Scripture gives us several criterion to use when evaluating the counsel of those who believe they commune with something larger than themselves.  First … “to the law, and to the testimonies, if they speak not according to these, there is no light in them.”  Those who would claim that a divine Spirit has revealed truth outside of the Bible, or to disregard scripture in favor of the supernatural, are in error.  God does not contradict Himself.  God could not logically claim to be both the inspiration and protector of the Bible, and also claim that He has revealed the “real” truth only to another individual.  The logical exclusion would prevent Him from being God.  This is not about how one interprets scriptures, this is about disregarding them entirely.  Those who would reject the Bible in favor of the supernatural forsake truth and follow only the ways of deceit.  Their conclusions can only be based in error and we should take care to disregard them accordingly.

Scripture also declare who God is; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Those who would claim parity or equality with God, or would claim that the “true” Messiah is themselves, are also in error.  It is rumored that Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Reverend Moon all claimed parity with God or Christ.  It is possible these claims are exaggerations of the media; however all seem to demand total servitude in order that enlightenment be achieved.  Christ Himself stated false Christ’s would appear in the deserts or in the secret places.  He warned us to avoid them, as when He returns every eye would see Him.  Those charismatic individuals who take their spiritual zeal and morph it into cult like allegiance do themselves and their followers a disservice.  Though He worked many miracles beyond explanation during His ministry, Christ always pointed His followers to His Father.  He was a constant servant, not looking to be served, but to serve others in all things.  Most of the spiritual guru’s of today are all too happy to garner attention and devotion, pointing to no other but themselves as the way of salvation.  In this they blaspheme the ministry of Christ, and point out the error in their teachings.

Scripture tells us to examine their “works” or their “fruits” to see what they yield.  If the results of their counsel increases love, peace, hope, faith, and service to others – it is far more likely to be from God, than if it results in greed, ambition, fame, or destruction.  God does not spend His supernatural energies in the destruction of mankind, but rather in its salvation.  The devil predicts doom and destruction.  The Lord always predicts a way of escape with any impending doom.  Noah preached for 120 years before the flood.  Sodom and Gomorrah were visited in person before their destruction, and Lot was spared.  Israel was warned repeatedly that destruction would follow disobedience, these warnings reached fulfillment when they forsook following God in favor of temple orgies and casting male babies into the fires of Moloch.  At that point invasion always followed until repentance was sought.  When a “prophet” preaches only of doom, and never of salvation, their inspiration is from the one who deals only in doom and never in salvation.

Scripture also tells us … “that God is no respecter of persons”.  This means while we tend to make distinctions between ourselves, God sees us all as His children; each of equal value and equal importance.  We make false distinctions between rich and poor, male and female, young and old, royal and common.  God sees none of these.  He has used Samuel at age 7, and Christ and age 12.  He has used Noah at age 400, and Abraham at 100.  He has used Miriam to prophesy along with her brothers Moses and Aaron.  He revealed His plans for the world to Pharaoh, and to Nebuchadnezzar despite that neither of these people were servants of the Most High.  Servants of God have only humility in common.  They have only willingness to serve in common.  They come from every walk of life, from every background; from the Messiah born in a stable, to Solomon born to a King; from a slave girl called Miriam, to a Hebrew raised in Egyptian royalty.  Truly the Lord does not draw the distinctions that so often prejudice our willingness to listen.  We prefer to listen to Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, than to listen to the six year old in Kindergarten, or the homeless man on the corner.

Scripture also gives us countless examples of the imperfections of our Lord’s servants.  None of the Biblical authors were perfect, or led perfect lives.  Christ alone was without blemish.  God does not demand or expect perfection from those who speak His truths.  Instead He asks for willingness to serve and humility to speak His truths and not our own.  Often the messages are unpopular and put the very lives and wellbeing of His servants in jeopardy.  He does not make them speak unpopular truths for the sake of being different or unpopular, but only to reveal error, and redeem unto salvation.  Elijah’s prophecies of drought for 3 years made him public enemy number one to the wicked king Ahab.  But it was not the Lord’s intent to simply stop the rain, but rather to turn the hearts of the people back to the source of all blessings.  Daniels interpretations of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams that foretold the end of his kingdom no matter how glorious did not sit well with the monarch, who sent him away and built a 90 foot statue of solid gold in defiance of the words of God.  Joseph’s interpretation of Pharoah’s dreams of feast and famine could well have resulted in his head on a pike, particularly since he would not bow to the “son of Ra” on earth.  But all spoke in an effort to save, despite their own character flaws, sins, and imperfections.  We must learn from the Bible to separate the truth of the message from the expectation of perfection in the instrument of delivery.

Our tendency when presented with truths from God that we do not relish is to find a way to disregard them.  In this we are no different than any of the kings, or peoples of the past, that also tried to find a way to ignore unpopular truths.  We tend to focus first on the person delivering the message.  Can we criticize them for some sort of hypocrisy?  Can we catch them in public sin?  Is there something in their past we can use against them, claiming perhaps it is still a part of their present.  We may not like their age, their gender, their socio-economic standing, their lack of education, their sexual preference – any imperfection we can find to use to disregard the message they are willing to bring.  But to eliminate all messages that do not come from people who we believe are imperfect, is to eliminate all truth and scripture itself.  God has only sinners available to Him to speak His truths.  There are none of us perfect instruments for him to use.  We are ALL broken and dysfunctional.

It is a testament to the love and grace of God, that He uses us in His service in spite of our weaknesses and failures.  Out of the mouth of a murderer came the blessed words of the Torah.  Out of the mouth of an adulterer, serial womanizer, and murderer came the Psalms of praise to our God.  Out of the mouth of a man controlled by his baser sexual passions came the wisest proverbs ever penned by man.  Out of the mouth of a traiter who betrayed his nation for the sake of greed came the account of the gospel of Christ.  Out of the mouth of a religious zealot who used his zeal to kill those who followed our Savior came the most wonderful letters of the love and salvation of the Christ he used to condemn.  Out God is able to use imperfect people to work wonders that live well beyond the scope of their lives.  How many have read the letters of Paul and come to know the Christ of our salvation in the perfect love he describes for the last 2000+ years?  How many have read the words of Moses in the Torah and have learned of the great miracles of salvation God did for His people even before the Messiah entered the world?  How many have read David and Solomon and learned wisdom in the study of our God?  All these men are long dead, but their work of redemption lives on.

One should not disregard truth because it is misused by others.  People seeking greed and control over others have long used the Bible in an effort to gain control over the lives of those they wish to dominate.  It does not make the Bible less true, because someone misuses it.  It only means the devil seeks to exert control by misusing the very love letter God penned to the world to show them redemption.  A young woman named Ellen White has also been misused by those within the Seventh Day Adventist church as a tool of condemnation rather than a tool of redemption.  Counsel given to provide context, or to avoid pain, has been turned into ruthless condemnation by those seeking only to exalt themselves above others.  They do not use her works to redeem only to beat into submission those with opposing ideas, generally when those ideas are steeped in love and liberality.  It makes her counsel of no less value, it is only a repeat of how the devil attacks anything that might lead man to redemption or discovery of the one true God.  The devil seeks to turn words of love and hope into a tools of condemnation  and reproach.  It is an old technique that he will continue to use.  But it does not diminish the truth of the love of God as revealed by His servants willing to serve.

Atheists demand prove they will never choose to accept.  Yet scripture foretells that the incidents of the supernatural are to increase as time grows short.  Things that cannot be explained in normal or scientific terms are destined to become more prevalent in our world.  Perhaps God waits for a people who will not seek the fame of these miracles, but like Christ seek to steadfastly avoid it.  But in any case as time grows short, the nut-balls will be crawling out of the woodwork.  The devil will counter truth with a plethora of mixed lies, and alternate explanations.  He will try to drown the truth in the noise of the day, supplanting the plain truth of God, with the convoluted lies that feed the egos of men.  His attacks will be relentless, but God will not have his truth or His words drowned out.  The world is destined to hear the final warnings and calls to redemption.  God would not have us ignorant of His plans or His love.  Miracles will happen.  They will occur on a wider and wider scale.  Let us be judicious in sorting the nuts, but also humble to accept truth without demanding perfection in the person who delivers it.  Let us not let our prejudices deny our ears.  But rather let us absorb His truths and integrate them into our lives, as we did with Moses, David, Matthew, and Paul.  There is much God may yet have to say to our world as its time grows short.

A Basis For Truth ...

Logic dictates a few truths about the nature of a Supreme Being we call God. Evil self-destructs over time, so a true God must only contain what we call good, no evil of any kind. As we can see that both evil and good exist in our world, something must have gone wrong with the plans of God. A God of love could not demand our affections but only ask for them. A God of love must somehow let us know what is going with Himself and with evil in order for us to make an informed choice of whether to love Him or not. Obviously someone chose not to love Him as evil now exists.

The question for us is where to go to find this communication from God to us regarding the state of things. In the beginning of our world, when man used 100% of his brain instead of the meager percentage we use now, God spoke directly with mankind. He walked with Adam and Eve in the perfection of the Garden of Eden in the evenings together. Adam and Eve passed their knowledge of God down orally to their children, and children’s children. Even Noah lived for 400 years after the flood. But in the years that followed, man’s life expectancy was greatly reduced, and his knowledge of God began to fade from the earth until Abraham. Abraham began a quest to find God once again, and God heard his pleas. God spoke directly with Abraham, and even visited him a few times in person in the guise of a traveler.

Abraham was blessed of God and began passing his information on God down through his genealogy who also had a few personal experiences with God (Jacob wrestling with the Angel, and dreaming of the ladder to heaven; Joseph interpreting dreams to pharaoh, etc.). But over the years the children of Israel became slaves in the land of Egypt, and began losing sight of God once again. Moses came and restored the reality of God in the eyes, minds, and hearts of the people once again. Moses in the time He spent with God in the mountains of Sinai began writing the first few “books” of the Bible, originally called the Torah. This was the first written manuscript of communication between God and man. It was written by Moses but inspired by God. The man was not perfect, but the communication would have to be, or the message of God would not come cleanly to His people and we would be misled. We cannot make an informed decision to love someone, based on half-truths, innuendo, or outright lies and misrepresentations. Therefore Logic again dictates that God must be accurate in His communication with us, or the point of communicating itself would be lost.

Over the next few centuries as the history of God’s originally chosen people would unfold. Leaders, Prophets, Judges, Priests, Kings, and humble servants would arise and chronicle the interactions of God with His people. Their hope was founded in the original promises of God to Adam and Eve, that a Messiah would come. The Messiah would take away the sins of the people, redeem them to God, and be our deliverer. Many prophesied about the details a Messiah would fulfill in His lifetime. But by the time of his predicted appearing the children of Israel had so degraded their view of God, that they wished only for a deliverer from the bondage of Rome. They had lost sight of the greater mission of the promised Messiah, to redeem them to God. So when Christ appeared on the scene, the religious leaders of the day thought only to maintain their power and control over the masses, and rejected the cornerstone of their faith.

After the ascension of our Lord to heaven, His disciples began once again chronicling the interactions of our God with His people, as well as His extension of Salvation to ALL men, not just those of Israel. Many new books were written, generally carrying the name of the Author, again inspired by the Holy Spirit but written by men. In roughly 325 AD the council of Nicaea under Roman emperor Constantine, sifted through the manuscripts of the day, sorting out the historical from the sacred and compiling what is now known as our Bible. Our Bible is then a collection of smaller books, written by authors from time of Moses until the time of the disciples, last of which was John the Revelator who penned the last book from the Isle of Patmos.

There were always books that claimed divine inspiration but for one reason or another were not included in the 66 volumes that now comprise our Bible. Might we have lost something important in the collecting process? Possibly. But remember the point of communication from God is to allow us to make an informed decision about whether to love Him or not. If what we were missing were critical enough to affect that decision, our decisions would be moot. Therefore Logic dictates that the information included in the Bible must be accurate and complete enough to make our informed decisions. And so we now use the Bible as our basis of truth. We compare new communication with the messages we read within it to determine the validity of the new information. If it builds upon what we know, we tend to be accepting, if it destroys what is written, we tend to reject it.

Logic dictates other less positive news for us as well. The presence of evil in our world creates a virtual guarantee that despite its final outcome in loss, it will nonetheless war with fervor against all that is good. One of the most effective ways of countering the influence of good in the world is to develop alternative ideas to it. People will not choose pain if the alternate choice of joy is available. But people may become confused if there are several choices available which all claim to result in joy, when in fact only one does. And so comes the invention of counterfeits, items that resemble the original, but are lacking in the quality or content of the original masterwork. In the spiritual world, this required counterfeiting the mission of our Messiah. Horace was introduced in Egyptian religions with many of the same characteristics we were to expect in our Messiah. But Horace does not meet all the requirements and so the counterfeit is revealed. Still, just the existence of a single counterfeit is enough to destroy the faith of many in what is real.

So where Good offers us the volume of the Bible, Evil must also present some alternatives to keep us confused. Enter all the other competitor books claiming divine inspiration for their origin, but all have one single element in common; they each and every one – undo principle teachings of the Bible. The Quran may be the most insidious. This is because outright lies are easier to detect, and dispute. But lies mixed with half-truths are much harder to ferret out and reveal the distinctions that cause the errors they produce. The Islamic faith traces back its God to the same God of Abraham. The Quran accepts many of the Biblical patriarchs as “prophets” of God, including Christ. So by not denying Him outright, the Quran attempts to reduce His role in our Salvation, denying His divinity. But the end result of this teaching winds up with the same religious basis of every other counterfeit religious system – the idea that man can save himself and achieve perfection by sheer will and the actions he performs.

Evil must attack the key principles of our Salvation in order to defeat it. Evil first attacks the idea that we even need to be “saved”. Evil markets evil to us as fun, excitement, and the only reason for living – why would anyone want to be saved from that? Next, for those who see through the illusions that evil presents in its marketing, evil suggests that if you do need to be saved, you can do it yourself. This idea of self-reliance, and focus on self, is the base principle for all that is evil in the first place. Keeping self at the center of our religion, defeats Christ’s ability to offer us real change. If we believe we can in effect, save ourselves, we do not need a Savior, and therefore are excellent candidates for religions systems such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or even New Agers. Then for those who see through this illusion of self-based salvation, evil offers competing Saviors. Enter the dynamic cult figures such as Jim Jones or David Koresh; men who use the Bible to mislead sheep into following them hook, line, and sinker. Though the numbers are smaller, the principle of counterfeiting what God offers is an effective strategy against the good our God offers.

Next, in order to muddy the water further, evil introduces external written manuscripts as having equal weight with what is found in existing scripture. The gospel of Judas was recently discovered in Palestine, and as such it is immediately offered equal weight with any other gospel by those who do not believe in the scriptures anyway. The same phenomenon happens with the gospel of Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of Christ. There is no way to verify the authors are who they claim to be, in addition, like always, these “gospels” disagree with the truths we know from the real Bible. But it is not just with old texts that falsehood arises, ideas like those of Joseph Smith and the Mormon faith arise. More modern texts have arrived that offer alternative ideas to those of the original scriptures.

And this entire conversation to this point has only dealt with the written forms of communication between God and us. There is an entirely different method that He sometimes, albeit rarely employs, that is face to face communication through prophecy, dreams, and real world encounter. Many claim to have heard from God directly, and most then usually begin by telling us how scripture is mistaken. That of course is the first clue the source of their supernatural experience is probably NOT of God. Truth as we have discussed can deepen, but not be overturned in its fundamental form. I make a distinction between the doctrines we may cling to that are supposed to be ideas that help us understand some characteristic about God, and the idea that our God exists, and is who He says He is. The latter is fundamental and cannot be undone, the former is more subjective and may in fact completely change as our knowledge of truth deepens. The idea that you can save yourself is a fundamental lie that cannot be altered, while the process for how Christ removes sin from you is up for much further discussion.

We should be open to finding more meaning in the scriptures we read than just what meets the eye. For example there are those that suggest the story of the flood is not literal, but only an allegory about the eventual destruction of evil in our world. This is one of those deceptive half-truths. The story is an excellent allegory, and could be used to teach us real world lessons for life right now. But it remains also a literal story of the history of God’s interaction with us. Where prophecy is concerned often there is more than one meaning that could be applied. Perhaps this is just another deepening of truth rather than discarding of it. Perhaps we should apply multiple meanings and see where each leads. As discussed before the most effective part of the process of studying truth begins with submitting the will, the ideas, and the dreams of the student to the Master – Christ.

Logic allows us a degree of certainty that our Bible is accurate, literal, inspired of God, preserved by Him over the years, and given to us as a gift to discern truth from error. Without this fundamental tool we would not have a basis to make an informed decision regarding the character of God who offers us unconditional love and hopes to see it returned. We can safely place our faith in both our God and His written word to us, and safely ignore what we come across that lies in conflict with what we know to be true. While it is good to evolve doctrines, and deepen truth, it will not ever change the fact that Christ is our Lord, Son of the living God, and Savior. Our Bible established this fact, and our lives will affirm it when lived in submission to Him.