Let's make a step forward from the basic considerations we laid down about any word from God, a couple of posts ago. I'll take this as established:
- There is no such thing as a word from God that is erroneous. If a word affirms error, it is not God who is speaking (Num. 23:19; Jn. 17:17; Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6: 18).
- There is no such thing as a word from God that is not absolutely morally-binding (Deut. 18:19; Jn. 15:22). This absolute obligation is all-encompassing: if God tells us to act or refrain from acting, we must comply; if God tells us to think or believe, we must agree. I sin equally if I fail to love my wife (Eph. 5:25), and if I fail to refrain from committing adultery (Rom. 13:9) — but I also sin if I do not believe that Christ is God (Jn. 1:1) and that He became flesh (v. 14).
But I'd like to stir your pure minds to thought in another direction. Take a hypothetical — oh boy, I wish it were hypothetical. But let's put it as one.
HYPOTHETICAL: Brother X says that God "told" or "has called" him to do Y, which is not in any way directly stated or contained in Scripture.
Now here are my questions, and I really would urge you to think hard about this. Picture me looking you straight in the eye, requiring that you lock gazes with me as I say very intently: it is failure to think through the implications of such claims that accounts for a great deal of sloppiness and error in the professing church today.
- What absolute and immediate obligation does that put on every person who hears that assertion?
- What must the consequences be for church discipline?
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Just to say to Gen. Soren: all your comment proves is what I think we already knew. Even if you have the best teacher (which I'm not) and the best textbook (which this isn't), if you stop your ears and close your eyes, you won't learn anything.
Otherwise, what you would have learned is:
1. Any claim to a word from God is necessarily a claim to something that is inerrant and morally-binding.
2. Any such claim puts an instant and universal moral obligation on anyone who hears of it.
3. Such a claim should always attract the attention of church leadership, for instruction or possibly discipline.
And, if you'd read the blog well, you'd long-since have learned what prayer is and isn't. If the Bible (and not tradition or religious ether) is your authority on this, it's really not rocket-science.
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