Some things are accepted so long among the children of God, that they go without a thought as to their beginnings. If something is believed a long time, does that make it the truth? Of course not.
One thing those hearing from God must always do, is to remain open to the truth that what they currently believe MAY be wrong. What about it my friend? Are you so closed that if a man were to show you something contrary to what you've always believed, that you would reject it just because "that's what you've always believed"? Believing something because we have always believed it, is one of the most dangerous places to find ourselves.
With that thought in mind - let us look at a belief that is so closely held by God's children, that it is nearly impossible for them to consider something different. Only those who are truly seeking God can even take it in. And that is, "does the Bible call itself the word of God"? Is the holy Bible that you read so often actually God's word? Do the Scriptures ever refer to themselves as the "word of God"?
Some titles given the "Word of God" (but not given to the "Scriptures") can be found as follows:
The word of God's grace. . . Acts 14:3; 20:32.
The word of faith. . . . . . . . . . Rom.10:8.
The word of reconciliation.. . . . .2Cor.5:19.
The word of truth. . . . . 2Cor.6:7; Jas.1:18.
The word of life.. . . . . . . . . . .1Jn.1:1.
The word of Christ.. . . . . . . . . Col.3:16.
The faithful word. . . . . . . . . . .Tit.1:9.
The word of righteousness. . . . . . Heb.5:13.
The word of the oath.. . . . . . . . Heb.7:28.
The word of exhortation. . . . . . .Heb.13:22.
The word of prophecy.. . . . . . . .2Pet.1:19.
The word of my patience. . . . . . . Rev.3:10.
The Word came to Abram SAYING. . . . . . . Gen 15:1, 4
The Word came to Samuel SAYING.. . . . . . . 1Sam.15:10
The Word came to Nathan SAYING.. 2Sam.7:4; 1Chron.17:3
The Word came to Gad SAYING. . . . . . . . . 2Sam.24:11
The Word came to Solomon SAYING. . . . . . . 1Kgs.6:11
The Word came to Shemaiah SAYING.. . . 1Kgs.12:22; 12:7
The Word came to the unnamed prophet SAYING. 1Kgs.13:9,17
The Word came to Jehu, the prophet, SAYING.. 1Kgs.16:1
The Word came to Elijah SAYING.. 1Kgs.17:2; 18:1; 19:9;
The Word came to Jacob SAYING. . . . . . . . 1Kgs.18:31
The Word came to Isaiah SAYING.. . . . . . . 2Kgs.20:4
The Word came to David SAYING. . . . . . . 1Chron.22:8
The Word came to Jeremiah SAYING. Jer.1:2-4,11,13, etc.
The Word came to Ezekiel SAYING. . . . . . . Ezek.3:16
The word came to Haggai SAYING.. . . . . . . . Hag.1:1
The Word came to Zechariah SAYING. . . . . . . Zech.1:1
The Word is Not the Bible!
God's Word is what God says. The Lord spoke the Word to Moses (Josh.14:10), as He also spoke the Word to Nathan (2Sam.7:25). In neither case was God quoting the Scriptures, for in both cases it was entirely new information being given from God to those men; still, it was the Word which was being spoken. The Word was spoken concerning God's curse on Eli's house (1Kgs.2:27). And again, this Word was not a repeat of formerly written material. It was new information out of the mouth of God. Although the Lord commanded Joshua to read the Scriptures, Joshua obeyed the Word of God by doing what God told him to do, not by reading a Scripture and claiming that it applied to him (Josh.8:2, 27). When the unnamed prophet of 1Kings 13 spoke the Word of God to King Jeroboam, he too was repeating what God had told him, not what he had read. There was, in fact, nothing he could have read that would have given him this Word. So it is with every man of God who spoke the Word of the Lord. In every case they spoke what they had heard from God, new information which was needed in the situation that existed. Ahijah (1Kgs.14:18; 2Chron.10:15), Jehu, the prophet (1Kgs.16:12), Joshua (1Kgs.16:34), Elijah (2Kgs.1:17; 2Kgs.9:36), Jonah (2Kgs.14:25), the young prophet who spoke to Jehu (2Kgs.15:12), Isaiah (Isa.16:13), Jeremiah (2Chron.36:21-22; Ezr.1:1), and all God's true prophets (2Kgs.24:2; Jer.18:18) spoke what they heard from God, not what they read out of the Bible!
The false prophets of Jeremiah's day could quote Isaiah's ancient Word from God, that He would defend Jerusalem for David's sake. But Jeremiah and the few other faithful prophets living then had a new Word: God now would destroy Jerusalem, the city He had promised to defend. Their new and living Word was rejected, and the old Word which applied to Isaiah's generation was clung to instead - to the destruction of the nation.
Jesus spoke the Word, and even though he occasionally quoted from the Law and prophets, anyone would have to admit that the Word he spoke was new to mankind (cp. Mt.5:21-22, 27-28, etc; Jn.13:34), because he was preaching his Father's Word, not his own (Jn.8:26). And anyone was blessed who believed that new Word from God which Jesus brought (Lk.7:7; Jn.4:50; 17:6; Acts 13:48). God's elect, too, is to speak the Word (Acts 4:29, 31; 1Thess. 1:8) as Paul and Silas did (Acts 16: 32), but we can only speak the Word if God allows us to hear it. Those whom God honors by communicating with them are, by the mere act of receiving God's Word, set apart and given authority in God's called out assembly (1Tim.5:17; Heb.13:7). Yet it is obvious that not everyone who owns a Bible has such authority. One may own a Bible without having the Word of God.
God's Word is a spoken thing. It is not a dead letter. It is something that is spoken by God to man and, then, the content of that Word is delivered by those men to other men, either orally or in writing. But the letter that is written or the message that is spoken by those men is not the Word of God; rather, those communications are testimonies to the Word which had been received. The Word came to the prophets, and they spoke or wrote the messages that they had heard from God. The words which men heard from those prophets was the prophets' declaration of the Word of God, their testimony to what they had experienced from God. The prophets received the Word of God, and the people were called upon to believe that God had actually spoken to those holy men. Paul did not read from the Scriptures to the Philippian jailer when he preached to him and to his household the Word of God. He had heard from God, was communicating to the jailer what he had heard from God, and the jailer was being called upon by Paul to believe that God had actually spoken to him, that what he was preaching was a true witness of a divine communication. When Paul wrote to the elect concerning the return of Jesus that "This we say unto you by the word of the Lord", he did not mean that he had read in the Bible that Jesus was coming again. He meant that God had revealed to him the truth of the second coming of our Lord and that he was relaying that truth to them. That was the Word of the Lord because that is what the Lord told Paul. When Philip took the Word of God to the Samaritans and they received it (Acts 8:14), it was a joyful event, but what sensible person could possibly believe that Philip was passing out Bibles in Samaria. Taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that the Bible is the Word of God must lead one to draw some very strange conclusions, the end result being that men will trust in their Bibles (which will kill, for "the letter killeth"), instead of the Spirit of God (which gives life, "for the Spirit is life" [IICor. 3:6]).
The Word of God is alive, will live forever, and is far sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating the souls of men, not their bodies, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb.4:12; 1Pet.1:23, 25). The Word is always a thing to be preached, not read (Mk.2:2; Acts 8:4, 25; 10:36; 11:19; Tit.1:3, etc.)! To "preach the Bible", as some boast of doing, is nothing. Satan quoted Scripture to entrap Jesus. He had to quote the Scriptures, for he had no Word of God for Jesus. But ministers of God are called "ministers of the word" (Lk.1:2), and preaching is called the "ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4), because "He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God" (Jn.3:34). The man sent from God is not confined to the Words which other men have heard from God.
Do not they who esteem the Bible to be the Word of God, and say that it is infallible, understand that the Word of God can be corrupted (2Cor.2:17; 4:2)? It can be corrupted because they who have received communication from God can be influenced by money, fear of men, or other considerations, to communicate the Word incompletely or with respect of persons (1Kgs.22:13; 2Chron.18:12; Jer.23:28; 26:2). Faithful delivery of the Word can be hindered by religious traditions of men (Mk.7:13; 2Thess.3:1), and it is by those who teach that the Bible is the Word of God that the true Word of God is most frequently contradicted when it is revealed.
The notion that the Bible is the Word of God is a "slow-eating cancer". I say this because the effects of such a belief are to slowly dull the ear of man's heart to the true and living Word of God. It slowly but inexorably diminishes the role of the living God in the decisions that men make, because it has the effect of sending them to the Scriptures for guidance rather than to their knees, in faith communing with God. In time, such wrong thinking diminishes the fear of God in the human heart, dulls one's awareness that God is intimately concerned and involved in our lives, and diminishes the zeal for holiness that nothing but personal communion with the living God can produce. To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to say that the Bible was in the beginning with God and is God. And to do that it is to make an idol of what is only a tool of righteousness, a record written by holy men as testimony of the Word of God which came to them.
The Scriptures are not themselves the Word of God, and they can only be rightly understood by the person who has himself heard from God. God still speaks. He has spoken to me. And the Word of God which came to me opened my eyes to the meaning of the Scriptures. To understand the Bible requires the same revelation and anointing which was required to write it. Only He who inspired the writing of the Scriptures can possibly inspire a man to interpret them correctly. In comparison to the Word of the living God, the Bible is a dead letter which kills every soul which looks to it for life (2Cor.3:6).
Despite the reverence for God which appears to attend the somber declaration that the Bible is "the infallible Word of God", that declaration sprouts from the envious heart of Satan, who would rather glory in the works of men - even the Bible, the written work of righteous men - than to glory in the living power of God. It is Satan who inspired that unknown minister who first proclaimed the Bible to be God's Word. His evil purpose was to discourage fervent prayer, and to discourage men from expecting answers from God Himself; that is, to "read the Word" rather than humbly to prepare their hearts to receive it. That the Bible is the very Word of God is a wickedly cunning lie, the effects of which are discouragement, confusion, and death, even if its proponents boast of devotion to Christ and an ever closer walk with God - through the Scriptures, of course, rather than through experience with the power of God's Spirit. The Word of God is what God is saying this moment, not what He said two thousand years ago, or even what He said yesterday.
The Bible never claims for itself the lofty title of "Word of God"; yet, strangely, multiplied thousands insist that the Word of God is what the Bible is. Living fellowship with the living God can never be attained by merely reading the Bible. There must be a communication, a Word, from God to man in order for fellowship to exist. What Satan has accomplished is to have persuaded many of us to think that we have heard from God just because we have read the Bible. This persuasion robs us of our zeal for fervent prayer and devotion, the means of really obtaining a Word from the Lord. And if Satan thought he could convince some of us that there is no longer such a thing as God speaking to man, don't you think that He would try to do it? Not only has he tried, but he has in great measure succeeded, so that many thousands now regard any man's testimony of hearing directly from God as heresy. But though many more than this be persuaded to deny the reality of God's Word being heard today, the Word of God will still prevail, and all who hear and obey His Word are destined to prevail with it.
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