Deadly Doctrine: Divorcing Spirit & Truth
The following post is from Costi Hinn and Anthony Wood’s forthcoming book, Defining Deception. This particular section is part of a chapter outlining the doctrinal errors of popular mystical-miracle movements today…
Joel Beeke, in his article about Calvin’s knowledge and piety, summarizes his view of Calvin’s teaching about the work of the Holy Spirit and the written Word this way: “The work of the Spirit does not supplement or supersede the revelation of Scripture, but authenticates it.” [1]
The 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article XVII, reads, “We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures…We deny that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.”
For nearly 100 years, American evangelicals have assented that God’s Word is the chosen method through which the Holy Spirit chose to speak. Sadly, this isn’t what one of the most famous modern movements is teaching millions of millennials around the world. Bill Johnson, Bethel Church, and their band Jesus Culture have a tagline they’ve made a ministry mantra: “Don’t keep God in a box.” For Bill Johnson, the primary teacher overseeing this global ministry, this means that God likes to talk outside of His sufficient word.
Herein lies one of the gravest errors misleading young people today. An entire movement is misinterpreting God’s word.
The most obvious and deceptive example of this is the dichotomy Johnson attempts to create between the Bible and the Holy Spirit, as if the Holy Spirit would ever say something different, apart from, or over and above what He provided in the written Word. Repeatedly Johnson pits the Holy Spirit against the Bible by writing that Scripture is insufficient to discern the voice of God:
“Jesus did not say, ‘My sheep will know my book.’ It is His voice that we are to know. Why the distinction? Because anyone can know the Bible as a book – the devil himself knows and quotes the Scriptures. But only those whose lives are dependent on the person of the Holy Spirit will consistently recognize His voice. This is not to say that the Bible has little or no importance. Quite the opposite is true. The Bible is the Word of God, and scripture will always confirm His voice. That voice gives impact to what is in print…[2]”
It is important to see what Johnson says here: “The voice gives impact…” Johnson has daringly separated God’s supposed voice from God’s Word as if God will be speaking new information outside of what He has already promised is “adequate” (2 Timothy 3:17) for man to be grow unto maturity.
Johnson does this to give authority to personal revelation outside of, and over the written Scriptures; a demonic plot dating back 1800 years to a heretical false prophet named Montanus.[3] In subsequent pages Johnson quips, “to follow Him, we must be willing to follow off the map – to go beyond what we know.”[4] He goes on, “We’ve gone as far as we can with our present understanding of Scripture. It’s time to let signs have their place.”[5] Time and again Johnson points to the authority of signs over Scripture.
Is the Bible really just a road sign to the real voice of the Holy Spirit? Clearly, Jesus did not think so. When Jesus was on earth He taught His disciples through the Scriptures: “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Paul also taught this way when he wrote, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). In fact, orthodox Christianity has always taught that the Holy Spirit chose to speak through the objective word of God; the Holy Spirit drives men by conscience and conviction back to those Scriptures for faith and practice. The Scriptures are the Holy Spirit’s voice. In John 17:17, Jesus Himself said, “Thy Word is truth.” The noun, “truth,” is acting as the predicate nominative and linked with the present tense verb which emphasizes that God’s word is truth.
Like Jesus and like Paul, two thousand years’ worth of saints have agreed in the power of God’s word alone.
One little verse, Romans 13:13, converted the immoral St. Augustine.
The miserable monk Martin Luther was forever changed by Romans 1:17.
For the American revivalist, Jonathan Edwards, it was 1 Timothy 1:17. Edwards said his first instance of inward delight was upon reading, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
Scripture as God’s actual word was taught by Peter in 2 Peter 1:20-21 when he wrote, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” In verse 19 Peter says that a prophetic word has been made “more sure” to him by (or than) his time with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. He continues, in verses 20–21, to undergird the authority of this prophetic word by saying it is part of Scripture when he declared, “No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” Peter is not saying that only prophetic parts of Scripture are inspired by God, He is saying we know the prophetic word is inspired, precisely because it is a “prophecy of Scripture.” Peter’s assumption is that whatever stands in Scripture is from God, written by men, carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Peter teaches precisely what Paul taught in 2 Timothy 3:16 in that, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The point is that Scripture is the means by which the Holy Spirit speaks. The Holy Spirit is not relative, bifurcated, or schizophrenic in His appeals. A regenerated life surrendered to the Holy Spirit will always point back to Scripture for faith and practice.
Christianity has held this truth for 2,000 years.
[1] Joel Beeke, “Calvin’s Piety,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 15 (2004): 40, http://www.midamerica.edu/uploads/files/pdf/journal/15-beekepiety.pdf.
[2] Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth (Shippensburg, PA: Treasure House, 2003). 84
[3] For study on the heretical sect stemming from Montanus, begin with: Bruce L Shelley, Church History In Plain Language, 4th ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013). 71-74.
[4] Johnson, 76.
[5] Ibid., 129.
