On this episode of Theology Gals while Ashley is in Italy Coleen is joined by Marissa Namirr.  Coleen and Marissa talk about the Holy Spirit's work in our lives and answer some objections to last week's episode  Personal Revelation and God's Will. 

 


What is cessationism?

Information on cessationism


Misunderstanding the Holy Spirit

We have the Word of God, the full and closed canon

“The evangelistic method of Jesus and the apostles was not to urge people to seek direct experiences with God; instead they went about preaching and teaching the Scriptures (see, for instance, Mark 1:14-15). And Jesus did not say that once we have spiritual life we live by direct mystical experience with God; rather, we “live … on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). That includes the “good work” of growing in the knowledge of God and likeness to Christ. So in Scripture the normative method of meeting God is through Scripture.” Donald Whitney

“In one of James Montgomery Boice’s final books he wrote something that has often come to my mind. He wrote about the Bible and said that as far as he could see the battle over the inerrancy of the Bible had been fought and won. The Bible is without error. But the battle for the sufficiency of the Bible was just beginning. Will the Bible be enough for us? Will we affirm that the Bible is sufficient to guide us in all of life? Or will we demand that God reveal himself to us in other ways?” Tim Challies How Does God Speak to me Today

Can Christians ever receive private messages from God?S

Subjective Experience

“In relation to our subject we must thoroughly wrestle with the question of how we know who or what we have encountered in our subjective experiences. All the information we have about God and our relationship to Him is found in the Bible.” Gary Gilley The Lord Told Me, I Think (this is an excellent articleł

Mysticism

“Let us imagine I follow the mystic way. I begin to have experiences; I think God is speaking to me; how do I know it is God who is speaking to me? How can I know I am not speaking to man; how can I be sure that I am not the victim of hallucinations, since this has happened to many of the mystics? If I believe in mysticism as such without the Bible, how do I know I am not being deluded by Satan as an angel of light in order to keep me from the true and living God? I have no standard…. The evangelical doctrine tells me not to look into myself but to look into the Word of God; not to examine myself, but to look at the revelation that has been given to me. It tells me that God can only be known in His own way, the way which has been revealed in the Scriptures themselves.” Martyn Lloyd Jones

Messages outside of Scripture are not consistent with Reformed Theology

“The Reformed theology and piety begins with the sufficiency of Scripture. Pentecostalism certainly and the charismatic theology and piety to a lesser degree begin explicitly or implicitly with the insufficiency of Scripture. The “due use of ordinary means” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 88) is essential to Reformed theology and piety but it is n...