This book has two separate domains of argumentation often intermixed within a single paragraph. The first domain responds to the question, “On what basis is a religious conclusion of any kind warranted?” with, “Whenever one’s conscience so demands.” The second domain is my (tentative) revision of mainstream Christianity launched from the (tentative) assumption that it is indeed the true religion. Although I do not presume my opinions to be facts, I am sufficiently convinced to defend them vigorously.

Israel had to wait (prayerfully) for a loud and clear sign from heaven, such as the voice of God, a vision of Fire, or an actual earthquake before marching into any battle (Gen 25:22; Ex 18:15; Num 9 :14-23 ; Jos 6:20; Jdg 20:27-28; 1Sa 9:9; 14:37; 22:15; 23:2, 4; 28:6; 30:8; 2Sam 2:1; 5:19, 23; 1Ki 22:5-8; 2Ki 1:3, 6, 16; 3:11; 8:8; 16:15; 22:13-19; 1Ch 21:30; 34:21, 26; Ps 27:4). Otherwise defeat was virtually guaranteed. Likewise each NT (New Testament) evangelistic and missionary effort pended a loud and clear authorization from heaven such as Christ’s voice, earthquakes, visible Fire, audible Wind, and celestial visions (Lk 3:21-22; 9:1; 10:6; Acts 1:3; 2:1, 43; 3:6; 4:30-31; 5:12, 19-20; 6:8; 8:26, 39; 9:3, 10-11; 10:3, 19; 11:4-14; 12:6-7; 13:2-4; 14:9; 15:12; 16:6-10; 25-26; 18:9-10; 19:6, 11-12; 20:22-23; 22:10, 14, 17-18; 23:11; 27:24; Gal 1:12; 2:2). One specific NT example should suffice to illustrate the point. In Luke 9 and 10 the voice of God/Christ sent out the Twelve to heal the sick. They were successful. Now suppose they had ventured out on their own initiative without such authorization from Christ. How many people would they have healed? None. What the church has completely missed, then, is that failure is virtually guaranteed for any evangelistic endeavor unauthorized by the divine voice (or by some other loud and clear signal from heaven). Paul put it like this:

Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect [mature] by the flesh?…He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (Gal 3:2 - 5).

Pastor Cho of the world’s largest congregation relies on said strategy,[1] as did Charles Finney. Why hasn’t the rest of the church, historically, recognized this need to wait upon God for loud and clear signals? Probably for three reasons. (1) Many assume that they can reliably ascertain both sound doctrine and God’s will without hearing His voice. (2) Many fail to seek His voice as a result of supposing, “It’s okay to presume I’m already hearing Him if my thoughts seem to line up with Scripture and/or the church’s teaching.” (3) Many do not realize that a state of complete certainty warrants the conscience in regarding a particular voice, vision, sign, or cataclysm as a loud and clear signal from God.[2]

Although in my opinion God is a Trinity, Scripture is inspired, and Christ’s atonement won salvation by faith alone, I do not even presume to know for certain that God exists. On the contrary, I am militantly opposed to presumption because it defines every false religion inasmuch as the members are people who find it satisfactory to insist upon uncertain doctrines (as though certain). To admit that one is human, susceptible to error, fallible is to admit our lack of complete certainty on religious issues. To then insist upon our opinions matter-of-factly is a dishonesty characteristic of, nay, foundational to every religious organization.[3] This book seems to be the only treatise in world history to denounce all presumption. Admittedly its conclusions, with a few trivial exceptions, are merely those of the famous Christian writer Andrew Murray (1828-1917), but he was essentially silent on these points to avoid controversy.

Presumption is evil. Many pastors and parents will encourage a teenager to enter the military to “serve God and country” despite the resulting oath to obey military leaders who may command him to kill “the enemy.” Do we really want to presume this oath appropriate? After all, Islam’s non-separation of church and state postures their religious leaders as political leaders. Thus the Muslim youth who presumes Islam to be true has already entered the military to likewise “serve God and country” under the same type of oath to kill “the enemy.”

You might object, “My presumptions are safe since I am not in the military.” Are you sure? Haven’t you noticed that the early church’s ability to heal all the sick (Acts 5:15-16) disappeared two thousand years ago? Put yourself in God’s shoes as He ponders your denomination. He says to Himself, “Already these people are mistakenly presuming to run the church exactly ‘by the book.’ A gift of healing or evangelism would only increase their presumption because they would conclude, ‘This new success is proof that we have been doing things right all along!’” Doing things right? This book will expose all denominations as arguably (1) insulting to God as a result of defining Him as a Being without merit; (2) self-contradictory in major doctrines; (3) unbiblical in church government; and (4) devoted to man-made traditions.

Presumption is contagious. If a Muslim leader abides in presumption, so too his children. Likewise if a Christian leader walks in presumption, so too his disciples. The result is the blind leading the blind with no one even raising the most critical question of all, namely, “how can each Christian attain to absolute certainty/infallibility?” Most religious people feel 95% certain of their opinions, but their innumerable disagreements disqualify this standard as inadequate. Religion is too serious an issue for us to rest content with any degree of uncertainty. God Himself would be irresponsible if He consigned any Christian to such a standard. Christ’s words to His apostles were not, “You will labor in frustrating uncertainty all the days of your life,” but rather, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn 8:32). For “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). Indeed the Protestant Reformation’s doctrine of assurance recognized that every Christian can attain to 100% certainty of salvation.

Suppose your child announced to you one day, “I refuse to go to college. I’m going to be a fireman because Pastor Mike claims to be 100% certain that this is the only way of life suitable for me.” You’d be rather upset with pastor Mike even though your son’s career is merely a temporal issue. How much more should we be outraged when a pastor or evangelist feigns certainty on eternal issues? An evangelist should say to his audience, “I know with complete certainty that Jesus is the only way,” only if he possesses, at that moment, the apostolic gift of infallibility. In other words evangelism without prophetic inspiration is not evangelism as God intended.[4] Therefore on Pentecost the 120 believers who received the physical Fire immediately prophesied/witnessed in tongues. Thus “it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you” (Mat 10:20). Christ’s words at Acts 1:8, “After the Holy Ghost comes upon ye, ye shall be my witnesses,” anticipate verses 2:17-18, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh and they shall prophesy.” Early evangelism was usually the province of prophets and apostles. Contrary to what Protestants claim, there is very little evidence, if any, that the NT epistles counseled entire congregations to aggressively evangelize. One will, however, find strong evidence in 1Corinthians 14 that all believers are supposed to aggressively seek prophetic inspiration! Rather interesting, isn’t it?

Protestants claim to run the church “by the book.” Let’s consider church government. They plant churches and elect pastors. Whereas in Scripture, infallible apostles planted churches and elected pastors. Here a Protestant will reply, “Okay, I admit that modern church government cannot be found in the Bible but that’s because things have changed since apostolic days.” Were things supposed to have changed? Not in my opinion. But in any case there is still a need for integrity. Let’s stop pretending to run the church ‘by the book.’

At one point I was a member of a congregation in the habit of Saturday morning prayer. Everyone would come dressed in street clothes such as T-shirts, shorts, jeans, and sweatpants. The next day everyone showed up in suits and ties. Yet I haven’t been able to find a single verse in the Bible suggesting that God needs us to wear a set of clothes on Sunday different from that worn on Saturdays. When we practice such man-made traditions, how dare we deny the charge of fabricating our own religion? The very fact that Sunday is the most racially segregated day of the week should alert us to the possibility that our congregations are not authentic churches in the sight of God.

Approximately 99% of my footnotes cite conservative, born-again Bible-scholars quoted from esteemed evangelical commentaries, books, and seminary journals. For extra convenience these footnotes were designed as independent essays readable after the book just like an appendix. Commentary in brackets “[ ]” provides my opinion; for example, “Ye have neither heard his [physical] voice at any time, nor seen his [physical] shape. And ye have not his [spoken/ exhaled] word abiding [physically] in you” (Jn 5:37).[5]

II. No Such Thing as Protestants, Catholics, or the Orthodox

If blind faith (presumption) were acceptable, all religions would be acceptable, because one could convert to any religion on blind faith. One should convert to Christianity not on the basis of blind faith but rather on the basis of an adequate rationale for this decision. Must this rationale be Reason? Not necessarily. For example, as an infant I came to believe that other people exist, not on the basis of reason but on the basis of sensory experience. This seems to be an adequate rationale, to the extent that the sensory experience compelled my conscience to believe. (I define the conscience as a feeling of certainty that a particular set of actions and beliefs is obligatory. Alternatively, I sometimes use the term “conscience” to refer to the mind in its capacity to experience such feelings of certainty).

What, then, is the adequate rationale for conversion, that is, for concluding that Jesus is God and the Bible is inspired? Ultimately, the conscience (a feeling of certainty) is the rationale, but what type of compulsion birthed that certainty? In other words, did the convert arrive at this certainty by looking to Reason? Or perhaps to Sensory Experience (maybe he heard Christ’s Voice or saw Him in a Vision)? The crucial point here is that his “adequate rationale” for conversion – whatever it may be - remains for him permanently authoritative even after conversion. For instance, if I converted to a particular religion on the basis of Reason, I cannot later contend, “Reason is no longer, for me, a final authority. I now rely on an inspired text as my only final authority.” Or, “I now rely on church dogma as the only final authority.” I cannot begin with Reason and then end up denouncing Reason. That doesn’t make sense. If the very origin, foundation, or root of my commitment to a given religion is Reason, to impugn Reason would contradict my own assumptions and thereby renounce my conversion.

As it turns out, Protestants do not regard Reason as the “adequate rationale.” They have always admitted, at least from the time of the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, that the “inward witness” (the testimony of the Holy Spirit speaking loudly and clearly to the conscience) is the rationale for conversion. The official position of Protestants is that the Holy Spirit, in order to obligate conversion, imparts to the conscience a feeling of certainty that Jesus is God and that the Bible is inspired. What Protestants have not admitted, to date, is the startling implication of this doctrine, namely that the Inward Witness is therefore permanently authoritative even after conversion. The logic is simply irresistible. If I relied on this testimony during conversion, I cannot then say, after conversion, “One should not rely on such testimony to reach religious conclusions, for Scripture is the only final authority for drawing conclusions.” After all, conversion is not an event of the past but a daily reaffirmation of beliefs. If I daily rely on the Holy Spirit’s Inward Witness as my adequate rationale, I cannot denounce it as unreliable. Consistency demands, rather, that I regard the Inward Witness as obligatory whenever it imparts to my conscience the same degree of certainty experienced during conversion.

Admittedly the Holy Spirit’s Presence is felt in the churches, but this experience is merely a small taste of Him. By regarding Scripture as the only final authority, Protestants have effectively silenced and quenched the Holy Spirit. Few Protestants seek the authoritative inspiration given to the prophets because Sola Scriptura prohibits and discourages it. The result is a church without any real guidance from God, and every Sunday the congregations “know exactly what to do” because they simply perpetuate man-made traditions practiced for 2000 years, for instance a 45 minute sermon, 30 minutes of singing, a mid-week Bible-study, regular “evangelism”, occasional “missionary work”, etc., etc., etc.

The three branches of mainstream Christianity are Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Protestantism is defined by the claim that Scripture is the only final authority. Catholics claim that the Catholic Church is the only final authority. Orthodoxy claims that the Orthodox Church is the only final authority. All three branches, and therefore all Christians, are subject to the same downfall – the fact that any such claim contradicts conversion. For example, the agnostic cannot say, rationally, “I am converting to Christ because the Catholic Church is the only final authority and so commands.” That doesn’t make sense, because first he needs an adequate rationale (a final authority such as Reason or Conscience) for deciding whether the Catholic church is an authority.

To summarize, God’s alternative to presumption (feigned certainty) is the testimony of the Holy Spirit (the Voice of God) imparting an obligatory feeling of certainty to the conscience.[6] Paul attested, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 9:1). Andrew Murray commented on this verse that the “Holy Ghost speaks through conscience.”[7]

One cannot rely on Scripture and the church to determine or even verify the specifics of God’s will because the rationale underlying His will takes into account trillions of humanly unforeseeable dangers and contingencies. It is situation-dependent and therefore humanly unpredictable. As a result, the Lord must be willing to voice the specifics of His will at a volume perfectly loud and clear. As Andrew Murray put it, “Obedience depends on hearing the voice. Do not imagine you know the will of God. Pray and wait for the inward teaching of the Spirit.”[8] The perfect nature of His will explains why love does no harm to a neighbor (Rom 13:8-10). No human being can determine perfectly harmless forms of behavior based merely on the teachings of Scripture or the church.

Even to this day Protestant pastors presume that preaching the written Word empowers the church sufficiently. The contradiction here is that the written Word is precisely the law denounced as powerless to sanctify (Rom 8:3), stimulative of sin (7:5-13) and hence a ministry of death (2Cor 3:6–9).[9] The following argument demonstrates that the written Word is not the divine power. The Spirit’s inspiration of Moses to count God’s people is why the fourth book is called the Book of Numbers. This book contains several instances of counting and mathematical sums. Therefore imagine the Spirit likewise inspiring me to write down the mathematical truth that 2 + 2 = 4. This would be an inspired text no different in essence than much of Numbers. Suppose then that I preach my inspired written Word to the world. Would it have any power to change lives? Of course not. In fact even the devil’s children preach the same truth in math classes every day. Reprobate scribes, Pharisees, professors and cults have preached the written Word for millennia without releasing any salvific or sanctifying power. The value of truth is that it is true; it is not, however, divine power. Clearly the Holy Spirit is God’s power. Why then did Paul counsel Timothy to preach/exhale the Word? He was referring to the living divine Word rather than the written Word as we shall see. It is a type of preaching completely lost upon the modern church.

If preaching the written Word were as powerful as pastors claim, why is the divorce rate the same in the church as in the world? This is not a request of pastors to stop preaching the Bible/law. The Holy Spirit helps to counteract the law’s negative side effects while using it, in a beneficial way, to confirm God’s promises to the human heart. The problem is that the law often does more harm than good when the Holy Spirit is not present in sufficient measure to fully counteract the side-effects.

III. Why Hearing God Is The Key

The world’s origin in divine speech depicts God’s voice as His power. “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please" (Isa 55:11).[10] Thus God’s power is not really conditioned on man’s free will. Rather His spoken Word always accomplishes His intent regardless of human volition. Hence any lack of His power/Spirit for revival, sanctification, evangelism, missions, and miracles is for lack of our hearing/receiving His spoken Word, as Paul warned the Galatians:

“Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect [mature] by the flesh?…He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles[11] among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God” (Gal 3:2 - 6).

Why does one receive an outpouring of the Spirit by hearing God?[12] And why is Paul citing Abraham’s experience of hearing God at Gen 15:1-6 as an example of receiving the Spirit by the hearing of faith? God’s spoken/exhaled Word/Breath is His Holy Spirit sent forth to do the miracle, for the Hebrew word mistranslated Spirit actually means physical breath/wind, as will be argued later. The Third Person’s true name is neither Holy Spirit nor Holy Ghost but Holy Breath/Wind whence Christ "breathed on [the disciples], and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy [Breath]” (Jn 20:22). Abraham’s faith came by hearing God speak/exhale promises at Gen 15:6 when the voiced/exhaled “word of the LORD came [twice] to Abram in a vision” (15:1; cf. 15:4).[13] He was the first man ever dubbed “prophet” (20:7).[14] To the prophets repeatedly came the voiced/exhaled Word/Breath (the Holy Spirit); they repeatedly received the Spirit by the hearing of faith. The Greek word for “miracles” in the Galatians passage is the same word translated “power” at Acts 1:8,[15] “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses.” In a nutshell Paul was reminding the Galatians to dedicate themselves to waiting (prayerfully) upon God for more hearings/outpourings of the Spirit even as Moses always persevered in prayer until God responded loud and clear. Andrew Murray drew the same conclusion of the Galatians passage quoted above on which he commented:

The mistake of the Galatian church is repeated to this day even in the churches that are most confidently assured that they are free from the Galatian error. Just notice how often the doctrine of justification by faith is spoken of as if it were the chief teaching of the Galatian epistle. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling as received by faith and our walking by the Spirit is hardly mentioned…[Unfortunately today] human effort and human arrangement take a much larger place than in the waiting on the power that comes from on high.”[16]

To be precise, Murray could not find the Reformed usage of “justification” in Galatians. Reformed justification contradicts Paul’s usage because Abraham was already a saved believer (Acts 7:2; Heb 11:8-10) long prior to the “justification” mentioned at Rom 4:3 and Gal 3:6. But how could Abraham be justified more than once? Only physical metaphysics makes this possible, as we shall see.

Jesus stated that a prayer warrior who experiences complete certainty about a petition is guaranteed to receive it. Here Jesus used the word “verily.” (A good test of one’s theology is whether it can take Him literally on each “verily” statement).

“For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall have them” (Mk 11:23-24). [17]

On the surface it looks as though Jesus was speaking too liberally here. It looks as though a wicked person could easily take advantage of this promise. The reality is that only the divine voice can generate absolute certainty/faith (it imparts certainty to the conscience as argued earlier), for faith cometh by hearing (Rom 10:17), and generally it does so only in response to faithful prayer warriors such as Moses or Elijah. Pastor Cho of the world’s largest congregation (over one million members) instructs his membership to “fast and pray until they get the [loud and clear] witness of the Holy Spirit that their prayer has been answered”[18] because, says Cho, “faith cometh by hearing.”[19] They literally intercede for a particular unsaved person until hearing God say “Yes, he will be saved”![20] Similarly a prophet is basically a person who waits in prayer to hear God speak, for instance “Anna, a prophetess…departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (Lk 2:36-37).

Admittedly prayer can be boring until God outpours joyful revival, but fellowship is always fun since everyone enjoys friends and dislikes loneliness. “Family Fellowship” is a new ministry technique here proposed for automatically creating fun-filled friendships involved in 24-hour corporate prayer. Traditional summons to 24-hour prayer usually suffer poor attendance, whereas Family Fellowship is potentially too much fun to resist. For details see the final section of ch. 5 or click here. This is quite possibly the most important part of the book.

IV. Intimacy As Seeing And Hearing The Father

Bible-study is a reasoning process, that is, a series of deductive leaps executed to steadily reason one’s way from biblical data toward a conclusion used as a stepping stone to jump to the next conclusion. Obviously the danger of such leaps is the human tendency to jump to conclusions unwarranted. Whereas God can simply voice to us the appropriate conclusions as to prevent human errors. On earth Christ’s understanding of Scripture consisted of such appropriate conclusions revealed distinctly (loudly and clearly) by the Father (Jn 5:30, 37; 7:15-16; 8:26, 40, 47; 14:10, 24; 15:15; 16:13; 17:8).[21] Intimacy between any father and child exists only to the extent of distinct (loud and clear) sensations. Therefore mere book-knowledge of the heavenly Father is transformed into intimate/personal knowledge of Him only to the degree that His proximity or Presence makes distinct (loud and clear) impressions (sensations) such as joy, peace, love, compassion, godly sorrow, hope, confidence, faith, holy anger, felt caresses, visions, and voices. This is called fellowship (1Cor 1:9; Phi 2:1; 3:10; 1Jn 1:3, 6). “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (Jn 10:27).[22] Direct revelation – God’s voice – is any impression (sensation) from Him sufficiently distinct (sufficiently loud and clear) to be perceived, including the acute (loud and clear) feeling of certainty that the true God has spoken. Absolute certainty obligates the conscience to heed the voice, for instance when Abraham heard a voice commanding him to slaughter his son Isaac. Failing to heed the voice is reprehensible only to the degree of certainty imparted. Indeed the conscience, at any moment, is obligated to whatever currently feels most certain among the choices, even when what is most certain is the need to wait (prayerfully upon God) for more certainty before acting. “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come” (Jn 16:13).

God’s voice cannot be limited to sound because He is capable of utilizing any type of thought, and hence any kind of sensation (impression), to communicate a message. The prophets experienced all types of sensations (impressions) from Him. Dreams and memories are two types of thought exemplifying the fact that thought involves all possible sensations including sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. In fact every aspect of consciousness is sensation because thought/ awareness must always be sufficiently distinct (sufficiently loud and clear) to be apprehended since absolute “silence” would be unconsciousness or death.[23] Thought’s sonic mode is what enables a loud stereo to break a thinker’s concentration by drowning out the thoughts that he or she is striving to hear. Thought is so inherently sensory that direct revelation will feel like physical sensations regardless of whether God Himself is physical. For example His peace feels somewhat like physical tranquilizing drugs. In a word, consciousness is loudness.

As a result of thought’s sensory nature, the new birth and sanctification inevitably and continually create sensations loud and clear, for instance an accurate mental picture (vision) of God necessary to thwart conversion to a conceptual idol, a false god, “that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life” (Jn 6:40).[24]. Cults such as the Mormons, Jehovah Witness, and Pharisees have only worshipped a conceptual idol because they do not see the true God.[25] Naturally, then, Jesus defined the non-Christian in the following way: "Ye have neither heard his [physical] voice at any time, nor seen his [physical] shape, nor does his [physical] word dwell in you" (Jn 5:37). (Lewis Sperry Chafer adduced this verse as proof that angels are physical).[26] The new birth, surmised John Calvin, is to “behold the true God.”[27] This, said Vincent, is the “new vision of the new man. He sees not only God, but the kingdom of God”[28] because “the new birth imparts a new vision.”[29] All genuine believers see (experience) His burning love, ecstatic joy, peace transcending all understanding, and mouth-watering affection but typically so indistinctly (at such “low volume” and hence “subconsciously”) as to be essentially unaware of it. The reason for this obscurity – the vision’s lack of loudness - is that at conversion and throughout immaturity the Holy Spirit is initially poured out upon, and thus shows the vision to, only a small portion of the heart whose thoughts constitute a tiny voice drowned out by remaining thoughts, precisely as an excruciating pain drowns out milder sensations, obscuring the vision. Each incremental outpouring loudens God’s voice and sharpens (loudens) the vision of Him. Moses matured to the point where his vision became amazingly distinct (loud and clear): “[Moses] is true to me in all my house: With him I will have talk mouth to mouth, openly and not in dark sayings; and with his eyes he will see the form of the Lord” (Num 12:7-8).[30] Maturity eradicates blindness (see 2Ki 6:17) and thus unveils God’s face, His pillars of glory, His angels, and His heavenly city even as Abraham “the friend of God” (Jam 2:3) supped and chatted face to face with Him one hot afternoon (Gen 18:1-3).[31] Only the spiritually immature have never vividly seen God face to face.

V. Why Outpourings Endure For Holiness But Recur For Miracles

Since the Holy Spirit is everywhere, He permeates even non-Christians as a potential for holiness activated when they submit in faith during conversion. Therefore the Spirit of holiness outpoured at conversion cannot be what non-Christians already have – they already have the Spirit within them as an inactivated potential for holiness – but is an activation of holiness wherefore the Protestant Reformation was correct to equate the new birth with sanctification, viewing them as two sides of a coin.[32] And yet, how can sin persist if the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of holiness, immediately activates holiness during conversion?[33] The only solution is to admit that God poured Him out only upon part of the heart whose remainder is the sinful nature at war with the sanctified portion of the heart (Gal 5:17).[34] Therefore sanctification is waiting in prayer for fresh outpourings to fill the remainder of the heart with holiness as Andrew Murray summarized, “More of the Spirit is the one thing needed for the Church.”[35] Therefore, said Murray, “Let every believer, who longs to be holy, join in the daily prayer that God would visit His people with a great outpouring of the Spirit of holiness.”[36]

After all, the new birth, also called regeneration, is an instantaneous purification of the heart (Deut 30:6; Ps 51:10; Jer 24:7; 31:33; 32:39-40; Eze 11:19-20; 36:25-20; Mat 5:8; 12:33; 7:17-20; Jn 3:3, 5-8; 15:3; Acts 15:9; 1Cor 6:11; 2Cor 5:17; 1Ti 1:5; 3:9; 2Ti 1:3; 2:22; Tit 1:15; 3:5; 1Pe 1:3; 22-23; 2Pe 3:1; 1Jn 3:9). Sin and sinful nature would have totally vanished if the entire heart were initially reborn. Therefore sanctification is waiting in prayer for incremental purifications/new births amassing to personal revival, “They that wait [prayerfully] upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa 40:31).[37] Each sanctifying outpouring ushers another portion of the heart into participation in the new birth.

Unlike these sanctifying outpourings, any charismatic outpouring for gifts remains only for the hour of need because God sends the Spirit to the believer only as an activation of His power, never as the mere inactive potential already within unbelievers, as argued two paragraphs back.[38] He doesn’t send to the believer what unbelievers already possess. As an example of a charismatic outpouring that only abides for the hour of need, we may consider the divine Word/Spirit of prophecy sent repeatedly to the prophets (e.g. Jer 1:2, 4, 11, 13; 2:1; 13:3, 8, 14:1; 16:1; 18:5; 24:4; 25:3; 28:12; 29:30; 32:6, 26; 33:1, 19, 23; 34:12; 35:12; 36:27; 37:6; 39:15; 42:7; 43:8; 46:1; 47:1; 49:34; etc). As we have seen, Abraham was a prophet to whom the divine Word at Gen 15:1-6 came twice in a vision described by Paul as “receiving the Spirit by the hearing of faith” (Gal 3:2-6). Similarly the Spirit fell repeatedly upon Samson as an immediate activation of strength (Jdg 14:6, 19, 15:14-15). Such repetition led to the recent misconception among some scholars that OT indwelling was incapable of permanence. The absurdity of this conclusion becomes apparent from the question as to precisely how many seconds the Spirit could remain within OT saints. It is simply ludicrous to impose such time-constraints upon an omnipotent God. The real reason for the repetition is that a charismatic anointing only remains for the hour of need. The frequency of return depends on persevering prayer, as for instance when the church prayed that God stretch “forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done…And when they had prayed, the place was [physically] shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled [refilled] with the [returning] Holy Ghost” (Acts 4:30-31). Samson’s final prayer returned his charismatic anointing one last time (Jdg 16:28).[39]

VI. The Recurring Anointing To Witness/Prophesy In Luke-Acts

Two noteworthy implications stem from a canon far too brief to include details irrelevant to future generations. First, the huge percentage of Scripture devoted to prophesying, signs, and wonders rules out cessationism, for God would not have dedicated so much of the NT to spiritual gifts if they have little bearing today.[40] Second, any themes distinctive to Luke-Acts as twenty-five percent of the NT (New Testament)[41] are of paramount importance. Three of Luke’s motifs surface plainly in his two books Luke-Acts.

(Lukan Motif 1) Prayer outpours the Holy Spirit. Luke referenced prayer more than any other NT writer.[42] “Filled with the Spirit” occurs about fourteen times in the NT but only in his writings except Eph 5:18. He is the only NT writer who credits outpourings and Spirit-fullness to prayer; for instance the Spirit’s descent as a Dove upon Christ was documented in all four gospels but tied to prayer only in Luke’s version (Lk 3:21);[43] the Transfiguration was a physical outpouring of divine Light-particles recorded in three gospels but attributed to prayer only in Luke’s account. Luke featured the apostles praying down an outpouring of Fire-particles upon themselves at Pentecost (Acts 1:14),[44] another outpouring upon themselves at 4:30-31, and later upon the Samaritans (8:15). He associated the Caesarean outpouring with the righteous prayers of Cornelius and Peter (10:1ff). Luke’s version of Christ’s question, “How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Mat 7:11) was this, “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Lk 11:13).[45] Here the “disciples were taught that the Holy Spirit would be received in answer to earnest prayer (Luke 11:13),”[46] since contextually Jesus was teaching them lifelong prayer habits in both parallel passages.[47] Christ urged us to “ask for” the Holy Spirit as a lifelong habit of prayer precisely because His totality does not automatically arrive at conversion.[48] “When we read the book of Acts,” observed Andrew Murray, “we see that the filling with the Spirit and his mighty operation was always obtained by prayer.”[49] Prayer is the only technique for Spirit-reception stipulated in the NT (Lk 11:13).[50]

(Lukan Motif 2) Spirit-fullness in Luke-Acts is principally for inspired witnessing and hence prophesying. "Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied" (1:67). "I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy" (Acts 2:18). “For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say” (Lk 12:12). Luke’s startling, radical definition of evangelism as prophesying in OT style was the momentous thesis of two highly acclaimed scholarly works of recent years, namely Roger Stronstad’s The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology;[51] and James Shelton's Mighty in Word and Deed: The Role of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts.

(Lukan Motif 3) To witness an event is to either see or hear it directly. Witnesses testify (bear witness) to others of what was directly seen or heard. “Ye shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8) involves first of all witnessing Him (seeing or hearing Christ directly, loud and clear) and then testifying (witnessing) to others. Thus Paul’s job description was this, “The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (22:14-15).[52] Prophesying is the same thing; it is testifying (bearing witness) to visions and voices from Him (2:17). Thus verse 1:8, “After that the Holy Ghost is come upon you…ye shall be witnesses unto me,” anticipates verse 2:18, “I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

VII. The Abrahamic Covenant Of Hearing Promises

In no sense does the NT Holy Spirit operate differently or better than that of the OT, for neither God nor His covenant of redemption can improve. The official creeds of the Protestant Reformation[53] rightly insisted that OT saving faith (Rom 4:1ff; Heb 11:1ff) was a fruit of the indwelling Spirit (Rom 12:3; 2Cor 4:13; Gal 5:22) whose presence initiated and sustained the new birth within OT saints by continually (1) revealing the true God to prevent saving faith in a false god, a conceptual idol;[54] (2) sustaining obedience (sanctification) since saving faith without works is dead; and (3) reassuring the heart whenever saving faith became vulnerable to doubt and unbelief. Every outpouring recorded in the historic literature such as Exodus and Acts fell subsequent to this permanently indwelling Spirit of saving faith/ new birth.[55]

The fact that OT and NT saints partook of Abrahamic saving faith (Rom 4:16) subsumes all OT and NT saints under a single Covenant of Salvation as the Protestant Reformation recognized. Reformed theologians called it “The Covenant of Grace.” Identifying it with the Abrahamic Covenant is a conclusion firmly grounded in abundant biblical evidence (e.g. Gal 3:6-29).[56] Hearing must be definitive of God’s highest covenant with the human race because all intimacy/“fellowship” (1Cor 1:9; Phi 2:1; 3:10; 1Jn 1:3, 6) exists only to the extent of sensations loud and clear. By definition the Abrahamic Covenant is hearing since it is God’s promissory voice spoken individually to him and to each of his OT and NT offspring, for unto “Abraham were the [covenantal] promises spoken [loud and clear], and to his seed…And if ye are Christ’s, then ye are Abraham’s seed” (Gal 3:16, 29; ASV).[57] (Contextually, the preceding verses 3:2-5 pictured Abraham as receiving the Spirit by the hearing of faith). Inasmuch as the Son is one of the seed to whom the Father spoke these covenantal promises (3:16), the Abrahamic covenant is actually the Father-Son covenant, highest in status among the covenants. Even a human voice automatically stirs up, more or less distinctly (loudly), a mental vision of the concepts articulated and the speaker as well. As a result of the promises voiced by the indwelling Spirit, therefore, Abraham and his offspring foresaw the heavenly city by mental vision (Heb 11:10, 13-16) and its glorious God. As Abraham’s seed/offspring (Gal 3:29) we behold the same two visions vaguely in our immaturity. Saving faith is the result of the Spirit continually reannouncing the Abrahamic promises to us on at least a low volume level (“subconscious” level). This indwelling “Holy Spirit of promise” (Lk 24:49; Acts 1:4; 2:39; Gal 3:14; Eph 1:13), not Canaan, was the principal physical Land promised to Abraham and his offspring and appropriated (inadvertently) throughout the entire OT by Canaan-winning faith. Canaan was merely an ingenious bait utilized by God to stimulate a national faith, obedience, and prayer that elicited from heaven outpourings of Land (the heavenly Canaan) distinctly visible (loudly and clearly visible) in physical pillars of Fire and Cloud (Ex 13:20-22; 14:19-24; 19:16-20; 24:15-18; 33:7-11; 40:34ff; Lev 9:23-24; Num 9:15ff; 1Ki 1:38; 1Chr 2:27; 2Chr 7:1-3). Pentecost’s outpouring was precisely such a distinctly (loudly) visible Pillar of physical Fire – the Promised Land – once again redescending precisely as in OT times, this time upon 120 believers (Acts 2:3). Thus the OT promise of entering or possessing God’s physical Land of Rest still remains in effect “To-day if ye will hear his voice” (Heb 3:7; cf. 3:14; 4:1, 7) “while it is called To-day” (3:13).

Approximately 500 years after Abraham, the Holy Spirit as a Pillar of Fire voiced to all Israel the Mosaic Law (Ex 19:1ff) without annulling the Abrahamic Voice-Covenant of hearing promises (Gal 3:15-22). Almost never did the OT define obedience as adherence to the written law. Rather obedience was almost always defined as adherence to voiced law, about fifty times (Ex 15:26; 19:5; 23:21-22; 29:42-43; Num 14:22; Deut 4:30, 36; 8:20; 9:23; 13:4, 18; 15:5; 26:17; 27:10; 28:1-2, 15, 45; 30:10, 20; 32:8, 10; Jos 5:6; Jdg 2:2,20; 6:10; 1Sa 12:14; 15:1, 22-23; 24:24; 1Ki 20:36; 2Ki 18:12; Ps 95:7; Jer 3:13, 25; 7:23; 9:13; 11:4, 7-8; 26:13; 32:23; 38:20; 40:3; 42:6, 21; 43:4, 7; 44:23; Dan 9:10-11, 14; Zech 6:15). The Hebrew word “qowl” translated “voice” in these fifty verses was sonic – perfectly loud and clear - in all of its five hundred total OT appearances and derives from a “root meaning to call aloud; a voice or sound.”[58] The Hebrew word “shama” translated “obey” or “hearken” in these verses literally means "to hear, to listen."[59] Moses inscribed the voiced commands on stone tablets known as Israel’s Old Covenant. Later God formulated for Israel her second national covenant, her New Covenant, in order to officially terminate the outmoded ceremonies. Thus, “By using the words, ‘a new Covenant,’ He has made the first one obsolete” (Heb 8:13). Her New Covenant uses the concept of law written on the heart (announced to it loud and clear) to theologically clarify the concept of obedience and is simply the final purification outpoured upon restored Israel in the next life (Jer 24:6-7; 31:8-33; 32:37-40; Eze 11:17-20; 36:25-29; 37:12-13). Thus Israel’s “New Covenant itself will not occur until the Lord Jesus Christ returns.”[60] Apart from these national covenants for Israel, God individually covenants (voices) His promises to Abraham and to each of us as his seed, for the covenantal “promises were spoken [loudly and clearly] to Abraham and to [us] his seed” (Gal 3:16; cf. 3:29).[61]

As noted earlier, Israel was supposed to seek loud and clear signs (promises) of impending success. The third chapter of Galatians provides two reasons for this methodology. (1) All believers must imitate Abraham’s walk with God because the Abrahamic Covenant of hearing promises is perpetual and inviolable. (2) Law is a matter of earning God’s rewards, grace a matter of Him voicing unmerited promises. Galatians teaches sanctification by grace, Romans justification by grace.

VIII. The Biblical Evidence For Materialism

Even the early church father Tertullian was a staunch materialist.[62] In this book “material” or “physical” simply means tangible (i.e. capable of impact/collision) and thus encompasses both strictly physical theories, on the one hand and, on the other, any theory of immaterial power or energy defined as tangible (i.e. capable of impact/collision).

God spoke to ordinary prophets in visions encrypted in riddles (i.e. non-literally) but to Moses in plain language (i.e. literally). Hence it is very important to take Moses’ writings literally even while allowing for possible metaphor in visionary texts such as Revelation. Indeed any text that is historical or theological rather than visionary is most likely literal (unless expressly disclaimed).[63] Immaterialism relies on a questionable non-literal hermeneutic to explain away the following materialistic nuances in Scripture.[64]

Moses’ prayer, “Show me your glory,” (Ex 33:18) elicited both a hearing and a seeing. It moved the Lord to physically parade in full view after voicing the loud and clear promise: “Thou shalt see my [physical] back parts: but my [physical] face shall not be seen” (33:23). The ISBE commented, “The glory of Yahweh is clearly a physical manifestation, a form with hands and rear parts, of which Moses is permitted to catch only a passing glimpse, but the implication is clear that he actually does see Yahweh with his physical eyes”[65] in a “human similitude.”[66]. Here the ISBE was not merely referring to a particular incident in Moses’ life but was rather defining Yahweh’s glory as physical based primarily on the following OT verses (Ex 24:9-11, 16; 34:5; Num 12:8; Isa 6:1-3; Eze 1:26; 3:23; 8:4; 10:4, 18; 11:22-23). Also mentioned in the ISBE were Ex 16:7, 10; 40:34; Lev 9:6, 23; Num 14:21; 16:19, 42; 20:6; 2Chr 5:14; 7:1-3; Psa 84:11; Isa 4:5; 40:5; 60:1; Eze 43:2-5; 44:4. “Whoever saw that dove [descend upon Christ] and that fire [at Pentecost],” wrote Augustine, “saw them with their eyes….in corporeal forms.”[67] Of course “corporeal” means material. Augustine’s additional examples of “corporeal forms [were] the fire of the bush, and the pillar of cloud or of fire, and the lightnings in the mount.”[68] Augustine is ranked among the greatest theologians of church history.[69]

“Holy Spirit” and “Holy Ghost” are immaterialistic English translations arguably alien to the Hebrew word ruach and its Greek counterpart pneuma. The other choice is the material translation Holy Wind/Breath. A theologian should commit to only one of the two choices because God has only one unchanging nature. He is not matter one day and immaterial substance the next. All scholars recognize material wind/breath to be the most common OT usage and a frequent NT usage of the term. In fact Lewis Sperry Chafer, president and founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, argued that angels are physical since “the term spirit…in both Hebrew and Greek is primarily a material term, indicating wind, air, or breath.”[70] The question is whether this term ever means material wind/breath when denoting the Third Person. As for the Twelve, Jesus physically "breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy [Breath]” (Jn 20:22).[71] Here Christ “breathed the Spirit upon his disciples.”[72] One cannot exhale what is intangible. Speech is another form of exhaling. Thus, "By the [spoken] word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the [exhaled] breath of his mouth" (Ps 33:6).[73] On Pentecost the 120 recipients heard the sound of a mighty rushing wind because they received the Holy Wind rather than the Holy Spirit/Ghost. According to Christ the Holy Breath/Wind makes a sound, “The wind [i.e. the Wind] bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the [Wind]” (Jn 3:8). Inasmuch as the Third Person is the Father’s power, His power is Wind, for “with the blast of [Breath from] thy nostrils the waters [of the Red Sea] were gathered together" (Ex 15:8).[74] "Thou didst blow with thy breath, the sea covered them (Ex 15:10).[75] (Let the reader be reminded that all the verses cited in this paragraph employ ruach in the Hebrew version and pneuma in the Greek NT and Greek OT/LXX). To ask whether God needs to breathe is to question whether He need speak. At issue is the facticity of divine speech consisting of exhaled breath.[76] Hence we “receive the Spirit [Breath]…by the hearing of faith,” (Gal 3:2; cf. 3:5) that is, by hearing God speak/exhale.

The written Word preached and obeyed is merely OT and NT law, essentially stone tablets, powerless to save and frequently stimulative of sinful passions (Rom 7:5-13). As Andrew Murray put it, "The letter of the Word, however we study and delight in it, has no saving or sanctifying power”[77] because, said Murray, “the written Word is powerless.”[78] Only the spoken, exhaled "Word that we get from the mouth of God," specified Andrew Murray, "brings the power to know [His will] and to do it."[79] Conversion is impossible without a physical mass of the divine Word/Breath from God's mouth or nostrils deposited into the unbeliever. Sanctification advances only insofar as either Christ or a preacher speaks/exhales more of the Word/Breath into us.[80] God charges the bodies of prayer warriors such as Moses with special outpourings of excess physical Breath to be discharged to others in preaching and ministry, for example the physical Cloud descended upon Moses’ body, in preparation for a discharge, at Num 11:25: “And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spake unto [Moses], and took of the spirit [i.e. the Cloud] that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease” (Num 11:25). Christ’s own body was charged with excess for release when He "breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy [Breath]” (Jn 20:22).

Matter/energy[81] is the foundation of intimacy in every human relationship. Loud and clear physical sensations are the only means of meeting people, sustaining friendships, falling in love, and nurturing children. Seeing loved ones smile approvingly is a soul-healing joy stirred up by light particles reflecting from their faces. “[Christ’s] countenance [shone] as the sun shineth in his strength” (Rev 1:16). His living particles of Light radiating from His smiling face are transcendently effective in stirring up such joy. On a microscopic, undetectable level they secretly reveal His love by covering the soul with affectionate kisses, hugs, caresses, and gentle tickles of joy. "The LORD make his face shine upon thee," said Moses, "and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace" (Num 6:25-26).[82] David said of those that know Him, “They shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance” (Ps 89:15).[83] Divine radiance transfigured the faces of Moses, Christ, and Stephen (Ex 34:29-35; Lk 9:28-29; Acts 6:15). Andrew Murray wrote that even as Moses was unaware that “his face shone, we ourselves will be unaware of the light of God shining from us."[84] Moses’ physical veil succeeded in restraining his facial radiance only because the Light itself is physical (Ex 34:29-35).

The writings of Moses establish a persistent physical pattern difficult to ignore. In Genesis, for starters, God walks physically in Adam’s garden in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). Precisely as any father would play with his children, the heavenly Father is the man who physically wrestles with Jacob all night long (Gen 32:24-30). Israel’s seventy elders climbed Mt Sinai and “saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone” (Ex 24:10). Moses speaks with God face to face until the day He is ready to appear in full glory; in this case Moses may only see his back parts, because none who see His face (in full glory) will survive it.

IX. A Biblio-Philosophical Defense Of Materialism

These final paragraphs summarize the biblio-philosophical defense of materialism. Pivotal to this defense is our obligation to always embrace the most humanly intelligible theory among the choices (unless constrained otherwise by the conscience). Why so? Imagine a science convention attended by the world’s greatest scientists. One of them stands up and says, “I have a new theory called Space-Time Warpage.” The host replies, “Great, please explain it to us.” The scientist retorts, “Sorry, I can’t do so because it is beyond human understanding.” The real implication of this statement is that he doesn’t have any theory at all. He might as well have called it something silly such as “Gobbledygook” instead of “Space-Time Warpage.” Clearly he used the latter term only because it sounds more impressive, that is, only to pretend that he really had a new theory. Mainstream theologians are quite fond of using impressive terms such as “hypostatic union” to describe their “theories” admitted in their writings to be humanly unintelligible. This is unacceptable. In sum, when faced with two theories, it would be theologically irresponsible and therefore immoral to embrace the one least intelligible. The defense of materialism begins with this fact.

A material cube has length, width, and height, and is thus three-dimensional. The theory that reality consists of such three-dimensional objects seems fairly intelligible. A theory far too obscure to conceive, on the other hand, is a four-dimensional object. Therefore a three-dimensional theory of reality should be regarded as more plausible than a four-dimensional theory. Immaterialism is least plausible of all, of course, because it postulates zero-dimensional objects, that is, substances devoid of length, width, and height and indivisible into parts due to a lack of extension in space. This is inconceivable (unintelligible) because every effort to conceive a substance flashes before the mind an extended object, even if small and fleeting. In addition it faces the following objections:

(1) Angels, human souls (Rev 20:4), the Holy Spirit (Jn 1:32-33), and even the Father Himself have been seen. How can zero-dimensional objects have a visible shape? “The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon [Christ] (Lk 3:22),[85] visible to a whole crowd.[86] “Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape” (Jn 5:37) whereas “the form of Jehovah doth [Moses] behold" (Num 12:6-8; DEV).

(2) The Trinity would make for a particularly inconceivable (unintelligible) instance of zero-dimensional substance. After all, the Holy Spirit was “sent down from heaven” (1Pet 1:12) while the Father and Son remained enthroned. And the Son descended for crucifixion while the Father dwelt above. Later the Son ascended in full view of men (Acts 1:9). Hence the three Persons are three spatially distinct subdivisions of the one physical God rather than a spatially indivisible unity. This is what allows them to act in three different ways at the same time.

(3) By the law of non-contradiction an object cannot be both X and not-X at the same time (e.g. both metal and non-metal) unless comprised of two spatially distinct parts. Likewise the Christian has both a holy nature and a non-holy nature only if he or she is divisible into at least two parts. Similarly the Godhead was both ignorant (incarnationally in the Son) and omniscient (celestially in the Father) only if divisible into two or more parts. Historically theologians have always admitted that any substance divisible into parts is a physical substance.

(4) The Hebrew word ruach (breath/wind) and its Greek counterpart pneuma (breath/wind) for the divine Spirit are also used for the human spirit (and human breathing) and angelic spirits. Thus if any of the three – men, angels, or God – can be shown material, hermeneutical consistency calls for regarding the other two as material as well. The following arguments reinforce the idea that they are physical.

(5) God hurled Satan down to earth. He also molded clay to form Adam. An object can be grasped, for such hurling or molding, only if both the hand and the object are tangible enough to keep it from slipping through. Similarly the chains of hell physically fetter demons in prison (2Pet 2:4; Jud 1:6; Rev 20:1).[87] Moreover God’s work since post-Genesis times is not creating new realties but influencing/molding existing realities.[88] There is simply no way to do this if either His hands or the substances are too intangible for a firm grip. These hands will one day shake the heavens and the earth (Heb 12:26).

(6) Demons cripple people and cause disease. How? Do demons have power to magically create forces and diseases ex nihilo (out of nothing)? Theologians attribute such magic-like power to God alone. Therefore demonic activity is not magical but physical contrary to immaterialism. What propels it? Thought-currents must be freely self-propelling if men, angels, and God are to have free will.

(7) God either magically influences the mind from a distance, or He inserts His hand into the mind to stir it physically. According to Scripture, He inserts the Holy Spirit into the human body instead of remaining at a distance. Therefore He must be operating physically in the mind. If he were operating non-physically (i.e. magically) there would be no need for, and no point in, having the Spirit descend into the human body. He descended in the bodily shape of a dove upon Christ, and as Fire upon the 120. Indeed from Genesis to Revelation He sends forth His Spirit to perform His will, which would be entirely unnecessary if He operated magically rather than physically.

(8) Likewise the human mind and body influence each other either magically from a distance, or physically from proximity. According to Scripture the Creator inserted (actually inbreathed[89]) the mind into the body (Gen 2:7) instead of leaving the two distanced. This is because mind and body influence each other physically rather than magically and therefore need proximity for this process to continue. Moreover to suggest that a soul unextended in space can reside within the spatially extended human body is blatantly self-contradictory. That is to say, if the soul exists in a particular region of the body, it must have size and shape.

(9) God and I are not the same mind. Therefore I do my own thinking, and He does His own thinking. I do not do His thinking. And since He does not do my thinking, He cannot know my thoughts unless He hears them, that is, uses His hand (qua ear) to tangibly feel the vibrations of all my cerebral thought-currents. Such a tangible experience would be impossible for Him if either His hand or my thoughts were immaterial. Similarly, I cannot know His thoughts unless I can feel/hear His voice vibrationally. That’s why He exhales Breath/Sound when speaking to us. This is not to suggest that He always vibrates the eardrum, for He can easily stir the brain directly to produce sensations such as sound.

(10) A similar argument applies to men and angels. That is to say, we cannot know each other’s thoughts, and thus cannot intercommunicate, unless we can vibrationally hear each other speak. Angels physically opened their mouths in speech to human beings and even chewed meals with them (Gen 19:3) who thereby “entertained angels unawares” (Heb 13:2). After all, if every vision of angels recorded in Scripture were a mental phantasm, why is it, in many cases, that the angel journeyed to the scene? Angels arrived on scene, typically in radiance, because light particles and sound waves enable men to see and hear them.

(11) Apostles and prophets guide us authoritatively only if the Voice speaking through them enters our heart to confirm their authority. But if the same Voice is in our heart, are not these leaders superfluous? Yes, unless God delights in the physical sensation of using their bodies as a sacramental medium for physically transferring the Voice from their bodies to our bodies. For instance Moses’ body discharged a prophetic anointing (the divine Voice) to seventy elders at Num 11:25. Logically, then, materialism is the only possible justification for the authority vested in apostles and prophets such as Moses and Paul. The Spirit was hand-transferred by Paul to the Ephesians (Acts 19). Handkerchiefs in contact with Paul’s body imbibed a charismatic anointing that healed the sick (Acts 19:11-12).

(12) A few verses are too materialistic to be convincingly explained away. Jn 3:5 is literally translated, “Unless a man is born of Water and Wind/Breath [pneuma], he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Thus God indwelt all OT and NT saints as Water and Breath/Wind, and as Flesh and Blood (His own divine physical substance, not the earthly flesh and blood of the Incarnation), for “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no [saving, regenerating] life in you” (Jn 6:53), for “he that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1Jn 5:12).

(13) According to James the human tongue is an evil moral agent, a worker of iniquity (Jam 3:3-8). How can this be, given that ordinary matter is too lifeless to be considered evil? James’ claim makes sense only if the soul is a physical substance mixed/merged with the entire human body into one substance like water and milk, whereby even the tongue is a wicked member. Several verses depict the sinful nature as our physical flesh (for instance chapters 6 to 8 of Romans), and at least two verses do so somewhat undeniably (Rom 8:3; Col 3:5). Of course the phrase “sinful nature” never occurs in Scripture. Rather Paul used the same Greek word translated everywhere else in the NT as literal physical flesh.

(14) If God sentences me for Lucifer’s sin, He is unjust. My innate sense of justice exonerates me from the sins of others. In the same way, I could not be held responsible for Adam’s sin if he were someone other than I because I must freely, consciously sin to become (a) guilty and (b) stained. Since Scripture holds me responsible for Adam’s sin, it follows that I am Adam without remembering it even as Christ incarnated forgetfully. Materialism alone allows all human beings to be the one man Adam. After the fall, God must have removed most of his stained soul to a reservoir in order to subsequently apportion parts of it to each human offspring at conception, as He still does today.[90] Logically this is the only possible origin of our prenatal taint.

(15) By allowing Israel to be an everlasting generation, materialism alone explains Mat 24:34, “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” Preterism becomes unnecessary.

(16) God is in a very real sense a substance, whether material or immaterial, only if His consciousness is truly grounded in substance, that is, only if any changes in His state-of-mind/consciousness are associated with corresponding changes (metamorphoses) in His substance. Otherwise His substance would not be the true ground of His consciousness but merely inanimate equipment distinct from Him and/or created by Him. Therefore His free choices are mental changes (from pre-decision to decision) associated with corresponding changes (metamorphoses) of His substance. Only substances subdivisible and hence material are metamorphic. One example of such changed state-of-mind is Christ’s incarnation from omniscience to ignorance.

(17) God has acted in various ways. Admittedly some theologians refer to His behavior as “eternal action” (whatever that means), but they do not deny divine actions such as creation, incarnation, and punishment. Action is impossible to conceive apart from motion/change, which in turn implies an energy field of some kind. Energy and matter, as modern physics recognizes, are synonymous concepts.

(18) What holds the universe together? It would collapse or scatter in various directions were it not for so-called “attractions” gravitational, magnetic, and nuclear. However, inanimate objects can neither feel attractions nor self-propel in response, especially not with the unfailing uniformity of gravity, magnetism and nuclear force. Hence scientists, historically, have readily admitted that these three magical “forces of attraction” remain unexplained. The only reasonable explanation is that the divine hand physically pushes each particle in the desired directions. God Himself, rather than magical “forces,” upholds the universe (Heb 1:3). The formulas for gravity, magnetism, and nuclear force are indeed quite accurate but merely measure His uniform exertions.

(19) God is immutably holy. He cannot sin or even experience temptation (Jam 1:13). Holiness is thus too easy for Him, that is, meritless, unless He originally labored to become immutably holy. Only materialism can postulate a mechanism for self-imposed immutable holiness. The Appendix refers to this mechanism as a divine “Immune System.”

(20) Material objects such as ingested food can easily become human flesh. An immaterial object cannot be flesh. The Lord must be physical, therefore, inasmuch as “the Word was made flesh” (Jn 1:14). Although previously physical and thus already fleshy from the start, for the purpose of Incarnation He had to assume a texture like that of human flesh as to merge with ordinary human protoplasm/flesh. Thus the verse may be read, “the Word was made human flesh.”

Logically, the human mind must be physical in light of the fact that (1) physical brain damage impairs reason; (2) physical drugs such as alcohol also impair reason; (3) all data including Scripture is known by physical sensations; (4) the mind’s decisions physically move the body to act; (5) the mind is extended throughout the body since pain is felt throughout the body; (6) without a sense of physical body, neither angels nor humans could govern their actions because they would no longer perceive any actions or a self who is acting.

The human brain is a thought-network comprised of some 100 billion electrochemical neurons.[91] God stirs our thought-currents in the same physical ways as electrochemicals, adrenalin, estrogen, testosterone, androgen, tranquilizers, painkillers, alcohol, narcotics, and psychiatric drugs. All of these physical substances influence our thoughts. Hence it is more plausible to say that God influences the mind physically than immaterially because, as argued earlier, if given two opposing theories, one of which is easy to conceive, the other too obscure to conceive and thus essentially incoherent, we should choose the more coherent theory (unless the divine voice constrains us otherwise of course). Anything less would be theologically irresponsible.

While immaterialism has throughout history utterly failed to explain even one single dynamic of reality whether natural or supernatural, materialism can easily account for, as has already become apparent, virtually every phenomenon of existence including the new birth, sanctification, spiritual awakening, next-world perfection, the birth of time, the nature of thought, the mind-body relationship, the creation of the universe, gravitational “force,” the nature of heaven, the nature of hell, God’s miraculous power, His triunity, His knowledge of our thoughts, His control over our thoughts, His freedom, His inability to sin, His Incarnation, His emotions, His glory, His face, His Light, His apparitions to people and angels, His outpourings, and even angelic/ demonic physics (i.e. their mobility, perceptions, warfare, mechanics for possessing minds, ability to cause disease, and their intercommunications with people, each other, and God). In sum materialism is fully intelligible, immaterialism fully unintelligible.

X. The Twenty Bibles Consulted In This Study

The KJV (King James Version), created in 1611, is the only Bible quoted in this study except where expressly indicated otherwise.[92]

Most of the following seven versions are probably faithful to the Greek Textus Receptus: KJV (King James Version); ALT (Analytical-Literal Translation); EMTV (English Majority Text Version); LITV (the Literal Translation of the Holy Bible); MKJV (the Modern King James Version); NWB (Noah Webster’s Bible of 1833); YLT (Young's Literal Translation of 1898).

Several of the following thirteen versions probably depend heavily on the Greek texts from Alexandria in Egypt: ASV (American Standard Version of 1901); BBE (the Bible in Basic English); DEV (Darby's English Version of 1882); DRV (Douay-Rheims Version of 1609); ESV (the English Standard Version of 2001); LBLA (La Biblia de las Americanas of 1986, a “Spanish NASB” from the same publisher as the NASB); ISV (International Standard Version); NIV (New International Version); NKJV (the New King James Version); NVI (Spanish New International Version); SRV (Spanish Reina Velara Version of 1909); SSE (Spanish Sagradas Escrituras); WEB (the World English Bible of 1990, an update to the ASV).

These 20 Bibles will be consulted in this study, but only 17 of the 20 have an OT. Therefore this study shall regularly speak either of “all 17 versions” or “all 20 versions.” Generally the present writer’s strategy is to quote the KJV and then tally the deviant versions.

Any analysis of Hebrew or Greek in this study will look to the King James Version, that is, the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus underlying the KJV.

The abbreviation "ff" may be read as “follow forward to the end of this chapter of the Bible” - e.g. Rom 4:22ff). And “cf.” may be read as “consult further” or “see also”.

XI. Tips For Viewing This Book Onscreen

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Chapter One: Hearing God's Voice Activates His Promises

I. Revelation Is Hearing God With Feeling Of Certainty

As to the question, how can we know with certainty what is true, my position is somewhat tautological (inherently true). A person can be sure that a proposition is true only when he is, in fact, indubitably sure. Stated differently, a proposition is unquestionably true only when it cannot be questioned or, at the very least, cannot be questioned in good conscience. Of course both the proposition and the felt certainty will be distinct (loud and clear) whence my acronym VOC (Voice of Certainty).

Urgency and deadlines often impel the conscience to act immediately upon whatever ideas presently seem most certain. In such pressing circumstances God typically instills just enough certainty to rule out competing choices, which might be called pressing certainty. In this book the term VOC can refer to either pressing certainty or absolute certainty. To create a church God only needs to sustain a pressing certainty as to the Creator’s identity. However, eternal issues are so serious that every believer should persevere in prayer for absolute certainty concerning them. Daniel’s greatness was his determination to persevere in prayer until hearing God for sure.

A simple analogy for understanding VOC’s authority is that a young boy's feeling of certainty that a man before his vision is his true father obligates obedience to his voice even if he can't prove that fatherhood genetically or biblically. VOC provides the mind a distinct (loud and clear) vision of the Father along with more certainty than that stimulated by a human father's sudden apparition before his son. As John Wesley put it, “The God of glory appeared to [Abraham] to give him this call, appeared in such displays of his glory as left Abram no room to doubt."[93] To say that Abraham had no doubts means that he felt absolutely certain that the visions seen and voices heard originated in the true Creator, which is VOC in a nutshell. Such recorded apparitions to OT and NT saints always exhibited “clear, unmistakable signs that the communications were really from heaven.”[94] The description “unmistakable” implies a perfect certainty impossible for impostors and deceivers to counterfeit.

VOC visually and vocally introduced the Lord to Adam and commanded him to abstain from select fruit. Jesus said that the "angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Mat 18:10; NW). VOC has always ruled angels both visually and vocally and is what called all OT saints to repentance and saving faith. VOC made the apostles, prophets, and authors of Scripture feel certain about God’s messages. In the next life VOC will govern all men forevermore.

Andrew Murray rightly elevated VOC's authority above biblical exegesis when he defined proper teachability thus, "All the teaching through the Word or men is [properly] made entirely dependent on and subordinate to the personal teaching of the Holy Ghost."[95]

Most Christians who claim to have heard God would admit they heard no external sonic voice. In other words they simply presumed to hear Him on account of a godly idea suddenly coming to mind. The rationale for this presumption is the widespread misconception that God is inside our thoughts whereas in reality the “indwelling” Spirit remains an externality (see Chapter Two, sec. II). As a Mind distinct from our mind and therefore external to our mind, God and His externality are to be felt and sensed precisely as we feel and sense the reality and externality of ordinary people and objects. In other words I first need to distinctly (loudly) feel and sense that a particular sensation is coming from someone other than myself before daring to suspect that God is speaking. I must never presume my own ideas and thoughts to be a message from Him. In my experience today’s “prophets” are, with perhaps two or three exceptions worldwide, merely people operating under this unwarranted presumption. The Book of Revelation consistently depicts the voice of both God and angels as an external sound of thunderous volume originating from an external speaker, as opposed to a mere idea quietly originating internally from within the mind (Rev 1:10, 15; 5:11-14 6:1, 9-10; 7:2, 10; 8:13; 10:13; 11:12, 15; 12:10; 14:2, 7, 9, 15, 18; 16:1; 18:2; 19:1, 6, 17; 21:3).

II. Faith Comes By Hearing Promises

Abraham’s faith (Rom 4:1ff) exemplified the term “faith” used throughout Romans and Galatians (Gal 3:6ff). According to Rom 4:3 and Gal 3:6, he believed when the voiced “word of the LORD came [twice] to Abram in a vision” (Gen 15:1; cf. 15:6). Thus “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the [spoken] word of God” (Rom 10:17). [96] Here “the word” means the Lord’s voice, not the written Word created five hundred years after Abraham.

Undoubting faith guarantees any petition (Mat 17:20-21; Mk 9:23; 11:23-25; Jn 14:12-14)[97] and is an absolute certainty available only from hearing VOC. God's sovereign control over VOC prevents impure faith from appropriating the prayer-promises for selfish ends.

Abraham heard promises. Hearing God promise a blessing awakens faith that He will do it. Thus faith, wrote Andrew Murray, "is the ear which has heard God say what He will do, the eye which has seen Him doing it.”[98] VOC uses visions to build faith in the promises. Hence Murray advised, "I must hear the person who gives me the promise: the very tone of his voice gives me courage to believe. I must see him: in the light of his eye and countenance all fear as to my right to take passes away.”[99] Murray encouraged newborn Christians to start out with petitions small enough to seem realistic and then persevere in prayer until hearing either God’s consent or His refusal, leaving one absolutely certain.[100] In Murray’s view, then, God does “not leave His servant in uncertainty as to His will. The gods of the heathen are dumb and cannot speak. Our Father [vocally] lets His child know [with absolute certainty] when He cannot give him what he asks.”[101] This statement shows that Murray regarded the divine voice as the key to certainty. Here Murray admits that God will sometimes deny the petition vocally. For example Paul continued petitioning God to remove the thorn until hearing VOC deny his request (2Cor 12:7). Murray had little tolerance for the notion that God refuses to answer some prayers with either a Yes or a No.

III. God’s "Promissory" Voice As Scripture’s Main Issue

The cross merely fulfilled God’s promises. Hence the dominant theme of the canon taken as a whole is not the cross but the voiced salvation-Promise spoken to Abraham and clarified in multiple covenantal promises (e.g. Lk 1:72-3; 24:49; Acts 1:4; 2:30, 33, 39; 7:5, 17; 13:23; 13:32; 26:6-7; Rom 4:13-16, 21; 9:4, 8-9; 15:8; 2Co 1:20; 2Co 7:1; Gal 3:14-29; 4:23, 28; Eph 1:13; 2:12; 3:6; 2Tim 1:1; Tit 1:2; Heb 4:1; 6:12-17; 7:6, 21; 8:6; 9:15; 10:23, 36; 11:9-11, 17, 33, 39; Jam 1:12; 2:5; 2Pet 1:4; 3:9, 13; 1Jo 2:25). The NT authors “regarded this one Promise as the theme of the whole O.T.”[102] The term for salvation used in the Promise was “everlasting inheritance.” Thus in visions of God, VOC promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses the earthly and heavenly lands of Canaan as an “everlasting inheritance” for their descendants in the nation Israel (Gen 12:1-3, 7; 15:7-8, 18; 17:2-8, 18; 22:15-18; 26:2-5; 28:14-15; Ex 3:1ff; 6:1-8; 23:20ff; 29:42-46; 33:1-3). The prophets Moses and Joshua preached/prophesied this Promise/gospel to all Israel, "For unto us was the gospel [of spoken promises] preached, as well as unto [Israel]” (Heb 4:2). The gospel hasn’t changed from OT to NT. VOC persuaded Israel to esteem this preaching/prophesying as God’s voice/Promise. The prophet is the ideal evangelist because VOC typically persuades a prophet’s audience that the true God is speaking, whereby the prophet Jonah converted the 120,000 evil citizens of Nineveh virtually overnight.

God’s Promise to bless Israel awakened faith to expect loud and clear responses to prayer. OT saints realized that waiting upon God to expressly promise success in any battle or major undertaking was absolutely necessary for guaranteed victory and blessing (Gen 25:22; Ex 18:15; Jdg 20:27-28; 1Sa 9:9; 14:37; 22:15; 23:2, 4; 28:6; 30:8; 2Sam 2:1; 5:19, 23; 1Ki 22:5-8; 2Ki 1:3, 6, 16; 3:11; 8:8; 16:15; 22:13-19; 1Ch 21:30; 34:21, 26; Ps 27:4). Moses’ determination to petition God for promises until hearing His response loud and clear largely accounts for the 150 OT instances of the expression, “The Lord spoke to Moses.” He made it a habit of prayer "to take the tent and to pitch it without the camp, afar off from the camp; and he called it, The tent of meeting...When Moses entered into the Tent, the pillar of cloud descended, and stood at the door of the Tent: and Jehovah spake with Moses" (Ex 33:7, 9). Ron B. Allen stressed that the original Hebrew in this verse says not “Jehovah” but “the pillar.”[103] Thus the pillar spake with Moses because, insisted Allen, “the cloud is Yahweh.”[104] The divine Presence simply was not confined to a Tabernacle accessible only to a high priest.[105] On the contrary Moses' tent far away from the Tabernacle[106] was the best place for everyone to get answers to prayer from VOC because the reviving Presence favors apostles and prophets like Moses. Consequently "every one which sought the LORD went out unto [Moses'] tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp" (Ex 33:7).

IV. "Confirmatory" Voice Of God Reaffirms His "Promissory” Voice

As demonstrated in the previous section, OT saints understood how to wait upon God for a desired blessing until hearing His consent/confirmation with absolute certainty/Faith. The sinful nature always supplies a voice of doubt/unbelief inclined to drown out this voice of certainty/Faith (VOC).[107] Therefore if the first confirmation heard was not terribly loud and clear, or if doubt/unbelief is louder than usual, the resulting uncertainty necessitates praying for reconfirmations[108] because we need maximum certainty/Faith to fully obtain God’s blessings (Mk 11:24; Heb 4:1-3). Abraham well modeled both Faith and reconfirmation. He was a prayer warrior who on at least five occasions “builded an altar unto the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD” (Gen 12:8; cf. 12:7; 13:4, 18; 22:9). After he prayed for a reconfirmation of the promises (15:8), a black darkness thickened around him until God appeared as a torch aflame with Light-emitting Fire and revocalized the promises (15:12ff). The darkness was a demonic voice of doubt, despair, and unbelief penetrated by divine Light-rays of hope and faith. Aware that VOC utilizes both visual and vocal confirmation for rebuilding faith, Andrew Murray counseled, “Do not lose time in deploring your unbelief, but look to Jesus. The light of His countenance will enable you to find the power to believe in Him (Psalm 44:3),”[109] because, alleged Murray, “to gaze upon His face, to sit still at his feet that the light of His love may shine upon the soul, is the sure way of obtaining a strong faith.”[110] Murray held it true of any Christian “that always sees and hears Him, that it becomes easy and natural to believe His promise as to prayer…let faith be all eye and ear.”[111] Any intensification (loudening) of the divine Presence, for instance the joy felt during a Sunday service, is actually God reappearing to confirm the promises as He did repeatedly for Abraham (Gen 12:1, 7; 15:7-8, 12, 18; 17:8; 22:15-18; Acts 7:2),[112] although usually less vividly (loudly) than in his experience.

In visions the Lord confirmed the same promises to Abraham’s descendants Isaac and Jacob (Gen 26:2-5; 28:10-15). When Jacob's voice of doubt loudened in fear of his brother Esau, he dove into prayer only to find himself physically wrestling with a visible God who vocally reconfirmed the promises (Gen 32:22-31),[113] "And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face" (32:30).[114] Against Paul’s voice of doubt the Lord physically “stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul" (Acts 23:11).[115] Similar confirmations loud and clear, even face to face, occurred for Joshua, Gideon, Manoah, and David (Jos 1:1-9; 3:7-8; 6:1; 8:1; 10:8; Jdg 6:11-22, 36-39; 7:1-10, 13-16; 13:1ff; 1Chr 21:16, 27; 2Sam 2:1; 7:4-17). In fact Christ physically "appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time" (1Cor 15:6).”

Distinctly visible (loudly visible) Fire and Cloud (Ex 40:36:ff; Num 9:15ff) continually reconfirmed God’s intent to take Israel into the promised land sworn to Abraham. Daily rebuilding their faith and silencing their voice of doubt was simply a matter of fixing their gaze upon the Cloud, "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb 12:3). The Pillar hovered visibly above the Tabernacle but occasionally levitated into a higher position as a distinct (loud and clear) signal to march forward, eventually redescending as a cease-march (Ex 40:36ff; Num 9:15ff). This arrangement taught Israel to wait upon the leadings of the Holy Spirit, upon VOC, to initiate and fight their battles.[116] Apostolic evangelism and missions were triumphant revivals because they were not self-initiated but directed by VOC's loud and clear confirmatory signals (Lk 3:21-22; 9:1-2; 10:1, 9; Acts 1:3; 2:1, 43; 3:6; 4:30-31; 5:12, 19-20; 6:8; 8:26, 39; 9:3, 10-11; 10:3, 19; 11:4-14; 12:6-7; 13:2-4; 14:9; 15:12; 16:6-10; 25-26; 18:9-10; 19:6, 11-12; 20:22-23; 22:10, 14, 17-18; 23:11; 27:24).[117] Thus the OT principle had in no way subsided, namely that the army of the Lord should never march into battle (such as evangelism and missions) without a loud and clear signal/confirmation from Him as a guarantee of impending victory.

V. Pentecost Was Promissory And Confirmatory

Pentecost was an important example of confirmation loud and clear. The one Promise encompasses all of God’s blessings including the Holy Spirit who is thus promised to all OT and NT saints. Therefore Pentecost’s outpouring of the Spirit was only another “fulfillment of the primal promise made to Abraham.”[118] At any moment VOC has to specify and confirm which promised anointings and blessings (“promised lands”) are presently appropriable. Pentecost was simply this traditional partnership of promissory VOC and confirmatory VOC. Speaking through Christ, VOC promised the Twelve (Lk 24:47-49; Acts 1:4-5, 8) the very OT anointing of “power” (dunamis) so dynamic in Samson, Elijah, Elisha, and Christ. Subsequently the risen Lord visually and vocally confirmed His promise by repeatedly "appearing unto them by the space of forty days, and [loudly and clearly] speaking the [promised] things concerning the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3; ASV). For ten solid days, "These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication" (Acts 1:14) until the final confirmatory signal came loud and clear, "And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them" (Acts 2:2-3). Pentecost makes no sense at all apart from the principle of loud and clear signals, for Jesus told them to wait in Jerusalem until the power had arrived, and how were they supposed to feel certain of its arrival apart from a loud and clear signal? Pentecost’s signal was only good for a short period of time, however. On a later date the army of the Lord was again depicted as contemplating a possible march into battle. Once again they had to wait prayerfully upon Him for a loud and clear signal. They prayed:

“[Stretch] forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place was [physically] shaken [by an earthquake[119]] where they were assembled together; and they were all [physically] filled with the Holy [Breath], and they spake [exhaled!] the [physical!] word of God with boldness (4:30-31).

What was David’s criterion of empowerment for marching into battle? To simply step out (foolishly!) on blind faith? From the outset “the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward” (1Sam 16:13). This was a prophetic Anointing to inspire his Psalms and direct his kingship.[120] But did he rest content in this empowerment? On the contrary, his ultimate criterion of empowerment for any given battle was not his anointing per se but specifically VOC. For example, “David enquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the LORD said unto David, Go, and smite the Philistines…Then David enquired of the LORD yet again. And the LORD answered him [as a reconfirmation]…I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand” (1Sa 23:2, 4; cf. 2Sam 2:1; 5:19). Thus David’s example shows that VOC is not supposed to be a once-for-all experience but is rather to be resupplicated until complete certainty of empowerment/fullness is reached.

VI. Was Pentecost Unrepeatable?

A classic tenet of historic Pentecostalism quite correct is that Pentecost was not a once-for-all new covenant but an endlessly repeatable outpouring.[121]. Joel’s promise of last-days outpourings is thus inexhaustible.[122] For instance Peter depicted the outpouring at Caesarea as a repetition of Pentecost, "As I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on [the Caesareans], as on us [on Pentecost] at the beginning" (11:15).[123] Here "Peter vividly recalls the events at Pentecost,"[124] thereby "leading to the common labeling of this event [at Caesarea] as the 'Gentile Pentecost'"[125] because indeed “a Gentile Pentecost had come.”[126] Vincent’s Word Studies on Acts 11:15 likewise noted, “Peter compares the outpouring on the Gentiles with that of the day of Pentecost.” Several scholars inferred that the Spirit even became visible again like Pentecost.[127] Ronald E. Cottle agreed that Pentecost was recurrent in the “Pentecostal effusion described in Acts 2, 8, 10, and 19.”[128] Omitted in this list is Acts 4:31 already admitted by F.F. Bruce to be reminiscent of Pentecost.[129]

Constrained to brief writings limited to a few select events, the OT and NT historians only recorded the Spirit falling upon select individuals of historic significance, for instance Pentecost’s 120 recipients. Scripture never records any universal once-for-all “New Covenant” outpouring upon the whole church. Such a once-for-all event would contradict the Holy Spirit's daily, incessant procession toward unbelievers to save them, [130] for “The Holy Ghost [is] eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.”[131] How could Pentecost already have poured out the Spirit on the whole church if the majority of it only came into existence 2000 years later? Pentecost was a continuation of the OT prophetic tradition rather than something new. It was new only for those of the 120 believers who had never fully experienced prophetic inspiration.[132] Pentecost did not create/birth the church but merely marked the last days of the OT-NT church (Acts 2:17).

VII. They Shall Prophesy (Acts 2:17-18)

Formerly children of the devil by natural birth, the Twelve became children of God by the new birth, excepting Judas of course, whereby they were casting out devils long before Pentecost (Lk 9:1-2). The fiery Spirit received on Pentecost was not the Twelve’s initial new birth as such, therefore, but a prophetic anointing primarily (and probably a sanctifying anointing secondarily). Joel’s promise quoted by Peter on Pentecost, after all, refers neither to the new birth nor to sanctification, that is, “not to a [purifying/sanctifying] of the moral nature, but an inspiration of the mind by which prophecy, and prophetic dreams and visions would be experienced”[133] as manifested immediately on Pentecost in “that species of prophecy which consists of speaking in tongues.”[134] Joel’s promise states, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see [prophetic] visions, and your old men shall dream [prophetic] dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my [prophetic] Spirit; and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17-18). Thus God was careful to cover people of all ages both young and old, male and female; all will prophesy. For instance Phillip “had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy” (21:19).

Historic Christianity’s perennial disregard for what Joel recorded is a hermeneutical travesty, an exegetical outrage. God did not say, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and they might prophesy,” but rather, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and they shall prophesy.” Anyone who claims to have partaken of Joel’s promised Holy Spirit without a prophetic experience is flatly contradicting what Joel stated.[135] Nor did God say, “I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall speak in tongues.” They might very well speak in tongues, as well as heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out devils, survive deadly poison, walk on water, pray down Fire (Acts 2:3), and fly on the wings of the Wind (8:39). Or they might very well do none of these things, but at least this one thing is certain; they shall prophesy.[136]

James Shelton’s masterful redaction criticism of the Greek texts compared every verse of Luke with Matthew and Mark while surveying Acts in order to surface peculiarly Lukan themes. He drew several important conclusions. First, “Filled with the Spirit,” an expression limited to Luke-Acts except Eph 5:18, characteristically marks the sudden redescent of the OT prophetic anointing,[137] as Walt Russell likewise concluded,[138] for instance at Lk 1:67, "Zacharias [the OT saint] was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied." Similarly 120 NT saints were filled on Pentecost and prophesied. Second, Luke’s application of an enormous vocabulary identically to OT and NT saints totally discredits differentiating the OT and NT prophetic anointings. Shelton speculated on a new era of some kind but found himself utterly compelled to dissociate it with Luke’s OT-style anointing for witnessing/prophesying which, argues Shelton, remained effective for NT saints throughout Acts.[139] Third, concluded Shelton, John the Baptist was a bridge of continuity between OT and NT preacher-prophets wherefore NT evangelism must be defined as OT prophesying.[140] The OT prophets preached repentance even as John preached NT-style repentance under the OT anointing of the prophet Elijah (Lk 1:15-17).[141] Fourth, the Lukan anointing is recurrent. Lk 3:1-3 describes John's ministry in a common OT format that began with "The word of the LORD came to the prophet."[142] The fact that "the word of God came to John" (Lk 3:2), argues Shelton, attests to the prophetic Word rearriving time and again.[143] This anointing is supposed to rearrive at each occasion of NT preaching/witnessing, just like in OT times. Fifth, Christ succeeded John as a preacher/prophet bridging the testaments.[144] In fact Luke deliberately drew about fifteen parallels to show that Christ functioned much like the prophet Elijah.[145] For instance Elijah’s visible ascent bequeathed Elisha a double portion of the prophetic anointing even as Christ’s visible ascent so endued His disciples.[146] Walt Russell rightly concluded, "Jesus' anointing with the Holy Spirit and his resulting prophetic ministry [of preaching] is the model for [all] Christians' ministry [of preaching].”[147]

Citing a substantial number of scholars in support, the four lengthy articles of leading cessationist F. David Farnell further demonstrated the indistinguishability of OT and NT prophesying.[148] Luke applied the same Greek word for “prophet” equally to OT and NT prophets alike. Furthermore, points out Farnell, Joel obviously used the term “prophesy” in the OT sense[149] wherefore the fulfillment of his promise in Acts can only mean the rearrival of OT prophesying. Thus “Joel 2 and Acts 2,” writes Farnell, “establish a fundamental continuity between OT and NT prophecy.”[150] Farnell also affirmed that John the Baptist “served as a prophetic bridge…between Testaments”[151] undercutting any effort to differentiate OT and NT prophecy. Other leading cessationists such as Gentry drew the same conclusions.[152]

Pentecost was not tongues but prophecy since the languages were understood (see 1Cor 14:5).[153] The Jewish audience “heard not tongues but inspired prophecy in their own languages.”[154] For three reasons all the “tongues” of Acts are to be presumed prophetic/intelligible. First, Luke’s purview is witnessing to people of all nations and consequently of all languages, and utterance understood by neither the speaker nor the audience is hardly the best tool for the job. Second, sound hermeneutics mandates a consistent Lukan usage of the term “tongues,” since hermeneutics is already too dreadfully thorny to fully depend on wherefore excessive irregularity would destabilize its conclusions to the degree of uselessness. Third, there is abundant evidence for classifying the tongues of Acts 10:46 as prophecy, “For [the Jews] heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God.” How did these Jews know it was true tongues and true praise? They must have understood the languages. Similarly Pentecost’s tongues had addressed multilingual “Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven” (2:5). They were “all amazed and marveled” (2:7) because “every man heard them speak in his own language” (2:6). Unintelligible tongues would have been scorned as gibberish at 10:46 when in fact the speech was esteemed as an amazing miracle of God. Furthermore, Peter identified these tongues as the same gift as Pentecost (11:15) and thus as prophesying. As early as 200 A.D. the renowned church father Tertullian categorized the tongues of 10:46 as prophesying.[155] Writing in 1963, Bellshaw attested to a historic scholarly majority favoring the view that “the tongues of Acts were known languages.”[156] This is prophecy.

The final mention of tongues in Acts is 19:6, “When Paul had laid hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.” Even the famous Pentecostal theologian Howard Ervin admitted that this verse is tantamount to stating, “They prophesied in tongues.”[157] He further conceded that Christ as The Prophet foreseen at Isaiah 61:1 (see Luke 4:18-21) “identified his baptism in the Spirit as empowerment for a prophetic ministry”[158] and “a paradigm for subsequent Christian experience.”[159] Are we then to entertain seriously Ervin’s theory that modern Pentecostalism’s unintelligible tongues[160] mark the prophetic anointing of Luke-Acts? Self-evidently the telltale mark of a prophetic anointing – the mark sine qua non - must be either prophesying or a known propensity for such (i.e. known by VOC). What is more, unintelligible tongues amount to a lesser gift than OT prophecy (1Cor 12:28-31; 14:5) whence Pentecostalism’s claim that this lesser gift (tongues) is the distinctive indicator of an (allegedly) greater NT era of the Spirit is surely illogical, since a lesser gift would indicate to spectators the very opposite, namely, that the lesser era is still in effect.

Contrary to Pentecostalism’s assumption that Spirit-baptism is required for miracles, the disciples were already performing miracles by Faith/Belief alone prior to Pentecost (Mk 6:7, 13; Lk 9:1-2; 10:9) because, said Jesus,

Have faith in God. Verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mk 11:22-24).

In other words tongues and Spirit-baptism cannot be strictly necessary for miracles since Faith is a sufficient precondition for any miracle. This miracle-working Faith is essentially the same as all saving Faith wrought from hearing VOC (Rom 10:17) but is typically of undoubting magnitude. In regard to the following passage, failure to distinguish weak, immature saving Faith/Belief from mature, miracle-working saving Faith/Belief of undoubting magnitude would lead to the impossible generalization that all believers do miracles:

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow [all] them that believe; In my name shall they [all] cast out devils; they shall [all] speak with new tongues. They shall [all] take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt [any of] them; they shall [all] lay hands on the sick, and they shall [all] recover (Mark 16:16-18)

This passage began with a reference to ordinary saving faith and then immediately shifted to the undoubting Faith/Belief of the mature. The same distinction was implied just two verses back where Jesus rebuked the Twelve for weak Faith/Belief (16:16). Earlier the lack of strong Faith in one region had thwarted His miracles (6:5-6). Insufficient prayer deprived the Twelve of enough Faith to miraculously cast out a certain devil (Mat 17:20-21).

VIII. Was Joel’s Promise Conditional, Or Unconditional?

The one Promise of Christ/salvation encompasses all the promises including that of Joel.[161] The Promise is unconditional only in the sense of guaranteed eternal fulfillment in the next life. As for this life, however, the major lesson of the entire OT is that all promised land is usually conditional upon obedience to God’s voice (Heb 3:7, 15; 4:7).[162] Therefore Peter’s promise on Pentecost probably alluded to both the unconditional and conditional aspects of the one Promise:[163]

Then Peter said unto [the God-fearing Jews], Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise [of Joel] is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” (Acts 2:38-39).

Peter promised Joel’s anointing unconditionally to his audience for two reasons. First, Joel’s “last days” will close with an unconditional prophethood for all believers throughout eternity. Second, Peter was probably foretelling his audience’s imminent reception of the Spirit, in virtue of either (A) foreknowing their imminent fulfillment of the typical preconditions (water-baptism and apostolic hands-laying) or (B) foreknowing God’s willingness to forego such Spirit-reception preconditions, if necessary, to use these men from “every nation under heaven” (2:5) in demonstration of the Spirit’s availability to all nationalities. The Ephesians exemplified fulfilling the typical preconditions for Spirit-reception when they “were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied” (19:5). This happened about twenty years after Pentecost![164] Why would hands-laying still be necessary if the Spirit is received in all fullness automatically and unconditionally at conversion? Similarly with the Samaritans, after baptism Peter and John laid “hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost” (8:17) with visible evidence following. Likewise Ananias, “putting his hands on [Paul] said…Be filled with the Holy Ghost” (9:17). Even Pentecost itself was conditional upon obedience to God’s voice, for the Twelve had to obey Christ’s voiced precondition of waiting patiently in Jerusalem. Likewise Cornelius and his household had to assemble for the outpouring in obedience to the voice of an angel (10:1ff). Roy Aldrich estimated that John the Baptist’s preaching saved easily more than ten thousand believers but admitted that “only 120 received the initial baptism at Pentecost.”[165] Obviously the other 10,000 had yet to meet certain conditions. Aside from Christ, probably the only person in Luke-Acts who received the prophetic Spirit without preconditions was John the Baptist Spirit-filled in his mother’s womb long before old enough to meet conditions! Explaining away these conditional withholdings of the Spirit as “exceptions” unique to the apostolic era contradicts divine consistency incapable of exceptions and misconstrues God as needlessly cruel for withholding the Spirit instead of resorting to alternative strategies. Exceptions in Scripture would utterly destabilize all hermeneutical conclusions and hence would be omitted from the biblical accounts even if possible. Any theology that postulates “exceptions” or covenantal “transitions” must be dismissed without the formality of an apology. Not only does the notion of exceptions border on heresy, it originates in special pleading.

What did Joel mean by an outpouring upon “all flesh”? If "all flesh" were without limitation, even unbelievers partook. Therefore "all" must have a limited force. Many of Scripture’s five thousand instances of "all" are limited in force. For instance by Paul’s preaching “all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word” (Acts 19:10; cf. Mat 3:5; Acts 4:10; 22:15). Everyone? Certainly not. In precisely what limited force, then, was Joel’s promised Spirit poured out on "all" flesh? An auto parts store boasting all car parts obviously means all types or classes of car parts. Albert Barnes observed, "The word all, here, does not mean every individual, but every class or rank of men. It is to be limited to the cases specified immediately,"[166] that is, on all ages and classes immediately mentioned in the promise (sons, daughters, young men, old men, servants, and handmaidens). Did the 120 fit all these categories? Perhaps not, but in the vicinity were men "from every nation under heaven" (Acts 2:5) whose families definitely fit the bill. Thus “on all flesh” means “on all races”[167] plus “without distinction of age, sex, or condition”[168] “on persons of every age, sex, and rank.”[169]

God ingeniously contrived the Joel promise for a vital hidden agenda. Its expression “all flesh” publicly and officially universalized the Holy Spirit to all nationalities as a permanent biblical refutation of ethnocentricity.

IX. “Ye Shall Be My Witnesses” (Acts 1:8)

“Ye shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). “Witness” and “testify” are the same word in Greek. To witness an event is to see or hear it directly. Witnesses testify (bear witness) to others of what was seen or heard. “Ye shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8) involves first of all witnessing Him (seeing or hearing Christ) and then testifying (witnessing) to others. Thus God’s plan was that Paul “see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his [prophetic[170]] witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (22:14-15). “I have appeared [visibly and audibly] unto thee [Paul] for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will [later] appear unto thee” (22:16). Clearly the term “witness” in Luke-Acts refers to a person who has seen or heard Christ or things from Him (Lk 1:2; Acts 1:8, 22; 2:32; 3:15; 4:33; 5:32; 10:39, 40-41; 13:31; 14:3; 22:18; 23:11; 26:16). In this vein Peter said, “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses [of His resurrection]” (2:32). Thus “Peter claims the whole 120 as personal witnesses to the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead and they are all present as Peter calls them to witness on the point. In Galilee over 500 had seen the Risen Christ at one time (1Co 15:6).”[171] “Prophesying” is another name for witnessing/testifying to visions seen and voices heard from Christ (Acts 2:17-18). Thus verse 1:8, “Ye shall be my witnesses,” anticipates 2:18, “I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy,” for “your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams” (2:17). Even OT prophets testified/witnessed to things seen and heard from Christ wherefore, “To [Christ] give all the [OT] prophets witness” (10:43).

John was another writer who stressed prophetic witnessing/testifying.[172] An angel said to him, “I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren [the prophets] that have the testimony [witness] of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony [witness] of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy…of thy brethren the prophets” (Rev 19:10, 22:9). God said, “I will give power unto my two witnesses [testifiers], and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days…[until] they shall have finished their testimony [witness]” (11:3, 7). Revelation is a “book of prophecy” (1:3; 22:18-19) in virtue of recording John’s witness, that is, his seeing and hearing things from Christ. John “bore testimony [gave witness] of the [prophetic] word of God,[173] and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw” (1:2; WEB). Also the prophet “John [the Baptist] bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon [Christ]” (1:32). Here John gave witness/testimony to seeing both Christ and the Holy Spirit at the same time. Christ’s prophecy that Judas would betray Him was called a witness/testimony (13:21). Christ was the Father’s witness, for “what [Christ] hath seen and heard [from the Father], that he testifieth [bears witness]” (3:32; italics added). “I speak that which I have seen with my Father” (8:38). Again and again Christ attributed His teaching to messages heard directly from the Father (5:30, 37; 7:15-16; 8:26, 40, 47; 14:10, 24; 15:15; 16:13; 17:8). In sum, time and again Scripture depicts evangelism/witnessing – giving testimony about the Son – as properly originating in prophetic visions and voices.

The Holy Spirit Himself is a witness in the sense of testifying to things seen and heard from Christ. “When the Comforter is come…he shall testify [witness] of me (15:26). “He shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear [loud and clear], that shall he speak, and he will shew you [in visions] what is to come” (16:13). “And it is the Spirit that beareth witness” (1Jn 5:6) loudly and clearly in our hearts. Accordingly the Protestant Reformation rightly emphasized the witness of the Holy Spirit (VOC) for conversion, endurance of faith, and maturation.

X. Voiced Authority (Exousia) From Christ To Be Fishers Of Men

Protestant pastors often exhort, “C’mon, take a chance. Step out on faith to preach the gospel and then trust the Lord with the results.” Stepping out in complete uncertainty to the Lord’s will is unjustified faith and hence blind faith. A justifiable faith is a conscience experiencing a degree of certainty obligating evangelism.

If stepping out on faith, blind faith, were as virtuous as Protestants insist, why not try to follow Peter’s example at Mat 14:28 –29? Here’s all you have to do. Just purchase tickets for a cruise and, when you reach the middle of the ocean, jump ship just like Peter did. Step out on faith to miraculously walk on water, trusting God with the results. Pretty stupid, huh? All blind faith is stupidity. Hence we should avoid “trying” to enact a miracle, or “trying” to evangelize. The biblical model is for us to first wait in prayer to hear the Lord promise to do the miracle, or promise to empower the evangelism. Only then are we to step out on faith to do the work, not on blind faith, but vocally certified faith consisting of Spirit-inspired certainty. Let’s consider some biblical examples.

(1) Peter did not step out on the water in blind faith. Rather he prayed the Lord for a voiced authorization because biblical faith cometh by hearing (Rom 10:17). Only when the Lord said “Come” did he step out upon the water. The ability of Christ’s voice to inspire certainty explains why the apostles, at the outset of His ministry, originally responded to His command, “Follow me.” Ordinarily it would be insanity to follow a man running around the neighborhood proclaiming himself to be God. Therefore the only way to justify the allegiance of the apostles and crowds to Christ is to concede the reality of Voice-epistemology. Hence Christ did not regard them as foolish or insane for following Him but, on the contrary, as people made wise by the Father.

(2) “Then [vocally] he called his twelve disciples together, and [vocally] gave power and authority [exousia] over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick” (Lk 9:1-2). Suppose the disciples had, on their own initiative, stepped out “on faith” in an “attempt” to heal the sick. Failure would be almost certain. This is precisely the state of the church today.

(3) “The Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place…[saying to them] ‘Heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you’” (10:1, 9).

(4) Jesus said to Peter the fisherman, “From henceforth thou shalt catch men” (Lk 5:10; cf. Mat 4:18-19; Mk 1:16-17; Lk 5:10). With how much abundance? The context is a portrait of revival illustrating precisely how abundant evangelism is supposed to be. All night long Peter was casting out the nets (“evangelizing”) without success (5:5). What was wrong with his methodology? It was self-initiated essentially on blind faith; it had no authority (exousia) from heaven. Then VOC from Christ’s mouth authorized him loudly and clearly to cast out the nets once again (5:4). Suddenly the nets became so overflowing with fish (“new converts”) that the two ships (“the local churches”) began to overflow and sink (5:7). Now that’s revival, and Christ repeated it at one of Peter’s later fishing expeditions (Jn 21:1-6) just to make sure His followers got the point!

If voiced authority (exousia) confers all miracles, why the need for Pentecost’s charismatic anointing? The answer lies in our book-title Knowing God is Physical Sensation. Authority (exousia) in itself fosters little intimacy. The Father wants His children to distinctly (loudly), physically feel His Power and Presence caressing their bodies, moving through them, and discharging to others. Moses’ body discharged divine Cloud to 70 elders (Num 11:25) and Light to all Israel (Ex 34:29-35). An anointing for evangelism is felt discharging from the mouth, lungs, and frame, even as Jesus physically "breathed on [the apostles], and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy [Breath]” (Jn 20:22). Indeed the main reason that God speaks to men through prophets is the opportunity to intimately, physically channel VOC through the prophet to the audience who needs VOC to certify the message.

How important is prayer compared to evangelism? Marital partners are to temporarily deny each other desired intimate relations only “that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer” (1Cor 7:5). Whereas evangelism is not portrayed as justification for denying each other.

XI. Promissory Voice As The Key To Prayer For Charles Finney And Pastor Cho

Although neither Charles Finney nor Pastor Cho espoused the Voice-epistemology and materialism endorsed in this book, both leaders learned by actual experience that dependence on the divine voice is the best way to usher in and sustain revival.

Pastor of the largest congregation in the world, Pastor Cho built it from scratch to over one million members. He prays three hours a day but has prayed five hours daily during difficult seasons. He attributes the shortcomings of American churches to insufficient and ineffective prayer. He persists in a particular petition until distinctly (loudly) feeling absolute certainty of God's consent, for "the prayer of faith requires us to continue praying until we have the [loud and clear] assurance in our hearts that God has heard us and the answer is on its way. 'So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.'"[174] Cho stresses fasting, "Experienced 'prayer warriors' are assigned to each [prayer] request and they fast and pray until they get the [loud and clear] witness of the Holy Spirit that their prayer has been answered."[175] As an example he furnished the story of a woman in his congregation who interceded for her unsaved daughter until "one day, as she prayed...She had a witness in her inner being that God had done the work. Within a few days, the daughter came to church and gave her heart to the Lord."[176] Cho recognizes that, generally, only authentic churches will have much success, that is, churches planted as the result of a command divinely voiced to a leader or leader-to-be.

Charles Finney (1792-1875) was possibly the most powerful revival preacher in American history and the apparent originator of altar calls for "decisions for Christ."[177] Entire sin-ridden “communities were reformed almost overnight.”[178] Christ appeared to him on the first day of his conversion.[179] Later that day he felt the Spirit descend upon his body like a gust of Wind and a wave of electricity.[180] He wept tears of joy the next morning when the Spirit redescended identically and supplied VOC (Voice of Certainty) for absolute certainty of his own justification by faith.[181] Daily he prayed for both individual conversions and corporate outpourings until distinctly (loudly) feeling certain of God’s consent. For instance Finney and a deacon prayed for an outpouring upon a village until, “Just at evening the Lord gave us…promise of victory.”[182] Similarly he was praying for an unsaved woman when as "I pled for her God said to me, ‘Yes! yes!’…and I felt a complete certainty that her salvation was secure.”[183] Of course “complete certainty” is VOC. In another case he struggled in prayer for a terminally ill unsaved woman until he obtained, he said, “the assurance in my own mind that the woman…would never die in her sins…I had no doubt that she would recover.”[184] To have no doubts is to have VOC. However, Finney experienced no intercessory VOC at all and no successful evangelism whatsoever during absences of his empowering anointing, usually regained by many hours of prayer and fasting.[185] This anointing caused uncontrollable weeping, agonizing compassion, sublingual groaning in prayer, and an insuppressible burden to intercede (viz. Jeremiah). It enabled him to preach with a magnitude of power so awesome that it literally altered American history. For example, "The Spirit of God came upon me with such power, that it was like opening a battery upon them.”[186] In a similar scenario “the congregation began to fall from their seats in every direction, and cried for mercy.”[187] He preached inspired messages thoroughly classifiable as "witnessing" in the Lukan sense of a prophetic anointing for evangelism. Like the OT prophets Finney often received a preview of the message shortly before the hour of delivery, making “so strong an impression on my mind as to make me tremble, so that I could with difficulty write…[going] through me, body and soul.”[188] This physiological turbulence was a loud and clear signal that God was speaking to him, precisely as VOC quaked and burned Jeremiah's bones (Jer 20:9; 23:9). Whenever Finney opened his mouth to preach, the divine unction barraged his mind with such a flood of inspired words that his lips could barely keep up.[189] One day Finney saw the blinding Light seen by Paul.[190] And for an entire winter devoted to studying Scripture, the Lord highlighted (brightened) particular verses to draw Finney’s attention to them.[191] He consistently looked to prayer as the only means to receive multiple, incremental Spirit-baptisms for both holiness and evangelism,[192] making him the forerunner of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements[193] even though he never spoke in tongues.[194] Finney incorrectly assumed, however, that any generation of believers could mimic his success because he failed to realize that it sometimes takes several generations of faithful prayer warriors to restore revival to a nation under judgment.

Certain Calvinists who resent Finney for his Arminianism have published gross misrepresentations of his teachings to impugn him. Now it may be true that Finney, like many theologians, failed of logical consistency in his effort to uphold justification by faith, but to construe him as an opponent of it is a blatantly dishonest distortion.

Chapter Two: Voice-epistemology Versus Intellectualism

I. The Basic Problems With Intellectualism

Protestantism’s theory of Sola Scriptura faces the following objections.[195]

(1) Greek is too complicated for non-scholars to master since a single Greek verb has about 150 or more spellings related to roughly twenty-five verb tenses, moods, and voices. English verbs usually have only four spellings such as play, plays, played, and playing. Furthermore the NT writers selected verb tenses in a manner manifestly too mysterious to reliably unravel. What is more, any word can be used in a potentially unlimited number of new ways; for instance the word “run” has dozens of meanings.

(2) Scholars disagree on how literal the texts are.[196] A very literal reading would take at face value Christ's identification of the bread and wine with His Body and Blood (Mk 14:22-24).

(3) Human reasoning is unreliable because the "heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer 17:9). Pride, rebellion, greed, indoctrination, private agendas, and every conceivable ulterior motive prejudice our interpretation of text.

(4) Literary analysts have shown that modern mindsets cannot reliably interpret ancient texts. For instance the Appendix reveals that solid sky is a scientifically valid OT concept completely lost upon modern minds.

(5) Any proof including Bible-based proofs is built upon assumptions which in turn need to be proven. The result is an infinite regress of proving assumptions, with the result that nothing ever gets proven. Hence a proof is valuable only for an audience already predisposed to a particular set of assumptions. That is to say, given a set of assumptions, a particular set of conclusions logically follows, and to itemize them is called a “proof.” Paul wisely used his audiences’ assumptions against them, especially the assumption that the OT is an inspired text. Thus Paul’s appeals to the OT in support of his doctrines (his Bible-based proofs) were only strategic; they do not imply that Bible-study is an adequate epistemology, contrary to what Protestants have assumed.

(6) If Bible-study were the best avenue to truth, the Spirit’s technique for illuminating our mind would consist of peaking our analytical skills, resulting in higher scores on various tests. Obviously this is not the case. In fact if mere analytical skills could spiritually enlighten the mind, pagan Bible scholars would see the light clearly while reborn adolescents walk in comparative darkness. This reversal of the facts prompted Andrew Murray to introduce a chapter on enlightenment with the verse, "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes" (Mat 11:25).[197] The reality is that even Christians who are intellectual babes can clearly see the light while the pagan Bible-scholars remain in darkness. According to Murray, “The wise and the prudent are those who [mistakenly] have confidence in their [analytical] reasoning ability to help them in their pursuit of spiritual knowledge”[198] whereas babes accept a truth on the authority of their father's voice.[199]

(7) Two thousand years of scholarly debate flatly contradict Charles Hodges’ assumption that the Bible is a plain book. In reality “the apostle Paul was not always clear in his writings, and even Peter admitted that some of the things he said are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:15–16).”[200]

(8) Sola Scriptura is the claim that a proposition is necessarily true only if demonstrably in agreement with Scripture. Yet the student must first draw conclusions about grammar, vocabulary, history, and context to translate a given verse. The basis for these conclusions is third-party reference books rather than Scripture itself. To regard these reference books as sufficiently authoritative for drawing conclusions is itself a violation of the Bible-as-the-only-authority. Sola Scriptura is, therefore, inherently self-contradictory and self-defeating.

(9) It was only 500 years ago that the printing press put Bibles in circulation. Thus for the first 5500 years of human history, believers at large did not have Bibles. To suggest that a proliferation of Bibles is necessary for ecclesiastical success construes God as an irresponsible Provider for 5500 years and Paul as a complete failure. Interestingly Paul is never seen bewailing the lack of Bibles and petitioning God to rectify it. He is seen, rather, bemoaning the paucity of prophetic gifting in the church (1Cor 14).

On the other hand, is inspired, absolute certainty really necessary for all ethical decisions? Perhaps universal obedience to conscience coupled with divine Providence is sufficient for worldwide well-being? This theory faces the following objections.

(1) Inspired certainty is the only way for God to let us know when He is speaking. Without it, therefore, He could never direct us to behave in precisely His desired manner. In short He couldn’t run the church.

(2) On several occasions the divine Voice directed biblical saints to abandon or shun a particular geographical region to avoid danger, for instance visions and dreams directed Joseph and Mary to flee from King Herod. In other words divine Providence does not always eliminate the danger but rather prefers, in some cases, to steer us away from it. God seems to often desire, when on the brink of releasing a disastrous judgment upon a city, that those residents who are believers be sufficiently attuned to His voice to escape the catastrophe. The story of Lot at Gen 19 exemplifies this principle.

(3) Without inspired certainty there could never be lasting world peace because conflicts exist at all levels of government. For example the leader of one nation might want to initiate a new technology beneficial in his opinion but catastrophic in the opinion of other nations. Therefore inspired certainty is the only way to bring all the world’s leaders into agreement on controversial issues.

(4) Even if divine Providence were disposed to establish world peace merely upon universal obedience to conscience and thus without using inspired certainty to direct every human act, nonetheless at every moment each of us would still need inspired certainty in order to know that such is His current plan.

This book claimed that each of us is obligated to whatever the conscience currently feels most certain about. One might object that an ethic dictated by feelings of certainty results in an ethical relativism, an antinomianism devoid of any absolute standard of right and wrong. To this I would reply:

(1) The absolute standard is love, which consists of actions that do no harm to God or neighbors. However, whenever we cannot hear His voice apprising us of which actions to currently take, naturally we are obligated to select courses of action to the best of our knowledge, that is, those actions we feel most certain about.

(2) Consider the alternative. Imagine a world where everyone acted in the following manner. When a person feels most certain about action X (it seems to him the morally appropriate thing to do), he abstains from X. Is this really the kind of world we want to live in?

(3) Couldn’t the devil impart certainty? That’s up to God. If God allows the devil to do so, He cannot blame us for behaving accordingly. On the contrary, He must reward us for faithfully heeding our conscience. Admittedly a few biblical passages seem to belie this analysis, specifically those narratives where God dispatches a demon to deceive people and then punishes them for obeying the demonic voice. But surely these are people who deceive themselves, that is, people who want to reject the truth because they love evil and therefore remain posed to welcome any and all demonic persuasions contrary to the truth.

(4) Each of us faces the choice of whether to serve in our nation’s army and whether to obey our military leaders when they command us to “kill the enemy.” Surely God is the one who should, ideally, make these decisions and use inspired certainty to make them known.

II. OT Obedience Defined As Obedience To God's Voice

Jn 10:1-27 advocated VOC prior to the crucifixion and hence in an OT context. In this passage Christ the Good Shepherd enters a gate to call His sheep out of a pen (10:2-3), standing before them visibly speaking, "and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth [visibly] before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers" (10:3-5). The fiery Pillar on MT Sinai voiced some of the OT laws to all Israel publicly and the remainder to Moses privately (Ex 19:3ff; 20:1ff; etc.). As the King James Version bears out so well, the OT referred to obedience as obedience to God's voice about fifty times (Ex 15:26; 19:5; 23:21-22; 29:42-43; Num 14:22; Deut 4:30, 36; 8:20; 9:23; 13:4, 18; 15:5; 26:17; 27:10; 28:1-2, 15, 45; 30:10, 20; 32:8, 10; Jos 5:6; Jdg 2:2,20; 6:10; 1Sa 12:14; 15:22; 24:24; 1Ki 20:36; 2Ki 18:12; Ps 95:7; Jer 3:13, 25; 7:23; 9:13; 11:4, 7-8; 26:13; 32:23; 38:20; 40:3; 42:6, 21; 43:4, 7; 44:23; Dan 9:10-11, 14; Zech 6:15). The Hebrew word for voice in all fifty verses, "qowl," totals some 500 instances in the OT, is always sonic in meaning, and is specifically translated “voice” about 375 of the 500 times in the KJV. In this case the present writer only tallied 15 of the 17 versions, of which 14 were alike and 1 tallied low on account of frequently substituting “sound” or “he said” for “voice” (ESV). The 2 versions not tabulated were the Spanish and English New International Versions (NVI and NIV) which seem to exhibit a clear anti-revelational bias against hearing God’s voice. In these two versions “obey his voice” sometimes reduces to “obey the Lord” or “obey His laws/commandments.” In reality the Hebrew words for "written law" and "written command" are totally distinct from “qowl” and rarely used to define obedience. Andrew Murray’s mastery of Hebrew led to the same conclusion, "The expression 'obeying the commandments' is very seldom used in Scripture; it is almost always obeying Me, or obeying or hearkening to My voice.”[201] The Hebrew word “shama” translated “obey” or “hearken” throughout the OT literally means "to hear, to listen"[202] or “give ear to.”[203] In fact in the King James Version it is translated “hear” 743 times and “hearken” (as to a voice) an additional 119 times.[204] Only 74 times does the King James Version translate it “obey.”[205] Even a common Greek word for obey has a sonic connotation.[206]

Using written law to define OT obedience is particularly objectionable where Moses plainly called for obedience to the sonic Fire whose deafening "voice then [physically] shook the earth" (Heb 12:26). MT Sinai shook like a leaf under its sonic energy. According to verses 12:18-26 this consuming Fire now speaks to us from heaven, "See to it that that you do not refuse him who speaks. If [Israel] did not escape when they refused him who [sonically] warned them on [MT Sinai], how much less will we, if we turn from him who [sonically] warns us from heaven. At that time his voice shook [MT Sinai]...God is a consuming fire" (12:25-28). The sonic energy implicit in qowl is evident from its unique role as “thunder” in the King James Version of the OT. And when a crowd in Christ's day heard "a voice from heaven," some who "heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him" (Jn 12:28-29) because an angel's voice is sonic like thunder, as John witnessed for himself (Rev 6:1).[207]

Law-obsessed Jews deaf to God’s voice tried to kill Christ for breaking the written law of the Sabbath (Jn 5:16-17). In rebuke Jesus thrice linked hearing the divine voice to salvation (5:24-25, 28) and then summed up the retort thus, "Ye have neither heard [the Father’s] voice at any time, nor seen his [physical] shape, nor does his [spoken/exhaled] word dwell [physically] in you" (Jn 5:37). Using written NT law to define NT obedience is simply the Jewish error revisited. Written law consists of God’s commands heard by mature prophets and written down for those believers too immature to hear Him loud and clear. Written law is better than nothing but is inherently powerless to sanctify and can detrimentally become obsessive and outdated.

Various OT saints sought God prayerfully in determination to see and hear Him, thereby maturing much faster than NT saints locked into Bible-study alone. Andrew Murray warned that hermeneutics may so obsess the mind that the “light of his countenance and the joy of his love cannot enter you…Your Bible study may become a substitute for God Himself."[208]

III. Paul Converted By God’s Voice

Charles Hodge used the expression “Calvinistic churches” interchangeably with “Reformed churches”[209] because John Calvin (1509-1564) was so influential to the Protestant Reformation that the official Reformed confessions do little more than summarize his teachings. It was “John Calvin, who gave to the Protestant reformation…a complete, Biblical theology.”[210] Calvin realized that the only justifiable rationale for immediate conversions is the indwelling Spirit’s witness given to all OT and NT saints, begun during conversion and then incessant thereafter. It is a distinct (loud and clear) feeling of certainty from the Holy Spirit[211] that Yahweh (Christ) is the true God, that repentance is necessary, that salvation is by faith in Him, and that Scripture is inspired.[212] Millard J. Erickson recently defended Calvin’s feeling-of-certainty epistemology on the basis that eternal issues call for a degree of “certainty that human reasoning cannot provide."[213] The whole Protestant Reformation came to agree with Calvin on the Holy Spirit’s witness.[214]

Rom 8:16 states, “The Spirit itself beareth witness [loudly and clearly] with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”[215] Likewise John credited assurance to the Spirit’s witness, "Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit" (1Jn 4:13).[216] Again, “Ye need not that any man teach you [because] the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth” (2:27).[217] Again, “It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth” (5:6).[218] Again, for “the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify [bear witness] of me” (Jn 15:26).[219] Tenney remarked that the supernatural “witness of which John speaks is self-authenticating”[220] as Thomas Oden insisted.[221] Obviously “self-authenticating” implies “completely persuasive” (VOC) and “counterfeit-proof” even as Patrick equivalently dubbed the witness “infallible.”[222] The ISBE states that the “Spirit of God, dwelling in man, witnesses to the state of Sonship (Ro 8:2, 15, 16; Gal 4:6)”[223] in the sense that “the Spirit says [loudly and clearly] to the believer’s spirit, ‘Thou art His child.’"[224] The result is an assurance of salvation.[225] Thus a personal relationship with Christ is a private voice from first to last because “faith cometh by hearing” (Rom 10:17).

Prior to conversion Paul was a biblical scholar almost without peer, the consummate Intellectualist. Unfortunately his hermeneutics only persuaded him that Christianity is blasphemy punishable by death. Upon suddenly seeing a vision and hearing a voice on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-13), however, he instantaneously abandoned over a decade of careful scholarly conclusions[226] even though he knew from the OT that lying spirits produce false visions and voices, and that his fellow Bible scholars, the Pharisees, would perpetually ridicule him for this apparent flight of fancy. Immediately heeding a vision or voice is foolish if one has serious doubts it, but Paul obviously felt certainty (VOC). Heeding VOC is commendable whereas rejecting it is reprehensible. "I was not disobedient," said Paul, "unto the heavenly vision" (26:19). Likewise Moses' call to ministry was a voice/ vision of a burning bush. Isaiah's call was the voice/ vision of a king dressed in flowing robes. Gideon's call was a voice/ vision of an angel. Ezekiel's call was a voice/ vision of Christ riding on stormclouds. Obeying VOC was wise in all these cases, and indeed in all cases.

IV. Is Relying On Voices Dangerous?

A soldier’s felt certainty of hearing his commander order an attack is often considered obligatory. How much more obligatory is VOC! Was Joshua supposed to disobey the visible Commander of the Lord’s Army (Jos 5:13-15)? Of course not. Scripture celebrates (Gen 22:18; 26:4-5; Heb 11:17; Jam 2:20) Abraham’s effort to kill his son Isaac upon hearing a voice (Gen 22:1-19). Abraham was the NT paradigm of faith (Rom 4:1) mentioned more often in the NT than anyone except Moses. Explaining away the attempted murder as normal behavior in those days overlooks Isaac’s status as the intended vehicle of God’s blessing to all nations. (Or imagine, since this was only a test, that God had commanded Abraham to slaughter the whole world). Suppose we ourselves were righteous, godly neighbors of Abraham. Would we have rebuked him or praised him in his effort to kill his son? A good neighbor would oppose any such act. Therefore it was outrageously immoral if he had any serious doubts rather than certainty/VOC. Obviously he felt certainty/VOC. At the last minute, however, VOC preempted the murder, “The angel of the LORD called out to [Abraham] from heaven [loudly and clearly]...[Then] the angel of the LORD called out to Abraham from heaven a second time" (Gen 22:11; 15). In sum Abraham observed two conflicting propositions in the same hour:

1. The best course of action for today is to slaughter Isaac.

2. The best course of action for today is to spare his life.

Even if Abraham had owned a Bible, hermeneutics never advocates such conflicting propositions. Therefore VOC is the only reliable way to become informed of God’s will. At times Paul’s hermeneutics misled his voice of conscience into initiating evangelistic campaigns eventually overridden by VOC (Acts 16:6-10). Peter saw a vision so alien to his hermeneutics that God displayed it three times to reinforce the point (Acts 10:1ff). Clearly VOC held a higher authority in the lives of the prophets than Bible-study.

At VOC’s command Moses ordered the Levites to slay one another (Ex 32:27-29) and all Israel to annihilate seven nations to take Canaan (Dt 7:1-2, 16). At these critical moments Israel needed and received certainty/VOC. Consequently her initial failure to slaughter the nations was thrice classified in Hebrews as disobedience to VOC (Heb 3:7, 15; 4:7). Likewise Saul’s failure to assassinate King Agag was disobedience to God's voice (1Sa 15:1-3, 23) whence the prophet Samuel grabbed a sword and “hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD” (15:33). God put such nations to death because they were irremediably evil like the nations of Noah’s flood.

Far from dangerous, voice-epistemology is the safest ideology of all. Following the voice of conscience, the voice-epistemologist will shun violence as much as possible unless VOC so constrains, whereas all major religions under the influence of Intellectualism have initiated wars and conducted massacres. In other words what makes alternative ideologies dangerous is the willingness to slaughter people even when we are not completely certain that it is the right thing to do.

V. Revelatory Vision Illuminates Scripture

The Introduction defined consciousness as loudness because every conscious experience must be sufficiently distinct (sufficiently loud and clear) to be perceived. For instance even the most abstract concepts are present to the mind as voices and visions. Take for example the following sentence, “Light is a spray of particles rather than an ocean-like flow of energy waves.” The words of this abstract sentence first come to mind as a voice, as is evident from the fact that I can sing them in my mind to any tune of my choosing. Next, my effort to actually comprehend the words postures them in my mind as a series of visions, for I will have to visualize light traveling first as a spray of particles and then as the waves of an ocean. All thought, all consciousness experience is, therefore, inherently sensory. In fact the cessation of sensory experience – the extinction of the five senses – is called unconsciousness.

Actually this theory that consciousness is loudness is to some extent a mere rediscovery of a conclusion originally drawn by the ingenious phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. He realized that a background of contrast is what makes any given reality perceivable. For instance white chalk is visible on a black surface while invisible on a white surface. Martin Heidegger slightly embellished this doctrine by mentioning the time-element, that is to say, he noted that such experienced contrast is in part a change in experience from one moment to the next. Thus a particular musical note is especially perceivable when it contrasts sharply with preceding notes or surrounding silence. The degree of contrast is the loudness of the perception. Although a dark room is a visual uniformity too devoid of contrast to qualify as vivid perception, fortunately light penetrating the darkness, reflecting off objects in varying patterns as to transform the uniformity into diversity, creates sharp visual contrasts impacting the mind with intuitions of the existence, presence, and appearance of the objects in that room.

What people see is not so much the objects or the light but their own intuitions. After all, by the sheer power of intuition they can picture any kind of object standing out brightly in a light. Indeed to picture any object is always to picture light because objects are seen only in a bright light – and note that the light in this case is clearly not “real physical light” but rather the light of intuition. What this illustrates is that the mind is always at work, that is to say, what we see, even when physical light is present, is ultimately the light of intuition. Stated differently, physical light, indeed any external stimulus, is merely a catalyst activating our light of intuition. Which is simply to reiterate the fact that all perception, all conscious experience, is a mentally/ intuitively experienced loudness/brightness of contrast. Ultimately, then, intuition – the mental tendency to visualize objects in a sharpness/brightness of contrast - is the light whereby all men perceive, whether material objects, on the one hand, or conceptual objects on the other. Highly intuitive people are called “very bright” or “brilliant” because they can brightly see/visualize complexes of conceptual objects that strand ordinary minds in complete darkness. For the same reasons intuition is often called “a light dawning on the mind.”

Heathens are in cognitive darkness to the gospel, unable to accurately see the conceptual objects jointly comprising the content of the message, "Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph 4:18). Darkness, blindness, and thus an inability of the eyes to see characterizes unbelievers (Ps 69:23; 115:5; 135:16; Isa 6:10; Mt 13:15-16; Mk 8:18; Lk 8:10; Jn 12:40; Rom 11:8-10; 2Cor 3:14-15; 2Cor 4:4), while the ability of divine revelation to open blind eyes to see marks believers (Ps 19:8; 119:18; 2Cor 4:3-6; Jn:12:40-41; Acts 26:18; Eph 1:18). To be unblinded is to see realities previously unseen, specifically God Himself in the case of conversion: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they might not perceive with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. Isaiah said this when he saw his glory [at Isa 6:1-10]” (Jn 12:39-41; italics added). Inability to clearly see God, then, is principally how Scripture defines spiritual blindness. Today’s church simply has too little of the Holy Spirit to see the vision of God as clearly as men like Isaiah and Abraham perceived it.

This Beatific Vision is not exclusively visual but is indeed a sensory plenum, that is, a fullness of all varieties of sensation. A vivid (loud) Beatific Vision affords sensations of joy and peace transcending all understanding, surpassing even the intoxications available from narcotics. The physical intimacy between Christ and His bride is an indwelling and therefore an interpenetration and hence is “sexual” but is supposed to be transcendently so. Paul occasionally alluded to this sexual aspect of divine-human intimacy:

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall [sexually] be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church (Eph 5:31-32; italics added).

And why not? First of all, if God is physical, as we maintain, there is no substantial difference, conceptually, between divine penetration and sexual penetration, except that He does a much better job of caressing His partners than we do. He tenderly caresses, with ineffable finesse, every single cell of the living body. At least such would be the experience of anyone whose body is fully Spirit-filled. The present writer’s favorite analogy is a loving father covering a babe with affectionate kisses. The sexual metaphors in Scripture are frequent. The indwelling Christ/Spirit even falls under the Greek word “sperma” (Gal 3:16; 1Jn 3:9) also used for male sperm according to Strong's Dictionary. Secondly, the Bible esteems marital sexual intimacy as a good thing. The next life would entail a loss if it involved renouncing this privilege. Heaven will not be a loss but a gain. Therefore it must be an intensification (loudening) of all biblically esteemed earthly blessings. This is why the Beatific Vision must be a sensory plenum. Heaven will be a place where Christ is literally the sweetest of fragrances, the purest of drinking waters, the richest of foods, the most dazzling of fireworks, and the greatest of lovers.

This concept of a sensory plenum can be further defended as follows. Our enjoyment, appreciation, and worship of Christ pinnacle only if we perceive His beauty, goodness, and power in a fullness of magnitude and from every possible perspective. The Holy Spirit will present Christ in a sensory plenum as an utmost effort to reveal His Glory in every possible way, that we may fully appreciate it, enjoy it, and accordingly exalt Him for it. If the Holy Spirit were to leave some variety of human sensation/ perception unused, there would be a human tendency to idolatrously self-conceive Christ in that particular area of intuition. And if He, alternatively, extinguished certain varieties of human sensation altogether, it would be a migration toward unconsciousness. No one would consider it a blessing at the Wedding Supper to be blind, deaf, and numb, or devoid of taste and smell.

Let’s recap. During conversion and thereafter, the Spirit is said to increasingly enlighten, illuminate, shed light on the mind in areas of cognitive dimness or darkness where important conceptual objects are unclear or invisible. To admit that He wants to bring us to an accurate understanding of these biblical concepts is to concede that He will bring these conceptual objects from darkness into light, that is, into bright, vivid (loud) focus before the mind’s eye to see/comprehend them accurately. Hence the mature believer will see accurate visions of God, heaven, angels, demons, and any other conceptual object that God deems useful for the task of accomplishing His work. “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).

VI. Seeing God By The Light Of His Countenance

As we have “seen,” intuition is the light whereby all men see, and ordinary physical light merely stimulates the light of intuition to reveal objects such as friendly faces. Hence the divine Light literally shined into Paul’s eyes, physically blinding him for three days (Acts 9:9; 22:11), to activate his light of intuition as to reveal Christ’s face. Paul’s natural eyes were thus consigned to physical darkness while his cognitive/intuitive eyes were enlightened to see Christ’s face. Every conversion is such a momentary flash of Christ’s face, usually too dimly for us to realize or remember it, fading immediately into an even dimmer, but continual, beholding of that same Face as Paul documented:

[The] god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For God, who [in Genesis] commanded the [physical] light to shine out of darkness, hath shined [His physical Light-rays] in our hearts, to give [us] the [intuitive] light of the [revelatory] knowledge of the glory of God in the [physically radiant] face of Jesus Christ (2Cor 4:4-6).

There are four reasons for reading physical Light here. First, the very next verse says, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels" (4:7). What treasure? Hermeneutically it must be the aforementioned Light that God "hath shined in our hearts,” taking up its abode in our material bodies as the indwelling Christ/Spirit. Second, the preceding verses recalled how Moses veiled his brilliant face to physically shade its unbearable radiance from Israel's eyeballs (3:12). The Light must have been tangible because immaterial light would simply have passed through the material veil unimpeded. (A material veil could never restrain intangible light). Third, the text is a clear allusion to Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light,” as noted in the margins of several Bibles such as the NIV, KJV, and NAB.[227] This physical light at Gen 1:3 was not the sun created thirteen verses later but Christ’s facial Light.[228] Fourth, “We all, with open face [i.e. unveiled faces] beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Cor 3:18).[229] “Transformed” here is the same Greek word applied to the radiant Transfiguration of Christ’s entire body (Mat 17:2; Mk 9:2). Thus Paul is saying that every Christian, in varying degrees, is an example of the Transfiguration (even when God does not expose the Light to others as He did with Moses, Stephen, and Christ). Once again, the verse stated, “We all, with open face [i.e. unveiled faces] beholding as in a glass [i.e. mirror] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Cor 3:18). The mirror/glass of choice in Paul’s day was a steel surface sufficiently reflective of sunlight to produce a brilliant user-image radiant enough to brightly transfigure the user’s own face.[230] Consequently several commentators rightly parallel this mirror/glass to Moses’ Transfiguration.[231] Depicted in this verse is an incremental, sanctifying transformation “from glory to glory”[232] caused by “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” (2Cor 3:18). “Spiritualizing” this verse to repudiate a real beholding of Christ is unconvincing,[233] as Gordon Fee argued extensively:

[We] behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and are therefore transformed into that likeness with ever increasing glory…God has shined into our hearts so that through that ‘light’ we might see his glory, which is located ‘in the face of Jesus Christ…To theologize this passage in such a way as to remove its experiential dimension is to divest it of its ‘real life’ setting…To behold Christ is to see the glory of the Lord, because Christ is the ‘image/likeness of God.’[234]

Again, we are all “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” (2Cor 3:18). As the ISBE noted, the OT “glory of the Lord” referred to the Light-radiating Pillars of Fire/Cloud and the human-shaped Figure typically shrouded within them (Ex 24:9-11, 16; 34:5; Num 12:8; Isa 6:1-3; Eze 1:26; 3:23; 8:4; 10:4, 18; 11:22-23; cf. Ex 16:7, 10; 40:34; Lev 9:6, 23; Num 14:21; 16:19, 42; 20:6; 2Chr 5:14; 7:1-3; Psa 84:11; Isa 4:5; 40:5; 60:1; Eze 43:2-5; 44:4).[235] In precisely this sense Isaiah “beheld his glory” (doxa) in the form of a human-shaped Figure enthroned (Jn 12:41). The Hebrew word for “glory” was translated doxa in the Greek OT (LXX) and subsequently in the Greek NT.[236] Thus NT saints are seeing dimly the same visions made vivid to the nation of Israel. The NT refers to Christ’s Transfiguration as the Lord’s tabernacled doxa made vivid to the apostles (Jn 1:14; Lk 9:31-32; 2Pet 1:16-17; Acts 7:55; 22:11).[237] Similarly “the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory [doxa] of the Lord shone round about them” (Lk 2:9). One day all men “shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory [doxa]” (Mat 24:30; cf. Mat 16:27; 19:28; 25:31; Mk 8:38; 10:37; 13:26; Lk 21:27).

Seeing God is not, however, an exclusively optic experience. Upon colliding with a wall a blind man might say to himself, “Now I see why they warned me about it.” He sees the wall through an intuition born of tactile sensation (he has a mental image of the wall), for intuition is the light whereby all men see. Admittedly this intuition/revelation of the wall remains incomplete on account of his unhealthy eyes. It is precisely such a partial, unhealthy blindness to God’s glory/face that sanctification/ revival seeks to cure.

VII. Knowing God Intimately Is Visual, Tactile, Vocal, And Emotional

Man was created for intimate fellowship with God (1Cor 1:9; Phi 2:1; 3:10; 1Jn 1:3, 6). Can Bible-study possibly be the ground of fellowship with Him? Of course not, as the following imaginary conversation illustrates. A man says to his comrade, “Guess what? I have recently been enjoying incredibly intimate fellowship with a woman. Indeed we are in love.” “Oh really? Tell me all about it! Is she beautiful?” “Well, I’ve never actually seen her.” “No? Ok. In that case, I’ll bet she has a wonderfully feminine voice replete with sweet, kind, encouraging words.” “Well, honestly, I’ve never actually heard her.” “No? How exactly do you know her, then?” “Well, actually she died about 2000 years ago, but she left behind a book of laws and rules along with promises that those who obey will be blessed.” “Wait a minute, I thought you referred earlier to enjoying intimate fellowship with her!”

Clearly biblical hermeneutics has absolutely nothing to do with divine-human fellowship. As another example, let’s imagine a father and mother abandoning their son with only a book of guidelines and rules. Would this book constitute an ongoing intimate relationship between parents and son? Of course not. Minimally they should regularly phone him and ideally return to proffer warm smiles, tight embraces, affectionate kisses, and encouraging pats on the back. Such an obvious elevation of intimacy from mere phone-calling to face-to-face proximity depicts divine-human intimacy (friendship), for the maturing believer, as increasingly facial, vocal, visual, tactile, and emotional. The "LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex 33:11; italics added; cf. Num 12:6-8).[238] The Father even immersed him in a pillar of Fire for forty days (Ex 24:15-18) largely to cover him, presumably, with intimate kisses and caresses even as a mother cares for a babe. Expressly pleased with his obedience (34:17; cf. Num 12:6-8), God elevated him to yet another level of visual and tactile intimacy. The divine hand clenched him, placed him in the cleft of a rock, and then shaded him from His unbearable radiance.

And when my glory shall pass, I will set thee in a hole of the rock, and protect thee with my right hand till I pass: And I will take away my [physical] hand, and thou shalt see my [physical] back parts: but my [physical] face thou canst not see" (Ex 33:22-23).[239]