Samson's Jawbone

Recently  at a church I attended one of the pastoral staff commissioned a team of youth leaving for a mission trip. He commissioned them based on something "God had told him," when he was a young man. He sent the team out in fulfillment of what God had spoken to him many years prior. I cringed!  It seemed to me that such a statement gave the impression that the team was going out in fulfillment of God's plan for that pastor, and that God's purpose for them individually was secondary. Wasn't the Great Commission the team's authority? No mention of it. Why did the congregation need to know about a specific "prophetic word," that had come to a pastor 30-years before? This "word-from-God," affirmation gave greater significance to his experience, then to the command of Christ. It essentially elevated the words and experience of that pastor above the word of God. Such statements diminish the authority of Christ and His word.  It is the authority ...

Several Years ago, the speaker at a conference I attended related his experience with someone who believed in private revelations.   While he was travelling to speak at yet a different conference, his wife received a call from the Vice President of one of North America's prominent Christian University's, he related the conversation like this: When his wife, Betty [a pseudonym], answered the phone, the caller identified himself as Dr. Mort [my pseudonym] of the university, and asked to speak to her husband whom we will call Dr Johns [also my pseudonym]: "Hello, this is Dr. Mort," of the prominent Christian university "is Dr. Johns available." "No," said Betty, "he's out of town on a speaking engagement. [This was before the cell phone era.] I can relay a message to him and have him call you." "Oh, that would be great! ...Would you let him know that I, and a group of our faculty, have been fasting and praying for a month, in our la...