Experiencing God
"But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies..." —2nd Peter 2:1
In
1990, a workbook based upon the teachings of Henry Blackaby (with co-author
Claude King), a Southern Baptist pastor and conference speaker, was
published. The workbook, Experiencing God, has since sold over
two million copies, been translated into 40 languages, and has been taken as
a 13-week course by approximately 16% of all Southern Baptists (SBC).
By some estimates, this translates to about half of all active
members of the SBC denomination. But, according to a spokesman for the SBC
Sunday School Board, churches from many other denominations have also gone
through the "Experiencing God" course, including
Roman
Catholic churches. Furthermore, there are now youth and pre-teen
editions of the workbook, as well as videos and a leader study guide.
The hardback version of Experiencing God (subtitled
Knowing and Doing the Will of God, LifeWay Press, Nashville,
Tennessee) is an expanded and modified form of the workbook (all comments
will be based on the hardback edition). It was published in 1994 and already
has sold 250,000 copies. In addition, thousands have attended "Experiencing
God Weekends" and "Experiencing God Weekends for Couples." These weekends
are usually sponsored by the SBC, but are open to all denominations. Even
the Jesuits at Boston College had scheduled a 1997 Spring "Experiencing God"
Conversation Series.
Blackaby's book and seminars are everything that should be detested in
so-called evangelicalism today. They take a purely mystical approach to
Christian living, and by necessity, undermine and distort the precious Word
of God. This examination of Blackaby's work is for the purpose of not only
exposing it (many outside of Blackaby's Southern Baptist Convention have
never heard of Blackaby), but also because it is a clear representation of
the state of evangelicalism in America.
The general teaching of Experiencing God is wrapped around what
Blackaby calls the "Seven Realities of Experiencing God":
(1) God is always at work around you.
(2) God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
(3) God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.
(4) God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.
(5) God's invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a "crisis of belief" that requires faith and action.
(6) You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.
(7) You come to know God by experience as you obey Him and He accomplishes His work through you.
General Thoughts
Experiencing God is a book that is full of errors, Biblically unsupportable assertions, incredible statements, and story-theology (views based upon anecdotal accounts rather than upon Scripture). Some examples:
(a) The last four of the Seven Realities either contradict Scripture, or at best, cannot be supported or proven by Scripture.
(b) "If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience" (p. 87). What does this mean? Does God speak to all Christians individually? If so, how? What Scripture is used to support this (Blackaby uses none)?
(c) After praying to God, Blackaby advises, "Reflect on your feelings. ... How did you feel as you walked and talked with God" (p. 62). What passage from the Bible tells us to reflect on our feelings in order to evaluate our prayer life?
(d) "Knowing God only comes through experience as He reveals Himself to me through my experiences with Him" (p. 5). Doesn't the Bible reveal God to us? Are our experiences necessary, and more importantly, are our experiences reliable when it comes to experiencing God?
(e) "With God working through His servant, he or she can do anything God can do. Wow! Unlimited potential" (p. 26). Wow is right! Kenneth Copeland, Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn, and the whole Word of Faith gang of heretics would shout, "Wow!" too. Can believers create? Can they convict of sin? Can they draw men to God? This statement is a gross perversion of Phil. 4:13 (and is very similar to Manifest Sons of God doctrine).
(f) "When God gets ready to do something, He reveals to a person or His people what He is going to do" (p. 31). Oh really? Actually, this concept is a major emphasis of the book, and a large part of its popularity. But what Scripture supports this? Does God really report to us? Does He reveal to His church what He IS GOING TO DO? If so, tell me, what is He going to do next week? Or, what is the next major movement of God in this world? We can often tell in hindsight what God has done and who He has used, but going forward is a different story.
(g) "You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing" (p. 38). Blackaby would have us "adjust [our] lives to" God (p. 73), rather than repent of our sins. What kind of "adjustments" are we talking about here? Blackaby often uses this word, "adjust," but it can't be found in a concordance. One wonders why he is so reluctant to use the good old fashioned Biblical words like, "repent" or "confess." "Adjust" sounds so nice and clean. "Repent" of sin sounds messy and ugly. Maybe that is why. Modern wisdom tells us that we must avoid offending anyone -- even if it is with the truth.
What Is the Word of God?
As concerning as some of Blackaby's statements
mentioned above are, the real distress lies in Blackaby's distortion of the
Word of God. Even though the book is peppered with numerous references to
the Bible, and some of what Blackaby says is supported with Scripture,
including speaking highly of the Word and its importance, we charge him with
distortion of the Scriptures. We do so along three fronts:
(1) Misuse of the Scriptures
II Tim 2:15 is clear that if we are to be a people approved of
God we must accurately handle the Word of truth. The teachers of the Word of
God have an awesome responsibility to understand and deliver God's truth,
not their own opinions. On this score Henry Blackaby fails miserably. To
misuse the Bible as Blackaby does is not uncommon. His errors are not
unique, but that fact does not excuse one who claims to speak for God. Keep
in mind that Blackaby is attempting to use the following passages as support
for his views:
John 14:26 -- The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things. -- "The
Holy Spirit of God will be your personal Teacher. ... He will be at work
revealing God, His purposes and His ways to you" (p. 3). Simply completing
the verse clarifies its meaning: And bring to your remembrance all
that I said to you. Jesus was not talking to us but to His apostles.
The Holy Spirit would teach them, and bring to their remembrance those
things that they would reveal to the church largely through the writing of
the New Testament. This verse is not a promise to the average believer
directly.
John 14:6 -- I am the way, the truth, and the life.
-- Blackaby uses this verse to teach that we will know specifically what God
wants us to do with our lives: "Who is it that really knows the way for you
to fulfill God's purpose for your life? God is. ... If you were to do
everything that Jesus tells you one day at a time, you always would be right
in the center of where God wants you to be. Can you trust God to guide you
that way?" (p. 21). This passage in not in the context of God's individual
will for our lives, but in the context of salvation and eternal life.
Heb. 1:1 -- God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers
in the prophets in many portions and in many ways. Blackaby utilizes
this verse, along with a few others, to prove that God will speak to His
people today, apart from the Scriptures: "If anything is clear from a
reading of the Bible, this fact is clear: God speaks to His people. ... God
does speak to His people, and you can anticipate that He will be speaking to
you also" (p. 83). Note carefully that Blackaby is not
referring to the written Word of God alone. In using Heb. 1:1 as a proof
text, Blackaby does the same as he did with the last verse -- ripped it out
of context. Reading the very next line, In these last days has spoken
to us in His Son (Heb. 1:2), shows that Blackaby has totally misused
Scripture. Rather than a proof text for God speaking to us apart from
Scripture, Heb. 1:1,2 coupled with Heb. 2:1-4, is a proof text of God's
revelation which was "In His Son," and has now been recorded by the apostles
in the Word of God. This passage proves that there is no
additional revelation apart from the Bible, not
that God is speaking to us today apart from the Bible. Blackaby could not be
more wrong.
Luke 4:24 -- is used as an example of how to use the
Scriptures to find direction from the Lord. Rather than teach his readers to
carefully study the Word in its context, using proper hermeneutical
principles, Blackaby teaches a neo-orthodox approach. A story is told of a
lady who awakened one night with this reference running through her mind.
She got up to read the passage and, "That morning the Lord spoke to Gail
through the Bible. She realized that even Jesus had to leave His hometown in
order to 'preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns' (v.
24). She sensed the Holy Spirit saying that she would have to leave the
comforts and security of home to go with her husband as they served the Lord
together. Later that morning, in the Experiencing God Seminar, she gave her
testimony of what God had said." On the basis of God "speaking" to Gail in
this way, she and her husband would sell their house and move to another
state. This is pure mysticism. It is among the most perverted forms of
Scriptural distortion.
John 11:4 -- This sickness is not unto death is
used in the same manner. Taken as if it were a personal promise to the
Blackaby family, they believed that God had promised them that their
daughter would not die of cancer -- and she did not. Proof positive that God
had spoken, right? What about the thousands over the years who have claimed
this same verse only to watch a loved one die? Perhaps it is because of such
misuses of Scripture that many professing believers think that God has
disappointed -- even deceived them. Yet John 11:4 has nothing to do with
Blackaby's daughter, or anyone else's. It has to do with Lazarus.
Rom 8:26,27 -- Blackaby uses these verses to teach that the
Holy Spirit, "Helps us know the will of God as we pray. ... The Holy
Spirit's task is to get you to ask for it (God's will)" (pp. 110-111). Of
course, the passage teaches no such thing. Rather it tells us that, "The
Spirit Himself intercedes for us." The Holy Spirit is not some mystical
bellhop from God prompting us to ask for just the right things before we can
get them (as Blackaby claims). Instead, recognizing our weaknesses, the Holy
Spirit prays for us, according to the will of God.
(2) Neo-Orthodoxy
Another front along which Blackaby must be challenged is that of
his neo-orthodox leanings. Blackaby would surely deny the neo-orthodox
handle, but his theology has clearly been influenced by neo-orthodoxy.
Neo-orthodoxy is a "Christian" theology which finds its roots in the
existential teachings of Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth. Barth was a
German theologian attempting to move away from liberalism in the
early-1900s. Unfortunately, as Barth recognized the error of liberalism and
started marching toward conservative orthodoxy, he never made it. Along the
way he formed his own views which eventually took the name neo-orthodoxy or
Barthianism. Blackaby is not a true Barthian, but his view of Scripture has
been influenced by this movement.
Barth reacted to the subjectivity of liberalism. Liberals had no authority
-- no word from God. Barth believed that man needed an authoritative word
from God, but he did not turn to the Bible for that word. Instead, Barth
taught that Jesus Christ was the Word of God, and the Bible only a witness
to that Word. It was Barth's teaching that the Bible was not the Word of
God, but it can become the Word of God if and when God speaks
to us through it. But, and this is important, other things, such as a
sermon, or a newspaper, or a novel, etc. can also become the Word of God
when God speaks to us through it.
In other words, one of neo-orthodoxy's "contributions" to evangelical
Christianity is the view that revelation to man from God takes many forms.
The Bible is no longer the sole authoritative voice of God in this age, it
is just one of them. God not only can, but we should expect Him
to speak to us in visions, dreams, circumstances, hunches, feelings, poems,
novels, music, etc.
The neo-orthodox view is widely accepted today among professing Christians,
thanks to the influence of the
Charismatic
movement. So most readers of Experiencing God are not
shocked when they read, "God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible,
prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes and
His ways. When God speaks to you, you will be able to know He is the One
speaking, and you will know clearly what He is saying to you" (p. 87).
According to neo-orthodoxy, not only does revelation come from sources
outside the Bible, but even the Bible itself is not the Word of God unless
God chooses for it to be. Blackaby says it like this in response to the
question, "Can't I get a word from God from the Bible?" (Notice that even
Blackaby recognizes that his system confuses people about what is the Word
of God). His reply, "Yes, you can! But only the Holy Spirit of God can
reveal to you which truth of Scripture is a word from God in a
particular circumstance" (p. 88). (Emphasis added.)
Do you see what has happened? Blackaby is not saying that only the Holy
Spirit can open our eyes to Biblical truth (the doctrine of illumination),
he is saying something entirely different. To Blackaby, the Bible is no
longer the "Word of God," it becomes the Word of God when God
uses it to speak to you through your experience/your circumstances -- God
can also speak to us in a poem, or The Wall Street
Journal, or your mother-in-law, or through impulses, as well as
dreams or visions. Blackaby has thus made the Word of God totally relative
and experiential, rather than Biblical.
This is pure neo-orthodoxy, and almost identical to the doctrinal teachings
of the
Charismatic and
Vineyard
movements.
Jack Deere, a leading Vineyard theologian writes, "God can and does give
personal words of direction to believers today that cannot be found in the
Bible. I do not believe that he gives direction that contradicts the Bible,
but direction that cannot be found in the Bible" ("Vineyard
Position Paper #2," p. 15). I defy anyone to show to me the difference
between Deere's view of revelation (an openly Vineyard teacher) and that of
Blackaby's. There is none, and that is our concern.
In Blackaby's program, this view of revelation becomes intensely practical.
He writes, "Your task is to wait until the Master gives you instructions. If
you start 'doing' before you have a direction from God, more than likely you
will be wrong" (p. 89). Sounds very spiritual, but how does it work?: We are
to wait for God to speak to us personally and directly before we make a
decision. If we don't hear from God, we are to do nothing. But the question
always arises, "Once we have accepted the neo-orthodox view of revelation,
how do we know if it is God, and not the devil or our own emotions speaking
to us?"
Wayne Grudem, another Vineyard theologian who
is a wholesale believer in extra-Biblical revelations of all kinds, attempts
to answer this question when he states: "Did the revelation seem
like something from the Holy Spirit; did it seem to be similar
to other experiences of the Holy Spirit which he had known previously in
worship? Beyond this it is difficult to specify much further, except to say
that over time a congregation would probably become more adept at making
evaluations ... and become more adept at recognizing a genuine revelation
from the Holy Spirit and distinguishing it from their own thoughts" (The
Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, pp. 120-121).
(Emphasis added.)
Grudem is arguably the most careful and well-respected Charismatic
theologian in the country. He teaches Biblical and Systematic Theology at
Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois (affiliated with the
Evangelical Free Church of America). Yet the best that he can come up
with in answer to our concern is "Did it seem like the Holy
Spirit?" And, "A congregation would probably" be able to get better at
discernment over time. While we are fumbling around trying to decide if
something felt like the Holy Spirit (nothing in the Bible helps
us here), and hoping that we will get better at all of this discernment
stuff, Blackaby tells us that we dare not even make a move until we are
certain that we have heard from God. Pity the poor Christian that believes
this trash -- he is hopelessly tossed about on a sea of subjectivity and
mysticism.
At this point, Blackaby, Deere, and Grudem would cry foul. They would claim
that while they believe that God speaks to His people apart from the Bible
today, these revelations are not on a par with Scripture. That is, God
speaks today, but not with the same authority as He did in His Word. So
don't accuse us of adding to Scripture, they would say. But, interestingly
enough, this brings up another issue. We find in the Bible that God did
speak, either orally (including through His prophets) or through the written
Word. But always, always, His Word was authoritative. It was nothing less
than a Word from God -- one that must be obeyed and heeded. Now Blackaby
(and the others) are telling us that God is speaking in a third way today, a
way never found, described, or hinted at in the Bible. God is speaking
today, but His Word is not authoritative. It can be weighed and examined. We
are not even certain when He is speaking. And when some think that they are
certain that He is speaking, they still believe that the revelation may be
partly in error.
This is how Wayne Grudem explains it: "There is almost uniform testimony
from all sections of the Charismatic movement that prophecy is imperfect and
impure, and will contain some elements which are not to be obeyed or
trusted. The Anglican Charismatic leaders Dennis and Rita Bennett write: 'We
are not expected to accept every word spoken through the gifts of utterance
... but we are only to accept what is quickened to us by the Holy Spirit and
is in agreement with the Bible ... one manifestation may be 75% God, but 25%
the person's own thought. We must discern between the two'" (Ibid.
p. 110). How?? Scripture does not tell us.
It remains a mystery as to why people are attracted to this neo-orthodox
view of the Word of God. Surely it is not an improvement over, Thus
says the Lord. Surely the uncertainty of this system pales in
comparison to the certainty of the Scriptures (2 Pe. 1:19-21). Well said are
the conclusions of R. Fowler White who wrote in The Coming Evangelical
Crisis a chapter entitled "Does God Speak Today Apart from the
Bible?":
"The Bible give us no reason to expect that God will speak to His children today apart from the Scriptures. Those who teach otherwise need to explain to God's children how these words 'freshly spoken from heaven' can be so necessary and strategic to God's highest purposes for their lives when their Father does nothing to ensure that they will ever actually hear those words. ... Moreover, the promise of such guidance inevitably diverts attention from the Scriptures, particularly in the practical and pressing concerns of life. Let us never underestimate just how serious this diversion really is" (p. 87).
(3) Mysticism
"Mysticism is the idea that spiritual reality is found by looking inward [through deep mediation or contemplation]. Mysticism is perfectly suited for religious existentialism; indeed, it is its inevitable consequence. The mystic disdains rational understanding and seeks truth instead through the feelings, the imagination, personal visions, inner voices, private illumination, or other purely subjective means. Objective truth becomes practically superfluous. Mystical experiences are therefore self-authenticating; that is, they are not subject to any form of object verification" (adapted/copied from The Vanishing Conscience; merely using this definition of mysticism should not imply that we endorse the author or the book, since we most certainly do not).
From this definition of mysticism, we find
evangelicalism in general, and Experiencing God in particular,
to be completely infiltrated with mysticism. Following are some examples of
mysticism in Experiencing God.
Blackaby's co-author, Claude V. King, writing in the Preface, sets the tempo
for the book with a personal experience: "Two years before, God had spoken
to me through His Word that a time would come when I would need to be free
of those job responsibilities to be more fully available to Him. I began to
pray and ask Him if this was the time I needed to leave my job and walk by
faith. ... By Labor Day weekend, God had convinced me that I must resign my
job and walk with Him by faith as I completed this new project" (pp.
XII-XIII). [Comment: King makes a job change based upon God speaking to him,
and God convincing him. How did God do this? Mainly through inner
impressions and feelings, even though he claimed that God spoke to him
through the Word and through the counsel of people. This is mysticism, not
Biblical principles of decision making.]
Then in the Introduction, Blackaby assures us that the Holy Spirit will
mystically convince us that the teachings of Experiencing God
are from God: "When I present what I see as a Biblical principle, you can
depend on the Holy Spirit to confirm whether that teaching comes from God or
not" (p. 3). [Comment: Not to disillusion Mr. Blackaby, but the Holy Spirit
confirmed to me that what Blackaby writes is pure nonsense. How did the Holy
Spirit tell me this? Not through some warm fuzzy and a sense of peace, but
through the careful examination of the infallible Word once for all inspired
by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit confirms truth in the Scriptures, not
through feelings.]
Blackaby often makes the following types of statements: "When God reveals
His work to you, that is His timing for you to begin to respond to Him" (p.
35, cp. pp. 81 & 99); "Truth is not discovered; it is revealed. Only God can
tell you what He is doing or is wanting to do through your life" (p. 46);
"When God starts to do something in the world, He takes the initiative to
come and talk to somebody" (p. 66, cp. p. 73); "When He comes to a person,
He always reveals Himself and His activity" (p. 69); "What God speaks, He
guarantees will come to pass" (p. 82); "When God reveals truth to you, by
whatever means, that is an encounter with God" (p. 85, cp. p. 86 -- this
type of mysticism is also neo-orthodoxy); "When God speaks to you, you will
be able to know He is the one speaking, and you will know clearly what He is
saying to you" (p. 87, cp. p. 100); "What you do in response to God's
revelation (invitation) reveals what you believe about God" (p. 135 -- note
the constant use of the word "revelation"); "We forget that when God speaks
He always reveals what He is going to do -- not what He wants us to do for
Him" (p. 137). [Comment: Note that Blackaby is not talking about God
speaking to us through the Bible. He is clearly teaching that God speaks,
reveals, talks, or invites the believer through extra-Biblical, mystical
means.]
How then are we supposed to hear the voice of God? Blackaby tell us to pray
the following prayer: "God, I pray that I will come to such a relationship
with You that when You speak, I will hear and respond" (p. 90). What if you
question this mystical approach to God? Then you clearly have a spiritual
problem: "Oh, don't let anyone intimidate you about hearing from God. One
critical point to understanding and experiencing God is knowing clearly when
God is speaking. If the Christian does not know when God is speaking, he is
in trouble at the heart of his Christian life" (pp. 83 & 94). Not only do
you have a spiritual problem, according to Blackaby, you also are in direct
disobedience to the Word of God: "When He gives you a directive, you are not
just to observe it, discuss it, or debate it. You are to obey it" (p. 158).
This whole paradigm also comes with its own special blessing: "If you walk
in a consistent relationship with God's provision for you -- the Holy
Spirit, and His own presence in your life -- then you should never
come to a time that you do not know the will of God" (p. 170). (Emphasis
added.) This unsupportable concept is perhaps the chief attraction to
Blackaby's whole system.
Concerning the mysticism in Blackaby's teachings, one commentator has aptly
stated:
"... these people are busy searching for God's perfect (secret) will and are willing to use occultic, mystic, non-scriptural methods to do so. By becoming so mystical and so in touch with God (their perception, that is), they straddle the line between the theist and the pantheist. That is why they seem to parallel the New Age[rs] (or a better description may be 'Gnostic[s]'). A full blown mystic (whose every impulse is from God) is in effect by definition a pantheist."
Conclusion
The teachings found within Experiencing God are a dangerous mixture of Biblical truth with mysticism, neo-orthodoxy, and good old fashioned misuse of Scripture. Blackaby follows and perpetuates a trend that has found great acceptance in many evangelical camps today. It is the trend toward a personal relationship with Christ even at the expense of truth. It does not seem to matter whether a teaching agrees with Scripture; all that matters is that people feel better and seem closer to God. In the process, the sheep are led further away from the true God, and the Word of Truth is despised.
This report has been excerpted and/or adapted from a three part review (Pt. 1; Pt. 2; Pt. 3) by Pastor Gary Gilley, Southern View Chapel, 3253 South 4th Street, Springfield, IL 62703)
