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HEAVEN'S DATING SERVICE

There's an old story that's made the rounds about a preacher who moved into a small town where two old-maid sisters were the mainstays of the church. Naturally, they were very interested in the new pastor, and went out of their way to provide him with every spiritual comfort. I don't know if, like in the story of Solomon and the baby, they thought they could divide him in two and each take half, but they were determined that either Spinster #1 or Spinster #2 was going to get Pastor X over to their side of the altar.
One day the mother of these two girls invited the preacher over for dinner, and one of the sisters made her move. Getting him pinned into a corner of the living room, she seized his hand, and with a gleam in her eye told him the happy headline. "Guess what, Pastor?" she asked. "Wonderful news! The Lord has shown me that you and I are going to be married!"

Have you ever come up against something like that? "The Lord has revealed to me that such-and-such is His will for me"? Or even more breathtaking: "The Lord has plainly shown me that such-and-such is His will for YOU."

Well, the preacher didn't bat an eye and he didn't run out into the street screaming for help. He gave her hand a little pat and very calmly told her: "Well, sister, that is wonderful news. Now, when the Lord reveals the same thing to me . . . then we'll be married." And I imagine he went straight home, disconnected the phone, and didn't sleep for the next week, just on the off chance God was trying to send him a vision or a dream.
My friend Morris Venden relates that story in a marvelous book of his, entitled How to Know God's Will in Your Life. And this takes us into an absolutely crucial area of study: How can we know when God is communicating with us? How can we distinguish between dreams from heaven and dreams from too much pepperoni pizza?

Right after telling this story, Morrie gives us one of his own . . . and of course, after forty-plus years in pulpit ministry, he's had just about everything in the world happen to him that can happen. Down in L.A. one day, a woman came rushing up to him, just vibrating with spiritual fervor. "Pastor," she told him, "the Lord has revealed to me that there is gold up in Alaska. He has shown me the exact spot where it will be found. All we have to do is take along a broom, sweep away the snow, pick it up, and bring it back." Then this P.S.: "And YOU are supposed to go with me."

Well, Morrie, remembering the story about the two sisters, didn't buy a plane ticket for the Yukon. And he didn't call for doctors in white coats to come and take the lady away. He just gave her a similar answer. "That's interesting," he replied. "When the Lord reveals the same thing to me, I'll go with you." "Really?"

"Yes," he repeated. "When the Lord reveals it to me too."
You know, friend, sometimes it's pretty easy to use your own antenna and tell when a message isn't coming from God's throne in heaven. And yet there are times when it isn't nearly as simple to know that God either is — or is not — communicating with us.
Well, what safeguards are there in the Christian faith to keep us from taking ill-advised trips to Alaska? Or to a mass suicide in Jonestown? Or into the errors of a cult system?
Let's start with the truths we can know; what do you say? Friend, I don't know if every dream you have has a heavenly origin. Some of them might; some of them might not. If you see a shining being of light standing at the foot of your bed in the midnight hour, I don't know if that's an angel. Maybe it is. But I do know this: if you read a verse or a chapter out of this ancient book called Holy Bible . . . THAT is the voice of God speaking to you. It is the premise of my life, and it is the premise of the Christian church, and it most certainly is the premise of the Voice of Prophecy radio ministry — for more than seven decades now — that all 31,173 verses in the Word of God are just that: the Word of God. Every other "signal source" needs to be questioned and evaluated, but I firmly believe that you and I can have total confidence in this one source. This Book, friend, is a message, a divine revelation, from God to us.

Here's the verse of the day on the matter: II Timothy 3:16, 17:

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

You scholars out there might remember the word "inspiration":

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God."

In other words, these 66 books in the Bible come to us as messages from God. Over in the book of II Peter, chapter one, we find additional insight as to how this actually happened.

"For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man," Peter writes, "but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrases that verse in his great book, The Message. Listen:

"The main thing to keep in mind here is that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private opinion. And why? Because it's not something concocted in the human heart. Prophecy resulted when the Holy Spirit prompted men and women to speak God's Word."

"They were moved by the Holy Ghost," says the King James.
Now, friend, I know what you're thinking. Here it's the Bible saying that the Bible is a reliable book. The Word of God claiming that the Word of God is inspired. Is that like a used-car salesman saying, "You can trust me because it says in the used-car salesman's handbook that you can trust me"? You're absolutely right . . . and so the discerning man or woman has to ask the question: Does this Book give evidence of being true? Do its prophecies come to pass? Are the stories accurate? Do the messages contained here change lives? Is the Jesus Christ found in these pages a legitimate Savior? After you've said yes to those questions a few hundred times, you begin to believe what it says in II Timothy about this Book being a reliable message from God.

Now, is our God able to also communicate with us through other avenues? Besides the Bible, can He get a message to me or to you by some other means? Like this radio program, for example? When you listen to the Voice of Prophecy, can you know and trust and believe that you're hearing a message God wants you to hear? What about those dreams? And those bright, benevolent beings of light people see gliding across their bedroom wall? Does God ever use the Internet? Does He choose to communicate by these other methods — and if so, how can we sort out the good radio programs from the bad ones? The good angels from the dark ones? How does a person know?

We want to spend this week exploring that question, friend, but let me close today's time of study by making this simple observation. How often do we go down the garden path looking for heavenly truth from these secondary sources . . . while blatantly ignoring what the plain Word of God says right in our faces? How often do we pay heed to a dream or a magazine article, while living outside of the boundaries of what the Bible tells us?
We noticed a piece of literary criticism from Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, and he wasn't speaking to this exact point. But he writes to complain about scholars who look high and low for hidden meanings and subtle subplots . . . and don't see the main story standing center stage.

"These men ask me to believe," he writes, "they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight."

I suppose that's an oversimplification. And it's true that you and I are woefully inadequate at understanding this grand book called the Bible. That's why we have so many denominations. That's why this radio show keeps scratching away at the truth, and after seven decades don't feel like we've plowed a very large piece of the field. But don't you recall times in your own life when you know the Bible had something pertinent to say about your life? "Love your neighbor," it said . . . and you knew it. And you knew you didn't love your neighbor, and weren't about to start trying. "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse." "Thou shalt not bear false witness." "Thou shalt not commit adultery." We could go on and on. And yet we want to turn to dreams and the Psychic Network on television for heavenly counsel instead of listening to the very counsel heaven SAYS is heavenly counsel.

So back to our title question: IS THAT GOD'S VOICE I HEAR? When it's found in Genesis, or in Revelation, or in any of the 64 books in between, the answer is an unqualified yes.