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Podcast
Muslims Becoming Christians Through Dreams
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Transcript
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Hi, I'm Dave DeWitt, and today I'd like to talk about Muslims becoming Christians
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through dreams.
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There are many testimonies of conversations, especially among the Muslims, where people
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are leaving Islam and becoming Christians because of dreams.
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First I'll read some claims being made.
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I won't give all the references, they're available on our website, relationalconcepts.org.
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But these are going to be a series of quotes.
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Tom Doyle with E3 Ministries says, quote, the content Muslims and they're having dreams
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over and over.
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The phenomena of dreams and visions has surfaced throughout the Muslim world from Indonesia
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to Morocco.
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Okay, that's a quote.
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Here's another quote.
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In the church, if you ask how many people came to Christ, 80% will say, I saw him in
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a dream.
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I suppose that means a Muslim country church or something.
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Anyway, more of the quote, many veterans, missionaries to the Muslim world would say
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dreams and visions along with satellite television are introducing Muslims to Jesus in unprecedented
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numbers.
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They add that more Muslims are coming to Christ than at any other time in the 1400 year history
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of Islam.
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Here's another quote, for at least 10 years, reports have proliferated of Muslim converts
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to Christianity through dreams.
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The reports have included villages in places like Morocco.
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We first heard about this in the early 1990s.
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Here's another quote.
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The examples are multitudinous.
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A Muslim from Malaysia saw her deceased Christian parents in a dream celebrating in heaven.
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Jesus in a white robe told her, if you want to come to me, come, and she did.
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A man from Western Africa saw a religious Muslim in hell and a poor Christian who could
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not even give alms in heaven.
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A voice explained that the decisive point was not the alms, but the faith in Jesus.
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That's another quote about a dream.
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Here's another one.
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A missionary working among the, I'm not sure to say this, TAUS, UGS people in the Philippines,
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the largest Muslim group reported that a number of faithful Muslims, quote, saw Jesus in their
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dreams following the last Ramadan.
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One man dreamed of Jesus killing a huge dragon in a duel, and the following day had the same
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dream again, which opened him to the gospel.
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Here's another quote.
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There are numerous reports that many of the barbers living in Algerian Altus Mountains
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are coming to Christ through similar dreams and visions, forming mostly underground cell churches.
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Another quote.
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An Egyptian Muslim was reading the gospels according to yet another report and had just
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reached Luke chapter 3 when a strong wind swept the room, and a voice said, I'm Jesus
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who you hate.
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I am the Lord you're seeking.
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He decided to follow Jesus that day.
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Here's another one.
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A well-informed source who for obvious reasons remains unnamed reports that a former Islamic
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imam, spiritual leader, has led 3,000 Muslims to Jesus, coming to his belief in Christ through
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appearances and dreams in which a white man told him to study the Bible.
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His method is simple.
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In conversation, he asked others, have you seen a white man in your dreams recently?
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And if they've not, he tells them, I was just wondering, thanks.
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If they answer positively, he continues by explaining, quote, this is Jesus.
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He wants to speak to you because he wants you to follow him.
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Some time ago, Bill Bright, director of Mission Agency Campus Crusade for Christ, wrote that,
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here's this quote from Bill Bright, we're experiencing an amazing phenomena.
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Muslims in particular are having dreams and visions confirming the reality of Christ.
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After one radio program reported that Jesus had appeared to many Muslims in a dream and
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said to them, I am the way, the radio station received thousands of letters from Muslims
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in North Africa and in the Middle East, in which the listeners said they had suddenly
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understood their earlier dreams.
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They then wanted more information about Jesus.
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It's hard to find actual testimonies from Muslims.
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Here's a couple of them.
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I'm going to read them to you.
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This is from a Muslim that is reporting on his dream, so it's a quote.
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That night I saw Jesus in a dream.
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First Jesus touched my forehead with his finger, and after touching me, he said, you belong
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to me.
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Then he touched me above my heart.
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You have been saved.
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Follow me.
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You belong to me, he said.
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I have decided I'm not going to finish the Hajj, the pilgrimage.
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Whatever it takes, I'm going to follow that voice, because that's the end of the quote.
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Here's another one.
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I found myself having supper with a man I knew to be Jesus.
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He had come to visit me in my house and stayed for two days.
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He sat across the table from me, and in peace and joy, we ate dinner together.
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Suddenly the dream changed.
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Now I was on a mountaintop with another man.
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He was clothed with a robe and shod with sandals.
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How was it that I mysteriously knew his name too, John the Baptist?
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What a strange name.
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I found myself telling this John the Baptist about my recent visits with Jesus.
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All right, so there's a bunch of quotes and things.
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Now I'm going to make some observations.
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First of all, it's hard to find actual testimonies of Muslims' dreams from Muslims who had dreams.
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The above two I just gave are repeated in several articles.
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What you can find are many charismatic Christian leaders telling us about Muslim dreams.
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One site is actually called Five Remarkable Testimonies of Muslim Dream Conversions, but
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all five are accounts written by charismatic Christian leaders.
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They're not testimonies by Muslim converts themselves.
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I'm not saying there aren't any.
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I'm just saying they're very hard for me to find them.
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Most of the other testimonies are a few words from a Muslim convert interspersed with many
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comments of the charismatic missionary.
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For the most part, not always, these testimonies about Muslims being converted to Christianity
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are being presented by the charismatic elements of Christianity and supportive of their views.
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A second observation I'm making is that Muslim dreams sound like dreams any of us might have.
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We have sketchy, vague dreams that jump from one scene to another.
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Often we can, for unknown reasons, identify someone in the dream, a deceased parent, grandparent,
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well-known figure, former teacher, professor, mentor.
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Our dreams are vague scenes not connected to one another and without specific message.
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This seems to be the case with these Muslim dreams.
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The biblical dreams, which were revelations from God, were clear, specific, and with a
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distinct message.
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Even in dreams like that of Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh, where they did not know the interpretation,
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the dream itself was clear and specific.
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In the case of Mary's husband Joseph, his instruction about Jesus was precise and clear
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about what he was to do.
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Pharaoh's dream, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and Joseph's dream were not like we usually have.
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A third observation, there are over 2.1 billion Muslims in the world.
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For the most part, they all know about Jesus and Christianity, just like Christians know
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about Muhammad and Islam.
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Is it so amazing that some of them, even thousands of them, are having dreams where they see
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themselves talking with Jesus or some vague identifiable figure?
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Some charismatic Christian leader tells them it's Jesus.
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I'm not questioning their conversion, but can we confidently conclude that the Jesus
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of the Bible is appearing to them?
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A fourth observation, Muslim dreams are all about individual people and what they are
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to do for their own benefit, usually healing or salvation.
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Biblical dreams were all about what God was doing.
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Jacob's latter dreams was about God's covenant with Abraham's descendants.
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Joseph's dream was about what God was doing with the 12 tribes.
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Pharaoh's dream was about what God would do with the nation of Egypt.
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Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's dreams were about what God would do with the whole
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course of Gentile history.
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Mary's husband Joseph was the only New Testament believer to have dreams.
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They're about God protecting the Christ child.
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Nobody in the Bible ever had a dream about his or her own personal healing or salvation.
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Number five, my observation, the Bible never suggests that believers should expect dreams
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or visions from God.
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The Bible is a record of God's intervention in history to bring about his sovereign plan
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for the ages and on into eternity, from the Garden of Eden to heavenly New Jerusalem.
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God revealed himself to Moses, but not to the other two million plus Israelites who
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left Egypt.
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God gave dreams to Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, but not to the other Egyptians and Babylonians.
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God revealed things to the prophets of Israel, but not to individual Israelites.
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God revealed his message to the apostles and the prophets of the New Testament, but
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not to every believer in the church.
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A sixth observation, the New Testament model for evangelism and missions is missionaries
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or was missionaries going to the lost with the gospel, not people having dreams and visions
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which led them to the missionaries.
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A lot of times the reason is given for this is that the Bible is not available to these
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people because of the Islamic leadership.
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Well, the Bible wasn't available to people that Paul was talking about either, and he
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didn't suggest that they wait on God to give them dreams.
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What he says here in Romans 10 is, how then will they call upon him if they have not believed,
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and how will they believe in him if they have not heard, and how will they hear without
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a preacher?
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How will they preach unless they're sent?
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Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good
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tidings.
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That's in Romans 10, 14 and 15.
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The apostles never said anything about salvation coming through dreams and visions, even in
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difficult areas where the missionaries had not gone or where the scripture was unavailable.
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A seventh observation, one thing is clear.
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Those who follow dreams and visions do not see the Bible as a sufficient revelation from
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God.
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Say all you want about people eventually finding their way to Christ through dreams, they do
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not have a sufficient Bible.
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Dreams and visions assume that the Bible is an insufficient revelation.
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That's why the biblical prophets received them.
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The Bible was not yet finished.
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It was incomplete and hence insufficient until the apostle John wrote the book of Revelation.
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To claim further revelation from God today is to declare that the Bible is still insufficient.
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An eighth observation, when someone has a dream and they believe it to be a revelation
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from God, they'll make that revelation their most important path to God, if not the most
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important thing in their life.
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As the former Muslim man we read about said, whatever it takes, I'm going to follow that voice.
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That sounds impressive when the voice is identified as Jesus or an angel, but remember that's
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essentially what Muhammad did when he started Islam and what Joseph Smith did starting Mormonism.
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That's what cult leaders do all the time.
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It's also what people do who say that God told them to divorce or remarry or be at peace
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with being a homosexual or go into debt or etc.
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Once a person identifies an experience outside the Bible as being from God or Jesus or the
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Holy Spirit or an angel, whether it's consistent with the Bible or not, it will likely become
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their master.
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Their tendency will be to follow the more instructions from that particular master.
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Well thanks for listening.
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I don't claim to have all the answers on this, and certainly God can do whatever he wants
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and reveal himself any way he wants.
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It's just that I find the comments I've read to be inconsistent with what I read in the Bible.
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If you want more on the subject, I invite you to look at my paper on the subject on
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our website relationalconcepts.org.
