A Special Delivery, Just for Me

An alleged Bible translation called “The Passion Translation” has an interesting (to say the least) origin. A fellow named Brian Simmons claims it came about in this way:

Jesus Christ came into my room, he breathed on me, and He commissioned me. It felt like a kiss from heaven. It felt like heaven’s wind … the breath of God upon me. And He spoke to me and said, “I’m commissioning you to translate the Bible into the translation project that I am giving you to do.” And he promised that he would help me. And He promised He would give me secrets of the Hebrew language. I believe the Spirit of revelation was given. He breathed on me so that I would do the project, and I felt downloads coming — instantly. I received downloads. It was like I got a chip put inside of me, I got a connection inside of me — to hear Him better, to understand the Scriptures better, and, hopefully, to translate.

I don’t have a copy of this “translation,” and I probably wouldn’t waste my money on one, but reviewers say that, far from being a translation, it is a very free paraphrase that nearly doubles the text of the Bible, adding very many words and phrases that do not appear in the original text. However, that is not the matter we are concerned with here.

Instead, we want to consider the whole framework that makes this sort of thing even plausible to anyone. In a nutshell, it is the claim that God sent me a special, extra-biblical message. It is the claim that special revelation is a continuing process in this age. (This is as opposed to general revelation — broad information about the existence of God that can be derived from observing the creation around us. Special revelation is delivered, at least initially, to some specific person and is much more specific in its content.)

The Brian Simmons version of “downloads” from God is an extreme version of this—and there are all sorts of problems with it. A glaring one is when the Apostles and prophets of the Bible received “downloads” of information from God, they also received downloads of miracle-working power from God to demonstrate those downloads of information were indeed from Him. Of course, Brian Simmons lacks this.

There are other problems also. For example, if these “downloads” from God are required to understand the Bible, that strongly suggests no one (in our time, at least) has understood it until Brian came on the scene. It also makes us wonder why God was unable to make the Bible understandable the first time around. We could continue here for a long time, but by now you get the idea.

The “Jesus appeared and downloaded information to me” version of this is not the only way this general pattern shows up. For as long as I can remember, I have encountered accounts given by people in restoration movement churches of God delivering special messages to them. These accounts do not usually go as far as “Jesus appeared to me,” but they are in the same category.

Consider something from my late father-in-law who was an elder at a Christian church for much of his adult life. He recounted a lot of interesting things in connection with that over several decades. One of the more interesting was his telling of a minister search by that congregation many years ago. The elders were interviewing candidates. One candidate, in the course of the interview, announced that God had told him he was to be the next minister at that congregation. This fellow was not the last candidate to be interviewed. While that process was still ongoing, the “God told me” candidate contacted the elders to announce God had now told him that he was to be the minister at a different congregation, so they need not consider him further. (If I were interviewing candidates in this situation, the words “God told me” in this individual sense would be the end of that candidate, but that is another matter.) While this bit of alleged revelation is not about translating the Bible, it is still a direct claim that “God told me” something.

Sometimes these claims of special revelation are not so direct. A version I have often heard is the “asking God a question and interpreting circumstances to get an answer” version of the individual messages from God approach.

For example, an account was given by a minister at a Christian church who had recently resigned and said he wanted God to tell him if he would ever preach again. While driving, he asked God to arrange for a red truck to come up the road  as a way to convey a “yes” to his question. Soon, he reported, a large red truck came up the road that even had something on it he took to be his own nickname. He claimed this could not just be a coincidence, and he concluded it was, indeed, a message from God. This was confirmed, he thought, by the fact that not much later he was preaching at a church again.

Now I do not doubt the sincerity of this fellow or many like him, but I do question the logic of this whole scheme and others like it. Someone has a question, usually about something very practical about his life, and so requests an answer from God. Assuming God answers such questions individually, the person sets up some kind of conditions for an answer. The person also decides on what the conditions will mean, and the report comes that the arranged conditions were met and the message from God had been delivered.

First of all, this is a request for special revelation. This means it is simply assumed that special revelation is a continuing matter. Sometimes it is said this is not a request for special revelation, but in all the examples I have known, like this one, in the end, information (it is claimed) is delivered. In this example, “I will preach in a church again” is information, no two ways about it.

It also assumes we can set conditions for God. Why can we assume God will deliver a personal unit of special revelation to us at all? What gives us the right to assume “the faith once for all delivered” needs to be supplemented from time to time for individuals?

Another problem with this whole approach is it requires we interpret happenings around us to receive the message, but there is no message until we assign a meaning to circumstances. The circumstances of the world around us can’t “mean” anything without assuming we know the code that assigns that meaning. In our example above, a red truck was assumed to be a “yes” answer to the question. However, the nickname on the truck was assumed to make it “even more sure.”

The problem is there is nothing sure about any of this, because God has never promised us individually-tailored answers to our practical questions. What He has promised is “once-for-all” information about creation and its meaning, the problem of sin and the salvation He has provided for us, and our meaning, significance, and purpose. He has also given us general principles for life we must apply to our practical questions.

In all this, we must keep in mind there are some things God has left to our discretion. Things like how and where to work, where to live, and those with whom we associate are our call — as long as they are within the boundaries of God’s moral law. A probably-not-to-be-surpassed book on this is a classic by Garry Friesen, Decision Making and the Will of God. It went through a few editions and revisions, all of which are helpful.

The circumstances example is not different in essence from the other two examples above. One of the great divides in thinking about the Christian faith is the matter on special revelation. On one side of that divide is the “God says all He has to say in Scripture.” On the other side of that divide is an open-ended view that has special revelation continuing throughout this age.

The open-ended approach is fraught with unsolvable problems of ambiguity and credentials for those who claim more revelation. The completed revelation in Scripture approach lacks these problems and fits with the picture presented in Scripture of this matter. Yet, it would be naive to think the continuing revelation view will ever go away. Its adherents are usually very sincere. It seems more exciting. It satisfies our cultural demand that everything fits me. Obviously, just from these examples, it makes for better stories—but none of this makes it true.