Living By Every Word That Proceeds From the Mouth of God - Part 8

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The Promise of the Spirit to Guide into All Truth, Part 1.

(This is part eight in a series that examines the view of Justice Boshoff who advocates that God’s word comes to us personally and directly from the Holy Spirit through prayer for wisdom and that the scriptures are a hindrance to hearing the word of God. You can read a transcript of two of his You-Tube videos: According to the Scriptures, You Won't Make It and Breaking Through the Bible Barrier.)

Mr. Boshoff cites the promise of Christ to his disciples to send them the Holy Spirit after his departure who will guide them into all truth. Mr. Boshoff applies that promise to himself and to all Christian’s today (unwittingly violating his rule that we cannot apply the scriptures to our situation). Since Mr. Boshoff appeals to this scripture in making his case, he deems it important and meaningful to us in our situation today. Let us examine the biblical text and make a determination on the validity of Mr. Boshoff’s application.

These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. John 14:25, 26

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. John 15:26, 27.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:12-15.

How are we to understand this promise of Christ to guide into all truth?

The Recipients of the Promise. It is a promise made to his disciples and not to the body of saints at large. The disciples were to become the holy apostles of the church and this promise was in anticipation of their fulfillment of that office. The apostles, along with apostolic era prophets, comprise the foundation of the Church (Eph 2:20, 3:5, 4:11), which is the body of Christ (Eph 1:22,23), the whole community of saints of all ages (Eph 1:10; 2:11-16, 19; 3:6).

Paul, as promised by Christ, and as an apostle called by Christ, was guided by the Holy Spirit into the truth of the great mystery that had been hidden in ages past but finally revealed to the apostles and prophets. The mystery was hidden and then revealed, it was truth that the disciples were not ready to bear, but after Christ’s session at the right hand of God, he revealed that mystery to Paul. Paul, in fulfillment of his calling as an apostle of Christ, explains this mystery to the saints in Ephesus, that the Gentile believers were no longer outside the commonwealth of Israel, but were now fellow citizens with the saints of the Old Testament who had come before but now in heaven, and with those of the New Testament era and still living on earth (Eph 1:10). Listen to the revelation of the marvelous mystery as he writes:

Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh --- who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands --- that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Eph 2:11-13.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Eph 2:19, 20.

Paul writes along the same lines again later in the epistle and specifically identifies the Spirit as the one who brought this revelation to him:

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles --- if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power. Eph 3:1-7.

In this text, Paul identifies the recipient of this revelation of the Spirit as the apostles and prophets of the New Testament era. There were many things Christ had yet to reveal, but his disciples were not ready to bear them, presumably because a good portion of it had to do with his coming crucifixion and resurrection, a concept that was a stumbling block to their clear understanding of Christ’s work (Matt 16:22,23). Christ was going to leave them and afterwards send them his Holy Spirit to bring to remembrance not only the things he had taught them while with them on earth, but also other things which he had not told them, things that were yet to come to them through the Spirit after his departure into heaven.

The ‘truth’ into which the disciples were guided after Christ’s ascension was a completion of that body of truth he had begun to teach them while in their midst, and the fulfilling of that promise could only take place within that small circle of men who were called to be Apostles. The context of what we learn about the apostles in the New Testament requires us to understand that Jesus’s promise of being guided into truth by the Holy Spirit was exclusively for his apostles.

One may object to the exclusion of any outside the small body of disciples as recipients of this Spirit guided truth. Paul was not among them; does that not prove that the promise was not exclusive to the disciples and to exclude others is a blatant error? Does not Paul’s example vie more toward the position that the promise of the Spirit’s guidance is to be extended to all Christians, of every age since the Lord departed? We will find the answer to that is no.

Living By Every Word That Proceeds From the Mouth of God - Part 7

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The Derivative Word Of God and Its Implications for Today.

(This is part two in a series that examines the view of Justice Boshoff who advocates that God’s word comes to us personally and directly from the Holy Spirit through prayer for wisdom and that the scriptures are a hindrance to hearing the word of God. You can read a transcript of two of his You-Tube videos: According to the Scriptures, You Won't Make It and Breaking Through the Bible Barrier.)


We should distinguish, on the one hand, between those words that are verbalized (whether oral or written) as a result of the oversight of God’s Spirit, and those words, on the other, in which there is no such oversight, but nevertheless convey accurately God’s thoughts. The former are a supernatural product and are intrinsically God’s words. The latter communicate the thought and meaning of the supernatural product and therefore are derivatively the word of God. The inspired words of the Bible are the very words of God by which he discloses to us his nature and purposes. The kerygmatic words (preaching) of men down through Church history are an exposition of the inscripturated words; insofar as they convey the meaning of those original words, they are in a derivative and secondary way the words of God.

The kerygmatic word of our day is not new revelation, that is, it is not the medium of a new self-disclosing word of God; nor is it the product of a supernatural overseeing of the Holy Spirit. Both the original and derived word have authority, but the difference is this: without the supernatural word there is no derivative word. Without the inspired word of the apostles and prophets, there is no source or basis on which an uninspired statement can be made with any certainty of its truthfulness or authority in its claims.

What implications may we draw for the Christian in his situation today? The apostolic word of God is beneficial not only to the first recipients of the original word, but also to others who can draw implications for their present situation from that original (1 Cor 10:6-11; 2 Tim 3:15-17). The original word addressing the original situation is the basis on which a derivative word may address a future situation.

Contrary to Mr. Boshoff’s position that the scriptures can only lead us to Christ but have no further word for us in our situation, the Bible, as the inspired word of God, serves as the basis for drawing examples, principles, and implications that are derivatively the word of God addressing us in our situation now. It is the charge of the pastor-teachers who are gifts given to the Church, Eph 4:11. The pastor-teacher must be able to teach, 1 Tim 3:2; 2 Tim 2:2, 24, “holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict,” Titus 1:9.

But Mr. Boshoff speaks disparagingly of those who are ordained elders in the church, who exercise their commission to teach sound doctrine:

“Some people say that what God wanted to say He said and it is written in the scriptures. That is a lie my friend, because God is not dead, God is alive. The churches want you to believe that God is dead because they want to tell you that God speaks through them to you. They want to keep you confined. Capture. They want to capture you. They want to tell you that they will interpret for you what God is saying. They have no knowledge of God at all. Nothing! They don't know Jesus.”

There is no such belittling of the pastor-teacher in the New Testament. He is called to teach, exposit the words of scripture and apply them to our situation because of their four-fold profitability. Through the pastor-teacher’s sound explication of scripture, he makes the sinner wise unto salvation and the man of God complete and equipped for every good work, (2 Tim 3:15-17).

With the entrance of the Incarnate Word into the world, God’s speaking in this present evil age reached its climactic expression (Heb 1:1, 2; John 1:14, 18; Jude 3), and the kerygmatic preaching of the apostolic era was its denouement. The scriptures are the permanent record of God’s word and the exposition of it is the means by which that word reaches the ears of God’s people today.

There is a dearth of sound, expository preaching in today’s church. God’s people are suffering for lack of it. To accommodate the sinner for fear of offending him, the sermon has been divested of its power by replacing the exposition of scripture with stories, humor, positive thinking, prosperity theology, and step-by-step self-help guidelines. The truth of God’s absolute holiness, man’s utter sinfulness, and the grace and mercy that comes only through Christ’s atonement and resurrection are nearly absent. The exclusivity of the cross is replaced with a false gospel that ceases to call men to repentance and faith in Christ alone; the power of the gospel to save from our sin and sinfulness is forgotten.

Expository preaching is the derivative word of God; through it, we hear God’s voice today. Without it, the church falls into false doctrine, fails to recognize sin, loses its identity as a chosen people who has been called to holiness and not to uncleanness, leaves the straight path and fails to find it again.

Through the exposition of scripture, the Spirit of God opens the eyes of our understanding so that we, as God’s people, know what is the hope of our calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of God’s power toward us which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead (Eph 1:17-20).

Through the meticulous explanation of scripture and its application to our present situation, the believer is renewed in the spirit of his mind so that he puts on the new man and puts off the old (Eph 4:20-24). He walks less and less as unwise, and more and more with wisdom, understanding what the will of the Lord is (Eph 5:15-17).

The people of God in every age must hear the word of God. In the time between the advents, from the apostolic era until Christ returns, that word comes to us derivatively through preaching that is a faithful, exposition of scripture (2 Tim 4:2; Tit 1:3).

Are the pews empty? Exposit the scriptures from the pulpit; let the word of God be heard. God’s people will come because they love the law of the Lord; it will refresh them, bringing continuous revival. It will convict them, bringing repentance and purity to the church. It will instruct them making them wiser than all ungodly counselors. Above all, it will glorify the One whose word is preached.

Living By Every Word That Proceeds From the Mouth of God – Part 4

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The Anti-theological, Anti-hermeneutical, Anti-logical, Anti-practical Perspective on Scripture

(This is part four in a series that examines the view of Justice Boshoff who advocates that God’s word comes to us personally and directly from the Holy Spirit through prayer for wisdom and that the scriptures are a hindrance to hearing the word of God. You can read a transcript of two of his You-Tube videos: According to the Scriptures, You Won't Make It and Breaking Through the Bible Barrier.)



The inspiration and authority of scripture is misunderstood, ignored, or outright rejected by many today, including those who would claim to be Christians. If the inspiration of the scriptures is understood in terms of the classic exposition of B. B. Warfield (The Inspiration and Authority of the Scriptures ), that the words of scripture, though not devoid of the style, vocabulary, and intellectual prowess of the human author that penned them, are nonetheless the out-breathed words of God (I Tim 3:16) written under the superintending work of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:19-21) and therefore the inerrant, authoritative word of God – these words are worthy of our full attention and every effort on our part to understand their meaning through the use of sound principles of interpretation.

I suspect that Mr. Boshoff does not hold such a view of the Bible; even if he should claim otherwise, his attitude toward scripture strongly suggests he does not.

If scripture is allowed to speak for itself, there is no other conclusion that we may come to but that the inspired writings of the prophets and apostles are the words of God, and as such are inerrant and authoritative in all of faith and life. The human authorship of the words of scripture does not detract from this one iota. Neither the human limitation in understanding nor the sinful disposition of the human heart prohibited the words they wrote to be the very words of God. They were borne along by the Spirit of God whose oversight of the ideas and concepts of the mind and the translation of those thoughts into words on parchment resulted in the inscripturation of divine speech.

If the origin and nature of scripture is not understood as God-breathed and therefore absolutely authoritative and inerrant, it is of little more benefit to us than the writings of the deepest or loftiest thinkers in the history of man. The Meditations (167 AD) of Marcus Aurelius, polytheist and pagan emperor of Rome, would have as much authoritative weight as any word expressed in the Bible. But if the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are taken as the written, inspired word of God, they demand that we heed them; they are the expression of God’s will for us concerning all of faith and life. And though they were written to a generation long ago, they are still binding on us today for they have never ceased to be the word of God.

There is an anti-theological bias in today’s church. Mr. Boshoff has undoubtedly been affected by it and is nurturing it when he disparages the need to apply the scriptures to our situation today.

Theology in its broad sense is the study of all things that pertain to God – his nature and being, his purposes, commands, behavior, and everything that comes under his sphere of influence – which according to the scriptures is everything there is. Nothing can be understood apart from its relation to God. If there is no relation to God there is no existence, for all things live and move and have their being in (by means of) God (Acts17:28).

How do we know this?

The particular pieces of theological knowledge are not known innately by man. Granted, through the creation he sees that God exists, and he has some sense of his power and sovereignty (Romans 1:20). But the creation does not give the details. The details come only by a self-disclosure of God. God must willfully reveal himself to us.

Redemptive history is that history that traces God’s redemptive acts (the Exodus is an example) which go hand-in-hand with revelatory acts – acts by which he has disclosed something about his nature and purposes. The acts themselves are revelatory; they tell us something about God. But God has spoken more directly, through human speech. God, in various ways and at various times has spoken to us in the past through the prophets. In these last days, he has spoken to us through his Son (Heb 1:1, 2). Of that which has been spoken, God in his providence has preserved what he deemed necessary through writing.

The self-disclosure of God, necessary for any understanding of God, is preserved for us today in the writings of the Old and New Testaments. Without them, everything we might proffer about God would be hearsay, conjecture, or tradition, none of it having any guarantee of its veracity or intelligibility. The prophetic word, the scriptures, being God-breathed and written under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19-21) has guaranteed that God’s revelation is both true and understandable. Without the scriptures, there is no sure understanding of God, there is no sound theology.

Hence, our only source of knowledge of God (his nature, will, purposes, etc) is the scriptures. And because the scriptures are written in human language, it is understood through the use of known principles of interpretation (hermeneutics). Language, whether divine or human, is meaningful because it communicates information in accordance with grammatical rules and logical relationships. As human language communicating God’s self-revelation, the scriptures cohere logically – they make sense. The message of the revelation does not violate the rules of logic (rules that were discovered by man, not created by him).

The discernment of the message in human language requires a knowledge of the language and its interpretation according to sound rules of hermeneutics, the science of interpretation. God speaks intelligibly, not illogically or in jibberish such that his speech is unintelligible to human understanding. Because of inspiration, the scriptures are guaranteed to cohere logically – they are the only writings of human history that have such a guarantee.

Because of the source of the words of scripture (God-breathed), and because they are meaningful, the scriptures are the only source from which we may gain wisdom for our day-to-day lives; the scriptures must be applied to our situation for any guarantee that what we do in our situation is not sin. The scriptures, therefore, are invaluably necessary for our practical needs – how we must live and behave.

Mr. Boshoff's theology leads us away from the only sound source of wisdom and replaces it by a subjective internal insight. Yes, he claims that it is the Holy Spirit who speaks inwardly, but he bases that on a misunderstanding of certain passages of scripture. Mr. Boshoff ironically has applied the scriptures incorrectly and advances a method of Christian living that is wrong. We will examine Mr. Boshoff’s erring hermeneutics in a coming article.