***When you pray, do you ever wait (listen) for the answer? Why is that not plain to you?***
The conversation was not about me; it was about your claim that the Lord talks to you. I asked you how. Do you know or not know?
***It is the very nature of scripture to speak to the one reading it. When you read something, you comprehend its import. Well, the scriptures are the Word of God!***
Act 8: 26-40. Read the lesson of the eunuch.
***There are many other examples to be found of the efficacy of scripture. When the believer reads it, it instructs him it admonishes him, it exhorts him, it rebukes him, it commends him. It talks to him!***
Bibliolatry 101. Thank you for the lesson.
“The conversation was not about me; it was about your claim that the Lord talks to you. I asked you how. Do you know or not know?”
I believe I have answered that. Yes, I know that the Lord speaks to me, and to all His children. Are you hung up on my use of the word “speaks”?
Yes, the Eunuch was taught by one of Jesus’ disciples. And the question for our discussion, I suppose is whether one can come to understand the mind of God as revealed through the scriptures apart from someone teaching him/her. I believe one can, but I know that is probably not how most come to Christ (Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God).
The story of the eunuch raises another question, though. Why did Phillip leave him? Here was an individual, newly saved and baptized, a babe in Christ, undoubtedly still feeding on the milk, and not the meat of the word. Why would Phillip be so quick to abandon him? Is it possible that once saved, the eunuch is now able to read the scriptures for himself (his understanding having been unlocked, the Holy Spirit Who guides into all truth received)?
I have never heard of bibliolatry? It is not idolatry to love the word of God (it is idolatry to love one’s own understanding of it, I suppose. I trust I have not come off as arrogantly suggesting my grasp of scriptures exceeds/compares more favorably with another’s). We are exhorted throughout scripture to cherish the word, to hold it, to study it, to learn it, to bind it around our hearts, to post it upon our door posts. These OT references are addressed to God’s OT people, Israel. Do you think it is any different for His NT people? Does God change? Have you read Psalm 119? God loves when sinners come to love His word, just as He loves it when sinners come to love His WORD.