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by Max Aplin

One area of disagreement among Christians concerns whether God still gives extra-biblical revelations to His children, i.e., revelations that are outside what He has revealed in the Bible. Some claim that He no longer does so and that in our day He speaks only through Scripture. Others say that He continues to give revelations and that the Bible itself confirms that He does this.

I am firmly convinced that God does continue to give extra-biblical revelations to believers today. In what follows, I want to focus on one part of this discussion, i.e., the issue of useful information that we don’t get from Scripture.

Useful information that we don’t learn from the Bible

To begin with, we need to be clear that every Christian takes advantage of many pieces of useful information that don’t come from Scripture.

To give an obvious example of this, it is very useful for me to know where to buy food in the town where I live. Clearly, I didn’t learn this from the Bible. Scripture was hardly designed to give people living in the 21st century directions to their local supermarket!

Of course, when I first moved to this area, I was easily able to find out where to buy food. I am not for a moment saying that we should typically expect God to reveal things like this to us supernaturally. I am simply using an obvious example to draw attention to the fact that every day we take advantage of useful information that we haven’t got from the Bible.

Another example of this is someone doing a job. I recently had an operation on my nose, so let me use the example of an ear, nose and throat surgeon. And because in this article we are thinking especially about useful information that is gained by Christians, let’s think about a Christian surgeon.

No Christian surgeon learned how to perform a nose operation by reading the Bible. Scripture obviously wasn’t designed for something like this. Yet for a Christian surgeon, there are many pieces of useful information that they need to know in order to do their job.

The same is true for thousands of other jobs. Typically, we learn the required useful pieces of information over a period of time. But we don’t normally look to the Bible for this information.

The final point to make here is that in things like where to buy food or how to do a job, God cares deeply about the pieces of useful information we have access to. He is with us in the details of our often complex lives. And there is no doubt that there are millions of occasions when God sees that a Christian doesn’t yet have access to a certain piece of non-biblical useful information that it would be good for them to have, and that it is His will that they gain that information.

Useful information that we can’t find out by ourselves

So far I have mentioned useful pieces of information that we can take steps to find out ourselves, whether by easily looking something up or learning it over a period of time.

However, there are other things that are very useful to know but which we are often not able to find out by ourselves.

A good example to illustrate this point is moving house. Moving house is a big decision and certainly not one that a Christian should take lightly. There is no doubt either that God cares about where we move to. He will hardly be neutral on this. In fact, any Christian who prays about where to move to, demonstrates by the fact that they are praying that they believe God knows where He does and doesn’t want them to move to.

Something we must understand clearly about God is that He is constantly at work building His church. And one way He does this is by sovereignly causing a Christian to meet a non-Christian to share the good news with. It is surely the case that God often causes a Christian to move house and be close to a neighbour who is ready to hear the gospel.

So let’s imagine a situation where a Christian couple are planning to move house and they have narrowed down their search to two houses, 14 Beech Avenue and 39 Acacia Grove. They have decided that they are going to make an offer to buy one of these properties.

However, they are not aware of anything in the Bible that leads them to favour one of these houses over the other. In other words, they are faced with a major decision where two options fit equally well with Scripture.

But let’s imagine too that God wants them to move to 14 Beech Avenue, because He wants this couple share the gospel with their next-door neighbour, who is ready to be saved. By contrast, God doesn’t want them to move to 39 Acacia Grove, because He has no special purposes for them there.

In a situation like this, it would be an extremely useful piece of information for this couple to know that it is God’s will for them to move to 14 Beech Avenue. And they aren’t going to get this from the Bible. Scripture cannot possibly tell them that a next-door neighbour at 14 Beech Avenue is ready to hear the gospel from them but the neighbours at 39 Acacia Grove will be unresponsive.

It should be obvious that in this sort of situation, for God to speak in a prophecy or a dream to reveal His will would be a positive thing. He would be providing a useful piece of information to the couple that they cannot find out from Scripture or by any natural means.

Of course, God could act in other ways to cause this couple to move to 14 Beech Avenue. For example, he could cause the house at 39 Acacia Grove to suddenly become unavailable. But this is beside the point, which is that it is quite wrong for any Christian to start to try to limit the ways that God may act. His preferred method may well be to convey a useful piece of information to the couple that He wants them to move to 14 Beech Avenue.

Basically, God has every sovereign right to impart any piece of useful information He wants to any person He wants, at any time He wants, in any way He wants. And every Christian needs to understand this clearly.

Other examples

Many other similar examples could be given of this sort of thing, where there is a useful piece of information for a Christian to know that they can’t find out from Scripture.

For example, suppose there is a devout Christian father whose teenage son has begun to experiment with class A drugs, and the father has no idea about this. There is obviously no possible way that he could find this out from the Bible.

But suppose too that God, in answer to this man’s daily prayers for his son, chooses to reveal this to him, so that the man can intervene quickly in his son’s life and stop the drug abuse.

God could choose to impart this information in many alternative ways. For instance, He could arrange circumstances so that the father overhears a phone conversation in which it is clear that his son is taking drugs. But God could also convey exactly the same piece of useful information by means of a prophecy or a dream.

To say, as some Christians do, that God does indeed give extra-biblical revelations of this sort through circumstances but not through prophecies or dreams is arbitrary and unbiblical. Scripture never limits how God will speak to Christians. Again, it needs to be said in no uncertain terms that God has every right to speak in absolutely any way He chooses, to anyone He chooses, at any time He chooses, about any subject He chooses, and no Christian has the right to start to try limiting what He may do.

Summing up

We have seen, then, that every day we take advantage of many pieces of useful information that we haven’t learned from the Bible. Scripture was never designed to give us all this information.

Most of the extra-biblical information that is useful for us consists of things that we can take steps to find out by ourselves.

However, sometimes we can’t do this, as, for example, often happens when a Christian is moving house. And at other times there is a useful piece of information that we don’t even know exists, such as when an errant child has started using drugs.

In cases like these, God may choose to reveal pieces of useful information to His children. And He may choose to do this through gifts of the Holy Spirit such as prophecies and dreams. He has every right to speak in any way He chooses, and we have no right to try to restrict how He may speak.

Thanks!