With many the Word of God is not the power of God unto salvation; it is only a “witness” to God’s Word. They tell us that as they read the Bible the Holy Spirit gives them special light on the passage read. If this is true, then the reader becomes a Divine speaker for God. That is all the pope of Rome claims. He speaks for God. I had just as soon have the pope as some teenager who claims he or she has a special leading in a “call meeting” or “soul talk”—which some call a “personal encounter.” The Bible is set aside as a true guide and is made only a means of bringing a person into a “personal encounter.”

The doctrine of “inner light” gave us every major denomination among us. Let us remember that the Bible is right and that “it is not within man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). God’s means of converting and leading man is the Word of God (Romans 1:16). The advocates of emotional religion talk much about the Holy Spirit and, at the same time, ignore what the Holy Spirit says in His Holy Word. The spirit that leads a man outside of the Word of God is not holy.

G. K. Wallace