In this blog entry I am going to argue that God may not be speaking through your pastors by using simple logic and some valid assumptions.
I have previously written this article last year. Now, after sharting this blog, I feel that I should share this to everybody. I hope that I don't offend anyone. I myself is a Christian and I have nothing against my religion or the Church.
First Assumption: God is rational
I am going to use this main assumption and the implication of the rationality of God is that He will act in the same manner when He is in the same situations. A irrational act in human context will be: you tell James that you dislike Janet. Then when you meet him again 5 minutes you tell James that you like her (under same condition, meaning that Janet did not do anything to you or you didn't hear a new information about Janet that makes you like her).
Had you been in different situations, you may act differently. For example if Janet suddenly sent you flowers, you would probably tell James that you like Janet now. This is rational. Although you act differently with regard to your opinion on Janet, but the situations are different. Had you been in the same situation and you act differently, then you are being irrational.
Now, you know that there are a lot of preachers claiming that what they are saying comes from God. But you also know there are many Christian denominations with different ideologies. This means that pastors from different denominations are preaching differently! For example, charismatic churches such as City Harvest would practice speaking-in-toungue while Presbyterian churches regard it as false. There are others disagreements that every denominations will choose not to argue about. But that's ok.
What is important here is that: if God is rational, he will not speak differently to different churches. The situation here is the same. God is speaking to His people. Sure, different churches are located differently. But I think it makes no sense if God is saying that we must speak in tongue in one church and saying that we should not in another. And the two churches can be metres apart. Or, God says one thing to your mother and another to your father. Just because they both attend different churches.
You now know that there are some pastors that are not voicing God's words. Because if everyone is being used by God, then there are no denominations and all church practises will be universal.
Second Assumption: Pastors use the same techniques in 'extracting' God's voice
In theology classes, pastors might be thought how to pray and how to prepare their sermons. Most of the times they claim that they are passing God's words to the congregration. Or they implicitly say that 'God please use your humble pastor to tell them what You want to say'. These are gimmicks. All thought in schools. Assuming that pastors use the same techniques taught to them in theology schools to get God's voice, then we can safely say that the technique is not fool-proof.
After all if the technique is fool-proof, then all pastors will be preaching the same ideology (means no denomination exists). Now if the technique is flawless, should pastors say that their words come from God? Yes if they are referring completely to the Bible. But most of the times pastors 'infer' that this is what God wants etc. And different pastors might infer differently. Some pastors like to use the Hebrew version of the Bible but some like the NIV version. A pastor can use the Hebrew version this Sunday but use NIV version the week after because they want to support their claim.
I believe that the presence of flawed technique warrants pastor to declare before preaching that 'what they preach might not come from God and you all should re-check with the Bible or God'.
If there are different techniques in the market, then we can say that some techniques are flawed but another is perfect. This is more complicated and I don't want to argue it. My understanding is that most pastors will pray to know what God wants to speak through them.
Conclusion
God may not be speaking through your pastors. Pastors should declare that 'God may not be speaking through them' before preaching.
There will be some follow-ups regarding that such declarations will undermine pastors' authority.
