God the Father

Unshackling the American Church: Cultivating Essential Beauty

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You shall make a lampstand of pure gold. The lampstand shall be made of hammered work: its base, its stem, its cups, its calyxes, and its flowers shall be of one piece with it. And there shall be six branches going out of its sides, three branches of the lampstand out of one side of it and three branches of the lampstand out of the other side of it; three cups made like almond blossoms, each with calyx and flower, on one branch, and three cups made like almond blossoms, each with calyx and flower, on the other branch–so for the six branches going out of the lampstand. And on the lampstand itself there shall be four cups made like almond blossoms, with their calyxes and flowers, and a calyx of one piece with it under each pair of the six branches going out from the lampstand. Their calyxes and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it a single piece of hammered work of pure gold.
—Exodus 25:31-36 ESV

In this “Unshackling the American Church” series, we’ve talked about conserving family and community, plus the Creation, but we haven’t truly talked about the need for beauty in our lives.

The Bible mentions by name human creators of beauty, the DaVincis, Michaelangelos, Tiffanys, Monets, and Rodins of their day. Moses returns from receiving God’s dictation for the tabernacle requirements and says this:

Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver–by any sort of workman or skilled designer.”
—Exodus 35:30-35 ESV

That passage and others like it scattered throughout the Scriptures carry extremely important connotations:

  • Artists are filled by the Spirit of God to create items of beauty
  • Artworks go beyond mere creativity and incorporate skill, intelligence, knowledge, and craftsmanship
  • Artists are inspired by God to teach art to others
  • God values what is beautiful and skillfully created
  • God values art
  • God values artists

I’m one of those people who believes Eve was the most beautiful woman ever to grace the universe. I think that God used every bit of his perfect artistry to craft a woman who in her self carried the essence of beauty. If Man is God’s ultimate creation, then some amount of ultimate beauty resides within Man.

More than being a work of art, Man carries the Imago Dei, “The Image of God”, and therefore as God creates works of beauty, so does Man. As God is pleased by what is beautiful, by extension, so is Man.

God placed in us a need for beauty. I’m of the opinion that the need for beauty in people’s lives drives us to the extremes of both artful design and pornography. The onslaught of porn that is hurting so many people is amplified in part by a misplaced need to encounter beauty. Given our need for beauty, if people can’t find it in acceptable venues, they’ll go searching for it in unacceptable ones. As our own art world degenerates into filth, and art acclaimed by “those in the know” is little more than what a chimp can scribble out if given a pack of crayons, people are dying for beauty in their lives.

  • When we desecrate Creation, we destroy beauty.
  • When we build suburbs consisting of one bland house design another, we devalue beauty.
  • When we settle for kitsch rather than skilled art, we parody beauty.
  • When we denigrate artists, especially Christian artists, we tell God that beauty is not worth conserving and that His gift of artistry is not worth receiving. We’re actually quenching the Spirit of God.
  • When we turn our backs on beauty, we lose a precious part of what God formed in us as men and women.

And trust me, we Christians too often reject beauty, whether on purpose or simply from ignorance.

While at a conference earlier this year, Tim Challies was struck by the blandness of an enormous church he was visiting, later learning that this was a deliberate decision by the church leaders. When I read this, I grew angry.

Why?

First of all, the reason given—bland so as not to detract from the Gospel—is misguided. In fact, artful craftsmanship and beauty are PART of the Gospel. God’s Spirit now dwells in Man and with that indwelling come the gifts of the Spirit of God, including the artistic gifts mentioned above. To reject this is to ultimately reject beauty. And God does not reject artful beauty. Truthfully, the attitude expressed by the church leaders is the ungodly utilitarianism I mentioned in my last post. Under utilitarianism, nothing has any further inherent value than its function.

But God rejects utilitarianism. Reread the quote that began this post and note the lampstand. Its function is to hold candles inside the tabernacle of God. But God doesn’t concern Himself merely with function, for if He did, there would be no reason for the calyxes, flowers, and blossoms that adorn that lampstand. Nor would it need to have clever design that incorporates all those elements in one piece.

God sees beyond the plain. He also understands that beautiful items enhance worship. Even if we don’t see beauty in other aspects of our meager lives, at least in the presence of God beauty exists. There’s not much to see while wandering in a desert, but at least the tabernacle itself, the very dwelling place of God on Earth, was beautiful. That beauty spoke to the otherness of God in the midst of that stark desert.

The second thing that angers me about the church leaders’ decision to build a bland church is that they’re telling all the artists and craftsmen in that church that their work has no value at all for the church as a whole. How astonishingly bankrupt! And this from supposed Protestants! The Reformation’s imprimatur on all craftsmen and artisans blessed their work as holy unto the Lord. As Luther himself said on this issue of art:

Yes, would to God that I could persuade the rich and the mighty that they would permit the whole Bible to be painted on houses, on the inside and outside, so that all can see it. That would be a Christian work.

God values artisans. (The Lord Jesus was a carpenter!) When artists and craftsmen serve the Lord with their art, they engage in worship. Yet there are churches that make artists into idolators even though God Himself has filled artisans with His own good Spirit. How utterly tragic when we tell those artisans that their work cannot serve God or their fellow Christians. Talk about quenching the Spirit!

And lastly, what a mind-boggling waste of money to build an enormous multimillion-dollar church complex that is purposefully dull. All across the country I see these piles of boring brick and I just shake my head. I’m sure someone thinks that designing an architecturally-interesting building filled with handcrafted artwork somehow detracts from God, but what detracts from God more than building a costly edifice that equally bores both the saved and the lost?

The truth of God exists in more than what we say with our mouths. His general revelation speaks, as do we when we act out the Gospel in actions rather than mere words. Words are not the only portion of the Gospel. So the leaders of that church are right when they believe that their church building speaks. The message that church building sends in this case? Our God is a dull god. And the people who serve Him are even duller.

When I’m in a beautiful church, it pulls me closer to God. When I’m in a drab and dour church, the opposite happens. Remember again one of the reasons God made the tabernacle beautiful.

It’s not as if beauty somehow detracts from worshiping God. For instance, we love this hymn:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

I suspect folks sing this hymn in those horridly ugly multimillion-dollar brick blocks they call a “church,” but I also suspect they don’t entirely believe it. The correlation between brick block churches and “Christians” who deny all experiencing of God, all wonder, and all mystery—the building blocks of beauty—is shockingly high.

How sad for them.

How sad for us too that folks who reject beauty in life are responsible for the dearth of good Christian art we see today. Where did it go? Simply answered, we saw no purpose in it, stopped being patrons of the arts, and held artists in contempt.

Rather than rehashing old points about Christians and the Arts, I’ll instead point to previous posts detailing this essential aspect of Christian living (especially part 2):

For 2006: The Church’s Brave New Brain – Part 1

For 2006: The Church’s Brave New Brain—Part 2

For 2006: The Church’s Brave New Brain—Part 3 (Conclusion)

We need beauty. God made us with a bent toward it because He Himself deems it valuable.

As I close, I’d like to head off the inevitable cry of “Graven images!”:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
—Exodus 20:3-5 KJV

Idolatry doesn’t begin with the artisan’s idol.  We must be discerning here. Just as true circumcision is not the removing of the foreskin, but the altering of one’s heart, so the other side of that truth shows that graven images are heart-based. If idolatry exists in a man’s heart, he will craft idols that reinforce the idolatry already there.

But a Christian’s heart has been changed, molded to hold the Spirit. Therefore, what a Christian creates is unto God alone, therefore it cannot be an idol, but rather an expression of worship to God. If we fail to understand this, then we fail to understand how God can forbid natural images in one place in Scripture and turn around and ask for their creation in another (our opening passage above.)

Christians harbor the fullness of God’s Spirit, and with that comes the inclination for beauty. Above all other people, we Christians should honor our artists and praise their gifts, even while we praise God for those gifts. To reject beauty is to ultimately reject the fullness of a Spirit-filled life. Those Christians that do renounce beauty miss the full blessing of what God intended for Man.

Today’s Christians must cultivate and conserve the beautiful, because if we don’t, no one will.

***

Other posts in the “Unshackling the American Church” series:

Stupid Hymn Tricks

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Always on the lookout for God-centric music that is intelligent and beautiful, I encountered a song a few weeks back that reminded me of hymns gone by. The melody was easily sung and the lyrics that I caught on first hearing were great.

Or so I thought.

The song in question is Fernando Ortega's "Our Great God" as performed with Mac Powell off the City on a Hill—Alleluia CD. Beautiful song and very hymn-like. HymnalThe chord transitions from major to minor keys are lovely and the production on the CD is exquisite. Best of all, because the phrasing is simple and the meter consistent, it is easy to sing, unlike many of today's recent worship music offerings. And the tune is so adaptable that you could sing a thousand other old hymns to it, including "Amazing Grace."

Here's the first line:

Eternal God unchanging, mysterious and unknown

  • God is eternal—check
  • God is unchanging—check
  • God is mysterious— (to the extent that His thoughts are higher than ours and His ways are sometimes hard to understand) check
  • God is unknown—Uh oh

I guess no one checked with the Bible on that last one:

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
—Acts 17:22-31 ESV

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'") And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
—John 1:9-18 ESV

But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
—1 Corinthians 2:9-10 ESV

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
—John 14:5-10 ESV

God is NOT unknown. He has been revealed. This is one of the distinguishing marks of the Christian faith: God is knowable through the Person of Jesus Christ. What we have in this song is rank postmodernism raising its ugly head. It's that attempt to sound religious by saying God is lurking on the outskirts of the universe, inscrutably doing whatever it is an inscrutable god does.

Jesus said that God is knowable because He (Jesus) is knowable, having revealed God in His very Person. Paul clearly addresses the "unknown god" fallacy, though, saying that while some may worship unknown gods, Christians do not. John writes that Jesus Christ made God known.

Now I'm not so charged by this song. The "unknown" lyric also reveals that the intention of the "mysterious" is not so much to say that God is higher than us, but to shroud Him in fog. It sounds like a vain attempt to restore the veil in the temple.

I don't want anyone in my church singing that God is unknown, so I guess "Our Great God" is out. Too bad.

How's about it folks; what songs or hymns out there strike you as being doctrinally suspect? Your comments are most welcome!

Revelation: When God Speaks

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The Scriptures in light of the CrossWith the blogosphere alive with the talk of the gifts of the Spirit and their existence or non-existence today, I’d like to discuss a sticking point that has long dogged the issue of modern day charismata: revelation.

Revelation scares people. God does not open His mouth and speak without major consequences. Revelation bothers many non-charismatics because the idea of God speaking to people today seems to butt up against the closed canon of Scripture; if God still speaks, should we not be writing down what He says? The Book of Revelation ends with a serious warning that whoever adds or subtracts from the Book will face dire consequences, right?

In the Book of Romans we read early on:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
—Romans 1:16-20 ESV

Revelation of God has come through the created order. What God has made speaks to us about who He is and what His character is like. What God has made testifies about Him:

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
—Psalms 19:1-5 ESV

This kind of revelation is referred to as General Revelation. It is God revealed through what has been made. This is the basis of the argument for Intelligent Design now being bandied about in scientific circles. It is also the revelation that speaks to us when we are out and about in the daily course of our lives on this third planet from the sun. For people who thoughtfully consider what God has put around us, His General Revelation can powerfully speak to the soul. Consider this hymn, a favorite of many:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

CHORUS
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze. CHORUS

And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin. CHORUS

When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation,
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow, in humble adoration,
And then proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!” CHORUS

“How Great Thou Art” begins with the acknowledgment of God revealed through General Revelation, then moves on to another kind of revelation, Special Revelation.

Think of Special Revelation as an autobiography of a craftsman. It’s an in-depth portrayal of a person. General Revelation is more like a photo of the craftsman’s workshop. We can deduce things about the craftsman by seeing his workshop, but we do not know anything in detail about him, only what he has made and the level to which he has made it.

For Christians, the Bible is Special Revelation of God. It speaks in detail concerning the history of our Triune God in reality and tells us details of His character. Special Revelation, therefore, is intimate in a way that General Revelation cannot be. It details who God is, how He is, and what He desires. General Revelation attests that He is and that He is awesome, but can tell us little more than that. Unlike Special Revelation, General Revelation cannot tell us what pleases God or how we can be found acceptable to Him. This is what makes Special Revelation essential. It can tell us how to be restored to God and how to please Him. It is God Himself speaking directly to Man—out of God’s mouth to our ears, preserved in print for all eternity. It is the essence of what all men need to know.

The Bible’s place as Special Revelation is universally true, therefore. It is Universal Special Revelation in that it speaks to all men at all times in all places for a general purpose. Because the Bible is given to Man as a Universal Revelation, its authority is grounded in God and has no exceptions, therefore, to whom it applies. For this reason, its authority cannot be abrogated. General Revelation cannot trump it. Instead, that revelation is subordinate to the Universal Special Revelation found in the Scriptures. The Scriptures illumine General Revelation and not the other way around.

Now I believe that there is one other kind of Special Revelation, and this is the part that becomes contentious. I’ve blogged about this before (and I would encourage everyone to read the post), but I believe that God speaks uniquely to specific men in specific times in specific places for a specific purpose. An example of this is in Acts:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
—Acts 13:1-4 ESV

Notice how the Holy Spirit operates here. He specifically called two people out of a specific congregation for his specific pupose. It was a Unique Special Revelation of God meant for that time, that place, those two believers, for one unique mission.

This idea of a Unique Special Revelation of God is what many non-charismatics object to within the charismatic movement. At issue is the idea that Unique Special Revelation somehow fights Universal Special Revelation for authority.

But as I’ve said, something that speaks to all men in all places at all times must be the final authority by nature of its universalism. Unique Special Revelation is not meant to speak to all men in all times in all places for general purpose.

Think of it this way. Many businesses have detailed vision and mission statements that the boss has handed down to employees and that serve as a template for all things done within the company. Those statements are a universal special revelation to the people who work for that boss. But should the boss come to a specific employee and say, “Johnson, I need you to fly out to Dallas and negotiate a deal with Franklin Heavy Industries,” the boss’s request is meant to further the vision and mission statements of the company so that the company prospers. The request is in keeping with the universal special revelation, but is in itself a unique special revelation. The rest of the employees of that company do not need to know that Johnson is on his way to Dallas. If they keep working in line with the vision and mission statements of the company, what Johnson is doing no way interferes with the common goal, but helps accomplish it. Nor are the bosses words to Johnson added to the vision and mission statement of the company.

In the case of the Acts 13 passage above, the Holy Spirit is going to the body of believers gathered at Antioch and nowhere else. That makes the message specific to a single gathering. In His words, he selects two believers from the crowd. There, too, is specificity, as is the mission itself: to go to Cyprus and beyond.

We see this same kind of Unique Special Revelation in Acts 16:

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
—Acts 16:6-9 ESV

The Holy Spirit forbade the apostles from going into Asia. Whether this was by His words or by His setting up a roadblock, either way the point was made and a unique revelation of God’s specific purposes was achieved. Later on, the Holy Spirit again speaks to Paul via a Unique Special Revelation by giving him a vision of the Macedonian man praying. Notice that this was NOT a Universal Special Revelation in that God was not asking the entire Body of Believers at that point to move to Macedonia and start an evangelistic crusade! No, the Lord was directing Paul and his companions alone to do that specific work within the universal call to make disciples of all nations.

Again, all of the Unique Special Revelations listed in Acts exist to uphold the truth given within Universal Special Revelation. The Universal Special Revelation is the final authority over Unique Special Revelation.

A few more thoughts on this…

Not every word that God spoke is recorded, nor are all His actions. The book of John ends this way:

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
—John 21:25 ESV

Jesus lived for thirty-three years, but the Gospels do not record every word He spoke in His entire existence on this planet. I, for one, would have loved to have heard the conversations He had with His parents in His youth. Wouldn’t those be fascinating and helpful for parents? Or what did He talk about with His disciples in those three years of nights around a campfire? We don’t hear all those. We are not privy to all His prayers. The differences between the Gospel of John and the three Synoptic Gospels are profound enough so that it is clear that not everything that Jesus said made it into the Bible. But God preserved what He wanted preserved in the Scriptures. What He felt was essential to Universal Special Revelation is in there. The canon is special for that reason.

What is even less recorded in the Scriptures is Unique Special Revelation. We know from the examples given in Acts that it certainly exists. I believe the very reason why these Unique Special Revelations are recorded in our Universal Special Revelation goes beyond the historical nature of Acts and into the very nature of Unique Special Revelation itself. God wants us to know that it exists and that He speaks that way.

What I do not believe is that each of those Unique Special Revelations must be known in order for the Body of Christ as a whole to operate. This is the reason that I have no problem not equating them with Universal Special Revelation. Those specific words are not essential for all of us to know, either in the days of the first century Church or the church of the 21st century. Their very specificity does not make them candidates for inclusion in Universal Special Revelation.

Although Paul clearly advocates revelatory speech through the charismatic gifts of words of knowledge, words of wisdom, words of prophecy, and the interpretation of tongues, God did not elect for Paul to record every single one of those Unique Special Revelations in His Universal Special Revelation. Yet the very fact that Unique Special Revelation does exist and that it is a means by which God works His specific will through specific people in specific times and specific places is important. For instance, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses pounded to the front door of the Wittenburg church was the result of God speaking to Luther and then to the people around him via the Unique Special Revelation granted him by the Holy Spirit, the one who grabbed hold of the reformer and used him for His unique purpose.

When a preacher expounds on the Universal Special Revelation via his sermon on Sunday, how can we not see that the Lord has ignited those words by means of Unique Special Revelation given to that preacher? What is the Unction of the Holy Spirit other than the Spirit speaking to a man in a given time to a given people for a given purpose?

I do not believe it is possible for the Church to exist without Unique Special Revelation. Just as Paul and his troupe were led to a man praying in Macedonia for a revelation of God to him and his people, so missionaries are called to specific groups of lost people around the world through the prompting of the Holy Spirit. When a missionary says that she has a heart for a certain people group, is that not a Unique Special Revelation given her by the Holy Spirit?

I believe we do an injustice to the Holy Spirit when we claim that Unique Special Revelation does not exist anymore. But I also believe that we grieve the Spirit when we try to manufacture Unique Special Revelation or fail to test any revelations we receive. This is clearly a mistake on the part of charismatics and non-charismatics have every right to call charismatics to task for this abuse. On the other hand, non-charismatics need to tread lightly when it comes to insisting that Unique Special Revelation does not exist. It certainly existed as recorded historically in the Universal Special Revelation of the Bible! Given its function, there is no reason to believe that God no longer wishes to direct His people in the same manner today that he did then. Nor do I see any proof that this kind of Unique Special Revelation has ceased. If it has, then no preacher should ever preach on the Scriptures, only read them to the congregation without any additional insights because those insights are no longer given by the Holy Spirit to a specific people in a specific time and place. Nor should he ever advise anyone in any specific instance of direction because all such direction has ceased.

I believe that Jesus chose these words very carefully:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
—John 10:27 ESV

Notice that He does not say that His sheep hear His words. It is the voice that matters. A voice speaks and continues to speak, whereas words are spoken once. And so the Spirit of the Lord Jesus speaks to us today. Discernment is therefore called for since there are other voices speaking that are not of God. However, the existence of those voices does not negate the existence of the One Voice, the Unique Special Revelation of God that His people are called to follow. The Shepherd is still speaking and we must obey.

The Lord either leads by His Spirit today or He does not. Based upon all the Scriptural evidence, God still speaks through Unique Special Revelation. I just pray that we are both open and discerning enough to hear Him and act on His direction.