REVELATION-COMPLETE

From the time of the apostles until the present, the true church has always believed that the Bible is complete. God has given His revelation and now Scripture is finished. God has spoken. What He gave is complete, efficacious, sufficient, inerrant, infallible, and authoritative. Attempts to add to the Bible, and claims of further revelation from God have always been characteristic of heretics and cultists, not the true people of God.

John MacArthur

Once a congregation sees Scripture as less than the final, complete, infallible authority for faith and practice, it has opened the doors to theological chaos. Anyone can claim to be speaking God’s revelation – and almost anything can be passed off as divinely revealed truth.

John MacArthur
Charismatic Chaos, Zondervan, © John MacArthur, 1992, p. 66, www.zondervan.com.

The New Testament prophetic gift (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10) primarily has to do with declaration, not revelation. The New Testament prophet “speaks to men for edification and exhortation and comfort” (1 Cor. 14:3). He is a preacher, not a source of ongoing revelation. His task is one of forth-telling, not foretelling. That is, he proclaims already revealed truth; he is not generally a conduit for new revelation… This revelatory aspect of prophecy was unique to the apostolic era.

John MacArthur
Charismatic Chaos, Zondervan, © John MacArthur, 1992, p. 81-82, www.zondervan.com.

Revelation is no usual book. It is a sweeping analysis of history from the first advent of Christ to the second. Jesus had promised that the Spirit would teach His apostles “all things” (John 14:26). The Spirit had come and fulfilled the promise. Apostles had communicated the authoritative word. The task of revelation was finished. The Book of Revelation is the last apostolic word to the church. The Almighty Saviour, seated at God's right hand, opens His sovereign lips personally to declare that nothing is to be added to what has been recorded. Beware of meddling with Christ’s revelation.

Walter J. Chantry
Signs of the Apostles, 1976, p. 35-37, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle PA.

Failure to see Jesus Christ as the final revelation of truth is a major error that will open the door of the church to a multitude of heresies, taught in the name of truth. Every true movement initiated by the Spirit of God leads men back to the words of Christ which were inscripturated by His own inspiration.

Walter J. Chantry
Signs of the Apostles, 1976, p. 35-37, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle PA.

Some persons think they can know God by means of their own human reason. But reason is a blind ally spiritually. It has always been the great minds exercising their powers apart from the Word of God who have produced the great heresies. Some think they can discover God by listening to a so-called “inner voice.” But the voice is often nothing more than an expression of their own inner desires. Quite a few think that spiritual truths can be verified by supernatural events or miracles. But the Bible everywhere teaches that even miracles will not lead men and women to understand and receive God's truth unless they themselves are illuminated by the Bible (see Luke 16:31). I believe that we can state categorically that there is no knowledge apart from Jesus Christ and that there is no knowledge of Jesus Christ apart from a knowledge of the Bible.

James Montgomery Boice

Why is God silent? Why does the God of all the universe not speak?... God has already spoken everything that can probably be spoken graciously. Jesus is the ultimate, final word of God in that area. Not a syllable can be added. The only words that remain to be spoken are the final words of judgment.

James Montgomery Boice

The Minor Prophets, v. 2, Baker, 1986, p. 598.

This line of prophetic spokesmen from God came to completion in Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Word, who was Himself a prophet – more than a prophet, but not less – and in the apostles and prophets of the first Christian generation. When God’s final and climatic message, His word to the world concerning Jesus Christ, had been spoken and elucidated by those in the apostolic circle, the sequence of revealed messages ceased. Henceforth the Church was to live and know God by what He had already said, and said for all time.

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

Exposition: Creation, Revelation, and Inspiration.

The fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.

John Calvin

All who claim a supernatural inspiration must stand prepared to prove it by supernatural works.

Robert Lewis Dabney

The Public Preaching of Women, October 1879.

The canon is closed, not because God has stopped speaking, nor because there are no more apostles, but because God sovereignly closed it. God simply ceased inspiring and preserving canonical revelation. Basing the finality of the canon on the cessation of apostleship is disastrous. How can the absence of apostles guarantee the closing of the canon when non-apostles wrote Scripture? Such a view would require us to assert, absurdly, that as long as there are non-apostolic Christians the canon is open!

Sam Storms
Are Apostles for Today? November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

The exclusive preeminence given to the Holy Spirit in their devotions and preoccupations with gifts, ecstasies, and “prophecies” has tended to neglect of the Scriptures. Why be tied to a Book out of the past when one can communicate every day with the living God? But this is exactly the danger point. Apart from the constant control of the written revelation, we soon find ourselves engulfed in subjectivity; and the believer, even if he has the best intentions, can sink rapidly into deviations, illuminism or exaltation. Let each remind himself of the prohibition of taking anything away from Scripture or adding anything to it (Deut. 4:2; Rev. 22:18-19). Almost every heresy and sect has originated in a supposed revelation or a new experience on the part of its founder, something outside the strictly biblical framework.

Rene Pache

The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, Moody, 1969, p. 319.

The Christian faith is unchangeable, which is not to say that men and women of every generation do not need to find it, experience it, and live it; but it does mean that every new doctrine that arises, even though its legitimacy may be plausible asserted, is a false doctrine. All claims to convey some additional revelation to that which has been given by God in this body of truth are false claims and must be rejected.

George L. Lawlor
Translation and Exposition of the Epistle of Jude, P&R, 1972, p. 45. Used by Permission.

[Sola Scriptura is defined as] the comprehensive and completed revelation of the will of God for us by which we can be thoroughly equipped for every good work... Such a complete, perfect, eternal, all-embracing, and all-sufficient revelation from God that it will never need amendment, correction, or supplementation.

Joe Morecraft

How God Wants Us to Worship Him. Vision Forum Ministries, p. 10.

Claims to special divine revelations are not so much a sign of super-spirituality as they are of evangelical or pietistic megalomania. The days of prophets and apostles, genuine agents of revelation, are past. Such claims today are spurious and exceedingly dangerous.

R.C. Sproul

Scripture and…revelation itself (Rev. 22:13-14) closes with the book bearing the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus spoke His last words to the Church as recorded in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Therefore, those who claim to speak new revelation from God today stand against the preeminence of Christ as the highest revelation of God.

John Napier

From the Garden of Eden, to the experience of Job, to the temptation of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the present day, Satan has tried to move man away from submission to the authority of God and His Word. If he cannot do it through direct enticement or challenge, he will attempt to do it through all manner of subtlety and deception. That is why one must be careful not to embrace new revelations that come through any avenue: impressions, intuition, visions, dreams, tongues, or prophecy. As noted previously, such undermine both the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

John Napier