Beth Moore. | (Photo: Facebook)
Posted on 01/07/2019 8:24:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Beth Moore. | (Photo: Facebook)
Popular Bible teacher and author Beth Moore has sparked a fiery debate online about whether spending time reading the Bible is the same thing as spending time with God.
“Spending time with God and spending time with the Bible are not the same thing. The Bible is the Word of God, crucial to knowing Him, but it’s not God. We can study our Bibles till the 2nd coming & leave God completely out of it. We can grow in facts & never grow a whit in faith,” Moore declared in an initial tweet on the subject late Wednesday.
The tweet, which garnered thousands of reactions, included criticisms from some who pointed to John 1:1, which says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Others came to Moore's defense.
The fiery debate forced Moore to further explain her point in two more tweets. She maintained that people can read Scripture and remain unchanged — this is a sign that they are reading the Bible without God’s presence.
“Do not be deceived. People who study the Scriptures constantly and are continually mean-spirited, rude, slanderous and, aside their religious rhetoric, bereft of outward evidences of the Holy Spirit are having Bible study without God. He affects us. You can take that to the bank,” she said as the debate raged on.
“I will emphasize once more that my point is NOT studying Scripture less. I am a proponent of daily Bible study. It’s my practice. My life work and my delight. My point is that we need God in our study of His Word. I’m just saying don’t leave Jesus out of Bible study.”
Despite the Bible teacher’s explanation, Reformation Charlotte, a ministry of Christians who seek to glorify God “by exposing our culture of darkness to the light of the Gospel,” argued that Moore’s position is misguided.
“Well, in her world, spending time with God consists of fanciful dreams of being lifted up in the air while being told by God that He’s going to unite all sectors of Christendom, or strange moments of meeting a woman at a random bus stop just to give her a handful of cash because, you know, God told her to go there and stuff,” the group stated.
“Of course spending time in Scripture is the same thing as spending time with God. You cannot know God any other way. It’s how he speaks to us (Hebrews 1:1). Yes, you can spend time with Him in prayer as well, and you can spend time with Him in worship. But what she’s saying is essentially the same thing as saying that listening to your parents speak to you is not the same thing as spending time with them. The Scriptures are God’s full and complete revelation to us. It informs all matters of our faith in Him, including our prayer and worship.”
No Compromise Radio, a ministry of Steve Cooley, also reacted with disdain to Moore’s views on Thursday.
“When Beth spends time listening to her husband talk to her, too bad that does not count as spending time with him,” the ministry tweeted.
Moore is founder of Living Proof Ministries, a ministry dedicated to encouraging people to come to know and love Jesus Christ through the study of Scripture.
I see this as splitting hairs / semantics.
i didn’t read fully, but too many people “spend time with God” without having read much of the bible to actually know about God. So there spending time is mostly conjured up in their own mind and they aren’t necessarily spending time with God of the bible but god of their own mind. The bible is hugely important if we are to spend time with God in any true sense. imho
She is fairly clear what she means. You need to read your Bible. But you also need to spend time alone in prayer and meditation. It’s not either-or. It’s both.
“Do not be deceived. People who study the Scriptures constantly and are continually mean-spirited, rude, slanderous and, aside their religious rhetoric, bereft of outward evidences of the Holy Spirit are having Bible study without God. He affects us. You can take that to the bank,” she said as the debate raged on.
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Amen!
I know atheists who have studied the Bible. I have read the Koran but I wasn’t spending time with Allah
Yep. Divide and conquer tactic initiated by the age old deceiver.
If, as an assigned academic exercise in a Comparative Religion course in college I read the Koran, does that mean I spent time with Mohammed?
Reading the Bible does not mean that the reader is seeking meaning and a true relationship with God. I can point to many people who can spout chapter and verse but it is obvious they do not know God.
“Time spent reading assembly instructions is not time spent building models.”
“Time spent folding clothes is not time spent doing laundry.”
Hmmmmm ... no, not gonna buy into the premise.
If you are reading to complete x number of pages per day and not think about what you are reading, she is right.
“Reading the Bible does not mean that the reader is seeking meaning and a true relationship with God. I can point to many people who can spout chapter and verse but it is obvious they do not know God.”
Satan quoted scripture to Jesus when he tempted him. I’d say he wasn’t a follower.
Do not just be hearers of the word but doers. I know from personal experience that I can read my bible for an hour and realize my heart and spirit wasn’t in it, and got nothing. Still better than not reading at all.
Me too. Technically, she can be right. Sometimes one can really get into reading the bible but forget the whole point. Then there is the main character in “A Clockwork Orange”. He did a lot of bible study and definitely was not spending time with God. He imagined himself as one of the soldiers beating Jesus.
So, though the bible is very useful in understanding the personality of God and his will for you, it’s not the same as spending time with God. That’s what prayer is for.
Who cares what she says.
The Bible isn’t the “Word of God.”
Jesus is the “Word of God.”
Other than that, Beth Moore is right about studying the Bible vs. knowing God.
She will be happy to sell you a study on spending time with God.
Beth Moore attracts her own ‘following’
Many of us have our personal favorites of ‘people of faith’.....but the difference is, I think, is we carefully consider their opinions, perhaps agree, but not idealize
With Moore it seems a promotion of Moore.....I do know she has found Donald Trump unworthy of her support and totally dismisses him
Please correct me if you think I’m wrong
another clueless she needs to look-up: lectio divinia
Exactly.
Gee. I understand both sides of the discussion. Now, if you change “read” to “read and meditate upon”, I’m guessing it gets much harder to get nothing from it. The Holy Spirit is often working in the meditation whether the reader knows it or not. Exposure to Scripture often leads to conviction and conviction to repentance and repentance to fellowship with Christ even as the person wasn’t truly aware what was happening to them. Nothing is impossible with God. He grows mighty oaks out of tiny acorns.
I would say the larger problem are people who listen without hearing rather than reading without learning. We’re becoming a less and less written society.
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