A critical review of Lloyd Gardner’s book, Face to Face: A Dialogue with Jesus (Tollhouse, CA: Eliezer Call Ministries, 2009) 174 pages.
Having almost died of a heart attack near Budapest, Hungary, in November of 2006, I sympathize with the author’s living with cancer. His insights can help others who for reason of illnesses, are coping with the uncertainty of life.
As a pastor, I also identify with the naiveté with which he returned to minister in a former congregation only to be dismissed by the leadership for failure to share their vision for the church (Chapter 9), which in today’s market-driven environment of ministry demands the production of tangible “results”—increasing attendance numbers, upping the cash flow and building bigger buildings. These days, “the buck stops” in the pulpit!
In a day of “big box” churches, Gardner’s focus upon the simple, as opposed to the institutional, church—The 2:42 Formula—finds precedent in Scripture. Luke describes “the four to-s” of the early church; that early Christians devoted themselves “to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Emphasis added, Acts 2:42).[1] But these days, contemporary Christians are all about feeling comfortable in church. As one pastor observes:
Comfort has become a central goal of worship. In the face of life’s challenges, people come to church seeking therapy or comforting affirmation. They often get their wish because church leaders know that these customers will vanish from the padded seats if they’re not satisfied.[2]
So pan-evangelical congregations emphasize man-centered musical excitements and entertainment in worship, programmatic approaches to spirituality, and paid professionals preaching psychology, positivity, possibility and prosperity in order to make the audience “feel good.” These developments in America’s evangelical churches represent a radical departure, even apostasy, from the devout and simple church described in Acts.
Gardner’s book contains truth. But when compared to Scripture, the truth is mixed with error, something that ought to concern Bible believers. About mixing truth and untruth, Harry Ironside (1876-1951) wrote:
Error is like leaven of which we read, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Truth mixed with error is equivalent to all error, except that it is more innocent looking and, therefore, more dangerous. God hates such a mixture! Any error, or any truth-and-error mixture, calls for definite exposure and repudiation. To condone such is to be unfaithful to God and His Word and treacherous to imperiled souls for whom Christ died.[3]
We turn to discern the errors in Face to Face.
As suggested by the title (Face to Face: A Dialogue with Jesus), Gardner’s book claims to recount multiple in-the-body visitations the author had as a time traveler with Jesus at the future judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10-11); experiences that were personal, physical and private.[4] To discern the authenticity of these supra-spiritual encounters (spirituality above the scriptural norm), Gardner’s experiences should be submitted to the scrutiny of Scripture. He himself cautions readers: “Do not accept what people tell you without putting it to the test of God’s word. What God shares in His word is of much more importance than all of the experiences people can or will have.” (Face to Face, 6)
So by his invitation, we will attempt to assay (to test the qualitative substance of) the author’s claimed visitations and conversations with Jesus. In this assessment, I ask the reader’s patience, for the issues raised in Face to Face do not lend themselves to “sound bite” responses. Reported experiences like Gardner’s–which are also claimed by individuals who are part of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a network of organizations and individual ministries like The Elijah List and The Call–represent much of what is being pawned off among uninformed Christians as true “spirituality.” Some claimed experiences are phenomenal–traveling to the third heaven, transporting oneself into other time dimensions, obsessing over angels and archangels, etc.–but blatantly challenge the Bible’s teaching on true spirituality.* We begin with Gardner’s claim to have had conversations with Jesus.
Voices
Listening to and hearing the voice of God is a popular experience claimed by many of today’s New Age/New Spiritualists.[5] In 1965, Columbia University Professor of Medical Psychology Helen Schucman (1909-1981) began to hear an inner Voice identified as Jesus’. Over a period of seven years, the Voice dictated material to her that, with transcriptional help provided by her faculty colleague William Thetford, became A Course in Miracles.[6] Because of the similarity of the course’s dictations to the words of the Gospels, especially John, others also believe that the “inner voice” Schucman heard to have been that of Jesus.[7] New Age spiritualist Barbara Marx Hubbard (1929- ) also listens to someone who speaks inside her.[8] New Age guru Neale Donald Walsch also claims to have heard God speak to him (Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue, Books 1, 2, 3).[9]
The author of the bestselling religious allegory The Shack, Paul Young, accounts for the book’s origin for reason of personal and private conversations he had with God.[10] On his daily work-commute from Gresham to Portland, Oregon, World magazine reports that, “Young used 80 minutes each day . . . to fill yellow legal pads with imagined conversations with God focused on suffering, pain, and evil.”[11] A friend of Young’s testified that the conversations were authentic.[12] In thinking how to explain the story of his ministry to a childhood campmate with whom he had been reunited, Bill Hybels asked: “How could I tell this savvy, cynical business guy that my fifty-year odyssey unfolded as it has because of a series of whispers from God? Inaudible whispers, at that.”[13] Many, both without and within the pale of evangelical Christendom, claim to have heard God speak in the quiet of contemplation or via direct conversations with Him.[14] Amidst the cacophony of voices, everybody seems to be listening to everybody else, but few to the Word of the Lord.
The fact that contemporary evangelicals seek “fresh” revelations from God indicates that they no longer consider Holy Scripture to be sufficient and authoritative in matters of faith (Contra 2 Timothy 3:16.). Yet if the Bible is no longer considered sufficient, the coming of “fresh revelations” raises the following conundrum. If the new revelations repeat the Word of God—and there is much in Gardner’s book that does that—then they are unnecessary. If the revelations/conversations are at odds with the Word of God, then they are heresy. If they add to the Word of God, then they point to Scripture’s inadequacy and insufficiency. To this point Proverbs warns: “Add thou not unto his [God’s] words, lest he [God] reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:6, KJV; Compare Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Revelation 22:18.). . . . .
True Discernment 
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