This strange textualism that assumes that because we can quote chapter and verse we possess the content and experience is a grave hindrance to spiritual progress…. It is one of the deadliest, most chilling breezes that ever blew across the Church of God!1
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The experience of God within the believer ought to result from the text, but it is possible to have the text and not have the experience!2
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In our generation there is a great concealing cloud over much of the fundamental, gospel church which has practically shut off our consciousness of the smiling face of God.
Textualism, a system of rigid adherence to words, has largely captured the church, with the language of the New Testament still being used but with the Spirit of the New Testament grieved.
The doctrine of verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, for instance, is still held, but in such a way that its illumination and life are gone and rigor mortis has set in. As a result religious yearning is choked down, religious imagination has been stultified and religious aspiration smothered.
The “hierarchy” and the “scribes” of this school of thought have told us and would teach us that we ought to shut up and quit talking about spiritual longing and desire in the Christian church.3
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God waits for your faith and your love, and He doesn’t ask whose interpretation of Scripture you have accepted.4
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Textualism is as deadly as liberalism.5
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Your faith can stand in the text and you can be as dead as the proverbial doornail, but when the power of God moves in on the text and sets the sacrifice on fire, then you have Christianity.6
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We do have much theology, much Bible teaching and many Bible conferences which begin and end in themselves. They circle fully around themselves and after the benediction everyone goes home—but no one is any better than he was before. That is the woe and the terror of these things. I plead for something more than textualism which begins and ends with itself—and sees nothing beyond.7