This testimony was about my experience hearing voices, which claimed to be from God. The voices claimed that I would win three Nobel Prizes and have a very beautiful Korean Christian wife. I thought God talked to me, and my experience was not unique. For example, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Korean leader of the Unification Church, Joseph Smith, leader of the Mormon Church, Mohammed, leader of the Muslim religion, and also many other cult or aberrant leaders claimed that they all heard God's voice when they were actually suffering from wishful thinking, from a mental illness or from some form of demon possession. It took me four years to come to the conclusion that I never talked to God and that I was never a prophet.
During the month of October of 1990, I did not know a lot about the Bible. I did not realize that I was making a claim that I was a prophet. A prophet, in Scripture, was one who had the word of God in his mouth. What he said, as a prophet, was God's Word. See Exodus 3?4, Deuteronomy 18, Jeremiah 1. Prophecies were the divine words he spoke. Prophecies had to be perfect and inspired by God if they were from God. However, 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 said,
"Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecies, they will be done away with; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away." NASB
Since the Bible, which was "perfect," came, the need for more prophecies passed away. The word for "perfect" in this context could not refer to Jesus since the word "perfect" in Greek was neither masculine nor feminine. So, this did not mean that Paul's, John's, and other New Testament writers' prophecies in the New Testament were not complete. Only after the last book of Revelations in the Bible was written, the Bible finally became "perfect" or complete. Before the Bible became "perfect" or complete, God used prophets like Luke and Mark and Apostles like Paul, Peter, and John. 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 could only refer to the Post-written New Testament era when there were no more New Testament apostles and prophets. If I were a prophet, all of my prophecies must be perfect and must be inspired by God. However, my false prophecies contradicted 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 since Corinthians was saying the Bible was already complete or "perfect," and the "partial" was done away.
Every Post-written New Testament prophecy was done away and was "partial" or incomplete. Please note that the verb "comes" is in present tense in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. For the sake of argument, let's say that 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 made a grammatical error such that the Bible meant to say, "when perfect will come" instead of "when the perfect comes." Also, let's say that the word "perfect" also referred to Jesus or His Second Coming. Then, the Post-New Testament prophecy and knowledge is still "partial" or incomplete in present tense once again. In other words, Bible was not perfect since prophecy was "partial" or incomplete. Accordingly, we could not rely on the Bible if the Bible was "not complete" or "partial," because this implied that sinful man could not find all of the spiritual guidance in the Bible. Thus, if I were a prophet, what I had falsely heard should have the same weight with the Bible. However, after I had carefully examined what I had heard, what I had heard contradicted the Bible. This contradiction will be shown more clearly when I discuss the Mormon argument for the gifts of prophecy. The Mormons did not realize that incompletion implied that Bible had some errors or has some flaws.
All Scripture [Old and New Testament] is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 1 Timothy 3:16-17
Every word of God is flawless; he is shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar. Proverbs 30:5-6
One Mormon told me that Proverbs 30:5-6 was written before the New Testament.
Proverbs 30:5-6 said that God using inspired Old Testament Prophets or New
Testament Apostles like Paul can add God's Words into the Bible. Thus, fallible
and uninspired men like Joseph Smith were not allowed to add anything to
the Bible. Since Joseph Smith was from the Post-written New Testament era,
he was fallible according to 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. One Mormon scholar told
me that there were thousands of errors in the Book of Mormon. Since the
New Testament is perfect and inspired while the Book of Mormon is not perfect
and not inspired, adding something perfect-inspired with perfect-inspired
is perfect-inspired while adding imperfect-uninspired (or perfect-uninspired)
with perfect-inspired is imperfect-uninspired. Mormons failed to see that
1 Corinthians 13:8-10 prophecies the end of perfect and inspired prophecies
through Jesus Christ, who is the author and perfecter of our faith, (Hebrew
12:2) while Christ is not the author of confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33)
It was very obvious that having little inner peace and having lots of confusion
was a clear indication that the voices were not from God. However, many
Christians claimed that they also heard God's voice and that they have inner
peace. I would like to say that one's feelings are a poor indication whether
or not God is talking to him. For instance, Reverend Sun Myung Moon and
Joseph Smith had inner peace when they had their encounter talking to their
voices and visions. It is not logical to conclude that having inner peace
indicates that the voices are from God. Some Christians may even say that
voices told the truth and that it must be from God. Tragically, Satan also
knows the truth. (James 2:19) If you read the book of Mormon, Joseph Smith
did speak some truth when he defined the word 'charity,' which is ironically
a xerox copy of the 1 Corinthians 13 from the New Testament Bible.
I have spent hours studying Apostle Paul's 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. I really
believed that God talked to me on October 24, 1990, the same way He had
talked to Apostle Paul. Without warrant, I equated Apostle Paul with myself.
Before I concluded that God did not talk to me, I examined the issues whether
or not God talked to me. While I was struggling at Berkeley, many brothers
and sisters told me that God never spoke to me. Back then, I really wondered
whether or not the voices were from my subconscious thought in my mind or
from Satan. So, I asked myself, 'Were Apostle Paul and I mentally ill and
never heard God's voice?' I became very depressed and thought that God lied
to me and Apostle Paul. I, now, know that the Lord did not lie to me and
that it was Satan, who deceived me, and that my pride was responsible for
my aberrant understanding of the Bible. Paul was sane, and I was very prideful
to see myself as an equal to Paul. When I read 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, I
saw many flaws in my logic and thinking, and there were many contradictions
in the voices of October 24, 1990. Many Christian scholars sighted many
flaws in the writings in all of the mentioned cults and other religions.