Well-known Christian evangelist, Bible teacher, and author, Beth Moore, launched quite the heated debate last week with a tweet stating that spending time reading the Bible and spending time with God [is] not equivalent.
“Spending time with God and spending time with the Bible are not the same thing,” she wrote. “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.”
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.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) January 2, 2019
The tweet has since garnered over 1,100 controversial comments from those who both side with Moore and critics who vehemently disagree.
“Not as Christians we can’t because the HS fills us and uses scripture to sanctify us,” commented one Twitter user opposed to Moore’s assertion. “Fact is, the more time we spend in [the] study of His Word, the more He will change us. You are making a separation that does not exist.”
Other critics pointed to the verse John 1:1, which states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”