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Tuesday, December 12. 2017The Apocalyptic Rapture
The year is 2017, and countless prophecies are heard within the Christen realm to the effect that a great spiritual revival is imminent in preparation for the expected coming of Christ in our time. One can well understand the sentiment behind such a notion. The strain of the times is being felt – the sense that something needs to happen – and it is rightly deemed that the church is in no condition to manifest Joel 2 or 1 Thessalonians 4, the latter usually referred to as the rapture.
The problem is that there is no scripture to back this assertion – namely in the sense of a worldwide spiritual awakening, of global repentance and conversion, and indeed of socio-political transformation toward godly models. Rather it is spoken of a falling away, of a spiritual famine, and of a world in thrall of the antichrist. As it was in the days of Noah ... and as it was in the days of Lot ... thus – so stated the saviour – shall it be when the Son of man is revealed. And neither of these ages experienced anything remotely like a universal spiritual revival – quite the contrary. Somewhere – somehow – there seems to be a great disjunction between the prophetic scriptures and the perceived need and expectation of our time. The churches are in a state of desperate crisis, such as yet retain a biblical model, insofar as the pastoral ministry is altogether incommensurate with the spiritual requirements of the age. It is a case of the blind leading the blind, after the scathing denunciation of Laodicea in Revelation 3. One of these days the foolish virgins of Matthew 25 will be caught unawares, and it will be asked, were not all these great things supposed to happen before the coming of the Lord? And the answer will return, it’s already happened and you did not know it. So it becomes us to ask, what kind of revival – what move of God – can we expect in our time? Is there indeed revival, and what form might it take? And what we actually observe, contrary to much zealous teaching, is that revival fires are everywhere dying down – namely in the conventional sense we have come to understand revival. Specifically we are speaking in this context of the great twentieth century pentecostal revival, which brought restoration of the spiritual gifts. While today there are greater attendance numbers, the quality of experience is not remotely what it was even a mere forty years ago, let alone that of the original outpouring after Azusa Street in 1906. And here lies the problem, in that the evangelic / charismatic churches are still pursuing a pentecostal message with undue emphasis upon the spiritual gifts, when another age is actually upon us. For this is the age of the calling of the bride, the opening of the seven seals, and the restoration of the Word of God in fullness. While pentecost, in the above sense, is certainly part of our message, we have today progressed beyond that into whole new order of ministry – of which ministry the established denominations are entirely unaware. We ask, how could this have happened, and we note that the said pentecostal revival occurred outside of the established churches, free from religious organisation and denomination. Indeed the fathers of the movement denounced religious denominationalism for the antichrist system which it is. Yet within a very few years, the pentecostal movement went the way of every revival preceding it, in that it organised and enshrined its non-biblical doctrines as binding dogma – and right there it died. Indeed the same holds for the entire history of revival and biblical restoration. Luther, Wesley or Pentecost – no spiritual revival ever originated from within the religious establishment and, once religious organisation took hold, God removed the candlestick and the life of the Spirit moved on, leaving behind the dead denominational husk. Yet every historic revival also built upon what was already in place, such that we are speaking of cumulative revelation, leading up to grand consummation in the coming of Christ. Accordingly there is a godly awakening among the elect – there is indeed revival – which, in its nature, however, goes entirely unrecognised among the religious denominations and centres of learning. What then is the message, the ministry of this present age, as characterised by the calling of the spiritual bride? A large number of scriptures may be adduced which broadly reflect the idea of consummation – which is to say, of the spiritual church conforming to the image of Christ. Below are presented three biblical passages which convey the essential idea. 1 Corinthians 13:9-10 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 John 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. We shall be like him (the Christ), for we shall see him as he is. Here, as throughout the New Testament, the emphasis is not upon human effort – it is not upon praying and fasting and zealous works – but upon the cognitive and receptive aspect of the gospel. It is upon seeing and cognising, upon knowing and understanding. Indeed we learn in Matthew 16 that revelation – divine revelation of who He is – is the spiritual rock, the foundation of the entire edifice of faith. Which brings us to our concept of the apocalyptic rapture – for the literal meaning of apocalypse is revelation. Concerning then revival in our time, it is not going to be revival as previously understood. It is not going to be a public affair, manifesting ‘out there’ with a lot of noise, with newspaper coverage and reverberations through the political and spiritual landscape. The only genuine revival we will see is that occurring within our own soul, and the world at large, including the nominal churches, will know nothing about it. Indeed we are speaking of a secret rapture and of Christ coming as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5), which scenario is not to be confused with Revelation 19, where Christ appears openly as conqueror and king for his millennial reign. Where thus it is spoken of seeing him (the Christ) as he is, the reference is not to some historic or derivative Hollywood Christ of the religious imagination – which is to say, a man in a robe – but to Christ as the revealed Word of God. It is the Word of God which is quickened in the rapture, the Word which is the spiritual seed sown into the individual soul. Moreover it must be Word of God in its fullness – the seed in its maturity – not the dead stalks and husks of the reformed traditions. Specifically it is the opening of the biblical seven seals in our age, whereby the spiritual bride is quickened to the ministry of the age. As we read in the Revelation, the book of life was sealed with seven seals, such that no mortal was able to look thereon. In other words, through seven ages we were accustomed to seeing through a glass darkly – through religious tradition and theological guesswork – but now face to face, as the lamb of God releases these seals to his faithful. This is vitally important, insofar as it constitutes the true baptism of the Holy Spirit – not manifesting in signs or sensations, but in the revelation of Jesus Christ. It constitutes the oil of the wise virgins, as per Matthew 25, and marks the essential difference between doctrinal abstraction and spiritual experience. As states Job 42, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye beholds you. And again, Matthew 5, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Coming then to the rapture as a generic spiritual experience, we find that it is not a singular event but occurs in scripture a full seven times – the personages involved being: – Enoch (Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5) – Moses (Deuteronomy 34, Jude 1:9) – Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) – Jesus, the Christ (Mark 16:9, Luke 24:51, Acts 1:9) – the Old Testament saints rising with Christ (Mathew 27:52-53) – the gentile bride (Thessalonians 4:16-17) – and the two witnesses to Israel (Revelation 11:11-12) What can we glean from these events? While the narratives are tantalisingly sparse, we observe, notably in the case of Elijah, an intersection of domains or experiential realms, of heaven and earth, with the suggestion of congruence or interpenetration. We find the same in 2 Kings 6, where the angelic host is seen encamped around his disciple, the prophet Elisha. The suggestion is that, in going to heaven, we do not fly off into space; we remain right here, translated into another dimension, existing at a higher rate of vibration. Such indeed we may assert, notwithstanding the biblical metaphor of ascending and descending to and from heaven. As remarked Jesus, speaking with Nicodemus (John 3:13), no man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. We may speak in this connection of a parting of the spiritual veil, where the temple or tabernacle of Moses furnishes the essential type. The holy of holies, where dwelt the living presence of God, was separated from the sanctuary and outer courts by a veil. As a metaphor of the true or spiritual temple, its three partitions correspond to body, soul and spirit – the three principles comprising the human nature – where the veil of body and soul clothes the spirit. We find the idea expressed in John 12:21-24, where certain Greeks asked to see Jesus. Came the saviour’s answer: Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit. Why could not the Greeks see him? As gentiles, unlike the Jews, they knew nothing of a prophet messiah, and would have merely seen a man in a robe – a man like any other man. Their time would only come when the veil of the flesh was rent, and Christ could be known as the Holy Spirit within. As Paul states in Hebrews 9:24, For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself ... Thus from the earthly tabernacle, where dwelt the shekinah light upon the mercy seat between the cherubim of beaten gold, we come to Revelation 4 and the ark of God in heaven. Surrounding the heavenly throne, as recounts the evangelist, John, were ‘living creatures’ – which creatures were full of eyes within, suggestive insight or spiritual vision. We understand concerning these creatures, the said cherubim, that they function as guardians against anything profane that would usurp the powers of the heavenly sanctuary. Only the high priest of Israel entered once a year, bearing the blood sacrifice in prefigure of the atoning death of Christ. Here we may compare Genesis 3, And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ... he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. We learned moreover, concerning the tabernacle of Moses, that it meant certain death for anyone to enter unbidden into the Most Holy. The way of the tree of life was barred – in symbol, the way of the sanctuary – until the cherubic sword pierced through the saviour’s heart, and the temple veil was torn from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). It is moreover the cherubim of Revelation 4, described as being full of eyes, which bid the prophet, come and see ... as the lamb of God opens the seven seals, revealing the mysteries hidden from the foundation of the world. These entities – having the form of a Lion, a Bull, a Man and a flying Eagle – are not merely guardians, they also facilitate entry for those who are bidden to enter. Specifically they represent the fire of God which conveys the sacrifice into his presence, purging us from sin, as it is written in Psalms 104, he makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire. Yet, even as there is set in the material heavens a light too bright for mortal eyes, in symbol of the spiritual sun, so these holy cherubim likewise cover their eyes and avert their gaze from the divine radiance. And they rest not day and night, crying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. Where previously it was thus death to enter, we are now bidden to come and partake of the hidden manna. In a profound reversal of perspective, where previously the tree of life was kept by a flaming sword, that sword is now turned outward, as our vision aligns with that of the saviour to behold the mysteries of God revealed. Demons scatter, and the veil of the physical world dissolves before his gaze whose eyes are like flames of fire, the sword of the Spirit issuing from his mouth. It is the cherubic fire streaming from the eyes whereby we behold the open door and see into the heavenly realm. Our God is a devouring fire, as state the scriptures, which fire issues from the sanctuary to dissolve the material veil, vanquishing doubt and all that would obscure our passage, bringing us face to face with the eternal God. Thursday, November 9. 2017
Jerusalem Or Babylon - Of The Two ... Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Commentary, Holy Scripture at
13:38
Jerusalem Or Babylon - Of The Two Spiritual Seeds And Branches
When one considers, as from the standpoint of modern critical theory, the historic edifice of the Christian church – its monuments, institutions, ways and doctrines – one could be excused for thinking that this indeed represents the legacy of the biblical apostles, that this is the church spoken of by Jesus. Without spiritual understanding or knowledge of the relevant history, and within the modern context, this is the nigh conclusion. Indeed it is the default position, alike of Christians, as of critics of the Christian faith.
However, there are actually two very different kinds of church which may be traced through the historic record, and which are referred to in scripture as two spiritual seeds, branches or lineages. Indeed, of the thousands of Christian confessions, ultimately all reduce to either of these two spiritual types. And although, historically, the two are intermingled, they have nothing in common that is either significant or profound. In every essential respect they are spiritual opposites. Concerning these spiritual seeds our saviour stated (Matthew 13): He that sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As a prophetic statement this indeed holds for the historic Christian church entire. Of the authentic and biblical church, and the good seed of our parable, we may briefly state that it was born in a transformative spiritual experience, called the baptism of the Holy Spirit, around AD 33 in the city of Jerusalem – and that this, along with its spiritual descendants, is indeed the church which Jesus acknowledges as his own. For simplicity we may call it the church of Jerusalem – by etymology, the peaceful reign of God – and we may reflect on the divine promise of Acts 2:38 that such indeed would be the nature of the Christian church throughout the ages. It is born and nurtured of the Spirit of God, with all the blessings and empowerments this entails. However, as history and biblical prophecy attest, there also exists another and very different kind of church, whose spiritual lineage may be similarly traced throughout the ages of Christendom. This latter – an imposture and the tares of our parable – had its inception some three hundred years later under the Roman emperor Constantine at the ill-fated Council of Nicea of 325 AD. Whereas the true and original church thus came by divine creation in a spiritual birth, the latter and counterfeit arose by organisational birth – essentially in an act of political contrivance to secure the religious unity of the Roman empire. It was the beginning of the fourth century and Christianity had spread like wildfire throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. This despite significant persecution, and Constantine reasoned with typical Roman pragmatism, if you can’t beat them, join them. The evil spirit, as predator and opportunist, aligns itself with perceived positions of power, and so also in this example, that it might subvert Christianity from within. Thus it was – amidst fistfights, political scheming and intimidation – that the religious orthodoxy for the Christian world of nigh a thousand years was hammered out. If we reflect that the apostle Paul had already warned of a contrary spirit within the Christian fold, this same spirit had now come to a visible head. Clearly then, these two seeds or churches are entirely at variance in nature or character, as also born out by their respective fruit. Whereas the spiritual church gives birth to the Christ-child or son of God, the artificial system of organised religion brings forth an organisational child. These two are again at mutual odds, and it is the latter which persecutes the former – always. The first, being born of the Word, produces the Word (the divine logos), in keeping with the primal directive of Genesis that every seed should propagate according to its type. The second, being born of perdition, produces a reductive creed and, along with sundry absurdities and atrocities, the theological guesswork that informs the historic church. Yet for the greater part of seven church ages the two systems coexisted and intermingled, such that it was humanly impossible to distinguish between them. Indeed Jesus, in declaring his parable, warned against premature separation of the types – lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. In other words, he emphatically opposed the kind of denominational sifting by which our modern churches try to filter them, each according to their doctrinal template. You’re oneness, two-ness, three-ness – or whatever it is – you have no part in our group – that kind of thing. On the contrary, they are intended to grow together in the same field until they are separated, in the end of the ages, by the angels of God. Confounding the situation, through the ages, was the fact that sound biblical doctrine had largely become obscured, such that even the sincere and godly where confused therein – individuals such as Martin Luther, who was hugely instrumental in restoring biblical verity, yet mistakenly believed that the Jews represent the biblical antichrist. Indeed this is unsurprising if we consider that the entire gospel of grace had been turned on its head and transformed into something entirely other – by the functionaries of the organised church. As a rule we may unequivocally state: God’s Word comes to his prophets; the theologians invariably mess it up. Indeed, it is precisely because the latter are without spiritual understanding – theology taking the place of revelation – that the original apostolic doctrine was lost, and something other, as plucked from a hat, put in its place. While biblical restoration is necessarily ongoing, it has bypassed the great denominations – denominations which, while superficially reformed, are in essence still oriented toward Babylon. For it was typically centuries ago that they underwent reformation, and with the understanding of that bygone era. As to the new manna which falls afresh in every age, this they cannot receive, given their organisational inertia and constraint. This is especially so in our age. For the glacial pace of institutional transformation can in nowise cope with the quantum leaps of revelation as obtain within the spiritual church – the church of the freeborn, which is after the revealed Word of God. Thus we need not wonder at the ‘protestants’ who loudly decry the Roman apostasy of bygone centuries, while enthusiastically conjoining with the very same system today. What they fail to see is that religious organisation as such constitutes the biblical antichrist – an hierarchical structure with a global headquarters and universal directives issuing from mere man – in scripture (2 Thessalonians 2), the man of sin. Evidently they never did ‘come out of Babylon’ (as per Revelation 18:4), for they are eager to return to her – these Christian organisations – effectively, to join in a worldwide ecumenical mega-organisation, inclusive of all persuasions – the which, in biblical language, constitutes but the binding of the tares, prior to the burning of Sodom. That this ‘binding’ can only occur at the cost of language, of dialogue and discourse, this is evidently considered a small price for ostensible unity. Yet is this unity but the contrivance of Babel, which is the original seed of chaos and disorder, for, as we note in Genesis 11, language, as such, became abrogate. Thus the churches are demonstrating who or what, in truth, they recognise as their spiritual Mother and Father. It is not Jerusalem, the peaceful reign of God, but Mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots and abominations. It is not the transcendent Spirit of God, but an intellectual system of speculative theology. While these two spiritual seeds grow in the same field, their trajectory and ultimate destiny are quite at variance. In the adumbration of the end-times, as both are coming to their respective head, both revert to their original type. The church of Jerusalem conforms to the Word of God by the Spirit of God – by which indeed it came to spiritual birth. Meanwhile the church of Babylon conforms to the organisational head, by which it came to birth, in ecumenical global union. The spiritual bride, in other words, is becoming one with her spiritual groom, the Lord Jesus Christ, while the false worldly church has her union with Satan and the spirit of antichrist. A separation is occurring as the spiritual life is concentrating in the grain – in the actual seed – while the husk and stalk are spiritually dying. We see this latter in that the churches are fast repudiating the authentic gospel in favour of a speculative mystical humanism. Effectively, they have substituted the biblical rock of divine revelation for the morass of opinion. While thus the godly spiritual temple of the ‘New Jerusalem’ is all but complete, Christ being the head and chief cornerstone, the theological builders of this present world are increasingly saying, um ... it was all a mistake. Let us try again. Both, in the end, have their respective revival, and around the same time – the spiritual bride in a resurrection and rapture, wherein she meets her Lord in the air; the Church so-called in the aforesaid grand ecumenical union, the supposed precondition of universal peace. But what says the scripture (1 Thessalonians 5:3)? When they shall say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them ... and they shall not escape. Or, in the words of John the baptist, in speaking of the Christ, he will gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Wednesday, March 15. 2017On The Unity Of The Faith
Of one mind and one heart, of one accord – thus is described the unity of the faith as enjoyed by the early Christian church. Such, indeed, is the ideal set forth in the scriptures for the body of believers. If, according to scripture, that body is subject to one head (which is Christ), it follows that it would quite naturally be of one mind. Moreover, as it was in the beginning of the church, according to the apostle Paul, so also will it be in the end, at the coming of Christ.
Yet how unlike this biblical ideal is our contemporary experience, seeing that the Christian community is broken up into thousands of organisations, each with its own doctrinal edifice. Let us be clear about this. It is because they do not agree among themselves, that they are thus divided. And it is not merely the broad confessional streams, which are at mutual odds. When we do a little probing, we find – even within the same pew – as many ideas, opinions, persuasions and doctrines, as there are individual souls. A unity of the faith ... the notion is preposterous. Confusion reigns among the churches – and, in truth, we have seen nothing yet. Given our information age – the phenomenal increase of information within the public domain – inevitably, the situation will only intensify, as the global mind of humanity is becoming ever more diversified, partisan and mutually estranged. Far from anything like transcendent oneness, the outlook today is towards hitherto unprecedented – indeed unimagined – fragmentation of worldview and belief. Essentially, the process is one of analysis, as groups and individuals are becoming increasingly exclusionary in their respective self-definition – factions splintering into yet further factions, in a relentless spiral into chaos. As W. B. Yeats, in his Second Coming, was prescient to observe: ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’. For the organisational entities of this world – religious and political – this is a problem. For how does one control the thinking of a populace let loose upon the internet? Or, for that matter, of a congregation let loose upon the Christian Bible – that strangest of books, diverse in viewpoint, subtly nuanced and profoundly mystical? The task, in a word, is impossible. Which is why information control – the limiting and manipulating of information – has ever been the preferred strategy – by the church, as by the state. Ecclesiastical examples indeed abound – from self-imposed monasticism, from tribunals and inquisitions, to modern fundamentalism and so-called discernment ministries. While, in the secular realm, there looms the ever-present threat of censorship and a state-controlled media. However, the principal weapon of control – religious as well as political – is the creed, the prescribed code of speech. We may not all think alike, it is conceded, but we may all be coerced into some form of collective creedal lip service. Hail the emperor or loose your head! Adhere to the creed or be counted a heretic! Yet, emphatically, this coercive model is contrary to the spirit of Christ, even as it is repugnant to the human or humane sensibility. The matter, indeed, is of profoundest spiritual significance. For our Bible cannot be reduced to a creed without severely compromising its transcendent charter – even as our universe cannot be reduced to a rational scientific model. For both – nature as well as scripture – bear the imprint of transcendence, such that violence is inevitably done to the sacred canon of life when subjected to a reductionist inquisition. When divorced, moreover, from authentic experience, language turns to gibberish, as human beings become progressively estranged – from one another as indeed from themselves. And whether we speak of secular ideology or the religious creed, once given the destruction of affective language, the historic outcome is is inevitable. It is the destruction alike of value and meaning, of nature as of wholesome culture. In scripture the applicable model is the legendary tower of Babel, its associated narratives combining all the essential elements. There is the spectre of forcible unity in the guise of the Babylonian empire, a Promethean project to assault the heavens, and the resultant confusion of language, which led to cultural and ethnic dispersion. Further biblical types include the Babylon described in the book of Daniel and, in the Revelation, the so-called beast, the image to the beast, and again the spectre of Mystery Babylon. The city of Babylon is thus recurrent throughout scripture as the archetypal incarnation of religious and political oppression. As such it is further identified with the biblical antichrist, which, in its prophetic end-time elaboration, becomes a global phenomenon. There does exist, of course, a true and godly unity of the faith, as acknowledged by biblical writers, and it flows from the spirit of unity, which is to say, from the Holy Spirit of God. It is occasioned – this godly unity – not by forcible constraint, but by interior regeneration of a spiritual birth. Jesus, in conversation with Hebrew scholar Nicodemus, stated (John 3:7-8), Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. In other words, the wind blows where it wills – you hear its sound, but you cannot determine its course – and so is everyone born of the spirit. And here we encounter paradox, in that the spiritual birth and Holy Spirit agency is altogether beyond human understanding and control. From an organisational standpoint this sounds like a recipe for chaos. Yet it is God’s way; it is the Bible way – and, indeed, it is the only way of achieving true and lasting unity. Concerning organised religion and the institutional church, therefore, we see that these represent not merely something other, but something entirely opposed, to the ways and works of the Spirit of God. Wherefore also the Spirit and Word of God was banished from the historic church (at the original council of Nicea, to be precise) – namely as Christian communities succumbed to organisational politics, and creedal lip service became the token of inclusion, replacing the divine seal or token of the spiritual birth. And to this day we are witness to the spiritual confusion, to say nothing of the material misery, which this agenda has caused through schisms, wars, inquisitions and pogroms. Denominational apologists, the while, assert that without ‘organisation’ there would be chaos and the 'mere anarchy' lamented of Yeats, and, historically, there is some truth to this. Religious organisation, in the typology of the spiritual seed, represents the stalk, tassel and husk. Its function is to protect and nourish the seed until it (the seed) comes to maturity. Accordingly, through most of Christian history the two systems here contrasted were inextricably conjoined. Eventually, however, the seed pulls away from its organisational matrix; the life of the Spirit becomes concentrated in the seed, leaving the stalk, etc, to wither and die. Here we may recall the cry of the baptist (Mathew 3:12), that he (the Christ of God) will gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. As it was in the beginning, therefore, when the original church set out under the investiture of the Holy Spirit, so will it be in the consummation, when the seed attains to maturity and breaks free of organisational constraint – which, indeed, it must in order to accede to the biblical high calling in Christ. Organisational churchmen, who warn of mayhem and pandemonium if the Holy Spirit had free reign, are thus fixated on the religious past, and, in large measure, on the mess for which they themselves – or their forebears – are responsible. The type (broadly those of the cessation doctrine in some form) is referred to in scripture (Timothy 3:5) as having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. The apostle (Paul) thus foresaw the day, wherein the Holy Spirit would be set aside for committees, councils and conclaves – for state presbyters, archbishops and popes. Christ, as states Revelation 3:20, is outside of his church, knocking to gain entrance – and, indeed, the entire address to Laodicea is here of relevance. Self-assured and full of hubris, the modern church has need of Christ – not the other way around. The universal creator, as nature herself attests, surely has no need of human cunning. For, as molecular biology teaches us, there is more order and intelligence in a blade of grass than in the whole of human achievement. As the scriptures further state, a body hast thou prepared me – a body, an organism, possessing life – such is the divine investiture set forth in biblical scripture. Organisation, as I employ the term, is but its carnal imitation. It is devoid of life and, typically, the incarnation of disorder. An incommensurate gulf moreover portends between these respective systems – the human and the divine. Sunday, July 14. 2013
Faith Is The Rock - On The Human ... Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Apologetics, Commentary, Holy Scripture at
16:45
Faith Is The Rock - On The Human Need To Believe ... Something
The stability of the mind is predicated on faith, where by faith we essentially mean that intuitive synthesis which unifies our myriad thoughts and impressions into a coherent worldview. This is why, in scripture, faith or revelation – the terms are synonymous – is called the rock, the foundation. ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona (Mathew 16:17-18): for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ... It is the revelation, according to the saviour, which is the rock, the foundation, of the Christian worldview – specifically, the revelation of who he is that is speaking ... namely, the Christ.
The present example, along with New Testament usage in general, thus speaks of a specific faith – that informed by the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is what is meant in scripture when it is spoken of the faith. But, as modern usage also has it, there are many ‘faiths’ – persuasions, worldviews, paradigms of the real – such that the concept should also be understood in the larger sense outlined above – the faculty of intuitive synthesis by which the mind reaches a resultant, a conclusion, concerning the nature of reality. Religious critics, of course, claim that it is reason – not faith – which rightly occupies this place of chief organising principle in the realm of mind – or that at least it ought, as it does for those sober, right-minded individuals, whose self-defined identity is of a vaunted rationalism. But this is simply not well observed. The reason is undergirded by faith, by the implicit assumption that reality is such-and-such, where that assumption involves a quasi infinitude of constituent beliefs, most of them so properly basic to human sensibility and culture that they rarely come up for scrutiny, let alone any serious questioning. Faith is accordingly the primordial substance of experience – it goes to the root, as indeed it is the root – and it fills the vast expanse of awareness, delivering a universe out of chaos. The reason, by contrast, arrives late on the scene, as a graft implanted into the tree of faith. It proceeds to analyse on the fractal edge of cognition and proclaims, aha, aha, I can explain ... not recognising for the most part that all reasoning is circular, a closed entropic sphere, suspended without support in the illimitable void. Where the reason gains purchase, harnessing electricity, for instance, and conjuring a glittering techno-sphere out of the void, it is only because it is nurtured, sustained, imbued with substance – the substance – which is faith. When thus understood we see that faith – what we call faith – is not narrowly religious in implication, although it is indeed religious in the broad sense of a binding or covering of the nakedness of the soul. In Genesis 3 it is spoken of that covering – as fashioned by man, and as provided by God. Both are ultimately of faith, although differing in the way they are informed, such that faith is prior, foundational and intrinsic, to any worldview one comes to espouse – whether materialist or mystical. It is this broader understanding which is basic to an appreciation of the nature of faith, although scriptural usage is typically more specific with implicit reference to the good faith – the faith of God as conveyed in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Faith, in this more specific sense, is thus typically distinguished from wisdom of knowledge, where the latter refers to that relative and partial knowledge – of observation and reason – as it were, an extraneous shoot, grafted into the Tree of Life – that primordial Tree in the Garden of God, which is of the nature of faith – meaning the good faith, unalloyed by knowledge or reason. It is in this specific sense, as per the Pauline asseveration, that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. However, not all faith is thus positive, given the broader use of the term. There is such a thing as faith or intuition gone awry, and here we speak of superstition. Clearly then, the intuition, although primary to the reason, is not infallible. As stated, it is a question of information – of how a mind is informed. It is the quality of information which determines the matter – in the religious as in the scientific domain. And here the reason, to render its due, may serve as a corrective. Indeed, it is here that the essential function of the reason is apparent – that of criticising ideas. It is intuition which generates ideas. Without intuition – or faith – there is are no ideas, and so, no universe. All would be chaos as the reason undermines itself in the conflagration of radical doubt. There would be no world, no sensible cosmos – no self, no other, so subject or object – nothing upon which to base a single proposition, which demonstrates that faith is indeed the rock – the core and foundational principle in the realm of mental organisation. The mind or soul must needs believe something insofar as its very existence is predicated upon, and comprised of that, something. The madman – the insight, I believe is due to the psychiatrist Russell Meares – has not lost his reason; he has all but his reason. Herein moreover lie the grounds for entrenched pathology of belief – for ideology, superstition or faith in the negative sense – that the soul thus misinformed would rather cling to its dysfunctional beliefs, than face existential annihilation in the exposure of rampant all-consuming doubt. It is called the abyss and the dark night of the soul – this radical dissolution of all certainty – and as a passage if initiation, of individuation, of spiritual transformation, it is universally recognised as central to the formation of a viable soul. As also observed Carl Gustav Jung, psychosis is the most direct, if the most perilous, path to individuation. It is perilous indeed, considering the weight of cultural sanctions that are ranged against it. And yet, the experience, in the nature of things, need not be traumatic. It may be of blissful rapture, as per the example of the spiritual birth which is the true Pentecost. The relative ease of the passage is determined by the soul’s inherent disposition as by the spiritual agencies supervening. And whereas the assignation is primarily for the perfecting of the saints (as on this side of the grave), in the greater cosmic context it is the destiny of souls universally. The reason for this is that culture is a lie – a contrivance, an accommodation – namely in its formal institutional conventions. In the cosmological and spiritual asymptote which is the singularity – the biblical Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end – the soul confronts the ground from which it arose, and thus its original and authentic nature. All contrivance, all that is of artifice, falls away in the disclosure of that which is intrinsic. There is a faith then which is natural and uncontrived. It is the rock, the foundation, as the Bible states, and it is the faith as once delivered to the saints. As states Deuteronomy, the book of the two laws (33:27): The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Thursday, June 27. 2013
Got To Be ... Rational ! ? Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Apologetics, Commentary, Evangelism, Holy Scripture at
16:18
Got To Be ... Rational ! ?
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
Christian apologists are typically at pains to demonstrate that their faith is rational. By this they usually mean that (1) it bears scrutiny by some canon of reason, and (2) that the tenets of Christian belief are consistent with an arbitrarily advanced state of scientific knowledge – to whit, the perceived present state. It is perhaps not usually admitted, but the inference is clear – science and reason represent a standard of verity and confer validation regarding the faith. Conversely, something is generally considered amiss where these two epistemological systems – religious faith and observation / reason – are perceived to be at odds. If at this point a suspicion arises that exegetes have the whole thing back-to-front – well, I suspect this suspicion may be entirely justified. We are beginning to glimpse just how profoundly – and, indeed, how subtly – the Christian faith has been subverted in a rational inquisition, which goes back at least to the ecclesiastical councils of Constantine. Christianity, originally, signified the ingress of a transcendent mind, incommensurate and radically at variance with the historic continuum. Then, within a relatively brief period, it was ‘tamed’ – co-opted – rationalised ... thereby loosing its transcendent charter and, indeed, much of its redeeming virtue. Whereas the humanist tradition, which we trace to the ancient Greeks, holds wisdom or intellectual achievement in the highest esteem, the gospel peremptorily informs that here is something altogether greater – something greater not merely by degree, but in a manner incommensurate. As Isaiah (55:8-9) states the matter – For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Of course, modern biblical scholars have turned this around, confidently asserting that their erudite cogitations are infinitely exalted above the parochial and primitive conceptions of scripture. And their basis for this assertion ... is science and reason. We know better, they claim, than the superstitious ancients who wrote the Bible. While extremes of this stance characterise such liberal and revisionist conclaves of the higher criticism as the Jesus Seminar, it’s leaven permeates no less the biblical evangelical mainstream. Its theological articulations, while paying lip service to transcendent verities, implicitly and ineluctably, bow down and worship at the shrine of reason. The stance, indeed is reflexive – it is part of the academic good tone, and entirely taken for granted. Reasonable – rational – formulations are the sine qua non of scholarly discourse. By contrast, the mystical, the prophetic, the revelational, the intuitive, the visionary, the spiritual as a means of biblical understanding – these are inherently distrusted and banished to the outer margins of acceptable dialogue. As one respondent put it to me – anyone can lay claim to a revelation or vision. To which I answer – quite. Nevertheless, the revelational or spiritual attitude has a chance of being right, for it is the way of God enjoined in scripture. Whereas the rational approach has no chance of succeeding, as the scriptures, again, make abundantly clear. The carnal mind is enmity with God, as Paul informs us in Hebrews – and the carnal mind, we may unequivocally assert, is the rational mind. It is the rational mind – with its handful of explanatory variables, its grounding in the relative, its infinite regress of analytic elaboration, without a sure foundation anywhere in sight. Indeed we may recall that it was knowledge – carnal knowledge, referred to in Genesis as the knowledge of good and evil, and all knowledge, in this sense, is carnal – which precipitated the primordial fall from divine communion. This ‘fall’ – assuredly – was from a holistic, spiritual and intuitive, vision to the partial, relative and analytic apprehensions of the rational mind. Consequently it is by no exertion of the rational mind that the conditions attending humanity’s spiritual exile can be reversed – and here, in a nutshell, is the failing of the modern church: its substitution of scholarship for spiritual revelation. The rational mind cannot relate, in any adequate sense, to the unfathomed and irreducible complexity of the organic. As such it is inherently estranged from nature, as it is estranged from the divine. Being finite in its conceptions, it is necessarily reductive in its modelling of natural process, even as it is reductive in its rendering of scripture in terms of a rational creed. The mystery of godliness reduced to a creed – that, in essence, is the plight of the church. For it is the rational mind which is implicitly elevated to godhead in the realm of human understanding. ‘Rational’ is the new godly. The matter is addressed by Paul, stating that the Greeks require wisdom, while the Jews seek miracles, and we moderns are mostly among the Greeks. Yet addressed in this manner are the both epistemological systems – the magical and the rational – and the gospel submits to neither. Both paradigms are rebuked in that we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling-stone to the Hebrews and foolishness to the Greeks. Christ crucified means the sacrifice of the Word – the cultural understanding, whether rational or magical, must needs perish for the spiritual to arise. This in part is what we mean by salvation and the spiritual birth. This is not to advocate an anti-intellectual stance. Our characterisation of the rational mind as enmity with God does to diminish its efficacy relative to a fallen world. But when directed at the highest, when approaching the asymptote of its own conceptual foundations, it necessarily fails. The reason, in its ultimate function, becomes cognisant of its intrinsic and ineluctable limitations, as indeed mathematicians discovered in the early twentieth century. Yet our cultural institutions – the church included – have failed to imbibe this lesson. The rush to deify the reason continues unabated, and its apotheosis is, no less, that abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place, as spoken of by Jesus. In biblical terms, the Word of Life – the transcendent mind of Christ – is rejected. All redemptive efficacy of the Word is lost as the transcendent revelation is lost. The human mind is not raised to the divine, but the divine reduced to the human. This – again – is the crucifixion of Christ in our age. Saturday, June 8. 2013
It’s The Body ! - On The Irreducible ... Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Commentary, Holy Scripture at
15:57
It’s The Body ! - On The Irreducible Complexity Of The Word Of God
It’s the body – the Word of God. It is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ in abstract form and the information content which structures that form – the body inhabited by the Spirit of God. Contemporary philosophers of science, like Stephen Meyer, author of Signature In The Cell (HarperOne, 2009), recognise that it is information which distinguishes living organisms from inanimate matter, and the same holds for the spiritual body. It is the inherent information content, as appropriated by spiritual revelation, which distinguishes the bride of Christ from the religious cults and denominations. The spiritual bride is comprised of the Word – the whole of the Word and nothing but the Word, it is fitting to add. She is one with her Lord who is the Word – she, the bride and mystical body of Jesus Christ. And what distinguishes the living Bride from the dead denominations and religious organisations is this – that the Word of God has life, and as such it is characterised by organic depth and integrity.
This, again to emphasise, is also the hallmark of the natural body. Nature, the natural universe, is unfathomably deep in its workings. It cannot be reduced to a rational conception in terms of a finite set of variables. And if nature cannot thus be reduced, neither can the Word of God – the Word which is the logos of nature. The inspired Word of prophetic utterance, as the self-disclosure of a higher mind, is transcendent of all rational conception – as states Isaiah 55, exalted above the thoughts and ways of man as the heavens are exalted above the earth. Which further explains why, through the ages, the Word of God has been elusive. It explains indeed the historic failing of the church, insofar it is informed not of the Word, but interpretations of the Word – divisive creeds, each emphasising certain aspects of scripture to the exclusion of others. Although grafted into the Tree of Life – the denominational creeds – they are out on a limb, so to speak. Sooner or later they run out of scripture, and compensate by filling the gaps with rationalisations – extraneous notions which have no part of the body. This explains why the body is sick and all torn up. To illustrate let us consider again the natural body. Metabolism of the natural body is regulated by enzymes, complex molecules which act as catalysts for myriad chemical interactions. Many of these enzymes oppose each other in function, and the health of the body depends on their balance, their due proportion and interaction, as regulated by yet further enzymes. Too much of one, to the exclusion of others, will kill the body, even though each one is good and necessary in itself. This is a perfect analogy of the spiritual body. Religious cults and denominations typically run with some exclusive idea, turning it into an overarching doctrine. Sooner or later, as stated, they run out of scripture, eventually reaching a dead end of spiritual stasis. Which explains why denominational Christianity is dead – why indeed we have something called Christianity, which is not Christianity at all. While it might have qualified as such back yonder in the age of Reformation – under the anointing of the cherubic Man (see Revelation 4) wherein rational exegesis was the state of the art – this is the age of the Flying Eagle, an age of restoration and spiritual revelation. The healthy body, as described, is comprised of the synergy of myriad opposing agents, and thus it is with the spiritual body. It is comprised of the whole of the Word, with its often seemingly contradictory notions – a proposition by which the rational mind is altogether stymied. The rational mind cannot cope with the Word of God, and radical attempts – as it were, of putting new the wine into old bottles – in terms of their consequences, typically range from the ridiculous to the tragic. Indeed the carnal or rational mind, as Paul reminds us, is enmity with God. Only the mind of Christ can take this Word and make it perform as intended. And, indeed, we have the mind of Christ – if we are born of water and blood according to the scriptures. As for the rational mind, it looses itself in the abyss, the incommensurate gulf between the rational conception and the irreducible complexity of the materia mystica, the primordial substance, which is the Word of God. We see this exemplified in the increasingly abstract formulations of academic theology, as in the increasingly indirect means of natural enquiry in the physical sciences – both engaging in realms increasingly remote from the data of sensory experience. From the rational standpoint, as stated, the well is infinitely deep, such that the rational mind is, on analysis, is commensurate with the abyss. The Word of God, by contrast, for all its organic depth and wholeness, never departs from the nexus of immediate experience. This indeed is the hallmark of the visionary and mystical, that it is grounded in the embodied experience. And so ... it’s the body, the Word of God. It is not to be held at arm’s length – dissected, interpreted, doctored, explained – it is to be received by faith. As states the scripture, a body hast thou prepared me – which truth holds for the spiritual body as it does for the natural. Only the mind of Christ can cross the gulf and produce the body, which crossing is the new birth by the Cross of Christ – the crossing of Jordan, metaphorically, which is death to the self. This is one of the scary notion of scripture, the truth of which, however, is liberty, salvation, and the power of the Holy Ghost. And it is a dangerous doctrine, subject, like all great truths, to misapprehension and consequent radicalism. But again we can point to the Word as a sure corrective in that any misapprehension will, surely and in some signal manner, depart from the Word. But the mind of Christ, the Holy Spirit, inhabits, upholds and affirms that Word – the Word which is the spiritual body of the bride of Christ. Friday, June 7. 2013When is the Word of God ... the Word of God ?
Is the Word of God always the Word of God? Many of us are fundamentalists in the sense that we take all of scripture to be divinely inspired. And in this sense, I concur, we must be fundamentalists in order to apprehend in full the biblical revelation.
But when we hear something like, the Bible says ... therefore I must ... , here I would caution, be careful. Untold mischief has arisen because of zealots on crusades for the reason that ‘God told me so’ – because of ordinary individuals of goodwill, trying to perform a spiritual service without appropriate spiritual charter. Paul, in Ephesians 1:9, refers to the will of God as a mystery. A mystery ... Here I think of my own spiritual mentor, William Marrion Branham, who posited five conditions that must be met for the Word of God to be ... the Word of God. I cannot locate the original right now, so I will try to reconstruct the essentials of this message. The five conditions are these: 1. It must come by Gods designated messenger. 2. It must come to the person which God intended. 3. It must be in accord with scripture. 4. It must be the Word in season. 5. It must be vindicated. Let us look at these more closely. 1. It must come by Gods designated messenger. Clearly, not everyone who prophesies or quotes scripture speaks for God. There are the misguided and outright deceivers – the false anointed and, as WMB put it in his Demonology series, deceiving spirits ‘versing’ the Word of God. The prophecy, in other words, must come by the Holy Spirit, and the anointed messenger chosen of God. 2. It must come to the person which God intended. Firstly, the Word of God is not for everyone. Not everyone can receive these truths. More specifically, there is specialisation within the spiritual body – not every member individually manifests the whole of scripture. To each is appointed a measure of the Spirit and a portion of the Word to fulfil. The exception here, of course is Christ himself, who embodies the whole, as well a certain great redemptive truths which pertain to the body entire. But concerning the specifics of ministry, of gifts and personal calling, these are unique to the individual, as well as the historic age of spiritual unfolding. 3. It must be in accord with scripture. Among evangelicals this would seem a commonplace, but it is a principle that is violated all to frequently. It is violated on the basis of false teaching, as on the basis of impressions, of sensation and religious emotion. A powerful anointing, a spiritual manifestation – those are often taken as divine sanction, even when there is no scriptural basis for the phenomenon in question. In Amos 3:7 we read in this connection, Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he reveals his secret unto his servants, the prophets. Stated another way, if it is of God, it is in the scriptures. Indeed, where a major doctrine is in question, the relevant truth must be seen to resonate throughout the entirety of scripture. We cannot build a doctrinal case on a few isolated verses, specifically selected to serve our end. 4. The Word must be the Word in season. This, to some extent, follows from (1) and (2), but it involves the greater truth that the Word God has divinely appointed seasons for its fulfilment. It must not be premature, nor should it lag behind – just as the seasons of the year relate to natural cycles of growth. As the Word God is the spiritual seed, it likewise has its appointed seasons. The Law of Moses was the Word God to Israel in the wilderness, but when that same Word, in the person of Jesus, stood before the Pharisees, the Word of Moses was superseded. Similarly, on a finer scale, we may consider the seven gentile church ages and the portion of the Word fulfilled in each. As in Israel’s wilderness journey, the spiritual manna needed to be gathered afresh every morning – with each new age of spiritual unfolding. Whereas the reformers Martin Luther and John Wesley brought such manna to their respective ages, the church of this age cannot thrive, let alone progress, on the doctrine of the Reformation Fathers. For this is another spiritual age, with a further portion of the Word revealed. 5. It must be vindicated. This is my personal favourite – the one which seems to me the most profound. Sure, the first four are significant, but essentially in line with what most biblical Christians would expect. Here learn we a deeper truth. God vindicates his Word by bringing it to pass – thereby showing that it is indeed his Word. In other words, it is not for mortals to interpret the scriptures – well, it says this ... I suppose it must mean ... – that kind of thinking is all wrong. The Word is simply believed by faith – in its entirety, without reservation – and God, by his Spirit, quickens the Word to make it manifest – specifically that portion of the Word to be fulfilled in the applicable season. God interprets his own Word by bringing it to pass – that is the interpretation thereof. So if something is claimed the Word of God, and it’s not happening – if it’s contrived, perfunctory and an all-round drag – that, of a surety, is not the Word of God. The Word of God is the Word in action. It is spirit and life. It is God himself. |
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