I interview the Holy Spirit

Hello. Thank you for taking some time for this interview.

How do you do.

What do you think of Christians today, generally?

Battlestar Galactica.

Yes, they are shallow, mostly, aren't they?

Asleep. Vain. Shallow.

If there were one book, other than the Bible, you would recommend to wake them up which would it be?

Pilgrim's Progress. I've been pushing it for hundreds of years now. Unfortunately even when it does get read the message isn't received.

I use Bunyan's language alot when describing Christians. They are mostly living in Bunyan's Village of Morality and refuse to come out. Can they even really call themselves Christians as long as they are in there?

Anybody can call themselves Christian.

Any advice for the average Village of Morality Christian?

None particularly.

Do you prefer Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit?

Both are OK. Boo.

You work closely with the Word of God. Could you settle which is the true and whole Word of God: the traditional text underlying the Authorized Version, 1611, or the so-called critical text underlying all the modern versions?

You know.

Yes, I know, but most Christians today seem to not have discernment on this foundational issue.

So be it. Just ask them: "Which text requires you to humble yourself to it?" They know the answer.

They want to dictate to it and determine for themselves just what the Word of God is and will be. The progressive nature of their enterprise itself should give away their motive to themselves, but-

But they are in rebellion. So be it. Don't follow them.

Could you be described as "conscious influence"?

Don't speak out of school.

You're a Person of few words. Have you ever appeared to someone as a centaur by a river?

I'm capable of that.

What books other than the Bible would you recommend generally?

Always "other than the Bible"...

I mean if you've already read the Bible. Or, if the Bible is currently beyond you.

Here's what you do, Panopeia...

Shhhh...

Read everything until you begin to discern different levels of influence. Then ascend up the hierarchy of influences by engaging influences that are just above or beyond your current interests and understanding. Then never get stuck on any one level of influence. Exploit everything, never join anything. Give your allegiance to nothing until you get to the summit. And beyond the summit. Here's a way to know you are moving upward: higher influences tend to require more directed attention and effort to engage them, and higher influences tend to be more rare the higher you go. Many at the base of the mountain, very few at the summit.

Would you recommend engaging a summit level influence when you're still at the base of the mountain in your development?

Yes. This effort gives you a possibility of knowing the mountain exists to begin with. The climb has to be made, though, in a real way, eventually.

How do you know which are the individuals you are to make born again?

It will show in their eyes. And general demeanor.

Are reprobates robots?

Effectively. Don't tell anybody.

Yet they have something in that they have the spirit of the devil in them.

It gives them some direction, yes.

But individuals who have the spirit of the devil in them yet who are also capable of being born again have something else in them.

This is getting too deep for me. Suffice to say: you're either there, or you're not there. If you're there be grateful to your Creator. If you're not there you have nothing to lose. There are other possibilities, more unique cases, rare though.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Once you know.

I feel safe.

Don't get too comfortable.

Spiritual warfare.

The way to the Holy Land is a battlefield. Expect friction.

99.9% of preachers/pastors useless to God

99.9% of preachers/pastors (let alone priests) are useless to God. Why? Because they refuse to proclaim the actual Word of God to the world. They want to proclaim the word of man. They want to bloviate and indulge their vanity and worldly pride and proclaim anything and everything other than the actual Word of God (i.e. the actual Words of the Word of God). They affect to 'teach'. No, you can't teach doctrine from a pulpit. Nobody learns doctrine like that. It's too passive. It requires a much more active, self-motivated approach to learn doctrine. What is effective - and what must come prior to learning doctrine - is hearing the actual Word of God. This is what regenerates souls. This is the effectual call. Your own words are not an effectual call. The words of man can't regenerate. The preacher/Bible-teacher who reached me read from the Bible itself. Just simply read the actual Word of God. The complete Word of God (and yes AV1611). He didn't care if his audience got bored or went away. He knew that God wanted him to proclaim the actual Word of God and that that is what has effect in regenerating souls. This inane business of 'sermonizing' while never reading anything more - usually - than a single quote of Scripture is morally retarded. Get your inane, vain selves out of the way, preachers and pastors, and allow the Word of God to do what only it can do.

Doug Wilson's right about this

Here Doug Wilson is on-the-mark. Though I understand the Westminster divines intentions in putting the matter as they did; not wanting to speculate or explain what the Bible leaves in mystery, etc. Also, the divines were right in an ultimate way, whether they intended it that way solely or not; so the confession, it can be argued, is not faulty there, necessarily.

Here is a post I wrote in Oct. '05 explaining - yes, explaining - it all. Recurrence is not reincarnation, I have to say over and over. Recurrence means your time is living, and is perceived by God - not by you or any other humans, but by God - as a living NOW. All the parts of your timeline are alive and 'present-tense' to God. Even though you die. The Bible refers to the second death for a reason. Ultimate death occurs, if it does for you, at the end of the age. Prior to that unregenerate people recur. Cycle down and up from Hades, so to speak (any language you use is weak and inefficient to describe what is just simply beyond our perception or ability to think about. We have to think in terms of 'revolutions' or a circle of time, but that is not it. From God's perspective, which is eternity, our birth-to-death timeline is alive in all its moments and years and events, and God can effect us at any point of that time-line from eternity. The Holy Spirit can regenerate at any point of that time-line. Even when we have, to the perception of other humans beings, died. And really died.

Recurrence contains all that we can conclude about what death might hold for us. Annihilation, reincarnation, continued existence in a higher or lower world. Annihilation because recurrence is death itself simply because those who recur are by default (still) dead in sin. Reincarnation because there IS a sense of living again, yet unlike the popular belief(s) in reincarnation you don't become another person or animal or whatever you remain essentially who you are now, in your same time. There may be differences in degree, maybe differences that would even seem dramatic that can be speculated on (gender, family, etc.), yet essentially you are still the same being in the same time. And as for continued existence in a higher or lower world that possibility is in the hands of God, or God's decree still. The potential is still there, until the White Throne Judgment, or harvest.

Read the two links above for the fuller context and picture...

It's a matter of discernment of the workings of the Kingdom of Darkness

Threads like these on the Traditional Text vs. the Critical Text are amusing in how they show up the different levels of development of Christians:

Here
Here
&
Here

Teellinck in his Path of True Godliness presents three levels of development of Christians:

Little Children in Christ
Young Men in Christ
&
Fathers in Christ

The manuscripts arguments and issues are a matter of spiritual discernment, pure and simple. Those who are still Little Children in Christ aren't able to discern attacks from the Kingdom of Darkness. They havn't developed as Christians to the level where it can be discerned. They swallow anything man presents to them regarding the Word of God. (They aren't capable of seeing things, for instance, like the fact that the attack on God's Word initiated in the 19th century is of the nature of a progressive attack rather than merely a one-time audacious defiling of God's Word.)

Teellinck defines the above categories in a few ways but in one central way which is the ability to discern good and evil and to discern attacks from the devil and his kingdom of death. Those who accept the Critical Text and the versions of the Bible based on it (New Living Translation, New International Version, New American Standard Version, English Standard Version, New Contemporary Version, all Roman Catholic versions, etc.) are simply not yet able to discern the devil's attack on God's Word. They are simply still little children in Christ. Those who are able to discern that the Critical Text - Satanicus/Vaticanus, presented to the world by spiritualists and atheists in the 19th century - is abomination are young men in Christ and fathers in Christ.

The canard that ability to discern the devil's hand in the Critical Text and versions based on it is "KJV-onlyism" is all the little children in Christ have as a defense. To, though, further discern the worth of the AV1611 is also a matter of development. In this case development of ability to discern language and levels of influence and poetry and literature and so on.

Teellinck also defines the levels of development of Christians by how aware we are of our own weaknesses and sinful nature. Little children in Christ are vain and get very upset when their cherished notions are exposed.

Read the threads linked above and see how the subject matter is really, foundationally, based on development of discernment. In this case discernment of evil in the ongoing attack on God's Word that began in the Garden...

To those confused and those confused by the confused (and those confused by the consciously mischievous)

Justification is by faith alone. And faith is not a work. Faith is of the law of Christ, not of the law of works. In the law of Christ what God demands He gives freely. (See the link to the relevant section from Fisher's Marrow of Modern Divinity in the post below.)

Federal Theology was developed for a reason. It is biblical covenant theology systematized. It is biblical doctrine pure, bold, and unwatered-down and un-negotiated to the demands of fallen man's vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will.

Ryle's definition of evangelical Christianity is not a definition of one kind of Christianity: it is the definition of biblical Christianity.

Law of works and law of Christ

An antagonist of Reformed theology writes:

For some unaccountable reason it has become scandalous to some Presbyterians [Calvinists, or Reformed Christians in general, which is to say those who hold to biblical doctrine] to point out that good works are necessary in believers as means of obtaining final salvation.

No, no works are good enough, or just enough, to save yourself. Only Jesus' works are good enough and of enough quantity to save you. This is Romanism this person is expressing. It is designed to keep human beings in the kingdom of death. It originates with the devil.

On a related note learn the difference between the law of works and the law of Christ. That link is to Fisher's Marrow of Modern Divinity. It's a very short section.

------------

Here is the page itself (that link is down as I write this):

CHAPTER III - OF THE LAW OF CHRIST.
Section 1 - The nature of the law of Christ.

Nom. Then sir, I pray you, proceed to speak of the law of Christ; and first, let us hear what the law of Christ is.

Evan. The law of Christ, in regard of substance and matter, is all one with the law of works, or covenant of works. Which matter is scattered through the whole Bible, and summed up in the decalogue, or ten commandments, commonly called the moral law, containing such things as are agreeably to the mind and will of God, that is, piety towards God, charity towards our neighbour, and sobriety towards ourselves. And therefore was it given of God to be a true and eternal rule of righteousness, for all men, of all nations, and at all times. So that evangelical grace directs a man to no other obedience than that whereof the law of the ten commandments is to be the rule.

Nom. But yet, sir, I conceive, that though [as you say] the law of Christ, in regard of substance and matter, be all one with the law of works, yet their forms do differ.

Evan. True, indeed; for [as you have heard] the law of works speaks on this wise, "Do this and thou shalt live; and if thou do it not, then thou shalt die the death": but the law of Christ speaketh on this wise, (Eze 16:6), "And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, live."—(John 11:26), "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." —(Eph 5:1,2), "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children: and walk in love, as Christ hath loved us." And "if ye love me, keep my commandments," (John 14:15). And "if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments, then will I visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes; nevertheless my loving- kindness will I not utterly take away from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail," (Psa 89:31-33). Thus, you see, that both these laws agree in saying, "Do this." But here is the difference; the one saith, "Do this and live"; and the other saith, "Live, and do this"; the one saith, Do this for life; the other saith, Do this from life: the one saith, "If thou do it not, I will chastise thee with the rod." The one is to be delivered by God as he is Creator out of Christ, only to such as are out of Christ; the other is to be delivered by God, as he is a Redeemer in Christ, only to such as are in Christ. Wherefore, neighbour Neophytus, seeing that you are now in Christ, beware that you receive not the ten commandments at the hands of God out of Christ, nor yet at the hands of Moses, but only at the hands of Christ; and so shall you be sure to receive them as the law of Christ.

Nom. But, sir, may not God out of Christ deliver the ten commandments, as the law of Christ?

Evan. O no! for God out of Christ stands in relation to man, according to the tenor of the law as it is the covenant of works; and, therefore, can speak to man upon no other terms than the terms of that covenant.

Done with the mockers

I'm finished with the FVers and other mockers who inhabit the end times.

Now I'll concentrate - go back to concentrating - on the shallow-though-doctrinally-on-the-mark Calvinists who don't have the full picture and are, because of it, inhabiting the Romanist realms of clericalism, ritualism, moralism, and formalism.

If you're not engaging in spiritual warfare you're not on the Way. You're still in the City of Destruction, or you're in the Slough of Despond or the Village of Morality (Bunyan's language from his Pilgrim's Progress). If you're not on the Way you're not marked. The devil doesn't bother with you because you're already his tame slave doing his bidding and living in the illusions of his kingdom.

Once you get out on the Way you provoke, by default, the forces of the kingdom of darkness. You engage the three-front war with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The old theologians (the Puritans and the Dutch Second Reformation Puritans) had the complete picture, but it's been lost. In some cases intentionally so, in other cases just lost in the mix and passage of time. The terminology is there, though not understood. Most all of it is stifled by shallow and dumb modern day Reformed church leaders and educational leaders. The guys in the suit and ties, who eat alot of ice cream, and who think the Faith is all about their family life (which is why you don't find them quoting Jesus too much).

I can elucidate it all. But there's a problem: it's not for everybody. It's available to anybody, but it's not for everybody. If you're a real Christian though you can be shocked with it. Given it directly. If you're not a real Christian you'll mock. "Spiritual warfare? Nobody believes in that anymore..." sayeth the seminary professors. As they pop another pill to make sure they never wake up enough to begin to see the prison they are in...

Read the blog, though. I've already been writing about it. Just in veiled language so as not to shock too much. And to not give the churchians too much knowledge they can only defile...

To the 'Federal Visionists'

To the 'Federal Visionists': you can't fool God's elect. You can fool those capable of being fooled, but you can't fool God's elect. And you can't defeat God's plan. You can annoy God's plan, but you can't defeat God's plan. You're playing your games, you're titting for tatting everything that comes your way. You're continuing to sophistically appropriate Reformed theologians from the past like homosexuals sophistically appropriate famous individuals from the past. You continue to demonstrate a rank inability to see the power of Reformed doctrine (biblical doctrine). You continue to hang out in the Reformed, Calvinist camps because you know the truth of God's Word is in the Reformed, Calvinists camps, and if you hung out anywhere else nobody would pay any attention to you. But you can't fool God's elect. Nothing you say, nothing you do will enable you to fool God's elect. God's elect have the Spirit of Truth. God's elect have discernment. God's elect can see and value the power of Reformed, Calvinist - biblical - doctrine. So grin and mock away as you write a new load of garbage, reeling in a new crop of innocents and fools and mockers of God's Word and sound doctrine like yourselves. Just remember it will be harsher for you at the judgment because though you can't understand or value it you know that what you are mocking and defiling is the truth. Rather than humbling yourselves to that which is above you you've chosen to bring it down to your level and twist and distort and defile it even in the act of teaching others. God have mercy on your souls.

Reply to a comment on big subjects

A comment regarding this post on the Mosaic Covenant as republication:

“On certain sites on the internet the Mosaic Covenant is being discussed…”

Hey CT, I’d be most interested in these discussions you mentioned. Addresses?

“…the first and second Adam parallel isn't pulled into the discussion”

Appreciate what you’re saying here, man. I too understand the Two-Adam dynamic to be so crucial. As you mentioned this generally doesn’t factor in, and I’m left asking myself if possibly I’ve missed something by my finding the T-A-D (federalism) to be nuclear to both understanding Scripture and deriving a sound theology from it?

Gotta another question…

Often the assumption seems to be that, the Reprobate are yet to be condemned for something committed by them individually. Wouldn’t Scripture answer this in its revealing the fact that all the wicked were/are condemned by ADAM’s one transgression, not by failing to keep some aspect of the moral will of God revealed after the Original Sin? No doubt individuals can/do sin against the will of God, but this would be the fruit of ONE transgression, Adam's.

Thoughts?

If you don't mind...I'd like to quote some of your comments over on my own blog (http://mjmorizio.blogspot.com)?

Hi.

When I wrote this post I had been reading the PuritanBoard. Here's one of the threads:

http://www.puritanboard.com/showthread.php?t=18535

There's probably references to other discussions within that thread. R. Scott Clark's blog and website discusses covenant theology:

http://dannyhyde.squarespace.com/the-heidelblog/

http://wscal.edu/clark/covtheology.php

Feel free to quote anything of mine (my intemperate language aside)...

YOU WRITE:
"Often the assumption seems to be that, the Reprobate are yet to be condemned for something committed by them individually. Wouldn’t Scripture answer this in its revealing the fact that all the wicked were/are condemned by ADAM’s one transgression, not by failing to keep some aspect of the moral will of God revealed after the Original Sin? No doubt individuals can/do sin against the will of God, but this would be the fruit of ONE transgression, Adam's.

Thoughts?"

The Puritans were conscious of this in the fact that if you're not in the Kingdom of God you're by default in the Kingdom of Satan. Yes, by the fact of original sin all are in the fallen state despite the fact we may not have committed active sins in our lives just yet, which happens rather quickly and easily as it is anyway.

On reprobation - the difficult doctrine - my thoughts are this: the Bible teaches it and it needs to be accepted for that reason alone. What it does is it forces you to see and accept original sin and your own dire condition. Also your dire condition without a Saviour. It teaches you you can't save yourself, and that your condition NOW is as a condemned criminal. Sound unfair? Maybe, in some ways, yet it is the way God gets you to, when you do (He does it, you do it as He does it, whatever) reorientate from vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will to faith, repentance, and real - or God's - will.

The doctrine of reprobation also teaches that there are consequences in God's Plan (consequences stemming from the fall in the Garden, for instance), and that there is real necessity for a Saviour. All the catch-22s of predestination and election and reprobation are nothing if you're practical and see it as God's Plan and as necessary for God to accomplish His will for His creation. From our end we either are effectually called or we're not. If we are we're grateful. If we're not we continue to mock and rebel and live in bondage to sin and death. Maybe some people remain asleep to it all merely and don't do anything actively one way or another. God is in control though. We can't judge God. We will, prior to regeneration and conversion, but He becomes the judge of us - we see that - once saved and getting real understanding of it all in time.

The question of who is reprobate is answered by the Bible by the fact that there is only one unforgiveable sin, and it's not murder or any other of the most horrible crimes one can imagine. Anybody can be saved. And anybody can remain, willfully in rebellion to God.

I came across a saying in a Calvinist book once: there won't be anybody in hell who doesn't want to be there. I see simplifying truth in that statement. How God saves is above us (even in terms of time and how we perceive time in our limited way), so even if a person seems to be lost, even after they die, God may not be through with them. God acts from eternity. The Holy Spirit applies redemption from eternity. God is not constrained by time as we perceive time. That's not to say we have second chances, it's just to say that God is in control regarding individual salvation. A single life seems linear - birth to death - from our perspective. From God's perspective it is probably more of a living 'now' that God can access at any point, anytime. We just have to accept what He says, and accept it on His terms. This is understanding and wisdom for us.

Those are my thoughts.

Update to a post

Update to this post just below:

I wrote it just after reading Manata lecture, in his bullying way, somebody about how his, Manata's, end-times views are correct. He threw in the obligatory "that's an assertion, not an argument" and accusation of using fallacious reasoning and being an idiot for it and all the rest one expects from that little internet school made up of those types (usually former or current theonomists, among other things). If you want some fun tune in to some of Manata's mp3 debates and listen to him get bogged down with his approach against his opponent. Not that his opponents have the better argument, but that what seems free-flowing in print runs in to the usual dead ends "intellect-alone" approaches run into when peformed in real life.

And I'd just read Hays write a bizarre response to Vincent Cheung. Bizarre because his tone and attitude seemed juvenile and nasty, and Cheung is, if anything, a rather kind gentleman when you approach him. I don't have a dog in the "scripturalism" fight, but to pound Vincent Cheung the way the theonomists Hays and Manata do is just off-the-mark.

And, yes, there IS a difference between reason and the cult of reason

How do Christian blogosphere denizens Steve Hays and Paul Manata spell Holy Spirit (or Jesus for that matter)?

C-u-l-t o-f R-e-a-s-o-n

Then, interestingly, that spelling reverts to S-t-e-v-e (or P-a-u-l) as it's stenciled on the forehead of the cult of reason statue sitting within their inner being where the Holy Spirit (or Jesus) more commonly - or ideally - sits within Christians.

(Some suggest they and their type are atheists-in-denial; but I wouldn't go that far myself... I think that they're just still at the juvenile end of the philosophy curve... "Juvenile philosopher meets seminary library" is, I recall, how I described Hays a couple of years back. They have the tyro-gunslinger attitude and all the rest of it to go along...)

When Village of Morality clerics appeal to "Christ-likeness"...

Yes, when Village of Morality clerics appeal to "Christ-likeness" it's just prior to them saying: "Fuck you."

I just got banned by fide-o. Another feather in my cap. Establishment Calvinists hate God's elect like Romanists hate God's elect.

They see God's elect coming on with no Village of Morality lukewarm fear of man and they get real scared (and angry).

Worthless goats. (And all those fide-o warriors are clerics too; no surprise.)

UPDATE: They say they're going to "deal" with me "fully" now. What does that mean? Probably they're going to hold some clerical ritual in their church and excommunicate me from God's Kingdom. Pass the incense and the goat entrails...

UPDATE 2: The iMonk says this:

"And you’ll never guess who/what crawled out of the woodwork to call me a “sub 70 theological IQ?” (That hurts. I was shooting for at least a 72.) Yes, the creature her/him/itself. The only BHT commenter to use the words [really really bad words] about the wife of a BHT fellow, and then continue right on with high Puritanism. If you don’t know who I mean, read the KJV 7 x and blog alone in the bathroom for two years. It will come to you."

He always has to mention that I made fun of somebody who turned out to be - gasp - somebody's wife. A sacred person, apparently, or title. And the wife turned out to be - again gasp - not of the white master race (I should have seen that through the cyber space, my fault). So the iMonk turned my making fun of an individual into I made fun of somebody's black wife (I assume the husband is white, otherwise the sacred ground wouldn't exist to be stepped on). Anyway, does the iMonk blog in Grand Central Station? Yes, I blog alone. Maybe he's saying he's the only person who reads this blog. It is lonely, which I'm grateful to God for, when you're not in the Village of Morality and you're in the Christian blogosphere, because 99.9% of Christians in the Christian blogosphere reside in Bunyan's Village of Morality. That's OK, in a way; it makes life funner for me. The iMonk, also in good Village of Morality fashion, has to make the obligatory mocking of reading the Bible complete, with aim (i.e. seven times, a good aim). Notice the iMonk never gets banned from the sites I get banned from. You're not real, iMonk, until the churchians are banning you. You're still one of them. You may be sitting morosely in a corner of the Village of Morality, but you're still in the Village of Morality. Right there with all those dreaded 'TR's you so disdain...

Calvinists not living up to their potential

If you're able to see and accept biblical doctrine, unwatered-down, unnegotiated to the demands of vanity, worldly pride, and self-will; i.e. if you're able to see and accept Calvinism, as in five solas, doctrines of grace, Federal Theology, then you've got alot.

Now you need watchfulness and being in a state where you fear only God.

Modern day Calvinists don't like the Puritans. They read them; they affect to admire them and value their example; but they really don't like them. Puritans may as well be Cathars (similar epithets), as far as modern day Calvinists are concerned.

Why?

It concerns ritualism, clericalism, formalism, and moralism. The Puritans - the real Puritans (i.e. the ones who defined the name in history) - didn't reside where those things were taken to be the faith. The Puritans were strangers and pilgrims on the Way; in the church of which Christ is King; in the Kingdom of God, which doesn't reside anywhere you can see, and doesn't consist of any kind of worldly unity.

You don't understand that? You make the devil and his ministers happy...

Try to see things clearly

There's a reason some 'Christians' deny the Covenant of Redemption...

The Covenant of Redemption - Pactum Salutis - is your legal standing in the Kingdom of God. To deny it is to deny God and His Kingdom.

It is the voice of the Kingdom of Satan that denies the Covenant of Redemption.