Response to a cleric who appeals to scholars to deny basic Satanic connections
*****, you just clearly are not yet able to discern foundational things. The Bible is simple. Satan is all through it in multiple names and manifestations and phenomena. Jesus is as well. Babylon = Satan. To see anything Babylonish in Romanism is like 2 + 2 = 4. You are still at a level of development where you hug the shore that is called the reverence for scholars and the authority of scholarship. And of course because this is absolute for you you will call me and anyone else who tells you such things "anti-intellectual."
If you ever find yourself in direct spiritual warfare you will begin to see the basics of the spiritual world and everything that seemed multifarious and myriad before (as the scholars preach on and on) will be seen for what they are. And you will see clearly the difference between revering and fearing man (scholars, in the context of your post) and revering and fearing God alone. I know you will protest that you fear God, but currently you don't fear God *alone.*
Fear God and not man, it is the beginning of wisdom.
2 Comments:
Earlier today before reading this post, thinking on this subject I understood something quite obvious - so not a realisation in the sense of eureka! but still something worth noting here.
The difficulty with the idea of fearing God is that we can not do that with our intellects by thinking. Yes we can believe, we can understand at a cerebral level that we need to fear God but actually it isn't a free card we can play. What I realised was that we have to connect with an emotional state but in our glib day to day attitudes which the world demands we run around with we are ill prepared to sincerely experience or connect with that fear that is so frequently talked of in the Bible.
Yet there are times in life, out of private desperation or whatever, when we run out of road and come face to face with our own acknowledgement that we have no control, are otherwise feeble: stripped down like this one turns directly to God, in prayer, and calls Him. There is no other recourse, no one and nothing else can help but may be it is in God's will.
Now, go to those inner places, those moments of conscience and you can connect with the real meaning of what it is to fear God: it is wholly an emotional experience.
Christianity in general requires emotional development. The very way Jesus teaches requires an emotional understanding. (I keep pointing out, but isn't it truly remarkable, that Jesus' teaching in the Gospels is so absent from systematic theologies the farther you get from Reformation times.) Conscience, discernment, speed of perception and putting things together. These come from emotional development. Faith hath a piercing eye, to see into spiritual realms (the Puritan said). That is beyond the slow intellectual realm. In fact, emotions are cognitive, baby (that is about as deep into philosophical language I will ever go) and there is an intellectual part of our emotional development. What passes for intellect is usually the lowest part of our intellect. The go, stop, green, red, Clark said this, Van Til said that realm that passes for the highest level of Christian development.
What develops emotion? Music, art, literature, all higher influences. Same things that awaken conscience as well. Or unbury conscience. Seeing things from other people's point-of-view is a big change and beginning of development. Seeing lying in yourself in all its manifestations. It all comes together eventually mainly with exposure, effortful, self-motivated exposure or engaging of higher influences.
This is why academics are such children when they teach and lecture Christians. Village of Morality Christians teaching and lecturing Christians on the Way.
(I should point out that since I have a blog with a '+' symbol as its title, the person who commented above is Paul of England.)
Post a Comment
<< Home