You may not be where you think you are

Why did I include churchians in the previous post? Because they refuse to take on the false teachers in their midst. I read a review by Beale of Enns main book, and it was so full of academic courtesy it was obvious Beale doesn't even know what it means to defend the faith. You don't confront a false teacher like that. That isn't even confrontation. You expose false teachers, and you ride them out of town on a rail. Actually you tar and feather them and set them on the road and warn them if they should ever think of coming back.

And look at Enns. A common deconstructionist of the '80s variety. They're at the level of 16-year-old atheists. And his peers are so stupid they can't see that or know what that means. And the churchians in general have no clue. Yet even if they all did have a clue they wouldn't confront him. Churchians aren't Christians, and they are responsible for these wicked souls teaching false doctrine so openly and in so accepted a way. Disgusting. Stop calling yourselves Christians.

An exact parallel: Christians who mock the King James Version and mock any who hold to it. Yet they've never said a word about the New Living Translation or even the various downgrades of the New International Version including the latest. Look what one could say about the NIV 2011, and yet on the usual sites you see the same continual mocking of the Received Text and the King James Version. Seeing a pattern here, churchians? You may not be where you think you are. You're in the Kingdom of Hell thinking you are safely in the Kingdom of God.

You churchians aren't innocent, you're evil

Wow. I've been reading through some Peter Enns articles, and this guy is Rachel Maddow stupid. He's eagerly deconstructing Christianity like a first year Ivy League cipher in the '80s. "Your metanarrative of the Bible is being threatened and you are angry and fearful..." This sentence reminds me of the atheist 'intellectual' (Heather MacDonald) who admitted in an unguarded interview with a guy who usually interviews porn actors (Luke Ford) that in all the years in the 1980s she spent getting degrees from Stanford, Yale, and Oxford she wasn't *once* asked to read a single work of history. She added, honestly, that she wasn't smart enough to think that it might be a good thing to do just on her own. Give her credit she finally caught on that what she was studying was garbage (post-modernist literary theory, i.e. Lady Ga Ga vs. Shakespeare, no, wait a minute, Madonna vs. Shakespeare).

So this subject of Peter Enns really is the subject of the worth of institutions called seminaries. Very much including Reformed seminaries. And traditional notions of church leaders and Christian educators. Obviously standards in these places are as low as they are in secular institutions of so-called higher learning. Liberal arts anyway.

Good freaking God what hell this all is. You can't really even find words to describe how radically stupid these people are. And they are *intellectual leaders* in Christian environments. How disgusting and disappointing. How disappointing it is to see Christians being obsequious to such village idiots. Fear of man. Respecting of persons. You're not followers of Christ. You're the followers of village idiots. Really, just screw off with your "You need to be churched!" You're not my brothers and sisters. Churchian useful idiots of the Devil. There is no innocence in your situation. You are as evil as the false teachers.

Response to hell boy

To Peter Enns, who got upset enough by my previous post to write a long post about how Christians shouldn't be mean to Peter Enns, I would simply reply that we mean Christians save our meanness for false teachers, and really not only false teachers but false teachers who present themselves to be something they are not, such as Reformed (as in taking employment in Reformed seminaries). No, Peter, if you were just hanging around John Shelby Spong at a local Dennys, lapping up his every word of wisdom, and taking notes to Boswell out a big memoir of the great man, then I would likely be indifferent to you. But the truly, actively, consciously wicked false teachers tend to go where the truth resides and attempt to defile it within the temple, so to speak. This is what you've done. This is what you continue to do. You have the stench of hell fire on you. I will sound an alarm and call you what you are: a creep who loves darkness so much that he wants to do nothing more than to defile the truth his every waking day. And why do you, like all false teachers, love darkness so, Peter? Well, we can't know, can we? We don't have access to all the security cameras. But you false teachers always have *something* that you love and want to continue doing and so desire to keep in the dark. Hence your viciousness towards the light. It's a losing battle, Peter. You can annoy God's plan, but you can't defeat God's plan. Yet you think you can. Why? Sin is irrational to its core.

Heretics exist and they are the pure stench of hell

If you don't read Peter Enns and see the influence he has on others and get the same feeling of revulsion and witnessing of abomination that you would get seeing a mother and father sacrificing their young child into the oven of a Molech idol then you aren't yet a born again Christian.

To see how revolting and odious real heresy, real heretics are see Peter Enns in action:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2011/10/al-mohler-adam-evolution-and-npr-final/

You are staring into death. Into the maw of hell itself.

They can't defecate on the word of God enough

I'm sorry, but these people are pure sh--, trash:

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4839

Their obviously-directed hatred gives them away like atheists give themselves away. They focus their mocking and anger and hatred on the King James Version like atheists focus their mocking and anger and hatred on Christianity as a whole. If they just preferred a different Bible version they would be indifferent to the Authorized - King James - Version. But they're not indifferent. Just as atheists solely focus on Christianity and not Islam or Hinduism or what have you. They are angrily and in a very motivated way focusing their mocking and hatred at the Truth. They recognize the standard. They know if a standard didn't exist the Devil would have nothing to deviate from, and this fact angers them. They know their versions would be a pile of different attempts amounting to babble. Or Babel. (I.e. if the standard didn't exist, and this very fact that they have to rely on the King James Version for their own deviations angers them.) They hate the King James Version in the exact same way atheists hate the fact that they have to wake up every day and experience the reality that they live in Christian culture and civilization. That the pure and whole word of God exists, and that Christianity itself exists is like acid poured onto every moment of these unregenerate fools lives.

Step back and ponder this: you don't hear them or see them writing such mocking things about modern Bible versions that overtly pervert the word of God. I mean, think about that. They have no problem with those versions. But the King James Version? It makes their blood boil. That's how you know where truth and the standard is, folks.

Anyway, they've been disabused of their claims Easter is a mistranslation over and over. See here for a good explanation of it:

http://brandplucked.webs.com/easterreplenish.htm

Ephesians 6:10-18

When I look at children, at innocence, in these dark times (as all times have been since the fall), and I feel the usual pain and anxiety for their situation and their future, and I ask myself what is it that they need? And not only that, but I ask myself what is the best way to sum up completely, foundationally, concisely what it is that they need? And I answer myself that they need the armor of God. That simple. They need the armor of God. With that they have everything. They can meet everything with success with that. It includes all. They don't need church. They don't need sacraments. They can get those and never get the armor of God. They don't need worldly wealth and power for protection. They need the armor of God, pure and simple.

. . .

For I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.

When I was mistaken for recommending anything other than Reformed Theology

...but really, Reformed Theology *is* mystical. Because it is the most biblical. The more biblical your doctrine - the hard to accept biblical doctrine - the more truly mystical it is. The more it takes you away from yourself. The more it makes you God-centered rather than man-centered.

Just see doctrine as armor. The armor of God. You want real armor. Not something weak or fake that makes you feel more comfortable.

On Christian groups

Glancing at the PuritanBoard just now, noticing once again how shallow that representative group Christian forum is: "What should I do with books I've already read? Should I put them on a shelf? or in a box? Anybody? (I DON'T WANT THIS THREAD HIJACKED BY KINDLE PEOPLE; I STRONGLY CAUTION ANYBODY WHO IS THINKING OF COMMENTING ALONG THOSE LINE TO START A KINDLE THREAD.) Suggestions appreciated."

I'm reminded once again how unteachable Christians in a group are. That forum has had events happen that should have taught them, as a group, that they are on the wrong track. Like, for instance, 280 of their main most interesting members becoming so exasperated with the tone and operation of the forum that they left, usually with parting advice that was routinely ignored. I'm not referring to Federal Vision advocates, or even people like me, but straight pillars of society, so to speak, of that forum's culture.

What is left behind are the most shallow and obsequious individuals, and the worst moderators ("I'M SHUTTING THIS THREAD DOWN DUE TO THE FACT THAT IT IS THREATENING TO BECOME INTERESTING AND PERHAPS OVER MY HEAD.")

So you have endless topics posted like: Is this book dangerous? Should I read it? Sorry if this is in the wrong category. Could a moderator kindly move it if I was so stupid and thoughtless to have posted this in the wrong category?

When Christians group together they are no different than the world. Everything is policed and pulled down to the lowest common denominator. It's like they say, through their dumb leaders, to the Holy Spirit: "Sorry, Spirit, we're pulling this down to *our* level."

What is a true group of Christians like? Like kings on a battlefield. Prophets, priests, and kings gathered together, natural equals. War fighting and ability in council appearing naturally with no 'accreditation' from institution or man given the time of day.

Christianity raises the bar. The Holy Spirit enables Christians to meet and exceed that bar. Man hates that.

Howard Stern, usually a predictable left-leaning New Yorker, when confronted with this level of stupidity can't help but show his common-sense

The devil's greatest advantage - and the left's - is each new generation is born a blank slate. The left can cause epic, hallucinogenic levels of human suffering and death in just the last 100 years - murder to the score of 100,000,000 - and it's forgotten, or not known by the very next generations; and the devil grins, and his useful idiots and wicked followers laugh.

Hell awaits them all.

That's good for a laugh on everyone else's part.

The Stern show interviews the Occupy Public Restrooms Wallstreet Movement:

[Oh, no, language alert! (you'll survive).]

http://youtu.be/tsJPKMvWDmY

What Christians are missing (all Christians, from academic professors to new age mystics)

You're here, you're reading this. Not many people read this blog, but you are here reading these words, so I'll continue to write this post.

Christians are missing a step in their development. The shallowness of Christians that is no different from the general shallowness of the world (also the vanity, worldly pride, self-will, fear of man, respecting of persons and similar features that Christians share with everyone else in the world) is due to Christians missing a vital step in their development.

There are 4 states, or levels, of consciousness. I'll briefly outline them:

Sleep. This is head-on-pillow sleep. Yes, it is a state of consciousness. The lowest. Perhaps some coma states are lower, but I speak of normal human states.

Waking sleep. This is the next step up in consciousness. This is the state all human beings are born into and stay in for their entire lives. If you tell a human being they are in a state of waking sleep they will deny it, and they may even wake up a bit just from the question, but they will fall straight back into the state once you walk away. You can do all that is done in the world in a state of waking sleep. You can be a doctor, an engineer, an athlete, a musician, whatever. It can and is all done in a state of waking sleep. To be able to 'see' your own state of waking sleep you have to make an aim and effort to be more awake (that's basically an 'I am here' sense of yourself and your surroundings, but it's more than that too), then unconsciously fall back into waking sleep, then *remember* you had made an aim to be more awake, and at that moment you'll be able to see the difference. You'll be able to see that you had *fallen* back into a state of waking sleep and to then know, ah, that period of time I have little or no memory of is waking sleep. That's a practical way to see the state of waking sleep. Yet to be able to make an effort to be more awake requires development most people don't currently have. What the effort to be more awake leads to is this next state, or level, of consciousness:

Self-Consciousness. Or self-awareness combined with self-consciousness. It's become an insult by the pseudo intelligent to accuse someone of not being self-aware. We're all not self-aware. We can only have rare moments of self-awareness and self-consciousness, but the vast amount of our waking life is spent in blissful unawareness of ourselves. This third state of consciousness, self-consciousness, needs some things we aren't born with. It needs regeneration by the word and the Spirit for one. That may be stating too much, but I'll say it anyway. It needs a degree of an unburied conscience. Normally our conscience is buried. We didn't lose it at the Fall, but it became buried. To greater or lesser degree. It varies with individuals, and with stages of development. It needs being broken to some extent by the world. Your vanity, worldly pride, and self-will have to be broken in a real way. A painful experience, or process to live through. You also need a basic level of development - a balanced development - of the physical, emotional, and intellectual parts of your being. This involves engaging influences that are above the influences of the world (food, sex, money, mother-in-law). Influences like imaginative literature, history, art, music, philosophy, religion, science, athletics, performing arts. That is a big subject that I'll just leave there. The state of self-consciousness is painful for human beings. It is hard to get into it, and much harder to *stay* in it. Our limits for being there are very restricted. We suffer when we are there as well. And to extend our limits for being in this state we have to suffer more. Seeing ourselves as we truly are and have been can be a very painful experience. In different ways. Things that normally remain in darkness in our inner being begin to have light shined on them and we can experience great scandal and embarrassment and remorse and one epiphany after another of just how embarrassing and stupid and wicked we are and have been in our lives. It's not fun. We'd rather slink back into waking sleep. It's more comfortable. Now I'll move along so as to not write a treatise...

Objective-Consciousness. If self-consciousness is having an understanding and awareness of yourself, then objective-consciousness is having an objective understanding and awareness of the external world, basically including everything. Not God-like understanding, but what is potential for a human being. This understanding will involve being aware of laws and forces and languages - not French or Spanish, but languages such as the language of cosmoses and the language of music and higher visual languages and so forth. Much more as well. Everything. Knowledge that generally is not taught in worldly schools or institutions. A big part of objective-consciousness, though, is knowing the Plan of God. Or the History of Redemption. This is the basic material of objective-consciousness. This knowledge gives you objective understanding of who we are, why we are like we are, our state vis-a-vis what is higher than us, or more powerful than us, why the world is like it is, what forces are at work in the world, etc.

Now to the point of this post (read the title). Christians can get some understanding of the Plan of God and of basic biblical doctrine. We can get to know our true state (sin, for instance). We can understand the mechanics of the plan of redemption. All that. We need the Spirit to really be able to see it and accept it, but I'm just saying an average, everyday mainstream Christian can get that understanding. That is the material of objective-consciousness.

But what is missing with that everyday Christian (professor or pastor or church goer or whatever) is the third state of consciousness described above. Self-consciousness, or self-awareness. This necessary step in real development is skipped over. This is why you can listen to a very learned theologian, on-the-mark with biblical doctrine, yet he doesn't strike you as a very developed human being. I'm not saying people need to be wearing white robes and affecting postures of wisdom and holiness. But that third state of consciousness - self-consciousness, self-awareness - is rare. You actually may not be able to detect it in another human being, at least not superficially. If you spend some time around that person you may. But there is a general law that we can't know when another person has a higher level of development of being than ourselves. We can be honest and know if they *know more* than ourselves (hence we'll show deference to an engineering teacher). But we will rarely if ever grant another person as having a higher level of development of being than ourselves. Most fallen human beings won't even grant that to God Himself.

But anyway, without this third state of consciousness you will be just as shallow and worldly as any other person who doesn't know the plan of God will be. Really in very foundational and mundane ways.

So now you know what Christians - what you - are missing. It's been outlined above very clearly. Now seek wisdom, and with your wisdom get understanding. And remember: fear God alone. When you fear God alone you don't fear man. And when you don't fear man but only fear God it enables you to pursue and find wisdom.

This is all actually getting boring - the devil's spirit is boring as hell

Don't even bother going to this link:

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/the-leithart-trial-dr-jack-collins-defense-of-peter-leitharts-view-of-the-covenant-with-adam/

it's not worth your time (and it's very annoying to read).

I'll summarize it: never - never - underestimate the ignorance of human beings credentialed by institutions of higher learning. Including institutions going by the name Reformed seminaries.

I suppose we can still be confident engineers and doctors and those in similar disciplines are still being taught sound basics, but theology? ...no.

Anyway, sound biblical doctrine can only be understood by individuals who have been regenerated by the word and the Spirit. Signing up for Reformed seminary classes doesn't regenerate you.

What more to say. I feel like really hitting these credentialed morons (and worse) hard on this. And also hitting those who are obsequious to credentials even despite all evidence that the credentialed ones are more ignorant (and worse) of the subject matter their credentials refer to than the average socialist is ignorant (and worse) of how wealth is created.

It brings up the fact that seminaries really aren't even anything to do with the faith to begin with. Seminaries just inject all the vanity (and worse) that is found in academia into churches. All the shallowness as well. All the man-fearing and respecting of persons as well.

It also brings up the fact that God's people are always a rather small remnant in any era. And we are never very prominent in any worldly sense. No credentials, usually, for instance. We're just sort of brought along by the Holy Spirit. Yes, we exploit sources and influences that are the result of the understanding and effort of individuals that have gone before. But they are usually very well-vetted by time.

Notice seminaries today usually stake their claim for legitimacy on the teaching of languages. This is petulant and juvenile. If Christians live in an era where Hebrew and Greek need to be known and known well Christians learn Hebrew and Greek. In our era the learning of Hebrew and Greek is mostly an initiation of the shallow into an asserted authoritative (clergy vs. 'lay people') permission to be authoritatively shallow and petulantly heterodox in all the ways dictated by whatever spirit is floating around, that isn't the Holy Spirit. I.e. he can't distinguish between law and Gospel, or begin to know the power of Federal Theology, but he has been through See It and Say It in Biblical Greek, Vol. 1, so...listen to what he has to say.

I honestly hate this world I'm in right now. It's so shallow. So flowing with the easy and dumb current of the devil. Everywhere I go, everywhere I move, I'm surrounded by lunatics. Vain, shallow, dead asleep, in total bondage to the illusions and delusions and temptations of the devil's kingdom, and seemingly in most all cases totally unreachable souls (as in various degrees of sociopathy).

Which is why the fact that seminaries - Reformed seminaries - and churches are so much the same as the world is so disappointing. I wouldn't expect it to be different regarding those things, but it is obvious that God's remnant is small. Always, in every era. The remnant though is big in influence. This is a big thing to see and appreciate. Small in numbers, big in influence. And obviously that big influence, the vast majority of it, is derived not just from living Christians, but from the work of long passed Christians. And not just their written word (which is very, very big), but from their other work as well.

A comment I wrote...I'm very wise...

c.t. said...

Another thing that may happen is a person can start to question the fact that the Bible is without error or something similar. There are very persistent writers who want to dispirit people about the Bible in that manner.

Just know that if you know the Bible 99% of such examples they give can be explained easily. I mean if you also know biblical doctrine. But the difficult ones can be explained too. But here is something about that:

At first those types start out by saying the Bible is all Chinese myth and NASA astronaut recordings and Assyrian short stories. I.e. it's all just crazy fairy tale nonsense. Of course that claim doesn't hold up, so they end up saying things like, "Well, why in 1 Kings does it say so and so fought and killed 300, yet in 2 Chronicles it says the same person went against 3000?"

So you see they have come a long way from Chinese myth to the latter. So first of all recognize that.

Second of all even the most difficult challenges like that (asserted mistakes) can be defended when you really get into the text. I use to do it all the time on various hostile websites even asking them to give me the most difficult cases. (I recall the Companion Bible was often very uniquely helpful for such things).

And remember, overall, that once you really begin to see *biblical doctrine* you then see how the Bible is all, from Genesis to Revelation, a unified work. Like a finely cut jewel where each part reflects all the other parts. This realization, or ability to begin to see this, takes you up a level from the level where such attacks as mentioned above can even effect you. (It's like you will have a beautiful woman before you and they will be saying, but what about that toenail on her small toe on her right foot? And you will be thinking, wait a minute, I can see her in the whole, and in any case that toenail doesn't even look so odd to me.)

This is why I point out that systematic theology works probably much more effectively than commentaries in enabling one to see the whole and thus the parts in relation to the whole of Scripture.

C. S. Lewis also stated that doctrine such as you find in systematic theologies is as *devotional* as actual devotional reading. Or more so even. That's because doctrine truly gives you practical understanding of the entire Bible.

You need to be churched!

Presbyterian organization ordains first openly gay minister

"You need to be churched, ct! That's your problem!"

Lutherans to hold same sex marriage ceremonies, says Reverend Sheila Smith of the First Lutheran Church of...

"You need to be churched!"

Anglican leader pronounces new translation of the Bible that makes homosexuality OK and deletes the Book of Revelation a step forward

"You need to be churched!"

Movement with Roman Catholic soteriology infiltrates and takes over Reformed Protestant churches and denominations rather easily

"You need to be churched!"

More institutional child abuse uncovered in the Roman Catholic Church

"You need to be churched!! You need to come under care of a church!!!"

4 out of 10 scholars working on new Bible translations used in 90% of churches avowed atheists

"You need to be churched!"

Most pastors graduating from seminaries proclaiming the Bible to be full of errors

"You need to be churched!"

Not just liberal but now even conservative churches seeing the bar as being low and talking to congregants as if they are half mentally deficient

"You need to be churched!"

If you come to our church with a King James Bible we will mock you because you aren't educated.

"You need to be churched, ct! Can't you see it? You need to 'come under care' of some good man-fearing mediator - not Jesus! - and a good shallow congregation! That's what you need! We'll also mock your anti-tyranny politics! Because we fear the world!!!! You need to be churched!!!"

Pastor takes 40 years to preach through New Testament once

"Can't you see you need to be churched?!? Look what you're missin' out on!!"

You ever step back and ponder...?

You ever step back and just ponder how low Christian academic institutions have brought discussion and debate of Christianity?

Beale vs. Enns.

Why not Beale vs. Anton LaVey?

"In his third book which has reached a popular audience Mr. LaVey has stated that the Bible is full of errors."

Really? He's Anton LaVey. Oh, you mean some guy at Westminster Theological Seminary is/was teaching the same thing? Really?

You ever step back and just ponder how low Christian academic institutions have brought discussion and debate of Christianity?

Getting real understanding of the word of God

[Note: I wrote a post about my latest complete reading of the Bible elsewhere which brought to mind this:]

To an academic (seminary type) reading that post they would grin when they read that I didn't start getting understanding of certain whole parts of the Bible until a third or fourth complete reading.

The fact is I could have gone straight to commentaries and so forth. And you know what? I probably did.

Yet there are different kinds or levels of understanding of the Bible. The way I did it was a very organic (from the inside out) growth in developing understanding of the Bible.

The commentary route and other secondary reference material is a surface approach. One wonders even if some seminary types have ever read the Bible cover-to-cover, i.e. a straight-through dedicated effort. It requires not only effort and time but valuation for the word of God as something worth committing yourself to in that manner. There is one well known seminary type who is a pastor who makes endless lists of Bible book commentaries as if he is assembling a large canonical book of Bible commentaries and gives the impression that all he reads is commentaries.

Systematic Theology is underrated as a source for getting commentary on the whole of the Bible, by the way. I mean that role ST plays is understated. Commentaries just as a form are pretty impractical. Like reading a phone book. All bark and no forest. Obviously they have a role once you have the foundation. Get the foundation first though.

I learned early on that I would get almost nothing from reading outlines of books of the Bible, for instance. But when you enter the text in that complete, cover-to-cover dedicated reading way that requires time and effort you are really engrafting the real thing, the living word, into you. Fusing it into you. And at first it is all a muddle, out of focus, etc.; yet with repeated reading it all slowly comes into focus and into understanding. Understanding the parts in relation to the whole.

You also pick up even in the first seemingly most unprofitable complete readings very big things you don't even realize you get at the time of the reading. Like for instance you go through Samuel and Kings and can't discern a Joab from an Abner or know what is going on in the most basic narrative sense, yet you subtly pick up very new knowledge and awareness of the deep subject of idols, which runs through those books like a subterranean stream.

I believe the Holy Spirit rewards time and effort spent reading the actual word of God.

As I write this I'm currently in my 7th dedicated complete cover-to-cover reading of the Bible, AV1611, almost through Isaiah.