Labyrinth and abyss

"[T]wo concepts that were fundamental to Calvin's speech and thought: labyrinth and abyss. For Calvin, these are the two forms of the ultimate experience of misery. Calvin took the word labyrinth from the humanistic tradition, where it was used pejoratively against scholasticism. For him, it represented a way of thinking that entangled a person and caused him or her to lose the way to God and self. In this life, humans find themselves in the labyrinth by nature. Only by holding onto the Scriptures as onto Ariadne's thread or, to use a Christian expression, as a guide for the journey to eternity can one escape from the labyrinth unscathed. As to the "abyss," people end up in it when they fall from God's ways, when they overturn his order and disregard his peace."

Herman J. Selderhuis. John Calvin: A Pilgrim's Life (p. 35). Kindle Edition.

God's will is liberty

Real Will, or God's Will is top-down will (it is descent-of-the-dove will). Self-will is bottom-up will (our first inclination, to act from the flesh, from our desires and fears and resentments and so on). Acting from God's will or top-down will or higher will is liberty (and it requires 'waiting on the Lord', i.e. not our first inclination). Self-will is bondage to this world of death and darkness.

Here's a main point: if you equate God the Father with a human, in effect a slave master, you will think acting from God's will is slavery. Yet God is Spirit (I'm speaking of God the Father). He is the source of all that is good and holy. You become a real individual with real liberty when you act from God's will.

One pithy way of seeing practically how we act from God's will is this: we take nothing more seriously than the teaching and commands of God in His living word.

This is also how we 'walk after the Spirit' rather than walking 'after the flesh.'

But to see it more fully you have to see that a regenerated individual with a new heart has a different relationship to the teachings and commands of God. They are not a chain about our neck that we *have* to follow though we might like to do something else. They are rather something that emanates from our new heart itself, so they are as natural to us as oranges are to an orange tree.

And Jesus summed up the law in the two great commandments: love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. That sums up the two tables of the Ten Commandments, or the moral law, which is the only law that is binding on us after the theocratic state of national Israel became defunct upon the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

The living language of the word of God challenges our level of being

It is axiomatic and should always be kept in mind: the living language of the word of God challenges your level of being. Always. In all ways. When you go to them and they give you a sense of weariness, your level of being is being challenged. When you read them and even the promises of glory and higher existence seem tedious, your level of being is being challenged. When they seem strange or like having nothing to do with you or you can't get much from them, your level of being is being challenged.

So the proper response is: when your limits are being provoked, make then a little more effort to extend your limits.

One thing that can inspire one to just read the Bible consistently (i.e. just read it, page by page, cover to cover, like trekking over a continent from ocean to ocean) is this: it is higher visual language. Living language. And once inside you it enables you to see things in yourself and in the world around you that you couldn't see before. You have to have the language inside you before you can see what you couldn't see otherwise. This new ability doesn't become known to us immediately, but it's like planting a crop that will manifest in another season in time. Even then we tend to become acclimated to things, so we might not see anything new in us, but it will be there. (The Homeric epics - Iliad and Odyssey - do this as well, obviously not in the same category as the word of God, but a pure and powerful and universal higher visual language is contained in them having to do with inner development of level of being; and they are - especially the Iliad - a challenge to read as well.)

Set your affection on things above

Christians who criticize other Christians for doing things such as Work - Fourth Way - practices (and other things) sometimes make accusations of having an over-realized eschatology. Of trying to climb up to heaven, etc. Look at these verses from Colossians 3:

1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

I'm not recommending Fourth Way ideas, practices, and goals, that would take too many caveats and so on (and it's usually something people come *out of* who become Christians, so don't get me wrong in mentioning that one among many types of school and so on out there, but practices can be universal and wheat can be found in much chaff), but even biblical watchfulness gets this treatment from the more establishment church types. Anything of a vertical nature, really. Being awake now, in a vertical eschatalogical sense. Now it is high time to awake out of sleep, Paul says in Romans 13:11. That is not head-on-pillow sleep.

The verses above, though, should be kept in mind when the 'grave concerns' of the usual types are being intoned.

Thinking about Arnold Murray

I've been thinking about Arnold Murray (a satellite preacher out of Arkansas), and I think there is a good example of 'school' in what he has done. When I look at it I really got kicked off that Puritanboard because somebody started a thread on Arnold Murray, and I wrote a long response, written carefully (knowing my environment), but their shallowness overwhelmed them and they kicked me out. They could tell I was not 'of them' anyway. I would just have to say 'hi' to determine that. But Murray put out the call that was effectual in me, so I can't say anything bad about him. The one thing he does well is to read the actual words of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book and not care if it bores his audience. This is something even Reformed church leaders disdain to do (the "lay people" couldn't possibly understand!!).

(By the way: what does it mean that the good churchians at the Puritanboard know I am not 'of them'? It means there is a two-tiered Christianity. There is church Christianity and there is order (or 'school') Christianity. There are worldly knights, and there are Grail knights.)

Arnold Murray's doctrine obviously is unique. But even there it is not bad for 'hooking' certain types who are negative to the churchianity that Christianity has become all around us. Even the occult or neo-Nazi or what have you connections or accusations that get thrown around don't hurt what he is doing, because it sets him apart as not fearing the opinions of man (including Satanic churchianity leaders, seminary educated or not). I'm actually drawn to the symbol of the swastika for that reason (though I should state Murray has nothing to do with swastikas). I fear God alone. Churchians despise that. They want everybody fearing them and residing in their little satanic church nurseries.

I mentioned 'school' above. I mean that in the esoteric sense. What Murray has successfully done is create a school. It has boundaries, and he stays within those boundaries. This enables him to build force within the boundaries. He doesn't teach orthodox doctrine, but he doesn't need to. His listeners eventually leave and gravitate to that on their own. Like I did.

Once, about ten years after I'd ever ordered one of the books they sell I called them just curious what their reading list looked like currently, and their operator said you use to be on our list. I said, yes. Then she said since I left they can't sell me anything. I thought, after some time, wow, that's interesting. They were never after money in any of the usual ways, but not even wanting to sell a book to a former listener. With that they are saying, you are no longer in this school. No longer at this level.

And along those lines, Murray is also very good at being a rock for beginners to learn from and transcend. He repeats himself over and over. He doesn't try to impress anybody. That's a good teacher. He allows students to move on, and he stays behind to meet the new crop. He knows what he's doing.

I haven't heard him in a long time, so I can't speak to what he is up to now. I.e. if he's the same or changed. It actually wasn't difficult to see orthodox doctrine after listening to him because he doesn't really present any kind of recognizable systematic doctrine to begin with. After I learned for instance the doctrine of election from Reformed sources I went back and listened to Murray's tape on election and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. That's what I mean.

But having benefited from his efforts (and that is real, somebody's effort, you can't deny another person's effort that you are able to benefit from) I both feel sympathetic to him, even knowing pure biblical doctrine, and could never take part in any kind of mocking of him that occurs among the shallow and ignorant.

Early in my life when I was more interested in writing and literature and novels and what not I noticed there was a pattern in the lives of novelists where they were very reluctant to mention influences in their lives other than very generic ones that everybody of their era might mention. This is because they knew it only gives the world ammunition to mock them or misrepresent their connection to the influence in question. The very fact that a person could be influenced by a single aspect of an influence, or just 1% of the influence and how critics would not care about that but would run with a complete connection in a shallow and probably consciously vicious way...this made them keep silent. Murray would be just like that. You just mention his name and the monkey's at the Puritanboard (most of them Administrators and Moderators for some reason) start jumping around and throwing their dung.

Anyway, I was just thinking about Arnold Murray...who put out the call (the living language of the Old and New Testaments) that was effectual in me...

Jesus Horton catches us all in our stupidity again

At the end of his latest White Horse Inn podcast (where I think I counted 873 'wows' giving the impression the on air crew there had gotten into somebody's medical marijuana stash) Michael Horton (or, em, Jesus Horton) said: "We are not saved by faith. We are saved by Christ." Which, is just a shallow and stupid theological statement. His desire to call everybody stupid is now to the point where he has to set us all up on justification by faith alone. We say we're justified by faith alone, and Jesus Horton comes along and tells us, "No! You are saved by Christ..." Wowww.

"You need to join a church."

You need to join a church.

OK.

Just don't join the Roman Catholic Church.

Got it. I understand that much.

Or any Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church.

Right. You have to drink Coke out of actual glass bottles in those churches.

Or any of the mainstream, 'seven sisters' churches.

Understood. Lesbians running the show there. New Age philosophy in place of biblical doctrine.

Also, stay away from the Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

No problem. Don't want anyone washing my feet. Not that it would feel bad. Also, don't ever want to have to pretend I can talk in tongues. Whatever that is.

Eastern Orthodox Church is not a good idea either.

They're almost as bad as the Roman Catholic Church. Understood.

Also, there are a lot of weird legalist churches out there. Stay away from them.

Cultish.

There are also nutty ecumenical churches that don't want to offend anybody but actual Christians.

I don't like their happy talk, no problem.

And stay away from the mega churches.

Consumerism, worldly entertainment, health and wealth doctrine, impersonal...

As for Reformed stay away from the Federal Vision ones. They teach heresy.

I'm on to them. Don't like them either.

Or the ones that want to turn the nation into a theocracy.

I see their barbed wire compounds, and I walk the other direction.

And don't join any nutty house church operations.

They turn into dens of swinger sex usually.

OK. So... Join a real Reformed church. There, I said it.

You mean like Presbyterian? Isn't that one of the 'seven sisters' mentioned above?

There are also churches with the name 'Reformed' in them.

Where they teach the heresy of Federal Vision?

Not all of them do.

How many churches are we left with here. What kind of number.

Probably six.

Are they regionally spread out at least?

I think their may be one within 650 miles of you.

Do they teach the unbiblical doctrine of infant baptism and use Bibles based on constructed 'critical texts'?

Maybe we can find you a Reformed Baptist church. You might have to travel an extra hundred miles or so.

Do they use critical text Bibles?

Probably.

...

It's pretty much a mess, isn't it?

Yes, it is. We can always be Grail Knights though...

Michael Horton

I just listened through this garbage again, the White Horse Inn (that would be the Romanist White Horse Inn, not the famous one of history, the other one where Romanists like these four Musketeers of stupid reside).

It's actually difficult to articulate how repulsive Michael Horton is. Obviously he's shallow. Obviously he has a naive self-awareness. Obviously he's a bit dense in his thinking a degree from Oxford is worth anything today beyond applause one might receive at a dinner engagement in Davos, Switzerland after giving an earnest speech on global warming and how best to loot national treasuries larded with several anecdotes and jokes about how stupid Americans are. And, no, he won't understand that last sentence. Neither will any of the other Musketeers of dumb on his show.

But he is really digging a unique hole to reside in. His take on Scripture has become almost unrecognizable even in the common panoply of false teachings. He's desperate to maintain his Reformed reputation, but his Romanism and disdain for anything Protestant has grown to such a degree that he's really having to stretch the boundary in which he can operate.

The one question to ask him that would cut through all the garbage and get to the heart of his problem is this: How long have you feared that you are unregenerate?

Actually, I think he's beyond fear now, and fully into rage at God and hatred for God's word and the pure doctrine Reformed Theology represents.

What specifically is he presenting in the name of Reformed Theology? The usual Romanist Beast doctrine: exalting cleric and ritual above the word and the Spirit; justifying his 'anger of Cain' for the regenerate by not just twisting Scripture, but reading it in a really strange pomo fashion where Jesus and Michael Horton are merged into a single entity and everybody else in the scene gets to wear the dunce cap, including all the disciples (not just the obviously stupid crowd, who resemble American Christians in so many ways); telling Christians that they can't do anything, that there's no point in trying to do anything, just eat crackers and drink grape juice and listen to liberal academic Reformed theologians, and basically stay infantile in your faith because you're stupid Americans and Protestants at that and he can't have you developing in any way or thinking you are - this he has trouble getting out of his throat - regenerated by the word and the Spirit or something.

I've always said these liberal academic Reformed types like Michael Horton make John Calvin look like a bare foot mystic, but they've gone beyond that at this point. Or actually they're just simply demonstrating what John Owen wrote centuries ago: "As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace; so there is not scarce anything more despised or scorned by many in the world than that any should profess that there hath been such a work of God upon themselves, or on any occasion declare aught of the way and manner whereby it was wrought... yea, the enmity of Cain against Abel was but a branch of this proud and perverse inclination."

This is the spirit of the first generation Reformation. Fear God alone.

How long do Calvinists put up with theologians like Michael Horton and his mentally frumpy cohorts saying there is no effort in Christianity?

The biblical doctrine of regeneration - the reality of regeneration - is obviously the weak link in the chain of these seminary educated morons.

ONCE REGENERATED YOU BETTER MAKE EFFORTS.

Again: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REGENERATED BELIEVER AND AN UNREGENERATE HUMAN BEING.

At what point do we not show patience for these intellectual village idiots calling themselves Reformed educators and church leaders?

"What I saw earlier in Bavinck..." from an email

I'm right now reading volume 1 of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics. Just as sheer intellectual feast it is pure delight. I'm reading subject matter right now that I can't articulate in an email, but his reputation and this systematic theology's reputation of being the Everest is not hyperbole. I know some book titles recently mentioned would run into the hundreds of dollars all together, but some books are worth more than their price. These books are of the pure school and get at knowledge of the mysteries of man and God and redemption in history...everything deep and real and important. - C.

When I sent that email about Bavinck I was reading him on the subject of what someone has to believe to be saved. What core doctrines. Catholics have a list. Protestants sometimes try to make a list. It's happened in recent years on blogs where people debate what doctrines are necessary to be known and understood for a person to be saved. So here's Bavinck on that subject turning it all on its head. It's very subtle, but powerful. He said the Reformers knew that you can't make a list. He said once you have a connection to Christ there's no list, there's an organic connection where salvation is there and only gets stronger as understanding grows vis-a-vis all of doctrine. In other words faith gets stronger the more understanding of doctrine develops, but it starts like a seed, and with that seed salvation is already set then it organically grows.

It's related to the saying: "I don't try to understand so that I can believe; I believe so that I can then understand."

The former is a man-centered approach. The latter is a God-centered approach.

But this doesn't denigrate doctrinal knowledge because it is that which strengthens faith.

I don't know if I captured or articulated that well, but it's an example of how you can learn things from Bavinck. - C.

So do you see how when Bavinck uses the term 'organic' he is really, maybe unwittingly, talking in the language of cosmoses?

We get connected with Jesus Christ (unio mystica, or union with Christ) and that is due to regeneration by the word and the Spirit, and we don't really know doctrine, or on-the-mark doctrine yet, yet still we have that connection. Then with that connection, our understanding of doctrine grows (for instance why we are to have faith in Jesus) as if from the level of a seed sprouting into fullness as a flower. That is how evolution happens in cosmoses. From inside, or inside source outward to all parts simultaneously.

See how that's different from: "So now do you understand the Trinity? The Incarnation? Now how about grace? Original sin? OK, you have what you need to have salvation."

No, it starts with that union that occurs with regeneration by the word and the Spirit. Yes we read the living word and it has effect, but when I read it and it had effect I didn't know what it was saying at the level of on-the-mark biblical doctrine. I just got the connection, the union with Christ, then the process started of developing understanding, unfolding like a seed into a flower. You want to become a full flower in your understanding, but you have salvation when at the seed level. - C.

I've become a date setter

I've become an end of the world date setter.

If Jesus' Incarnation is the center of historical time (that which the Old Testament saints looked forward to, and that which we look back toward), and if we don't use creation but the founding of the Kingdom of which Jesus was born King into (i.e. Abraham and God making the covenant with Abraham) as our beginning date then that was in the neighborhood of 2000 BC. So, it's just a matter of symmetrical figuring to see that sometime around 2000 *AD* is the end of time date. It could be up to 2020, but not much further.

As I stated, when I had that series of personality conflicts with my Home Economics teacher in high school and had to go to the Principal's office repeatedly, and was able then to discern it as a sign of the end of time, I have been on this path of finding the true end time date, and now it has arrived.

Sometime between 2013 and 2020. - C.

Prophets, priests, and kings...and church

I personally think that *ideally* a church gathering is a gathering of *kings*. Individuals who are prophets, priests, and kings all in one. That includes males and females. And to really make an extended analogy, where in history do we see gatherings of kings? On battlefields. So if everybody can hold their own, biblically and doctrinally, then anyone who tries to lord it over anyone else in some off-the-mark way is in for quite a test of strength.

I see Christianity as being a high bar in terms of getting understanding of the Bible itself and doctrine and practice, but the Holy Spirit enables us to meet and exceed that bar.

Then once we get that real understanding, then ‘authoritative preacher guy’ and ‘shallow pastor guy’ and ‘false teacher guy’ and ‘pure vicious wolf guy’ can all be dealt with because we understand them. Of course, they’re going to know they don’t want you in their dominion, except for maybe ‘shallow pastor guy’, who I have more sympathy for, especially if he’s shy and trying really hard and means well.

This subject gets into ecclesiology and what a church, or gathering of Christians, is all about, or is supposed to be about. People have legitimate differences of seeing it. The most famous Calvinist in England – John Owen – differed with Calvin on church issues. (Owen was a Congregationalist.) In fact, most Calvinists in history and today differ with Calvin on ecclesiolgy and sacramentology.

John Bunyan, another famous Calvinist, when in court and asked by an Anglican judge why he didn’t belong to a local church said he didn’t see it in Scripture. I wish I still had the quote because Bunyan put it more pointedly. Didn’t mean you’d never see Bunyan in a church. But it’s about fear of God vs. fear of man.

For me, a church should be like a sanctuary where you can go to learn and meditate, read, listen, experience a quiet interlude from the world. Churches in the Old World are more conducive to that, perhaps. But that’s just me, my type.

For instance, we can’t get away from the basic fact that Christianity is a religion of the Book. God revealed Himself in language that we can read. And a church should be a place where that Book is read and we can read it and really get understanding of it. Parts in relation to the whole understanding of it. Not rely on one person only to know it. God wants us *all* to be prophets (knowing His word, able to speak in prayer to Him), priests (able to sacrifice our old nature in emulation of our High Priest Jesus Christ), and kings (able to command our inner domain and cultivate our new nature), while, of course, recognizing the *authority* of the Prophet, Priest, and King *above us* Jesus Christ Himself. There is one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom of God is a ‘Kingdom.’ And when God is the King that system of government works out well and is the best.

Fellaheen

This has always been an interesting term that I couldn't nail a tight definition down on. It's 'fellaheen.' I first came across it in Spengler's Decline of the West.

It's from an Arabic word and literally means: people who don't own the land they are farming.

It's broader, cultural meaning is: a people who are operating in a culture and civilization that isn't their own.

So, the Jewish people, for instance, are fellaheen in Christian culture and civilization. Just as Christians were fellaheen in Islamic culture and civilization back after 700 AD.

There is more to it though. The term and meaning carries within it the fact that fellaheen peoples can't participate at the deep, foundational level of that culture and civilization. I.e. because they aren't inherently of that culture and civilization their acts within it are shallow.

An example from the pop film level: Woody Allen instinctively knows he is fellaheen compared to Ingmar Bergman. He was always saying Bergman is the real thing, I am a fake. A fellaheen like Woody Allen can really only copycat within our culture and civilization. Just like Jewish novelists can write blockbuster novels, but they can't write Don Quixote or Moby Dick. They can copy cat and write pastiche and similar things and styles, but nothing that comes from within the heart and soul of Christian culture and civilization.

Fellaheen peoples can be very successful and contribute major things, but ultimately their contribution will be artificial to the culture and civilization, and often poisonous (Marx, Freud). Einstein would be cited as a counter argument by people with an emotional dislike for the term, but Einstein operated within the flow of the western scientific enterprise and was educated in western, Christian universities and so on. And his contribution has a lot more fluff and dead end in it than the popular myth of Einstein would let on.

The term has been suppressed because of the treatment of Jews in Europe culminating in the Holocaust (not the Holocaust of Jewish Bolshevism against Christians in Europe, but the Holocaust of Germans and other Europeans against Jews).