Dichotomy or trichotomy - see it from the angle of spiritual warfare

Theologians argue whether man is a dichotomy or a trichotomy regarding body, soul, and spirit. Because the Word of God uses soul and spirit synonymously many erroneously conclude man is a dichotomy of solely body and soul.

What they miss is the fact that the spirit is part of the soul. So really you can say both - dichotomy and trichotomy - are correct. We are body, soul, and spirit, and those three things are each separate, unique things; yet the spirit is part of the soul, so the soul can stand in as an identifier for both soul and spirit, hence man can also be said to be solely body and soul.

I'll go farther. You won't read this anywhere else, that I know of, because theologians stay clear of spiritual warfare.

Read this verse:

Heb_4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

This refers to regeneration. Another subject theologians stay clear from, their fallen nature not wanting to concede sovereignty to God in regeneration but to man and ritual.

The Word of God is living language. Theologians are too shallow generally to know what that means. They assume the Bible is just like any other book, and they expose this approach in how they do textual criticism. They're shallow. Generally they've never read much literature out of their supposed specialty, or what their seminary professor told them is 'safe' to read. So they have nothing to compare and contrast to the Bible to see its unique nature. They haven't read epic poetry or the classical historians or even sacred literature of other religions. (Knowing they are false religions doesn't excuse willful ignorance in not reading such works.)

So with this in mind, that the Word of God is living language - quickening language, regenerating language - see what that verse is saying. The living Word actually goes into our soul and cuts out the spirit that is there, which is the spirit of Satan, of disobedience, of the Kingdom of Satan, and the Holy Spirit then replaces it with the Spirit of God, the Spirit of faith and repentance, the Spirit of the Kingdom of God.

We are body, soul, and spirit, but what 'spirit' do you have in your soul? The spirit of Satan, or the Spirit of God? What cosmos are you connected to? Darkness or light? Death or the living Water of Life?

This is why in regeneration the living Word of God is the wild card in the process. This is why you need to read the Bible complete, cover-to-cover. Get the complete living language into you and allow it to work, if, by the grace of God, the external call is also going to be an internal call.

Hate: a difficult insight, but an insight

I recently acquired Paul Hollander's From the Gulag to the Killing Fields. In reading some of the first hand accounts of communist horror something struck me that is probably difficult to communicate or see or accept, but here it is...

The absolute hate that the communist forces manifested towards their victims made one eye witness sum up the whole movement as just pure expression of hatred. If compassion was shown to any victim the person showing compassion would be executed. That type of thing. It was their policy to inculcate hate. Mao did this, I recall from another book. I know this is obvious, but I'm trying to say that it was specifically hate that they were demanding from the rank and file. Hate the enemy.

The analogy has to do with how the Devil and his spiritual children counterfeit everything in the plan of God. This type of focus on hate reminded me of the difference between common grace ethics and consummation ethics. How we are to love our enemies now, but at the consummation we are to hate our enemies (or the enemies of God). If we love the enemies of God at the consummation it would be an act of rebellion against God Himself.

Can you see how that is being counterfeited in these totalitarian movements in the 20th century? They are doing it in the service of their false idol(s), counterfeiting that coming time when believers will do it in the service of God Himself.

To accept this, to see it, needs a strong faith in God and a good understanding of the plan of God, and real Holy Spirit-enabled moral discernment and discernment for what is true and what is false; also a very God-centered being that doesn't put oneself above God and pretend to judge God and His plan. - C.

ps- If you really want to see what this email [this was originally an email] is about read this summary of Meredith Kline's famous article on Intrusion Ethics.

Spectre of evil

Paul of England writes:

It's all about tyranny and liberty. Right down to our simplest Yes/No decisions. We inherently know this, it's a gift of the Fall, part of our make-up. Our feelings of joy or elation and conversely depression or misery are intimately tied up with this same knowledge.

This is in part what makes Lenin interesting. He didn't wake up one day as a despot or murderer. He had himself in his mind on the trajectory of a liberator. That's a commonplace though - being misled about our own intentions by the force of the world, and then if we go deep enough, the active presence of the Devil begins driving.

In a sense though, Lenin is more than his followers. More complex, more adaptive, creative, arguably more authentic in a sense too. For instance Marx thought Russia had no prospects for revolution - it was too vastly peasant. Marx envisaged the proles, the workers rising up against the fat controller. That could only occur in a more developed nation. Lenin's solution was to invent the idea of the Intelligentsia leading the peasants until the peasants were able to take command of themselves. Like parents caring for their infant children. He would save them from the wickedness of the aristocracy by leading them in revolt against their masters. That ideological deviation is already no longer Marxist.

Did he genuinely believe his ideology would emancipate? One of the common defences thrown out is that you can't blame Lenin for the totalitarianism that emerged. That's what he was fighting against. I suspect that's a lame defence.

I've never read Lenin but he may be interesting. Whilst his contemporaries would say "we must protest against this injustice" Lenin would publish methods for killing the oppressors with boiling oil. And so forth. Curiously i have an impression of Lenin as a recurring historical figure that I first met in the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Lenin's elder brother, in his late teens, plotted to assassinate the autocratic Tsar. Lenin's brother gets caught and is hanged. This is cited as the primary catalyst for Lenin - it begs the question, was his drive to liberate Russia from the debauchery of the aristocracy real or a mask for a deep seated vengeance? His ideology of course was BAMN which makes anything permissible. and probably set the course for the rest of the regimes history and for all the copycat regimes that followed.

I responded:

This is why I harp on Dostoevsky. These socialist ideas, the nihilism, all of it started in - or arrived in - Russia in Dostoevsky's time. He was one of them. He was sentenced to die, was taken to the wall to be executed, was then walked back to his cell and sentenced to ten years in Siberia where he became a Christian.

He then knew it was all demonic. He called his political novel on it all Demons. Or the Possessed. It is even a theme in Crime and Punishment. He was prophetic of the 20th century. He predicted it all.

An element of Lenin you didn't mention was his militant atheism. It was arguably his driving motivation. The one thing that brought all the various factions that became the Bolshevik Party together was their unified hatred of Christianity. Their atheism. You saw the same thing in the French Revolution, which was the father, so to speak, of the Bolshevik Revolution.

These were not naive utopians. The useful idiots that followed them were, but the leaders were not. They were consciously demonic as hell. They called their idealist, utopian, naive followers *useful idiots.*

Of course these types will have better cover if what they are undermining or taking over is despotism to one degree or another itself. but it is always exaggerated. They are looking to create the possibility to make massive human sacrifices to the Kingdom of Satan. Pure and simple. That's what it always came down to. The ultimate, always-present goal. - C.

And added:

THE spectre haunting Europe in The Communist Manifesto (1848), and haunting the world today [1968], walks for the first time in the pages of [Edmund] Burke:

Here is a quote from one of his letters about what was happening in France:

"… out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrifick guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist..."

That word, spectre, was used by Marx obviously, and he mentioned Burke in his writings, so he was using it intentionally, and wickedly (in a wicked, mocking fashion).

The French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution are similar break outs of this evil spirit. You have to read of the French Revolution by a non-leftist historian to see just how identical it was to the totalitarian ideology and regimes and means and so forth of the 20th century.

Leftist historians know that all the seeds of the evil they cover up and excuse are in the French Revolution. Forget that the 'old Regime' was what it was, such evil will break out against the most successful, egalitarian society. In the U.S. it has been working to bring this nation down from the beginning. They despise the contrast of the American Revolution (the third major revolution) with their gruesome totalitarian revolutions. For instance, one leftist historian described Robespierre as a religious fanatic, giving the intended impression that he was like a Christian fanatic, not telling his reader that Robespierre was 'religious' because he set up a false god he called the God of Reason to replace Christianity and did all the 'year zero' things (changing the calendar, fundamental things) to leave no trace of Christianity in culture and society. That was how he was 'religious'.

Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is a good start in seeing what was going on. - C.

A non-man-fearing approach to homosexual condemnation

Any condemnation of homosexuality is man fearing if it doesn't include a condemnation of the practice of the homosexual community in increasing their tribe by recruiting children and young people by 1. molestation; 2. indoctrination; and 3. drug addiction. Then telling them they were born that way.

For the homosexual community to have their gay bars filled in the future they have to constantly molest, indoctrinate, and otherwise recruit in the present.

This is why homosexuality was criminalized in the past, and why it should be criminalized now.

A Christian needs to discern between the wicked souls who run the racket and the victims of those wicked souls in terms of our view. Most homosexuals were molested as children and young people, indoctrinated as children and young people, were given drugs and made dependent on the homosexual community for those drugs, etc. Then they were told they were born that way. Just as in the Satanic Marxist movements, you have the King Rats, and you have the wide-eyed indoctrinated followers. Prosecute the King Rats and let the prison chaplains work on them; but evangelize to the wide eyed victims.

Spiritual warfare note - the spiritually celibate

1. For self-serving reasons homosexuals don't want to recognize chastity or spiritual celibacy in heterosexuals (in fact they want to claim that everybody secretly acts and thinks and queerly lusts just like they do).

2. For a host of different, but similar, reasons heterosexuals will recognize chastity but don't want to recognize spiritual celibacy in other heterosexuals.

3. Homosexuals, married people, people in committed relationships, fornicators, adulterers, they all want to bring down the spiritually celibate, by denying they are real, or by mocking and ridiculing, accusing, shaming, belittling, embarrassing.