I have grown accustomed to the beautiful testimony and insights of my dearest sister in Christ, betty boop, whenever the debate turned to faith and reason over the years. She has never disappointed me.
And I'm thrilled now to read your wonderful insights, dear Mad Dawg, and your enthusiasm for the subject matter! The next time betty boop and I are challenged by metaphysical naturalists, I would love to ping you to the debate.
The debate is on the front lines of the great spiritual battle. And the spirit of anti-Christ urgently wants men to rely on sensory perception and reasoning, i.e. to be skeptical of or even reject, spiritual revelations and insight.
And they most often do this by trying to control the rules of engagement, e.g. demand we accept their presupposition that God is a hypothesis, that the only acceptable evidence is that which can be observed by any man. These correspondents exclude "ears to hear" or spiritual discernment on principle.
Therefore, to deny them any traction from their rules of engagement, the first thing I offer is my testimony:
roamer_1, if all my sensory perception and reasoning are telling me to run but God is telling me to stay, I will stay.
Truly, it would be irrational for me to run since I am more aware of God and certain of Him than I am of anything I can physically see, hear, touch, smell or deduce.
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. II Cor 2:6-16
EXCELLENT, as usual.
Thx.
When the Francey family went to Okinawa as missionaries, we rented a building in the city of Nishihara, and began passing out fliers announcing the meetings. One elderly woman took one of these papers home to her son.
The son wrote to us, saying he was a very bad sinner. He had jumped on the Bible to destroy it. Could our God, Jesus Christ, forgive him? We were glad to have a Yes answer. This man, Tokeshi, came to the meetings and was saved. He asked God to deliver him from drinking sake (rice wine) and God did! His mother couldnt stop thanking us for what we had done. We reminded her it was Jesus who did it.
Tokeshi had a serious heart condition, and he asked for prayer and God healed him. Then, he needed a job. Again we prayed, and God gave him a government job where he worked for years.
Some years later our family was invited to visit and minister in Japan and Okinawa. We visited the church we had pioneered in Nishihara. Tokeshi greeted us by pulling out of his pocket the worn flier his mother had given him years before. He was still serving the Lord.
Billie Charles Francey
Former [Foursquare] Missionary to Asia