Posted on 12/07/2002 9:46:51 AM PST by beckett
Perhaps the real key is simply to first accept Him, confess your sins in repentance, to the Father in the name (by faith and belief in His Perfect Sacrifice) of the Son, in order to be filled by the Holy Spirit who will guide you in your metaboolizing of Scripture.
Reading Scripture is the first step, after returning to fellowship with God on His grounds. After reading, comprehending and spiritually digesting the Word, it must be understood and made into an outward knowledge, or epignosis, for it to be believed,...in faith.
When a statement is made that certain extrabiblical writings are more interesting, this is an indicator that the reader is reading in their own will external or independent of God's will. Those things spiritually discerned, will merely appear foolish. Instead the reader will tend to seek to comprehend or imagine spectacular situations which merely titillate the senses or reinforce an arrogance complex of scarred soul.
The Nag Hamadi scripts pale in comparison to the depth and robust intricacies of Scripture already recognized as the canon of Scripture. By no means do I discount them as grossly untrue at present, simply because I haven't rigorously studied them, but because merely a few references in them fail to acknowledge the rich Word of God acknowledging and honoring the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, I find it much more fruitful to place the Holy Bible, or Scripture, in higher priority for study and a steady walk in faith.
The meaning of 'to believe in' as read in English translations of Scripture isn't conveyed in the above query, but another meaning appears to be confused and substituted with different tenses in the vocabulary.
When we believe in Him, we are able to receive salvation. This belief is not merely an acknowledgment of His existence. That meaning might be in the Greek word 'gnosis'. The faith in God and acceptance of His plan is made possible by the sacrificial unlimited atonement for all men of sin which caused a spiritual separation from God and physical separation of body frm soul and spirit.
The Holy Spirit indwells the believer and allows us to mature in Him, by first learning doctrine from the Word and then metabolizing that doctrine into a walk with Him, or an epignosis,...an outward knowledge, which is the belief in Him.
The understanding or gnosis of fallen angels is provided from studying Scripture and the doctrine metabolized regarding the angelic conflict, good and evil, creation and sin, provides one a further walk in Him to understand and discern the actions of deceiving persons, man and angelic.
By discerning deceiving spirits. In order to properly discern, one must first accept God on His terms, through Christ. This then allows an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. After being indwelt, is one sins, they fall out of fellowship with God. In order to return into fellowship, they must repent and confess that/those sins to the Father via Christ. This may be done today simply by prayer, in part as belief.
In this fashion the Holy Spirit is allowed to fill the believer again. From there, the believer conitinues to study the Word and understand doctrine and metabolize it further under the lead of the Holy Spirit. As one continues to mature, they are better able to discern spiritual things.
BTW, in many cases, deceiving spirits exhibit remarkably emotional and extreme variations of unholy personal behavior. They frequently aren't that hidden even though they believe they are going to control all events.
Why can't you be fooled as well as anybody else? Because only what you believe is true?
The Word of God is true. Not because of me or any other created person, but because it is the Word of God. Once one accepts and believes that Word after comprehending it and acting on that understanding and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide the spirit, one can discern properly.
Is it possible to be decieved? Of course, if one fails to walk in Him or insufficiently study the Word of God, one might easily be tempted to act independent of God's will and fall to temptation and be deceived. Good guidance is, Return to Him so He may return to you.
As I have noted elsewhere, one of my mottos is, leave no stone unturned.
Do you know who Dr.Walter Martin is?
And this is just the point. This is the same claim made by all, which is why I am ending this conversation. Doesn't matter whether it is Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, David Koresh, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, on and on and on, I have heard this exact same argument used to prove "We Have the Truth! - Everybody else is deceived!"
You are backing me into a corner where my only recourse is to start picking apart your belief, Christianity or both. And that is something I do not want to do. I ask questions about how one comes to certain conclusions. But what you are doing to me is preaching, and I'm not interested. I've heard it all before and there isn't anything you can tell me that I haven't heard, and probably from better. No offense intended but go preach to somebody else.
He was the modern eras greatest Christian Apologist and I have listened to what must be hundreds of hours of his lectures on tape. When you implied that I have put more attention into mysticism and the occult you couldn't be more wrong. I find that I have put more study into Christianity, and the roots of the religion, than many Christians have. He was also a superb logician and one of the people responsible for my understanding and devotion to it. But he was at least honest enough to say, 'Faith is just faith, take it or leave it' and not try to prove it logically.
My use of the term "insane" was meant less for its technical accuracy than for its satisfaction of the rhetorical requirements of the paragraph. I wanted to tie your use of the word to the paltry state of our overall knowledge despite considerable successes through "sane," rational inquiry. My point was not that it's commendable to be literally "insane," but that rational inquiry has its limits which throughout the human saga have led people to draw conclusions about existence that are not strictly rational.
BB (and Plato's) metaxy is a metaphor for the tension that exists between the physical and the spiritual, a bridge between the mundane and the ideal.
As for my speculation about "leaks way down," that might be best thought of, I think, as completely consistent with "Mind pervading the whole Universe."
Suzanne is a great tune, and Leonard a great poet and songwriter. He spends longs stretches of time in a Buddhist monastery every year, and it shows in his art.
After thinking about #253, I will only post this one line from the article with a short comment about it. If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less.
I wonder if a glimpse of the abyss doesn't do just the opposite and if that isn't a great thing.
The music compliments it beautifully, so it really should be listened to.
Remember that there is no causality at the quantum level, only probability.
God plays with dice.
BUMP
This is going to sound flippant and I'm really not being a smart alec, but - both and neither.
I was trying to understand, on many levels. That the Scriptures are written on a level we now don't understand, with many hidden meanings, is clearly true. If one looks at that old Semitic way of writing one quickly understands this. There is an old Sufi poem about a toad that makes absolutely no sense until one understands that the word for 'toad' and the word for 'eternity' are the same word phonetically, even though the are spelled differently. When you understand that the one is a metaphor for the other, the poem becomes this incredible metaphor for life.
The whole of the Scriptures was written when this was the way people wrote, almost exclusively. But we have long ago lost the keys to the metaphors and so people nowadays take the whole thing literally, which it was never meant to be. But listening to someone like Dr. Martin one occasionally can run across a glimmer. I learned things I wouldn't know otherwise.
one of the prettiest songs ever written.
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