SEPARATION FROM GOD

 

One concept that is stressed within the Reformed Baptist community is the transcendence of God. The Christian understanding of the word “transcendence” is that God is separate from and above His Creation. Unlike the god of some other religions, our Judeo-Christian God is not Himself a part of His creation. This concept is softened and balanced somewhat by the companion term “immanence”, which essentially means “God with us”.

Transcendence is an important notion. It should remain in the Christian’s vocabulary. The separation of our transcendent Judeo-Christian God from His creation emphasizes His superiority over it. Creation didn’t make God, but rather God made creation.

The emphasis sometimes made by preachers of transcendence over immanence, however, needs to be curbed. When it is not, the transcendent nature of God is used to contrast God’s greatness, His magnificence over mere humanity. We all know that to be the case; we don’t need to be hammered on the head over its truth.

We do need to know our place in God’s scheme of things. We don’t need to go off the reservation by thinking of ourselves more than we ought. We don’t need to play god by attempting to decide on our own what we think represents truth in Scripture, or whether God embraced evolution as a working tool, or whether our science is more authoritative than His Word, or the like. The notion of God’s transcendence helps us realize that we ourselves are beneath our God.

But we need balance in the matter. The beautiful wonder of what God desires in our relationship with Him is that despite His magnificent greatness, He wants to have a loving connection with us, and in the process to actually elevate us to a level closer to His. We don’t need to wag our tails in self-serving abject sycophantic fawning. God doesn’t want His boots licked. He doesn’t want His ego stroked. He wants to love us, and for us to love Him back, as Jesus told us in Matthew 22:37 and 38, repeating Moses’ exhortation to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:5:

“Jesus said unto [the lawyer], Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”

As John said in 1 John 4:8: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

It’s just as simple and profound as that: God is love. Even the negatives that are thrown our way, properly interpreted, are intended to develop our capacity to love Him back.

Transcendence over-emphasized stands in direct opposition to the love of God. It does nothing but separate us from Him with the feeling that if we are so very different (read “lower”) than Him, we have nothing in common with His nature. Consequently, He is alien to us. How in the world are we supposed to love an alien Being? He might as well drive a UFO and we might as well bury ourselves underground so He can’t reach us with His impossible (read “alien”) demands on our lives.

GENDER MISMATCH

 

The other day I read the transcript of a speech given by a pastor to a Christian women’s group. I found it to be fascinating, particularly the relationship between the topic and its Baptist source.

The pastor was attempting to uplift the women by addressing the importance of femininity to the economy of God, even to the extent of including the feminine element in the nature of the Godhead Itself.

The human family, he began, is itself a representation of the Godhead. In that correspondence, the human father is an obvious type of the Divine Father. The human child, to continue in that context, is just as obviously a type of the Divine Son, Jesus Christ. By a process of elimination, he said, the human wife and mother must typify the nature of the Holy Spirit. He ticked off some of the feminine virtues that typify the Holy Spirit’s role within the Divine Godhead: compassion, comfort, support and the like, all of which we typically associate with femininity.

I was delighted with that comparison, having made it myself long ago and written much about its implications regarding the nature of the Godhead after having researched what Scripture had to say about the dots I had connected in that regard. I was particularly pleased to note that these words were penned from a Baptist hand.

But then I encountered a difficulty, one that represented a discrepancy between what the pastor was implying in his description of the woman Christian’s role and what he actually wrote. What he wrote, when referring directly to the Holy Spirit, was the pronoun “He”, implying, as Church authorities usually do, that the Holy Spirit is either genderless or a weakly-gendered male. In making that overt gender assignment in direct contradiction to the association he had made to the women, the minister was simply following the party line begun centuries ago in the translations available to the Christian community, all of them using either the male or the neuter pronoun to reference the Holy Spirit in opposition to what was said in the original manuscripts.

I suspect that, along with a large number of his predecessors, this minister attempted to avoid the inevitable condemnation of his peers that would have been his lot had he used a feminine pronoun in reference to the Holy Spirit in keeping with the association he was attempting to illustrate between womanhood and the functional role of the Holy Spirit.

The man should have read Joshua 1:6-9 and acquired some backbone before delivering his ultimately confusing message to those women in the conference:

“Be strong and of good courage; for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swore unto their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses, my servant, commanded thee; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper wherever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

“Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee wherever thou goest.”

Let me complete the pastor’s message for him a little more boldly than he did, as I have done previously in many places. The association between femininity and the Holy Spirit is correct; in fact, given the entirety of what Scripture has to say about that association, it is the only correct one that can be made. The obvious implication, that the Holy Spirit also has a feminine role within the Godhead, is just as correct: the Holy Spirit is feminine in nature, being the complementary Other to the Divine Father. In every case where Scripture associates man and the Godhead, the woman is a type of the feminine Holy Spirit.

Genesis 1:26a and 27 can only rationally be interpreted in the context of human womanhood representing the Holy Spirit:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Genesis 2:18, 21 and 22 can only rationally be interpreted in the context of a reprise of the formation of the Godhead out of the Father, the feminine Holy Spirit having Herself been fashioned out of the Father’s essence in conformance with His selfless nobility:

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help fit for him.

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

The repetitive statement of Genesis 2:23 and 24 in Matthew 19:4-6 (Jesus’ pronouncement of the godliness of human marriage) and Ephesians 5:31 and 32 (Paul’s statement that the Church will participate in an intimate spiritual marital relationship with Jesus) underscores the importance of marriage to the extent that it also represents the relationship within the Godhead between the Father and the Holy Spirit:

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.”

In what alternate context would Proverbs 8, the Song of Solomon, John 2 (the wedding at Cana), and John 3 (spiritual rebirth) even make sense?

The pastor also tried to gain the affection of his feminine audience by claiming that Woman was created out of Man (Genesis 2:22) last because this final act of creation, that of Woman, was the most perfect of all, surpassing even the creation of Man. That might be the case – or it may not be. The real issue regarding Woman’s formation out of Man, in consistency with the femininity of the Holy Spirit, is that this final act of creation itself was a reprise of the Holy Spirit’s formation out of the Father.

Many of the Church’s problems with indifference and poor attendance could readily be mitigated through a deepening of our pastors’ understanding of Scripture and their acquisition of bones to replace the jelly in their backs. Their position regarding the gender of the Holy Spirit is not only indefensible, but places a stumbling block in the way of the Church members’ love of God. Church members are not blameless either. They could read Scripture on their own more than they do and use their own minds in the process to the extent that they could hold their pastors accountable to what the say.

THE EARLY MORAVIAN CHURCH

 

A few weeks back as I was browsing the Internet I came across a fascinating article written by Dr. Craig D. Atwood entitled Motherhood of Holy Spirit in 18^th Century.

According to Dr. Atwood’s biography, his current title is the rather lengthy “Charles D. Couch Associate professor of Moravian Theology and Ministry Director of the Center for Moravian Studies”. He is a faculty member of the Moravian College and Theological Seminary located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he teaches Moravian theology and history, Christian history, religion in America, and history of Christian thought.

His current interests include a desire to help the Christian community in general to “rediscover the riches of the Moravian theological heritage”. There is a hint in this aspiration, supported in the article noted above, that he sees that something quite valuable was lost in the transition of the Moravian Church away from its unique early dogma toward a more mainstream perception of our Trinitarian Godhead.

The perception that was abandoned by the Moravian Church is identified in the title: the femininity of the Holy Spirit.

The article itself, which was delivered in a presentation to the faculty of the Moravian College in 2011, traces the history of the Moravian Church in America during its most controversial (and possibly its most fruitful) period, the two decades of the 1740s through the 1750s. From the establishment of the Moravian community of Bethlehem in 1741 on a 500-acre plot purchased from the estate of George Whitefield, the Church initially adhered to the theology of Moravian (now Czechoslovakia) Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.

Zinzendorf’s theology is rooted in the Czech reform movement of the fourteenth century, in which John Hus’ protests against the Catholic Church a full sixty years before Luther landed him astride a stake, where he was burned as a heretic in 1415. Followers of Hus organized the Moravian Church in 1457 in the village of Kunvald, about a hundred miles east of Prague. The Church spread into Poland through heavy persecution in the sixteenth century. Continuing persecution in the seventeenth century contributed to a relative stasis in the Church. It enjoyed a revival in the eighteenth century as the Church planted roots in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania under the leadership of Count Zinzendorf.

According to Dr. Atwood, Bethlehem, which lies on the outskirts of Allentown in southeastern Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia and west of the New Jersey border, enjoyed particular favor from God, as the community was one of the most successful in pre-revolution America. Atwood implies that this favor resulted from the unique theology of the Moravian Church, in which the Holy Spirit was considered the Spouse of the Holy Father and Mother of Jesus and His Church.

This perception of the Holy Trinity continued at least for the twenty years following the establishment of Bethlehem, but following the death of Count Zinzendorf and his wife and son, the far-weaker post-Zinzendorf Church leadership fell away into a desire to conform more closely to the more popular “mainstream” dogmas of the Protestant Churches in the surrounding communities. They completed their abandonment of dogma by burning Zinzendorf’s writings.

Dr. Atwood appears to lament this transition toward “normalcy”, implying that Bethlehem and the Moravian Church did not continue in the favor of God thereafter. He expresses disappointment in the manner in which this transition was handled during the time he was a student of the Moravian seminary, claiming that in continuing embarrassment Church historians label the two initial decades of the Moravian presence in America as “a time of sifting’, wherein the theological “experimentation” of the time eventually led to the more stable dogma of mainstream Christianity. In opposition to this false and rude dismissal, Dr. Atwood claims that a substantial segment of the Moravian Church continues in the initial dogma even to this day.

Dr. Atwood himself seems to be seeking a re-establishment of that early doctrine of the Holy Spirit, not only for its intrinsic truth but for the good of the Church and perhaps even America.

Here’s my take on this account of accommodation to popular thought: as the reader of my blog postings is well-aware, I consider the perception of the femininity of the Holy Spirit not only to represent truth, but to be the only viable way to worship our Judeo-Christian God with the love that He demands of us. Beyond that, the transition of the Moravian Church to “normal” is just another sad tale in a very long litany of similar ungodly, cowardly acts of appeasement to majority thought, begun in the New Testament by Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus and continuing on to this very day, where we see, among other examples of falling-away, the Church’s attempt to accommodate herself to the false and thoroughly secular notion of evolution.

DISCOVERING THE BEAUTY

DISCOVERING THE BEAUTY IN SCRIPTURAL PASSAGES SOME THINK TO BE BAD

For a long time now, modern Churchgoers have questioned the motive and, even more seriously, the guiding Hand of the Holy Spirit behind Paul’s descriptions in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1Timothy 2 regarding the proper role of women in Church. Was Paul a misogynist, as some have claimed? Was he really listening to the voice of God when he wrote those passages?

“Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to bed under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”

“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.”

Given Paul’s beautiful description of the marriage between Christ and His Church in Ephesians 5:22-33, it is highly doubtful that Paul was a misogynist.

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

“Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife, see that she reverence her husband.”

It is inconceivable, to my mind, that Paul could have written the above passage under an attitude of disdain toward women, or worse, a rebellious streak of independence from God. It is far more likely that here, as well as in the two passages cited earlier, that Paul wrote under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who had something more profound to impart to the reader of Scripture than we have so far been able to grasp.

The problem with attempting to attribute Paul’s discussions of the woman’s role in Church to going off the reservation is that he was not the only one in Scripture to say what he did. Isaiah 3:12 and 1 Peter 3:1-5 have much the same to say:

“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they who lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”

“In the same manner, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the behavior of the wives, while they behold your chaste conduct coupled with fear; whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of the wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden person of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quite spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands.”

There is a rather commonplace answer to this issue that seems to be more female-friendly than a first reading of Scripture would suggest, and without overtly contradicting the Bible. It was stated quite nicely by James Rutz on page 122 of his book Mega Shift, and reflects the consensus of many theologians:

“We are told that ‘it is a shame for women to speak in the church.’ (1 Corinthians 14:35) Paul was not expounding on the topic of qualifications to be a pulpeteer; he was discussing orderliness vs. confusion in meetings. He was referring to the annoying, idle chatter (lalein, lalein) that occurred when illiterate first-century women were clumped together and left to figure out what on earth was going on by themselves. This word for ‘speak’ can also mean ‘an extended or random harangue,’ and who needs that?”

In a double-asterisk footnote on page 125, James Rutz also comments on legitimate Church gatherings where circumstances preclude the attendance of menfolk. To that, I respond by pointing to Scriptural examples of women legitimately performing male roles when the men fail to step up to the plate. Look, for example, at the story of the prophetess Deborah (Judges 4) for confirmation of that notion.

If that answer is satisfactory to the reader, I won’t argue to the contrary. Go for it, with my blessings.

But, knowing from 2 Peter 1:20 and 21 and from Paul himself in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 that all Scripture is inspired of the Holy Spirit and applies to all generations, I sense that something much more profound and supportive of the dignity of womanhood than a simple irritation is in play here. Perhaps a major clue to our understanding of Paul’s words is encapsulated in Ephesians 5:33: “. . .let every one of you. . .so love his wife even as himself; and the wife, see that she reverence her husband.” Notice in this sentence the different roles played by the man and his wife: the man loves, even sacrificially, while the woman reverences him. This difference harmonizes with the difference in roles spelled out for male and female from the very beginning in Genesis 2:

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help fit for him. . . And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”

Out of this passage one can quickly discern a significant differences in roles: the man is to be the initiator, and the woman the responder. We can directly understand this difference today in a more practical and earthly setting, merely by observing the two genders in their actions and interactions among others. This difference is more basic than cultural: it is the way that we were designed by God. It has nothing to do with equality; male and female have exactly the same standing before God, as Paul noted in Galatians 3:28:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, here is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Scripture also is quick to point out that the man’s role involves the burden of responsibility, to the point of sacrifice, and that should a man fail to assume his proper role, it is perfectly acceptable for a woman to take his place. To back that statement up, I again refer the reader to the example of Deborah in Judges 4.

God made male and female different for the purpose of harmony: the woman serves as a complementary other to the man. A responsive woman performs that purpose as a complementary other to the initiator man.

In my opinion the issue extends beyond the complementary way that God designed men and women. According to Genesis 1:26 and 27,

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

This passage, along with the story of Eve’s creation out of Adam in Genesis 2, appears to point back to the very form in which the Godhead exists, with the Holy Spirit interacting with the Divine Will that we know as the Father as His responsive Other, the Divine Means. If in fact there is truth to this perceived connection, and if indeed the Holy Spirit is functionally feminine as I strongly suspect, Paul’s demand of women that they remain silent during Church services represents nothing less than the call for women to behave as proper types of the Holy Spirit.

What an honor it would be for Christian women to represent the Holy Spirit! If such is the case, as I believe with my heart, the passages in Paul cited above, rather than maligning womanhood, exalts this gender with an awesome connection to God.

CONSPIRACY – IMAGINGED OR REAL?

 

The notion has been around for quite a while that a conspiracy might be afoot, wherein a cadre of enormously wealthy and powerful individuals band together to plot a worldwide system of government that will work to their exclusive advantage, effectively enslaving all but a privileged few.

Those who read their Bibles don’t find that to be so hard to believe. It’s right there in the pages of Scripture, particularly in Daniel and Revelation. In Daniel 2, for example, Daniel interprets a dream of King Nebudchadnezzar, the ruler who sacked Jerusalem and took Judah into captivity in the sixth century B.C. This troubling dream involved a metallic image representing the mightiest kingdoms of man on earth, appearing in sequence from the time of Nebudchadnezzar’s dream up until the time that Jesus reigns on earth.

“This is the dream, and we will tell its interpretation before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wherever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all.

“Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall rise another [silver] kingdom inferior to thee, and another kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things; and, as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, but there shall be in it of the strength of iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter; and the dream is certain, and the interpretation of it sure.”

Up to our own point in time, Daniel’s prophetic interpretation of Nebudchadnezzar’s dream has been sure indeed. Nebudchadnezzar’s Babylonian kingdom of gold came and went, as did the silver kingdom of the Persian Empire, and after that the brass kingdom of Alexander the Great. The iron kingdom of the Roman Empire followed the others in its rise and fall. Daniel in Chapter Seven also described these kingdoms in terms of animals: a lion, a bear, a leopard, and the most dreadful beast of all, which had iron teeth. These animals fit well with the features of the first four kingdoms. The Leopard, for example, is fleet of foot, as was Alexander in the speed with which he conquered the known world in the fourth century B.C.

We now await the rise and fall of Scripture’s final worldwide kingdom of man, Daniel’s kingdom in Chapter Two of iron and clay and in Chapter Seven having ten horns, also known as the kingdom of the antichrist as described in Revelation 13:

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as though it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshiped the dragon who gave power unto the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

“If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience of the saints.

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke like a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them who dwell on it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, that had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he hath power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”

This awful ten-horned beast that shall be the final kingdom of man has features that represent a composite of the earlier sequence of kingdoms spoken of in Chapter Seven of Daniel: lion, bear, leopard, and power from a great and terrible dragon. This similarity of features evokes a closer look at that chapter of Daniel. There, in verse 4, the lion is found to possess a feature of startling significance in a modern context.

“The first [beast] was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings; I beheld till its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man; and a man’s heart was given to it.”

The association of England with a lion is a common one; the lion is an iconic fixture of government buildings in that nation. It is also common knowledge that America sprang from English roots. Its first non-indigenous people were English, and it was an English colony before gaining its independence. Given that America’s icon is the eagle, this passage in Daniel, as Bible scholar Irvin Baxter first pointed out, very clearly relates to America. It is wrong, therefore, to assert as many theologians do that America can’t be found in the Bible. There are other Scriptural references to a modern kingdom that match well with America, such as the feckless young lions of Ezekiel 38:13 and the twice-fallen Babylon of Revelation 18. But these associations are more speculative than the eagle of Daniel Seven, which points quite strongly and, to my mind, unequivocally to the United States.

[to be continued]

FRAUDS

 

Several years ago in The Tacoma [WA] News-Tribune there was an article datelined London by Jill Lawless of the Associated Press entitled “Scientists study ‘missing link’ hoax”. The article described the so-called “discovery” in 1912 by amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson of an ancient and apparently pre-human hominid near the village of Piltdown in southern England. The age of the “Piltdown Man” skull, as it was subsequently labeled, was thought to be nearly a million years.

This widely-broadcast “find”, representing as it did the fervently-sought “missing link” between ape and man, lent tremendous support to Darwin’s controversial theory of evolution, seriously wounding the faith of many Christians and impacting even the houses of Christian theology, the seminaries. From Darwin’s time on, aided by such “finds”, Christians who had placed their faith in the inerrancy of the Bible desperately sought ways in which they might accommodate this new “fact” of evolution into the creation story of Genesis Chapter One.

For the next forty years, as Ms. Lawless’ article notes, the Piltdown Man was perceived to be irrefutable fact. By then, some seminaries had backed off from their stance on the inerrancy of the Bible, and many Christians, pastors and laypersons alike, had accepted this new thought into their personal understandings of Christianity.

The Piltdown Man was then exposed as a hoax, found to have consisted of a human skull (a few hundred years old) and the jaw of an orangutan. The fraudulent assembly was then stained to make it look ancient.

The rest of Ms. Lawless’ story centered on the ongoing scientific investigation into what possibly could have driven the perpetrator(s) of such an egregious hoax to do such a dastardly deed and, peripherally, what could have allowed it to have been accepted by science for so long. What was missing in her story is the half-hearted manner in which the scientists of that day up to the present, disseminated to the public the truth of the matter. It is doubtful that this omission was intentional, as was the flavor of her story, which appeared to convey the thought that this hoax was an exception to an otherwise completely honest run of subsequent “findings” of supposed “missing links”. One would think from the tale that this was a one-time aberration in a science dominated by objective researchers whose hearts were as pure as the driven snow.

Nothing could be further than the truth. The actuality of the matter is that the Piltdown Man was just one of an unbroken string of deliberate deceits. It wasn’t even the first. One Christian scholar who investigated the whole sordid affair up until the time of his passing was Dr. Grant Jeffrey.

According to Dr. Jeffrey, in his 2003 book Creation, published by Frontier Research Publications, Inc.,

“There is no fossil evidence to support evolution. Many Christians and Jews who have been troubled by the claims of evolution will be astonished to discover that the evolutionists knew all along that there was no fossil evidence in support of evolution. Yet, many textbooks and teachers boldly declared that the fossils proved evolution to be true.

“After a century and a half of claims by evolutionists that just a little more time would produce the necessary fossil evidence of the missing links between species that would confirm the theory of evolution, we find there is an astonishing and total lack of fossil evidence to confirm any indisputable transitional forms, or ‘missing links,’ that must exist if the theory of evolution were actually scientifically true. However, in over one hundred and fifty years of a massive global search by scientists that has catalogued over one hundred million fossil specimens in museums and laboratories, they have failed to discover a single ‘missing link’ fossil. If the evolutionists were intellectually honest, they would have abandoned evolution long ago.

“In 1859, Charles Darwin acknowledged that the utter lack of fossil evidence for these missing links between one species and another provided ‘an unanswerable objection’ to the theory of evolution. However, Darwin assumed that the search for fossils that would establish the truth of evolution was just beginning and that, given sufficient time and effort, scientists would soon discover the millions of transitional fossils required to prove that one species gradually transformed itself by natural selection into a new species.” [Italics in the original.]

Jeffrey goes on to say that “To date, though, every species discovered in the fossil record appears perfectly formed. Paleontologists have never discovered a fossil showing a partially formed species or a partially formed organ.”

He documents a number of supposed ‘missing links’ between ape and man, all of which were subsequently exposed as outright frauds. They are listed below.

With the help of untrained convicts, fossilized bone fragments of what came to be called Java Man were dug up in 1891 on the Indonesian island of Java. On the basis of nothing more than a fragment of a skull cap, three molar teeth and a bone fragment of a thighbone, the director of the find, Dr. Eugene Dubois, identified the fossils as belonging to Homo erectus, a humanoid three quarters of a million years old. Attempts to confirm his claims uncovered the following facts: the thighbone fragment was identical to that of a modern human; the skull cap was found forty-six feet away from the other fragments; there was no logical reason to associate the skull cap with the thighbone.

Piltdown Man I and II were supposedly discovered in 1912 and 1917 at the Piltdown quarry in England by amateur geologist Charles Dawson. In 1953, after over forty years of unquestioning acceptance of these findings as genuine, the skulls, after being examined by more modern techniques, were found to be intentional frauds. The skull described by Jeffrey was a composite of skull fragments of modern man and orangutan jaw. Worse, the bones had been dyed with bichromate of potash to make them appear ancient. Although evolutionists generally agree that Piltdown man was an outright fraud, they don’t speak much about this incident.

Nebraska Man was found in 1922 in western Nebraska by Professor Harold Cook. His find was supported by Dr. Henry F. Osborn, head of the American Museum of History, who touted the find as finally representing the evidence linking chimpanzees, Java Man and modern man. The Java man, as noted above, was since exposed as fictitious. So was Nebraska Man, whose supposed existence was used as evidence in the famous 1925 Scopes evolution trial. The problem was that the ‘evidence’ amounted to a single tooth, around which very imaginative evolution-minded artists created a picture of how they wished a missing link to look. It gets worse: the tooth was later found to have belonged to an extinct pig. The same fiction applies to the Southwest Colorado Man, another ‘evolutionary discovery’ that also turned out to have been based on a mere tooth, this one belonging to an ancient horse.

In 1932 another supposed missing link, Ramapithecus, was found in Africa. This ‘discovery’ amounted to nothing more than some fossilized teeth, which were later found to belong to the modern orangutan. Here again, evolutionists generally acknowledge this ‘discovery’ to be false.

Dr. Jeffrey also notes that the same kind of problems attend the discovery of ‘Lucy’ in 1974. In this case, Professor Richard Leakey claimed that ‘Lucy’ was an ape-like creature who walked upright. However, the lengths of the forearm fossils found in the vicinity strongly suggest that ‘Lucy’ walked on all fours like any other ape-like creature. Even Dr. Leakey admitted to exercising a large amount of imagination to create a picture from a few bone fragments. What puts the lie to these excursions of the imagination is that in many, if not all, cases there is actually no logical reason to assume that the fragments belong to a single creature.

Even with such a shady history of attempting to create missing links where missing links didn’t exist, the evolutionists continued to pull the wool over their own eyes as well of those of their associates and an all too-trusting public by trotting out Peking Man, Neanderthal Man, and Cro-Magnon man in a dismal and apparently desperate attempt to justify their system of belief. All three of these, it turns out, were nothing more nor less than fully human, a fact quite reluctantly admitted by the community of evolutionists.

If the history of evolutionists’ attempt to find the missing link between ape and man has yielded nothing more than a sordid collection of frauds, perhaps they can fall back on the find in Australia of an archaeopteryx fossil, this creature supposedly representing a link between reptiles and birds.

Perhaps not. At least not in honesty. The notion that this bird represents a transitional form came from its teeth, which are unusual in a bird and more usual to a reptile. Everything else about this fossil shows absolutely nothing contradictory to what constitutes a bird. The unusual feature of teeth is not so unusual after all, considering that some reptiles have no teeth while other fossils of birds do, and other strange creatures, like the duck-billed platypus, exist that are not considered to be missing links.

But what about the dinosaur-bird so highly publicized by the National Geographic magazine, who artistically (and fictionally) portrayed a baby dinosaur with feathers and claimed that birds belong to the family of bipedal dinosaurs.

Even the community of evolutionists was taken aback by this hasty conclusion. Jeffrey quotes Professor Storrs Olson, curator of birds at the Smithsonian in the following condemnation:

“National Geographic has reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism. . . It eventually became clear to me that National Geographic was not interested in anything other than the prevailing dogma that birds evolved from dinosaurs.”

Nor has the media changed its tune in the years since Ms. Lawless wrote the article. ‘Finds’ sporadically continue to surface, with no more justification than the others.

THE QUEEN MOTHER

 

In Chapter 2 of Scott Hahn’s book Hail, Holy Queen (one of my favorites), he comments on Jesus’ response during the wedding at Cana (John 2) to His mother’s words that “They have no wine.” At these words, Jesus tells her “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”

Many Bible commentators, Scott asserts, take Jesus’ words here as a rather harsh put-down to His mother, Mary. Scott defends Jesus’ response, noting that the phrase “what have you to do with me” actually can convey respect.

Without attempting to put words into Scott’s mouth or ideas into his head that he would take strong objection to (and already has elsewhere), I see throughout this book numerous instances of what many readers readily could interpret as quite brilliant defenses of the vision of a feminine Holy Spirit. In doing so, Dr. Hahn often seems to camouflage attributes rightly belonging to the Holy Spirit in the person of the Virgin Mary, just as the Catholic Church seems to do in a more general setting. Whether this tendency is intentional on Dr. Hahn’s part, only he can say.

While not intentionally disagreeing with Dr. Hahn’s attempt to defend the benign intent of Jesus’ words to Mary in John 2, these words evoke in my own mind the thought that perhaps Jesus, while responding to Mary, was thinking of how the wedding at Cana was but a foreshadow of His future marriage to His Church in the spiritual realm. Perhaps He was anticipating with great joy the time when His hour would finally come, when His spiritual Mother, the Holy Spirit, would participate in His future wedding to His Church. If such were indeed the case, this exchange between Jesus and Mary provides a beautiful Scriptural addition in support of the Holy Spirit’s femininity.

Farther along in the book, in Chapter 3, Dr. Hahn addresses the woman of Revelation 11:19 through 12, of which I extract parts below:

“And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his covenant; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven – a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she, being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

“And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and, behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born.

“And she brought forth a male child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up onto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”

Dr. Hahn notes that some theologians identify the woman of Revelation 12 as the Church, and proceeds to discuss why this identification doesn’t quite fit the Scriptural description. He then applies a more fitting identification of her as Mary, adding a beautifully profound association of her with the ark of Revelation 11:19: “If the first ark contained the Word of God in stone, Mary’s body contained the Word of God enfleshed.”

While his association of the Ark with Mary may be quite true, here again I perceive a yet higher association, one that, while not taking away from Mary’s role here, adds yet another layer to it. Noting that the location of the drama in Revelation 11 and 12 is in the spiritual domain, I would rephrase Dr. Hahn’s assertion as “If the first ark contained the Word of God in stone, and Mary’s body contained the Word of God enfleshed, the Holy Spirit contained the Word of God in Spirit.” I see the ultimate Woman of Revelation 12 as the Holy Spirit. To me, that image is quite beautiful.

Lately, I’ve taken to re-reading in the evenings the historical books of Scripture; Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. At the present time, in going through 2 Kings, I’ve noticed that as the kings and their deeds were recounted, mention was given of their mothers. In Chapter 4 of Hail, Holy Queen, Dr. Hahn addresses the importance of the Queen Mother to the King’s regime. His explanation of her status is most interesting: the practice of the kings of that era of taking multiple wives led to the awkward situation of selecting to whom would be bestowed the honor of serving in the primary position of queen. This situation was wisely avoided by placing the mother of the king in that exalted position. Scott Hahn revisits Revelation 12 in this chapter, enthroning Mary, as mother of Jesus, as the woman of such queenly stature as described in Revelation 12:1 and 2, as co-Regent of Jesus in His ultimate role of kingship over the earth.

While there may be some truth to Scott Hahn’s assignment here, I see a far more profound truth, and one more harmonious to the Scriptural text, in assigning to the Holy Spirit this same function.

SEVEN DAYS OF HUMAN HISTORY

SEVEN DAYS OF HUMAN HISTORY

The other night, remembering how much I enjoyed reading Dr. Scott Hahn’s book Hail, Holy Queen, I leafed through it again and came across one of his many profound commentaries, this one about the timing of the wedding in Cana in which Jesus not only participated, but worked His first miracle in changing water into wine.

The Scriptural account is given in John 2. I have pictured Jesus’ intimate participation in this event as looking forward with great joy to His own wedding to His Church. That outlook remains with me, being ever firmer with Scott’s commentary on the wedding event, as presented in his Chapter 2, on page 34, which addresses another issue pertaining to it – the timing of this future marriage of Jesus.

In arriving at John 2, Scott traced from the beginning of John 1 the use of John’s word ‘day”, which he claims was deliberate, imparting information beyond the plain text to the serious Biblical scholar. Up to John 2, Scott arrived at the timing of the precursors to the wedding event as four days. Then, he notes, the wedding itself occurred on the third day thereafter. Scott sees that as enormously significant, because that would place the wedding on the seventh day.

I am indebted to Dr. Hahn for bringing that timing to my attention, for it dovetails exceedingly well with my understanding of the Scriptural word ‘day’. In the creation epic of Genesis 1, God created the Earth and everything within it in six days, resting on the seventh and calling it a Holy Sabbath. As Scott Hahn apparently views it, this seven-day period also serves as an allegory of the timing of human history itself, in the terms of Psalm 90:4:

“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.”

Peter echoes this allegorical equivalence of a day to a thousand years in 2 Peter 3:8:

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

In the context of seven days representing seven thousand years, Jesus’ wedding would take place at the thousand-year millennium spoken of in Revelation 20:4, precisely when Jesus reigns on earth with His Bride, the Church:

And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them,; and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”

I had already perceived the span of human history as encompassing seven thousand years, as there are numerous indications of that same time scale throughout Scripture.

Take, for example, the Book of Hosea. In Hosea 3:4 and 5, the prophet describes the lengthy stretch of time that would encompass the diaspora of the Israelites:

“For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord, their God, and David, their king, and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.”

In Chapter Six verses 1 and 2, Hosea gets more specific:

“Come, and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.”

As the late Grant Jeffrey uncovered in Scripture (Ezekiel 4 and Leviticus 26) and I have noted in my novel Home, Sweet Heaven, Israel became a nation again as foretold on the precise day, May 15, 1948 in the third millennial day after the beginning of the diaspora.

For another example, Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus, as recounted in John 11, beginning in verse 11:

“These things said he; and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. The said his disciples, Lor, if he sleep, he shall do well. However, Jesus spoke of his death; but they thought that he had spoken of taking rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless, let us go unto him. Then said Thomas, who is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him. Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.”

Why did Jesus wait for four days to resurrect Lazarus? Because in this drama, Jesus was prophesying of His own death and resurrection, which occured on the fourth millennium from creation.

Jesus came in the flesh of the fourth ‘day’. In my opinion, His resurrection on the third day after His crucifixion has two meanings: the third literal day and the third millennium, when He shall return to Earth to reign for the seventh millennium of human history. This makes perfect sense in the context of Jesus’ words in John 2:19:

“Jesus answered, and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

What will Jesus raise up on the third “day” after His crucifixion? We, the Church. Remember from 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:19-22 that the Church herself, through her constituents, is a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the ultimate temple foreshadowed by the presence of the Glory of God in the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple (Exodus 40, 1 Kings 8):

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

“Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

As to how we shall be raised up, Paul furnishes the answer in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

“But I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.”

CESSATIONISM (CONTINUED)

CESSATIONISM (CONTINUED)

In her book Eucharistic Miracles, Catholic author Joan Carroll Cruz relates the following account of a ministry supported by tongues, this account occurring closer to our own time than that of the early Church:

“Another who shed tears before the Sacrament of the Altar was St. Francis Solano (d. 1610), a native of Andalusia, Spain who was pious and contemplative in his youth. He communicated frequently and devoutly and was able, because of his edifying example, to draw other youths to a similar devotion. At the age of 20 he entered the Franciscan Order, where he so impressed his superiors that soon after his ordination he was given the assignment of novice master. When King Philip II of Spain asked for missionaries for South America to evangelize the native Indians, St. Francis Solano volunteered and set out with a party of priests in 1589. After a trying trip in which his ship was wrecked in a storm, he found his way to Lima, Peru, where his principal labors took place. Because of his gift of tongues he was able to preach to wild tribes in their own dialect. It is said that during his missionary endeavors more than 9,000 persons asked for Baptism. The wildest animals were subject to him, and birds sang at his invitation – as they had for St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of his order.”

One can question the validity of this claim, although the validity itself of one’s question in that regard would be nothing more than a matter of opinion. But one cannot question the fact that the circumstances under which St. Francis Solano was reputed to have spoken in tongues was virtually identical to the situation at the birth of the Church, where Scripture itself openly declared the use of tongues in supporting its development. This fact alone refutes the reasoning behind Mr. Fisk’s declaration that the gift of tongues was a one-shot event.

In his diatribe against the use of the gift of tongues, Mr. Fisk makes another assertion, that the Holy Ghost was not given to individuals prior to Jesus’ glorification, which is demonstrably a patent falsehood. While this assertion may have been true during the period when Jesus was active in His ministry prior to the establishment of the Church, the Holy Spirit was certainly active within Jesus’ predecessor John the Baptist and his mother Elizabeth as well, for in Luke 1:39-45:

“And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah; and entered into the house of Zacharias, and greeted Elizabeth. And it came to pass that, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she spoke out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy greeting sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed; for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.”

There also are cases in the Old Testament where the Holy Spirit clearly indwelt selected individuals in order to accomplish the will of God in specific situations. An example that points directly to the Pentecost experience is presented in Numbers 11:25, where God gave the Spirit to the seventy elders, who subsequently prophesied “and did not cease”. Another example is given in Nehemiah 9:20, where the prophet recalls God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to individual Israelites to instruct them in the building of the temple.

Mr. Fisk’s assertions with respect to Acts 10 (the inclusion of Gentiles into the Church through the conversion of Cornelius) and Acts 19 (the establishment of Churches in new and predominantly Gentile lands) are based on the same presuppositions behind his commentary regarding Acts 2. As before, I make the counter-assertion that these situations, far from being unique to that period, are in effect existing at this very moment in various locales throughout the world. I also repeat my assertion that the referenced Scriptural accounts in no way imply that such situations would be unique to that time, nor even hint that the gift of tongues was unique to that period.

Regarding the gift of tongues as noted in First Corinthians 12-14, Mr. Fisk declares that while all Christians receive the indwelling Holy Spirit, not all speak in tongues, nor does this gift represent sanctification. Having established those points, he then distorts this basic understanding into the familiar assertion that the gift of tongues was reserved for unique situations (the ones he attempted to establish earlier and are supposedly no longer in existence) and eventually into the assertion that the practice was actually discouraged. Along the way, he addresses the real reason behind his assertions: the abuse of the gift of tongues. His statements with respect to this abuse reveal his reactionary overgeneralization, amounting to a desire to suppress the gift in order to stop the abuse, or, equivalently, to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

There is a particular passage, 1 Corinthians 13:10-12, that is a favorite of cessationists, being frequently cited as “proof” that the gift of tongues was fleeting in nature:

“But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then, face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

The gist of the cessationist argument here is that the gift of tongues was intended primarily for the apostolic age before Scripture was completed. When Scripture was fully written and canonized early on in the history of the Church, Christianity had come of age. Man now had the opportunity through Scripture to clearly see God in more detail than before, making the use of tongues unnecessary.

My response to this argument is that it is a gross misapplication of the passage. A more reasonable interpretation of “seeing (God) face to face” is in connection with 1 John 3:2 when we possess spiritual bodies:

“Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

Mr. Fisk concludes his discussion with a summary of his interpretation of what Scripture has to say about the gift of tongues. I will present below his various points along with my own commentary regarding them.

“Tongues served as an initiatory token to confirm the establishment of a new order, the Church” This is pure conjecture, not related to the cited Scriptural passages. In fact, as I have noted above, there are renewals currently taking place around the world whose circumstances closely resemble those encountered in Acts.

“The Holy Spirit’s power and blessing was entered into without tongues.” This over-generalization is arrogant and unjustified. The linkage of the indwelling Holy Spirit with the gift of tongues is a matter entirely up to God, most fortunately without the participation or direction of Mr. Fisk.

“Tongues was not given to all believers.” I’m tempted to agree with Mr. Fisk on this point, but then again, the gift and its exercise are two different things, so who’s to say whether we who don’t use the gift don’t do so because we don’t think we should or because our devotion is lacking.

“Tongues was only one of several spiritual gifts granted at that time.” Okay, but so what?

“Tongues evidently was a peculiarity of the age of apostolic signs and wonders.” Perhaps Mr. Fisk may think so, but that doesn’t make it true. There is no Scriptural basis whatsoever for this assertion.

“The appearance of tongues was manifestly occasional.” Perhaps, but by no stretch can that be interpreted (and over-generalized) to preclude its validity today.

“Tongues was an inferior gift, even in the day of its occurrence.” How wonderful that God has Mr. Fisk to tell him what’s important and what’s not in His relationship with mankind.

“Tongues is not to be sought, but passed by in favor of gifts that edify all.” At first, I tended to agree with Mr. Fisk on this point, as the seeking of tongues is a common starting point for abuse. On second thought, the implication made here by Mr. Fisk is that this gift, even if valid, is to be rejected in favor of “better” ones. If this is indeed what Mr. Fisk meant, he’ll have a lot to answer for to God. I, for one, would never be so impudent with God as to reject an offered gift.

“If manifest, the employment of tongues was sharply restricted and regulated.” Certainly, because of the obvious problem of abuse. But again, who is man to turn up his nose at anything offered by God?

“Indications are that tongues would not be permanent.” This is a restatement of an earlier point he made regarding the uniqueness in time of the gift of tongues. Again, there is absolutely no Scriptural justification for this statement.

In conclusion of my review of Mr. Fisk’s commentary on the gift of tongues, I assert that he is doing exactly the same thing as those who he claims are abusers of the gift: he’s attempting to put the Holy Spirit, and thus God, into a box of his own design and dimensions. In doing so, he’s creating his own God. But his box is not only glaringly hypocritical, it is even more confining and ugly that the one he accuses the abusers of creating.

CESSATIONISM

CESSATIONISM

I once knew a person, a close relative actually, who would periodically express outrage at some perceived injustice in the world. At such times he would express his heartfelt desire to stamp out the root cause of this injustice or abuse, which inevitably would turn out to be closely related to the item that was abused, if not the item itself. If a car had run through an intersection without looking and caused an accident, he would demand, usually by written notice to the city fathers, that a stop sign be placed on every intersection. If a tree fell during a windstorm, he would insist that all trees over a certain height or age be cut down.

There’s a well-used phrase that describes such over-the-top, knee-jerk, all-encompassing and basically thoughtless over-reaction. It’s called “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.

Recently I was handed a small pamphlet that apparently represents the prevailing Baptist position on tongues. Entitled Speaking in Tongues in the Light of the Scripture, this booklet by Samuel Fisk, published in 1967 by College Press on behalf of Western Baptist Bible College, attempts to demonstrate Scripturally why speaking in tongues is inapplicable to the modern Christian experience. In other words, according to Mr. Fisk, some gifts of the Spirit have essentially ceased, since they are no longer necessary to the spread of the Gospel message. The formal name for this supposition is cessationism.

The Baptist position on tongues has been long established: the practice is neither necessary nor appropriate to Church worship; moreover, it is disruptive to the orderly conduct of the service. To give the benefit of doubt to the Baptist community, it may have been driven to this position by excesses in other sectors of the Christian faith. The motivation behind the publication of this booklet, as well as the Baptist position itself, could be a reactionary stance against the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements that emphasize the ability to speak in tongues as an outward sign of having been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. As I know from personal experience, some congregations of the Charismatic persuasion have indeed thoroughly abused this gift by attempting to call forth the Holy Spirit during worship services, as if God Himself is on call to respond to such self-serving requests. This practice, in effect, tries to place the Holy Spirit into a box of the Church’s own choosing, thus attempting to confine God into a position of obedience to man. Jesus made it perfectly plain during his talk with Nicodemus in John Chapter Three that the Holy Spirit does what God wants, and when and where God wants it to be done.

I have witnessed such an abuse of the practice of speaking in tongues by attempts to call forth the Holy Spirit through the use of “mood singing”. That Church placed such importance on the gift of tongues that Scripture itself was subordinated to it. The subordination of Scripture caused me to leave the Church. Therefore, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Fisk’s concern: it is real. But his response heads in the wrong direction.

Cessationists, Mr. Fisk included, attempt to set the record straight on the issue of speaking in tongues by appealing to Scriptural references to the practice, which are basically limited to three books in the Bible: Mark 16, Acts 2, 10 and 19, and l Corinthians.

So far so good. But then Mr. Fisk starts to over-react, with what I consider to be devastating consequences.

With respect to the passage in Mark, Mr. Fisk argues that the manifestation of tongues was a sign following the preaching of the Gospel to a world to which the Gospel was novel, namely the time in which the Church was newly founded following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here the author attempts to show that the gift of tongues was a one-shot event, reserved for the very early Church following the first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection. As if to add credence to this notion, he makes the observation that other gifts of the Spirit, such as healing of deadly wounds and sicknesses and casting out devils, cannot be seen today. In direct opposition to this observation, Christian news sources such as Prophesy News Watch (PNW) and World Net Daily (WND) often cite counter-references to this claim, in which modern instances of healings and exorcisms are well-verified, having been attested to by multiple witnesses. As a matter of fact, in locations today such as Asia and Africa where persecution of Christians is both commonplace and brutal, claims have been made of a new Pentecostal experience with the same manifestations as described in the Book of Acts. A July 9, 2016 WND news article noted the intensity and strength of God’s interaction with the persecuted Christians, which included visions, healings and even resurrections.

In his discussion of tongues in the context of Mark, Mr. Fisk makes an unjustified, and in my mind egregiously illogical, extrapolation of Scripture to suit his preconceptions. The relevant passage, Mark 16:15-18, consisted of words by Jesus to His disciples following His resurrection:

“And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow those who believe: In my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

Nowhere does the applicable passage of Mark even imply that the gift of tongues was limited to the Apostles alone, or to a single period of time. Nor is it proper to hint, as he does, that the very exercise of the gift of tongues represents a theological error. Mr. Fisk simply attaches his own “reason” for the gift of tongues to what Mark actually wrote about it, which is that the gift was only given to Jesus’ disciples and only because the Gospel was so new to the world. He then claims on the basis of that manufactured supposition that this “reason” no longer exists. He is really saying that modern Pentecostal attempts to exercise this gift amounts to abuse. However, even if he is correct about perceived excesses, it is illogical to attack an abuse of a quality by attacking the quality itself. That kind of reaction amounts to over-reaction, a “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. This mindset can reach beyond nonsense to cruelty, a historical instance of which existed in the inhumane practices associated with the Inquisition.

Regarding the accounts in Acts of tongues, Mr. Fisk is quick to point out the significance of the small number of instances in which tongues is mentioned, which, as he says, indicates the small value of this gift. Here the relevant passages are Acts 2:7,8, followed by Peter’s sermon in which three thousand souls came to accept the salvation of Jesus Christ.:

“And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?”

Mr. Fisk’s claim here is that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was a novel event underscored as a legitimate act of God through the sign of speaking in tongues. The tongues, moreover, were intelligible words to the listeners. Yet further, there is relatively little mention of the use of tongues after that event. Similarly, Acts 10, involving Peter’s bringing the gospel to the gentiles through Cornelius and his family, was another unique event that required the confirmation by extraordinary means that God intended that the Gentiles be included in His gift of salvation. Another extraordinary event in which speaking in tongues is mentioned is the re-baptizing in Jesus of those who were baptized by John. The account is given in Acts 19:3-6:

“And [Paul] said unto them, have ye received the Holy Spirit since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there is any Holy Spirit. And he said unto them, Unto what, then, were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him who should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke with tongues, and prophesied.”

Mr. Fisk’s commentary regarding the significance of the few instances in Acts of the use of tongues is mere supposition that can be countered by pointing to other qualities of our relationship with God that, while exceedingly important, are also mentioned but a few times. An example is Paul’s message in Ephesians 5 regarding the Church’s marriage to Christ. As for the account of tongues in the Pentecost, Acts 2, Mr. Fisk claims that this event was never repeated. This statement would be true for him, because virtually by his own definition all modern accounts of speaking in tongues are fraudulent. But such a statement is an outrageously arrogant and biased presuppositional error.

In virtually every new generation in diverse locations throughout the world, the Holy Spirit is not known. Indeed, in many parts of America today the Bible itself is not understood and await a person of God to step in and offer the Gospel message. In areas where Christians are routinely persecuted, unlike the relatively comfortable circumstances of Mr. Fisk’s world, there are numerous accounts of the gift of tongues. I myself, despite my own witness of abuse of this gift, am also a probable witness of genuine instances of this gift. Again, Mr. Fisk supplies no logical basis for his assertion that the gift of tongues was never repeated. It was simply conjecture on his part, conditioned by his own presupposition regarding the gift and having no definitive Scriptural basis. The majority of his argument regarding Acts 2 represents a story of his own manufacture, again based on conjecture. He embellishes on the Scriptural account without actual Scriptural justification for it. He repeats the charge that the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit following Jesus’ resurrection was a unique event caused by a unique situation, namely the need to get the Church started. His assertions refuse to grasp the essential notion that there are many situations throughout the centuries in various regions of the world, particularly those where the Gospel has been suppressed by wicked governmental systems, that the Church must be freshly and newly established, often repeatedly. Consider, for example, the growth of the Church in Russia, China, Indochina and the Muslim nations over the past several decades, where suppression is and has been extreme.

[to be continued]

MORE GENDER THOUGHTS

MORE GENDER THOUGHTS

The issue of the Holy Spirit’s gender is important enough to continue pursuing it a bit. If, for example, the first chapters of Genesis as noted in my blog posting Significance of a Feminine Holy Spirit do indeed suggest gender-based facts regarding the nature of the Godhead, why doesn’t the rest of the Bible go along with the understanding hinted at there?

But the Bible does go along with it. In their haste to cleanse the Church of gender, the Church Fathers glossed over those passages in Scripture that seem to have confirmed this beginning overview of God’s nature, not recognizing them for what they may have intended to convey. Expositions of the Old Testament book of Ruth, for example, routinely assign the person of Naomi as representing Israel. They do the same with the Woman of Revelation 12, except that the Catholic Church insists instead that the Woman represented there is Mary. In both cases, the recognition of the Holy Spirit as feminine makes Her by far the best candidate.

The Glory of God (Shekinah) who indwelt the Tabernacle of the Wilderness Exodus 40) and Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 8) at their dedications, and who foreshadowed the Holy Spirit who indwells Christians as living temples of God (1 Corinthians 2:19-22 and Ephesians 3:16), was always considered by the Jews to be feminine. Incidentally, I wonder whether many theologians have understood the connection between the Shekinah of the temple dedications and the Holy Spirit of the Pentecost. I have never heard of that link being made in the many Church sermons and Bible studies that I have been privy to. Again, understanding the Holy Spirit as feminine puts a whole new slant on the Word of God.

Despite the many allusions to The Holy Spirit as the subject of the Book of Proverbs, particularly in Chapter Three and Eight, the mainstream interpretation of the feminine persona in Proverbs is simply that of a mere literary device. That viewpoint changes instantly with the recognition of the Holy Spirit as possessing a feminine gender.

How do the mainstream theologians handle the overtly erotic content of The Song of Solomon? I don’t know, because I’ve never heard a pastor or a Bible study leader mention the topic. The commentaries I’ve read do acknowledge the sexual nature of the book and, in line with Ephesians 5:31 and 32, they often directly link the subject with the future marriage of Christ with His Church. Regarding the implications of that association with respect to the gendered nature of the Godhead in general, commentaries of that flavor truly open a can of worms that most pastors wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. One of the pastors of my acquaintance indirectly acknowledges the viability of such commentaries, but then turns around and claims that God is genderless. Another example of Orwell’s doublethink.

The Pharisee Nicodemus had a hard time wrapping his arms around Jesus’ claim in John 3 that entrance into the kingdom of heaven required a person to be born again of the Holy Spirit. To this day, theologians have a hard time wrapping their arms around the implications of Jesus’ talk to Nicodemus, which is that His association of spiritual birth with the Holy Spirit automatically confers the role of femininity upon Her.

Taken on an individual basis, some of the associations that I’ve noted above between Biblical passages and the Holy Spirit, like in Ruth and Proverbs, wouldn’t be readily apparent to the person who doesn’t share my vision of the Holy Spirit. I get that. But in the aggregate, the sheer number of associations like that which can be extracted from Scripture add much weight to my point of view. Moreover, there are passages like John 3 that are so obvious in that association that I simply can’t conceive how a viewpoint that excludes the femininity of the Holy Spirit is possible to a logical mind.

Is it really a good idea to pursue a contentious issue regarding Church doctrine at a time when the Church is faced with such a rapid falling away from Scriptural truths and indifferent laypersons are leaving the Church behind in droves? I think so, because I perceive that the very difficulties that the Church is now facing are directly connected to the basic misunderstanding of Scripture that I’m attempting to address.

SIGNIFICANCE OF A FEMININE HOLY SPIRIT

SIGNIFICANCE OF A FEMININE HOLY SPIRIT

A major implication of perceiving the Holy Spirit’s femininity is the replacement of confusion with understanding. Once that connection is made, the Godhead’s attribute of Unity in the face of Trinity is no longer a logical inconsistency; the understanding itself immediately emerges with the depth of full intuition, so boldly as to evoke not only a sense of functional differentiation among the Members of the Godhead, but also to resolve the former paradox of unity in Trinity and to encourage the assignment of specific functions to each of them.

The Trinity, given the inclusion of femininity, at once is seen in a Family context. Viewing the Godhead in context of Family, the Family Entity resides above the three Members of the Trinity, representing the oneness of God in loving relationship, to which the individual Members are subordinate. In that setting, the Trinitarian Godhead represents the unity of Family, whereas the individual Members of the Godhead represent the three familiar functional roles of Father, Mother and Son.

In the context of function, the Father naturally represents the Divine Will in accordance with that assignment as given in Scripture, whereas the Holy Spirit responds to that Will by furnishing the Means by which it may be actualized. Pursuing that context, the Son represents the result of the union between Will and Means, being the Will’s actuality in Creation.

Key to understanding the Divine Family is the notion of complementary otherness implicit in the relationship. The importance of complementary otherness is its very partiality, which in the incompleteness of one partner without the other removes the exaltation of the individual. Even, or perhaps especially in the Godhead, ego is deliberately minimized by design.

It is my conviction that the Father Himself, in his own selfless nobility, willed the implementation of His subordination to Family, with love as His motive for doing so. Parting Himself in two, He voluntarily limited His unrivaled personal sovereignty over the universe to a shared arrangement with that element of His former essence that we call the Holy Spirit. This parting created gender differentiation within the Godhead Itself As the Complementary Other to the masculine initiative essence of the Divine Father, the Holy Spirit necessarily possesses the responsive gender attribute of femininity.

This Family-based gendered view of the Godhead elevates several verses of Genesis 1 and 2 beyond mere descriptive images of mankind, as we are used to understanding them, to very elemental depictions of the Godhead Itself.

Genesis 1:26 and 27 reads as follows:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of he air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

In their usual interpretation of this passage, commentators on Genesis regularly interpret the image of God in which man was created to consist of character attributes, avoiding any association of mankind’s rather significant gender attributes with God Himself. That interpretation deliberately and without justification ignores the conspicuous inclusion of gender in the passage.

In Genesis 2:18 through 22 the creation of Eve out of Adam is related in interesting detail. As this passage follows the creation of Adam out of the earth and some subsequent activities of Adam, its usual interpretation is that Eve’s creation historically followed that of Adam’s, without further elaboration. While the sequence under that interpretation may or may not be correct, an interpretation under the understanding of a fully-gendered Godhead is far more significant. The passage is presented below:

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help fit for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help fit for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

Under the standard interpretation there are some enigmatic elements, such as the question as to why God had Adam name the beasts before giving him Eve, and why God didn’t prescribe the same procedure for creating female animals out of the males.

The answer is, obviously, that man alone out of Creation was made in God’s image, and the account of the creation of Adam and Eve in God’s image says something about God Himself as well as mankind. The passage quoted above is not incidental; it is an elaboration for emphasis of God’s own nature.

Note in that passage that God described the state of Adam being without a companion as not good. Being without a feminine companion would render Adam, for all practical purposes, genderless. The attribute of gender was important to God, which suggests that God considers gender and its exercise as intrinsically good, rather than bad. The passage goes out of its way to make that plain. Again, in an interpretation more in line with what the Scripture suggests, the creation of Eve from Adam echoes rather distinctly the Father’s extraction of the Holy Spirit from His own essence.

Directly following that passage in Genesis 2:23-25 is another gender-oriented one:

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

Adam spoke these words before the Fall; therefore the union between man and woman was viewed by the primal couple as being God-given and nothing to be ashamed of, precisely as God intended. It was only after the Fall that sexual shame came into the picture.

This passage was so important to God that it was repeated twice elsewhere in Scripture, first by Jesus in Matthew 19:4 through 6 and then by Paul in Ephesians 5:31 and 32:

And [Jesus] answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he who made them at the beginning, made them male and female; and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

Notice, in the statement above attributed to Jesus, that He credited Adam’s quote to God Himself. The quote is obviously of great importance to God, not only because it was echoed by Jesus and Paul, but makes the claim that Jesus, as a Member of the Godhead, will marry the Church. The implication in this is that if gender union applies to one Member of the Godhead, it places the attribute of gender squarely in the Godhead, further suggesting that gender is an attribute shared by the Father and Holy Spirit as well. Moreover, the natural fruit of the union between Father and Holy Spirit is the Son Jesus, the glorious actualization of the Will as given birth by the Divine Means.

Here’s the great beauty of what the Father did in his selfless parting of Himself to form the Holy Spirit: what He gave up in doing that He regained in love in union with Her. That is the true significance of the implication of Adams words: “a Man shall cleave unto to his Wife, and they two shall be one Spirit.”

Just as Adam’s side was rent to form Eve, and as the Church was formed out of Jesus’ pierced side on the cross, so did the Father part Himself to form the Holy Spirit, with Whom He united in love to form Jesus Christ.

God intended our relationship with Him to be intimate and romantic. Only through our perception of the Godhead in Family terms can we begin to appreciate and love God as Jesus calls us to do in Matthew 22:37 and 38:

“. . .Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”

DOES LEAVEN ALWAYS REPRESENT SIN?

DOES LEAVEN REPRESENT SIN?

Does Leaven, according to Scripture, represent sin? The answer is yes and no. More definitively, the appropriate Scripturally-based answer for the use of leaven as a metaphor is yes, often, but sometimes no. The metaphor of leaven must be qualified as to source and age, as there are Scriptural references both to leaven as sinful and as welcome to believers.

Metaphorically, leaven in the context of Scripture represents the multiplication through propagation of something such as a spoken word that spreads through a crowd from mouth to mouth. The bread in Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes was itself a metaphor for the spread of His Word; in that event, the metaphorical leaven was the hand-to-hand distribution of the bread as well as the mouth-to-mouth distribution of His Word. (Refer to Part Five of Family of God, Appendix 2 of Marching to a Worthy Drummer, or Chapter Eighteen of the novel Cathy for details of Jesus’ feeding process.)

Jesus’ comments to His disciples in Mark 8:13-21 regarding the feeding of the multitudes includes mention of leaven, illustrating the importance of the qualifier He used with respect to that word:

“And [Jesus] left them and, entering into the boat again, departed to the other side. Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the boat with them more than one loaf. And he charged them, saying, Take heed. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread. And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? Perceive ye not yet, nor understand? Have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not? And do ye not remember? When I broke the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven. And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?”

Jesus had just fed the multitudes. In doing so, He metaphorically demonstrated the leaven-like multiplication of His Word along with the physical multiplication of bread. The leaven in that sense was of God, and so was anything but evil. In talking with His disciples, His also used the word “leaven” in a negative sense, connoting evil. But in doing so, He specifically qualified that word with “of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod”. Like old leaven, the teachings of the Pharisees and of Herod were contaminated versions of the Word of God.

In Leviticus 23:6 is found another indication of bad leaven:

“And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.”

Indeed, Jewish tradition called for a thorough housecleaning prior to this feast, where every nook and cranny would be swept clean of all traces of the old leaven. But throughout the year before this event the leaven in the house had aged and probably was contaminated with many airborne substances.

This tradition probably contributed much to the notion that a lack of leaven represented purity. Many Christian “authorities” are prone to proclaiming that leaven across the board is symbolic of sin. They go too far, overgeneralizing a frequent but not exclusive representation, neglecting for example the very important passage in Leviticus 23:15-17:

“And ye shall count unto you from the next day after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be complete: even unto the next day after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days and ye shall offer a new meal offering unto the Lord.

“Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth parts; they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the first fruits unto the Lord.”

This is the feast of Pentecost, which looked forward to the filling of the new Church with the indwelling Holy Spirit fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection. The account of this blessed event is given in Acts 2:1-8:

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly here came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because every man heard them speak in his own languate. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?”

It is possible that here the leaven represents the propagation of the Gospel through Spirit-filled Christians, a context in which leaven is far removed from sin.

IS PASSION INTRINSIC TO GOD?

IS PASSION INTRINSIC TO GOD?

Having swept the Church clean of all matters involving the hint of sexuality, the post-Nicaean Church leadership preserved this sterilization through the expedient of canonizing its dogma, thereby avoiding further dispute over the matter. At the time, given the rampant sexual immorality of the pagan society surrounding the Christian community, it made perfect sense to divorce sexuality from their religion. Despite intimations of romance and sexuality within Scripture itself, the obvious nobility of God as depicted in Scripture demanded in the Christian mind the equation of holiness to chastity, at least in the Christian understanding of God.

Yet some persistent contradictions remained under this regime of sterilization: marriage was ordained and blessed by God; notions of gender differentiation within the Godhead kept emerging; the attempt to reconcile God as One with God as Trinity led to confusion and uncertainty; and the Song of Solomon stood out in open opposition to the thought that the Godhead lacked a romantic element.

Nevertheless, a neutered Mary was held up as the standard of Christian sexual morality. Then, during the turbulent years of the fifteen hundreds when, driven by Martin Luther and John Calvin, the Protestant arm separated itself from the Mother Church and Mary’s influence waned within it, Jerome Zanchius emerged to formalize the idea of God’s distance from romance and passion.

Right up to the present time the Catholic Church continued to have Mary as her standard, and the Protestant Church was heavily influenced by medieval theologian Jerome Zanchius and his pseudo-rigorous but extra-Scriptural development of a concept of God in which He is said to be void of passion.

It was in reference to this source that I was brought to heel after having written Family of God. I was told rather sternly that God is generally not assumed to possess passion, certainly not of a nature that would admit of a romantic union between Father and Holy Spirit.

But Scripture portrays God as possessing passion, even romantic ardor. The notion that God is above love of a passionate nature violates Scripture, the most obvious case being the passion intricately woven into the Song of Solomon, otherwise known as the Song of Songs or the Canticles. At least two Bible commentaries (in the Reformation Study Bible, New King James Version and in the New Schofield Reference Bible, both as introductions to the Song of Solomon, consider the Song to be an allegory of the future union of Jesus Christ with His Church.

A host of Christian authorities readily acknowledge that it speaks of marital love in terms of passion and ardor. The same authorities admit even the erotic nature of some of its verses. The 1995 Reformation Study Bible (New King James Version), for example has this to say of the subject matter of the Song of Solomon:

“The beauty and worth of sexual love is affirmed at the beginning of the Bible, where the difference and relationship of the sexes is associated with the creation of humanity in God’s image (Gen. 1:27; cf. 2:19-25) If sexual love were evil in itself, it would be inappropriate as an allegory of Christ’s love for His church.”

Here Editor R. C. Sproul and his associates not only acknowledge the sexuality of the topic, but link it to both the nature of the Godhead and with the relationship between Christ and His Church. Indeed, in their same introductory commentary, the editors make the following statements:

“The Song of Solomon reveals three qualities of love between a man and a woman: self-giving, desire, and commitment. In all these ways love reflects the greater love of God our Creator. God delights in us and gives Himself to us. . . Christian marriage, according to Paul, should be modeled on the most perfect expression of such love, the self-giving love of Christ for His church and its willing response (Eph. 5:22, 23). The climax of the Song of Solomon is the praise of vehement and faithful love (8:6,7). The Song of Solomon. . .looks back to the gift of love in creation, and forward to the perfection of love in One greater than Solomon, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Obviously I perceive an intimate connection in the Song of Solomon regarding the relationship between the Father and the Holy Spirit as well as that between Jesus and His Church. Connected with that perception is my belief that the Holy Spirit essentially forms the subject matter of the Book of Proverbs. The commentary on the Song of Solomon in the Reformation Study Bible hints of this same connection in its acknowledgement of the Book’s emphasis on marital love:

“Many interpreters, both Jewish and Christian, have regarded the Song as an allegory of God’s love for Israel or the Church. The association of the book with Solomon, however, points us in the direction of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Wisdom literature is distinguished, among other things, by its focus on the common sphere of human relationships. The Book of Proverbs uses language similar to that of the Song of Solomon in talking about marital love (Prov. 5:15-19), the subject of the Song. This love must finally be seen in the context of the even greater love of God.”

The commentary on the Song of Solomon presented in the New Schofield Reference Bible (1967 Edition edited by C. I. Schofield) echoes, but even more forcefully, that given in the Reformation Study Bible:

“Nowhere in Scripture does the unspiritual mind tread upon ground so mysterious and incomprehensible as in this book, whereas saintly men and women throughout the ages have found it a source of pure and exquisite delight. That the love of the divine Bridegroom, symbolized here by Solomon’s love for the Shulamite maiden, should follow the analogy of the marriage relationship seems evil only to minds that are so ascetic that marital desire itself appears to them to be unholy.

“The book is the expression of pure marital love as ordained by God in creation, and the vindication of that love as against both asceticism and lust – the two profanations of the holiness of marriage. Its interpretation is threefold: (1) as a vivid unfolding of Solomon’s love for a Shulamite girl; (2) as a figurative revelation of God’s love for His covenant people, Israel, the wife of the Lord (Isa. 54:5-6; Jer. 2:2; Ezek. 16:8-14, 20-21, 32, 38; Hos. 2:16, 18-20); and (3) as an allegory of Christ’s love for His heavenly bride, the Church (2 Cor. 11:1-2, refs., Eph 5:25-32).”

As there appears to be a general agreement among established Biblical authorities regarding the relevance of this openly passionate Book to Christ and His Church, and there appears to be a similarly general agreement among established Biblical authorities regarding the Diety of Jesus Christ, an inescapable observation must be made: At least one Member of the Divine Godhead is openly acknowledged to be fully capable and willing to (passionately) exercise His male gender. That said, why would one Member of the Godhead be endowed with such an attribute while the other two would not be? That utterly confusing and contradictory state of affairs could be acceptable only to an avowed ascetic, an attribute which I concur with the editors of the Schofield Bible to be a profanation of God and His Creation.

The Song of Solomon itself establishes, if somewhat indirectly, a female gender of the Holy Spirit by associating in no less than three verses (2:14, 5:2 and 6:9) the nature of the (eminently female) Shulamite with that of a dove. Actually, where a dove is noted in Scripture (KJV) and associated with a specific gender, that gender invariably is female. The particular verses where gender is described are: Genesis 8:9, 11; Psalm 68:13; Song of Solomon as noted above; and Jeremiah 48:28. The dove, of course, is a well-known symbol of the Holy Spirit as presented, for example, in Matthew 3:16:

“And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.”

The bottom line is, of course, what Scripture has to say about the notion that the Godhead might Itself be a family, a characteristic that would make sense only if God the Son had a Holy Mother, a functionally feminine complement to the Holy Father. Can this notion be found anywhere in Scripture? Indeed it can, in Ephesians 3:14 and 15:

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, . . .”

IS GOD DUAL-GENDERED?

IS GOD DUAL-GENDERED?

In a previous posting I explained why a genderless heaven doesn’t make sense. As I had noted there, the usual argument for that false supposition fails to take into account the distinction between individuals and the Church as an aggregate body. But lurking behind that argument also is a bit of discomfort with the notion that heaven might be polluted with sexuality, which is a carryover from another false notion that’s been around for a long time – the idea that purity equates to chastity. That’s why, when a Christian who is afflicted with that notion is confronted with the probability of a gendered heaven, he will attempt to keep the Godhead pure of any implication of passion, romance or sexuality by taking the other extreme of applying both genders to each of the Members – the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus.

The idea that God lacks passion is at odds with Scripture and will be addressed in another posting. The focus for now will be the absurd notion that each of the Members of the Godhead is dual-gendered, possessing features of masculinity and femininity.

One can see how such an idea came about. It doesn’t take an in-depth understanding of Scripture to perceive that within the Godhead are both masculine and feminine attributes. Given that understanding, the only possible gender arrangement that maintains a lack of sexuality would be dual-gendered Godhood, applied equally to each Member of the Godhead.

Perhaps it is this kind of mistaken understanding riding on the back of shallow thought that led respected Catholic theologian Father Macquarrie and a host of other would-be expositors of Scripture throughout the centuries, in recognizing gender-based traits within the Godhead, to attribute facets of both genders to each of its Divine Members.

There are at least two logical reasons for rejecting dual-genderhood in God, both based on Scripture. The first is God’s detestation of gender ambiguity and its contradiction of the Scriptural portrayal of strong masculinity of both The Father and Jesus, as well as the proscriptions in both the Old and New Testaments against weak masculinity and sexual impotence. Among these are the following clearly-stated passages in both the Old and New Testaments:

“He who is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”

• Deuteronomy 23:1

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

• 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10

The second issue with dual genderhood is its blatant contradiction of the principal of complementary otherhood with which God had so thoroughly imbued His creation and infused within Scripture. The essence of maleness and femaleness is that together they form a complementary pair wherein each offers the partnership that which is lacking in the other and which is necessary to make a complete whole. That this complementary otherhood is representative of the Godhead itself is manifestly clear in Genesis 1:26 and 27:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

If God indeed was dual-gendered, He most easily could have created mankind with both genders, as would be appropriate to creating them in His own image. Then each person would be self-sufficient unto himself.

Why didn’t God do just that? Probably the most important reason why he didn’t can be found in the general sense of God’s nature as presented in Scripture. When one looks at the Bible in its entirety, one surmises that the attribute that stands out above all others is His selfless nobility, a quality that demands otherhood, something outside oneself upon which one can confer love and adoration. Any alternative to otherhood would promote narcissism, or self-love.

The quality of complementary otherhood also explains the necessity for a Trinitarian Godhead. The Trinity in this context would consist of a fully masculine Father, a fully feminine Mother, and a fully masculine Son Jesus. Only in such a Family setting can one intuitively perceive the presence of selfless nobility and a bond of love among its Members so strong as to support the notion of monotheism.

IS GOD GENDERLESS?

IS GOD GENDERLESS?

I have devoted much time toward demonstrating by Scripture that the Holy Spirit is functionally feminine. I have written two Christian nonfiction works and four novels largely focused on that topic. For much of that time I had thought that the biggest stumbling block preventing more Christians from perceiving what I have considered to be obvious is the use in our Bibles of masculine pronouns when referencing the Holy Spirit. I had placed the blame for those “he” references on overly-zealous translations from the original autographs by misguided Christians.

That supposition is indeed true: things did get changed in the translations, for reasons that I have noted in Marching to a Worthy Drummer. But the situation is worse than that. Lurking behind that error has been a misperception, rampant within mainstream Christianity, that gender itself doesn’t belong in the heavenly realm. Quite recently, one person remarked to me “But there’s no procreation in heaven!”

That says it all. From whence came such a stupendously sterile assessment of the spiritual domain? Let me guess – perhaps the notion came from Scripture itself in Jesus’ words to the effect that in heaven men don’t marry, or in Paul’s words that there is neither male nor female. The first comes from Matthew 22:29 and 30, and the second from Galatians 3:28:

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven.”

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Since when is the lack of an attribute associated with the “power of God”? In failing to understand Scripture beyond the level of the most shallow thought processes and refusing to appreciate every word and phrase, the readers acquired a notion that directly contradicts the rest of the Bible. How then do they handle The Song of Solomon, with its vivid description of passion and romantic love? They can only gloss over it without thought, never asking themselves why, if gender doesn’t belong in the Godhead, the Song was canonized in Scripture, or why Jesus’ first miracle occurred joyfully during the wedding in Cana, or why Paul wrote what he did in Ephesians 5, the bottom line of which is repeated below:

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

What those two passages regarding the lack of gendered function in individuals really meant, if one truly thinks about them, is that the Church is a composite of individuals, not the individuals themselves. Our physical bodies contain a large number of organs, most of which have nothing to do with gender. But if a spleen is genderless, that certainly doesn’t mean that the person to which it belongs is without gender. The exact same principle applies to the distinction between the individual Christian and the Church which consists of many individual Christians. In more than one passage, Paul attempted to make that clear. An example of the aggregate nature of the Church is given in Ephesians 4:11-16:

“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers. For the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, who is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.”

1 Corinthians 12:4-27 also represents a passage describing the Church as an aggregate of individual persons, and is even more detailed in its depiction of our individuality as parts of a greater and different whole than the passage in Ephesians 4:

“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences in administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit. For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, various kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members, every one of them, in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: and those members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need; but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”

Tongue-in-cheek, I emphasized the distinction between the individual and the aggregate in Marching to a Worthy Drummer, hoping to clarify the issue:

“If, now, we revisit the passages noted above dealing with the lack of gender in the individual spiritual person, we see the basic shallowness of an attempt to claim, on that basis, that there is no gender in the spiritual realm. “For what would a gendered ear look like? Or how would a sexual foot accomplish that function? At the very least, it would impart a brand new meaning to the term “playing footsie”. Would one have to make special provisions, for the sake of modesty, toward prohibiting the practice of walking barefoot? Shoe salespersons would have to be watched very carefully – perhaps making them submit to licensing. Of course, it would open an enormous market for suggestive footwear.

“But as to the Church as the composite spiritual Bride of Christ, that’s an entirely different story.

“What do Christians think this marriage will involve? An unconsummated, virginal union basically empty of the natural meaning of union itself? A union in name only, incapable of bearing fruit, as suggested by the natural generation of offspring by almost every life form on earth, including humanity?

Think about that: from Genesis in the very beginning of the Bible, we know that the spiritual realm involves creation, which is an order of gender above mere procreation. Yet further, should we simply ignore what Paul wrote in Romans 7:4 regarding our spiritual existence?

“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.”

SPIRITUAL EUCHARIST

SPIRITUAL EUCHARIST

When we think of feeding, we automatically relate to the stomach and material food, even when the topic is connected with God. Our material focus on food limits our understanding of what Jesus really meant when He spoke of food, even in the context of His Word. What does the Word have to do with feeding? There’s nothing material about the Word, and it can’t do anything for our stomachs.

According to God, man possesses a soul, an attribute more precious and important by far than a stomach, or, in fact, anything material about our body. The salvation of God, that enormous thing that Jesus died on the cross for, applies to the soul rather than to the body. In the spiritual realm, the material part of man is of little or no importance next to the soul. The Word of God, then, insofar as it leads to salvation, and, following that, an ongoing relationship with God, is an input, a nourishment, of the soul. It is spiritual food, without which the soul would wither and die. In that sense, the Word is the most important food that we can obtain. Despite the demanding nature of our stomachs, material food is of far less consequence to our well-being than the Word of God.

Jesus Himself made a direct association of His Word with food. Further, John notes in His Prologue (verses 1-18 of John 1) that Jesus is the Word of God, the very embodiment of it.

In John 6:30-35, for example, Jesus equates Himself with the Bread of Life:

“They said, therefore, unto him, What sign showest thou, then, that we may see, and believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”

Again, in John 6:48 Jesus equates Himself with the bread of life, embellishing on its spiritual importance in verse 51:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

In response to this declaration, there were people that just couldn’t lift themselves out of the material world sufficiently to comprehend the spiritual nature of Jesus’ claim:

“The Jews, therefore, strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

A good many Christians, including pastors and theologians from the time that Jesus spoke until and including the present day, undoubtedly have voiced the same question with respect to this passage in John’s Gospel.

Significantly, in John’s Gospel, Jesus equated Himself, and thus His Word, with bread just after performing two miracles, both of which were intimately related to the connection among Peter, Jesus and God’s sharing of His glory with man. The first of these miracles was Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. The second was Jesus’ walking on water and Peter’s short-lived accomplishment of the same, an act that will be discussed later.

In Luke 22:15-20, Jesus again associates Himself, by inference the living Word of God, with food and wine:

“And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say unto you, I will not any more eat of it, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves; for I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. And he took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.”

The communion ritual of the Eucharist has been passed down in the Church to this day in honor of these words of Jesus. But for both Catholics and Protestants alike it is seen as an act unrelated to the understanding of Jesus as the Word of God. The deeper meaning of the Eucharist, however, is spiritual, as defined by Jesus in linking His blood with the New Testament. We partake of this Eucharist as we partake of our daily bread: by digesting Jesus’ Word in our hearts and living it.

There is another passage in Scripture, this time in Revelation 10:9-11, that treats the Word of God as spiritual food:

“And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little scroll. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little scroll out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, and as soon as I had eaten it my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again about many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”

That Jesus considered the spiritual food of the Word to be of like nature but far more significant and real than physical food is demonstrated in Matthew 4:2-4, when, after Jesus fasted in the wilderness, satan approached Him, tempting Him:

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

THE REAL MEANING OF THE GLORY OF GOD

THE REAL MEANING OF THE GLORY OF GOD

It’s tempting to describe God in superlative terms. Common appellations include the words magnificent, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscent. God does indeed possess these qualities, but they fall far short of actually describing God’s glory.

Being limited to this world and without access to heaven except possibly in some extremely rare and predominantly life-threatening circumstances, we have little understanding of God’s domain. But we do have His Word, and through that Word we can catch glimpses of heaven’s treasures. Among these jewels that Scripture points to are vignettes of God’s character – things that He seems to consider to be of the utmost importance. God’s apparent character suggests that His glory consists of qualities quite different than the superlatives we like to trot out when we worship Him.

The true glory of God is His selfless, noble love as John declared in 1 John 3:16 and 4:7 and 8:

“By this perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

“Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

Phrased differently, the real glory of God is His willingness to give up what the secular world might think of as His glory, His superlative features, in favor of love, to humble Himself by becoming human and experiencing the painful shame of the cross on our behalf.

Jesus turned the value system of the secular world on its head by declaring that a true leader must be a servant and backing it up as noted in John 13:3-5:

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.”

After correcting Peter for first refusing to allow Him to wash his feet, Jesus made a statement regarding the sharing of even this act:

“If I, then, your lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.”

As the resurrected Jesus, in Luke 24, spoke on the road to Emmaus to the persons who lamented His passing, He connected His glory to His suffering:

“Then he said to them, O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”

A magnificent part of God’s glory is His willingness, regardless of the involvement of suffering, to share it with us.

UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE ROMANTIC BOND

UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE ROMANTIC BOND

Of all the possible relationships people may have among each other, the romantic bond uniquely involves three features harmoniously and synergistically combined: functional unity, mutual possession, and shared intimacy.

Of itself, the feature of functional unity is common among relationships. It is the essence of teamwork, wherein individuals, each having specialized tasks, operate together in coordinated fashion to achieve higher-level objectives. Functional unity serves as the most sought-after expectation of armies, factories, sports teams and virtually every human endeavor that requires multiple persons working toward a common goal. Most relationships, however, require instruction and training to achieve that feature of human interaction, and firm supervision to maintain it.

In a good romance, however, teamwork is achieved far more naturally than in other relationships, requiring neither instruction, training, nor coercion. Gender-based specialization automatically delineates the normal roles of the participants, enabling them to interact together in complementary fashion without giving much thought to the process. Moreover, this functional synergism within the romantic bond uniquely complements the other two distinctive features, mutual possession and shared intimacy.

Outside of romance, possession is essentially off the table for normal human relationships. As in slavery or prison, possession of one human being by another is always, with but one exception, unhappy and forced. That exception is a passionate romance, which involves mutual possession as not only a voluntary act by the partners, but a comfort as well, and an expectation that each places on the other. Any situation that threatens that possessive bond, such as a potential romantic interest outside that relationship, is seen in a vehemently negative light. Two of God’s Ten Commandments address that very issue.

Scripture itself sometimes conveys that same sense of possession regarding relationships within the Godhead, between God and humanity, and between individuals. Unfortunately, instances in which possession is the topic is very often misinterpreted by Christians as meaning something entirely different than what the text plainly states. An example of that is found in Jeremiah 10:12:

“[God] hath made the earth by his power; he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.”

This passage has often been interpreted to mean the essential opposite of what it intended to convey. In the common misinterpretation, the words “power”, “wisdom” and “discretion” are taken as attributes of the Father. As this interpretation applies these claims to the Father alone, it effectively denies their potential application to the other Members of the Godhead. In other contexts within Scripture, and particularly throughout the Book of Proverbs, all three of these so-called “attributes” are associated with the Holy Spirit rather than the Father. In an alternate interpretation these “attributes” can be taken to be possessive in nature toward the Holy Spirit. In that context the “attributes” belong to the Father’s Holy Spirit and it is the Holy Spirit who belongs to the Father. Under that very natural alternate interpretation a completely different understanding of that passage results, one with romantic implications.

Another example tends to corroborate the possessive interpretation of the passage noted above, wherein the object of the possession is an Entity rather than a mere thing or attribute. The Scriptural passage for this example is Ephesians 5:25-28:

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such things; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

“So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.”

In verse 28 of this passage, the body of the wife is possessively related to the man. The man owns his wife’s body, just as she owns his. Paul was very explicit in this connection in 1 Corinthians 7:2-5:

“Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence; and likewise also, the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

The possessive ownership of each others’ bodies, while taken for granted in romantic relationships within humanity, is often avoided in the context of the relationship between Jesus and His Church. Yet Paul was quite explicit in his establishment of that as well, as Ephesians 5 continues in verses 29 through 32:

“For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

Ephesians 5:28 is often misinterpreted as supporting the common claim that the Church is the one and only spiritual body of Christ, inferring that the Church is the exclusive repository of that body. In the more natural context of possession, however, the Church belongs to Jesus as a body integral with His own, in the same sense that a wife’s body belongs to her husband as an integral component of his own body, just as Adam (Genesis 2:24), Jesus (Matthew 19:5) and Paul (Ephesians 5:31) directly stated.

Of the three features of romantic love, the third, shared intimacy, is the strongest bonding agent to unite the couple. Other human relationships can involve intimacy, but never to the extent of the sexual union between a man and a woman in their romantic partnership. God designed it that way to impart to the gender-based relationship its unique fullness, to set the couple apart from others as a special inviolate unity. It is the intimacy of their shared sexuality, or the promise of it, in synergy with their shared possession of each other, that gives their romance its very strength of passion. Nothing other than that intimacy provides individuals with a bonding force of that strength or beauty.

The pervasive notion of a genderless God denies that beauty to Him and the other Members of the Godhead and renders him alien to us in blatant contradiction to Genesis 1:26 and 27, and in his elaboration over the creation of Eve in Genesis 2:21-25:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thinkg that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

And to what end have we denied this beautiful attribute to God? So that we may maintain a distance from Him in direct opposition to what He desires in His relationship with us? So that we can equate purity with chastity, when the two are manifestly different concepts? The key to this blatant falsehood is found in the end of the passage above: . . . “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

As I had noted in Marching to a Worthy Drummer, it is the shame, not the act, that has driven us to think of gender as inappropriate to God. And the shame came not from God but from Adam’s fall. It persists to this day, and prevents us from perceiving the Trinitarian Godhead in all its beauty and glory.

UNIVERSAL VIOLENCE

UNIVERSAL VIOLENCE

In America, widespread and growing campus unrest. Mass protests against racial inequity and police brutality. Mass murders by shooters and terrorist suicide bombers. Elsewhere throughout the world, Christians being persecuted and slaughtered. More terrorist mayhem involving mass murcders. A worldwide rejection of the Judeo-Christian God. Economic upheaval.

Violence everywhere evokes a remembrance of Noah’s Great Flood and the situation that initiated it as told in Genesis 6:5-13:

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence.

There was rampant violence on the Earth in the days of Noah, and because of that violent behavior God decided to destroy the earth with the Great Flood. But in the Flood’s aftermath, God gave us the promise that He would never again repeat that planetary catastrophe. The primary account of that promise is given in Genesis 9:11-15:

“And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my [rainbow] in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

Well, that’s certainly a relief! It appears from this promise that either mankind will never again indulge in that amount of violence, or else God will overlook it. Seems like, despite the mess the world appears to be in, that we’ve dodged a big bullet.

No. Wait. God only promised us we wouldn’t suffer through another Great Flood. But there are other things of potential worldwide scope that can be catastrophic to the Earth. As a matter of fact, we still have the passage in 2 Peter 3:1-12 to contend with:

“This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you, in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior; knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, by which the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

“But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are in it, shall be burned up.

“Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, in which the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?”

Oh oh. If, as Peter claims, a thousand years can be likened to a day, and the Genesis creation epic covered a six-day period before God’s rest, then perhaps what might happen as we approach the end of six thousand years of Biblically-relevant human existence with imminent event of the thousand-year millennial reign of Christ promising to appear very shortly, the earth might again experience a destructive force of planetary scale with a suggestion of nuclear warfare.

This scenario fits right in with the devastation forecast in Revelation. Is the worldwide violence rampant now on Earth an immediate precursor to a buildup to that event?

CONSPIRACY – REAL OR IMAGINED? (CONTINUED)

CONSPIRACY – REAL OR IMAGINED? (CONTINUED)

Daniel actually had been describing the composite modern beast of Revelation Thirteen as well as the sequence of world kingdoms which had led up to the modern world. This can be seen even more clearly as the passage in Daniel Seven continues: the modern incarnation of the Persian bear would be Russia, whose icon is indeed the bear, and Germany of the Grecian leopard. Daniel continues, in verse 7, to flesh out the modern world government:

“After this I saw in the night visions, and, behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly, and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet; and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before which there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots; and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.”

Daniel’s mention of a “little horn” introduces a probable feature of the coming world government that most eschatologists tend to overlook. The horn is indisputably a leader, but of what? As Bible scholar Daymond Duck proposed, the final world government may well be composed of ten regions, rather than of ten nations. In that context, the “little horn” of Daniel Seven may refer to a nation, a smaller entity than a region, which would place the “little horn” as the president of a nation. One could then speculate that perhaps this president may be a president of the United States, for example, who would, in Daniel’s parlance, pluck up the presidents of the United States, Canada and Mexico to become leader of what would then be the North American Region, a supranational entity composed of those three former nations. In my novel Home, Sweet Heaven, as a matter of fact, I describe just that scenario. This regional leader would then go on to be head of the world government comprised of those ten regions.

The Christian doesn’t have to go as deeply into the weeds as we have just trekked to perceive from the Bible that a world government will become a reality. It’s not a question of whether, but of when. In that sense, virtually all Christians with any interest whatsoever in eschatology could be labeled as conspiracy theorists.

Are there other indications, aside from Scripture, that a conspiracy is underway to integrate nations into a larger governmental system, indications that might move more individuals to perceive that the notion of a conspiracy might be more than a paranoia-fed myth?

One simply has to make a quick glance around at the various problems that exist in our modern world to appreciate that society the world over is encumbered with a number of negative issues, each of which represents a very real threat of turning our present order into a chaotic mess from which we have the possibility of emerging only through a centralized system of government that possesses the will and the strength to impose the harsh measures required to restore order. To enumerate just a few: the terror threat from radicalized Muslims; the terror threat from society’s misfits; the terror threat from rogue nations motivated either by unreasoning hatred or the desire to call forth the Mahdi; the increase in natural disasters, exacerbated by the unwise location of populations, the over-use of available resources, and the decay of infrastructures; environmental pollution leading to disease and degeneracy of living conditions; overcrowding; and loss of survivability due to substandard schooling and training and political corruption.

This partial list can easily be expanded, but one item that probably doesn’t belong on it is global warming, which points to what may be the most important item on the list – the manufactured issue that can only be resolved by a more powerful government. Some may argue that there are very real indicators that global warming is a real and important issue. But even if it is a real issue, it may not be caused by man – off the top of my head I can point to at least one potential source other than man – and the issue may not be permanent or life-threatening. Furthermore, if it is a real issue, the motivation for labeling it as threatening may be a primarily political one.

Given all these potential causes of disaster and chaos, most of which are solvable only by God or a centralized government that has the will and means to impose harsh controls over its subjects, it isn’t difficult to perceive that if a cadre of exceedingly wealthy and powerful individuals exist, and further that if these individuals have no understanding of or faith in God, such people would be more than willing to create such a government.

We do know of the existence of such a cadre of people, and we also know that, like bugs that hide under rocks and logs, they are prone to conducting meetings away from the public spotlight.

Moreover, we can infer from the conscious effort to discredit the notion of our Judeo-Christian God and to remove all references to Him from society that the most powerful of this cadre of individuals has absolutely no truck with this God. Moreover, we have clear evidence that this group already has exercised a heavy-handed influence over society to worsen rather than mitigate our problems. We can see this by observing the atrocious mishandling of our public education systems from kindergarten all the way through college and beyond; the ineffective manner in which terrorism is addressed; the enormous effort expended to propagate godless myths such as macroevolution in the face of scientific findings to the contrary; the attempt to prohibit the chaplains of our armed forces from uttering the name of Jesus Christ; the characterization of Christians as “disturbed malcontents”; and the use of the gay agenda to label portions of Holy Scripture as “hate-inciting”.

Given, then, the numerous paths to disaster that exist in the world today, the cadre of immensely wealthy, powerful and godless individuals that exist as well, and clear evidence that this group is fomenting issues rather than attempting to control them, it is only a matter of common sense, driven by the obvious issues and the equally obvious reluctance to mitigate them, to perceive that a conspiracy to form a totalitarian one-world government is indeed afoot.

Why, in the face of the Bible’s forecast of just such a conspiracy, and the obvious indicators of the same, have we been led to view those who have simply connected the dots as being dangerously removed from reality?

The mere fact that “conspiracy theorists” are commonly thought of as dangerous misfits may actually be the most powerful indicator of its reality. Why else would a common-sense conclusion be labeled as dangerously wrong?

CONSPIRACY – REAL OR IMAGINED?

CONSPIRACY – REAL OR IMAGINED?

The notion has been around for quite a while that a conspiracy might be afoot, wherein a cadre of enormously wealthy and powerful individuals band together to plot a worldwide system of government that will enslave all but a privileged few.

Those who read their Bibles don’t find that to be so hard to believe. It’s right there in the pages of Scripture, particularly in Daniel and Revelation. In Daniel 2, for example, Daniel interprets a dream of King Nebudchadnezzar, the ruler who sacked Jerusalem and took Judah into captivity in the sixth century B.C. This troubling dream involved a metallic image representing the mightiest kingdoms of man on earth, appearing in sequence from the time of Nebudchadnezzar’s dream up until the time that Jesus reigns on earth.

“This is the dream, and we will tell its interpretation before the king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wherever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all.

“Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall rise another [silver] kingdom inferior to thee, and another kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things; and, as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided, but there shall be in it of the strength of iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter; and the dream is certain, and the interpretation of it sure.”

Up to our own point in time, Daniel’s prophetic interpretation of Nebudchadnezzar’s dream has been sure indeed. Nebudchadnezzar’s Babylonian kingdom of gold came and went, as did the silver kingdom of the Persian Empire, and after that the brass kingdom of Alexander the Great. The iron kingdom of the Roman Empire followed the others in its rise and fall. Daniel in Chapter Seven also described these kingdoms in terms of animals: a lion, a bear, a leopard, and the most dreadful beast of all, which had iron teeth. These animals fit well with the features of the first four kingdoms. The Leopard, for example, is fleetfooted, as was Alexander in the speed with which he conquered the known world in the fourth century B.C.

We now await the rise and fall of the final worldwide kingdom of man, Daniel’s kingdom in Chapter Two of iron and clay and in Chapter Seven having ten horns, also known as the kingdom of the antichrist as described in Revelation 13:

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as though it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshiped the dragon who gave power unto the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

“If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience of the saints.

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke like a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them who dwell on it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, that had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he hath power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”

This awful ten-horned beast that shall be the final kingdom of man has features that represent a composite of the earlier sequence of kingdoms spoken of in Chapter Seven of Daniel: lion, bear, leopard, and power from a great and terrible dragon. This similarity of features evokes a closer look at that chapter of Daniel. There, in verse 4, the lion is found to possess a feature of startling significance in a modern context.

“The first [beast] was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings; I beheld till its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man; and a man’s heart was given to it.”

The association of England with a lion is a common one; the lion is an iconic fixture of government buildings in that nation. It is also common knowledge that America sprang from English roots. Its first non-indigenous people were English, and it was an English colony before gaining its independence. Given that America’s icon is the eagle, this passage in Daniel, as Bible scholar Irvin Baxter first pointed out, very clearly relates to America. It is wrong, therefore, to assert as many theologians do that America can’t be found in the Bible. There are other Scriptural references to a modern kingdom that match well with America, such as the feckless young lions of Ezekiel 38:13 and the twice-fallen Babylon of Revelation 18. But these associations are more speculative than the eagle of Daniel Seven.

[to be continued]

POLITICS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN

POLITICS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN

In this presidential election cycle, one candidate is openly socialist and another is following closely on his heels. Moreover, the openly socialist candidate already has attracted a loyal following that, for the more conservative voters, appears to be surprisingly large. The older of the conservatives shake their heads in wonder as they recall how recently the label of communism and its socialism brother had evoked feelings within a large part of the American public akin to those associated with criminals. For those born in the American heartland older than the millennial generation and residing outside the larger cities, this attitude remains prevalent.

Socialism isn’t a new idea. It’s at least as old as the Christian Church. And, for a time following the Pentecost, it worked beautifully, as described in Acts Chapter 2. The only problem with it is that it only worked that one time in history, and it worked then only because of the massive infusion of the Holy Spirit into the newly-birthed Christian community.

Outside of that one instance in the distant past, modern socialist/communist governments have uniformly turned into repressive, dictatorial regimes that have caused enormous human suffering. There’s a reason for that. Without the direct involvement of God, socialist/communist systems of government rapidly degenerate into self-service on the part of government officials and bondage for the rest. We’d turn into a nation of apathetic, indolent and lazy seekers of handouts, as a good percentage of us already are, and our leaders would manage to turn the system into a huge windfall for them, like Putin has done with Russia. Socialism apart from God is evil, and we in America, having in large part discarded God, are certainly not exempt. The biggest problem with us as a nation is that we’ve collectively tossed God into the dumpster.

George Orwell once wrote a novel, entitled Animal Farm, that has become a classic. It used to be required reading in school. I doubt that it is now. Simply written, it almost reads like a childrens’ book. The theme is that the animals, led by the pigs, revolt against the farmer who owns them. Their battle cry is “All animals are equal!” After the revolt succeeds, the pigs take over and, of course, grab all the goodies to be had, making the others more destitute than they were before they revolted. They complain to the pigs, attempting to remind them that all animals are equal. “Of course all animals are equal,” the head pig responds, “but we pigs are more equal than others!”

Another person besides the American candidate is attempting to resurrect socialism, and since he’s doing so within a Christian setting, there’s more hope of his being capable of installing a successful system. Pope Francis appears to be a socialist at heart, and he’s also the leader of the Catholic Church, which, on the surface, would seem to grant him sufficient authority to handle the task. But look at the opposition he’s getting from the thoroughly-entrenched Vatican leadership. If he survives the next two years and manages to sweep the Vatican clean of the moneychangers, I’ll be more than willing then to grant that he represents the second successful instance of socialism/communism. But I wouldn’t bet on it at this point.

I certainly wouldn’t want to bet that here in America Bernie Sanders would, if president, be capable of implementing a successful socialism. We fallen humans simply can’t be trusted with that kind of society.

The sad truth is that we don’t reside in heaven. We live on Earth, which is kind of a tough neighborhood. It’s getting more evil and dangerous every day. Part of why so many Christians don’t understand the real situation is that for centuries elements of the Church have embraced a philosophy in which the Bible’s Book of Revelation is interpreted allegorically as opposed to literally, and as a result views the role of the Church as cleansing the world of evil on its own and handing over a pristine world to a passive Jesus. Augustine championed that view because he couldn’t understand Revelation in a literal sense. Of course he couldn’t understand it! The book wasn’t intended for his generation.

Daniel 12:4-9 refutes those who would argue that the books of the Bible were intended to apply to the generation in which they were written, or that they applied to all generations:

“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

“Then I, Daniel, looked and, behold, there stood two others, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river. And one said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and swore by him who liveth forever, that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished the breaking up of the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.

“And I heard, but I understood not. Then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.”

The Books of Daniel and Revelation appear to have been intended for our generation because now, with our technical knowledge, Revelation is readily understandable to us in a literal sense. As you look around, do you see the world getting better? It’s more like the exact opposite is happening. It may not be what we’d like to believe, but it’s right in line with a literal reading of Revelation.

We do have a chance at an election cycle that will be benign for conservatives. But first we’ll have to include God in the game. Without Him, it won’t matter what flavor of politician we’ll have for our next president.

CORRECTED VERSION – IS THIS ALL THE CHOICE WE GET?

 

 

 

[Note to the reader: earlier today I made a posting with the title below, but the text was an incomplete version; the completed version was on my thumb drive but didn’t get transferred in a timely manner.  My apologies.  The version below is what should have been posted to begin with.]

IS THIS ALL THE CHOICE WE GET?

From the way this election cycle is shaping up, we might be left with the choice of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump for our next president of the United States. What kind of choice is that?

Clinton has an extremely shady past. Her Machiavellian acquisition of wealth and power at the expense and lives of others includes the Benghazi debacle that smacks of an unthinkable abandonment and the email scandal that reeks of a felonious placing of self before the interests of our country. But even before those more recent suggestions of malfeasance on a grand scale, she had left in the wake of her self-centered acquisition of power and wealth the Whitewater scandal and the death of associate Vince Foster that evoked a number of unanswered questions that suggest murder rather than the alleged suicide.

Machiavellian is a strong word. It implies a dark and deadly hunger for power that descends below normal humanity. It will be useful to explore the word in some detail. To that end, I have extracted from Part 3, Chapter 1 of my book Family of God information relevant to the association of darkness with Machiavelli:

“Truth perverted has the power to enslave us. In the two thousand years since the death of the innocent [Jesus] who was thrust before Pilate and evoked from the Roman the famous question “What is truth?”, battles have been fought and countless people have suffered in the struggle to define truth for gain. No one knew this with more clarity than Niccolo Machiavelli, the fifteenth century Florentine who set out in The Prince to describe the means by which an ambitious man might acquire and maintain power over others. It has been recognized for centuries as a handbook on deception and betrayal in which the manipulation of truth is wielded with the objective of obtaining unfair advantage over innocent people. This kind of self-service is the very antithesis of the Judeo-Christian God; it represents a horrifying death of the soul. Below, in his own words (translated by N. H. Thomson), Machiavelli relates a classic instance of the application of duplicity:

“In our own times, during the papacy of Alexander VI, Oliverotto of Fermo, who some years before had been left an orphan, and had been brought up by his maternal uncle Giovanni Fogliani, was sent while still a lad to serve under Paolo Vitelli, in the expectation that a thorough training under that commander might qualify him for high rank as a soldier. After the death of Paolo, he served under his brother Vitellozzo, and in a very short time, being of a quick wit, hardy and resolute, he became one of the first soldiers of his company. But thinking it beneath him to serve under others, with the countenance of the Vitelleschi and the connivance of certain citizens of Fermo who preferred the slavery to the freedom of their country, he formed the design to seize on that town.

“He accordingly wrote to Giovanni Fogliani that after many years of absence from home, he desired to see him and his native city once more, and to look a little into the condition of his patrimony; and as his one endeavor had been to make himself a name, in order that his fellow-citizens might see that his time had not been mis-spent, he proposed to return honourably attended by a hundred horsemen from among his own friends and followers; and he begged Giovanni graciously to arrange for his reception by the citizens of Fermo with corresponding marks of distinction, as this would be creditable not only to himself, but also to the uncle who had brought him up.

“Giovanni accordingly, did not fail in any proper attention to his nephew, but caused him to be splendidly received by his fellow-citizens, and lodged him in his house; where Oliverotto having passed some days, and made the necessary arrangements for carrying out his wickedness, gave a formal banquet, to which he invited his uncle and all the first men of Fermo. When the repast and the other entertainments proper to such an occasion had come to an end, Oliverotto artfully turned the conversation to matters of grave interest, by speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander and Cesare his son, and of their enterprises; and when Giovanni and the others were replying to what he said, he suddenly rose up, observing that these were matters to be discussed in a more private place, and so withdrew to another chamber; whither his uncle and all the other citizens followed him, and where they had no sooner seated themselves, than soldiers rushing out from places of concealment put Giovanni and all the rest to death.

“After this butchery, Oliverotto mounted his horse, rode through the streets, and besieged the chief magistrate in the palace, so that all were constrained by fear to yield obedience and accept a government of which he made himself the head.”

One does not need to look closely to see obvious parallels between Hillary Clinton’s past actions and this brutal example of reckless self-devotion.

Opposing Clinton is Donald Trump, whose immense ego and empty-minded bombast suggest a deranged personality far darker than the self-absorbed immaturity of a schoolyard bully. Elevation to the presidency would have a good chance of placing the consequences of his inevitably misguided acts on a destructive level with that of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator who brought his country to its knees in World War II.

The young Mussolini was described as a disobedient and unruly schoolyard bully, who couldn’t be handled by schools noted for their expertise in discipline. Nevertheless, his intelligence allowed him to educate himself broadly if not deeply in philosophy and political theory. His self-assurance, speaking presence and apparent knowledge of the political issues of the day granted him the respect of his political peers despite the shallowness of his actual knowledge, which few bothered to explore in detail. Embracing violence as a means of acquiring political objectives, he was arrested a number of times. He was also becoming a person of note in the socialist community, enhancing his standing in that community with frequent articles.

He was known for frequent and radical changes in position, morphing from a socialist to a fervent nationalist, and from there, as it suited his rise to power, to a Fascist dictator.

During World War II he cast his (and Italy’s) lot with Hitler’s Germany, anticipating an equal standing with the Nazi dictator. To his jealous dismay, that never happened, and Hitler’s stronger control over the war in Italy virtually destroyed that nation as the conflict brought in the Allies. As the end of the war approached, he attempted to flee the country disguised as a German soldier, but was recognized and shot along with his mistress. Their bodies were put on display in Milan, hung downward.

Disturbing parallels between Mussolini and Trump include a shallowness of political understanding, a proclivity toward changing position on issues, and, of course, their common self-aggrandizing bombast. True wisdom was lacking in Mussolini, and it’s probable that Trump shares this characteristic. In the end, Mussolini almost destroyed Italy. Given their commonalities, it is possible that America’s future would also be in peril with Trump at the helm.

Mussolini got the Italian trains to run on time, true to his promise. But then he destroyed them.

The poverty of choice that limits us to either Hillary or Trump was handed to us by an electorate who is unable to distinguish between the ability to act boldly and the ability to act wisely. As Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Having removed God from the public domain, we appear to have lost our wisdom.

IS THIS ALL THE CHOICE WE GET?

IS THIS ALL THE CHOICE WE GET?

From the way this election cycle is shaping up, we might be left with the choice of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump for our next president of the United States. What kind of choice is that?

Clinton has an extremely shady past. Her Machiavellian acquisition of wealth and power at the expense and lives of others includes the Benghazi debacle that smacks of an unthinkable abandonment and the email scandal that reeks of a felonious placing of self before the interests of our country. But even before those more recent suggestions of malfeasance on a grand scale, she had left in her self-centered wake the Whitewater scandal and the death of associate Vince Foster that evoked a number of unanswered questions that suggest murder rather than the alleged suicide.

[insert excerpts from the Prince-taken from Part 3, Chapter 1 (The Perversion of Truth) Of Family of God]

Truth perverted has the power to enslave us. In the two thousand years since the death of the innocent man who was thrust before Pilate, battles have been fought and countless people have suffered in the struggle to define truth for gain. No one knew this with more clarity than Niccolo Machiavelli, the fifteenth century Florentine who set out in The Prince to describe the means by which an ambitious man might acquire and maintain power over others. It has been recognized for centuries as a handbook on deception and betrayal in which the manipulation of truth is wielded with the objective of obtaining unfair advantage over innocent people. This kind of self-service is the very antithesis of the Judeo-Christian God; it represents a horrifying death of the soul. Below, in his own words (translated by N. H. Thomson), Machiavelli relates a classic instance of the application of duplicity:

“In our own times, during the papacy of Alexander VI, Oliverotto of Fermo, who some years before had been left an orphan, and had been brought up by his maternal uncle Giovanni Fogliani, was sent while still a lad to serve under Paolo Vitelli, in the expectation that a thorough training under that commander might qualify him for high rank as a soldier. After the death of Paolo, he served under his brother Vitellozzo, and in a very short time, being of a quick wit, hardy and resolute, he became one of the first soldiers of his company. But thinking it beneath him to serve under others, with the countenance of the Vitelleschi and the connivance of certain citizens of Fermo who preferred the slavery to the freedom of their country, he formed the design to seize on that town.

“He accordingly wrote to Giovanni Fogliani that after many years of absence from home, he desired to see him and his native city once more, and to look a little into the condition of his patrimony; and as his one endeavor had been to make himself a name, in order that his fellow-citizens might see that his time had not been mis-spent, he proposed to return honourably attended by a hundred horsemen from among his own friends and followers; and he begged Giovanni graciously to arrange for his reception by the citizens of Fermo with corresponding marks of distinction, as this would be creditable not only to himself, but also to the uncle who had brought him up.

“Giovanni accordingly, did not fail in any proper attention to his nephew, but caused him to be splendidly received by his fellow-citizens, and lodged him in his house; where Oliverotto having passed some days, and made the necessary arrangements for carrying out his wickedness, gave a formal banquet, to which he invited his uncle and all the first men of Fermo. When the repast and the other entertainments proper to such an occasion had come to an end, Oliverotto artfully turned the conversation to matters of grave interest, by speaking of the greatness of Pope Alexander and Cesare his son, and of their enterprises; and when Giovanni and the others were replying to what he said, he suddenly rose up, observing that these were matters to be discussed in a more private place, and so withdrew to another chamber; whither his uncle and all the other citizens followed him, and where they had no sooner seated themselves, than soldiers rushing out from places of concealment put Giovanni and all the rest to death.

“After this butchery, Oliverotto mounted his horse, rode through the streets, and besieged the chief magistrate in the palace, so that all were constrained by fear to yield obedience and accept a government of which he made himself the head.”

One does not need to look closely to see applications today of the methods of deception set forth by Machiavelli and his disciples. Problems are created by governments for which the only solution is more state control. Information is hidden and compartmentalized in the name of national security. Groups who oppose state-sponsored agendas are isolated through public marginalization.

Opposing Clinton is Donald Trump, whose immense ego and empty-minded bombast suggest a deranged personality far darker than the self-absorbed immaturity of a schoolyard bully. Elevation to the presidency would have a good chance of placing the consequences of his inevitably misguided acts on a destructive level with that of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator who brought his country to its knees in World War II.

[insert writeup on Mussolini]

This poverty of choice was handed to us by an electorate who is unable to distinguish between the ability to act boldly and the ability to act wisely. Mussolini got the Italian trains to run on time, true to his promise.

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (CONTINUATION #3)

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (CONTINUATION #3)

The Holy Spirit Identified as Feminine in Revelation 12 (an update of the previous item: The Holy Spirit Identified as Feminine in Original Scripture)

Revelation 12 reads as follows:

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven – a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she, being with child, cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

“And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and, behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born.

“And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

“And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

Who is this marvelous woman? Catholics claim that she is Mary, while Protestants lean toward Israel. But this passage becomes far more awesome and beautiful with an identification of this Woman as the Holy Spirit. Moving beyond aesthetic considerations to the logical, both Mary and Israel lack credibility, as neither would be appropriate candidates for the heavenly clothing with which She is adorned, which imply Her role as Co-Creator with the Father. Her spiritual station among the Highest, including the account herein of Her birth of Jesus Christ, is also implied.

According to her thoroughly researched book God is Not Alone – Our Mother the Holy Spirit, Marianne Widmalm references passages in Isaiah 66 to support the identification of this Woman as the Holy Spirit.

The timing of the events in Revelation 12 have led me to speculate, without definitive justification at this point in time, whether the birth of Jesus referred to in this passage might relate to the possibility that Jesus did indeed die on the cross thoroughly and completely, demanding that His resurrection involved the Holy Spirit’s laboring over a complete reconstruction of Him, including the imprint in His mind of every memory and every event that took place during His sojourn on Earth. At this point, this is just an idea, but a very moving one.

The Holy Spirit Identified as Feminine in Early Post-Resurrection Christian Writings (an update of the previous item: The Holy Spirit Identified as Feminine in Original Scripture)

In her book God is Not Alone, noted above, Marianne Widmalm goes to great lengths to show that The Gospel of the Hebrews, written in the Hebrew language, preceded and influenced the writing of Matthew’s Gospel. The importance of this precursor Gospel is that it described the Holy Spirit as feminine. Widmalm cites early Church Father Origin (185-254 A.D.) as declaring from the Gospel of the Hebrews that Jesus Himself called the Holy Spirit His Mother (see pp. 172,173 of The Gospel of the Hebrews). Widmalm cites several other notable Christian writers of the first through fourth centuries, including Jerome, who also alluded to a feminine Holy Spirit. She speculates that in the movement of the Church toward a Trinitarian formula defining a genderless or masculine Holy Spirit, The Gospel of the Hebrews was destroyed by well-meaning but terribly misguided individuals as being inconsistent with the emerging theological direction of the Church. This situation may be similar to the wholesale destruction of ancient Mayan documents as presided over by the Spaniard Diego de Landa. Because of his acts, almost all our knowledge of early Americans was lost forever.

The Feminine Nature of the Holy Spirit in the Book of Wisdom

The Book of Wisdom, which is canonical in the Catholic Bible, presents the Holy Spirit as feminine and directly links Her to Wisdom as presented in the Book of Proverbs.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church, by elevating Mary as she did, did not completely deny the family of God the balancing femininity it so badly needs, so maybe Irenaeus should be respected a bit more in the Protestant community. Another thing the Catholic Church did for the feminine which the Protestant Church did not was to include the Book of Wisdom within the body of canonical, and therefore considered to be inspired, Old Testament books. This beautifully-written book furnishes several interesting passages suggestive of the identity of Wisdom as the feminine Holy Spirit. Selected passages are presented below:

“And in your wisdom have established humankind . . .Give me Wisdom, the consort at your throne . . . Now with you is Wisdom, who knows your works and was present when you made the world; Who understands what is pleasing in your eyes and what is conformable with your commands. Send her forth from your holy heavens and from your glorious throne dispatch her that she may be with me and work with me, that I may know what is pleasing to you. For she knows and understands all things, and will guide me prudently in my affairs and safeguard me to her glory . . . Or who can know your counsel, unless you give Wisdom and send your holy spirit from on high?

– Wisdom 9:2, 4, 9-11, 17

The Identification of the Holy Spirit with Birth in John 3

Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John describes the Holy Spirit as possessing the function of spiritual birth. Birth, of course, is an eminently feminine attribute.

“There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered, and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound of it, but canst not tell from where it cometh, and where it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (CONTINUATION #2)

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (CONTINUATION #2)

Inclusion of Gender in the Creation of Man in God’s Image

Genesis 1:26 and 27 links the creation of man in God’s image as possessing gender:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

An alternative interpretation of this passage would not only attempt to split an intimately interconnected verse with no substantive justification, but it would also demonstrate an indifference to God’s aversion to the practice of homosexuality (as well as other sexual sins), as may be found in Genesis 19, Leviticus 18 and Romans 1. This strong antipathy of God toward sexual sin would more properly be indicative of misrepresenting man’s creation in God’s gendered image.

In Genesis 2 verses 18, 21 and 22 the detail of Eve’s formation out of Adam is highly suggestive of the counterpart formation of the Holy Spirit out of the Father.

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. . . And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

A shallow interpretation of this passage would suggest that since it follows the story of the creation of Adam and Eve sequentially, the creation of Eve was removed from that of Adam by a significant amount of time. A more logical interpretation would view the insertion of this passage as a matter of emphasis, suggesting perhaps that this extraction of Eve out of Adam was illustrative of the extraction of the Holy Spirit out of the Father.

The Embedding of Feminine within the Masculine

In Genesis 5:1 and 2, Adam and Eve are both named Adam, suggesting that Eve, while being functionally feminine, is also named after her masculine counterpart.

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”

This naming convention furnishes some justification for describing the Holy Spirit with masculine pronouns, although it should be kept in mind that the original Hebrew described the Holy Spirit in feminine terms.

The Femininity of the Executive Function

It is generally recognized and specifically noted by Bible scholars that Scripture depicts the Holy Spirit as operating in an executive function, responsive to the Father’s Will. A responsive nature is distinctly feminine. Genesis 1:1,2 furnishes a specific example of the Holy Spirit operating responsively to the Father.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Although I prefer to remain entirely within Scripture in my responses, I also could cite Benjamin Warfield’s commentary in page 122 his book The Holy Spirit that “In both Testaments the Spirit of God appears distinctly as the executive of the Godhead [italics in the original].” This reference is particularly appropriate, in that Benjamin Warfield is held in high esteem within the Christian community. I also point to Warfield’s more lengthy discussion on pages 124 and 125 that elaborated on the role of the Holy Spirit in the act of creation in responsive fashion to the Will of the Father, therefore representing a feminine role.

The linkage given in Proverbs with Wisdom in an executive role, as well as its personification of Wisdom as a complement to God the Father amply justifies the inclusion of the Holy Spirit in that linkage.

Furthermore, in Ephesians 5, Paul repeats Adam’s words to the effect that a man shall leave his father and mother and join his wife, and they two shall become one flesh. In applying this entire passage to Jesus, does not Paul imply that Jesus had a Mother to leave? As there is a general consensus that Jesus existed long before He came in the flesh, we also must agree that here Paul is not speaking of Mary as Jesus’ Mother.

It may be the case that most theologians don’t perceive any compelling reason to equate Christ and the Church to Adam’s words regarding leaving father and mother and joining unto his wife to become one flesh. But Jesus Himself as quoted in Matthew 19:4-8 appears to attach a significance to Adam’s words that transcends a mere man-woman relationship. In addition, there are other passages in Scripture, including Genesis 24 and Isaiah 54, that tend to confirm the notion that in the spiritual realm the Church shall indeed serve in a female role as the Bride of Christ.

The Holy Spirit Identified as Feminine in Original Scripture

It is an undeniable fact that with regard to Scripture, “Church authorities” did indeed engage in a sexual cleansing operation, for not only were the Godhead and Mary stripped of their sexuality, but there is indisputable evidence that Scripture itself was altered to sexually mutilate the Godhead by substituting a weak all-male congress for what always was perceived by the Jews and also by the earliest Christians as a Divine Family consisting of Father, Mother and Son.

It wasn’t always that way. In the Hebrew Old Testament, the Holy Spirit, as the Ruah or Shekinah, was viewed as feminine. The switch to masculinity occurred in the New Testament.

In Isaiah 51:9 and 10, for example, the King James Version reads:

“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it who hast cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it who hast dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; who hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”

The original, however, read as follows, and some Bible scholars assert that the neutering was deliberate, for there is no way that the original can be construed as depicting other than femininity, in opposition to the oft-mentioned comment that some grammatically feminine words in Hebrew don’:

“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not She who hast cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not She who hast dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; who hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”

According to an Internet search of “feminine Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures”, multiple modern, deeply serious theologians and ancient language scholars share the view that the earliest Hebrew Christians had access to Scripture that presented the Holy Spirit as a feminine Persona; this feminine persisted within the Syriac and other Eastern branches of Christianity and within the Gnostic sect as well. A prime example of this is the Scriptural passage known as the Siniatic Palimpsest (a palimpsest is a recycled writing medium, wherein a second layer of writing was applied over the original, the original usually consisting of more important information) uncovered toward the end of the nineteenth century by Agnes Lewis. The original writing included portions of the Gospel of John of which a quote from Jesus Himself in John 14:26 asserts the following (translation attributed to Danny Mahar):

“But She – the Spirit – the Paraclete whom He will send to you – my Father – in my name – She will teach you everything; She will remind you of what I have told you.”

There is a suggestion, from a comparative review of this text with Paul’s letters that Paul, among the numerous early Hebrew Christians, used the version of John’s Gospel from which this passage came. References to the Siniatic Palimpsest may be found on the Internet. Unfortunately, many of the translations into English found under the search phrase “Siniatic Palimpsest” apply without justification the more conventional “he” rather than the “she” of the original language. Some Internet references, however, do acknowledge the proper “she”.

The identification of the Holy Spirit as feminine in the Siniatic Palimpsest is no small matter, for this document is the oldest of all copies of the Gospels, being dated to the second century A.D. It is a recognized principle of textual interpretation, even by the most conservative of Biblical scholars, that the older the text, the closer it is thought to be to the original Scripture. This is particularly important in light of the fact that there are no other Scriptural texts between it and the oldest Greek text dated to the fourth century A.D. One can only surmise that between the second and fourth centuries Scripture had been altered to substitute “he” for “she” in references to the Holy Spirit. Even then, at least one reference to the Holy Spirit as “she”, apparently having been overlooked in the switch, was allowed to remain. As Romans 9:25 reads in our King James Bible,

“As he saith also in Osee [Hosea], I will call them my people, who were not my people; and her beloved, who was not beloved.”

Despite the overt mistranslation of the pronoun “She” to “It” or “He” in modern English translations of Scripture, these modified versions still provide sufficient evidence of the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit to convince all but the most reactionary of individuals. Among the most assertive in that regard is the Glory of God, the Hebrew feminine Shekinah, who indwelt the temples at their dedication. The obvious connection between the feminine Shekinah described in Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8 and the indwelling Holy Spirit described in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles and referred to by Paul is, of itself, overwhelming evidence of the feminine gender of the Holy Spirit. The link between the Holy Spirit and the Shekinah Glory is also supported as well by the many references to “Eloah”, a feminine term for God in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the recognition of feminine expressions of God in the books of Job and Judges, as acknowledged by at least one expert in the specialized field of ancient Hebrew.

Why would Church authorities be so boldly heretic as to deliberately alter Scripture as to mislead the Church regarding the gender of the Holy Spirit and to remove all traces of sexuality from God? A number of possibilities have been raised by multiple scholars, among which two stand out as particularly plausible candidates. First, the Gnostic Christian community, which adhered to a feminine Holy Spirit, went overboard on some of its misunderstandings of Christianity, and was considered to be a dangerously heretic sect; in its attempt to stamp out this notion of God, the community that eventually came to represent mainstream Christianity engaged in a wholesale rejection of its precepts, in effect throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Second, the presence of femininity within the Godhead came perilously close to pagan theology, which involved the worship of divine families consisting of father, mother and son, and was often given to lewd ritualistic behavior, as lamented by Augustine among others. Here again, in her attempt to separate herself from these other religions, mainstream Christianity rejected the notion of a divine family out of hand, once more tossing the baby out with the bathwater.

A number of modern Bible scholars agree as to Old Testament references to the Holy Spirit in unambiguously feminine terms. This goes beyond grammatical considerations. R. P. Nettelhorst, for example, Professor of Bible and Bible Languages at Quartz Hill School of Theology in Antelope Valley, California, who is an expert in the Hebrew language, changed his thinking on the gender of the Holy Spirit upon coming across undeniably feminine references to the Holy Spirit in the Book of Judges. After further research, he found the femininity to be scattered about in various locations in the Old Testament, beginning at Genesis 1. Other scholars have found the same feminine descriptors elsewhere, including the Book of Job.

[to be continued]

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (CONTINUATION #1)

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (CONTINUATION #1)

Link Between Proverbs and the Holy Spirit

In passages that describe Her presence alongside the Divine Father during the creation epic, the female Persona in the Book of Proverbs is identified as the Holy Spirit. Throughout Proverbs, Wisdom acquires a distinct Personhood and is cast in the role of complementary companion to the Father in the act of creation, which is a distinctly female role.

The prevailing understanding of the Book of Proverbs is that its personification of Wisdom is simply a literary device and was never intended to represent an actual Person. But in opposition to this view, Wisdom in the original Greek has a name of a person, and that name is Sophia. Sophia has a history of being linked, in the Jewish and early Christian religions, with the Personhood of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Himself, in Luke 7:35, associates Wisdom with motherhood, an eminently personal attribute.

“But wisdom is justified of all her children.”

While that verse possibly could be interpreted as being merely a figure of speech, Jesus in Luke 11:49 and 50 more emphatically personifies Wisdom:

“Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation.”

I also disagree with the associated prevailing Protestant presupposition that Proverbs 8 refers to Jesus Christ, as well as the prevailing Catholic presupposition that Proverbs 8 refers to Mary, because in both cases the presuppositions simply don’t fit the context of that chapter. I also could cite Proverbs 9 and 31 in that regard, and Psalm 104:30 which links creation with the Holy Spirit. (Job 26:13 is similar in that regard.)

The Persona of the Holy Spirit is female throughout; an attempt to assign some of these passages to Jesus Christ, as many do, would constitute an unnatural force-fit, most obviously in the issue of gender, but also with respect to function and role. The frequent Catholic attribution of Wisdom to Mary faces the equally grave difficulty of linking Mary with capabilities such as creation that are reserved for God alone. The attempt to link Wisdom with the Virgin Mary is unsustainable in the light of Mary’s full humanity and consequent absence in the creation epic, wherein according to Chapter 8 Wisdom was at the side of the Father during the process of creation.

On the other hand, the Book of Proverbs beautifully and harmoniously supports a female functional designation for the Holy Spirit. Of particular interest in this regard are Proverbs 3 and 8, from which the following excerpts are taken:

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. . .She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. . .The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens. . .Doth not wisdom cry? And understanding put forth her voice? . . .The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.”

These passages suggest a connection between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit as furnishing the most likely Person to which a female function may be assigned; they also suggest that the Holy Spirit was active in creation itself, as summarized in Genesis 1:1-3:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

In the context of Scripture’s general treatment of the Holy Spirit, the passage in Genesis quoted above more than suggests that the Father was assisted by or in union with the Holy Spirit in the act of creation, the result being, as Jesus Himself suggested in Revelation 3:14 in declaring Himself the beginning of the creation of God, a manifestation of the Son.

In further support of my equation of Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, I cite Isaiah 11:1 and 2:

“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,. . .”

Any attempt at a rebuttal to the association of Proverbs with the Holy Spirit must address Proverbs 3:19 in the context of Genesis 1:1-5, Proverbs 8:22-36, Job 26:13 and Psalm 104:30. The attempt to attribute Proverbs 8 to Jesus rather than the Holy Spirit must explain the out-of-context insertion into material descriptive of Wisdom, as well as the feminine description of Wisdom throughout the Book of Proverbs as opposed to the depiction of Jesus throughout Scripture as strongly masculine and the image of the Father.

Wisdom, as depicted in Proverbs, is strongly female and only female. The attempt at rebuttal to the contrary must also avoid taking the Jungian notion of the human psyche, both male and female, as containing both masculine and feminine elements, and extrapolating it to his notion of the Trinity. There are logical difficulties in doing so, as described below.

Scripture rather exclusively associates the Father with the Divine Will, which, as an initiating role, also is exclusively masculine. Similarly, Jesus the Son is presented in Scripture as the Divine Representation which, as the perfect image in reality of the Father would also be predominantly masculine. The masculine predominance of Jesus is given further weight by Paul’s characterization in Ephesians 5 of Jesus as the Bridegroom of the (functionally feminine) Church. In Family of God I simply noted what to me was an obvious connecting function of the Holy Spirit between Father and Son: the Divine Means which, in union with the Divine Will, gave birth to the Divine Implementation in reality (Divine Representation). Obviously, this Divine Means, being so closely linked with the other two Members, is also Deity. Because the Divine Means performed a function that was responsive to the Will, an obviously female role, I attached a female gender to this Person. Scripture and Christian tradition both understand this third Member of the Trinity to be the Holy Spirit.

Another item that presents itself in a reading of Proverbs with an eye to the Personhood of Wisdom is the implied intimacy between mankind and Wisdom in the warning given in Proverbs 8:36: he that sins against Wisdom wrongs his own soul. Could this imply that our own purpose and function in the spiritual realm might actually parallel that of the Holy Spirit? There may well be a correlation between this caution and the one expressed by Jesus in Matthew 12:31 and 32:

“Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”

These are strong words, and they make a strong connection between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit. Perhaps theologians instinctively sense this correlation. Perhaps also not wishing to shoot themselves in the foot and instead of attempting to truly understand what is being said here, they duck away from presenting anything controversial regarding the Holy Spirit. Historically, that has certainly been the situation with numerous theological expositions regarding the Holy Spirit, all of which end up complicating an extremely simple understanding of the nature of the Trinity by claiming that ultimately man is unable to grasp it.

As a final comment regarding my association of Proverb’s Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, I note that Church Father Irenaeus of the second century A.D., commonly accepted as a respected Church Father, also directly equated Wisdom with the Holy Spirit. That he seems not to have made the obvious connection of Wisdom with femininity may be attributed to his strong aversion to Gnosticism, whose adherents generally believed in a feminine Holy Spirit. His attack of Gnosticism in his tome Against Heresies is quite humorous at times, as I described in my novel Buddy. A sample is offered below:

“’Now what follows from all this [description of some of Marcion’s more outlandish claims]? No light tragedy comes out of it, as the fancy of every man among them pompously explains, one in one way, and another in another, from what kind of passion and from what element being derived its origin. They have good reason, it seems to me, why they should not feel inclined to teach these things to all in public, but only to such as are able to pay a high price for an acquaintance with such profound mysteries. For these doctrines are not at all similar to those of which our Lord said, ‘Freely ye have received, freely give.’ They are, on the contrary, abstruse, and portentous, and profound mysteries, to be got at only with great labour by such as are in love with falsehood. For who would not expend [all] that he possessed, if only he might learn in return, that from the tears of the enthymesis of the AEon involved in passion, seas, and fountains, and rivers, and every liquid substance derived its origin; that light burst forth from her smile; and that from her perplexity and consternation the corporeal elements of the world had their formation?

‘I feel somewhat inclined myself to contribute a few hints towards the development of their system. For when I perceive that waters are in part fresh, such as fountains, rivers, showers, and so on, and in part salt; such as those in the sea, I reflect with myself that all such waters cannot be derived from her tears, inasmuch as these are of a saline quality only. It is clear, therefore, that the waters which are salt are alone those which are derived from her tears. But it is probable that she, in her intense agony and perplexity, was covered with perspiration. And hence, following our notion, we may conceive that fountains and rivers, and all the fresh water in the world, are due to this source. For it is difficult, since we know that all tears are of the same quality, to believe that waters both salt and fresh proceeded from them. The more plausible supposition is, that some are from her tears, and some from her perspiration. And since there are also in the world certain waters which are hot and acrid in their nature, thou must be left to guess their origin, how and whence. Such are some of the results of their hypothesis.’”

Jesus’ Marital Relationship with His Church

This relationship, which was explored in the posting “Why the Spiritual Marriage Between Jesus and His Church is Substantive and Fully Functional”, demonstrates the existence of gender and its associate romance in the spiritual domain. A summary of the topics covered in that posting are noted below. The reader can refer to the posting itself for more details.

Paul’s stunning statement in Ephesians 5:31,32 regarding Jesus’ marriage to His Church contains multiple elements that identify this marriage as much more than merely a figure of speech.

Romans 7:4 corroborates Jesus’ marriage to His Church; beyond that, it identifies the union as creatively productive.

Jesus first miracle described in John 2, the wedding in Cana, identifies Jesus as anticipating with joy His own future spiritual marriage.

In the parables of the marriage feast (Matthew 22) and the ten virgins (Matthew 25), Jesus describes His own future marriage without ambiguity as an important and joyful occasion.

Isaiah 54, as a follow-on to the great messianic Chapter 53, is a passionate statement of Jesus’ future marriage and is summarized as such by Paul in Galatians 4:27.

The Song of Solomon is a romantic, explicit depiction of the bonding between male and female; it would not belong in the Bible if gender had no place in the spiritual realm.

[to be continued]

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

SCRIPTURAL SUGGESTIONS OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

The Shekinah Glory

The Shekinah Glory who indwelt the Tabernacle in the Wilderness (Exodus 40) and Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 8) is recognized as feminine. This same Shekinah Glory is intimately linked to the Holy Spirit through the corresponding indwelling of Christians who are described in 1 Corinthians 3 and Ephesians 2 as living temples of God.

That the Old Testament Shekinah is the New Testament’s Holy Spirit is manifestly evident in the precursor role to the indwelling Holy Spirit of the Shekinah Glory who indwelt both the Tabernacle in the wilderness and Solomon’s Temple at their dedications. Since it has been claimed that the word Shekinah does not exist in the Hebrew Scriptures in its noun form (the situation there being similar to the absence in the Bible of a noun form of the word baptize), the following commentary will be made regarding its origin before proceeding with examples of the Shekinah presence.

In the Hebrew Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the word Shekinah is used as a noun. It means “intimate dwelling” or “the presence of the Glory of the Lord”. Justification for the use of this word is the use in the Hebrew Scriptures of its root word “shachan”, referring particularly to the pillars of cloud and fire that accompanied the Israelites in their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land through the wilderness. The prophet Isaiah referred to it quite graphically in Isaiah 4:5 and 6, linking this pillar of cloud and fire to a covering presence. It is generally understood that this same pillar is referenced in Isaiah 51:9 and 10, where the prophet goes out of his way to describe by feminine pronouns the same pillar of cloud and fire that accompanied the Israelites on their journey from Egypt. The Targum interpretation leaves no doubt that the Shekinah Glory is a feminine presence, and represents an equivalence with a feminine Holy Spirit. Isaiah 4:5 and 6, and 51:9 and 10 read as follows:

“And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion , and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defense. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.”

“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not she who hast cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not she who has dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; who hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”

Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8 provide prominent examples of the Shekinah as a precursor to the indwelling Holy Spirit of the New Testament. Exodus 40:33-38 describes the indwelling of the Tabernacle in the wilderness:

“And [Moses] reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the hanging of the court gate. So Moses finished the work.

“Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys; but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

The description “cloud of the Lord” , “fire by night” and “taken up” leaves no doubt that this “cloud” is equivalent to the Shekinah of the Red Sea adventure and of Isaiah 4:5. The corresponding incident with respect to Solomon’s Temple, taken from 1 Kings 8:6-13, is given below:

And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, into the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread forth their two wings of the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and its staves above. And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they were not seen outside; and there they are unto this day. There was nothing in the ark except the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt. And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord. Then spoke Solomon, The Lord said he would dwell in the thick darkness. I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever.”

In this passage the meaning of “cloud” is closely linked with “dwelling place” and “glory of the Lord”, which again point to the phrase Shekinah Glory.

The connection between these precursor events and the Holy Spirit who indwells Christian believers is given in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:19-22, wherein Paul asserts that the Church herself, through her constituents, is a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit:

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

The facts embedded in these passages are no surprise to Christians, who generally accept without question that believers are indwelt with the Holy Spirit and comprise, as the Church, a holy temple. What some of us may not be aware of is that this temple and its indwelling by the Holy Spirit was represented numerous times as the Glory of God in the Old Testament. Turning to the Internet, the Wikipedia entry for “Shekinah” begins as follows:

“Hebrew [Shekinah] is the English spelling of a grammatically feminine Hebrew ancient blessing. The original word means the dwelling or settling, and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, especially in the temple in Jerusalem.” An accompanying figure shows the Shekinah, or the Glory of God, indwelling the temple as described in 1 Kings 8.”

Noting the female gender of this indwelling Shekinah, we find here by comparing the indwelling presence of the Glory in Solomon’s temple with the description in Ephesians 2 of the Holy Spirit indwelling the human temple that Scripture itself, by furnishing this direct comparison, supports an interpretation of the Holy Spirit as a female Entity in the face of conventional Christian thought, as driven by the use in Scripture of the male pronoun in reference to the Holy Spirit.

This feminine gender attribute in Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8 may have been simply lost in the translation from Hebrew (Aramaic) to English, which could have been a result of the lack of gender precision in the English language. (Actually, the first transference from feminine to masculine occurred in the Latin, for which the Holy Spirit was definitely presented as male.) But there is an associated gender misrepresentation in Isaiah 51:9, 10 that appears to be more deliberate. What the translators did in that passage was to substitute the grammatically incorrect ‘it’ for the gender-correct ‘she’ in reference to Shekinah. In their desire to maintain a fully masculine Godhead, they neutered the female.

Reconciliation of Monotheism with the Holy Trinity

The only logical way that the Judeo-Christian monotheism may be reconciled to the general Judeo-Christian understanding of the Godhead as being a Trinity is to perceive the Godhead as representing a tightly-knit Family. The issue arises through the identification of the Trinitarian Godhead as one in Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

It is quite difficult, if not impossible, given the prevailing understanding of the Godhead, to reconcile a Trinitarian Godhead with the oneness of God as given in Deuteronomy 6. The prevailing view of a genderless fellowship simply doesn’t evoke the notion of unity demanded in the above passage, or of Jesus’ description of it as the greatest commandment of God toward mankind.

How could three be considered as one? Even Islam struggles with that, to the extent that this religion is so strictly monotheistic as to deny the Christian Trinity as being fully God. Within Christianity, the ‘Jesus Only’ Church does the same, as did some early heresies within the Christian Church, including Arianism.

Actually the only way that the Trinity can be reconciled intuitively with monotheism is in the context of a Divine Family. I noted in my book Family of God the dramatic change in comprehension of the Godhead that resulted from this insight:

“Surely by raising this issue [of monotheism in a Trinitarian setting] we have placed ourselves in the midst of a basic conflict, one that was not resolved when Jesus came to the earth in the flesh, nor has it been settled in the two millennia since that event. Perhaps, given the assault on family values experienced by our generation, the timing is appropriate for God to favor this same generation with an understanding, rich in information as to His own nature, which will lead to a resolution of this conflict. It is with this hope that we continue our review, searching Scripture for something we may have missed before.”

“As would be expected, God furnished man with His own straightforward answer to the paradox of His triune nature. It is profound in its simplicity and astonishingly beautiful in form. In the second chapter of Genesis, Adam speaks thus:

“’And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’

“The essence of this passage was repeated by Jesus and later by Paul. In the contexts in which it was presented, it is obviously of importance to God. Could there be a significant relation between the unity of flesh in marriage and the unity of spirit, as was often claimed by Jesus, between the Father and Him, and in fact, among the three Members of the Holy Trinity?”

[to be continued]

ARK OF THE COVENANT IN FLESH AND SPIRIT

ARK OF THE COVENANT IN FLESH AND SPIRIT

 

 

 

The Ark of the Covenant has an interesting and rather enigmatic history. Its fabrication was commanded by God to Moses at the time that Moses went up to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.  God issued very specific instructions as to how it was to be constructed.  It had an intimate connection to the tabernacle in the wilderness and to Solomon’s Temple, where it occupied the Holy of Holies in both temples.  It was above the ark that the Shekinah Glory indwelt both houses of the Lord.

 

Details of the ark of the covenant are presented in Exodus 24:15-18, 25:1-22:

 

“And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.  And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.  And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and got up into the mount; and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

 

          “And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.  And this is the offering which ye shall take of them: gold, and silver, and bronze, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, and rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and acacia wood, oil for the light, spices for anointing oil and for sweet incense, onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod and in the breastplate.

 

          “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.  According to all that I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the furnishings thereof, even so shall ye make it.

 

          “And they shall make an ark of acacia wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.  And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a rim of gold round about.  And thou shalt cast four fings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it.  And thou shalt make staves of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold.  And thou shalt put the staves into the fings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them.  The staves shall be in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it.  And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.  And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.  And thou shalt make two cherubim of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.  And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubim on the two ends thereof.  And the cherubim shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be.  And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.  And there I will meet with thee, and I will communewtih thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.”

 

The testimony referred to in this passage consists of the stone tablets upon which God had written the Ten Commandments. According to Hebrews 9:4, the ark also contained the golden pot of manna and Aaron’s rod.  These artifacts spoke of the intimacy of God’s relationship with mankind, and of His power in fulfilling His Word.  According to 2 Chronicles 5:10, the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod were later removed. 

 

The ark was captured by the Philistines during one of Israel’s frequent fallings away from God.  During its return, it was touched with the result that the offender died.

 

The ark’s fate becomes murky after that; Isaiah was said to have buried it at the time that the ten northern nations of Israel were assaulted by Assyria and dispersed.  Other legend has it that King Menelek of Ethiopia, who was the offspring of David’s romance with Queen Sheba, stole it after having replaced it with an imitation and took it with him back to Ethiopia.  To this day either the real ark of the covenant or its duplicate is under heavy guard in the Ethiopian city of Axum.  The ark is mentioned in the Bible a final time in Revelation 11, but this ark is probably a much different one.

 

In my novel Jacob, book three of the four-book Buddy series, Earl Cook connects this later ark with the earlier one in his talk to fellow Christians in a Bible study:

 

“This one’s about the Ark of the Covenant. This ark was a wooden box, overlaid with gold and topped with two cherubs.  Inside the box were relics of past interactions between God and man, including the staff that Aaron used, the one that turned into a snake in front of pharaoh, and a sample of the life-sustaining bread that fell from heaven during the great exodus from Egypt and, most important, the tablets upon which God had written the Ten Commandments and which he gave to Moses on the mountain.  These tablets of the Law represented the first Word of God covenant between God and man, or the Old Testament.  The Ark of the Covenant was placed within the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and later in Solomon’s temple.  At the dedication of both of these temples the glory of God, called the Shekinah, descended in a cloud and dwelt within the temples.  There is a great significance to this indwelling of the Shekinah glory, and I’ll probably go into it in another sermon.  But for now I want to focus on the Ark, which has had a very colorful history.  There’s a question as to whether Menelek, the queen of Sheba’s son with Solomon, went back to Ethiopia with a copy of it or actually had stolen the real thing.  To this day, that version is jealously guarded by Ethiopians.  Nevertheless, it was eventually lost.  Apparently, the prophet Jeremiah buried it in a cave toward the end of the sixth century B.C. when Jerusalem was in danger of being overrun by enemy forces.  There’s another story in that too, but to forge ahead, the Ark of the Covenant is finally mentioned again toward the end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, where John sees it in heaven.  But this may be a different Ark altogether.

 

“Let me tell you why. In Revelation 12, immediately after John’s sighting of the Ark in heaven, he goes on to describe another heavenly wonder: a woman clothed with the sun, who gives birth to a man-child who is to rule the world, obviously Jesus.  This woman has variously been identified as several different personages by people of differing faiths, each one being the favorite of one faith or another.  Many have thought of this woman as representing Israel.  Catholics have picked up on this passage, claiming her to be Mary.  For reasons that I won’t go into now, I don’t think that’s quite accurate.  But it’s very close.  Whether this woman actually is Mary or not, it does evoke an image that makes me want to say, ‘Of course!  It can be no other way.’  That image, which I cherish now with all my heart, I know to be true, and I want to share it with you now.  Mary herself, in containing the Word of God in her womb, was herself the flesh-and-blood Ark of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.  That may well have been the Ark that John saw in heaven.”

 

But there may also be a yet greater Person to whom this later ark may be attributed, wherein the connection is spiritual rather than fleshly. The Biblical account of this ark is presented in Revelation 11:19 through 12:17:

 

          “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his covenant; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderclaps, and an earthquake, and great hail.

 

          “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven – a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.  And she, being with child, cried, travealing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

 

          “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and, behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.  And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the worman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her child as soon as it was born.

 

          “And she brought forth a male child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.  And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

 

          “And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven.  And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.  And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night.  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.  Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.  Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea!  For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

 

          “And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the male child.  And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.  And the serpent cast out of his mouth water like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.  And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.  And the dragon was angry with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

 

The possible spiritual connection is described in Chapter 8 of my nonfiction book Marching to a Worthy Drummer, wherein I link the Shekinah Glory to the Holy Spirit, noting that this connection is a very direct suggestion to the Holy Spirit’s femininity:

 

“Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8 provide prominent examples of the Shekinah as a precursor to the indwelling Holy Spirit of the New Testament.  Exodus 40:33-38 describes the indwelling of the Tabernacle in the wilderness:

 

“And [Moses] reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the hanging of the court gate. So Moses finished the work.

 

          “Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.  And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys; but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up.  For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

 

“The description “cloud of the Lord” , “fire by night” and “taken up” leaves no doubt that this “cloud” is equivalent to the Shekinah of the Red Sea adventure and of Isaiah 4:5. The corresponding incident with respect to Solomon’s Temple, taken from 1 Kings 8:6-13, is given below:

 

And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, into the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread forth their two wings of the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and its staves above.  And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they were not seen outside; and there they are unto this day.  There was nothing in the ark except the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.  And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord.  Then spoke Solomon, The Lord said he would dwell in the thick darkness.  I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever.” 

 

“In this passage the meaning of “cloud” is closely linked with “dwelling place” and “glory of the Lord”, which again point to the phrase Shekinah Glory.

 

“The connection between these precursor events and the Holy Spirit who indwells Christian believers is given in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:19-22, wherein Paul asserts that the Church herself, through her constituents, is a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit:

 

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

 

          Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

 

“The facts embedded in these passages are no surprise to Christians, who generally accept without question that believers are indwelt with the Holy Spirit and comprise, as the Church, a holy temple. What some of us may not be aware of is that this temple and its indwelling by the Holy Spirit was represented numerous times as the Glory of God in the Old Testament.  Turning to the Internet, the Wikipedia entry for “Shekinah” begins as follows:

 

“Hebrew [Shekinah] is the English spelling of a grammatically feminine Hebrew ancient blessing. The original word means the dwelling or settling, and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, especially in the temple in Jerusalem.” An accompanying figure shows the Shekinah, or the Glory of God, indwelling the temple as described in 1 Kings 8.”

 

“Noting the female gender of this indwelling Shekinah, we find here by comparing the indwelling presence of the Glory in Solomon’s temple with the description in Ephesians 2 of the Holy Spirit indwelling the human temple that Scripture itself, by furnishing this direct comparison, supports an interpretation of the Holy Spirit as a female Entity in the face of conventional Christian thought, as driven by the use in Scripture of the male pronoun in reference to the Holy Spirit.”

 

Just as Revelation 11 and 12 symbolize Mary as the ark of the covenant in flesh, so do those same passages symbolize God the Holy Spirit as the ark of the Word, God’s covenant to mankind, in spirit.

 

WHAT’S REALLY WRONG WITH AMERICA

 

 

WHAT’S REALLY WRONG WITH AMERICA

 

 

Sincere as our presidential hopefuls may be about “fixing” America’s woes, their focus on the fundamental cause of our problems isn’t quite laser-sharp.   Perhaps the reason for this is that their first objective is to get elected, and they’re attempting to appeal to what the majority of Americans perceive to be the basic problem.  The drawback of this is that mainstream America seems to be as clueless of the real issue as Germany was back in Hitler’s heyday.

 

Whatever the reason for their avoidance of the most pressing problem with America, the fundamental issue with America is crystal-clear to a segment of our population that now finds itself to be in the minority: committed Christians.  As they well know, things started to fall apart when God was dismissed from the public conscience, and the only way that America can retrieve its former glory is to invite God back into the public square.  Knowing their Bibles, they can point to the precedent of Israel’s decline from her former greatness following her public rejection of God.

 

I had addressed this issue in my novel Jacob, the third in the four-book Buddy series.  I’ll let Earl, one of my main characters, do the talking here as he did in Chapter Nineteen of that novel.

 

“Hi, everybody,” he began.  “I already had a talk on my mind for this morning, but I suddenly realized that there’s a more important topic that needs to be addressed.  So if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to speak out of my heart, calling upon support from the Holy Spirit rather than my usual notes.  If I were going to give the subject a title, I guess that ‘What’s Really Wrong with America’ would be as good a one as any.  I don’t need to tell anyone here that there’s something wrong.”  His statement of the obvious brought a few half-hearted laughs, but the mouths of most turned grim.

 

“What really happened to America started before most of us were born,” Earl continued.  “Like a serious disease such as cancer, it started slowly, with hardly any symptoms at all.  Only when it got to the terminal stage did we all become aware of what had happened, but by then it was too late.

 

“What was this dreadful disease?  I’ll tell you what it wasn’t.  It wasn’t a failure of leadership.  Nor was it a takeover by unprincipled, self-absorbed rulers who cared nothing for our God-given American constitution.  The sickness is a disease of the heart, of our indifference toward the Judeo-Christian God who played such a vital part in the founding of the American dream.  This disease didn’t turn our leaders into evil, vicious persons.  It infected us instead, creating the environment in which evil people could thrive and prosper.

 

“The sickness began within four of the institutional systems upon which we base our understanding of the world around us.  The first of these is the secular media, which provide us with news and entertainment; the second is the scientific community; the third is our schools, wherein our children are supplied with a formalized version of knowledge; and the fourth is our seminaries, which supposedly offer us a specialized knowledge of God.  These institutions were the first to get sick, and then the disease metastasized from there, branching out to infect the general public.

 

“The secular media was infiltrated long ago by selfish, godless people, to whom the physical world in which we reside is the only world there is because that’s the way they want it to be.  They were repulsed by the thought of some higher being looking over their shoulders, or knowing their thoughts, which probably did run into some colorful fantasies and mean-spirited notions.  But in their torrid love affair with their own minds, they embraced the ever-expanding world of science as much as they were put off by religion.  In their wholesale rush to glorify mankind’s scientific achievements, they bought into some very bad and very false ideas, being so incredibly shallow of mind as to unthinkingly accept these ideas simply because they were generated by so-called experts in the field.

 

“The sources of these very bad and very false ideas were people of the same kind of godless self-absorption as the media representatives.  Encouraged by the adoring media, they assumed the intellectual authority of the God they had in mind to replace.  The only difference between these self-styled scientists and their media counterparts is that the scientists possessed some knowledge of the subject upon which they made such weighty pronouncements.  But their education in some cases actually was as sparse or nearly so, as that of the public at large, because the scientific disciplines were in their infancy, with very little knowledge to be obtained through formal training.  Such was the case in the fields of natural history, geology, and biology.   I could go into a very detailed expose of the reasons why, for example, the theory of evolution is a misleading, dead-end path, but time doesn’t permit that.  The reasons involve some very important and revealing scientific discoveries in the field of biology by Darwin’s far more knowledgeable modern counterparts.  If any of you are truly interested, see me after this meeting and we’ll set up a workshop on the subject.

 

“But just as the media controllers bought into false scientific notions that confirmed and increased their distance from God, so did the educators, who also infiltrated the school system all the way from kindergarten to the great universities.  John Dewey was among the worst of that lot.  After assuming dictatorial power over the machinery of public education, this godless Marxist developed curricula that opposed Christianity at every turn.  His ideas also began to sway students away from nationalism into a world citizenry, and fostered quasi-scientific notions that supported our alienation from God.  His most devastating weapon was his appreciation that he wouldn’t accomplish his objectives in a day, or even in a decade or a generation.  His gradual insertion of bad ideas into the classroom began in the classrooms of the teaching colleges, infecting the teachers first with false notions, and letting them be his unwitting tools in disseminating his notions to the public at large.

 

“The same thing happened in our seminaries, the schools that supposedly train men and women for Christian service as pastors, chaplains and religious instructors.  Just as John Dewey infiltrated the secular teaching system, so did self-centered and basically godless men invade the seminaries, attempting to turn theology into a strictly intellectual endeavor.  They elbowed God aside with their false theories that the Bible was nothing more than a work of man, and attempted to strengthen that assertion on the basis of literary reviews that claimed various books to be written by several authors and at widely different dates, all of which were established on the false presupposition that prophesies could not have involved a God-given knowledge of the future.  Not all, but way too many of the pastors that came out of these wicked seminaries were just as self-centered as the secular educators.  After having avidly internalized the false teachings to which they were exposed, they lost their focus on God, which was tenuous to begin with, and concentrated instead on the task of creating successful income-producing congregations based on the false pictures of God which they had uncritically embraced.

 

“So what?  What is the bottom line in all this?  It is that the public at large perceives that the Bible was a work of man and riddled with errors and fuzzy, unsophisticated and basically meaningless passages.  In line with that understanding, the God of that Bible is seen as either imaginary or a very distant and essentially alien being.  Considering the Bible to be less than profound, the general public long ago released itself from the odious task of attempting to read it.  Refusing to understand the Bible as the only reliable Word of God, these same people lost most of their knowledge and understanding of God.  In the end, God became to them at best a stern taskmaster and at worst a distant, alien being who was entirely indifferent to the daily affairs of mankind.   Perceiving God in that way, they themselves distanced and alienated themselves from Him.

 

“But as history has demonstrated time and again, mankind needs God.  We certainly need God for the salvation that offers us a ticket into the next world, for which there’s reason to believe that it’s much more colorful and real than this one.  But we also need God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to impart to us the selfless nobility that is so necessary for us to get along with each other in this lesser world.  Without the lofty standards established by God for human interaction, the world quickly descends into mean-spirited, selfish, hate-driven acts of people showing unkindness toward each other for their own profit.  It becomes an insane hell of our own making.  Does anyone doubt that this is exactly what has happened outside these doors?

 

“I’ll wind up today’s talk on that sour note.  But think about the implications.  The solution of our present distress isn’t about patriotism or patriotic acts.  We lost our patriotism to America when we lost our patriotism toward God.  Our forefathers knew their God in an intimate way that is almost completely lost to us.  They had their eyes on a greater world than our material realm.  They knew, for example, what Paul had to say about that other, better world.”  Earl picked up his Bible from the upended box beside him and turned to First Corinthians Chapter 2.

 

“’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, except 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 who 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 Spirit 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.’

 

“That, my friends,” Earl said as he looked out to the audience, “is what we have lost in maintaining our focus on the material world to the exclusion of the spiritual realm.  But it is in the spiritual world that the biggest battle is being waged.  Paul was very clear about that.”  He turned to Ephesians Chapter 6 and continued reading from it.

 

“’For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.  Stand, therefore, having your loins girded about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, with which ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spriti, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds; that in this I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.’

 

“Now, after hearing that, let me ask you: is it better to contribute our own violence to the mess we are surrounded with, or rather should we turn back to God and, as Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, show our love of God to the world by loving our enemies, no matter what that might cost us?  While you’re thinking about that, you might offer a prayer for me and all your fellow Christians that, like Paul, we may receive from the Holy Spirit the courage to continue speaking out about our convictions.”

 

 

UFOs CONTINUATION #4

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 7 (CONTINUATION #4)

 

 

Chapter 7: Biblical Accounts of UFOs (Continued)

 

 

Example 18 – Luke 24:1-7:

 

“Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.  And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcherRemember how he spoke unto you when He was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” 

 

 

Example 19 – Luke 24:13-32:

 

“And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.  And they talked together of all these things which had happened.  And it came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them.  But their eyes were holden that they should not recognize him.  And He said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one with another, as ye walk, and are sad?  And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said unto Him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast no known the things which are come to pass there in these days?  And He said unto them, What things?  And they said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and have crucified Him.  But we hoped that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel; and, besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done.  Yea, and certain women also of our company amazed us, who were early at the sepulcher; and wen they found not His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive.

 

“And certain of those who were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even as the women had said; but Him they saw not.  Then he said unto them, O foolishe ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?  And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself.

 

“And they drew near unto the village, to which they went; and He made as though He would have gone farther.  But they constrained Him, saying Abide with us; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.  And He went in to tarry with them.  And it came to pass, as He sat eating with them, He took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them.  And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him; and He vanished out of their sight.  And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us along the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?”

 

Example 20 – Acts 8:1-4, 9:1-1-9

 

“And Saul was consenting unto [Stephen’s] death.  And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judah and Samaria, except the apostles.  And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.  As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.  Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.”

 

“And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

 

“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

 

“And he said, Who art thou, Lord?  And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

 

“And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?  And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

 

“And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.  And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.  And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.”

 

The following excerpts from the Bible, which are merely ‘tips of the iceberg’, demonstrate how thoroughly this encounter turned Paul’s life around.

 

Example 21 – Acts 9:10-20, Romans 1:1-8:

 

“And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias.  And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord.

 

          “And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth, And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.

 

          “Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.

 

          “But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel; For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”

 

          “Paul [Saul], a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures,) Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name: Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ: To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

          “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.”

         

Here again we see evidence that the encounter imparted wisdom; it totally and permanently changed Saul’s mentality and his life.

 

Example 22 – Hebrews 13:2:

 

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

 

Example 23 – Revelation 1:9-20:

 

“I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

 

          “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

 

          “And I turned to see the voice that spake with me.  And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the food, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.  His head and his hairs were white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.  And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

 

          “And when I saw him, I fell at his feed as dead.  And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and death.

 

          “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks.  The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.”

 

This close encounter follows a pattern that is seen throughout the Bible, that of an apparition who imparts wisdom and understanding that reaches out beyond our human abilities and our conception of time.  In every case, the knowledge and information dovetails perfectly with other parts of the Bible, contributing to a consistent whole.

 

The involvement of past UFOs in Scripture should not be surprising.  Given our faith in the God of Judeo-Christian tradition, we must necessarily assume that if UFOs exist, God is involved.  As Creator of the universe He created all that exists within it, including the things we call UFOs regardless of whether they exist within or outside our imaginations.  It matters very little whether these objects are primarily physical or spiritual, for even the casual reader of the Bible knows that God’s domain includes both.  In that sense, our own technological wonders, our Mars rovers and space shuttles, including their operators, belong to God.  This is anything but a trivial issue.  The notion of UFOs as technology-adept aliens comes straight out of the more far-reaching notion that God as an Entity who is personally involved in and relevant to our lives does not exist.  The fact that most of us fail to appreciate is that our understanding of the ultimate ownership of our universe is perhaps the most influential element of how we have perceived UFO events in the past, and of whether we consider them to be basically good or evil.

 

Regardless of their origin, however, their current reputation is not so good, and at least part of the blame can be placed on their behavior toward us.   Based on their perceived secrecy, apparent indifference toward humans, and the terror which they evoke in those whom they abduct, it would seem reasonable to suggest that they come from the wrong side of the good-bad line.   Perhaps some of them do.  But as one reviews the many abduction accounts and their supposed horrors, one gets the unmistakable impression that the most terrifying aspect of these encounters is the lack of control experienced by the abductees: being under the absolute dominance of their captor conflicts sharply with their materialistic, probably godless view of life and their place in it.  Accustomed to perceiving themselves as self-driven, they are forced to confront an absolute powerlessness to escape the situation or to influence the unfolding of the event.  In Witnessed, Budd Hopkins captures the essence of this aspect:

 

“When UFO abductees come upon evidence that, for them, confirms the physical reality of their encounters, their reactions are invariably shock and depression.  No one I have ever worked with has indicated pleasure or relief at any kind of confirming news.  Treating their UFO memories as earthly, explainable dreams or fantasies is for abductees a necessary hope, a bulwark of denial against the unthinkable.  But when that protective dam bursts and the abductees’ tightly held systems of defense are swept away, they are left with a frightening and intolerable truth.”

 

For many ‘victims’, the experience flies in the face of the way they were taught to believe regarding the ultimate independence of the individual, their understanding of themselves as being masters of their own destinies.  Most of us, whether our backgrounds were religious or not, tend to compartmentalize our religious meditations, separating them from the everyday reality of our lives.  When we think of God, we perceive our thoughts to be of our own volition, another exercise of free will.  We rarely perceive our relation with God in terms of His absolute dominance over our lives.  For the most part, God appears to be content with this arrangement.

 

But there are significant exceptions.  A review of the encounters experienced by Daniel, Paul, and John, for example, demonstrates quite clearly that they were life-altering events.  The experiences had many of the same characteristics of modern UFO abductions.  They involved discomfort and terror as well, even for these individuals who had an unusually intimate relationship with God.

 

I would suggest that if the modern abduction experience is perceived as a negative one, it is because the absolute dominance of the ‘occupants’ over their subjects conflicts so greatly with the secular world view held by most of us.  Should we blame the UFOs for this, or should we instead understand how far from God we have put ourselves?  Having made that general commentary, we shall turn next to specific details of UFO involvement in our secularly-described history, and of how these details relate to our religious past.

 

 

 

 

UFOs CHAPTER 7 (CONTINUATION #3)

 

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 7 (CONTINUATION #3)

 

 

Chapter 7: Biblical Accounts of UFOs (Continued)

 

 

Example 13 – Ezekiel 2:1-3:

 

“And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.  And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.  And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day.”

 

A great many present-day Jews and Christians consider Ezekiel’s ‘dry bones’ prophecy in the 36^th chapter to have had a remarkably accurate fulfillment in the restoration of the State of Israel following World War II.

 

Example 14 – Daniel 10:5-21, 12:1-13:

 

“Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.

 

“And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves.  Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength.  Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground. 

 

“And, behold, a hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands.  And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent.  And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.

 

“Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel; for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.  But the prince of Persia withstood me for one and twenty days; but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

 

“Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the visions is for many days.

 

“And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb.  And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength.  For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? For as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me.

 

“Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me, And said, O man greatly beloved, fear not: peace be unto thee; be strong, yea, be strong.  And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened, and said, Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me.

 

“Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.  But I will show thee that which is noted in the Scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince.”

 

 

“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.  And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall, awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.  And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.

 

“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

 

“Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river.  And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?  And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever, that it shall be for a time, times, and a half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.

 

“And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?

 

“And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.  Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.  And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.  Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.

 

“But go thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”

 

The ‘angel’ who appeared to Daniel would be treated as a ‘Close Encounter of the Third Kind’ today. These passages in Daniel were so prophetically accurate that they have come under severe attack by secular skeptics over the past century with respect to their actual dating.  There is much reason, as developed in detail by Grant Jeffrey and other theologians, to consider these attacks to be void of any merit whatsoever.

 

Example 15 – John 24-29:

 

“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, as not with them when Jesus came.  The other disciples, therefore, said unto him, We have seen the Lord.  But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.  And, after eight days, again hi disciples were inside, and Thomas with them; then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

 

“Then said He to Thomas, Reach here thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach here thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.  And Thomas answered, and said unto Him, My Lord and my God.

 

“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

 

Example 16 – John 21:4-14:

 

“But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore; but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.  Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any food? They answered Him, No.  And He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the boat and ye shall find.  They cast, therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fish.  Therefore, the disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord.  Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the lord, he girt his fisher’ coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea.  And the other disciples came in a little boat (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fish.  As soon, then, as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread.  Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.  Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fish, an hundred and fifty and three; and although there were so many, yet was not the net broken.

 

“Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine.  And none of the disciples dared ask Him, who art thou? Knowing that it was the Lord.  Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.  This is now the third time that Jesus showed Himself to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead.”

 

Example 17 – Luke 1:26-38:

 

“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.  And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

 

“And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

 

“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God.  And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

 

“Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

 

“And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.  And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.  For with God nothing shall be impossible.

 

“And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.  And the angel departed from her.”

 

It would be interesting to know what these angels actually looked like to Daniel and Mary.  What is certain is that they both perceived these apparitions to be other than merely human.

 

[to be continued]

 

 

UFOs CHAPTER 7 (CONTINUATION #2)

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 7 (CONTINUATION #2)

 

CHAPTER 7: Biblical Accounts of UFOs (Continued)

 

 

 

Example 13 – Ezekiel 2:1-3:

 

“And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.  And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day.”

 

A great many present-day Jews and Christians consider Ezekiel’s ‘dry bones’ prophecy in the 36^th chapter to have had a remarkably accurate fulfillment in the restoration of the State of Israel following World War II.

 

Example 14 – Daniel 10:5-21, 12:1-13:

 

“Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.

 

“And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength.  Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground. 

 

“And, behold, a hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands. And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent.  And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.

 

“Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel; for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of Persia withstood me for one and twenty days; but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

 

“Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the visions is for many days.

 

“And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb. And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength.  For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? For as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me.

 

“Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me, And said, O man greatly beloved, fear not: peace be unto thee; be strong, yea, be strong. And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened, and said, Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me.

 

“Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.  But I will show thee that which is noted in the Scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince.”

 

 

“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall, awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.  And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.

 

“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

 

“Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river. And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?  And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever, that it shall be for a time, times, and a half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.

 

“And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?

 

“And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.  And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.  Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.

 

“But go thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”

 

The ‘angel’ who appeared to Daniel would be treated as a ‘Close Encounter of the Third Kind’ today. These passages in Daniel were so prophetically accurate that they have come under severe attack by secular skeptics over the past century with respect to their actual dating. There is much reason, as developed in detail by Grant Jeffrey and other theologians, to consider these attacks to be void of any merit whatsoever.

 

Example 15 – John 24-29:

 

“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, as not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples, therefore, said unto him, We have seen the Lord.  But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.  And, after eight days, again hi disciples were inside, and Thomas with them; then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

 

“Then said He to Thomas, Reach here thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach here thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered, and said unto Him, My Lord and my God.

 

“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

 

Example 16 – John 21:4-14:

 

“But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore; but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any food? They answered Him, No.  And He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the boat and ye shall find.  They cast, therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fish.  Therefore, the disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord.  Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the lord, he girt his fisher’ coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea.  And the other disciples came in a little boat (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fish.  As soon, then, as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread.  Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.  Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fish, an hundred and fifty and three; and although there were so many, yet was not the net broken.

 

“Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples dared ask Him, who art thou? Knowing that it was the Lord.  Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.  This is now the third time that Jesus showed Himself to his disciples, after he was risen from the dead.”

 

Example 17 – Luke 1:26-38:

 

“And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

 

“And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

 

“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

 

“Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

 

“And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.  For with God nothing shall be impossible.

 

“And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.”

 

It would be interesting to know what these angels actually looked like to Daniel and Mary. What is certain is that they both perceived these apparitions to be other than merely human.

 

Example 18 – Luke 24:1-7:

 

“Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcherRemember how he spoke unto you when He was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” 

 

 

Example 19 – Luke 24:13-32:

 

“And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.  And they talked together of all these things which had happened.  And it came to pass that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near, and went with them.  But their eyes were holden that they should not recognize him.  And He said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one with another, as ye walk, and are sad?  And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said unto Him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast no known the things which are come to pass there in these days?  And He said unto them, What things?  And they said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people; and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and have crucified Him.  But we hoped that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel; and, besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done.  Yea, and certain women also of our company amazed us, who were early at the sepulcher; and wen they found not His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who said that He was alive.

 

“And certain of those who were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even as the women had said; but Him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O foolishe ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?  And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself.

 

“And they drew near unto the village, to which they went; and He made as though He would have gone farther. But they constrained Him, saying Abide with us; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.  And He went in to tarry with them.  And it came to pass, as He sat eating with them, He took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them.  And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him; and He vanished out of their sight.  And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us along the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?”

 

Example 20 – Acts 8:1-4, 9:1-1-9

 

“And Saul was consenting unto [Stephen’s] death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judah and Samaria, except the apostles.  And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.  As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.  Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.”

 

“And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

 

“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

 

“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

 

“And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

 

“And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.  And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.”

 

The following excerpts from the Bible, which are merely ‘tips of the iceberg’, demonstrate how thoroughly this encounter turned Paul’s life around.

 

Example 21 – Acts 9:10-20, Romans 1:1-8:

 

“And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias.  And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord.

 

          “And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth, And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.

 

          “Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.

 

          “But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel; For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”

 

          “Paul [Saul], a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures,) Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name: Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ: To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

          “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.”

         

Here again we see evidence that the encounter imparted wisdom; it totally and permanently changed Saul’s mentality and his life.

 

Example 22 – Hebrews 13:2:

 

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

 

Example 23 – Revelation 1:9-20:

 

“I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

 

          “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

 

          “And I turned to see the voice that spake with me.  And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the food, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.  His head and his hairs were white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.  And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

 

          “And when I saw him, I fell at his feed as dead.  And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and death.

 

          “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks.  The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.”

 

This close encounter follows a pattern that is seen throughout the Bible, that of an apparition who imparts wisdom and understanding that reaches out beyond our human abilities and our conception of time.  In every case, the knowledge and information dovetails perfectly with other parts of the Bible, contributing to a consistent whole.

 

The involvement of past UFOs in Scripture should not be surprising.  Given our faith in the God of Judeo-Christian tradition, we must necessarily assume that if UFOs exist, God is involved.  As Creator of the universe He created all that exists within it, including the things we call UFOs regardless of whether they exist within or outside our imaginations.  It matters very little whether these objects are primarily physical or spiritual, for even the casual reader of the Bible knows that God’s domain includes both.  In that sense, our own technological wonders, our Mars rovers and space shuttles, including their operators, belong to God.  This is anything but a trivial issue.  The notion of UFOs as technology-adept aliens comes straight out of the more far-reaching notion that God as an Entity who is personally involved in and relevant to our lives does not exist.  The fact that most of us fail to appreciate is that our understanding of the ultimate ownership of our universe is perhaps the most influential element of how we have perceived UFO events in the past, and of whether we consider them to be basically good or evil.

 

Regardless of their origin, however, their current reputation is not so good, and at least part of the blame can be placed on their behavior toward us.   Based on their perceived secrecy, apparent indifference toward humans, and the terror which they evoke in those whom they abduct, it would seem reasonable to suggest that they come from the wrong side of the good-bad line.   Perhaps some of them do.  But as one reviews the many abduction accounts and their supposed horrors, one gets the unmistakable impression that the most terrifying aspect of these encounters is the lack of control experienced by the abductees: being under the absolute dominance of their captor conflicts sharply with their materialistic, probably godless view of life and their place in it.  Accustomed to perceiving themselves as self-driven, they are forced to confront an absolute powerlessness to escape the situation or to influence the unfolding of the event.  In Witnessed, Budd Hopkins captures the essence of this aspect:

 

“When UFO abductees come upon evidence that, for them, confirms the physical reality of their encounters, their reactions are invariably shock and depression. No one I have ever worked with has indicated pleasure or relief at any kind of confirming news.  Treating their UFO memories as earthly, explainable dreams or fantasies is for abductees a necessary hope, a bulwark of denial against the unthinkable.  But when that protective dam bursts and the abductees’ tightly held systems of defense are swept away, they are left with a frightening and intolerable truth.”

 

For many ‘victims’, the experience flies in the face of the way they were taught to believe regarding the ultimate independence of the individual, their understanding of themselves as being masters of their own destinies.  Most of us, whether our backgrounds were religious or not, tend to compartmentalize our religious meditations, separating them from the everyday reality of our lives.  When we think of God, we perceive our thoughts to be of our own volition, another exercise of free will.  We rarely perceive our relation with God in terms of His absolute dominance over our lives.  For the most part, God appears to be content with this arrangement.

 

But there are significant exceptions.  A review of the encounters experienced by Daniel, Paul, and John, for example, demonstrates quite clearly that they were life-altering events.  The experiences had many of the same characteristics of modern UFO abductions.  They involved discomfort and terror as well, even for these individuals who had an unusually intimate relationship with God.

 

I would suggest that if the modern abduction experience is perceived as a negative one, it is because the absolute dominance of the ‘occupants’ over their subjects conflicts so greatly with the secular world view held by most of us.  Should we blame the UFOs for this, or should we instead understand how far from God we have put ourselves?  Having made that general commentary, we shall turn next to specific details of UFO involvement in our secularly-described history, and of how these details relate to our religious past.

 

 

 

 

UFOs Chapter 7 (Continuation #1)

 

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND UFOS CHAPTER 7 (CONTINUATION #1)

 

 

CHAPTER 7: Biblical Accounts of UFOs (Continued)

 

Example 7 – Exodus 40:34-38:

 

“Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

 

“And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys; but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

 

This event occurred again when Solomon dedicated the first temple, as recorded in 1 Kings 8:10-13:

 

“And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord.

 

“Then spoke Solomon, The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness. I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever.”

 

 

Example 8 – Joshua 1:1-11:

 

          “Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.

 

          “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.  From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.

 

          “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

 

          “Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for and inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them.  Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn no from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.

 

          “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

 

          “Have I not commanded thee?  Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

 

          “Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it.”

 

Example 9 – Joshua 5:13-15:

 

“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?

          “And he sad, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.  And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant?

          “And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy.  And Joshua did so.

 

Example 10 – Joshua 6:2-5, 15,16,20:

 

“And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thy hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor.  And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once.  Thus shalt thou do six days.  And seven priest shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.  And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.”

 

“And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.”

 

“So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.”

 

As in the case with Moses before him, Joshua’s adventures were accompanied with signs and miracles. Also as with Moses, his adventures were preceded by the sighting of an apparition, who commanded him to display courage.

 

Example 11 – 2 Kings 2:1-13:

 

“And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Bethel.  And Elisha said unto him, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.  So they went down to Bethel.  And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today?  And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.

 

          “And Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here; for the Lord hath sent me to Jordan.  And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.  And they two went on.  And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and they two stood by Jordan.

 

          “And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground.

 

          “And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I shall be taken away from thee.  And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.  And he said, thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.

 

          “And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

 

          “And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!  And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.  He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan.”

 

Here is what we would call a classic UFO abduction case, complete with the UFO itself. Did this encounter affect Elisha thereafter?  We see in 2 Kings 2:14, 15 the answer:

 

“And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? And when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.

 

“And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.  And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.

 

Example 12 – Ezekiel 1:1-28:

 

“Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the

fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity, The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was there upon him.

 

          “And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.  Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures.  And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.  And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.  And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot: and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass.  And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.  Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.  As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.  Thus were their faces; and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.  And they went every one straight forward: wither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.  As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.  And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.

 

“Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.  When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went.  As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.  And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.  Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

 

“And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the color of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above. And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two, which covered on this side, and every one had two, which covered on that side, their bodies.

 

“And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of a host: when they stood, they let down their wings. And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings.

 

“And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.  As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about.  This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.  And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.”

 

This event has been thoroughly revisited by modern writers, who note the obvious correspondence with recent UFO sightings. Here again, as in modern sightings with a religious flavor, the sighting had a long-term impact on the witness.  There is abundant evidence in the chapters in Ezekiel that follow that great prophetic wisdom was imparted to Ezekiel.  His life was changed forever as he followed the prophetic command noted below.

 

[to be continued]

 

 

UFOs CHAPTER 7

 

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY

 

 

Chapter 7: Biblical Accounts of UFOs

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is an indisputable fact that the Bible contains numerous accounts of the appearance of God or His angelic representatives to man, and even of the direct intervention of God into the affairs of mankind.  Because of their otherworldly nature, we might rightly call many of these events UFO experiences.  Several of the more well-known examples are given below:

 

Example 1 – Genesis 6:1-4:

 

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose.

 

“And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

 

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children unto them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

 

Example 2 – Genesis 14:18-20:

 

“And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God.  And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: and blessed be the most high God, who hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.  And he gave him tithes of all.”

 

Example 3 – Genesis 18:1-5, 16-23, 19:15-17:

 

“And the Lord appeared unto [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, And said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant.  And they said, So do, as thou hast said.”

 

“And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way.  And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations shall be blessed in him?  For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.

 

 “And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.

 

“And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord.

 

“And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?”

 

“And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.  And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.

 

“And it came to pass, when they brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.”

 

This account does not mention how the men first appeared to Abraham.  They could have appeared suddenly, simply walked into sight, or have arrived in a craft before or at the time Abraham sighted them.  There is every indication, on the other hand, that Abraham knew that these ‘men’ were extraordinary from the beginning.  That he perceived them to have unusual powers is beyond dispute.  Their display of power in destroying Sodom is obvious, as is the purpose behind their appearance.  The full Biblical account gives them prophetic power as well in predicting Sarah’s ability to bear a child in her old age.  There is some correspondence between this event and modern ‘apparitions’, such as the Fatima sighting.

 

Example 4 – Genesis 28:12-22:

 

“And [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.  And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will  give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.  And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places to which thou goest, and will bring thee again unto this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to the of.  And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.  And he was afraid, and said, How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

 

“And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.  And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.  And Jacob vowed a vow, saying If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.”

 

Example 5 – Genesis 32:24-32:

 

“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.  And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled against him.  And he said, Let me go; for the day breaketh.  And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.  And he said unto him, What is thy name?  And he said, Jacob.  And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.   And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.  And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?  And he blessed him there.

 

“And Jacob called the place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.  And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he limped upon his thigh.  Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew that shrank.”

 

Example 6 – Exodus 3:1-14, 4:1-5:

 

“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

 

“And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

 

“And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.  And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses.  And he said, Here am I.

 

“And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.  Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

 

“And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

 

“Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.  Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.

 

“And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

 

“And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

 

“And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

 

“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said: Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”

 

“And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.

 

“And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand?  And he said, A rod.  And he said, Cast it on the ground.  And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

 

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail.  And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand: That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee.”

 

The much more recent apparition which appeared to Juan Diego in the sixteenth century, and to the peasant girls in Fatima in the twentieth century, recounted in an earlier chapter, may not have been as significant as this appearance before Moses.  But they did contain some of the same elements, such as commandments to appear before powerful individuals, and the empowerment to produce remarkable signs.

 

[to be continued]

 

 

UFOs CHAPTER 5

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 5

 

 

Chapter 5: The Christian Assessment of UFOs Part Two – the Positive Take

 

 

 

 

 

A slim minority of Christians view the UFO phenomenon as both real and positive without ruling out the possibility that some UFO experiences might fall into the negative category.   We – and I include myself among them, having had my own UFO experience with very positive long-range consequences – perceive UFO contacts in terms of angelic visitations.  We acknowledge the existence of both obedient and fallen angels, which accounts for the variety of contact experiences, particularly the extremes of good and bad.

 

The reality of my personal UFO experience was verified more by the aftermath of the experience than the actual event itself.  That’s not unusual, as many accounts of interactions with UFOs describe persistent effects of one-time encounters.  Most of these effects involve fear of some sort, even terror, and that’s what makes my encounter different – a complete absence of fear.  If anything, I felt more of a kinship with whoever occupied the craft that I saw.  That positivity places me in a rare category of contemporary individuals, but I’m not completely alone.  I recall reading of another person’s positive experience, the account of which is given in Report #6 in Chapter 8 below.

 

I qualify the rarity of my category with the word “contemporary”, because there is one source of past experiences on the positive side of the ledger which has a rather large constituency.  That source is the Bible.  I will discuss more of that topic later.  Interestingly, the other person of whom I am aware who had a positive experience, also reported Christian implications.  My own UFO experience was intensely Christian as well, and it was a deep one which imparted knowledge that, as far as I know, was unique to me.  It also changed my life.

 

Regarding the actual event, I was uncertain for many years as to whether I was merely a witness to a sighting event, or if my involvement was deeper than that.  I’ll describe it to the best of my knowledge and memory, and let the reader decide what to make of it.  The event occurred forty two years ago at the time I’m writing this, at ten p.m. on a night in the fall of 1973 on Interstate 5 southbound near Wilsonville, Oregon, about ten miles south of Portland.  I had not experienced such an event before, nor afterward.  The trip was for business purposes, and I had a companion with me, a draftsman who was serving as an electrical technician who I had taken along to help with a problem we were experiencing with an installation in Eugene, Oregon.  Having set out after the working day, we had stopped off for dinner at a restaurant next to the freeway, after which we were returning to I-5 southbound via an overpass.  We had just entered the overpass when my passenger thrust his arm across my face, pointing to the south.  “Look!” the shouted in a rare display of emotion.  “A UFO!”  At the same time I caught a glimpse of a semi in front, the truck skewed across the roadway ahead.  The driver obviously was staring at the same sight.  Turning my head southward, I saw what seemed to me to be an enormous disc-shaped object hovering near the next overpass about a mile south of ours.  Being a certified flight instructor with enough hours of night flying to know what airplanes look like at night, both on the ground and in the air, I was startled at the size of this object.  The appearance of this craft was very much larger than a Boeing 747.  Returning my attention back to the roadway ahead, I threaded my car around the semi and hit the on-ramp with the gas pedal to the floor.  That didn’t amount to a very great burst of speed, as the car was an old Volkswagen bug.  I had timed its acceleration once – the 0-60 time neared 30 seconds.  I imagine the occupants of the craft got a good laugh out of that    Nevertheless, the craft stayed motionless as we headed toward it, and I had another impression, one of three rectangular windows, the long sides vertical, and of being watched – intensely observed.

 

About halfway to the other overpass, the craft lifted, wobbled, and crossed over I-5 heading east very slowly, seeming to descend among the tall evergreen trees in the area.  We exited the highway and headed eastward after it, but by that time the craft was gone from our vision.  We eventually gave up the chase and returned to the freeway toward our destination of Eugene, somewhat relieved to be getting back on track.  We had been tired and looking forward to checking into a motel in Eugene and getting some sleep.  Yet I remember having felt a sharp sense of loss as well, of something that I had and was giving up.

 

Over time a vague uncertainty crept in as to whether that was the extent of the incident.  We had checked the time when we broke off the chase.  We apparently had been looking for the craft for about 45 minutes.  At the time I thought nothing of it, but since then I’ve had a recurring thought that three quarters of an hour is a really long time to be looking for something, particularly when we were so close to our starting point near the freeway when we ended the chase.  Nevertheless, I shoved that thought aside too, having more important things to think about.

 

We spent the weekend in Eugene on the job, and, returning Sunday, flipped a coin, the loser having to report the incident to the highway patrol.  Having lost the toss, I made the call and was treated to the rudest response I have ever experienced this side of boot camp.  I shrugged my shoulders and headed back northward, determined that if that kind of experience came my way again, I’d keep it to myself.

 

I certainly made no connection whatsoever between this sighting event and God. I was brought up to consider Christians to be naïve persons who needed God for a crutch.  My family was intellectually-oriented and had no need for myths.  With all the scoffing and snide remarks our parents had made over the years regarding the personal weakness of Christians and the irrelevance of Christianity to normal life we got the message loud and clear: well-adjusted people don’t indulge in religious nonsense. Once, several years ago on a business trip, I found myself in a motel room with nothing to read.  I love to read.  The only thing available was a Gideon Bible in the drawer.  I opened it to Matthew 25 and read maybe a verse or two.  I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, so I shoved it back in the drawer and turned on the TV, convinced in my mind that the Bible indeed represented nonsense. The rest of my family still believes that way except for my wife, who is on the same page as me with respect to our beliefs, and probably my brother.  But at the time I knew nothing about God, nor did I want to.  I was perfectly content to leave God entirely out of my life.

 

The UFO experience didn’t open anything up to me – not then. In fact, I forgot about it shortly afterwards.  When something very strange like that happens, one tends to wonder whether it was real or a hallucination, and shove it into the back of his mind.  At least that’s what I did.  At the time I was having a lot on my plate, too.  I didn’t think again about the UFO until maybe five years later.  By that time, I’d changed jobs and even forgot the name of my traveling companion.  I still can’t remember his name, and it frustrates me, because I’d really like to compare notes with him.

 

But maybe six months after the UFO sighting and with no external stimulus whatsoever, I suddenly acquired a yearning to read the Bible. The next day I bought one.  That night I began to read, and was astonished with how much I was able to understand.  I even wept upon encountering certain passages.  Within a year I had read the Bible cover-to-cover, and had understood and retained much of what I had read.  As time passed I became more eager to associate with Christians and to learn more about our Lord.

 

During that time, I made no connection between that experience and the UFO. It was only several years later when talking to another person about how I became a Christian that I made the connection – and it hit me like a collapsing building.  After that I began to revisit and explore the notion that my experience embraced more than just a sighting.

 

I continue to experience vague memories of a conversation, during which highlights of my future were given in a compassionate, even loving, framework.  The things that would happen would enable me to grow into a person who would be attractive to God.  These foretold significant times included a very dark period during which I would experience a profound grief, but my life was to end well – in fact, very well.  I seem to remember that at that time I was wishing that the grief period would be over and I’d be experiencing a much more benign aftermath.

 

The period of grief did indeed occur, and now I’ve passed beyond that stage into a much happier time, for which I’m very grateful.  But other things have also happened that reinforce the possibility that I actually had contact with the occupants of the craft.  The most important of these is the informational aspect.  I possessed information of which I had no previous interest or understanding; moreover this information appears to be unique to me.  A portion of this information required little effort on my part, other than to read Scripture.  Upon the reading, I seem to have been given the ability to read passages and quickly integrate them into related passages and to the general body of Scripture.  For other information I was given a strong desire to receive it, but the acquisition itself required much work and persistence on my part.

 

The most important information of this kind involved a desire to work out the arithmetic details of Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes. The answer was a long time in coming, about ten years, but resulted in a precise knowledge of the numbers associated with the feedings, such as the number of fragments per basket of leftovers, and the exact patterns by which the multitudes were fed.  The final result was an enormous surprise – the patterns of the feedings combined to form a cross, as I describe in Part 5 of my book Family of God, Appendix 2 of my book Marching to a Worthy Drummer, and in my novel Cathy.  As far as I know, this information is unique.  Other information was given to me that, although not unique, is quite rare.  I share that information in the books noted above, as well as in my other novels Buddy, Jacob and Home, Sweet Heaven.

 

The knowledge that I was given wasn’t limited to the head. It also involved the heart, and more than a little humor.  A compassion for the handicapped was instilled in me, leading me to volunteer at a local nursing home.  The activity began as a Bible study, which, in turn, led to a companionship with a young man who was severely afflicted with cerebral palsy.  That, in turn, led to adventures that I wouldn’t have dreamed of in my pre-Christian life.  I recall those adventures, both scary and humorous, in my novel Buddy, and in my nonfiction work Marching to a Worthy Drummer as well.  My life after the grief period has been rich and joyful indeed and I wouldn’t change it for the world, which makes the precursor UFO event, on balance, a very positive experience.  Not only that, but the knowledge and adventures that my Christianity has endowed me with gives me a firm faith, which translates into a positive outlook on my ultimate future despite my forced participation in an ever more darkening and chaotic world.

 

Given the nature of the experience that I had and its correlation with Bible accounts as reviewed in Chapter 7 below, I lean heavily toward an explanation of the beings associated with UFOs as angelic, both obedient and fallen. I happen to be one of the fortunate ones who encountered a good angelic presence.  I appreciate that this attribution doesn’t square with the physicality of the Roswell incident, with its remains of both craft and occupants.  I don’t have an answer for that, except to acknowledge that perhaps our physical universe is large enough to accommodate more than one sentient species, and that the spiritual domain inhabited by God and His angels presides over all such species, human and other-worldly.  I see nothing in the Bible that would preclude such an arrangement.

UFOs CHAPTER 4

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 4

Chapter 4: The Christian Assessment of UFOs Part One – The Negative Take

Several well-known Christian spokespersons have in the past addressed and continue to address large audiences on the UFO topic. When they do, they almost invariably describe the phenomenon as demonic, and issue warnings to their fellows against any association with them. More than one popular speaker has gone so far as to advise his audience that any person who has been in contact with a UFO occupant to pray for the deliverance of his soul. As highly-respected theologian Chuck Missler noted on page 324 of his 1997 book Alien Encounters, co-authored by Mark Eastman,

“Demonic access of any kind requires the lowering of the gate of one’s will. This can be initiated by a subtle “entry” – involvement in a seemingly “harmless” pursuit or game such as a “ouija” board, a séance, a party game, or something more serious. This can make you prey for the forces of darkness and eligible for the types of events or pseudo-events described in this book.”

Again, on page 326, he makes this dire warning:

“If you see a UFO, immediately call on God and plead his blood as your basis for immunity. And don’t let yourself become hypnotized. It’s serious business. Your eternal destiny is at stake.”

I count myself among those who respect Dr. Missler. Many of his insights into Scripture are unique to him and quite interesting. I don’t play with ouija boards, as I happen to agree with him on that matter. However, I take issue with his negativity regarding UFOs, precisely because my own UFO experience, as will be related in the next chapter, occurred when I was not a Christian, and turned me toward Christianity rather than away from it. Furthermore, any contact that I might have had with a UFO occupant was completely involuntary. I think my God is big enough to keep me out of trouble all on His own, although I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Missler that dabbling in the occult, a voluntary act, is a real no-no. I also agree with him that the world will encounter, and perhaps already has entered, a time of spiritual depravity, false doctrine, and a massive effort to mislead. This view is given credence by the numerous warnings of Jesus and Paul, particularly in Matthew 24, Romans, Timothy, Thessalonians and Revelation, regarding the spiritual darkness that will be visited upon the human race as the Church Age draws to a close.

Nevertheless, those members of the Christian community who shun UFO contact obviously are negatively biased against UFOs, perceiving the phenomenon not as materialistic but spiritual. Chuck Missler, for example, favors angelic beings as the source of UFO contacts. However, he seems to focus exclusively on the side of the fallen angel, rather than acknowledging both kinds of angels. Many contemporary theologians who address the UFO issue concur with Dr. Missler on this point. Yet, can you imagine what Gideon would have done about the angel sitting under the tree if he had held this point of view? Would he have run away and prayed to God to keep his soul intact? Would he have complained to his father? Or how about Mary? Would she have told Gabriel that she didn’t want anybody fooling around with her body, particularly her reproductive system, and to get the heck away from her? A later chapter will describe a host of encounters with beings that the Judeo-Christian community accepts as having been angelic, but would describe as alien in a more modern setting.

The bad feelings of many popular Christian spokespersons toward UFO encounters might include the secular notions that UFO occupants are alien to us and are frighteningly superior, but their greatest concern relates to the Bible, specifically to Genesis 6:2-4

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all whom they chose. And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

Evangelical Theologians directly associate the Great Flood of Noah with God’s desire to cleanse the earth of these hybrid beings and disobedient fathers and terminate the violence that they wrought on our planet. They are considered evil for a number of reasons: their disobedience toward God in leaving their assigned heavenly station and mingling with the inhabitants of Earth; their forbidden sexual lust which led to their intrusion upon the exclusive earthly relationship between human males and human females as established by God; and the untimely knowledge that they imparted to humans, which interfered with the sequence of events which God had planned for us.

The term “sons of God”, by which the Bible describes these beings who produced hybrids, readily identifies them as angels. Their evil nature is described elsewhere in Scripture, particularly in Revelation 12:7-13:

“And there was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and satan, who deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

“And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the male child.”

Here again bad angels are depicted. But note that there are two camps in this drama, and one of these camps consists of good angels. When the topic of UFOs is addressed by Evangelical theologians, they almost uniformly link the UFO experience with angels, but they tend to forget about the good ones. This oversight is difficult to understand, given the numerous instances in Scripture, like Gabriel’s discussion with Daniel in Daniel Chapter 9, and his later Annunciation to Mary in Luke 1, where Gabriel obviously is serving God in obedience and interacting quite benignly with humans.

Nevertheless, the Bible makes it plain that there are fallen angels who behave with evil intent toward humans. Both Chuck Missler and Scott Alan Roberts address the offspring of these fallen angels as Nephilim. According to Roberts in his 2012 book The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim,

“Some Christian ufologists, such as Chuck Missler, believe that the “Sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 are actually extra-terrestrials or grey aliens, and that these beings are actually fallen angels or demons that have appeared during the antediluvian times in order to genetically alter the human race, and to pollute the bloodline of Jesus. Thus, the Nephilim would be the hybrid race of these beings in this view.”

Roberts also claims that the fallen angels, fathers of the nephilim, belonged to the caste of the “watchers” that were so briefly and enigmatically mentioned in Jeremiah 4:16 and Daniel 4:13, 17, and 23:

“Make mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come over from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah.”

“I [Nebudchadnezzar] saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven; . . .This matter is by decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones, to the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will, and setteth up over it the basest of men. . . And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of its roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let him be wet with the dew of heaven,, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him;”

In his Chapter 5, entitled “The Watchers”, Roberts turns to the extra-canonical Book of Enoch to glean further information about the watchers and the Nephilim. The Book of Enoch, fragments of which were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, described these beings in greater detail. As noted above with regard to the angels of Revelation 12, if the watchers indeed are angels, there were both good and bad ones, the bad watchers being the fallen angels who abandoned their assigned heavenly station to cohabit with human women. The disobedient watchers, Roberts notes, had angered God on a number of levels, including their disobedience to God, their impartation of knowledge prematurely to humans, and their having had sexual liaisons with women, thus polluting the human DNA, which threatened the bloodline to Jesus as well as violating God’s intent to limit marriage to a human male and a human female. Roberts quotes several passages from Enoch that are descriptive of the watchers’ malfeasance. These passages include the following, where the watcher Azazyel figures prominently as a target for epithets:

1 Enoch 7:10, 11-14, 9:5-14, 10:12 and 13, and 18-20:

“Then they took wives, each choosing for himself’ whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabitated; teaching them sorcery, incantations. . .”

“And the women conceiving brought forth giants, whose stature was each three hundred cubits. These devoured all which the labor of men produced; until it became impossible to feed them; when they turned themselves against men, in order to devour them; and began to injure birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes, to eat their flesh one after another, and to drink their blood.”

“Thou hast seen what Azazyel has done, how he has taught every species of iniquity upon earth, and has disclosed to the world all the secret things which are done in the heavens. Shamyaza also has taught sorcery, to whom thou hast given authority over those who are associated with him. They have gone together to the daughters of men; have lain with them; have become polluted; and have discovered crimes to them. The women likewise have brought forth giants. Thus has the whole earth been filled with blood and with iniquity. And now behold the souls of those who are dead, cry out. And complain even to the gate of heaven. Their groaning ascends; nor can they escape from the unrighteousness which is committed on earth. Thou knowest all things, before they exist. Thou knowest these things, and what has been done by them; yet thou dost not speak to us. What on account of these things ought we to do to them?”

“All the earth has been corrupted by the effects of the teaching of Azazyel. To him therefore ascribe the whole crime. To Gabriel also the Lord said, Go to the biters, to the reprobates, to the children of fornication; and destroy the children of fornication, the offspring of the Watchers, from among men; bring them forth, and excite them one against another. Let them perish by mutual slaughter; for length of days shall not be theirs”

“Destroy all the souls addicted to dalliance, and the offspring of the Watchers, for they have tyrannized over mankind. Let every oppressor perish from the face of the earth; let every evil work be destroyed.”

Roberts makes an interesting connection between the watchers and a famous modern UFO event. He notes that in the occult science of numerology the number of 33 denotes the highest level of human consciousness, which is echoed in the hierarchy of Freemasonry where the 33rd degree is the highest order. He comments further that Israel’s mount Hermon was the location on the 33rd parallel where the fallen watchers arrived on Earth, and proceeds from there to point out that on the other side of the world from Israel the famous alleged 1947 UFO crash occurred at Roswell, New Mexico, also on the 33rd parallel. He seems to indicate that Roswell is precisely on the opposite side of the Earth from Mount Hermon, but if one traces the two locations on a globe, they don’t quite line up on opposite sides. Yet, they are somewhat close to doing so.

On page 98 of The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim, Roberts makes a perceptive statement. He claims that people tend to interpret ancient documents, particularly religious ones, as mythical and so to dismiss them as essentially irrelevant to our lives. We do so, he asserts, in order to perceive ourselves as intellectually superior to our ancestors, who we view as naïve, superstitious, and engaging in outmoded ways of thinking. But perhaps, he speculates, our own scientifically-oriented way of thinking is too sterile. Maybe some of those ancient “myths” contain real truths, which we ignore to our disadvantage. I wholeheartedly agree with Roberts’ opinion here, but I would go farther, by reminding Christians that both Peter and Paul (2 Peter 1:20, 21 and 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17) claimed that all Scripture was inspired by the Holy Spirit and should be considered truthful in its entirety. It has often been the case that these statements have caused me to persist beyond an initial misunderstanding of Scripture, where others have been tempted to cast the same aside as either mythical or in error, to the acquisition of valuable insights regarding the nature of God.

UFOs CHAPTER 3 (CONTINUED)

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 3 (CONTINUED)

While Chariots of the Gods?, first published in 1970, was a best-seller, Von Daniken was considered by many at the time to be a sensationalist. Respected theologians remained indifferent to his views, treating the notion of space aliens as a mere passing fad, to be indulged in by those whose literary tastes run to those expressed by the supermarket tabloids. Much of Von Daniken’s work, however, is insightful enough to merit more respect than he has received from the mainstream religious community. Since Von Daniken, moreover, others have taken up this particular baton with quite serious scholarship. Notable among these researchers is Zecharia Sitchin, who authored the Earth Chronicles book series centered on his 12th Planet concept.

Many aspects of Sitchin’s arguments are not original with him. He repeats a variety of facts and conclusions that were presented before by Von Daniken. Nevertheless, like many scholars who flesh out the pioneering work of others in greater detail, Sitchin brings out a wealth of additional background information in support of Von Daniken’s original claims. Furthermore, his theories regarding the source of the cosmic visitors do indeed appear to involve some original concepts which add depth to the discussion. Because of his scholarship, consistency of thought, and clarity of presentation, Sitchin’s writings will be included with Von Daniken’s as the generally representative focus of discussion.

Regardless of whether one agrees with part or all of Sitchin’s thesis, he presents a good case, providing in the process a very concise, readable story of how the history of man developed through the eyes of nineteenth and twentieth century archaeologists. As Sitchin follows the successive discoveries of the sites of ancient near-Eastern civilizations, he manages to convey a sense of excitement over the archaeologists’ growing grasp of the information which was revealed therein and of his own developing realization of the enormous implications of their discoveries. The civilization of man, Sitchin asserts in The 12th Planet, began in the fourth millenium B.C. along the Euphrates River just above the Persian Gulf, at Eridu in the Biblical land of Shinar which modern historians call Sumer. Its expansion from there followed the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers into Akkadia and Babylon, and from thence northward into the region of Mount Ararat and eventually into Europe, westward via the Mediterranean Sea to Crete and then Greece, back southward along the eastern bank of the Mediterranean into Canaan and Egypt, and eastward into the Indus Valley. Its northward progression was facilitated by the Horites (Hurrians), who communicated with the Akkadian civilization to their south and the Hittites to their north.

The change that the civilization of Sumer represented from the primitive lifestyle of man up to that time was so sudden that scholars called it astonishing. Modern society could easily identify with it: it had a Government with a bicameral congress, a code of laws including those to protect the poor (preceding Hammurabi by almost a millenium), schools, artistic sophistication, music with the flavor of our own Country/Western music, a pantheistic religion of twelve primary dieties which formed the basis of the Grecian, Roman, Canaanite, Hittite, Amorite, and Egyptian systems of worship, and a written language which was passed on to these same societies. Its people practiced law, medicine, agriculture, studied mathematics and history, and concerned themselves with world peace.

Sitchin claims that the rise of the Sumerian civilization was too abrupt to have been accomplished by man alone. The suddenness of man’s progress there led Sitchin to surmise that man was given a big push by outside influences. Mankind had help, he says, and that help came from beyond earth. Moreover, he claims, the Bible speaks of it. In his book The 12th Planet, Sitchin interprets the Biblical book of Genesis as describing humanoid beings from another planet who visited earth many thousands of years ago. Their first and principal occupation was in the region of ancient Sumer, where they built several cities. The Sumerian name for the region was E.din, which means ‘home of the righteous ones’. The Biblical implication of this name is obvious.

Portions of the Bible, as a matter of fact, have a startling similarity to some recently-decipered Sumerian texts. To support his view that humans were visited by aliens, Sitchin points out the many Sumerian, Biblical, and other ancient records alluding to ‘gods’ who possessed an advanced technology having characteristics paralleling those of our modern age, including flight above the earth and into space. He also shows that mankind, while venerating these beings as gods, attributed curiously human characteristics to them, chief of which was their ability to mate and have offspring. They also had shortcomings of a human nature, such as jealousies, anger, untruthfulness, unfaithfulness, and self-serving motives. These records, Sitchin asserts, are consistent with passages in the Bible, if those passages are interpreted from the perspective of an alien presence on earth which, despite its advanced technology, fell far short of the Godhood which mankind attributed to it.

Among this ancient literature is a rich and colorful tradition of dieties who form a family dynasty. The members of this dynasty are subject to the same nobility and moral faults as mankind. Stories of their personalities, the relationships among themselves and with mankind, and their exploits form a cosmic drama whose main players seem to be somewhat akin to the characters of Dallas. Indeed, their loves, jealousies, sexual liaisons, and adventures would make good material for a television soap opera.

Sitchin notes a close correlation between the pantheon of gods in other cultures and their Sumerian counterparts. He furnishes compelling evidence to support his claim that this Sumerian pantheon was the basis of the Hittite, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman religious systems, and that Sumerian knowledge and religious concepts greatly influenced religious thought throughout the world, including that of the Hindus and the Hebrews. The Egyptians, for example, believed that their gods came from a far land, most likely in the region of ancient Sumer, after the Deluge. In fact, the primary deities associated with both earthly and heavenly activities and celestial bodies, in particular, have been accepted among many archaelogists as having originated in Sumer. Sitchin notes, in support of this supposition, that the hierarchical structure of the gods, which was maintained at a constant number of 12 in the Sumerian pantheon as some of them were replaced by others, was similarly maintained at 12 in the later Egyptian, Greek, and Roman pantheons.

There is some minor overlap of material between Sitchin and Temple, but it is not known to what extent they may have shared data, if at all. There are, however, significant differences in focus. Where Sitchin primarily (but not exclusively) references Mesopotamian, i.e. Sumerian and later Akkadian and Babylonian, clues to extraterrestrial visitations, Temple extracts his information from historically more recent source data, including epics and myths from Egypt, Greece, Rome and other civilizations from the Mediterranean area. Temple engages in much speculation out of a comparative review of mythology and word roots. His primary intellectual tools are an unusually comprehensive knowledge base of legends and myths, an impressive memory, and a rather freely-employed flair for creative associations. Many of his associations are tenuous at best, while others are somewhat more plausible. Although his treatment often lacks the integrating theses which other authors such as Sitchin employ to tie together the various components of their developments, the sheer aggregation of the associations gives weight even to some of his more tenuous connections. Temple believes, as Sitchin does, that an extensive knowledge was imparted to mankind 5,000 or so years ago. A part of this knowledge, elements of which it is highly unlikely that man could have obtained on his own, concerned the Sirius star system, as noted in the commentary above regarding the Dogon tgribe o Mali, Africa.

Temple went on to claim that the knowledge which the Dogons possess is but the tip of the iceberg: the Greeks as well as the Dogons borrowed this knowledge from the more ancient Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations, which were not only contemporary with but in communication with each other. Intrinsic to their common knowledge were the same elements which the Dogon most probably borrowed and display in their rituals: understanding of the Sirius system, including the small size and great density of Sirius B, its approximately 50-year orbit about Sirius A, and the ellipticity of the orbit. Greek language and mythology, he asserts, encodes a somewhat imperfectly-understood vestige of this ancient knowledge and its associated rituals.

Temple, like Von Daniken, supports his thesis of alien visitations with the observation of records of strange hybrid partly-human, partly-animal creatures. According to Temple, the creatures, some of which were considered to be quite ugly and fear-inspiring, were supposedly intelligent, extremely knowledgeable, and adept in the arts of civilization. He implies that the aliens themselves may have had these forms. Von Daniken, on the other hand, attributes these forms to experimentation on species indigenous to the Earth. A variety of such beings, mostly amphibious but sometimes possessing features of snakes or other creatures instead of fins in their lower parts, were depicted in the ancient art of a number of societies, including the Dogon, Chinese, and especially the Egyptians. It is only with recent advances in genetic science that we can perceive the possibility that the depictions represent reality: perhaps at some time in the distant past there was much experimentation with gene splicing. In Gods from Outer Space, Von Daniken notes the many references to hybrid creatures in ancient literature and art from the Sumerian civilization forward. As he implied in The Eyes of the Sphinx, the many odd forms of artifacts uncovered in Egypt, which often combine portions of vastly different species, indicate that the genetic manipulation may have attempted to cross species boundaries. Whatever the origin of these odd creatures, the depictions appear to represent something other than fiction. They lend weight to the alien thesis.

But in reviewing the works of these authors of the historical alien genre, one can discern a number of common assumptions that are not necessarily true, and, in fact, severely restrict their visions of our past. Their primary assumption is that the Bible, while it might contain interesting and perhaps even valuable historic information, is just another document written by men. As such, there is nothing in it that can be attributed to the influence of God, nor is the majority of information treated by it as fact anything more than oft-repeated fable. Even the fables are considered to be degenerations of earlier, more accurate accounts. Several other assumptions directly follow this first one, especially the notion of evolution – that mankind, in opposition to the events catalogued in Genesis, evolved from a lesser creature, and from a primitive state to increasing levels of sophistication. In lockstep with the theory of evolution and equally opposed to the notion of Biblical truth is the companion doctrine of uniformitarianism, that the present is the key to the past and the state of the earth and life within it as we see it today is the result of billions of years of slowly-working processes. With the rejection of Scripture as truth, God Himself doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant to science, or even history for that matter. Thus in attempting to address the UFO phenomenon, God isn’t seen as particularly relevant to that issue either, and the researchers are left to their pursuit of answers along the lines of cutting-edge technology. When researchers find evidence of technical sophistication in our historical past, the rigid constraints that they impose on themselves by their godlessness impels them toward one of only two possible answers: either mankind was visited in the past by technologically superior beings, or there is insufficient data to say what went on in the ancient past and the subject would be best left alone (for now). This is why the group of investigators who are interested in ancient technology are predominantly spokespersons for UFO visitations in the past.

What if the Bible is historically accurate after all? Then it’s immediately another ball game. According to Genesis 6:1-7, we started out with a lot of talent, and quickly became corrupted, probably worshipping the same inventive spirit that modern man does:

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”

We would no longer need ancient aliens to account for the Nazca Lines, the Great Pyramid, the Egyptian Tombs, and a host of other intriguing archaeological relics. Intelligent and sophisticated humans may have existed in the ancient past, turning into cave-dwelling primitives only temporarily until they recovered from the necessity for mere survival following the Great Flood. Perhaps their technology even surpassed our own. After all, it took us less than 400 years after we got on the technology wagon to achieve the sophistication in the mathematical and physical sciences that led to automotive transportation, manned flight, supersonic flight, space flight, worldwide communication, radio, television, computers, robotics, bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers and gameboys.

Actually, it is no longer logical to reject the historical accuracy of the Bible in favor of the opposing pseudoscience. Not after the The notion of uniformitarianism, at best a conceptual tool but not a very good one at that, has pretty much received a well-deserved comeuppance, with numerous former adherents rushing to discard it. With the arrival on the scientific scene of fresh new insights into the process of life, especially at the microscopic level, the theory of evolution is following suit, only not so quickly. The major hindrance to its utter rejection is the lack of any other theory of life’s origins that doesn’t involve God.

UFOs CHAPTER 3

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 3

Chapter 3: The Historical Alien Presence – Or Was It Something Else?

Among the most spectacular of extraterrestrial accounts from the past is the collection of religious beliefs of the Dogon tribe in Mali, West Africa. It is an astonishing story of information this tribe possesses that should never have been available to them in their isolation and primitive state of existence. As related by Scott Alan Roberts in Chapter 5 of his book The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim, French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen extracted from their religious mythology a wealth of information regarding the star Sirius and its associated system the accuracy of which is simply beyond the tribe’s powers of observation. A brief summary of Roberts’ account of their incredible customs and the information they represent is given below.

The Dogon people have a tradition, reaching into the unknown past, of worshiping beings they call the Nommos. These froglike creatures aren’t local to the area, but reside somewhat farther away, within hailing distance of the star Sirius B. They recognize Sirius B as one member of a dual-star system, and depict in their drawings the two stars, Sirius A and Sirius B as rotating about each other in an elliptical pattern. Western society figured out elliptical orbits only after the pioneering work of German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the seventeenth century. The Dogons probably beat him to the concept as there was no known modern interaction between the Dogons and the Western world until the 1920s.

The Dogon legend describes the Nommos as having lived on a planet that orbits Sirius B. They arrived on Earth in a craft that we would describe as an ark, which descended in a spin and landed with a big commotion.

The Nommo furnished information to the Dogons; eventually, one of them was crucified on a tree, was resurrected, and returned to the Sirius star system.

A more detailed view of the Dogons and their strange religion is presented by Robert Temple in his 1998 book The Sirius Mystery.

As explained by Temple, there’s a mystery indeed about the Dogon knowledge of the Sirius star system. Sirius A is visible, but Sirius B is much smaller, being a dwarf star, and is invisible to the observer on earth, even with a decent telescope. Yet, as it is very dense, it possesses an appreciable gravitational field. The Dogons know that it is comparably tiny, because they named the star after the seed of an indigenous plant, the botanical name of which is digitaria. The seed of the digitaria is minute, being the smallest seed of which the Dogon are aware. Yet the Dogon consider the much larger star Sirius A to be unimportant to them next to their home star of Sirius B.

Moreover, the Dogons have the orbital period of Sirius B, which is fifty years, pegged with precision to its actual period, and understand that it rotates about its own axis, a common characteristic of stars.

The Dogons are also aware of planetary features within our own solar system. For example, they know that the moon is dead, that a ring encircles Saturn, and that Jupiter possesses four major moons. As for the Earth, it is understood to turn on its own axis and to make a great circle around the sun.

Temple’s book includes other knowledge possessed by the Dogons. This additional information is simply too extensive for the scope of this book. Temple also apeculates, like Zecharia Sitchin who published The Twelfth Planet in 1976, that the evidence of the aliens’ visitation is encoded in the traditions and literature of the ancient Mediterranean region, from which the Dogons, as well as the Greeks and Romans, borrowed from a common source.

Other societies, considered by us to be primitive, also worshiped what we like to label as “alien”. Erich Von Daniken was the earlies of the modern investigators to popularize this practice. In his book Chariots of the Gods? Published in 1976, the same year that Sitchin published The Twelfth Planet, he cites many artifacts of unknown antiquity which don’t fit into mainstream assumptions of man’s history, noting that these oddities are either ignored by scientists or suffer the application of unsatisfactory reasons for their existence. Among these artifacts scattered about the world are structures of sophisticated design and immense proportions, the components of which are of equally impressive size. There are also, in widely scattered locations, structures, objects, and patterns on the ground with evident links to air or space travel.

The enigmatic straight lines in Nazca, Peru are quite ancient. Yet investigators can comprehend no useful purpose for them other than aircraft runways. There are also huge figures cut into the surface in the vicinity which are not recognizable on the ground, but are readily understood for what they are from an aerial perspective.

An abundance of enormous stone structures can be found high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and Bolivia and elsewhere in South and Central America. Von Daniken describes monolithic stone blocks weighing 10, 20, and 100 tons, with precisely defined edges, used in the construction of these structures. Some of the blocks are engraved with figures. Other figures are themselves carved out of stone. But the figures aren’t quite human. Some have four fingers; others wear what appear to be helmets. Still others are depicted as flying.

In addition to artifacts which display a sophistication quite beyond what mainstream archaeologists are willing to attribute to the peoples of antiquity, there is an apparent knowledge itself that runs counter to our perception of ancient man and his lack of sophistication: maps, calendars and astronomical tables, texts, and even artifacts which demonstrate a knowledge of electricity and electro-chemical processes.

Maps of world scope found in the possession of 18th Century Turkish Admiral Piri Reis were not only amazingly accurate but depicted the Antarctic Continent as if it was ice-free, showing land boundaries and mountain ranges in their proper relative locations, although such boundaries were not known in modern times until the middle of the twentieth century. As Von Daniken pointed out, some of the maps appeared to researchers to represent data taken from aerial photographs. Believed to be of still greater antiquity than the sea captain to whom they belonged, the originals from which they were copied were probably created long before the time when the world thought that the earth was flat.

A calendar of impressive sophistication was found in Tiahuanaco. This device gave the equinoxes, seasons, and hourly positions of the moon. Halfway around the world, archaeologists digging at the Mesopotamian site of Nineveh found a mathematical calculation carried out to 15 digits, when, as Von Daniken pointed out, mathematicians of the much-later Greek civilization couldn’t count above 10,000.

Artifacts found in the Middle East and China whose fabrication required a knowledge of electricity and electrochemistry include batteries and battery electrodes, crystal lenses which we can make only with the electrochemically-produced cesium oxide, and objects fashioned of platinum and aluminum.

Where did this enigmatic ancient knowledge come from? Von Daniken asserts that it came from visitors to Earth from space. He speculates briefly at one point that these visitors may have come from the planet Mars before its surface was destroyed by some cosmic event. Elsewhere he places their origin farther afield, among one of the star systems in our Milky Way Galaxy. He claims that we can see depictions of these beings in ancient artwork, from cave drawings scattered throughout the world to Sumerian cylinder seals and South American stone carvings.

But above all the mute artifacts we find scattered about the earth, we have the ancient literature that brings these visitors to life. All we have to do, Von Daniken asserts, is to discard the mundane, inaccurate interpretation of these tales that was first initiated by scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when the technology to which they pointed was simply inconceivable. Less than two centuries ago, the notion of traveling about the Earth in flying vehicles was considered an absurdity by all but a few visionaries. The thought of traveling among the planets in space vehicles was at the far end of science fiction well into the last century.

Now that we ourselves possess much of the technology described in the ancient literature, however, we can see these texts as representing potential truth rather than necessarily depicting flights of fancy. In line with a more technically-orientated interpretation of these ancient tales, flights of the ‘gods’ in aircraft and space vehicles appears to have been a common theme.

Von Daniken notes that the Bible itself is a part of that ancient literature which describes flying machines driven by ‘gods’. He refers to the multi-winged, multi-wheeled flying vehicle described by the prophet Ezekiel as what modern man would call a ‘UFO’. The prophet Elijah may have ascended to heaven in a similar vehicle. Whatever these vehicles were, they certainly represented a technology far in advance of what we consider the peoples of that day to have possessed. The only other alternative to the physical reality of those vehicles described in the Bible is that they were dreams or visions of Ezekiel and others. But if that is the case, from whence did these highly-detailed visions come? It is absurd to think that they were simply figments of active imaginations. To deny that the vehicles actually existed is equivalent to asserting that the visions came from God. Consequently, in either case there is some truth to their existence.

[to be continued]

UFOs CHAPTER 2 (CONTINUED)

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 2 (CONTINUED)

Some secularly-oriented UFO spokespersons are fence-sitters. While they either explicitly or indirectly equate their extraterrestrial visitors with the Biblical God, they almost invariably follow a mechanistic mindset for which the Biblical God is demoted to the status of a mere extraterrestrial. In the most fundamental sense, the Judeo-Christian God is obviously and unequivocally a space being: by common understanding, as Creator and Master of the universe, He owns it. Space is a large part of His turf. But that is not the sense in which the UFO fence-sitter implicitly defines the Judeo-Christian God. The alien deities as depicted by these authors differ substantially from that God with respect to capabilities, morals, and, above all, intent. These alien beings may have come from a distant planet, and they may have possessed a superior technology, and perhaps even a more highly-developed intellect. They may have created man as a hybrid of their own genetic material and that of some subhuman species extant on earth at the time. Nevertheless, they appear to be remarkably similar in their nature and temperament to mankind itself. This is especially true with regard to their moral character, which included venality, uncontrollable sexual urges, and petty jealousies. Nor are these beings omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. As pilots of spacecraft, mine supervisors, and genetic manipulators, they were subject to the same limitations in time and space as humanity. They are perceived as a plurality, not as a Triune Godhead but as a number of individuals who belonged to some other planet and relied on vehicular devices to arrive on the Earth. From that perspective, they were much too small to come even close to representing the Judeo-Christian God, both in their moral stature and capabilities, and in their self-serving natures. Instead, it is stated in all seriousness with no intent of mockery, the god who comes to mind in their writings is very much like the Wizard of Oz. This Cosmic Wizard is endowed perhaps with a superior intellect, certainly possesses a superior technology, and is capable of putting on a good dog-and-pony show to impress us less sophisticated earthlings with his divine attributes. But in the end he his much like us, having a mixture of good and bad qualities. This extraterrestrial had the same potential as man to strive for nobility and to fail in the attempt.

A ‘god’ of such limited attributes would be more like a cousin to humanity than a God. He would certainly lack the moral authority to exercise absolute control over our lives. His motives toward mankind would be limited as well, in all probability being directed toward self-service, as Zecharia Sitchin suggests in his Twelfth Planet series regarding his supposition that man was created for utilitarian purposes. In that context, Sitchin’s explanation of our origins as being motivated by the need for labor in the aliens’ mines is entirely consistent with his view of ‘god’ as a construct of man inspired by his utilitarian interaction with visitors from another planet. But to carry this consistency of thought to its logical conclusion would not only force us to deny the strong theme of sacrificial love that runs throughout the entirety of Scripture; it would also require us to consider our Judeo-Christian Scripture to represent myth more than truth. The mythical elements might indeed be based on factual events, but the mythical would have to be invoked to blow up the main player(s) to the status of godhood. It indeed appears that secularists prefer to view the Bible in a mythical context. In developing their own picture of god, those of the alien presuppositions also refer to the Bible, but not in the same way as the traditional Christian community. While they, like Christians, consider it to be a valuable historical document, it is just that to them and nothing more. It is treated as no more inspired than other ancient literature and is usually regarded as a Hebrew version of an earlier (and therefore supposedly more accurate) original.

Moreover, a mythical interpretation of the Bible which the secular UFO believers appear to favor of itself requires a corresponding ‘god’ to be of limited abilities and probably (although not necessarily) less than selfless intent. This viewpoint not only opens the door to the selective acceptance and rejection of arbitrary portions of Scripture, but also leads directly to the interpretation of any specific creative acts noted therein as being of limited scope and probably originating from self-serving motives. A good example of this is found on page 191 of Sitchin’s Divine Encounters, where Sumerian king Gudea is commanded through visions from the deity Enlil to build a temple. The detail of construction he is given through the series of visions is highly reminiscent of the Biblical instructions God gives to Moses and, later to David, regarding the construction of the places of worship and the artifacts that are to be used therein. But with respect to intent the similarity ends. Whereas Gudea’s temple has a utilitarian significance for the deities, God’s temples were intended as models to communicate God’s relationship with mankind and especially to instruct man on the nature of the Messiah to come.

The general lack of humanity associated with Sitchin’s beings is common to the viewpoint of the secular UFO buff: the beings are irretrievably alien, a notion that carries with it a strong element of fear. To many people, the intrusion of anything into the physical world not perceived as compatible with it as defined by current science is a very scary thought. It is perhaps this fear of control more than any other that separates the Christian from the secular UFO buff. A popular theme, around which a number of recent movies and television serials have been based, is the alien takeover. Through the use of superior technology, the alien race indwells the bodies of selected humans. From that beachhead, the aliens push outward in their diabolical attempt to make their conquest complete. The situation is made all the more terrifying by the fact that to outward appearances the infected, traitorous humans are indistinguishable from the normal remnant.

Given their common insistence on treating the Bible in the same manner as other ancient documents, it is inevitable that the proponents of the alien thesis should come to regard it from a mythical perspective, even while placing a literal interpretation on many of its passages. Sitchin and other writers of the alien visitation genre develop their theses from an interpretation of ancient texts that is driven by the alien notion. While their interpretations may be literal, the orientation remains secular with a rational, causal flavor. Sitchin, for example, follows precisely the same standard with respect to his interpretation of Hebrew Scripture as he does with the Sumerian texts. This approach may be justified with respect to the Sumerian literature, which seems to possess, to a large degree, an intrinsically secular, sometimes even a technical or social, basis. Scripture, on the other hand, has a different orientation. While its ultimate Author claims to have created the physical universe and everything within it, and while Scripture furnishes essential background information relating to secular matters, its emphasis is not on the secular but on God and His relationship with mankind. When a materialistic concern is presented at all in Scripture, it is usually included only when such background is necessary to provide an appropriate setting for its major theme, which is the presentation of God to man. While Sitchin is to be commended for the consistency of his approach, it may be suggested that perhaps the specifics of the approach to interpreting text should take this difference in orientation into account. There is no question but that a literal interpretation of Scripture is justified in all cases by the richness of the corresponding information it produces. But whereas it would also be appropriate to apply a strictly rational, technical, and causal approach to the exposition of secular material, an interpretation of Scripture should recognize in the omniscience of God His ability to transcend our ideas of causality, limited as we are in time and space. In this context, the possibility of miracles should be recognized, as should the ability of God, through the Holy Spirit, to influence man in both the writing and the interpretation of Scripture. When we attempt to interpret His Word, Scripture itself implies that we should recognize the influence of our own limitations as well as the power of God in the successful execution of this endeavor.

Zecharia Sitchin demonstrates that a strictly secular interpretation of Scripture can lead to a radically different outcome than that of historical understanding. On pages 30 through 33 of Divine Encounters, Sitchin discusses the rift between Cain and Abel, attributing it to their rivalry over the legal heirdom of the patriarchy and paralleling the rivalry between the gods Enlil and Enki. Christians, on the other hand, in the light of a different understanding of the intimacy of God’s interaction with man, see an entirely different cause of the animosity, one that is clearly implied in the Book of Genesis and which is fundamental to their faith. Cain was a farmer, whereas Abel was an animal husbandman. When they brought offerings to the Lord, they each did so in the context of their respective functions: Cain offered the fruits of the harvest, and Abel offered an animal. God viewed these offerings for how they represented man’s attempt to regain His favor after the expulsion from Eden. Whereas Cain offered the work of his own hands, Abel offered the blood of an innocent victim, acknowledging his own inability to please God and foreshadowing the work of Jesus Christ on the cross on behalf of mankind. Cain’s subsequent jealousy over God’s preference of Abel’s sacrifice led to his murder of Abel. Interestingly, on page 40 of Divine Encounters, Sitchin implies, in direct opposition to the Scriptural account, that the farmer enjoyed Enlil’s favor over the herdsman.

This radical difference in interpretation necessarily leads to the perception of inconsistencies throughout the Bible, self-fulfilling the initial assumption that Scripture is less than inspired. The inevitable conclusion that one might make from this viewpoint of the Judeo-Christian Scripture, and especially its regard for the Bible as less than inspired of God is that our ancient forebears were duped into submission, even slavery, to other beings of perhaps superior intellect but less than honorable motives. Our inferior society, according to this view, went along with their functional imprisonment out of their lack of sophistication. To this very day, according to the adherents to this alien genre, the less intellectually endowed among us who attempt to follow the teachings of their religions remain trapped in subjugation to an evil fable.

The result of this trend toward the self-reinforcement of entry presuppositions is that the group of secular believers in UFOs, unlike those who deny their existence, will tend to stand firm in their particular visions of what UFOs represent. If they maintain an assumption of Scriptural errancy, however, their reasoning about the relevance of God to the UFO situation will tend to be circular: they will take out of their mental exercises with respect to God exactly what they came in with. There is thus a rather extreme and irreconcilable divergence of views between the Christian believer in UFOs and their secular counterparts regarding any link between so-called aliens and God. The net outcome of this difference is an implacably dark assignment to UFO occupants of either evil intent or alien indifferene.

This outlook, in turn, has heavily influenced the ongoing government policy of inhibiting the public awareness of UFOs to maintain control over the human population while seeking a better understanding and control over the phenomenon itself.

UFOs CHAPTER 2

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2: The Secular Perception of UFOs

There is a group within the secular community whose members are entirely indifferent to the UFO issue. This group can be categorized as consisting of imagination-challenged, intellectually shallow people who are focused on the mundane throughout their lives, being aware of only those events that might affect their own highly-developed self-interest. Not only is this camp indifferent to UFOs, it is also indifferent to the subject of God (except, perhaps as God might relate to Santa) and pretty much to anything not involving the next hamburger or the next episode of the Wheel. I dismiss it with a matching indifference, with the exception that I do enjoy watching the unsuccessful attempts of such people to answer the ridiculously elementary questions posed by Watters on the O’Reilly Factor.

The remainder of the secular world is divided into two sharply opposed camps regarding UFOs. A substantial segment of mainstream society, having bought into the prevailing paradigms of the world, places those who claim involvement in the UFO phenomenon as credulous, out of touch with reality, and rather on the fringe of social acceptability. They deny the existence of UFOs altogether, assuming that accounts of them originate with individuals who are burdened with problems of one sort or another. They are supported in large part by the mainstream media, the mainstream educational system, and mainstream science, to whom they prefer for answers to their own minds and common sense. This group, being marginally more intelligent, are marginally more aware of the world about them than those who are completely indifferent to the UFO phenomenon. They also are marginally more interesting.

The opposing secular camp not only believes in the existence of UFOs, but sees in them an alien presence, irrelevant to God, that has invaded us both now and in the past. This more interesting group consists of those who not only believe in UFOs, but acknowledge their historical existence and generally think that they are up to no good. Investigators within the camp of historical or ancient encounters are represented by authors Von Daniken, Sitchin and Temple. The more speculative details presented by them include mythological connections to Sirius or alien visitors in our past who came from an unknown planet of a highly eccentric orbit within our own solar system. There are a number of investigative organizations such as MUFON that focus on more modern sightings. Such can be readily acquired on the Internet. We shall set aside the speculative details as interesting but somewhat irrelevant to a demonstration of the reality of extraterrestrial visitors. For the most part we will confine our attention here to the core thesis of past and present visitations to earth by extraterrestrial beings, whatever their possible origins. The basic questions alone raise a variety of issues important to the speculative Christian.

If there is reality behind the UFO phenomenon – and that’s a very big if to the secular mind – the perception of their craft is consistently viewed in naturalistic terms. Whether they come from a different planet or galaxy, UFOs belong to the same universe as we inhabit, along with our own dimensional constraints. The craft, to them, are electromechanical devices like our own aircraft and space vehicles but designed and fabricated with the aid of a technology that is more advanced than ours. The implications of this standard perception have both technical and social components.

Technically, we are intrigued with the capabilities of UFOs, because evidence of their existence includes features such as their maneuverability, speed, power source, mode of overcoming gravity, and electromagnetic effects when they are in proximity to our own vehicles and appliances that extend rather far beyond our own capabilities in these areas. Some individuals would welcome contact with UFO occupants for the superior knowledge that they might be able to impart to us and thereby raise us up to new levels more compatible with their own. Such individuals are in the minority due to the social implications noted below.

The social implications of a more advanced society go beyond perceptions of UFO occupants as alien beings. Whether they are similar to us or not, their presence on earth represents de facto superiority. We know from experience within our own human society that when two peoples of unequal civilizations meet, they will clash, with the more advanced civilization dominating and eventually destroying the less developed one. This understanding is not lost on those who contemplate a future world in which UFO occupants would openly interact with humanity, and the thought is sufficient to generate real fear. This perceived threat to our way of life and even to our own continued existence would be more than sufficient to erect a governmental barrier of secrecy around the UFO phenomenon and to downplay the existence of such to the general public.

Difficulties have emerged regarding a materialistic view of UFOs. The enigmatic features of modern UFO sightings initially raised a number of questions relating to the technology that aliens might possess to enable them to perform the radical maneuvers associated with them or their vehicles. Over the several decades that have elapsed since the first well-publicized modern sightings in 1947, it was recognized that technology alone furnished an insufficient explanation of their characteristics and capabilities, which led a number of researchers in that field to question whether the aliens might have a spiritual quality. The mindset of Dr. J. Allen Hyneck, who came into the field of UFO investigations as a consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Bluebook, evolved over the course of his investigations from skeptic to believer in the alien hypothesis, but he went beyond the extraterrestrial notion to a belief in something perhaps more spiritual in the nature of the alien beings than the common understanding admits. Jacques Vallee, a long-time UFO investigator who has gained a considerable measure of respect in the field, echoes this thought.

In his 1988 book Dimensions, Vallee asserts that UFO visitations, with many of their modern characteristics, have been with us since the beginning of mankind’s civilization. He traces the evidence for this assertion throughout our history, noting the many famous sightings which extend past a number of recorded incidents from the present down through the middle ages into antiquity. Most important to our subject, he cites the numerous Biblical passages such as the vision of Ezekiel, which overtly refer to such visitations as having a distinct flavor wherein the UFO aspect merges into Judeo-Christian canon. Moreover, he notes, the nature of these visitations, in which the ‘beings’ appear to be beyond the constraints of mass, space, and time in their ability to levitate, withstand violent maneuvers, and pass through solid objects, possess the same features that make the modern UFO sightings so enigmatic. It is these disturbing characteristics which so oppose modern rationalist thinking, Vallee claims, that put the UFO ‘occupants’ into a category beyond the mere extraterrestrial. He speculates on the possibility that they might be interdimensional, occupying a universe parallel to our own.

Secular accounts of ancient UFO visitations and theories regarding them will be explored in more detail in a later chapter. Here it will be simply noted that in general troubled and partially-formulated speculations like Vallee’s serve to emphasize the ultra-rigid boundaries of the modern rationalist way of thinking. The notion of a spirit-based entity capable of passing through solid objects is usually rejected quite rapidly as ridiculous. The assertion of this as impossible in our ‘real’ world also denies the possibility that the soul, so important to the Christian belief, can exist. A passage in Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel directly refutes this denial. In that passage the resurrected Jesus performs the same acts that the UFO debunker uses to discredit the reality of UFO sightings:

“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither they finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.”

In the above passage, Jesus not only passed through solid walls to appear to the disciples, but presented the form of flesh to Thomas. He also ate with them. These capabilities that include the materialistic but extent beyond materialism are precisely those characteristics of many UFO sightings which cause such consternation among the investigators and their audience. Yet many of our cutting-edge physicists confront these mysterious capabilities on a daily basis in their investigations into quantum physics.

[to be continued]

UFOs CHAPTER 1 (CONTINUED)

CONTACT, COMMUNION AND CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 1 (CONTINUED)

Accepting the reality of UFOs is comparable to believing in near-death experiences: people can indulge in endless speculation about them, but the truth of the matters can be fully understood only by those who have had actual experience with the events and their aftermaths. As for UFOs, their reality to me is a given, because I personally have experienced the event, and the aftermath, to me, has been a glorious, life-changing journey. Apparently, the same can be said about many of those who have been on the edge between life and death and have returned back to this side.

Actually, there are at least seven important commonalities between UFO encounters and near-death experiences (NDEs). The first of these, at least to those who see a religious connotation to the UFO encounter, is the angelic involvement in both. Second, both kinds of events include both positive and negative encounters. Third, many people, both those involved and their investigators, interpret the experiences as exclusively negative. The account below involving the nun may be distressingly typical. Fourth, the experiences are other-worldly; they don’t fit into the pattern of what we consider to be normal. Fifth, the capabilities of spiritual entities, including those who experience an NDE, extend beyond those of us who are confined to the material world. These super-powers include the ability to travel at will through the air without supporting devices, invisibility, and lack of solidity. Jesus’ post-resurrection encounter with Timothy as described in John 20:24-29, were of this flavor. Sixth, both types of experiences imparted knowledge that would be unobtainable through normal channels of information. The seventh is the most important of all: to those who experienced positive encounters, there was a deep sense of loss at leaving behind the encounter environment.

These commonalities deserve to be addressed in greater detail. As for the angelic quality of the experiences, John Burke describes in his 2015 book Imagine Heaven multiple cases where the person involved was met by beings who were intuitively sensed to be angels. Of course, the “light at the end of the tunnel” that is included in so many of these events almost invariably was associated with Jesus Christ. The same may be said regarding those UFO encounters that were experienced or interpreted as having religious components – the occupants of these craft were thought to be angelic in nature, whether the experience itself was positive or negative. In fact, both the NDE and UFO experiences included both positive and negative instances, where the negative NDE experience was often interpreted as being in hell, and the negative UFO event was attributed to demonic beings. The negative UFO interpretation is addressed elsewhere in this work. As for the interpretation of an NDE experience as negative, John Burke relates one incident that may be more typical than we’d like to imagine. On page 41 of Imagine Heaven he quotes a woman who had her NDE experience in a Catholic hospital. After overcoming her fear of rejection over the matter, she shared her experience with a nurse. Just as she’d imagined, the nurse was horrified and sent for a nun to counsel her. The nun attributed the experience to the work of the devil. This reminds me of several Christian spokespersons who also attribute demonic inspiration to the UFO phenomenon. On the positive side, if the NDE subject went somewhere, that ‘somewhere’ was heaven, and for the ‘religious’ UFO encounter where knowledge was imparted, the subject in at least one case was instructed about or given visions of heaven. That particular case happened to be mine. Regarding the other-worldly nature of both types of experiences, this quality is evidenced by the large number of people who prefer to deny the reality of the events as delusional. It is common knowledge that UFO occupants and their craft perform maneuvers that are quite beyond the capabilities of mankind. Those involved in NDE experiences also claim to possess capabilities that go beyond the normal range of human experience. It’s not always appreciated that Jesus Himself demonstrated super-normal capabilities in addition to His healings, both before and after His resurrection. John 8:59 and 20:24-29 illustrate this quality of Jesus:

“Then took they up stones to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.”

“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples, therefore, said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, will not believe. And, after eight days, again his disciples were inside, and Thomas with them; then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach here thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach here thny hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered, and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Regarding the impartation of knowledge, I detail in Chapter 5 below my own experience which not only gave me the desire to acquire knowledge of Scripture but the actual understanding that was given to me that can’t be explained in any other way. In Chapter 7, I expand on that single incident by describing the prophetic knowledge that was given to a number of Biblical figures. Some of it is spectacular, including Daniel’s forecast in Daniel 9:24-27 of the timing of critical events that would occur in the future, including Jesus’ entrance as King into Jerusalem a certain time from a predicted event. This prophecy was fulfilled to the exact day hundreds of years in the future from Daniel! Another prophetic event that was precisely fulfilled was Ezekiel’s forecast of Israel’s return to statehood in 1948, as demonstrated by the late Bible scholar Grant Jeffrey.

Some very impressive knowledge, beyond what humans are capable of acquiring, comes out of NDE experiences as well. On pages 35 and 36 of Imagine Heaven, Burke relates how people who have been blind from birth emerge from their NDE episodes with descriptions of persons and objects that would be accessible only to those with the ability to see. He presents a particularly poignant example on page 48 of how a Dutch couple had a daughter they named Reitje who had died while a child. Eventually, after a period of grieving, they had a son. They refrained from telling him about their daughter, wishing to wait until he was older and could better handle the topic of death. When he was five, the son contracted meningitis and died. When he was rescuscitated, his greatly-relieved parents came to his hospital bedside to shower him with their love, whereupon he told them that he had gone to heaven. He told them that he had met his sister there, and gave them her name of Reitje. He asked them why they had never told him about her, saying that she had hugged him and was very loving toward them all. It blows my mind how the boy’s parents must have reacted to that news.

A very lovely lady with whom I had worked at one time confided in me her own near-death experience. While giving birth to her last baby, she succumbed to uncontrollable bleeding, and died on the hospital bed. She recalled hovering under the ceiling above her body, where they were working to resuscitate her. One of the doctors was talking to the nurse assisting him, and happened to make some inappropriate remarks about her. When she regained consciousness, she called him to her bedside and, as the astonished man began to melt down, redressed him sharply for what he had said.

I seem to have acquired some knowledge about heaven. In my most recent novel Home, Sweet Heaven I continue with the adventures of Earl and Joyce Cook, some of which involve the spiritual realm of heaven. An excerpt of their first encounter with that realm is given below; I was comfortable with the writing, as if I was happily recalling it directly from memory.

“They entered the light and emerged into a scene of awesome splendor. It was familiar, even homey, as if she’d been here before, long before her journey on earth. She was surrounded by greenery more vivid and lusher than what she’d been used to on earth. The trees appeared to be alive, their leaves flashing with emerald sparkles in the light breeze. They cast soft background glows that blended smoothly into a warm powder blue sky at the horizon that gradually deepened into a midnight blue at the zenith. This visual experience is a beautiful song, Joyce marveled. Even the grass seemed to be participating harmoniously in the joyful singing that surrounded her both visually and aurally. She rapidly began to view the dimensional restriction of her past life on earth as an irritating encumbrance. As she looked around, Joyce thrilled to the softly harmonious blend of colors. It was like the transition between black-and-white and color TV. Beyond the grandness of the visual experience, love was in the very air, so immense that it seemed to have a palpable presence. Her sense of familiarity strengthened as, mingled with the love was the growing knowledge that this was her real home.

“Yes!” a laughing angel affirmed to her without speaking. The presence of this being, Joyce realized with shock, was not outside her own soul. The being was within her, part of her own self and anything but an invasion of her privacy. Privacy here was meaningless, her spiritual intuition told her, as unwelcome as such an intrusion would have represented in the material world from which she had so recently departed. The intimacy was akin to romance with perhaps even an implication of sensuality in its connectivity, but extended vastly beyond the earthly experience. Another spiritual being entered their domain, extending the joy of intimate communion.

“’Oh!’ Joyce exclaimed to her new companion. ‘Oh my, I recognize you! You’re Cathy!’ The recognition of the soul who in earth had inhabited the severely crippled body of a girl afflicted with cerebral palsy overwhelmed her and she began to cry. Cathy joined in, weeping with joy and tightening their spiritual bond. ‘Look at me!’ she cried, moving outside Joyce’s domain momentarily to prance. ‘I’m whole!’ She skipped away, and then returned to Joyce, laughing. Joyce continued to cry as she looked with wonder at her adopted daughter who had been so cruelly mishandled at the hands of the prison guards. After a time of silent, heartfelt communion, Cathy began to instruct her about heaven. ‘The spiritual realm is our normal home, Joyce,’ she told her earthly guardian. ‘I chose to spend some time on earth, and I chose the body and circumstances under which that time would be spent. We were given that choice as an opportunity to grow in our love of God and to help others grow as well. You were one of my primary assignments, although I wasn’t aware of it while I was on Earth.’

“’Me? You were to help me?’ Joyce responded in surprise.

“’Yes. You thought it was the other way around, but I was placed into your life to help you grow in love and compassion. A big part of that growth involved your becoming more selfless in your interaction with others. But there were others with the same mission, like Earl and Sam.’”

Much as the NDE experience overlaps that of the UFO encounter, they are far from identical. There is at least one major difference as well. Whereas the UFO phenomenon quite often evokes secular, materialistic interpretations and notions of government cover-ups, there is no counterpart to these interpretations in the NDE cases, which invariably are interpreted in religious terms. Government involvement there is simply not contemplated, nor should it be. As far as I’m aware, nobody on the brink of death has been escorted to a group of bug-eyed Greys. I wouldn’t reject the possibility of something like that happening, but if I ever heard of such a thing, I’d be laughing a lot.

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER EIGHT (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER EIGHT (CONTINUED) The Meaning of Biblical Morality

It has been said, in defense of Zanchius, that in describing God as above passion, he was referring exclusively to God transcendent, a state of being connoting God separate from and above His creation. God immanent, on the other hand, referring to God among us, would indeed possess passion.

This defense is weakened by the fact that it puts words into the mouth of Zanchius that the gentleman never put there himself. Nevertheless, the assumption shall be made herein that Zanchius meant this all along.

It will also be presumed, so that the discussion might proceed without immediately being cut off, that somehow the following Scripture verse, namely Hebrews 13:8, can be interpreted to be not applicable to a change in God’s personality from ‘God transcendent’ to ‘God immanent’.

“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.”

It will yet further be presumed, for the sake of initial argument, that ‘God immanent’ refers exclusively to Jesus in the flesh. But since Jesus preexisted His sojourn in the flesh, his or any other Member of the Trinity’s existence prior to that event would necessarily be ‘God transcendent’. But Exodus 32:7-14, for example, describes that same God, who is, by our initial definition ‘transcendent’ at that point in history, as possessing passion in abundance:

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, whom thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made a molten calf, and have worshiped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
“And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
“And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord why doth wrath wax hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.
“And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”

Perhaps, then, lest we find immediate fault with this notion that ‘God transcendent’ differs with respect to nature than ‘God immanent’, the term ‘God immanent’ would better be defined as ‘God interacting with man’. But that doesn’t work because the creation itself of man is one aspect of God interacting with man, whereas it is the very endeavor of creation that defines “God transcendent’.

We could narrow the definition of ‘God immanent’ further to mean ‘God communicating with man’. As redeemed mankind will be communicating with Jesus as His Bride throughout eternity, that raises a very strange and difficult, if not blasphemous theological issue: Jesus as God was once transcendent before He came in the flesh, but never shall be again.

We could narrow the definition still further to mean ‘God communicating with man while He is in the flesh’ But that doesn’t work either, because Ephesians 5 demands that in His spiritual form, Jesus will be communicating quite intimately with His Church, to whom he is Husband. By this new definition, Jesus shall no longer assume the role of ‘God immanent’, but instead shall be ‘God transcendent’. Shall we then insist upon a passionless marriage, one that violates the whole concept of marriage as God Himself in both Scripture and creation has presented it to us?

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul’s mystery in Chapter 5 gives us a very different message than this. It speaks of hope and joy to which Zanchius’ definition of God simply doesn’t do justice. It is to be treasured not only for its contribution to our future hope and expectation, but also to clarify our understanding of our God. This mystery is encapsulated in Ephesians 5:25-32:

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
“So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
“This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

A devoted Christian condensed this beautiful statement into the following magnificent observation: “Just as Adam’s side was opened for Eve, so Jesus’ side was opened for His Church.”

In dwelling upon this wonderful notion, we also anticipate a God who is capable of passion toward us regardless of whether His presence is transcendent or immanent. In recognizing this fact, we can return to the assurance in Hebrews 13:8 of God’s unchanging nature.

What might change in God between transcendence and immanence is the dimensional constraint that Jesus experienced in becoming flesh. But that implies a limitation on His attributes rather than His basic nature, where passion belongs. Furthermore, it would be a limitation on His immanent form, not His transcendent form, which demands that His immanent form involves a subset of the attributes associated with His transcendent form, not the other way around. Therefore, even if one should insist in opposition to logic that passion was an attribute rather than an element of His basic nature, passion would be part of His transcendent form and not His immanent form, in contradiction to the argument that attempted to support Zanchius’ omission of passion in God’s nature.

Having refuted Zanchius’ assertion on this point, we can state without restraint that God, regardless of whether His form or state of being is immanent or transcendent, is capable of possessing passion. An immediate implication of this is that God is not alien to us.

The notion that God is above love of a passionate nature appears to violate Scripture, the most obvious case being ardor and passion intricately woven into the Song of Solomon, otherwise known as the Song of Songs. At least two Bible commentaries (in the Reformation Study Bible, New King James Version and in the New Schofield Reference Bible), both as introductions to the Song of Solomon, consider the Song to be an allegory of the future union of Jesus Christ with His Church.

My perception of the glory of God in all three Persons of the Godhead is far more the quality of their selfless willingness to give up the majesty than the grandeur of their possession of it. Connected with that perception I view the Members of the Godhead as capable of experiencing love with intensity and passion, which to me includes love of the romantic kind. Otherwise, the Song of Solomon would seem to be a wholly gratuitous insertion into Scripture of material extraneous to the Word if it didn’t speak either of Jesus’ future relationship with the Church or of the inter-Member relationship within the Godhead or both. Even more telling in this regard is the Shema of Moses, which Jesus presents as the greatest commandment in Matthew 22:36-38, and which demands a passionate commitment to the Lord. In light of the fact that Jesus, as a superlative Leader, never asked of His disciples anything that He wouldn’t do of Himself, it would seem to be contradictory to His character for Him to ask of us a passion that He Himself was incapable of exercising or even possessing.

The Song of Solomon raises issues in that regard that are worth addressing in detail. A host of Christian authorities readily acknowledge that it speaks of marital love in terms of passion and ardor. The same authorities admit even the erotic nature of some of its verses. The 1995 Reformation Study Bible (New King James Version), for example has this to say of the subject matter of the Song of Solomon:

“The beauty and worth of sexual love is affirmed at the beginning of the Bible, where the difference and relationship of the sexes is associated with the creation of humanity in God’s image (Gen. 1:27; cf. 2:19-25) If sexual love were evil in itself, it would be inappropriate as an allegory of Christ’s love for His church.”

Here Editor R. C. Sproul and his associates not only acknowledge the sexuality of the topic, but link it to both the nature of the Godhead and with the relationship between Christ and His Church. Indeed, in their same introductory commentary, the editors make the following statements:

“The Song of Solomon reveals three qualities of love between a man and a woman: self-giving, desire, and commitment. In all these ways love reflects the greater love of God our Creator. God delights in us and gives Himself to us. . . Christian marriage, according to Paul, should be modeled on the most perfect expression of such love, the self-giving love of Christ for His church and its willing response (Eph. 5:22, 23). The climax of the Song of Solomon is the praise of vehement and faithful love (8:6,7). The Song of Solomon. . .looks back to the gift of love in creation, and forward to the perfection of love in One greater than Solomon, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The editors, after implying a gender attribute of Jesus and the Godhead Itself, back off from openly declaring a sexuality of God:

“Although it is not proper to attribute sexuality to God, there is an analogy between the love we experience in marriage and the love that God has for us.”

While I would have wished that the editors, after having stated here what easily could be interpreted as the essential opposite of what they presented elsewhere in their introductory remarks, might have explained to us what they meant by the words ‘not proper’ and ‘sexuality’ and how they might justify using these words, their comment here may be reconciled with their other insinuations while leaving intact the notion of gender in the Godhead by considering the word ‘sexuality’ to refer to the human-specific form in which the function of gender has been implemented. If that indeed is what the editors had in mind, then I would be somewhat in agreement with them (while, with one eye fixed on the Song, wondering if they hadn’t been a bit hasty themselves in this declaration) and be tempted to applaud their discernment in declaring ‘sexuality’ to be an inappropriate attribute of the Godhead.

The commentary on the Song of Solomon presented in the New Schofield Reference Bible (1967 Edition edited by C. I. Schofield) echoes, but even more forcefully, that given in the Reformation Study Bible:

“Nowhere in Scripture does the unspiritual mind tread upon ground so mysterious and incomprehensible as in this book, whereas saintly men and women throughout the ages have found it a source of pure and exquisite delight. That the love of the divine Bridegroom, symbolized here by Solomon’s love for the Shulamite maiden, should follow the analogy of the marriage relationship seems evil only to minds that are so ascetic that marital desire itself appears to them to be unholy.

“The book is the expression of pure marital love as ordained by God in creation, and the vindication of that love as against both asceticism and lust – the two profanations of the holiness of marriage. Its interpretation is threefold: (1) as a vivid unfolding of Solomon’s love for a Shulamite girl; (2) as a figurative revelation of God’s love for His covenant people, Israel, the wife of the Lord (Isa. 54:5-6; Jer. 2:2; Ezek. 16:8-14, 20-21, 32, 38; Hos. 2:16, 18-20); and (3) as an allegory of Christ’s love for His heavenly bride, the Church (2 Cor. 11:1-2, refs., Eph 5:25-32).”

As there appears to be a general agreement among established Biblical authorities regarding the relevance of this openly passionate Book to Christ and His Church, and there appears to be a similarly general agreement among established Biblical authorities regarding the Diety of Jesus Christ, an inescapable observation must be made: At least one Member of the Divine Godhead is openly acknowledged to be fully capable and willing to (passionately) exercise His male gender.

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT: The meaning of Biblical Morality

General

According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance for the King James Bible, there is no Biblical reference to either morality or immorality.  There are, however, multiple passages in the Bible that essentially equate our notion of the word “morality” to other common terms.  These will be explored below.

There are numerous discussions on the Internet regarding Biblical morality, two of which reference a number of Bible verses the authors thought to be appropriate to the topic.  Many of these verses reference notions that are thought to be equivalent to our basic understanding of what Biblical morality might represent.  They are arranged below according to their commonality of these alternate expressions.

Morality as fulfillment of the Law (sometimes equated with love, other times equated with doctrine, most dealing with sexual deviation): Genesis 19:1-38; Exodus 20:13; Leviticus 18 and 20; Deuteronomy 23; 1 Kings 14:24; 2 Kings 23:7; Proverbs 20, 23; Matthew 5:27, 28; Matthew 7:12; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:17; 1 Timothy 1:10; Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:15;

Morality as righteousness, which is most used in terms of our obedience to the call from God to love our neighbors and most specifically for our honesty in dealing with others, our responsibility toward those under our control or supervision and for our compassion toward those hurting or less fortunate than ourselves:  Isaiah 64:6; Matthew 6:33; Matthew 25; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 2 Timothy 3:16

Morality as love of God: Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:30, 31;

Morality as obedience to God: references under fulfillment of the Law; references to righteousness; Proverbs 6:23-25; Proverbs 12:1; Matthew 6:24; Matthew 24:44-46; Acts 5:29; 1 Corinthians 2:13; Ephesians 6:4; James 1:22-25

Morality as good manners (responsible, thoughtful conduct): 1 Corinthians 15:33

Morality as harmonious with man’s creation: Genesis 1:27

Sexual Morality

The issue of sexual morality, and in particular the Biblical implications regarding it, is so important and so generally misunderstood that it deserves a separate discussion.

Webster’s New American Dictionary, 1956 Edition, defines “morality” as follows: “right living, virtue; conformity to generally accepted standards of conduct. “ Virtue, in turn, is defined therein as: “moral excellence, chastity”.  Continuing on, chastity is defined therein as: “the state of being chaste; purity”, where the word “purity” is defined as: “the quality of being free of blemishes and without admixture; chastity”.  Despite this unhelpful circularity of definition, chastity is commonly equated with virginity, which, in that dictionary, is defined as: “the quality of being a virgin; celibacy; chastity”.  Therefore, according to this dictionary, the term “morality” is equated, in a roundabout way, with celibacy.  There certainly are other, nonsexual, connotations of morality as well, but the sexual connotation takes center stage.

This linkage of morality with sexual purity, most commonly interpreted as strict celibacy, has been with the Church virtually since its beginning.   The implication is that sexuality of any nature, is at best a diversion preventing full intimacy with God and, at worst, a sin.  This notion is sometimes taken to the extreme of pronouncing as sinful passion of any kind.  This notional attitude is common in both Protestant and Catholic denominations, the Catholic expression of it being the most open.   As demonstrated in numerous Catholic publications, and particularly in those that deal with Mary, this equivalence is quite pronounced.  As an example is the Catholic insistence upon Mary’s perpetual virginity, despite the clear contradiction in Matthew 13 of that notion.  (The Catholic answer to Matthew 13 is her interpretation of the terms “brothers” and “sisters” is that of close relatives rather than siblings.)  It is true that Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, describes celibacy as a desirable objective with the intent that the virgin may place all his or her affection on God undiluted, but note in verses 6 and 25 his acknowledgment that virginity is not a commandment from God.  Note also in verse 40 that Paul seems unsure as to how much of the call to celibacy of which he speaks is actually of God.  Nowhere in the Bible outside of Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 7 is there a hint that celibacy is a desirable practice.  There is no commandment that says “Thou shalt not lie with a woman.”  To the contrary, in Genesis 1:28 God told them to be fruitful and multiply.  Furthermore, Deuteronomy 23:1 insists that full masculinity is required for service to the Lord by stating that “He who is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”  As a final point on the sexuality issue is the presence of the overtly sexual Song of Solomon in the canon of Scripture.

On the other hand, there are a host of abuses of normal sexuality that are proscribed in the Bible (especially in Exodus 20:14 and 17 and Leviticus 18 and 20) as abominations, or as one might otherwise put them, as immoral acts, such as adultery, homosexuality and bestiality, all of which represent violations of the way that God designed us, and consequently are in disharmony with our basic (unfallen) natures.  Adultery, in particular, also directly violates God’s second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:39), which is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Additional  Comments on the Church’s Notion of Sexual Morality

Perhaps the most intellectually theological expression of the notion of sexuality or even passion as being beneath God is the virtually Gnostic pronouncement given by Jerome Zanchius in his tome “Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted”.  The first of these statements may be found on p. 40 as “Position 2” under the heading “The Mercy of God”.  In that statement Zanchius says “Mercy is not in the Deity, as it is in us, a passion or affection, everything of that kind being incompatible with the purity, perfection, independency and unchangeableness [immutability] of His nature; . . .”  The second of his statements is on pp. 43 and 44 under headings I and II of chapter 1.  Therein he fleshes out his concept of God’s love, as the following excerpts show: “When love is predicated of God, we do not mean that He is possessed of it as a passion or affection.  In us it is such, but if, considered in that sense, it should be ascribed to the Deity, it would be utterly subversive of the simplicity, perfection and independency of His being. . .”;  “. . .His love towards them arises merely from ‘the good pleasure of his own will,’ without the least regard to anything ad extra or out of Himself.”; “When hatred is ascribed to God, it implies (1) a negation of benevolence, or a resolution not to have mercy on such and such men. . .”

Zanchius thus defines a God whose primary attribute is his majestic greatness.  Had his mind access to expressions denoting higher level superlatives, he certainly would have included them.  In defining God in this way, he automatically makes love a secondary attribute, despite John’s emphatic identification of God as the very embodiment of love.  Zanchius’ passionless God, in fact, is alien to the God of Scripture.  This is to be expected, as he assigns attributes to God without any reference whatsoever to Scripture itself.

Zanchius’ God, then, being positionally remote from and by nature very different from the mankind of His creation, is alien to it as well.

In opposition to Zanchius, Scripture paints a far more beautiful picture of God, depicting His majestic glory as His willingness to give up the majesty of greatness and power in favor of a love of great fullness and depth.  The Gospels appear to support this view, depicting Jesus Christ (as God) as a Being full of the attributes of love as we know it, including passion.  Examples that come to mind include His weeping over Jerusalem and Lazarus and His ordeal in the garden of Gethsemane.  It is difficult to picture the risen Jesus talking to His followers on the road to Emmaus in the context of Zanchius’ notion of God’s remote perfection.

Zanchius’ definition of God not only suppresses His most important attribute, but inhibits those to whom Scripture was written from loving Him back.  This is a serious issue because it runs counter to His Great Commandment to love Him with all our hearts, and our souls and our minds.

[to be continued]

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER SEVEN (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER SEVEN (CONTINUED): The issue extends beyond the gender of the Holy Spirit

One further Biblical suggestion needs to be addressed regarding the importance of gender in the relationships within Godhead and between the spiritual Church and Jesus Christ.  In Genesis 17, God talks to Abraham, telling him of a blessing that he will receive that will greatly impact the future of mankind:

“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.  And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.  And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for Me, behold, My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.  Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.  And I will make thee exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.  And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.  And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a sojourner, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.

 

          “And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep My covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations.  This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee.  Every male child among you shall be circumcised.  And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you.  And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner who is not of thy seed.  He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.  And the uncircumcised male child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken My covenant.

 

          “And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai, thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.  And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.  Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old?  And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?  And Abraham said unto God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee!  And God said, Sarah, thy wife, shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.”

 

          The primary theme of this passage continues in Genesis 18:11-14:

“Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.  Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I have become old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?  And the Lord said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying Shall I of a surety bear a child, who am old?  Is anything too hard for the Lord?  At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

I now present the gender issue to the reader by way of a question involving the passage above that requires nothing more or less than a common-sense answer:  Why, if God isn’t intimately and personally involved in gender, would He present one of the most important transactions between Him and the human race in terms of a sexual miracle?

As God had suggested, nothing is too hard for Him to accomplish.  If God were indeed above gender, as many past and present theologians insist, He certainly could have altered the story line and associated miracle to remove sexuality from it.

Sarah would bear their son Isaac the next year.  Why indeed would God demand a token response of Abraham and his offspring in the form of the sexual ritual of male circumcision?  This ritual had little or nothing to do with cleanliness.  The human race had survived for centuries before the ritual was established.  In Acts 7:51, Paul echoes Ezekiel 36:26 in furnishing a hint as to the real purpose of the ritual:

“Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do ye.”

 

In a very graphic way, Paul used the term to chastise his audience for their lack of sensitivity toward God.  That was indeed the imagery that God intended to convey to the nation of Israel through the institution of the rite.

Isaac was the son of Abraham through his lifelong marital partner, as God had intended marriage to be.  Through Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac later, Abraham became a strong type of God the Father, while Isaac represented the Jesus as Lamb of God who was obedient to the cross.  Years later, Abraham sought a suitable wife for Isaac, one who would maintain Isaac as a strong type of Christ.  The account is in Genesis 24:10-32:

“And the servant took ten camels of the camels of [Abraham], and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor.  And he made his camels to kneel down outside the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water.  And he said, O Lord god of my master, Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and show kindness unto my master, Abraham.  Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water; and let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; let her be the one whom thou hast appointed for thy servant, Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shown kindness unto my master.

 

          “And it came to pass, before he had finished speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder.  And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her; and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up.  And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water from thy pitcher.  And she said, Drink, my lord: and she hastened, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink.  And when she had finished giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have finished drinking.  And she hastened, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels.  And the man, wondering at her, held his peace, to learn whether the Lord had made his journey prosperous or not.

 

‘And it came to pass, as the camels had finished drinking, that the man took a golden ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her wrists of ten shekels weight of gold; and said, Whose daughter art thou?  Tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father’s house for us to lodge in?  And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore unto Nahor.  She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and fodder enough, and room to lodge in.  And the man bowed down his head and worshiped the Lord.  And he said, Blessed be the Lord God  of my master, Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren.  And the dams and he ungirded his camels, and gave straw and fodder for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and the men;s feet that were with him.  And there was set food before him to eat: but he said, I will not eat, until I have told mine errand.”

 

The man related to Laban and the others the unique way that God had precisely answered his elaborate test for the suitability of Rebekah for marriage to Isaac.  Then the man gave Laban the riches he had brought with him on the camels.  Laban responded by consenting to the marriage.  But as the man prepared to return to Abraham with Rebekah, Laban backed off somewhat, asking for another ten days before giving up his sister.  At that point, almost as an afterthought, they decided to ask for Rebekah’s consent as well.  (As a side point, I see some implication in that regarding the issue of free will, most often expressed as the Calvinist/Arminian divide among Christians)

After receiving Rebekah’s consent to the marriage, they journey back to Abraham’s home, where Isaac marries Rebekah.  She gives birth to Jacob and Esau.  Jacob is renamed Israel by God, continuing on the bloodline to Jesus Christ.

I offer another question to the reader: What was so important about Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah that it involved such an intricate selection process that was so detailed in Scripture?  Permit me to answer that one:  Isaac, who was a strong type of Christ, continued to be a type in this marital relationship, anticipating the future role of the Church as the Bride of Christ.  Paul expressed this blessed hope quite boldly in Ephesians 5:31 and 32:

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”

 

Christians sometimes claim that Jesus never married, nor ever will marry, perceiving Him to be “above” sexual matters.  Others claim that He did marry, to Mary Magdalene.  I would claim that both these presuppositions are wrong with immense implications regarding our understanding of God, suggesting instead that Jesus never married on Earth because He already is betrothed to his future wife, the Church.  I see Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana as anticipating the joy of that future marriage.               

           

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN: The issue extends beyond the gender of the Holy Spirit

It is a left-handed tribute to the thoroughness by which the Church was cleansed of all matters sexual to appreciate that not only was the Holy Spirit stripped of gender, but that this wholesale gender denial extended to our future spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ.  Even today, pastors who should know their Scripture better downplay Paul’s beautiful presentation in Ephesians 5 of our future spiritual relationship with Jesus as His wife.

Claiming, no, demanding rather, that procreation doesn’t exist in the spiritual realm, they prefer to perceive the Church’s future bridehood as nothing more than a figure of speech intended to convey the greatness of Jesus agape love toward mankind.  As to what the actual relationship consists of, they refuse to extend their imaginations beyond some kind of bright light in heaven and go no further, their impassible mental wall being their equation of purity with chastity.  In doing so, they miss the boat on the Godhead’s involvement in the entire creation epic.

It is common knowledge that Scripture describes the Church as the Bride of Christ.  But Scripture also describes us as Jesus’ spiritual wife, which defines the relationship as having been consummated.  Examples include Revelation 19:7 and 21:9.  Romans 7:4 is even more explicit in that regard, going beyond describing our relationship with Jesus as a marital one to identifying it as bearing fruit:

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

It is an undeniable fact that consummation and birth go hand-in-hand.  The insistence upon its denial in the face of its obvious truth reminds me of an incident in which my brother and I were involved in junior high.  Regrettably, our involvement was thoughtless, causing us to engage in some soul-searching afterward.

There is a saying in the Marine Corps that there are always the ten percent who never get the word.  This is true not only in the service but in all walks of life.  In the particular case that I’m recalling here, the fourteen-year-old classmate of ours had no knowledge whatsoever regarding the birds and the bees.  My brother and I, upon discovering this oddity, proceeded to explain to him that his very presence on earth required his mother and father to have engaged in sex.  He subsequently displayed, in very rapid succession, all the stages of grief.  He went into denial, but then his mind caught up with that and his face turned quite red.  He wept crocodile tears and, bawling, he got up and rushed out the classroom door while the rest of the class snickered.  I imagine that he went directly home thereafter to confront his parents with their disgrace.

That poor unfortunate kid reminds me a lot of our mainstream Church leadership, both Catholic and Protestant.  The main difference is the probability that over ninety percent of them never got the word.  The problem is not that God has engaged in disgraceful behavior, but that the Church leadership now and in the past has insisted upon perceiving all sexual conduct as dirty.  They need to grow up.

With that thought in mind, I present the following questions to them:

QUESTIONS FOR THE MAINSTREAM THEOLOGIAN WHO INSISTS UPON THE LACK OF GENDER IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM

All of the following issues have straightforward, Scripturally-compatible answers.

Please explain the mechanics of Jesus’ birth in the flesh, with reference to Luke 1:26-35 and “the seed of the Woman” in Genesis 3:15.  Regarding this issue, the proper interpretation of “seed” is the male contribution to life, as opposed to “egg”, which is the female contribution to life.  Also, in Luke 1, the “highest” is the Father.  Putting these facts together in the context of a feminine Holy Spirit who is creatively responsive to the Father’s will leads to a conclusion that is very different, less self-contradictory, fully intuitive and eminently more logical than the mainstream views of both Catholic and Protestant Churches on this topic.

Please cite Scriptural descriptions of the spiritual Church that are not relevant to depictions of Jesus’ marital relationship to the spiritual Church.  Do not include references to the Church as the Body of Christ, as that is explained in Ephesians 5:28 as integral to the marital union.

Please explain, with reference to John 3 and Revelation 12, how Scripture denies the possibility of procreation in the spiritual realm.

Please explain the relevance to the body of Scriptural canon the presence in Scripture of the following books and chapters: Genesis 2 and 24; Song of Solomon; Isaiah 54; Jesus’ first miracle described in John 2 – the wedding in Cana; 1 Corinthians 6 and 7; Ephesians 5; and Revelation 19-21.

Please explain Scripture’s emphasis and often continuous focus in both Testaments on gender, marriage, birth and offspring.

Please account for Scriptural references to feminine characteristics, including executive roles and the portrayal of Wisdom in Proverbs as feminine, within the Godhead in the face of the strong masculinity of both the Father and Jesus Christ and the anti-Scriptural notion of both masculinity and femininity residing within the same Being.

Please point to those passages in Scripture that label gender or sexuality as beneath God.  Please include those passages that describe the only purpose of the marital union as the begetting of children.  Such would appear to contradict 1 Corinthians 7:9.

Please explain why Jesus remained celibate during His time on earth.

Please explain the difficulty of mainstream theology in its understanding of the Holy Spirit and its perception of the issue as complex, and why, in the face of a simple, intuitive answer to the issue given a feminine Holy Spirit, it is necessary to suggest that an answer is unknowable and can be resolved only through a face-to-face meeting with God.

Please explain the attachment in Genesis 2:18 to the notion of complementary otherness and why that doesn’t apply to the Godhead.

Those who found that they couldn’t answer all of the questions with reference to Scripture should get the hint that maybe their understanding of God needs some extensive revision with respect to gender and love within the Judeo-Christian Godhead.  Perhaps some re-examination of the meaning of sexual purity also would be in order.  The following chapter addresses that issue.

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX: A summary of the God that the mainstream Christian Church refuses to see

 

This God, unlike the one addressed in the previous chapter, corresponds more closely to Scripture.  That is a most fortunate circumstance, as this God is One whom we can understand with full intuition and share a substantial measure of intimacy.  We can worship this God with fervor, because we share in many of His attributes and, more importantly, we can see this God as noble.  If there is any attribute of this God that stands out above omniness, it is the majesty of His selfless nobility.

This God of Scripture consists, at the present time, of Father, Mother and Son, constituting a perfectly functioning gender-inclusive Family enjoying perfect intra-Godhead intimacy, communication and, most of all, love on a scale so grand as to be beyond our perception.  It is the Godhead – Family – that bestows oneness on the Holy Trinity.  Within that Trinity the Members are differentiated by function: Kingdom, Power and Glory.  The characterization of the Godhead as Trinitarian is qualified as pertaining to the present, as there is every hope, within Scripture, of the spiritual Church eventually joining the Godhead.

The feature that drives this separation of the Godhead away from the God of mainstream understanding is the femininity of the Holy Spirit.  This feature instantly transforms a loose, agape-based amalgam of vaguely-defined Beings into a tightly-coupled, eros-based Family whose Members enjoy complementary, mutually-supportive functions.  Moreover, even with our fallen natures and dimensional limitations, their Holy natures, being Family-based, are accessible to our understanding, even to the extent that we can worship this God with the fervor demanded of us by Jesus in Matthew 22.

Given the notions of family and its associated features of unity of purpose, selfless participation, complementary otherness, it is a matter of simple logic to attach functionality to each of the Members within the Godhead.  As described in Marching to a Worthy Drummer, to the Father would apply the attribute of Divine Will, or the initiating thought.  Corresponding to the complementary otherness of the Will, the functional attribute of the Holy Spirit would be the execution of the Father’s will, or the Divine Means that enables the initiating thought belonging to the Will to assume reality.  To the Son, then, would be the Divine Result, the glory in reality of the initiating thought.

Where would the Church fit in?  As the spouse of Christ, of course, just as Paul hinted in so many passages, including 2 Corinthians 11:2 and Galatians 4:27 (which itself echoes Isaiah 54), and he so directly stated in Ephesians 5:25-32.  In Revelation 19:7 and 21:9, John echoes Paul’s assertion, claiming the Church to be the wife of Christ.  Given this wonderful relationship, it is only natural that Paul’s would note in Galatians 3:29, 4:5 and elsewhere that the Church is the in-law child of the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The existing relationship within the Godhead and the promised future relationship between man and God places our present relationship with God on an entirely different plane than that which is perceived by the mainstream Church.  No longer must we worship God as groveling dogs or as beggars for scraps but as future members of the Divine Family, adored and treasured by a God who knows intimacy and wants the same for us.  Of course God is superior to us in a great number of very important traits, such as character, abilities, and mind.  But it is His superiority in one trait that gives us hope and allows us to adore Him in sincerity.  That trait is His superlative love, which extends even to us.

As a beautiful token of our betrothal to Jesus Christ, we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, forecast millennia before our time at Her indwelling of the Tabernacle in the wilderness (Exodus 40), and at Solomon’s dedication of the first Temple (1 Kings 8).  The connection between these precursor events and the Holy Spirit who indwells Christian believers is given in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:19-22, wherein Paul asserts that the Church herself, through her constituents, is a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit:

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

 

          Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

We know from this parallelism of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling of the Jewish Temples and the temples of our bodies that we the Church all have available to us the guidance of God, our future Mother-in-law, directing us as we allow toward the characters that will be pleasing to our future Spouse, Jesus Christ.  All we have to do is accept that supporting direction, scary or unpleasant as it may seem at first.  But what loving intimacy!  What hope for our future spiritual companionship with our Lord and our Spouse, Jesus Christ!

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER 5

 

CHAPTER FIVE: A summary of the mainstream Christian Church’s view of God

Extracting the essence of the previous four chapters, one readily can summarize the nature of God, as viewed by mainstreamWestern Christianity, as embracing the following attributes:

God is perceived to be majestic, all-seeing, all-powerful, and all-knowing.  These attributes are contained in the familiar omni-descriptions: omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient.  If other omni-attributes are found, they would apply to God as well, as the mainstream God is all about omniness.

Unlike us lesser beings inhabiting the material world, God is genderless, being above matters sexual.  He is also without passion in general, including love and hatred.  To be sure, He is merciful, but in a vague, largely undefined way.  Passion, gender and the intimacy of possessive love are prohibited by the Western Mainstream Church from encroaching upon His omni-qualities.

Given these general characteristics, the Godhead is found to be a Trinity, consisting of a common essence and three vaguely-defined “personalities”.  His Trinitarian constitution is considered to exist from forever in the past to forever in the future.  The intra-Trinitarian relationship consists of a supposedly benign fellowship of three characteristically male personalities who lack the function of gender, bonded together in love restricted to an agape form; love in an eros form with its possessive and romantic qualities is considered unthinkable.

The general implication of this view of God and the Godhead is that God represents an essential alien quality, one of being inexplicably different from us: He is genderless whereas we are fully gendered; He is unattainably far above us; His relationship with us is said to consist of love, but it is the sparing love of a stern, commanding Presence, constantly kicking over those of our works that don’t meet with His stratospheric standards of behavior.

Because of God’s lack of gender, we are commanded to obey his several prohibitions of sexual deviation from His established norm of a lifetime-long single marital relationship between one male and one female without understanding why that is such an important standard.  While unequivocal obedience without the necessity of knowledge is a reasonable expectation of God toward mankind, many of His other commandments are amenable to common-sense understanding.  On the other hand, it is apparent that at least in our present societies worldwide, people including Christians violate the sexual commandments with indifference toward God.

If anything affirmative can be said of the various Church authorities’ treatment of the Holy Spirit as noted in the previous chapters, it is their consistency with each other in fostering the view of God as expressed above.

Our worship of this Being must consequently consist of fear tempered by love, rather than love tempered by fear.  We worship Him as would tiny ants, looking up an enormous leathery sole poised to come down hard, smashing all below into pulp.  We appease this harsh God, either to avoid punishment or to curry favor and to obtain subsequent gifts.

In the wake of this description of our common understanding of God I offer a question: Is this the God defined in Scripture?  To that question, I respond with a resounding “no”, for the reasons explained herein.

Instead, this God is a diety of man’s own making.  Usually, when referring to a false god, the conservative Christian will point to that god’s indulgences toward a fallen Church.  The most recent examples of that attitude include the conservative Church’s denunciation of those Churches that attempt to accommodate the secular world’s insistence upon political correctness in the matters of homosexual marriages, homosexual participation in Church leadership, the Muslim view of God, or that worship the benevolent God who sheds health, wealth and happiness to those who, with itching ears, fervently believe in such.  But the conservative view of God, while residing at the opposite end of the belief spectrum from Santa Claus, is every bit as much a god constructed by man, because that god, like the others, fails to correspond to Scripture.

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR: How modern theologians attempt to explain the Holy Spirit while excluding sexuality from God
For the most part the Protestant Church, in contrast with her Catholic sister, simply accepts the lack of the feminine and ignores the issue altogether, treating it as beyond the pale of appropriate intellectual investigation. Despite this general official refusal of the Protestant Churches to address the void caused by the removal of functional gender from God, a number of interested theologians have attempted to explain the nature of the Holy Spirit in a way that, while conforming to Church doctrine, makes an effort to present the Holy Spirit in a logical and, as they struggle to achieve, a warm manner.

Yet both Catholic and Protestant Churches have in common a view of the Trinity in which sexuality is at most a superficial feature even for birth and in which vital aspects of femininity are denied altogether. This view leads most investigators into the nature of the Trinity into an admission that the topic is very complex, to the extent that in the end they admit further that. like attempting to understand the duality of light or the logic behind quantum mechanics, they can’t comprehend it completely. This limitation has and continues to have a profound influence on the entire nature of Christianity. Didn’t any of these investigators grasp a hint in the wake of this inability to comprehend such an important topic that perhaps the standard view of the Trinity might need some revision?

Both the Father as the divine Will and the Son as Jesus Christ, the divine Word, are well-defined in Scripture as to their general natures and their functional roles. Of the three Members of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is by far the most enigmatic. It is the lack of understanding, or perhaps simply the misunderstanding, of the nature of this divine Member from which the confusion and apparent complexity of the Trinity has arisen. A substantial part of this confusion is the obviously apparent but discomforting feature of the Holy Spirit’s Scripturally-defined character as embracing specifically feminine elements in contradiction to the general view of the Trinity as being either gender-neutral or masculine.

Many expositors of the Holy Spirit see in Genesis 1 the active participation of the Holy Spirit in the act of creation. This is the position taken by respected scholar of Scripture Benjamin B. Warfield, who describes this functional attribute of the Holy Spirit in Chapter Seventeen of his book The Holy Spirit:

“His offices in Nature – The ‘Spirit’ or personal ‘Breath’ is the Executive of the Godhead, as the ‘Son’ or ‘Word’ is the Revealer. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of chaos and developed cosmos (Gen. 1:2). Henceforth he is always represented as the author of order and beauty in the natural as of holiness in the moral world. He garnished the astronomical heavens (Job 26:13). He is the organizer and source of life to all provinces of vegetable and animal nature (Job 33:4; Ps. 104:29, 30; Isa. 32:14, 15), and of enlightenment to human intelligence in all arts and sciences (Job 32:8; 35:11; Ex 31:2-4).”

Dr. H. A. Ironside, in a little tome first printed in 1941 entitled The Holy Trinity, also interprets Genesis 1:2 as asserting that the Holy Spirit, in concert with the Father, was actively involved in creation. Interestingly, in referencing Isaiah 66 as an Old Testament reference to the Trinity he quotes from verse 13:

“As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you.”

Although Ironside invariably interprets the Holy Spirit in terms of the masculine pronoun ‘he’, he also confesses a lack of full understanding of the nature of the Trinity. Yet the passage quoted above, by associating the word ‘mother’ with ‘comfort’, furnishes a key argument for the feminine function of the Holy Spirit. For Jesus, in John 14:16 and 17, directly links the Holy Spirit with the name (implying role) Comforter:

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

Dedicated theologian Dr. Bruce A. Ware makes similar statements to Warfield regarding the executive (implementation of will) role of the Holy Spirit in his work Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. In fact, this executive role of the Holy Spirit is a general theme among theologians. In his own work, Ware encapsulates the roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as follows: Father – Grand Architect; Son – Submission to the Father in doing (displaying) His Will; Holy Spirit – Carrying out the work of the Father.

Alister McGrath, who wrote the work Understanding the Trinity, provides a representative viewpoint of this genre, yet also furnishes some remarkably fresh insights. He stands on what I humbly perceive as firm soil in his eloquent and moving descriptions of God and the incarnate Jesus in chapters 1 through 6. In reading it for a second time quite recently I realized afresh how his treatment of the Trinity had influenced my own work Family of God. It was Dr. McGrath, in fact, whom I mentioned on pages 24 through 26:

“Some theologians, having briefly noted the one intuitively satisfactory functional description of the Trinity, reject this particular answer quite abruptly, justifying their rejection on the basis of insufficient logic. They proceed from there to hammer out tortuously-derived and ultimately insufficient, emotionally empty alternatives. One such expositor, who otherwise paints with highly readable and insightful words a delightful description of God, mentions the Trinity with profound understanding and then quickly discards it as a misapplication of a familiar model in an attempt to apply too much of what is, after all, just a simplistic and imperfect model to the reality of God Himself. In his haste to reject that application, however, he violates the same logical guidelines which he carefully presented in the immediately preceding pages of his discussion.

“This same theologian, in viewing the Trinity in the uncontroversial terms of man’s encounters with God, explains it as different facets of His nature through which God has chosen to reveal Himself to man. God, he asserts, is altogether too vast for man, with his limitations in time and space, to acquire a complete picture of His entire nature. We can sample portions of this Divine Entity, however, and by thinking through the implications of the composite picture that He has given us through Scripture, we perceive His Trinitarian nature and the necessity for it. This experiential description is, I think, a valid one and has the advantage of being safely neutral with respect to gender. It is certainly the most intuitively satisfying characterization of the Trinity that I have seen to date. Yet such an exclusively man-centered description yields a disappointing poverty of information about God Himself, leaving the reader to ask why, if God does indeed have a Trinitarian nature, He is so reluctant to share a picture of that characteristic with us in terms of His intrinsic functional attributes. It would seem, after all, that a God-centered intuitive understanding would naturally lead to a greater appreciation of Him, and consequently a greater love toward Him on the part of His subjects. One might easily suspect, as a matter of fact, that those individuals in the past who were named in the Book of Hebrews, did indeed have personal insights into the nature of God beyond those which the usual churchgoer might have access to via his pastor or his reading of Scripture.”

The description of the Trinity that Dr. McGrath presented with profound understanding and subsequently discarded in haste begins on page 57 of Understanding the Trinity. An important continuation is presented twelve pages later, where the author appears to wish to tone down his rejection of the earlier model by presenting some qualifying remarks which suggest that perhaps he himself had some persistently lingering thoughts about the nature of the Holy Spirit that he didn’t wish to assert directly:

“It was therefore assumed that light also needed to travel through something [as was the case for sound, upon which light was modeled], and the word ‘aether’ was coined to describe the medium through which light waves traveled. If you read old radio magazines, or listen to old radio programmes, you’ll sometimes find people referring to ‘waves traveling through the aether’. But by the end of the century it had become clear that light did not seem to need any medium to travel through. What had happened was simply that the logical necessity of one aspect of the model (sound) had initially been assumed to apply to what was being modeled (light), and this assumption was gradually recognized to be incorrect as the experimental evidence built up.

“And so it is with models of God. For example, we often use ‘father’ as a very helpful model of God, emphasizing the way in which we are dependent upon God for our existence. But for every human child there is a human mother as well as a human father. This would seem to imply that there is a heavenly mother in addition to a heavenly father. But this assumption rests upon the improper transfer of the logical necessity of an aspect of the model (father) to what is being modeled (God), in just the same way as the necessity of one aspect (the need for a medium of propagation) of the model (sound) was transferred to what was being modeled (light). . .”

“. . . Although the strongly patriarchal structure of society of the time inevitably meant that emphasis was placed upon God as father (e.g., Jeremiah 3:19; Matthew 6:9), there are several passages which encourage us to think of God as our mother (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:18). We shall be considering these two images together, and ask what they tell us about God.

“The first, and most obvious, point is that God is understood as the one who called us into being, who created us. Just as our human parents brought us into being, so God must be recognized as the author and source of our existence. Thus at one point in her history, Israel is chided because she ‘forgot the God who gave [her] birth’ (Deuteronomy 32:18; cf. Isaiah 44:2, 24; 49:15).

“The second point which the model of God as parent makes is the natural love of God for his people. God doesn’t love us because of our achievements, but simply because we are his children. ‘The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you’ (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). Just as a mother can never forget or turn against her child, so God will not forget or gturn against his people (Isaiah 49:15). There is a natural bond of affection and sympathy between God and his children, simply because he has brought them into being. Thus God loved us long before we loved him (1 John 4:10, 19). Psalm 51:1 refers to God’s ‘great compassion, and it is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for ‘compassion’ (rachmin) is derived from the word for ‘womb’ (rechmen). God’s compassion towards his people is that of a mother towards her child (cf. Isaiah 66:12-13). Compassion stems from the womb.”

A delightful feature of his discourses, remarkable for its rarity, is a description of God’s loving relationship to mankind in romantic terms. Another feature of his presentation is his lengthy discussion of the necessities of Jesus’ essence as both man and God, and of His resurrection.
Unfortunately, Dr. McGrath appears to be on less stable ground in his discussion of the Trinity. In his presentation of this dogma he avoids delving too deeply into God’s intrinsic nature or attributes by substituting in its place a lengthy experientially-based account of Him in terms of His interaction with mankind. He is careful near the outset of his discourse, however, to distance himself from any notion that the Trinity includes a female Persona. He does so in his chapter entitled Thinking About God by noting that intellectual models are subject to misapplication through the improper assumption that every attribute of a model must apply to its counterpart in reality. As already noted, he cites as an example the wave characteristic of sound as a model for light, as was quoted directly from his work above.

But is the assumption of a Divine Mother in the economy of God necessarily a misapplication of the human parent model? It could be, but that’s a long way from must be. Nowhere does Dr. McGrath justify the necessity that he associates with that application. Instead, he elevates a mere illustrative example to the status of a law.

Moreover, and again as we have already noted, a short twelve pages further along, Dr. McGrath equivocates a bit regarding the possibility of motherhood in God’s economy, citing a number of Scriptural passages that describe God in a role more appropriate to motherhood than to fatherhood.

Almost at the end of his book it can be seen how Dr. McGrath rescues himself from this apparent inconsistency: as discussed in more detail below, he does not posit a distinct member of the Godhead who possesses the attributes of femininity; instead, he attributes this characteristic to the same Person as the Father. But rather than solving the problem of the feminine side of God, he comes dangerously close both to ultra-monotheism and modalism. Beyond that, he defines a God with gender characteristics indeed, but in the same Person. According to 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10, this suggests a model for a human malady known as hermaphroditism, which is contrary to Scripture, even to the extent of being labeled as unrighteous:

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

I find it hard to believe, given its treatment in Scripture, that in His own organization God would wish even to hint at sexual perversion, or even sexual difficulty.

The essence of McGrath’s description of Jesus may be encapsulated in this passage, found in his chapter entitled God as Three and God as One: “The difficulties really begin with the recognition of the fundamental Christian insight that Jesus is God incarnate: that in the face of Jesus Christ we see none other than the living God himself. Although the New Testament is not really anything like a textbook of systematic theology, there is nothing stated in the great creeds of the church which is not already explicitly or implicitly stated within its pages. Jesus is understood to act as God and for God: whoever sees him, sees God; when he speaks, he speaks with the authority of God; when he makes promises, he makes them on behalf of God; when he judges us, he judges as God; when we worship, we worship the risen Christ as God; and so forth.” Dr. McGrath goes on to characterize Jesus in his incarnate form as not actually comprising the fullness of God, but merely as a representative sample of God suitable for furnishing humanity with some comprehension, consistent with their limitations, of the far more complete spiritual God who resides in heaven. He claims in a similar vein that the Holy Spirit, like Jesus, is another manifestation of God, in this case one that indwells the believer, that furnishes another way by which redeemed mankind can encounter, or experience, God.

Dr. McGrath ends with this commentary:

“We can now see why Christians talk about God being a ‘three-in-one’. One difficulty remains, however, which must be considered. How can God be three persons and one person at the same time? This brings us to an important point which is often not fully understood. The following is a simplified account of the idea of ‘person’ which may be helpful, although the reader must appreciate that simplifications are potentially dangerous. The word ‘person’ has changed its meaning since the third century when it began to bed used in connection with the ‘threefoldness of God’. When we talk about God as a person, we naturally think of God as being one person. But theologians such as Tertullian, writing in the third century, used the word ‘person’ with a different meaning. The word ‘person’ originally derives from the Latin word persona, meaning an actor’s face-mask – and, by extension, the role which he takes in a play.

“By stating that there were three persons but only one God, Tertullian was asserting that all three major roles in the great drama of human redemption are played by the one and the same God. The three great roles in this drama are all played by the same actor: God. Each of these roles may reveal God in a somewhat different way, but it is the same God in every case. So when we talk about God as one person, we mean one person in the modern sense of the word, and when we talk about God as three persons, we mean three persons in the ancient sense of the word. It is God, and God alone, who masterminded and executes the great plan of salvation, culminating in Jesus Christ. It is he who is present and active at every stage of its long history. Confusing these two senses of the word ‘person’ inevitably leads to the idea the God is actually a committee, which, as we saw earlier, is a thoroughly unhelpful and confusing way of thinking about God.”

One certainly could not accuse Dr. McGrath of being a tritheist. On the other hand, despite his denial on the back cover of the book that he entertains the heretical notion of modalism, he’s on shaky ground there, being right on the edge or over it according to his own words.

Dr. Mcgrath is somewhat unique among other well-established theologians in that his scientific training has furnished him with an ability to be objective in his presentation and make use of useful intellectual tools such as models to make his points. Further, he at least addresses some notions that others avoid like the plague, as if they themselves might be infected by ideas they may have been taught were close to blasphemous. He has in common with the others, however, several notions regarding the Holy Spirit that are generally accepted within faithful Christendom: while all Members of the Trinity possess the same substance and are fully and equally God, they differ with respect to functional role; the role for the Holy Spirit conforms most closely to that associated with executive companion and motherhood; the Holy Spirit is a background Entity, more self-effacing than Father and Son; the Trinity (as confessed by the Church) is a mystery beyond man’s comprehension. The ‘others’ who share these particular view with Drs. McGrath and Ware include Dr. Peter Masters (The Faith) and James R. White (The Forgotten Trinity).

I agree quite thoroughly with all of these points except the last, regarding the mystery which appears to be beyond comprehension, with which I disagree quite thoroughly. To me, the incomprehensibility in understanding the Trinity is another typical case of man’s brain outsmarting his heart. What should be an extremely simple and intuitive understanding, man has turned into a riddle, in the process wrapping himself tightly around the intellectual axle.

A case could be made that in the many attempts made by scholars of Scripture to describe the Holy Spirit, they end up implying an association of the Holy Spirit with Wisdom. Wisdom, of course, is given a lengthy treatment in Proverbs, with a female gender association.

It must be noted that in every case, these respected theologians are consistent with each other and with general Church dogma, represented by the early Church Fathers, Zanchius, and Catholic theology concerning the absence of gender within the Godhead.

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER THREE

 

 

CHAPTER THREE: How the modern Catholic Church excludes sexuality from the attributes of God

As was noted above in the context of Father MacQuarrie’s view of the distribution of secondary gender characteristics within the Godhead, the Catholic Church responds to a genderless God in a unique way.  Having removed the female gender from the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church, to her credit, understands that an unnatural gap was thereby created in its sterilized perception of the Godhead.  She has filled the perceived and all-too-real void of a genderless or (mostly) all-male God with Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom she has elevated to a superhuman status that falls just short of deity.  It is Mary upon whom the Catholic Church places her love and devotion, restoring a semblance of the fervor of worship commanded by both Moses and Jesus in asking of us the entirety of our hearts, souls and mind in our love toward Him.  To most Catholic laypersons, Mary’s position of subordination to diety is so minuscule as to be nonexistent, wherein the veneration of her is indistinguishable from worship.

The Catholic text Mary in the Church Today, a compilation by Father Bill McCarthy of papal pronouncements and other official Catholic teachings regarding Mary, mother of Jesus, is an excellent source book for the understanding of the Catholic position regarding Mary.  The teachings, from which the following entries are gleaned, speak for themselves.

“’For,’ the text [Lumen Gentium, 62] goes on, ‘taken up to heaven, [Mary] did not lay aside this saving role, but by her manifold acts of intercession continues to win for us gifts of eternal salvation.’  With this character of ‘intercession,’ first manifested in Cana in Galilee, Mary’s mediation continues in the history of the Church and the world.  We read that Mary ‘by her maternal charity, cares for the brethren of her Son who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led to their happy homeland.’  In this way Mary’s motherhood continues unceasingly in the Church as the mediation which intercedes, and the Church expresses her faith in this truth by invoking Mary ‘under the title of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, and Mediatrix.’

“Through her mediation, subordinate to that of the Redeemer, Mary contributes in a special way to the union of the pilgrim Church on earth with the eschatological and heavenly reality of the Communion of Saints, since she has already been ‘assumed into heaven’.  The truth of the assumption defined by Pius XII, is reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council, which thus expresses the Church’s faith: ‘Preserved free from all guilt of original sin, the Immaculate Virgin was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory upon the completion of her earthly sojourn.  She was exalted by the Lord as Queen of the Universe, in order that she might be the more thoroughly conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords (cf. Rv 19:16) and the conqueror of sin and death.’  In this teaching Pius XII was in continuity with Tradition, which has found many different expressions in the history of the Church, both in the East and in the West.”

-exerpted from Redemtoris Mater, Articles 40 and 41

“Subsequently, in 1962, on the feast of the Purification of Mary, Pope John set the opening of the Council for 11 October, explaining that he had chosen this date in memory of the great Council of Ephesus, which precisely on that date had proclaimed Mary ‘Theotokos’, Mother of God . . . “

“2. At the second session of the Council it was that the treatment of the Blessed Virgin Mary be put into the Constitution of the Church.  This initiative, although expressly recommended by the Theological Commission, prompted a variety of opinions.

“Some, who considered this proposal inadequate for emphasizing the very special mission of Jesus’ Mother in the Church, maintained that only a separate document could express Mary’s dignity, pre-eminence, exceptional holiness and unique role in the Redemption accomplished by the Son.  Furthermore, regarding Mary as above the Church in a certain way, they were afraid that the decision to put the Marian teaching in the treatment of the Church would not sufficiently emphasize Mary’s privileges and would reduce her role to the level of other members of the Church. . .”

• excerpted from the ninth of Pope John Paul II’s series of catecheses on the Blessed Virgin

“Mary’s fundamental dignity is that of being ‘Mother of the Son’, which is expressed in Christian doctrine and devotion with the title ‘Mother of God’.

“This is a surprising term, which shows the humility of God’s only-begotten Son in his Incarnation and, in connection with it, the most high privilege granted a creature who was called to give him birth in the flesh.

“Mother of the Son, Mary is the ‘beloved daughter of the Father’ in a unique way.  She has been granted an utterly special likeness between her motherhood and the divine fatherhood.  And again, every Christian is a ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’, according to the Apostle Paul’s expression (1 Cor 6:19).  But this assertion takes on an extraordinary meaning in Mary: in her the relationship with the Holy Spirit is enriched in a spousal dimension,  I recalled this in the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater:  ‘The Holy Spirit had already come down upon her, and she became his faithful spouse at the Annunciation, welcoming the Word of the true God. . .’ (n. 26).”

– excerpted from the eleventh of Pope John Paul II’s series of catecheses on the Blessed Virgin

“The freedom ‘from every stain of original sin’ entails as a positive consequence the total freedom from all sin as well as the proclamation of Mary’s perfect holiness, a doctrine to which the dogmatic definition makes a fundamental contribution.  In fact, the negative formulation of the Marian privilege, which resulted from the earlier controversies about original sin that arose in the West, must always be complemented by the positive expression of Mary’s holiness more explicitly stressed in the Eastern tradition.

“Pius XII’s definition refers only to the freedom from original sin and does not explicitly include the freedom from original concupiscence [generally, the desires of the flesh in the Catholic vernacular].  Nevertheless, Mary’s complete preservation from every stain of sin also has as a consequence her freedom from concupiscence, a disordered tendency which, according to the Council of Trent, comes from sin and inclines to sin (DS 1515).”

-excerpted from the twenty third of Pope John Paul II’s series of catecheses on the Blessed Virgin

“In recounting the birth of Jesus, Luke and Matthew also speak of the role of the Holy Spirit.  The latter is not the father of the Child.  Jesus is the son of the Eternal Father alone (cf. Lk 1:32-35), who through the Spirit is at work in the world and begets the Word in his human nature.  Indeed, at the Annunciation the angel calls the Spirit ‘the power of the Most High’ (Lk 1:35), in harmony with the Old Testament, which presents him as the divine energy at work in human life, making it capable of marvelous deeds.  Manifesting itself to the supreme degree in the mystery of the Incarnation, this power, which in the Trinitarian life of God is Love, has the task of giving humanity the Incarnate Word.”

-excerpted from the twenty eighth of Pope John Paul II’s series of catecheses on the Blessed Virgin

“1. The intention to remain a virgin, apparent in Mary’s words at the moment of the Annunciation, has traditionally been considered the beginning and the inspiration of Christian virginity for the Church.

“St. Augustine does not see in this resolution the fulfillment of a divine precept, but a vow freely taken.  In this way it was possible to present Mary as an example to ‘holy virgins’ throughout the Church’s history.  Mary ‘dedicated her virginity to God when she did not yet know whom she would conceive, so that the imitation of heavenly life in the earthly, mortal body would come about through a vow, not a precept, through a choice of love and not through the need to serve; (De Sancta Virg. IV. PL 40 398).

“The angel does not ask Mary to remain a virgin, it is Mary who freely reveals her intention of virginity.  The choice of love that leads her to consecrate herself totally to the Lord by a life of virginity is found in this commitment.

“In stressing the spontaneity of Mary’s decision, we must not forget that God’s initiative is at the root of every vocation.  By choosing the life of virginity, the young girl of Nazareth was responding to an interior call, that  is, to an inspiration of the Holy Spirit that enlightened her about the meaning and value of the virginal gift of [sic, substitute ‘chasitity’] heresy.  No one can accept this gift without feeling called or without receiving from the Holy Spirit the necessary light and strength.”

-excerpted from the twenty ninth of Pope John Paul II’s series of catecheses on the Blessed Virgin

“2. It may be presumed that at the time of their betrothal there was an understanding between Joseph and Mary about the plan to live as a virgin.  Moreover, the Holy Spirit, who had inspired Mary to choose virginity in view of the mystery of the Incarnation and who wanted the latter to come about in a family setting suited to the Child’s growth, was quite able to instill in Joseph the ideal of virginity as well.”

-excerpted from the thirtieth of Pope John Paul II’s series of catecheses on the Blessed Virgin

This view of Mary, as described by the highest Catholic authority and seconded by the entire Church, presents Mary with the warmth of humanity.  But she, like the Godhead Itself, has been stripped clean of all sexual experience except for the pain of childbirth.  In thinking about that rampant sexual housecleaning, it seems strange indeed that Peter, the iconic and revered founder of the Catholic Church, was himself married, according to Matthew 8:14 and 15, while his successors and the entire body of clergy were and continue to be prohibited from doing so:

“And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw that his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever.  And he touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she arose, and ministered unto them.”

We all know how that worked out in practice: instead of taking wives and thereby participating in a relationship established and condoned by God, the clergy instead took the wives of other men, prostitutes and, ultimately, altar boys.

If anything can be said in favor of the Catholic view of God, it is consistent with the views expressed by the early Church Fathers.  It is consistent as well as with the views of Zanchius, although considerably softened by the treatment of Mary.

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER TWO

 

CHAPTER TWO: How the removal of sexuality from God propagated into the Middle Ages and beyond

A thousand years after the Church had formalized its dogma, her insistence upon purity had not only remained, but had crystallized into a rigid perfectionism.  This absolutely flawless state was enshrined by the medieval cleric Jerome Zanchius, a strict adherent of the heavenly perfection envisioned by Aristotle and Ptolemy.  To this day, Zanchius is held in high esteem by many mainstream Church leaders.  And why not?  Zanchius’ vision of God is perfectly compatible with the omniness, perfection and asexuality of the mainstream God.

In his rather pretentious sixteenth century work Absolute Predestination Stated and Defined, Zanchius included some Scripturally unjustified statements regarding the nature of God, of which the following excerpts are representative:

“VI.—I shall conclude this introduction with briefly considering, in the sixth and last place, THE MERCY OF GOD.

“POSITION 1.—The Deity is, throughout the Scriptures, represented as infinitely gracious and merciful (Exod. 34.6; Nehem. 9.17; Psalm 103.8; 1 Peter 1.3).

“When we call the Divine mercy infinite, we do not mean that it is, in a way of grace, extended to all men without exception (and supposing it was, even then it would be very improperly denominated infinite on that account, since the objects of it, though all men taken together, would not amount to a multitude strictly and properly infinite), but that His mercy towards His own elect, as it knew no beginning, so is it infinite in duration, and shall know neither period nor intermission.

“POSITION 2.—Mercy is not in the Deity, as it is in us, a passion or affection, everything of that kind being incompatible with the purity, perfection, independency and unchangeableness of His nature; but when this attribute is predicated of Him, it only notes His free and eternal will or purpose of making some of the fallen race happy by delivering them from the guilt and dominion of sin, and communicating Himself to them in a way consistent with His own inviolable justice, truth and holiness. This seems to be the proper definition of mercy as it relates to the spiritual and eternal good of those who are its objects.”

Zanchius continues as follows in his Chapter 1, entitled in grandiose manner “Wherein the Terms Commonly Made Use of in Treating of this Subject are Defined and Explained”:

“HAVING considered the attributes of God as laid down in Scripture, and so far cleared our way to the doctrine of predestination, I shall, before I enter further on the subject, explain the principal terms generally made use of when treating of it, and settle their true meaning. In discoursing on the Divine decrees, mention is frequently made of God’s love and hatred, of election and reprobation, and of the Divine purpose, foreknowledge and predestination, each of which we shall distinctly and briefly consider.

“I.—When love is predicated of God, we do not mean that He is possessed of it as a passion or affection. In us it is such, but if, considered in that sense, it should be ascribed to the Deity, it would be utterly subversive of the simplicity, perfection and independency of His being. Love, therefore, when attributed to Him, signifies—

“(l) His eternal benevolence, i.e., His everlasting will, purpose and determination to deliver, bless and save His people. Of this, no good works wrought by them are in any sense the cause. Neither are even the merits of Christ Himself to be considered as any way moving or exciting this good will of God to His elect, since the gift of Christ, to be their Mediator and Redeemer, is itself an effect of this free and eternal favour borne to them by God the Father (John 3.16). His love towards them arises merely from “the good pleasure of His own will,” without the least regard to anything ad extra or out of Himself.

“(2) The term implies complacency, delight and approbation. With this love God cannot love even His elect as considered in themselves, because in that view they are guilty, polluted sinners, but they were, from all eternity, objects of it, as they stood united to Christ and partakers of His righteousness.

“(3) Love implies actual beneficence, which, properly speaking, is nothing else than the effect or accomplishment of the other two: those are the cause of this. This actual beneficence respects all blessings, whether of a temporal, spiritual or eternal nature. Temporal good things are indeed indiscriminately bestowed in a greater or less degree on all, whether elect or reprobate, but they are given in a covenant way and as blessings to the elect only, to whom also the other benefits respecting grace and glory are peculiar. And this love of beneficence, no less than that of benevolence and complacency, is absolutely free, and irrespective of any worthiness in man.

“II.—When hatred is ascribed to God, it implies (1) a negation of benevolence, or a resolution not to have mercy on such and such men, nor to endue them with any of those graces which stand connected with eternal life. So, “Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9.), i.e., “I did, from all eternity, determine within Myself not to have mercy on him.” The sole cause of which awful negation is not merely the unworthiness of the persons hated, but the sovereignty and freedom of the Divine will. (2) It denotes displeasure and dislike, for sinners who are not interested in Christ cannot but be infinitely displeasing to and loathsome in the sight of eternal purity. (3) It signifies a positive will to punish and destroy the reprobate for their sins, of which will, the infliction of misery upon them hereafter, is but the necessary effect and actual execution.”

We observe in these few excerpts from his book Absolute Predestination Stated and Defined that Zanchius’ God, while exhibiting the stability of a rock, does not indulge in excesses of emotion such as fervor would induce.  Fervor, on the other hand, is precisely what God demands of us in our relationship with Him.  As Jesus declared in Matthew 22:37 and 38:

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.”

Zanchius repeatedly cites like a mantra his justification for his view: God’s purity, perfection, independency and the unchangeableness of His nature.  But where in Scripture can we find such descriptors of God other than His constancy of nature?  Where in Scripture is purity defined in the manner that Zanchius intended to convey or in the manner that mainstream Churches presume to interpret?  More importantly, how can these attributes furnish justification for an assumed lack of passion that directly contradicts Jesus’ call for our fervor of worship?

In His absolute perfection, this God of Zanchius was of a remote grandeur.  This notion, which the Church leaders of that time and since rather naively bought into, gave rise to a God whose primary attribute is his majestic greatness.  By defining God with majesty in mind, love became a secondary attribute, despite John’s emphatic identification of God as the very embodiment of love.  They went (and go) too far.  The perfection embodied in their eulogies renders them sterile.  In defining God in this way, love automatically becomes a secondary attribute, despite John’s emphatic identification of God as the very embodiment of love.  Zanchius’ passionless God, in fact, is alien to the God of Scripture.  This is to be expected, as he assigns attributes to God without any reference whatsoever to Scripture itself.

Zanchius’ God, then, being positionally remote from and by nature very different from the mankind of His creation, is alien to it as well.  This perception of remoteness is evident in modern Churches, where pastors complain, with some justification, that mankind has a proclivity toward defining God according to what he wants God to represent.  In noting the truth of this objection by observing the numerous ways in which the modern Church has created gods that deviate quite strongly from the God of Scripture, we also note that the early Church did its share of creating a God apart from Scripture by the simple expedient of performing a hasty castration while maintaining a complete oblivion to its long-term collateral consequences.

Downplaying Scripture’s instruction to us in Genesis 1:27 that mankind was made in the image of the plural Godhead, Zanchius and his followers emphasize God’s difference from us.  While mankind may share some of the more superficial features of living beings with God such as our rationality and moral sense, the basic concept of gender is seen as over-the-top and a plainly inappropriate attribute of God.  But gender represents far more than mere sexuality.  It also involves the notion of complementary otherness, the idea that a team consisting of complementary others synergistically supports both love and function.  Without the sharing intrinsic to otherness, unlimited power automatically fosters narcissistic self-adoration.  The sharing of power with a complementary Being requires each Partner to contribute something lacking in the Other.  It is the self-humbling lack of completeness that so beautifully endows each Partner with adoration toward the Other rather than to Self.

It has been standard practice, to those who bother to think about the fact that some attributes of God are feminine in nature, to assign elements of both genders to each Member of the Godhead.  Such was the path taken by the prominent Catholic theologian John MacQuarrie.  I wrote of his approach in my book Marching to a Worthy Drummer:

One of the more intelligent discussions of the Godhead that remains within the Church-imposed boundary of asexuality has been supplied by Catholic Father John Macquarrie in his book Mary for all Christians.  In his chapter entitled “God and the Feminine”, he acknowledges the incompleteness of male alone or female alone without its complement.  While touching on the all-important notion of complementary otherness, he goes on to other topics rather quickly, largely overlooking the most important aspect of otherness, which is its necessity in supporting the noble selflessness intrinsic to God as emphasized throughout the Bible.

Father Macquarrie also openly states, reminiscent of medieval theologian Jerome Zanchius, that God transcends sex.  How does he apply that concept that God is above matters of gender to his perception of the incompleteness of a single-gender Godhead?  He does so in distressingly extra-Biblical fashion.  Being well-read in psychology, Macquarrie turns to C. J. Jung and his concept of shared gender.  In that context, Macquarrie asserts, all the Members of the Trinity share both male and female characteristics.

Many Catholic theologians, perceiving despite the Church’s grand elevation of Mary that there were some elements of the feminine within the all-male Godhead, grasped onto the Jungian notion that each of the divine Entities possessed both male and female attributes.  Here again is a view that suggests gender weakness in contradiction to Scripture.  In addition to promoting a divine narcissism in distinct opposition to the general tenor of Scripture, this notion is logically untenable in the face of the pronounced masculinity of both the Father and Jesus Christ and the proscription against male neutrality in Leviticus 21:20 and against male femininity in 1 Corinthians 6:9.  That leaves the Holy Spirit alone as the possible embodiment of the female gender.

As if the direct problems associated with the gender-neutral or all-male viewpoints of the Godhead aren’t bad enough of themselves, they sometimes create collateral difficulties.  Among some Christian communities the ever-present threat that these viewpoints will inhibit ardor in worship has led to further misunderstandings that are intended to correct their deficiencies and restore the fervor suggested by Scripture.  One such compensating offshoot practice is the Catholic veneration of Mary as the primary female persona of our religion.  Despite protestations to the contrary from Catholic authorities from the Pope down to the pastoral level, this veneration, as was noted in Chapter 4, approaches actual worship to such a degree that it represents a de facto integration of Mary into the Godhead.  Indeed, Mary is endowed in the Catholic Church with a number of attributes that rightly belong within the Godhead, specifically the Holy Spirit.

In opposition to Zanchius, Macquarrie and their numerous followers, Scripture paints a far more beautiful picture of God, depicting His majestic glory as His willingness to give up the majesty of greatness and power in favor of a love of great fullness and depth.  The Gospels appear to support this view, depicting Jesus Christ (as God) as a Being full of the attributes of love as we know it, including passion.  Examples that come to mind include His weeping over Jerusalem and Lazarus and His ordeal in the garden of Gethsemane.  It is difficult, for example, to picture the risen Jesus talking to His followers on the road to Emmaus in the context of Zanchius’ notion of God’s remote perfection.

Zanchius’ definition of God as remote from and alien to us not only suppresses His most important attribute of love, but inhibits those to whom Scripture was written from loving Him back.  This is a serious issue because it runs counter to His Great Commandment to love Him with all our hearts, and all our souls and all our minds.

One thing can be said regarding Zanchius’ view of God: it is certainly consistent with the alteration of Scripture performed by some of our respected Church Fathers under the motive of stripping sexuality from all things associated with God.

Our brief review of Zanchius and MacQuarrie can be summarized by the notion that God is an omni-everything, kind of a super-superman, complete with x-ray vision to peer into the hearts, minds and actions of His subjects.  Given Zanchius’ vision of the absolute nature of His mastery over our lives, we need to obey Him, because otherwise we can get into some very deep trouble.  Beyond this control, God differs from us in so many ways that we’d best not try to approach Him from the standpoint of shared weakness.  We must instead resign ourselves to the bleak fact that His majestic betterness can be used against us if we don’t toe the line.  We ourselves should pray with fervor that we will be undeserving recipients of His benevolence rather than deserving objects of His wrath.

Along with our prayers, we’d do well to read what Scripture has to say about God’s relationship with us, which pretty much contradicts just about everything in Zanchius’ and MacQuarrie’s views of God.  We should be particularly careful to understand God’s willingness to become a man, subject to every temptation we possess, for the sake of His great, overwhelmingly fervent and loving passion toward us.

 

 

 

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER ONE (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER ONE (continued): How some eminent early Church Fathers set the stage for the removal of sexuality from God

As the story of Abraham unfolds from Genesis 12 through 25, the narrative stresses the importance of his natural wife Sarah to God’s promises to him. It is in Sarah that the covenant promises reside through Isaac and then Jacob. The poignant account of Sarah’s death in Hebron is given in Genesis 23, where Abraham came “to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.” Abraham honored her memory by purchasing a cave in Hebron for her burial. It is the resting place for all the patriarchs, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their three primary wives.

Virtually every Christian recognizes that the story of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 represents a forecast of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our salvation. This event in Abraham’s life immediately and quite strongly identifies Isaac as a precursor to Jesus. Isaac is mentioned again in Genesis 24, this time in the context of his betrothal to Rebekah, which turns out to be an elaborate affair. The imagery in this prolonged event speaks quite plainly of another betrothal, that of Jesus to His Church, as described by Paul in Ephesians 5:25-32:

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but noourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church; for we are members of his body. Of his flesh, and of his bones.

 

          “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and his church.”

 

This passage so plainly states the spiritual role of the Church as the Wife of Christ that any negation of gender in the spiritual realm speaks only of the poverty of the skeptic’s understanding of God and Scripture, and of the blindness and deafness of his anti-gender presuppositions.

It has been argued in the past that Matthew 22:29 and Galatians 3:28 preclude the role of procreation in the heavenly realm:

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven.”

 

          “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The key phrase here is “power of God”. In other words, if you subscribe to the notion that the spiritual realm doesn’t involve reproduction, lift your eyes from the mundane, thoroughly shallow little details and look at the big picture. Paul even spells it out for you in 1 Corinthians 12:12-20:

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members, every one of them, in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, were were the body. But now are they many members, yet but one body.”

Paul couldn’t have said it plainer than that: we as individuals are a tiny element of the Church, not the whole. Our being spiritually genderless doesn’t make the Church genderless, just like my genderless toenail doesn’t make me genderless in the flesh. Yet there are many people in the mainstream Church, even some who consider themselves to be among the spiritual elite, who are so blind to Scripture’s account of the Church’s future spiritual role as to be unable to differentiate the individual from the whole.

Beyond the Book of Genesis, there are a multitude of Scriptural corroborations of the essential role of gender in the spiritual realm. Among these is one of my favorites, the Shekinah Glory who inhabited the temples of Moses in the wilderness, as described in Exodus 40:34-38 and I Kings 8:10 and 11:

“Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode therein, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys; but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

 

          “And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord.”

 

It is generally acknowledged by Christian experts in the matter that the Hebrew word Shekinah is equivalent to the phrase glory of the Lord. It is also generally acknowledged that the word Shekinah is feminine. Furthermore, this indwelling function of the Shekinah has a counterpart, the indwelling of Christians upon their acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. According to Acts 2, this indwelling is the Holy Spirit, as promised by Jesus in John 14. The parallelism of the Shekinah with the indwelling Holy Spirit is vividly described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:19-22 wherein Paul asserts that the Church herself, through her constituents, is a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit:

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

 

          Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

Another favorite indication of feminine gender in the spiritual realm, again of the Holy Spirit, is the passage of spiritual birth in John 3:

“There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered, and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound of it, but canst not tell from where it cometh, and where it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered, and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered, and said unto him, Art thou a teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which we do know, and testify to that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.”

But there’s plenty more regarding spiritual gender in the Old Testament. How about the Book of Proverbs, particularly in Proverbs 3 and 8, where the feminine Wisdom is personified as a Helper at the side of the Father in the creation of the world? According to those who take issue with the association of gender with God, the personification of Wisdom typically is explained away as merely a literary device. This attribution is an arbitrary claim without Scriptural support that does nothing more than identify the claimant as biased against gender in the spiritual realm. In contrast to this lack of Scriptural support against the personification of Wisdom, the notion that Wisdom is indeed personified by the Holy Spirit enjoys support from the Book of Wisdom, which is included in the Catholic canon but was deleted from the Protestant canon in 1827 by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

I noted in Marching to a Worthy Drummer in support of the Personhood of Wisdom the following statements by Jesus in Luke 7:35 and 11:49, 50 that associate Wisdom with motherhood, which is an eminently personal attribute:

“But wisdom is justified of all her children.”

“Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation.”

In addition, Proverbs 8:22-36 and 9:1-6 directly link the act of creation to Wisdom, whereas the act of creation is also linked to the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:1-5, Job 26:13 and Psalm 104:30. This functional parallelism strongly suggests the equivalence of Wisdom to the Holy Spirit.

Then there’s the explicitly romantic Song of Solomon, which would be extraneous to the Bible if gender is missing from the spiritual realm.

This sampling of Scriptural support for a gendered heaven illuminates a face of God that is altogether more lovely, compassionate, firm in the intra-Godhead bond of family than the sterner, informationally-poor and remote face as understood by the mainstream Church.

But there is yet more: evidence that the Church was cleansed of sexuality through the tampering of Scripture

According to an Internet search of “feminine Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures”, multiple modern, deeply serious theologians and ancient language scholars share the view that the earliest Hebrew Christians had access to Scripture that presented the Holy Spirit as a feminine Persona; this feminine persisted within the Syriac and other Eastern branches of Christianity and within the Gnostic sect as well. A prime example of this is the Scriptural passage known as the Siniatic Palimpsest (a palimpsest is a recycled writing medium, wherein a second layer of writing was applied over the original, the original usually consisting of more important information) uncovered toward the end of the nineteenth century by Agnes Lewis. The original writing included portions of the Gospel of John of which a quote from Jesus Himself in John 14:26 asserts the following (translation attributed to Danny Mahar):

“But She – the Spirit – the Paraclete whom He will send to you – my Father – in my name – She will teach you everything; She will remind you of what I have told you.”

There is a suggestion, from a comparative review of this text with Paul’s letters that Paul, among the numerous early Hebrew Christians, used the version of John’s Gospel from which this passage came. References to the Siniatic Palimpsest may be found on the Internet. Unfortunately, many of the translations into English found under the search phrase “Siniatic Palimpsest” apply without justification the more conventional “he” rather than the “she” of the original language. Some Internet references, however, do acknowledge the proper “she”.

The identification of the Holy Spirit as feminine in the Siniatic Palimpsest is no small matter, for this document is the oldest of all copies of the Gospels, being dated to the second century A.D. It is a recognized principle of textual interpretation, even by the most conservative of Biblical scholars, that the older the text, the closer it is thought to be to the original Scripture. This is particularly important in light of the fact that there are no other Scriptural texts between it and the oldest Greek text dated to the fourth century A.D.

On the other hand, it is not really necessary to assert that Scripture was altered to change the references to the Holy Spirit from “she” to “he” to justify a feminine function of the Holy Spirit. As I had noted in both Family of God and Marching to a Worthy Drummer, it is more a matter of recognizing the Holy Spirit as functionally feminine in the face of the possibility that She may share in the masculine substance of the Father. This is certainly the case with the Church, in that Scripture describes her as functionally feminine, being the Bride of Christ, while the aggregate of individuals that describe her are collectively described as masculine, as in the term “mankind”. This view of collective masculinity and functional femininity is supported in Genesis 5:2:

“Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”

This differentiation between substance and function, in fact, is suggested by the Nicene Creed, in which in the original version the Holy Spirit is referred to as follows:

 

“And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.”

Around the sixth century A.D. the filioque (the words “and the son”) were inserted into the Nicene Creed after the phrase “who proceeds from the Father”. This insertion was finally approved by the pope in 1014, an act that contributed to an uproar among the faithful that led in 1054 to the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western branches of the Church. The insertion of the filioque into the creed suggests the loss of the Church’s initial understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role within the Godhead.

 

 

 

 

GOD, FACE TO FACE CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE: How some eminent early Church Fathers set the stage for the removal of sexuality from God

In the book Early Christian Fathers, edited by Cyril C. Richardson may be seen Justin Martyr’s attitude toward the place of sexuality within the Christian faith This commentary was written around the middle of the second century A.D., about a half century after the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation. In it, Justin clearly expressed his view of the importance of sexual circumspection:

“About continence [Jesus] said this: ‘Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart before God.’ And: ‘If your right eye offends you, cut it out; it is better for you to enter into the kingdom of Heaven with one eye than with two to be sent into eternal fire.’ And: ‘Whoever marries a woman who has been put away from another man commits adultery.’ And: ‘There are some who were made eunuchs by men, and some who were born eunuchs, and some who have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake; only not all [are able to] receive this.

“And so those who make second marriages according to human law are sinners in the sight of our Teacher, and those who look on a woman to lust after her. For he condemns not only the man who commits the act of adultery, but the man who desires to commit adultery, since not only our actions but our thoughts are manifest to God. Many men and women now in their sixties and seventies who have been disciples of Christ from childhood have preserved their purity; and I am proud that I could point to such people in every nation. . . But to begin with, we do not marry except in order to bring up children, or else, renouncing marriage, we live in perfect continence. To show you that promiscuous intercourse is not among our mysteries – just recently one of us submitted a petition to the Prefect Felix in Alexandria, asking that a physician be allowed to make him a eunuch, for the physicians there said they were not allowed to do this without the permission of the Prefect. When Felix would by no means agree to endorse [the petition], the young man remained single, satisfied with [the approval of] his own conscience and that of his fellow believers.”

In writing about the sexual purity of Christians, Justin intended to contrast this behavior with that associated with the false gods and the rampant and often cruel immorality that not only was involved in the worship of them, but which had infected secular life as well:

“Far be it from every sound mind to entertain such a concept of deities as that Zeus, whom they call the ruler and begetter of all, should have been a parricide (killer of a relative) and the son of a parricide, and that moved by desire of evil and shameful pleasures he descended on Ganymede and the many women whom he seduced, and that his sons after him were guilty of similar actions. But, as we said before, it was the wicked demons who did these things. We have been taught that only those who live close to God in holiness and virtue attain to immortality, and we believe that those who live unjustly and do not reform will be punished in eternal fire.”

“Secondly, out of every race of men we who once worshiped Dionysus the son of Semele and Apollo the son of Leto, who in their passion for men did things which it is disgraceful even to speak of, or who worshiped Persephone and Aphrodite, who were driven made by [love of] Adonis and whose mysteries you celebrate, or Asclepius or some other of those who are called gods, now through Jesus Christ despise them, even at the cost of death, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible God. We do not believe that he ever descended in mad passion on Antiope or others, nor on Ganymede, nor was he, receiving help through Thetis, delivered by that hundred-handed monster, nor was he, because of this anxious that Thetis’ son Achilles should destroy so many Greeks for the sake of his concubine Briseis. We pity those who believe [such stories], for which we know that the demons are responsible.”

“That we may avoid all injustice and impiety, we have been taught that to expose the newly born is the work of wicked men – first of all because we observe that almost all [foundlings], boys as well as girls, are brought up for prostitution. As the ancients are said to have raised herds of oxen or goats or sheep or horses in their pastures, so now [you raise children] just for shameful purposes, and so in every nation a crowd of females and hermaphrodites and doers of unspeakable deeds are exposed as public prostitutes. You even collect pay and levies and taxes from these, whom you ought to exterminate from your civilized world. And anyone who makes use of them may in addition to [the guilt of] godless, impious, and intemperate intercourse, by chance be consorting with his own child or relative or brother. Some even prostitute their own children or wives, and others are admittedly mutilated for purposes of sodomy, and treat this as part of the mysteries of the mother of the gods – while beside each of those whom think of as gods a serpent is depicted as a great symbol and mystery. You charge against us the actions that you commit openly and treat with honor, as if the divine light were overthrown and withdrawn – which of course does no harm to us, who refuse to do any of these things, but rather injures those who do them and then bring false witness [against us].”

Two and a half centuries later Augustine experienced much the same revulsion as Justin did over the moral tawdriness of the Roman society in which he lived. Having become a Christian thirty two years after his birth in 354 A.D., Augustine had spent much of his dissolute pre-Christian years in the enjoyment of the depravity of the society in which he lived. The shame and regret of these early years served to drive Augustine into a passionate rejection of loose morality and unbridled lust. The strength of his feelings in that regard are demonstrated throughout his book City of God, an example of which is given in Chapters 4 and 5 of Book II:

“When I was a young man I used to go to sacrilegious shows and entertainments.  I watched the antics of madmen; I listened to singing boys; I thoroughly enjoyed the most degrading spectacles put on in honour of gods and goddesses – in honour of the Heavenly Virgin, of of Berecynthia, mother of all. On the yearly festival of Berecynthia’s purification the lowest kind of actors sang, in front of her litter, songs unfit for the ears of even the mother of one of those mountebanks, to say nothing of the mother of any decent citizen, or of a senator; while as for the Mother of the Gods – ! For there is something in the natural respect we have towards our parents that the extreme of infamy cannot wholly destroy; and certainly those very mountebanks would be ashamed to give a rehearsal performance in their homes, before their mothers, of those disgusting verbal and acted obscenities. Yet they performed them in the presence of the Mother of the Gods before an immense audience of spectators of both sexes. If those spectators were enticed by curiosity to gather in profusion, they ought at least to have dispersed in confusion at the insults to their modesty.

“If these were sacred rites, what is meant by sacrilege? If this is purification, what is meant by pollution?  And the name of the ceremony is ‘the fercula’, which might suggest the giving of a dinner-party where the unclean demons could enjoy a feast to their liking.  Who could fail to realize what kind of spirits they are which could enjoy such obscenities?  Only a man who refused to recognize even the existence of any unclean spirits who deceive men under the title of gods, or one whose life was such that he hoped for the favour and feared the anger of such gods, rather than that of the true God.

Augustine went on to lament, as he called them, the obscenities performed in the worship of the “Mother of the Gods”:

 

            “The last people I should choose to decide on this matter are those who are more eager to revel in the obscene practices of this depraved cult than to resist them. I should prefer the decision of Scipio Nasica, the very man whom the Senate chose as their best man, whose hands received this devil’s image and brought it to Rome. Let him tell us whether he would wish his mother to have deserved so well of her country that she should be accorded divine honours. For it is well known that the Greeks and the Romans, and other peoples, have decreed such honours to those whose public services they valued highly, and that such people were believed to have been made immortal and to have been received among the number of the gods. No doubt he would desire such felicity for his mother, if it were possible. But let me go on to ask him whether he would like such disgusting rites as those to be included among the divine honours paid to her? Would he not cry out that he would prefer his mother to be dead, and beyond all experience, than that she should live as a goddess, to take pleasure in hearing such celebrations?   It is unthinkable that a senator of Rome, of such high principles that he forbade the erection of a theatre in a city of heroes, should want his mother to be honoured as a goddess by such propitiatory rites as would have scandalized her as a Roman matron. He would surely have thought it quite impossible for a respectable woman to have her modesty so corrupted by the assumption of divinity that her worshipers should call upon her with ritual invocations of this sort. These invocations contained expressions of such a kind that had they been hurled at any antagonist in a quarrel, during her life on earth, then if she had not stopped her ears and withdrawn from the company, her friends, her husband and her children would have blushed for her. In fact the ‘Mother of the Gods’ was such a character as even the worst of men would be ashamed to have for his mother. And when she came to take possession of the minds of the Romans she looked for the best man of the country, not so as to support him by counsel and help, but to cheat and deceive him, like the woman of whom the Bible says, ‘she ensnares the precious souls of men’. Her purpose was that a mind of great endowments should be puffed up by this supposedly divine testimony and should think itself truly exceptional, and therefore should cease to follow the true religion and piety – without which every national ability, however remarkable, disappears in the ruin which follows on pride. And thus that goddess should seek the support of the best men only by trickery, seeing that she requires in her worship the kind of behaviour which decent men shrink from even in their convivial moments.”

Augustine was enormously influential to the Christian Church at a time when Church doctrine was still being formulated and heresies were still emerging, to be debated upon and rejected. In his wake, the Church charted a course that polarized itself away from any hint of the depravities associated with the corrupt gods and goddesses of the world about her. This extremity of purification, for which purity was equated with chastity, cleansed the Judeo-Christian God of any taint of sexuality.

This view of sexuality as representing a taint frowned upon by God raises an issue that was brought up at the end of the Introduction: is the view Scriptural?

According to Genesis, it is not. Right at the beginning of Genesis, the creation epic describes the reproductive process extending even into the domain of plant life, wherein the fruit of the tree yields trees of its kind. Moreover, God saw this as good. Reproduction becomes more overtly sexual in the created animal life, wherein this life bore young after its kind. God also saw this as good. In the creation of man as described in Genesis 1:26 and 27, their gender differentiation now extends beyond mankind himself to hint of a like feature within the Godhead, here specifically described as plural:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

 

In blessing Adam and Eve, He specifically told them to multiply.

This time God saw His creative act as not only good, but very good.

Many theologians down through the centuries have attempted to separate the gender differentiation of Genesis 1:26 and 27 from the creation in God’s image. All such discourses, at least the ones of which I am aware, are logically weak and based on the unbiblical presupposition that God is “above that kind of thing”. The passage says what it says, and does so without ambiguity. Moreover, if this gender differentiation is not to represent the image of God, then the feminine half of the human race would have no representation in God. Some religions take that notion to its logical extreme, its male members treating women as animals.

[to be continued]

GOD, FACE TO FACE INTRODUCTION

The she-wolf lay trembling but still in a dark cold cave, her eyes blinking in the face of a harsh wind that ruffled her fur, seeking to expose her flesh to its frigid bite. The cave itself was surrounded by a bleak and hostile universe, its antipathy to life as immense as its vast scale.

 

Nested underneath her was a pack of cubs, warmed and fed by the suffering body above them and oblivious to the stress she was facing to ensure their survival. They fought for the warmest spot and the most milk, thinking only of their own well-being within their tiny universe beneath her sheltering underside.

 

I realized with a shock that the cubs represented us and that the life-giving body above was the Holy Spirit.

Many years after I became a Christian, God granted me two insights, profound in their influence on my experience as a believer: the first was a mathematically-based understanding of details associated with the events of Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes¹; the second was an understanding of the nature of the Holy Spirit and of the Spirit’s role within the Trinitarian Godhead.

1. A presentation of the feedings is furnished in Appendix 2 to Marching to a Worthy Drummer

 

The former insight, once established, was easily verifiable, and thus provided a means to strengthen my faith in the divine Source of the latter. As such, it was instrumental in the maintenance of my confidence in the gifts that God so graciously handed me. The importance of this confirmation was made manifest by the severity of the criticism against my insight into the nature of God.

I had been aware from the very receipt of this insight that it didn’t square with the conventional understanding of God as professed by the mainstream Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, for the insight itself was consistent with the vision of the wolf and cubs I had received many years previous upon accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

I was given to understand the relationship between the wolf and her cubs in that vision as symbolic of that which existed between God and the human race, the wolf representing the Holy Spirit. The vision awakened in me a hunger for the knowledge of God.

Why a wolf? I don’t know the answer to that, but to me a wolf is emblematic of nobility and strength.

The bigger question is why I was favored with the two insights that I acquired much later. I don’t know that either, but maybe it’s simply because I asked for it.

Attempting to share this vision with other Christians in my enthusiasm as a newly-minted Christian, I was quickly confronted with the displeasure of my peers. I kind of suspected that, because the image of a wolf can be taken by some as inappropriate and demeaning to God. But that wasn’t the problem at all. The problem was gender. The vision couldn’t be correct, because the Holy Spirit was referred to in Scripture as masculine rather than feminine. Given this negative reaction, I proceeded no further with the sharing, completely avoiding the pastoral staff in the matter. Until I was given further insight into the issue many years later, I put the vision out of my mind and focused instead on understanding Scripture. This in-depth review served me well upon receiving the gift of insight, as I was then able to confirm my understanding of the Holy Spirit’s gender through Scripture.

I subsequently wrote about the insight in my book Family of God, after which I submitted the book to a friend who possessed impressive theological credentials. As before, I was criticized for the view, but with a twist: the Holy Spirit was not considered by him to be feminine, but neither was this Divine Entity masculine; the entire Godhead was considered to be void of gender in the sense of participating in a procreative function. The entire Creation, in his view and in the view of the seminary from which he emerged with a degree in theology, and, in fact, in the view of virtually every Western denomination acknowledged to be Christian, was accomplished by some pure Godly process in which gender differentiation was not involved.

The form of my friend’s displeasure exposed the heart of the matter: sex. Sexuality was forbidden within the Godhead. The entire Church denomination to which he belonged viewed sex as basically evil and too earthy for God. His denomination was not alone in this dim view, which represents the official public assessment of the mainstream Church regarding all matters sexual in nature. In privacy, it’s an entirely different matter, as the world discovers in recurring episodes of sexual excesses within the Christian clergy and laypersons. A lesser-known manifestation of this sordid business among Christians is the startling estimate that 80% of Christian males regularly view pornography, a good half of them being full-blown addicts to this form of voyeurism.

In a subsequent book Marching to a Worthy Drummer, in which I enlisted the aid of Scripture to rebut the mainstream view of the genderless Godhead, I made in the Introduction the following commentary regarding the source of this mainstream viewpoint:

Love was in the air at the time of the Pentecostal birth of the Church. And hope besides, a freshness of season, a joyful anticipation. Despite the anger and persecutions of those who knew not Christ against those who did, the Church willingly, thankfully and even possessively took up the Cross, marching boldly toward a paradise restored.

A few short centuries later the Western Church, greatly enlarged and enjoying the status of a state religion, had lost its newness and its joy. It was an institution now, a secular power. In the acquisition of this comfort and lofty position it now stood as a receiver of service, having forsaken the love of serving others. Far worse than that, it had lost the joy of loving God at the most basic and important level, that of natural intuition.

Some might think that this loss was an inevitable consequence of the easing of conditions for the Christians. No longer faced with persecution, they became soft of spirit and their fervor of worship decayed into indifference toward God.

Indeed, that was part of the problem. The Church always has been at her best when forced to face suffering and persecution. But looming over that external nudge toward decline was a much bigger dilemma, an internally-caused one that drove Christians away from their love of God because they could no longer see God with the intuitive clarity they possessed earlier.

This urge for reformation that stripped them of their knowledge of God was a desire to distance the Church from the sea of false notions and pagan beliefs with which she was surrounded. Sensing the great danger their Church faced from these competing ideas, many of which were lewd and corrupt, the leaders among the faithful strove to set their faith apart from the baser systems of belief in order to ensure its uniqueness and, above all, its purity. They intended to accomplish this with a thorough housecleaning and, energized with this objective, they pursued this task as if on a sacred mission.

By the time they were finished their objective was achieved beyond all rational expectations. Sexuality was completely divorced from the Christian faith as practiced by the mainstream Church. If the realization of that objective required a certain “correction” of Scripture in a few critical places, well, so be it. God certainly wouldn’t frown on the desire to purify Christianity. Not only were Mary and Joseph purged of sexual experience beyond the pain of childbirth and the necessity of breast-feeding, but God Himself, being considered above the baseness of sexual experience, was neutered. The Holy Spirit was changed from a feminine Being to a weakly masculine one, and, as a consequence, the Godhead was stripped of its family context and instead came to be viewed as a fellowship of brothers.

Gone was the intuitive basis for love, as represented by the Christian’s own family and spousal experience. In seeking God, the believer was forced to approach Him with agape love, having been made to forsake any hint of eros and the possessive love it engendered. From this complete lack of understanding of who God actually was, it was only a matter of time before indifference toward Him set in.

All one has to do to verify the anti-sexual bias of the early Christian Church is to read what the Church Fathers themselves, including Justin Martyr and Augustine, had to say about the place of sexuality within Christianity. There also is much evidence that Scripture was tampered with to disassociate sexuality from God.

Like most committed Christians, I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture in the original autograph, and its inspiration, again in the original, by the Holy Spirit. But, having been exposed to numerous off-the-wall interpretations of Scripture, I certainly don’t have any faith in the ability of mankind to maintain that Scripture in its original, pristine state.

On the last go-around on this subject with my friend, he again responded negatively to the clear Scriptural evidence of the femininity of the Holy Spirit as well as the equally clear evidence of Scripture having been tampered with regarding gender and God. He said, in effect, that he would produce Scriptural evidence that was thoroughly contradictory to mine.

Now, as I eagerly await his substantiation of his claim, I cannot help but to anticipate what this evidence might look like. I sincerely want to see the face of this more appropriate God. And the Source of this picture had better be Scripture.

Why is that? According to John 1:18, we have not and indeed cannot directly see the face of God the Father.

“No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”

 

Nevertheless, we understand from Scripture that Jesus (Col 1:15) is the very image of the Father, so that we know from John 14:9 that if we see Jesus, we also see the Father:

“Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?”

 

How can we see Jesus, and thus the Father? Many great artists have attempted to paint his features, but we have no assurance of their resemblance to the actual Jesus. But Jesus wasn’t speaking of what He looks like, but what His heart looks like, and we have Scripture to show us that. His most preeminent attribute, according to John 1:1 and 14, is His role as the Word of God:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . .And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”

Having access to this picture of God in Scripture, it is incumbent upon us to adhere to it, understanding any view of God that contradicts His portrait in Scripture to be false and unworthy of our attention.

SOME APPALLING CHRISTIAN STATISTICS

In a recent televised broadcast of his weekly show Christ in Prophecy, Dr. David Reagan of LambLion Ministries presented some shocking statistics that he had acquired from Jim Garlowe, pastor of Skyline Nazarene Church.

Dr. Garlowe, who is an acknowledged expert in the field of Church history, sources the following appalling information regarding the practices and beliefs of evangelical Church constituents:

19% are living with partners outside of marriage

37% do not believe the Bible to be totally accurate

45% do not believe that Jesus was sinless

52% do not believe that satan is real

57% do not believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life

57% believe that good works play a part in gaining eternal life

Note that these figures pertain to evangelical Christians, those most noted for their obedience toward the Great Commission defined by Jesus Christ in Matthew 28:18-20:

“And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

These horrifying statistics come on the heels of an Internet edition of Prophecy News Watch that addressed the severity of another problem associated with the modern Church.

It was estimated in that article that almost eighty percent of Christian men regularly indulge in the viewing of pornography. It’s not difficult to imagine where that behavior leads. The number of actual pornography addicts is about half of those. That’s a very distressingly large portion of the Church. In effect, the cleansing of God of sexuality has not led to the cleansing of Christians from sexual deviation. To the contrary, it has had precisely the opposite effect. Not only have women been degraded in this monstrous misrepresentation of the Godhead, but Christian men have allowed themselves to be degraded as well. It doesn’t end there – degradation, whether or not it is perceived as relevant to God, leads directly to alienation from God.

Alternatively, this drift away from God may have less to do with a misunderstanding of the nature of God than a more basic indifference to God resulting from a complete devotion to the secular world.

The lack of interest in things godly represented by these statistics corresponds distressingly close to the description of the last of the seven Churches addressed by Jesus in Revelation. His message to the Laodicean Church in Revelation 3:14-19 reads as follows:

“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anount thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent.”

It appears that Jesus already has lit the fire by which the Church shall be refined as gold, for, in his A Prophetic Manifesto, Dr. Reagan outlined three steps toward a nation’s destruction as it turns its back on God. These steps (paraphrasing Dr. Reagan’s treatment) follow Paul’s presentation in Romans 1:24-32:

First, as a nation turns from God, God Himself politely steps back, allowing evil to flourish in the form of sexual deviation from the Biblical standard of monogamous male-female marriage (Romans 1:24, 25). This roughly corresponds to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Second, God unleashes a plague of explosively rampant and ubiquitous sexual deviation (Romans 1:26, 27). This began in the 1980s.

Third, society at large is delivered unto a depraved mind. At that point, as described in 2 Chronicles 36:15, 16, there is no remedy – no return and no healing (Romans 1:28-32). We seem to be there.

Returning to Dr. Reagan’s presentation of Dr. Garlowe’s historical information, Christianity in America appears to be adhering to the following event timeline:

1607-1833 (236 years): Christianity represented the establishment

1833-1918 (85 years): Christianity was the dominant force

1918-1968 (50 years): Christianity represented a sub-dominant force

1968-1988 (20 years): Christianity became a sub-culture

1988-1998 (10 years): Christianity became a counter-culture

1998-2008 (10 years): Christianity devolved into an antithetical culture

2008-present: Christianity has become a persecuted culture

Keep in mind that persecution of the Church actually performs a healing function: the superficial are removed, leaving behind the fully-committed, within whom the light of Christ shines ever brighter against a darkening world.

[Note to the Reader: Carolyn and I will be heading out on vacation for 2+ weeks. Be back with you when we return!]

A SUMMARY OF THE FEMININITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

 

 

 

Direct Scriptural support

 

 

The Siniatic Palimpsest

 

According to an Internet search of “feminine Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Scriptures”, multiple modern, deeply serious theologians and ancient language scholars share the view that the earliest Hebrew Christians had access to Scripture that presented the Holy Spirit as a feminine Persona; this feminine persisted within the Syriac and other Eastern branches of Christianity and within the Gnostic sect as well. A prime example of this is the Scriptural passage known as the Siniatic Palimpsest (a palimpsest is a recycled writing medium, wherein a second layer of writing was applied over the original, the original usually consisting of more important information) uncovered toward the end of the nineteenth century by Agnes Lewis. The original writing included portions of the Gospel of John of which a quote from Jesus Himself in John 14:26 asserts the following (translation attributed to Danny Mahar):

“But She – the Spirit – the Paraclete whom He will send to you – my Father – in my name – She will teach you everything; She will remind you of what I have told you.”

There is a suggestion, from a comparative review of this text with Paul’s letters that Paul, among the numerous early Hebrew Christians, used the version of John’s Gospel from which this passage came. References to the Siniatic Palimpsest may be found on the Internet. Unfortunately, many of the translations into English found under the search phrase “Siniatic Palimpsest” apply without justification the more conventional “he” rather than the “she” of the original language. Some Internet references, however, do acknowledge the proper “she”.

The identification of the Holy Spirit as feminine in the Siniatic Palimpsest is no small matter, for this document is the oldest of all copies of the Gospels, being dated to the second century A.D. It is a recognized principle of textual interpretation, even by the most conservative of Biblical scholars, that the older the text, the closer it is thought to be to the original Scripture. This is particularly important in light of the fact that there are no other Scriptural texts between it and the oldest Greek text dated to the fourth century A.D.

 

 

The nature of the spiritual birth by the Holy Spirit points directly to a feminine Holy Spirit

 

Quoting from John 3:

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; the same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered, and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound of it, but canst not tell from where it cometh, and where it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered, and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered, and said unto him, Art thou a teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which we do know, and testify to that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

Dr. McGrath on the Protestant side and John MacQuarrie on the Catholic side, among many other theologians on both sides, argue that each Member of the Godhead has both a masculine and a feminine side enabling each and every Member of the Godhead to perform that birth function. This argument is negated not only by the strong maleness of the Father and Son as presented in the Bible, the proscription against effeminate males in Deuteronomy 23:1 and 1 Corinthians 6:9.

Acts Chapter 2 makes a singular association between this rebirth described in John 3 and the Holy Spirit, identifying the Holy Spirit as the Birther. Because gender weakness is frowned upon in the passages cited above as well as the proscription against homosexuality in both Testaments, the Holy Spirit must be identified as functionally feminine.

 

 

A Feminine Church suggests a feminine Holy Spirit

 

The femininity of the spiritual Church was established in the article entitled The Church, the Bride, the Body and the New Jerusalem. The spiritual Church, being a feminine entity and the Bride of Christ, requires Jesus Christ to be gendered. This was the great mystery of which Paul spoke in Ephesians 5:31 and 32:

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and His Church.

 

This relationship between Christ and His Church elicits a profound question, one that can be answered rationally only one way: why, if Jesus partakes of both gender and marriage, would the Father and the Holy Spirit not?

Given the male gender of the Father, the obvious answer is that the Holy Spirit is the feminine Spouse of the Father.

The feminine Shekinah Glory points to a feminine Holy Spirit

 

Perhaps the most significant suggestion of femininity in the Bible may be found in the property of indwelling, a characteristic of the Holy Spirit that strongly connects the New Testament with the Old.

That the Old Testament Shekinah is the New Testament’s Holy Spirit is manifestly evident in the precursor role to the indwelling Holy Spirit of the Shekinah Glory who indwelt both the Tabernacle in the wilderness and Solomon’s Temple at their dedications. Since it has been claimed that the word Shekinah does not exist in the Hebrew Scriptures in its noun form (the situation there being similar to the absence in the Bible of a noun form of the word baptize), the following commentary will be made regarding its origin before proceeding with examples of the Shekinah presence.

In the Hebrew Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the word Shekinah is used as a noun. It means “intimate dwelling” or “the presence of the Glory of the Lord”.   Justification for the use of this word is the use in the Hebrew Scriptures of its root word “shachan”, referring particularly to the pillars of cloud and fire that accompanied the Israelites in their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land through the wilderness. The prophet Isaiah referred to it quite graphically in Isaiah 4:5 and 6, linking this pillar of cloud and fire to a covering presence. It is generally understood that this same pillar is referenced in Isaiah 51:9 and 10, where the prophet goes out of his way to describe by feminine pronouns the same pillar of cloud and fire that accompanied the Israelites on their journey from Egypt. The Targum interpretation leaves no doubt that the Shekinah Glory is a feminine presence, and represents an equivalence with a feminine Holy Spirit. Isaiah 4:5 and 6, and 51:9 and 10 read as follows:

“And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion , and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defense. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.”

 

          “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not she who hast cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not she who has dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; who hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”

Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8 provide prominent examples of the Shekinah as a precursor to the indwelling Holy Spirit of the New Testament. Exodus 40:33-38 describes the indwelling of the Tabernacle in the wilderness:

“And [Moses] reared up the court round about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the hanging of the court gate. So Moses finished the work.

 

          “Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys; but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.”

 

The description “cloud of the Lord” , “fire by night” and “taken up” leaves no doubt that this “cloud” is equivalent to the Shekinah of the Red Sea adventure and of Isaiah 4:5. The corresponding incident with respect to Solomon’s Temple, taken from 1 Kings 8:6-13, is given below:

And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, into the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread forth their two wings of the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and its staves above. And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they were not seen outside; and there they are unto this day. There was nothing in the ark except the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt. And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord. Then spoke Solomon, The Lord said he would dwell in the thick darkness. I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever.”

In this passage the meaning of “cloud” is closely linked with “dwelling place” and “glory of the Lord”, which again point to the phrase Shekinah Glory.

The connection between these precursor events and the Holy Spirit who indwells Christian believers is given in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:19-22, wherein Paul asserts that the Church herself, through her constituents, is a temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit:

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

 

          Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

The facts embedded in these passages are no surprise to Christians, who generally accept without question that believers are indwelt with the Holy Spirit and comprise, as the Church, a holy temple. What some of us may not be aware of is that this temple and its indwelling by the Holy Spirit was represented numerous times as the Glory of God in the Old Testament. Turning to the Internet, the Wikipedia entry for “Shekinah” begins as follows:

“Hebrew [Shekinah] is the English spelling of a grammatically feminine Hebrew ancient blessing. The original word means the dwelling or settling, and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, especially in the temple in Jerusalem.” An accompanying figure shows the Shekinah, or the Glory of God, indwelling the temple as described in 1 Kings 8.”

Noting the female gender of this indwelling Shekinah, we find here by comparing the indwelling presence of the Glory in Solomon’s temple with the description in Ephesians 2 of the Holy Spirit indwelling the human temple that Scripture itself, by furnishing this direct comparison, supports an interpretation of the Holy Spirit as a female Entity in the face of conventional Christian thought, as driven by the use in Scripture of the male pronoun in reference to the Holy Spirit.

This feminine gender attribute in Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8 may have been simply lost in the translation from Hebrew (Aramaic) to English, which could have been a result of the lack of gender precision in the English language. (Actually, the first transference from feminine to masculine occurred in the Latin, for which the Holy Spirit was definitely presented as male.) But there is an associated gender misrepresentation in Isaiah 51:9, 10 that appears to be more deliberate. What the translators did in that passage was to substitute the grammatically incorrect ‘it’ for the gender-correct ‘she’ in reference to Shekinah. In their desire to maintain a fully masculine Godhead, they neutered the female. In the process, they inadvertently managed also to castrate their masculine God. As just one example of this removal of gender, Isaiah 51:9 and 10 refers to a neuter Arm of the Lord rather than the original feminine gender.

Proverbs points to the femininity of the Holy Spirit

 

The Book of Proverbs beautifully and harmoniously supports a female functional designation for the Holy Spirit., as the subject of this book is uniformly feminine, and whose functionality closely parallels that of the Holy Spirit. Of particular interest in this regard are Proverbs 3 and 8, from which the following excerpts are taken:

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. . .She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. . .The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens. . .Doth not wisdom cry? And understanding put forth her voice? . . .The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.”

Several items come to mind from the above review of these passages in Proverbs. The first is that the Persona is female throughout; an attempt to assign some of these passages to Jesus Christ, as many do, would constitute an unnatural force-fit, most obviously in the issue of gender, but also with respect to function and role. The second is directly related to function, wherein the passages suggest a connection between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit as furnishing the most likely Person to which a female function may be assigned; the third is that the Holy Spirit was active in creation itself, as summarized in Genesis 1:1-3:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

 

The frequent Catholic attribution of Wisdom to Mary faces the equally grave difficulty of linking Mary with capabilities such as creation that are reserved for God alone.

 

In the context of Scripture’s general treatment of the Holy Spirit, the passage in Genesis quoted above more than suggests that the Father was assisted by or in union with the Holy Spirit in the act of creation, the result being, as Jesus Himself suggested in Revelation 3:14, a manifestation of the Son. I am not alone in this assertion regarding the active participation of the Holy Spirit in the creation event. As a matter of fact, I simply repeat the position of Benjamin B. Warfield, a noted Bible scholar who is well-respected among conservative theologians.

 

Any attempt at a rebuttal of this association must address Proverbs 3:19 in the context of Genesis 1:1-5, Proverbs 8:22-36, Job 26:13 and Psalm 104:30. The attempt to attribute Proverbs 8 to Jesus rather than the Holy Spirit must explain the out-of-context insertion into material descriptive of Wisdom, as well as the feminine description of Wisdom throughout the Book of Proverbs as opposed to the depiction of Jesus throughout Scripture as strongly masculine and the image of the Father. Furthermore, the attempt to link Wisdom with the Virgin Mary is unsustainable in the light of Mary’s full humanity and consequent absence in the creation epic, wherein according to Chapter 8 Wisdom was at the side of the Father during the process of creation.

Wisdom, as depicted in Proverbs, is strongly female and only female. The attempt at rebuttal must also avoid taking the Jungian notion of the human psyche, both male and female, as containing both masculine and feminine elements, and extrapolating it to his notion of the Trinity. There are logical difficulties in doing so, as described below.

Scripture rather exclusively associates the Father with the Divine Will, which, as an initiating role, also is exclusively masculine. Similarly, Jesus the Son is presented in Scripture as the Divine Representation which, as the perfect image in reality of the Father would also be predominantly masculine. The masculine predominance of Jesus is given further weight by Paul’s characterization in Ephesians 5 of Jesus as the Bridegroom of the (functionally feminine) Church. In Family of God I simply noted what to me was an obvious connecting function of the Holy Spirit between Father and Son: the Divine Means which, in union with the Divine Will, gave birth to the Divine Implementation in reality (Divine Representation). Obviously, this Divine Means, being so closely linked with the other two Members, is also Deity. Because the Divine Means performed a function that was responsive to the Will, an obviously female role, I attached a female gender to this Person. Scripture and Christian tradition both understand this third Member of the Trinity to be the Holy Spirit.

Another difficulty, and it is a big one, that I see in the notion of each Member of Godhead possessing elements of both genders is that such a state of affairs would promote self-adoration, a characteristic that I sincerely hope is lacking within the Godhead. Love and adoration require otherness. The alternative is narcissism.   I truly believe (and hope) that both Father and Holy Spirit are as selflessly noble as the Son demonstrated on the cross.

Indirect Scriptural support

 

 

The personhood of Wisdom in Proverbs

As for the interpretation of the association of femininity with the subject of Proverbs as being nothing more than a literary device, the same is no more consistent with the general tone of Scripture than Zanchius’ removal of passion from God.

Jesus Himself, in Luke 7:35, associates Wisdom with motherhood, an eminently personal attribute.

“But wisdom is justified of all her children.”

 

While that verse possibly could be interpreted as being merely a figure of speech, Jesus in Luke 11:49 and 50 more emphatically personifies Wisdom:

“Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation.”

In further support of my equation of Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, I cite Isaiah 11:1 and 2:

“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots; And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,. . .”

Another item that presents itself in a reading of Proverbs with an eye to the Personhood of Wisdom is the implied intimacy between mankind and Wisdom in the warning given in Proverbs 8:36: he that sins against Wisdom wrongs his own soul. Could this imply that our own purpose and function in the spiritual realm might actually parallel that of the Holy Spirit? There may well be a correlation between this caution and the one expressed by Jesus in Matthew 12:31 and 32:

“Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”

These are strong words, and they make a strong connection between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit. Perhaps theologians instinctively sense this correlation. Perhaps also not wishing to shoot themselves in the foot and instead of attempting to truly understand what is being said here, they duck away from presenting anything controversial regarding the Holy Spirit. Historically, that has certainly been the situation with numerous theological expositions regarding the Holy Spirit, all of which end up complicating an extremely simple understanding of the nature of the Trinity by claiming that ultimately man is unable to grasp it.

I must express my disappointment with all such expositors for allowing this unjustified fear to prevent them from furnishing a richer, more love-inducing understanding of their God to the Christian community. How can we possibly fulfill God’s greatest commandment to us to love Him with all our hearts if we cannot understand Him? How can we truly worship God if we turn our hearts away from His own Word? I assert with the Revised Westminster Confession that the three Persons of the Trinity have but one substance – that of the Father, shared among them, and three distinct Personalities, or roles. I identify those roles as Father, Mother, and Son, wherein the Three constitute one God in the context of Family, by virtue of the love intrinsic to that structure which, of course, is idealized in its application to God. This identification I make does not represent any cleverness on my part; rather, its very simplicity gives me cause to suspect that many followers of God would do well to actually follow God in love tempered by fear instead of fear tempered by love, and to follow God Himself instead of adhering so stubbornly to the traditions of man.

Moreover, I would suggest that in a functional sense an all-male Godhead represents a model that can be construed with little difficulty to support homosexuality, in opposition to God’s detestation of that practice, as may be found in Genesis 19, Leviticus 18 and Romans 1.

Something the Catholic Church did for the feminine which the Protestant Church did not was to include the Book of Wisdom within the body of canonical, and therefore considered to be inspired, Old Testament books. This beautifully-written book furnishes several interesting passages suggestive of the identity of Wisdom as the feminine Holy Spirit. Selected passages are presented below:

“And in your wisdom have established humankind . . .Give me Wisdom, the consort at your throne . . . Now with you is Wisdom, who knows your works and was present when you made the world; Who understands what is pleasing in your eyes and what is conformable with your commands. Send her forth from your holy heavens and from your glorious throne dispatch her that she may be with me and work with me, that I may know what is pleasing to you. For she knows and understands all things, and will guide me prudently in my affairs and safeguard me to her glory . . . Or who can know your counsel, unless you give Wisdom and send your holy spirit from on high?

– Wisdom 9:2, 4, 9-11, 17

 

A family-based Godhead in which the Holy Spirit is functionally female, united in love, naturally and intuitively resolves the apparent discrepancy between monotheism and a Trinitarian Godhead.

In Matthew 22:37, Jesus identifies the greatest commandment as the one Moses gave in Deuteronomy Chapter 6: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Being the greatest of commandments, it is not one to be trifled with to anyone who wishes to be obedient to God. But its fulfillment requires one to seek intimate knowledge of the entire Godhead, including the nature of the Holy Spirit and of the intra-Godhead union. It certainly demands that one satisfactorily resolve the enigma of oneness in a Trinitarian setting.

Assuredly, a union within the Godhead involving love of a non-romantic nature can be proposed. However, a rebuttal alternative should carry as much intuitive and love-inspiring force as a relationship in which a family setting is central. A rebuttal should also explain in functional terms why there is a proscription against the gay lifestyle as presented in Leviticus 18 and Romans 1. Furthermore, a rebuttal should also address the centrality of family in Scripture as well as in life in general.

Linkage of the Holy Spirit with an executive function

 

This executive nature of the Holy Spirit was proposed by respected theologian Benjamin Warfield as well as others. It is certainly suggested in Scripture. An executive office is responsive to higher orders, this being within the Godhead the initiative of the Father, or Divine Will. A responsive office, in turn, is a distinctly feminine one. This creative response is distinctly different than Jesus’ role as the Divine Representation, or Divine Implementation, which is, as a perfect Image of the Will, the result of creative response to the Will.

The possessive nature of Jeremiah 10:10-13

 

In Jeremiah 10:10-13, God describes His creative accomplishments in a possessive way:

“But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting king; at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation. Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens. He hath made the earth by his power; he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion. When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures.”

 

Wisdom, certainly, and often also power, are routinely linked to the Holy Spirit. To the person who views the Holy Spirit as feminine and bound to the Father in a family relationship in which romance is a major factor, this passage brings out the possessive nature of romance. In that context, the Holy Spirit belongs to the Father, as does the Father to the Holy Spirit. The passage above fits harmoniously into that supposition.

If, on the other hand, one presupposes that the Father and the Holy Spirit are more loosely bound in an agape relationship appropriate to an all-male Godhead, this passage would not speak of a possessive relationship between the two, and the attribute of wisdom would more appropriately be one possessed by the Father Himself. Of course, that assignment would create the collateral difficulty of rendering the Holy Spirit far less understandable as to function and attributes.

THE CHURCH, THE BRIDE, THE BODY AND THE NEW JERUSALEM

 

The beautiful mystery explained by Paul in Ephesians 5:25-32 has instilled in me the wonderful and moving view of the Church as the Bride of Christ:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the Word; that He might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church; for we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of his bones.

 

          For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.

 

In repeating the words of Adam in the Garden and of Jesus in Matthew 19, both in the context of marriage and the physical union between a man and his wife, Paul, by placing this marital union in the context of Jesus and His Church, plainly stated that the Church will be the spiritual Bride of Christ.

This statement of Paul’s echoes the numerous allusions that Jesus made to His own future marriage, including the parable of the marriage feast in Matthew 22, the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25, and, of course, his first miracle at Cana recorded in John 2, wherein He changed water into wine in anticipation of the joy of His own future wedding. Further identification of Jesus as a Bridegroom of a feminine entity is furnished by John in John 3:29.

In addition to New Testament pointers to Church in a bridal/marital context, there are at least two strong indicators of the same in the Old Testament in Genesis 24 and the Book of Ruth.

Genesis 24 describes the betrothal and marriage of Rebekah to Isaac. In Genesis 22 God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, which identifies Isaac as a type of Jesus Christ. In line with that identification, Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah identifies her as a type of Christ’s bride. According to Galatians 3:28, in which spiritual individuals do not possess gender, this bridehood cannot be fulfilled in individuals: the fulfillment must come for a collection or aggregate of individuals, which would suggest the Church. This identification of the Church as the Bride of Christ is strengthened by Paul’s characterization of the Church in 1 Corinthians 12 as a collection of individuals, each possessing specific gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In the Book of Ruth, Ruth’s husband Boaz is routinely identified by the Church as the Kinsman-redeemer, a type of Christ. It follows that Ruth, a female, represents His spiritual Wife, the Church.

Relating again to the Old Testament, it would be extremely difficult, if the Church was not a feminine entity, to justify the inclusion of the Song of Solomon in the canon of Scripture. Why, if the spiritual domain is genderless, would this overtly sexual document be a part of the Bible?

Not only is the future bride of Jesus feminine, but she is a living being, as clearly stated in Matthew 22: 31, 32:

But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Note also in Paul’s commentary in Ephesians 5: 28, that So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, Paul emphasizes the image developed in the restatement of Adam’s commentary regarding Eve of two becoming one flesh such that in the marital union the wife is considered to be the man’s body.   Here Paul extends the image of the wife being the body of the man to Christ and His Church, in line with an alternate description of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Paul alludes to this equivalence earlier in Romans 7: 4 and 1 Corinthians 2:15-20, where he describes the spiritual nature of the Church at Rome and Ephesus as both a feminine spouse and the spiritual body of Christ through the union of gendered complements capable of bearing fruit:

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I, then, take the members of Christ, and make them into the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? Know ye not that he who is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is outside the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

 

The plurality of the members of the Church, hinted at in the passages above, raises another issue, one that was touched on before. In Matthew 22: 28-30 and Galatians 3:28, both Jesus and Paul characterize the individual Christian as without gender in the spiritual realm:

Therefore, in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? For they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto the, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Note, however, that in both these cases the subject is the individual. But in 1 Corinthians 12: 4-28 and elsewhere in Scripture, Paul very plainly develops the idea that the individual is not the Church, but rather just a component of her, and a rather small element at that:

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit. For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, various kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the very same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

 

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath god set the members every one of them, in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble, are necessary. And those members of the body, which we thin to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need; but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.

 

Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the Church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet show I unto you a more excellent way.

The Church, then, as a single spiritual entity comprising a multiplicity of components, is fully capable of being endowed with gender, in exactly the same manner that while the eyeball of a person is genderless, the entire person is indeed either a male or a female. Furthermore, just as Jesus is always identified as male, Scripture always identifies the Church as either a functional female or its equivalent as the spouse of Christ.

The gendered nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ and His Church is suggested in the strongest terms in the Song of Solomon, for why would this romantic, even erotic, relationship be included in the canon of Scripture if such was not the case? This remarkable passage has been equated by several respected Bible commentators as representing the eventual marital relationship between Jesus and the Church. A typical example follows, taken from Song of Solomon 1: 14, 15:

 

My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyards of Engedi. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.

Scripture also describes the individuals comprising the Church as living human beings. Examples include Matthew 9:15 (also Mark 2:19 and Luke 5:34) and Ephesians 2: 4-7:

Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the Bridegroom will be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

 

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love with which He loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath made us alive together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that in ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

 

To this point, Scripture has shown that the Church is a feminine living body comprised of a multitude of genderless spiritual human souls which, in the aggregate is espoused to Jesus Christ as her future husband. Uniting spiritually through the marital union in the spiritual realm, the Church becomes the Body of Christ precisely as the wife is considered integrated into the body of the man in the material realm. But Revelation 21: 2, 9 and 10 paint an alternate picture of the wife of Christ that easily can be construed to represent an altogether different picture of this Bride:

And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her Husband. . .And there came unto me one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come here, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.

 

The passage above can readily be interpreted to suggest that the Bride of Christ is a building, albeit a beautiful and magnificent one, rather than the Church, which, as has been noted, is comprised of living souls. Several Scriptural passages that suggest the same thing come to mind, of which the following three are prominent:

1 Corinthians 3:9, 10 and 16:

For we are laborers together with God; ye are God’s cultivated field, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth on it. But let every man take heed how he buildeth upon it. . . Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

 

Ephesians 2:19-22:

Now, therefore ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together growth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Revelation 3:12, in Jesus’ message to the Church at Philadelphia:

          Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God; and I will write upon him My new name.

But note from these three examples that while the imagery is one of a building or components thereof, the components themselves are living human souls, all redeemed by Jesus Christ and therefore identical to the components of the Church. Given that identity, the imagery in Revelation 21 of the new Jerusalem is not mutually exclusive with the imagery of the Church. Indeed, the two images are entirely compatible with each other and mutually supportive, each adding color to the understanding of the Church as the spiritual Bride of Christ. This understanding brings this commentary full circle through Revelation 19: 7-9 back to the character of the Church as not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing:

         

          Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they who are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.

 

 

 

HOME, SWEET HEAVEN INSTALLMENT #38

Chapter Thirty Seven

 

“We’re back!” Joyce cried joyfully as she looked about her in wonder at the lushness of the landscape, so perfect even in its imperfection. The scene embraced her participation in it, the colors more vivid in their multidimensional hues than anything she could have experienced on Earth. This is so real! Joyce thought with pleasure. The presence of God was everywhere, joyful in His radiance. “Oh, thank you, Wisdom! Will I ever have to go back to Earth?”

“Earth?” She asked with a grin. “What Earth? No. You’re a spiritual being for good now, but you might be going back periodically as you serve at Jesus’ side. But it’ll be your choice and you can return here – home – whenever you wish.”

“Can I see my Sammy now? Oh, where’s Earl? How beautiful this all is!”

“Slow down, darling!” Wisdom responded with a rich laugh. “No, you won’t have to go back this time. You can stay here forever, if that’s what you want to do. There’s a very big event coming up that you’re an important part of. We’ve been waiting for you to come back to it, the marriage of Jesus with His Church. As for Earl, he’s right beside you now, and Sam’s running our way with Earl’s Alicia in hand. Go ahead – merge.”

Without conscious effort, Joyce merged into Earl so that their togetherness was complete. Although they still retained their individuality, they were open to each other’s internal thoughts and emotions, becoming one in a sense that was impossible in the material world. They hugged each other and opened themselves to their former spouses, weeping without restraint in the emotion of the moment.

“Come,” Wisdom said after allowing them time to understand and appreciate their new lives together. “About that event- it will be happening now. For that you’ll be merging with a great many more Christians, those who comprise the spiritual Church. Don’t worry about that, Earl,” She said in response to his brief flash of negativity at this new revelation. You four are a special component of that Church. You’ll be operating together as a unit, so your interaction with others won’t be quite so close. Close enough to experience the mutual love, but not so close as to evoke thoughts of invasion. And wait ‘till you see your bridegroom!”

“Will our marriage be romantic, like between men and women on earth?”

“Yes, but more so. Much more. Jesus Himself gave you the tiniest of hints of that joyful occasion in the Gospel of John, Chapter 2.”

“Oh! I – we – know what it says! We don’t have to remember. It’s imprinted in our beings! Can I recite it?”

“Of course. Go for it!”

“’And the third day there was a marriage in Cana, of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there. And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they lacked wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw some out now, and bear it unto the governor of the feast. And they bore it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not from where it was (but the servants who drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine and, when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana, of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.’

 

Wisdom spoke in response. “Besides the obvious fact that, being Jesus’ first miracle in His incarnation, it also was very important, there are a number of nuances in this passage. Do you recognize some of them?”

“Oh, yes! The wedding too, place on the third day, a reference to Jesus’ statements elsewhere that He would rise again on the third day, meaning the third thousand-year period since His resurrection.”

“Yes. Which, according to Psalm 90 and 2 Peter 3:8, would be the sixth millenium after the creation of man, the beginning of the Millennium. That also is why Jesus waited four days to resurrect Lazarus, for His incarnation, death and resurrection was in the fourth millenium, and in raising Lazarus He was prophecying His own resurrection.”

“And then there is the mention of His mother. I think You were there too as His divine Mother.”

“You’re right again, darling. I was there overshadowing Jesus’ earthly mother Mary, and it was a beautiful moment of anticipation for both of us.”

“Did it bother You that the Catholic Church gave all the credit for motherhood to Mary?”

“Of course not! Mary is a very special daughter-in-law to Me, too. I love her very deeply. She did indeed suffer along with Jesus at His crucifixion. And, of course, now that she’s among us and knows her true place, she’s an obedient and loving daughter. She really can’t wait for the marriage!

“Will we individuals, as just components of the Church, be able to participate in that romance?”

“As you already know, your individuality in the spiritual realm doesn’t imply the isolation that it did down in the material world. You are far more integrated into each other here than you were down there. Yes, to answer your question. Most happily, each of you, in the different circumstances that prevail here, will fully participate in that romance.”

“How can we, as created beings, marry God? Wouldn’t that sort of confer godhood upon us, too, being one with Him and all that?”

“Good question, and the answer is that yes, you as spirit beings will automatically partake of godhood. Whan Jesus merges into you,” Wisdom replied, “you will partake of His substance, elevating you into godhood. Beyond that, creation is a circular process, as you will have the ability to appreciate in the greater dimensional reality you will have in your marriage to Jesus. I’ll remind you that throughout the history of mankind, special people already have contributed under My supervision to the creation of Jesus as the Word of God in Scripture.”

“What are we going to do as Jesus’ bride?”

Wisdom laughed at that. “Oh, you have no idea,” She said. “I won’t spoil the excitement by telling you everything, but I will point out to you, as if you didn’t already know, that mankind has trashed the earth in a very big way. Somehow mankind managed to uglify the beauty We created beyond all rational expectations. The giant plastics industry turned out to create a huge mess; your playing with atoms didn’t work out too well, either. I could go on and on, but you already know all that, having lived there during the most profound destruction of the land, which included the greatest battle ever waged by man. You also saw the beginning of what We are doing to correct the trashing of your planet, something that you yourselves will become intimately involved in as the Wife of Jesus.”

“Oh? What would that be?”

“The planetoid that We brought close to earth – Our most direct method of participating in the battle of Armageddon – managed to perform some rather extensive cleanup work in the process of getting rid of so many evil little men and women. The catastrophe that We brought to bear on earth was planetary in scope, creating enormous earthquakes, and tsunamis, and windstorms. The water movement lifted up and deposited a brand-new system of strata. The earth movement created brand-new and pristine landmasses. Best of all, much of that plastic trash, much of those ugly chemicals, much of that radiation, is now down in the earth’s mantle where it belongs. But there’s still more of that disgusting trash still around. You’ll be busy creating and implementing means of cleaning that up and using the Millennium survivors to do the physical work. And then, there’s the restoration of Mars as well.”

“What about Venus and the rest?”

“In their own time, dear. You’ll have plenty to keep you very happily occupied.”

They came up to a quiet little stream. Looking down, they saw a large trout moving placidly up the middle. “Look!” Joyce exclaimed. “It’s smiling at us!”

“Yes!” Alicia said, laughing. “It’s that way everywhere here. I’m so glad that now we have a chance to experience this wonderful life together!”

They topped a rise and looked down into a bowl that contained an innumerable company of fellow Christians. Somehow they knew where and how to interact with them so that together they became a new entity whose features rivaled Wisdom’s own beauty. The amazing thing about this self-understanding was that they all were intensely aware of their composite Persona, just as they understood Wisdom.

“Jesus is about to join us,” Wisdom told them. “Let the music begin.” Accompanied by a thousand harps, and angelic choir sang the prelude to the Wedding March.

“Who is going to give us away?” came into Wisdom’s attention.

“It is my very great privilege, as your loving Mother-in-law, to perform that exceedingly welcome task,” She responded.

“Oh!” The gasp of awe was shared within the entire Church as she saw Jesus enter her assembly. What followed was a ripple of passion, like an electric shock, that permeated the Church as she saw Jesus in Truth and Light. The communal passion welled up into a romantic yearning for Him that transcended the earthly experience of imprinting between mates.

The marriage ceremony was performed by the Father Himself, His own perfect features visible to the Church for the first time. As they said their vows in giddy anticipation and were finally pronounced Man and Wife, Jesus turned to His new Bride and kissed Her deeply on the lips. With that He entered Her space and merged with Her, causing every element of Her being to glow with delight.

“It is finished!” the Father pronounced. “You are now Man and Wife, each God and together God. Welcome to the Godhead. Our Trinity is now a Quaternary!”

HOME, SWEET HEAVEN INSTALLMENT #37

Chapter Thirty Six (continued)

The drastic cutback of life repeated itself throughout the Earth. On the other side of the world from America a young girl named Jana happened to live in one of the rare and widely-scattered enclaves of human habitation where survival was possible. Her own continued existence was either a miracle or an odd freak of nature gone berserk. Born into modest but comfortable means nine years before the beginning of the Great Destruction, she was a toddler when the Wave came. Her mind mercifully blanked out most of the events of that day, but throughout the rest of her life she was constantly subjected to flashbacks of overwhelming terror that she was helpless to resolve. The certain knowledge that they would return to torment her kept her in a shy and humble prison of fear. The image that she most dreaded was the morning on the seashore, where she was playing on the ground with her mother in sight and the water close at hand, its gentle lapping just one of the many mild background noises. Then the ground beneath her began to shake and great cracks opened up everywhere. In one terrible moment her mother was gone, lost inside the voracious mouth of soil that had suddenly turned into a hungry monster. But it shook so badly that Jana couldn’t think beyond the terror. She could only stare without comprehension at her loss, the tense ground shivering in rage. The shaking went on and on, it wouldn’t stop, and she could see, again without understanding, great palls of smoke where red liquid gushed out of the ground to engulf houses and screaming people and turn trees bright red and sometimes white before they vanished. These images burned themselves into her mind, storing themselves for nightfall, when they would return during unguarded moments to torment her. Much later the shaking stopped, and she sat where she was, on an island of undisturbed ground, numb with shock. Not a soul came to her aid; she could see a few others but they were either quite still, like herself, or slowly and awkwardly reassembling themselves.

After a time Jana became aware of the intense, oppressive silence, and that was when she turned her head toward the coast and screamed in fright, for the sea was gone. Instead, the land continued out from the shoreline, brown mud and rock that dropped gently but steadily down into a plain that extended out to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. She stared at this new land in disbelief, her terror so extreme that she was unable to move. She was still staring when her mind dimly recorded motion on the horizon, a movement so vast that it was beyond the power of her brain to put it into the proper perspective. A dark line, glints of silver, marching across the plains below, expanding, a dark wall advancing upward, blotting out the sun. It moved faster now with the shortening distance, looming upward, filling the sky, filling the valley as it rushed headlong toward her. Roaring, peaking, cresting up, engulfing clouds, ripping them into streamers and wisps, the hurting pressure of her ears tightening in pain, the air exploding, lifting, hurtling headlong toward the town, spanked from behind, thrust faster, tumbling, overtaken, shaken, engulfed.

Jana hit something, flattened into it and continued to swirl and churn in the crushing grip of violently moving water. Every day thereafter she would vividly remember that first desperate gulp of air as the tree to which she clung tossed about on the restless water, traversing mountains that suddenly turned into valleys and then back into peaks. She would often wonder but never come to fully understand what freak motion of water or indentation in the ground over which it surged prevented it from falling down upon her and crushing out her life, as it did with the rest of her village. She wouldn’t realize that she was badly injured until several hours later. Only when the water deposited the tree and her with it scores of miles inland from her village, and the adrenalin subsided to be replaced by pain, did she understand her state.   Her left eye was damaged beyond healing from the blow of the initial contact with the tree that saved her life. Even in the sorrow that comes from remembered violence and loss she possessed the vanity of a pretty girl. She grieved over her damaged face, but was later able, with clever arrangement, to cover the empty eye with her hair.

Very soon after she returned to the ground she was seen by an aimlessly wandering man, a kind person who picked her up and carried her with him in his search for his village or someone he knew. They were very lucky; his village, being situated on a high plateau, was spared the violence from shaking and water that had destroyed hers. Although much of it was severely damaged, some shelter still remained and there were people who remained alive, with whom they could share experiences and talk out their fears. Jana was given to an elderly lady, old enough to be her grandmother, but she was also kind, and gently nursed her back to health. Jana remained with the old lady, a time when dark, murky clouds extended down to within a few feet of the ground and very little sunlight penetrated the gloom. It became cold and there was very little food to eat. The tiny village subsisted mostly on rats, who had become fat on the death that stalked the land. This unpleasant fare was washed down with stale, rank-smelling water from the marshland to the west.

In spite of the hardships and discomfort of attempting to survive in a world that suddenly had marginalized mankind, Jana was given a precious gift. The old lady with whom she lived was a devoted Christian, and every night at bedtime she was in the habit of imparting to Jana a portion of her knowledge of God.

Far below the turmoil on the surface, the earthmotion yanked at the underground communities scattered throughout the earth, where the majority of political movers and shakers now resided. The terrific heat from the moving crust-mantle boundary surged upward through layers of rock that were turning soft and in some locations molten, themselves merging into the boundary and becoming part of it. The effects, which were strongly influenced by latitude and crustal depth, were felt unequally. The pressure of moving ground drove the nearly plastic red-hot walls of the Malaysian shelter inward toward each other, squeezing the long-dead community inside into a soupy pulp that was forcefully mixed into the surrounding rock. The meltdown of the reactor generated an insignificant little belch. News of this disaster never reached the other communities. From the very first there was a sharp rise in electrical activity that rendered electromagnetic communication impossible. Earthshocks made a joke of the alternate laser communications, their violence completely overwhelming the optimistically-designed damping mechanisms. Then when the winds came and the lands were breached with water the ground was immediately swept clean of sensors.

The European governmental community located in Belgium was particularly ill-sited, having found itself covered by water to a depth of a mile and a half. The extreme pressure forced water down the cracked heat-exchanger pipes that were exposed on the surface, creating colossal jets of deadly liquid that sprayed into the shelter, uprooting people, buildings and equipment before the invading liquid eventually settled down to fill the caverns, drowning the trapped inhabitants. Here the reactor survived intact for a time, humming away happily in the midst of quietly floating bodies.

The Brazilian facility remained intact in its entirety, continuing to function through the directives of automatic control systems, its human inhabitants being dead to the last man. They simply couldn’t handle the sustained one hundred fifty degree temperature that was maintained by a greatly overloaded environmental system.

GLOW, of course, had rapidly moved into the nearest underground shelter that was available to him, which actually was very close to the position where Jacob and Moira, along with Sidney and Mary, lay at their observation post. This shelter was virtually unique, in that it remained intact throughout the major part of the bombardment from above. The facility’s communication with its above-ground sensors was destroyed, however, causing him to be irritated with his lack of information on the world above the shelter. Quickly tiring of this forced isolation from the world that he had come to understand as his personal possession, he took the elevator back up to the surface. He just had time for a swift glance around when a final piece shed from the comet stamped on his head and smashed him into the ground. Despite the finality of this event, there was yet another leg to GLOW’s involuntary journey. Eventually Wisdom would oversee his transportation to the fresh new daughter of Jupiter that still loomed over the Earth. There, in the somewhat warmer climate that prevailed in the center of that planetoid, GLOW would literally and quite spectacularly represent the name he had chosen for himself.

With a precision unique to God, there existed by His divine Hand a tiny enclave of life in addition to the hills below Dafna in Israel that escaped the general turmoil. This island of life was located in midwestern North America in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. Here in the vicinity of Mount Rushmore the territory not only was spared the hurricane winds but became blanketed above by cloud, being located near a node of minimum atmospheric disturbance. The people who resided there in temporary but quite adequate shelters had very little knowledge of the worldwide disturbance, as their communication devices were inoperable due to intense ionization.

Shielded from the awful apparition above them, these people shared a thread of commonality: most were Christians who had come to this singular location at the nudging of the Holy Spirit; the others came, albeit reluctantly, as family members. They had in common one other thing, which was an extremely rare and precious circumstance: some of them continued to survive through the next day.

The Black Hills began to rise even as the giant tsunami rushed toward them from the east. As the land rose, cracks appeared in the soil and snaked upward to the precariously balanced rocks above. Responding to the shaking and the undermining, enormous pillars of granite toppled and rolled down the moving slopes, like giant sequoias, felling the trees in their paths and leaving scratches like giant claw marks. Jackrabbits and deer scattered out of their paths along with terrified humans. Most were successful. Some were not. Those who managed to dodge the monsters were troubled yet further by a noise from the east that rose above the nearby din of tumbling boulders.   Far below them the Cheyenne River became a metallic ribbon of reflected light from the leaden sky above as the outflow from the broken dam of the Angostura Reservoir cut into the changing topography to pencil out a new channel. But this insignificant line was dwarfed by an astonishing plane of pewter rimmed with silver farther to the east that stretched to the horizon. As the frozen people stared in open-mouthed awe, the plane continued to flow toward them like liquid mercury as the horizon itself rose perceptibly and light and shadow firmed to define a crest fifty miles to the east of the rapidly approaching trough. The scale was too large for the human mind to grasp, living beings never having encountered before such enormity of motion. Only when the new water tumbled over the changing Cheyenne River, completely dwarfing it, did the awful scene come into perspective for a few. As the magnitude of the liquid cliff became apparent the revelation evoked the dizziness of hanging over a sheer precipice; many were so overwhelmed that they simply stood there, puke pouring from their open mouths. As it bore down upon them, the white frothing vanguard of water was a roaring cliff of such incredible height that it appeared to be above them. The roar deafened them; before they fell onto their faces in panic the compressed air threatened to lift them into its turbulent maw and fling them headlong to the west. Then the wind front swept past, followed by the sea of darker water, furnishing a more constant reality to the nightmare. The level of onrushing darkness continued to rise about them with the approach of the first crest. But then it finally passed them and the water started slowly to descend. They began for the first time to breathe hope.

Through all this commotion the Christians had prayed fervently for deliverance, but they also were quick to appreciate that they were located at that spot for just that reason. With the passage of The Crest, as the peak of water would be called for generations to come, their prayers turned to thanksgiving. As the turbulent ocean continued to rush past beneath their amazed eyes and which had instantaneously turned their mountain into a western Atlantic island, they came to the conclusion that such force must necessarily have been related to a planetary event and pondered the significance of it to the rest of the world. Being attuned to the Biblical account of Noah’s flood, some had now come to appreciate that the Bible was far more accurate that the contradictory science to which they had been so thoroughly indoctrinated. Implicit in that new understanding was the realization that what they were now experiencing was a repetition of events that had occurred long ago.

San Francisco was still in nominal night as dawn arrived in New York; however, the large globe sitting on the western horizon lit the sky with a white glow that totally dispelled the darkness. Those who could bear the sight watched in horrified fascination as the comet noticeably increased in size before their eyes and then, as it approached the Van Allen zone, appeared to spread vast wings as an eagle swooping down on its prey. Most who watched this appalling scene from their apartment windows were unaware of the drama taking place on the waterfront below them. For the first time in over three thousand years the sea was transgressing its boundaries to complement its retreat from the eastern continental edge. Slowly at first, the tide kept rising. At an ever-accelerating rate, the black water engulfed first the docks, then the low-lying buildings, and began to mount the hills. The apartment dwellers first became aware of this new disaster indirectly, noticing first how slowly the comet moved below the horizon, and then how the reflected light of the comet on the ocean appeared where land was shortly before. Then the winds came and the ocean continued to rise, white caps gleaming, then great waves, monsters smashing into buildings accompanied by tornadic screechings and the jolt of buildings being ripped off foundations, glass breaking and frigid wetness.

Within a short time the western coastline of the American continent was inundated to a depth of over six hundred feet. San Francisco was now eighty five miles seaward of the new, violently battered shoreline. Then, as quickly as it had come, the sea receded back, forming an enormous mass of moving water that would cross the Pacific to smash headlong against Asian coastlines. The lifeless remnant of San Francisco would stand, dry, to receive the rays of a tropical sun. To the north, Portland lay buried beneath two hundred and fifty feet of mud, silt, and the remnant soils of what used to be the banks of the Columbia Gorge. Here, during the inundation of San Francisco, the mighty Columbia had been an immense river of saltwater that roiled up the gorge to smack into dam after dam, mountainous white spray bursting upward to the sky, cracking each in turn like a fragile eggshell. But each assault and breach claimed its toll of energy. As the sea reached its easternmost boundary, it spread out and gently licked at the dry plains. For a tiny instant, with mountains flaming and smoking, bleeding lava from thousands of rotten sores, the water itself was expended and quiet from the exhausting climb landward. Then, slowly like a brakeless freight train gathering downhill momentum, it began to recede. Shortly it was speeding out of control, sucking at the river banks, digging up new channels, creating a new Grand Canyon that, like its predecessor, now lay at a latitude that used to mark the boundary between Arizona and Utah. From time to time rumors of Portland’s existence would surface, but Portland itself would never be found again.

“Let’s call it a wrap,” the Divine Will said to His beloved Consort, who responded with an outstretched finger leveled at the threatening monster. Seen by fewer than a thousand people, a great sword of blue-white light connected for the merest instant the Carlson Comet with the Earth. Had the atmosphere been quiet instead of the raging maelstrom that it was, the thunderclap could have been heard around the world. But in that same brief instant the world was saved: no longer did the Carlson Comet loom larger with each second that passed.

The Carlson Comet came to within less than five earth diameters of the ravaged planet before hurtling away along its own path. Close as they came to actually colliding, and devastating as its proximity was to the earth and to the life upon its surface, pockets of life nevertheless remained, humbled and ready to fully accept the leadership of God and His Christ. To prepare the way for this welcome transformation, the physical devastation of the planet served to bury the ravages of man so far beneath the surface that for all practical purpose the numerous blights no longer existed. Particularly satisfying to Wisdom was the complete removal of all the disgustingly ugly wind farms, every windmill of which had deliberately been thrust past the Earth’s mantle to melt back into basic molecular constituents.

The strange violence on the surface of the Earth died out over time, but slowly. Its passing was reluctant, attended with endless battles between sea and land, taking its time to subside as the floor beneath the seas continued ever more slowly to restore itself to equilibrium.

Existence would be primitive from that time forward for over a century as the remnant of mankind learned to adjust to new latitudes and piece out the rhythms of new seasons. But God was now with them and, despite the hardships of their daily toils, they would sit by campfires at night and recount tales to their children of a great winged monster who shook the earth, and of enormous waves, and blood-red lava, and of God with them.