[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

Bible, what Bible? Enoch was 250 yrs or more before any NT books were written. And the OT canon wasn't settled by then. So what Bible do you speak of?

I speak of the canonical Bible. Genesis to Revelation. I am trying to find out "what happened", so to speak; what people believed. So I'm like a detective, who has a set of witnesses, then physical evidence, then people who talked to the witnesses, then eventually I have some wild rumors floating around. I assign different credibility values to different sources. Few things are dismissed out of hand, except maybe today's "The National Examiner" on sale at the checkout counter, or maybe some website claiming that the Secretary General of the U.N. is really a reptile.

So Enoch has some credibility because it is clearly contemporary with the NT canon. It was widely circulated and had some clout. But it isn't the Bible. Less credible are "Slavonic Enoch" and other sources. But still not ignored.Anyway I don't know what the source of "Enoch became a great angel" is from.

Originally Posted by Dave

I agree, if only they stated "my opinion, my point of view..." rather than "The Truth...." The Truth as though they had the inside track on "The Truth"?

I admit that I am hypothesizing, that there may be some more overlap between the [singular] Holy Spirit and the [plural] ministering angels. Are the seven angels the Holy Spirit? No; I don't think so. I think that the Holy Spirit is the Great Angel of Revelation 10, referencing the OT. Then you have the "Protoctoi", the 7 first-created angels who stand before the throne. Then you have the 24 "elders" around the throne. Etc. John presents us with a concentric set of ministering spirits.

I'm functioning within a historically-derived view. By way of explanation: suppose there were 25 books in existence, which explained for us "The Truth" about the universe. Only 25 books, no more or less. Now, one book is about Chemistry, another about Biology, another about History, another about Religion, another is Philosophy, another is Poetry, etc. The combination of these 25 books gives us the sum total of what the Universe is, both factual and mythical. But each of us has a unique record of interaction with these sources. Each of us has some history which skews our own cognizance of "The Truth".

Me, for example, I started with Biology. I then I read History, then Mathematics. So my understanding of the third book is affected by my reading the other two; I used "meaning" from the first two to help me understand the third book. This is different from someone who started with Poetry, then Mythology. They will have a different "bias", or historically-derived understanding, as they peruse the subsequent books, and come to some understanding of what constitutes the Truth.

And this doesn't even take personal preference, family influences, etc. Maybe my dad always said, "Poetry is stupid" at the dinner table. That may affect my assigning relevance to Poetry as a source of meaning, and import. Out of the 25 books, I may have personal preference for six or seven which strongly shape my view of objective reality, and the rest are in descending order of importance.

The Ecclesia, to me, is where "each one has" a reading on The Truth, and each one of us presents our story, and it gets pruned and shaped by the Conversation. I'm affected if OBW says "nonsense" to my ideas. That doesn't mean they are nonsense, but someone whose opinion I trust thinks they don't hold any water. So I take that under advisement as I continue my investigations.

In my reading I use the Bible, but I also use the Church Fathers who had access to oral traditions. I use non-Christian sources like Philo and Josephus. I use non-canonical sources like 1 Enoch. For me, The Truth is that there is a kind of Nicene-era "Orthodoxy" that says that God is one, with three co-inherant equal "persons". That doesn't help me very much, frankly. It doesn't explain for me the Roman Centurion's analogy, that "I also have servants under me", or why there were seven spirits burning before the throne, or why Jesus spoke to the angel of the church in Ephesus, only to have the Spirit conclude the speaking to the church, or why The Holy Spirit, singular, manifested as multiple flames over the heads of the disciples on the day of Pentecost, or why Jesus said you would see angels, plural, ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, or why an angel told Philip to go down the south road out of Jerusalem, only to have the Holy Spirit tell him to run up to the Ethiopian eunuch's chariot. Etc. In scriptures there seems to be some overlap between Holy Spirit, singular, with ministering angels, who are holy spirits, plural. So I considered, and here on an "Alternative Views" section of the forum I hypothesized. But I don't presume to have "The Truth".

And none of us is today's "oracle", who has the Truth in toto. I think that kind of system set up by Nee and Lee distorts the conversation in the Ecclesia, and hinders the journey of all the rest. For example, Lee said that God is one essentially but three functionally, or economically. Instead, I hypothesize there that God is one economically, that Jesus is "one" economically or functionally with the Father because He presents us the Father as the Roman Centurion presented Caesar to the servants under him. Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father but by Me". Just like the servants could not bypass the Centurion to get to Caesar. When the Centurion spoke to them, that was Caesar speaking to them. And in the OT the witnesses (Manoah and his wife, Hagar, Moses, Jacob) could call the Angel "God" because the Angel represented God so completely. The Angel coming to them was, indeed, God coming to them, through a lesser intermediary agent. So to me, the Father on the throne is "God, who is one". Then you have the LOGOS before the throne, you have the Holy Spirit, you have the seven angels, the two Seraphim, etc. It is a universe of order. To me it's preferable to the vague, nebulous (and contradictory?) "God is one and God is three".

In my own case, I began with the reading in John 1:51 where Jesus said, "You will see angels ascending and descending", then I read the story where the Centurion said, "I also have servants under me", and then I read the "throne scene" of the Book of Revelation. From that I began to put together a story, with meaning. Someone else might read different verses, or read them in other order, and put together a different story. That is where the Ecclesia comes in. That is where "each one has" an alternative view of The Truth, and we respectfully present them together. I think that if there is a God, and we present our stories respectfully to each other, then God is pleased. "Receive one another as God has received you in Christ Jesus."