Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Yes, the Spirit can differentiate. But the difference was not left laying on the ground in the form of a list of verses..
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The matter of listing proof-text verses, or even strongly suggestive verses, and then saying "this shows us that" is itself a subjective exercise. Those you get there early in the process, and make a long list, and say "this shows us that" will often get followings, as Nee and then Lee did.
But lists do not reality make.
This of course is my own subjective assessment, and colored by dark and hidden things, no doubt. The Lee followers wrote once that I had ambition and had been thwarted, and was now lurking in cyberspace, muttering in streams of murky self. Yes, but that is my point. So was Nee, so was Lee, so are we all, at least to some degree.
Jesus alone needs no perfecting, no training, no rebuking or correction. His relation with the Father was perfect. The Father delighted in Him. If you tell me that this is merely my soul, then I laugh. No, it is the Word. It is not about my subjective experiences, it is about Jesus. It is about His experiences of the Father. Who can plumb them? So if we cannot suss out the heights and depths and breadths, then why go anywhere else?
What teaching, what training, what revelatory truth can push Jesus off the table? None. So I remain a Protestant, and son of Protestants, but am probably less likely to be distracted by the snake oil salesmen than before. Now I "see Jesus", as the writer of Hebrews said we could.
I remember the song, "Jesus only, Jesus ever" (Hymns, #511). In the LC we sang it, then promptly forgot it. Why - because the oracle wanted to talk hermeneutics, or the latest move or flow, or the revelation of the church, or some other doctrinal wind of teaching. But Peter pointed out Jesus only Jesus ever in Acts 2. And Peter never left the Shepherd. But the oracle in the LC wasn't interested. Paul pointed out Jesus only Jesus ever in Acts 13, using the same source (vv 34-37)! And Paul never lost the vision of Jesus. It was about "this Jesus", and nothing else. (Acts 2:32)