Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I'm thankful that God's heart is much bigger than you portray here. The Spirit of God is able even to use "polluted sources" to speak to God's children and to anoint them. Did not the Spirit of the glorified Son of Man speak to God's children in all 7 churches in Revelations?
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Your presumption as to how complete the corruption in some of those places was is not supported by the scripture. Besides, the speaking actually recorded in the scripture was not from within those churches, therefore not subject to their corruption.
And in any case, you miss the point I was making. I am not saying that nothing good can come out of anything Lee/Nee said or was printed by the LSM (of course those are nearly synonymous). I am pointing to the uncertainty of true spirituality of what was read or heard. I know now that there were times that I, and everyone around me, had a rising sense of enjoyment from what we were hearing. Yet years later I have come to recognize that what we were hearing was actually incorrect, and the sense we received was more from the novelty and uniqueness of it than anything of true spirituality. In restrospect, we are too often swept-up in a bandwagon of thinking and acting.
I now recognize that I gave 14+ years of my life to a group that I would now recommend even an Anglican church over. They may not be the most up-to-date thing around. And they won't be preaching/teaching all of the nuggets that might (or might not) be hiding in the fortune cookies of scripture. But they are teaching their people the love of Christ and His love for the world — not just for the members of their group. And encouraging them to live that love in all of their lives. You might get a more theological sermon somewhere else, but is that really what we need?
If the goal is righteousness, peace, and joy, then we need to pursue it all. And joy is not just the spiritual equivalent of being LSU fans last Monday night. And in the grand scheme of things in the world, even that win is of little consequence. Yeah, some money will go to the schools, and a few of the players may get rich playing in the NFL. But outside of reminiscing about the game years in the future, it has little if any real impact.
The same can be said for things in the spiritual realm. Getting excited when I learn of something that will actually make a change (for the better) in my life is really something. But if it is just learning something that is already true and that knowing does not change, there is something hollow in getting excitied about it. If I am not studying to be an engineer, but learn that the camshaft in a 4-cycle engine turns at half the speed of the crankshaft, it is interesting, but makes no difference because I am already benefitting from that fact. But if I get excited about it and go out onto the commons at the university and start shouting about the impact this newly learned fact is having and act superior for knowing and speaking about it, I am little more than a fool, even though what I am saying is correct.
But returning to what the Spirit can make from even chaos and error, I freely agree that the Spirit can do much. But when I cannot see an actual divine being saying whatever it is I am hearing, and I am inclined to like to hear from otherwise untrained individuals who pop up to excitedly speak what they think they got from something that I now consider potentially suspect, I need more than a good feeling to endorse it. That feeling may be agreement by the Spirit, it may be just my preference for the kind of speaking happening, it may be my personal liking for the person speaking, or it may be the happy state of my stomach after a good breakfast or dinner. I need something more than my feelings to corroborate.
And if I lived in the first century in the city of Thyatira, I might be concerned if I came to realize that some of the teachings I was receiving were more correctly described as deep things of Satan. If I was not a Bible scholar (and I am not), I might want to find out what teachers I could trust. (Seems a little like reversing some of Paul's concerns about Corinth.) And if I came to understand that certain of the teachers were salting their teaching with error, I might rather avoid those, or at least listen with skepticism. I do not say that the Spirit cannot bring truth out of a bad well. But I also know that if the well is known to be bad, then it is risky to drink the water from it.
And unnecessarily risky if there are good wells available.