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Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
Thanks for all the in-depth analysis of the TAS devotional - both Aron and OBW put some goodly time & effort into looking at that going both forward and backward! However, what I'd asked for (a couple times) was not a review of what TAS said, but rather what folks thought of my comment regarding the TAS devotional (and actually what I said was more a comment on the verses TAS cited, than what he had to say). In that regard, I think all there's been was a one-liner response (by Aron I think), that really didn't address very much.
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Nice deflection. And I've come to expect no less. Question: what did you think, really, of my comments on TAS' devotional? And if my comments were irrelevant, since your comments were separate and unrelated to TAS' writing, then why did you include them on the same post with TAS? And if not unrelated, why such determined avoidance of engagement, if you're posting on the forum "Local Church Discussions"? Saying that I was going both forward and backward isn't engagement, sorry. It's non-speak.
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Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
So here it is again (let's see how much discussion this generates)
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What does "these vast expanses of Christ" mean? How vast? How expansive? Is there any objective way of knowing if your own "expanse of Christ" is real or illusory? Suppose you sit in a chair and review such essays as this one by TAS - does your Christ expand? How do you know?
"I feel warm fuzzies"... that must be the spirit/Spirit..." But how do you know? I sat in the meetings for years, rehearsing such phraseology, chasing the 'glow'. In the end I had nothing. Maybe TAS or StG has something. But how are we to know how much, how high and deep and broad? Why then focus on it as if it's something of itself, to be held forth as a subject of some separate and serious inquiry, the focus of a book or a meeting or a morning devotional?
Peter's witness of the fulness of Christ, after watching him for 3 1/2 years, was "that he went around doing good" (Acts 10:38). The love of God flowed to Christ, through Christ, and into the world. "Go back and tell John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk again, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel proclaimed to them" Maybe that was the central focus of Paul, why God revealed His Son in him, that he might preach the him among the nations (Gal 1:16). And maybe for you it's to visit the sick, maybe for me it's to feed the hungry or comfort the grieving. Let God be the judge of how much (or little) we've apprehended in such works of obedience. If you focus on apprehension, even Paul's apprehension - especially Paul's apprehension! - you may apprehend illusion. You may say, "I see" and your blindness remains. You may speak or write of vastness, with nothing behind it except distraction (and by 'you' I don't mean StG specifically, but that there's no way to know if speaking of 'vastness' as something of itself does any good or just wanders off).
We have no way to judge, even if we count the messages given, the books published, the churches raised up, the albums sold. "To whom much is given, much is required" - who knows how much (or little) I was given? Simply to do one's best, is all. "I was a pitiful slave but I did my best", is all. ~Mark 14:8; Luke 17:10
Now, I'm not saying that TAS & StG are suffering from illusion. But for the sake of our readers, we should point out that TAS seems to be from the same 'school' of Nee and Lee, where a vague, intangible "Christ" is proclaimed to be all in all,
which may have no bearing on the actual person Jesus of the gospels. We have no way to know how "vast" the apprehension of Nee or Lee or TAS (or StG or you or me) is, unless we're convinced that sitting in a chair rehearsing a few special words gains "more Christ", as RK and EM proclaimed confidently. If TAS is presenting something fundamentally different from that, how so? And if your comments are fundamentally different from TAS, how so?