Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
God's economy simply means God wanting to dispense Himself into man, so that may might become god. What does "become god" mean? It means man might partake of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). In short, God became a man so that man might become god. In general Christian theology this is called divinization (deification, making divine, or theosis).
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Not covered in this is the prerequisite "being filled with spirit" and "exercise your [human] spirit" which means, shout repetitively and say amen constantly. Members greet each other with "Amen, amen". During lapses in meetings you'll hear a constant, "Ohhh Looooord Jeeeeesussssss, amen". It's deliberately mindless noisemaking, used to suppress conscious thought.
The linch-pin of this "spiritual exercise" is something called "pray-reading", where they'll take Bible verses and say "amen" to each word, or "Hallelujah" or "Praise the Lord"... like this: "Amen, amen BLAH", "praise the Lord BLAH", "Oh Lord Jesus BLAH" - whatever the word is. This is "eating God" to make you "filled with S/spirit" and supposedly cause inward organic metabolic change to make you God. It's a kind of ritual Pentecostalism which claims "God dispensed into man to make man God", as the quote above says.
But where does it say that pray-reading is eating God? Scripture does say, "Thy words were found and I did eat them" but Jesus explains this clearly: "My food is to DO the will of the Father", not to pray-read. To obey God's commands is to eat, a word fulfilled by Jesus. It also says, "I come to DO thy will, O God - behold, in the scroll of the Book it is written concerning me". It doesn't say, "I come to pray-read thy words, Oh God" but to I come to DO them. The contrast could hardly be more clear.
Then Jesus transfers this to the disciples, saying that his work is to do the Father's will, and when they ask what works they should also do, he says, "To believe into the one that the Father has sent". His work is to obey the Father's words, and our work is to believe into his obedience. Nothing is said about pray-reading on either part. It's obedience that's stressed - his obedience to the Father, and ours to him. Not mere noisemaking.
And Paul's lengthy sections on offerings by Achaia and Derbe and Galatia and Philippi to the poor of Jerusalem are seen in this vein. Our work is to believe, and evidence of that faith and the indwelling Spirit is by our unsolicited, generous gifts of love reaching those unable to pay back. Just as the Samaritan in love yielded for the wounded man, with no thought of return, so were the gentile churches to succor the poor of Jerusalem. The theme is consistent through the NT: it's laid down in the gospels, shown in Acts, written about in detail in epistles.
When John the Baptizer asked of Jesus, "Are you the Christ, or should we expect another?" Jesus said to tell John what they saw: the deaf heard, the blind saw, lame healed, the dead raised, and the poor had the gospel preached to them. Nothing about "Here you'll see us pray-reading". No spectacle of jumping up and down or heel-rocking, arm-waving and shouting "amen". What Jesus was doing was "in the power of the Holy Spirit".
By contrast, the Lord's Recovery model of God's economy doesn't care about helping others, instead it's to look for "good building material" that can pay you back. At FTTA I heard, "Don't waste your time" with widows and orphans, the sick and the poor.
And then, where's evidence of inward metabolic transformation? Many have spent decades pray-reading and still look untransformed to me. Many of the leaders are similarly lacking evidence of grace. Yes, some are transformed, but then some Baptists and Anglicans are transformed, too. I don't see pray-reading doing what it's supposed to. The only magic I see is what the minister wove, charming the audience, a la Psalm 58:5. But Jesus didn't charm the serpent, he crucified it.
But pray-reading doesn't magically "make us God", sorry. There's no evidence either in scripture or in experience.