Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
I think UntoHim clinched it. Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep. Why would he have done that if the sheep don't need to eat? Also, the fact that Jesus told Peter three times to do this suggests that the feeding, and eating, is ongoing. I think this is clear enough, and I've never heard anyone else suggest otherwise. You would be hard pressed to find a mainstream Christian teacher who didn't believe that spiritual eating and drinking in some form should be part of the daily Christian life.
The LR's whole weird slant on the idea is, like everything else they slant weirdly, another story.
|
It might be worth pointing out here that "feeding" in the NT typically meant the actual consumption of real physical food. In Acts 6 the ministrations and dispensings to the widows was not messages and pray-reading, it was food. Likewise Paul and Barnabas "dispensing" in Acts 12:25 (RecV) ~ Cf Gal 2:10. Jesus fed the thousands, not with metaphysical 'spiritual food' but with real bread and fish. And James saw this innate tendency to spiritualise things away from reality when he noted the dismissal, "Be warmed and filled" when the recipient had neither (2:16).
I don't think there's anything wrong with praying, reading, or pray-reading. Or singing psalms. Or shouting to the heavens that Jesus is Lord. But like everything in this flesh of sin and delusion, it comes with qualifiers and caveats. The fact that it did have a "weird slant" in the LR should cue us to be watchful, alert. Actually various slants, any one of which is a cautionary tale in and of itself.
We were told to "shut off" or "get out of" our minds via pray-reading. This is contrary to Paul's balancing word (1 Cor 14:15).
When Jesus said, "Eat me and live" he didn't say, "via pray-reading". That was a man-made addition. And the fact that we uncritically accepted these man-made emendations, as I previously noted in the "God's economy" thread, should be very sobering to us today.
Jesus said, "My food is to do the will of the Father" and "As I live by the Father so also shall ye" and "As I obey the Father's commands so shall ye obey mine." Here, "food" is linked to "obedience", not making repetitive noises, "amen, amen..."
The chief proponent of "eating and drinking Jesus" in the LR could not "avoid every appearance of evil" as the apostle wrote (1 Thess 5:22). In fact this self-styled apostle wasn't fit to be assembly elder per Titus 1:6. So where did his "eating and drinking" get him? Or us, for that matter? What were we really "experiencing and enjoying" there?
In the mid-90s I saw a video smuggled out of China that showed a roomful of 100 - 150 people repeatedly shouting the verses of WL's "new hymn", which had the lines, "God became man to make man God, untraceable economy" as they sang it. Over and over they "chewed on" this material. And I'd bet everyone in that room would have told you they were "eating God" or somesuch. Manufactured group euphoria was held as a stand-in for "gaining Christ" in Philippians 3:8. But "Christ" is not some metaphysical commodity to be accumulated via shouting - "Exercise your spirit, brother!" - as in obedience to be found, at last, to be "in him" not only in confession and baptism but also in deeds to others. In our actions. "Be doers and not merely hearers" [and shouters] of the Word. This video came out at about the time WL told us proudly of the 15 or 20 million shouters affiliated with his ministry, which shouters were disavowed in toto ten years later by LSM, not merely because of persecution but also because of the bat-guano craziness going on in the mainland.
And related to the last point, note the close proximity to these practices and the entry of what seem to be "familiar spirits" for lack of a better term. Didn't MC recently testify of the "spirit of Brother Lee" among the LSM leadership, if I correctly recall a post on the Jo Casteel FB page?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
"LOOOK .... there's an empty chair here (if he's here ... tho dead over 20 years) ... bro. mota agrees with me, my burden is his burden ..."
|
So by all means pray, and I do say by all means, including repetition, and while in scriptural reading. And call it what you will. But beware of those who in ignorance and greed market their mysticism. Look how closely Simon Magus pressed onto Philip and then Peter, trying for a cut of the action (Acts 8:9-24)! Don't let anyone defraud you of your prize.