Revelation Scripture Quotes

No text can be understood out of its entire context. The most "entire" context is Jesus. Every biblical text must be read in the living presence of Jesus. Every word of the scriptural text is a window or door leading us out of the tarpaper shacks of self into this great outdoors of God's revelation.

The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication.

The Qur'an follows on from the two Revelations that preceded it and is not only free from contradictions in its narrations, the sign of the various human manipulations to be found in the Gospels, but provides a quality all of its own for those who examine it objectively and in the light of science i.e. its complete agreement with modern scientific data.

As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read the scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term.

While deeply admiring and affirming past prophets, the Qur’an casts a critical eye on human misapplication of their revelations. “Our prophetic guides came to them with clarifying signs, yet many among them soon lapsed, spreading disorder in the land” (5:32). The perpetual dynamic of monotheistic values revived by prophets only to be subsequently squandered by humans is what concerns the Qur’an. It diagnoses a range of repeated failures, including: losing a close relationship with the Divine and reverting to idolatry; debating minutiae as an excuse to avoid bold action; imposing dogma not found in scripture and turning petty disputes over dogma into deadly violence; and elites selfishly abusing their leadership positions to mislead and manipulate.

In my desire to distance myself from sadistic Christians who revel in the idea of wrath and punishment, I may have crossed a line. Refusing to teach a passage of Scripture is just as wrong as abusing it. I really believe it's time for some of us to stop apologizing for God and start apologizing to Him for being embarrassed by the ways He has chosen to reveal Himself.

The step of obedience always precedes revelation. That pattern is evident all through the Scripture.

Every person on the planet faces gaping jaws of uncertainty. The only antidote to this poisonous threat is drawing closer to Me. In My Presence you can face uncertainty with perfect Peace. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” REVELATION 22 : 13

Evangelical Christians need to notice..., that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ' - and this is the modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the revelation of the written Scriptures.

Why is it so hard to get people to study the Scriptures? Common sense tells us what revelation commands: 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God'--'Search the Scriptures'--'Be ready to give to every one a reason of the hope that is in you.' These are the words of the inspired writers, and these injunctions are confirmed by praising those who obey the admonition. And yet, for all that we have the Bible in our houses, we are ignorant of its contents. No wonder that so many Christians know so little about what Christ actually taught; no wonder that they are so mistaken about the faith that they profess.

Every true Christian should feel deep in his bones an utter dependence on God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4).

While some dismiss the Bible as a dusty old book, I view its pages as portals to adventure. Not only is the book chock-full of clever plots and compelling stories, but it’s laced with historical insights and literary beauty. When I open the Scripture, I imagine myself exploring an ancient kingdom . . . With every encounter, I learn something new about their life journeys and am reminded that the Bible is more than a record of the human quest for God: it’s the revelation of God’s quest for us.” - Scouting the Divine

Knowledge comes by revelation through the study of the Scriptures

It may occasion surprise that the decree of a temporal power sufficed to give the classics a position that can be compared in other cultures to the place of sacred scriptures inspired by divine revelation.

The heavenly blessing is to be delivered from the law, sin and death; to be justified and quickened to life: to have peace with God; to have a faithful heart, a joyful conscience, a spiritual consolation; to have the knowledge of Jesus Christ; to have the gift of prophecy, and the revelation of the Scriptures; to have the gift of the Holy Ghost, and to rejoice in God.

Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.

The heart also needs to breathe, and the breath of the heart is none other than the remembrance of God. Without it, the spiritual heart dies. The very purpose of revelation and of scripture is to remind us that our hearts need to be nourished.

Spirit of love and communion, give me grace to understand the mind of Christ. Let me do his will by obedience to the revelation of the Father’s will that all of us be “one body.” I cannot understand the depths of this mystery. Give me the grace to love it.

In [the] early days, Muslims did not see Islam as a new, exclusive religion but as a continuation of the primordial faith of the ‘People of the Book’, the Jews and Christians. In one remarkable passage, God insists that Muslims must accept indiscriminately the revelations of every single one of God’s messengers: Abraham, Isaac, Ishamel, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and all the other prophets. The Qur’an is simply a ‘confirmation’ of the previous scriptures. Nobody must be forced to accept Islam, because each of the revealed traditions had its own din; it was not God’s will that all human beings should belong to the same faith community. God was not the exclusive property of any one tradition; the divine light could not be confined to a single lamp, belonged neither to the East or to the West, but enlightened all human beings. Muslims must speak courteously to the People of the Book, debate with them only in ‘the most kindly manner’, remember that they worshipped the same God, and not engage in pointless, aggressive disputes.

In prayer humans speak and God listens. In revelation God speaks to human hearers. In this way scripture and prayer feed the dialogue between humanity and God.

A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty.

As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read that scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelation.

If the Bible is not simply “revelation,” neither is it simply a devotional aid, even the primary devotional aid.

Scripture is the grammar textbook for the language of God, instructing us clearly in the patterns of meaning and the rules by which we are enabled to read everything else.

They say instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of clichés, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising. However, who has not hung on a scripture, a quote, a statement, only to stumble upon the key phrase that brought all things to a turning point? The greatest sermons and speeches were pieced together by illuminating thoughts that powered men to surpass their own commonness. It is the sparkling magic of letters forming words, and those words colliding with passion, that makes statements into wisdom.

The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus. Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation.

When God speaks, he does not give new revelation about himself that contradicts what he has already revealed in Scripture. Rather, God speaks to give application of his Word to the specific circumstances in your life. When God speaks to you, he is not writing a new book of Scripture; rather, he is applying to your life what he has already said in his Word.

The words of the Bible are sources of spirit. They carry fire to the soul and evoke our lost dignity out of our hidden origins. Illumined, we suddenly remember, we suddenly recover the strength of endless longing to sense eternity in time.

Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence. But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence. And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence. Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe? Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?

To reason with the non-Christian in a fashion purporting to be independent of God or independent of reliance upon revelation is to honor the unregenerate's notions of "evidence" and "verification" as legitimate and correct. However, for the Christian, it is Scripture that governs *every* aspect of his life, even his concept of "evidence" and the way he reasons with skeptics.

The concept of divine revelation was central to Augustine's epistemology, or theory of knowledge. The metaphor of light is instructive. In our present earthly state we are equipped with the faculty of sight. We have eyes, optic nerves, and so forth- all the equipment needed for sight. But a man with the keenest eyesight can see nothing if he is locked in a totally dark room. So just as an external source of light is needed for seeing, so an external revelation from God is needed for knowing. When Augustine speaks of revelation, he is not speaking of Biblical revelation alone. He is also concerned with "general" or "natural" revelation. Not only are the truths in Scripture dependent on God's revelation, but all truth, including scientific truth, is dependent on divine revelation. This is why Augustine encouraged students to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible. For him, all truth is God's truth, and when one encounters truth, one encounters the God whose truth it is.

The Scriptures, beginning with the Book of Judges, teach a philosophy of human government, which you will find was true of God’s people and which has been true of every nation. The first step in a nation’s decline is religióus apostasy, a turning from the living and true God. The second step downward for a nation is moral awfulness. The third step downward is political anarchy.

Logos (The Biblical Manuscripts/Canon of Scriptures) & Rhema (The Person/Life/Words/Death/Resurrection of Jesus Christ): The 'special' & 'ultimate' revelation of God. Without these revelations God would be unsearchable, unknowable, and inscrutable." ~R. Alan Woods [2013]

Insecurity and jealously can be a cause of someone having a critical spirit towards others. Focusing on men and not the Lord can cause one to be critical of every flaw of others. Satan is also the “the accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10) and sadly can work through or use believers to accomplish his work of tearing down. Those who are habitual fault-finders, constant critics of people and situations usually are sick in the body and full of tension and stress. The Scriptural solution to any of us even struggling in this area is clear: "stop passing judgment on one another" and that we can start to love others in the body of Christ, uplifiting them, edifying them and building them up.

[I]t is to be borne in mind, in regard to the philosophical sciences, that the inferior sciences neither prove their principles nor dispute with those who deny them, but leave this to a higher science; whereas the highest of them, viz. metaphysics, can dispute with one who denies its principles, if only the opponent will make some concession; but if he concede nothing, it can have no dispute with him, though it can answer his objections. Hence Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith, we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections — if he has any — against faith. Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.

It has driven men to extremes, to the impious arrogance of believing they alone can comprehend the vast mysteries of Scripture, let alone the mind of God. Such people are incapable of understanding even their own minds, for they confuse their own needs, for certainty or power, with God’s voice speaking to them.

The end product of biblical Christianity is a person—not a book, not a building, not a set of principles or a system of ethics—but one person in two natures (divine/human) with four ministries (prophet/priest/king/sage) and four biographies (the Gospels). But those four biographies don’t tell the whole story. Every bit of Scripture is part of the same great story of that one person and that one story’s plotline of creation, revelation, redemption, and consummation.

How one views Scripture will determine the rest of one's theology. There is no more basic issue: Every system of thought that takes seriously the claims of the Bible to be the inspired, authoritative Word of God will share a commitment to particular central truths, and that without compromise. Those systems that do not begin with this belief in Scripture will exhibit a wide range of beliefs that will shift over time in light of the ever-changing whims and views of culture. Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group's view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God's truth. Once this foundation is lost, the house that was built upon it cannot long stand

Meditation is the primary way in which we guard against the fragmentation of our Scripture reading into isolated oracles. Meditation enters into the coherent universe of God's revelation. Meditation is the prayerful employ of imagination in order to become friends with the text. It must not be confused with fancy or fantasy.

Those who follow Christ are distinct from the world and the ways of the flesh. As Christ says in John 17:17, they are consecrated or "set apart" from the world, and the distinctive thing about Christians is that they have the truth. Being not of this world, believers are "set apart" by the truth. And Jesus asserts in the same verse that "God's Word is truth." As we walk before the unbeliever then, the thing that makes us different is our submission to the Word of God. Our lives and thinking are founded on Scripture, while the essence of the unbeliever's life is rejection of the revelation of God. Our presupposition of Scripture's truth is at diametric odds with that of the world, and because we have been given the Word of God, the world hates us. From the outset, the focus of the world's opposition to the faith is the Word of God itself.

The rationalistic faith of the Enlightenment has a view of God (Deism), revelation (general, not special), truth (known by reason alone), sin (Pelagianism), Christ (teacher of morality and example of love), atonement (via subjective theories only), salvation (through education and technology), the church (the scientific community), and eschatology (utopia on earth through progress). But most modern people who live their lives as though this set of beliefs were true dislike admitting that they follow a religion. They would rather it was a choice between religion and reason, which is why the myth of the warfare between science and religion was invented in the nineteenth century.

It is important for the apologist who desires to be obedient to the Word of God in defending the faith to pay special attention to the fact that throughout Scripture, God's veracity is not defended, but accepted from the outset on His authority. Unless we have more wisdom than that contained in the revelation of God, we should take the same attitude.

Accordingly, historicists have to explain why in Paul’s letters there are no disputes about what Jesus said or did, and why no specific example from his life is ever referred to as a model, not even to encourage or teach anything or to resolve any disputes, and why the only sources Paul ever refers to for anything he claims to know about Jesus are private revelations and hidden messages in scripture (Element 16), and why Paul appears not to know of there being any other sources than these (like, e.g., people who knew Jesus).

A religion is not judged by the contents of its book but by the power of its Spirit.

the church has always confessed the doctrine of the Trinity as something to be believed on the grounds of revelation alone as recorded in Scripture alone. The church should continue to do so.

Let your conscience be your scripture and your actions be your religion. Let the humans be your church and compassion be your worship. Let love be your gospel and acceptance be your revelation.

Most broadly understood, lectio divina involves receiving God's revelation wherever it occurs. This means that there are other media beyond Scriptures that can also be engaged with in this same prayerful way. We can, for example, apply it to the reading of a book or article. In fact, it is very appropriately used when reading something devotional-say, for example, the book you now hold in your hands. But we can also open our senses and attend to God's revelation while listening to music, viewing a work of art, contemplating an icon, talking to a friend, listening to a sermon or watching a sunset.

The trouble is that we have made the Bible into a bunch of ideas—about which we can be right or wrong—rather than an invitation to a new set of eyes. Even worse, many of those ideas are the same, old tired ones, mirroring the reward and punishment system of the dominant culture, so that most people don’t even expect anything good or anything new from the momentous revelation that we call the Bible. The

A divine revelation should not consist only in uprooting us from the world’s profanity in order to install us statically within a sacred world, in the bosom of which we could continue to lead almost the same life we led in the profane world. To enter into revelation is not merely to change objects as we do furniture. It is to be converted. Not to be converted once, but to be converted always. Sacred forms, rites, symbols and the Scriptures are basically conversion-makers, which means that we are never done with converting, never done with understanding, because they perplex and surpass all understanding.

From the Renaissance until today, Christianity, and also to some extent Judaism, in the West have had to carry out a constant battle against ideologies, philosophies, institutions and practices which are secular in nature and which challenge the authority of religion and in fact its very validity and legitimacy. These challenges to religion have varied from political ideas which are based on secularism to the denial of the religious foundation of morality and the philosophical denial of the reality of God and of the after life or of revelation and sacred scripture. The history of the West has been marked during the last few centuries by a constant battle between the forces of religion and secularism and in fact the gaining of the upper hand by secularism and consequently the denial of the reality of religion and its pertinence to various domains of life.

May there not be some subconscious jealousy that motivates our reactions to other people? Why do we eat chocolate sundaes when we know that we should reduce? Are we free from the influence of parental training? The Scriptures say, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Parental training and all education proceed on the assumption that the will is not free, but can be trained, motivated, and directed. Finally, beyond both physiology and psychology there is God. Can we be sure that he is not directing our choices? Do we know that we are free from his grace? The Psalm says, "Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you." Is it certain that God has not caused us to choose to approach him? Can we set a limit to God's power? Can we tell how far it extends and just where it ends? Are we outside his control?

We know that there is a standard set for us in the heavens, a standard revealed to us in this book [the Bible] whih is the fixed and eternal standard by which we judge ourselves... Nothing makes America great except her acceptance of those standards of judgement which are written large upon the pages of revelation... Let no man suppose that progress can be divorced from religion, or that there is any other platform for the ministers of reform than the platform written in the utterances of our Lord and Savior. America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.

God’s preferred state for humankind is that we live free from fear, experiencing shalom, or peace. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is packed with references that emphasize God’s desire for a fear-free, peace-filled world.

Revelation is purposive. Its end is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. In short: revelation is reconciliation.

Do you know that every morning, the children of Israel had to go out to collect fresh manna? The manna could not be stored overnight as it would turn stale and breed worms. Ever wondered why God didn’t just give them a week’s supply of manna? Well, that is because God wants us to open the Scriptures every day to collect fresh manna of Jesus. He doesn’t want us to live on past and stale revelations of Jesus, for His mercies are new every morning. Hallelujah!

Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group’s view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God’s truth.

And consequently, when wee Believe that the Scriptures are the word of God, having no immediate revelation from God himselfe, our Beleefe, Faith, and Trust is in the Chruch; whose word we take, and acquiesce therein. ... If Livy say the Gods made once a cow speak, and we believe it not; wee distrust not God therein, but Livey. So that it is evident, that whatever we believe, upon no other reason, then what is drawn from authority of men onely, and their writings; whether they be sent from God or not, is Faith in men onely.

Finally, if you ask why this complete picture of the Antichrist is given us in Scripture, my answer is: in order that we might clearly recognize it when it is revealed. And what then must we do when we see it is come? Must we oppose it, must we fight it with the sword? That, of course, is completely impossible. It will come. It must come. And to oppose its coming is entirely vain. Its coming is irresistible. And the battle is not one of, the sword. But as the text has it, he that is for captivity, into captivity he goeth; and if any man shall kill with the sword, with the sword he must be killed. No, we cannot oppose the power of Antichrist by main force. When that world-power comes and reigns supreme, we shall be submissive to the last, as far as God and our conscience permit. But here is the patience and the faith of the saints, that in all these times they remain faithful, and refuse to deny the Christ. They wait for the day of His coming. May God give us grace to be found faithful at all times, and watching and praying, so that no one may take our crown.

The unity of divine revelation, of the various dispensations, is found in the goal of history, the kingdom of God. And since this kingdom is centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the dispensational unity of Scripture and of history is Christological as much as it is eschatological.

John Houghton, in his article on Augustine and Tolkien, has made the point that there are in fact “two moments in the task of theology.” On the one hand, the theologian must “de-mythologize” and so render intelligible to his audience the meaning of divine revelation or sacred scripture by explaining it in terms of what they already know.2 It is this first task of theology with which St. Thomas was primarily involved, translating, as I suggested in the Introduction, the mythos of biblical revelation into the logos of Aristotle and the “vernacular” of late medieval scholasticism. “On the other hand,” Houghton continues, “the theologian faces the task of recovery, of restoring the power of images and stories that have grown weak from cultural change or from mere familiarity. In this sense the theologian’s task is not demythologizing but mythopoesis as...‘re-mythologizing’...

Here is what our Lord says about that apostate church:   I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. (Revelation 3:15-18, niv)

The Lord needs men and women who can talk with confidence about what they believe. Men and women who aren't afraid to wrestle with tough questions. Men and women who can talk to children, youth, and each other about everything from the Church's teachings about marriage to other issues that can cause confusion and threaten faith. We of all people should be comfortable discussing any topic, any issue, any doctrine with anyone, because we can draw from a deep reservoir of revealed truth. We have so many places to turn for answers—to the Lord, to the scriptures, to prophets, seers, and revelators, and to a host of other inspired resources.

We are free to feed our minds from every good source, but there is no source like the Bible. It is a written revelation of who God is and of what God’s purposes are for humanity. No book comes close to it in influence or significance. Eugene Peterson writes, “Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love.” Yet consumer researchers say that the average Bible owner possesses nine Bibles and is looking for more. Something is lacking.

The lamp of divine, written revelation reveals the will of God for the believer. Whether it is expressed by biblical command or precept, by scriptural example or principle, the Word illumines the path every believer must take. This divine light in Scripture is not a mere option, but an absolute necessity for every follower of Christ.

Creation is important, please don’t misunderstand. However, I suggest that His greatest glory is His redemption of us and the earth and the heavens, because that is the focus of most of the rest of the Bible. We discover that probably 90% of the Scriptures, including the entire Book of Revelation, is devoted to God’s redemption of His creation.

Within the Christian worldview, Scripture is the sole and ultimate test for truth. God has given us a system of truth through the Scripture. Since the Bible is God's revelation, it can never be wrong on any issue that it addresses. A thorough knowledge and understanding of the Scripture, then, is our ultimate safeguard against satanic deception of every kind.

Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness. What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself, and by whose side would you sit down? Their pleasures are not your pleasures, their tastes not your tastes, their character not your character. How could you possibly be happy, if you had not been holy on earth? Now perhaps you love the company of the light and the careless, the worldly-minded and the covetous, the reveller and the pleasure-seeker, the ungodly and the profane. There will be none such in heaven. Now perhaps you think the saints of God too strict and particular, and serious. You rather avoid them. You have no delight in their society. There will be no other company in heaven. Now perhaps you think praying, and Scripture-reading, and hymn singing, dull and melancholy, and stupid work—a thing to be tolerated now and then, but not enjoyed. You reckon the Sabbath a burden and a weariness; you could not possibly spend more than a small part of it in worshipping God. But remember, heaven is a never-ending Sabbath. The inhabitants thereof rest not day or night, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” and singing the praise of the Lamb. How could an unholy man find pleasure in occupation such as this? Think you that such an one would delight to meet David, and Paul, and John, after a life spent in doing the very things they spoke against? Would he take sweet counsel with them, and find that he and they had much in common?—Think you, above all, that he would rejoice to meet Jesus, the Crucified One, face to face, after cleaving to the sins for which He died, after loving His enemies and despising His friends? Would he stand before Him with confidence, and join in the cry, “This is our God; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation”? (Isa. xxv. 9.) Think you not rather that the tongue of an unholy man would cleave to the roof of his mouth with shame, and his only desire would be to be cast out! He would feel a stranger in a land he knew not, a black sheep amidst Christ’s holy flock. The voice of Cherubim and Seraphim, the song of Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven, would be a language he could not understand. The very air would seem an air he could not breathe. I know not what others may think, but to me it does seem clear that heaven would be a miserable place to an unholy man. It cannot be otherwise. People may say, in a vague way, “they hope to go to heaven;” but they do not consider what they say. There must be a certain “meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light.” Our hearts must be somewhat in tune. To reach the holiday of glory, we must pass through the training school of grace. We must be heavenly-minded, and have heavenly tastes, in the life that now is, or else we shall never find ourselves in heaven, in the life to come.

Suppose that members of a religious movement, such as Christianity, maintain that the existence of some powerful god and its goals or laws can be known through their scriptures, their prophets, or some special revelation. Suppose further that the evidence that is available to support the reliability of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations is weaker than that God is hypothetically capable of producing. That is, suppose that Christians maintain that Jesus was resurrected on the basis of the Gospels, or that God’s existence can be known through the Bible, or Muslims insist on the historical authenticity of the Koran. Could God, the almighty creator of the universe, have brought it about so that the evidence in favor of the resurrection, the Bible, or the Koran was better than we currently find it? I take it that the answer is obviously yes. Even if you think there is evidence that is sufficient to prove the resurrection, a reasonable person must also acknowledge that it could have been better. And there’s the problem. If the capacity of that god is greater than the effectiveness or quality of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations, then the story they are telling contradicts itself. 'We know our god is real on the basis of evidence that is inadequate for our god.' Or, 'The grounds that lead us to believe in our god are inconsistent with the god we accept; nevertheless, we believe in this god that would have given us greater evidence if it had wished for us to believe in it.' Given the disparity between the gods that these religious movements portend and the grounds offered to justify them, the atheist is warranted in dismissing such claims. If the sort of divine being that they promote were real and if he had sought our believe on the basis of the evidence, the evidential situation would not resemble the one we are in. The story doesn’t make internal sense. A far better explanation is that their enthusiasm for believing in a god has led them to overstate what the evidence shows. And that same enthusiasm has made it difficult for them to see that an all powerful God would have the power to make his existence utterly obvious and undeniable. Since it’s not, the non-believer can’t possibly be faulted for failing to believe.

Slowly, God is opening my eyes to needs all around me. In Scripture, God revisits this issue of caring for the poor- an echo that repeats itself from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible acknowledges that the poor will always be part of society, but God takes on their cause. The Mosaic law of the Old Testament is filled with regulations to prevent and eliminate poverty. The poor were given the right to glean- to take produce from the unharvested edges of the fields, a portion of the tithes, and a daily wage. The law prevented permanent slavery by releasing Jewish bondsmen and women on the sabbatical and Jubilee year and forbade charging interest on loans. In one of his most tender acts, God made sure that the poor- the aliens, widows, and orphans- were all invited to the feasts.

If I promised you a new car, would you say, “If it’s new, it probably won’t have an engine, a transmission, doors, wheels, or windows”? No, you’d never make such assumptions. Why? Because if a new car didn’t have these things, it wouldn’t be a car. Likewise, when Scripture speaks of a new Earth (2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21), we can expect that it will be a far better version of the old Earth, but it will truly be Earth.

That would indicate that, one of these days, Israel is going to have a fresh visitation of the Holy Spirit, when a mighty revival sweeps the land. This agrees with many passages that predict a great spiritual awakening when the Jews call upon the Messiah they rejected in AD 30 (see Joel 2:18-32; Zechariah 12:10–13:2; Romans 11:26-27; Revelation 7:1-10). It is important to note that this revival is the only part of this prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled.

It should not be forgotten in this connection that the minister's duty is increasingly that of an apologist for Christianity. The general level of education is much higher than it has ever been. Many young people hear of evolution in the high schools and in the college where their fathers never heard of it except as far as a distant something. If the minister would be able to help his young people, he must be a good apologete, and he cannot be a good apologete unless he is a good systematic theologian

Why would God have inspired the words of the Bible if he chose not to preserve these words for posterity? Put differently, what should make me think he had inspired the words in the first place if I knew for certain (as I did) that he had not preserved them? This became a major problem for me in trying to figure out which Bible I thought was inspired. Another big problem is one that I don’t deal with in Misquoting Jesus. If God inspired certain books in the decades after Jesus died, how do I know that the later church fathers chose the right books to be included in the Bible? I could accept it on faith—surely God would not allow noninspired books in the canon of Scripture. But as I engaged in more historical study of the early Christian movement, I began to realize that there were lots of Christians in lots of places who fully believed that other books were to be accepted as Scripture; conversely, some of the books that eventually made it into the canon were rejected by church leaders in different parts of the church, sometimes for centuries. In some parts of the church, the Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) was flat out rejected as containing false teaching, whereas the Apocalypse of Peter, which eventually did not make it in, was accepted. There were some Christians who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John. There were some Christians who accepted a truncated version of the Gospel of Luke (without its first two chapters), and others who accepted the now noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, which eventually made it in, and others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas, which did not. If God was making sure that his church would have the inspired books of Scripture, and only those books, why were there such heated debates and disagreements that took place over three hundred years? Why didn’t God just make sure that these debates lasted weeks, with assured results, rather than centuries?1

If you’re not sure if you’re feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost, or you wonder if you are accurately translating the impressions you’re receiving, ask the Lord to tutor you through the ministering of the Spirit. Ask Him to lead you to scriptures and to teachings of living prophets that will help you grow in the spirit of revelation. Look for every evidence in the scriptures of direct communication between heaven and mortals on earth, because in those accounts lie instructions for learning the language of revelation.

believe firmly that all truth is God’s truth, and I believe that God has not given revelation only in sacred Scripture. Scripture itself tells us that God reveals Himself in nature, which we call natural revelation. I once asked a seminary class, a conservative group, “How many of you believe that God’s revelation in Scripture is infallible?” They all raised their hands. I then asked, “And how many of you believe that God’s revelation in nature is infallible?” No one raised his hand. It’s the same God giving the revelation.

When we read any portion of Scripture, which did not agree with our traditions, every man had his own system of spiritualizing, to make it bend to his own views. Instead of this, we have now learned that God means what He says, and says what He means. . . . When He gives to us revelations of the greatest moment to us, will He not set forth His mind and will in their true meaning, as He intends they shall be fulfilled, and as He intends we shall understand them? The Latter-day Saints as a people have learned to take God at His word.

The lesson I have learned is that a failure to cultivate the imagination leads to an unintended neglect of the imaginative literature of Scripture, and this in turn leads to some degree of spiritual atrophy. For Christians, the stories of Revelation are not optional reading. Nor are they child's play. Imaginative literature--the kind of literature that invites us to see in our imaginations what we cannot see with our eyes--is an important part of the Christian's literary diet. It challenges our idols. It challenges what is false and trivial in our lives.

One of the most breathtaking concepts in all of Scripture is the revelation that God knows each of us personally and that we are in His mind both day and night. There is simply no way to comprehend the full implications of His love by the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is all-powerful and all-knowing, majestic and holy, from everlasting to everlasting. Why would He care about us—about our needs, our welfare, our fears? We have been discussing situations in which God doesn’t make sense. His concern for us mere mortals is the most inexplicable of all.

Even from the standpoint of the skeptic, a reasonable and candid search into the unknown, by the light of what is known, will guide the unbiased, intelligent reasoner in the direction of the truth. Yet it is evident that without a direct revelation of the plans and purposes of God, men could only approximate the truth, and arrive at indefinite conclusions. But let us for the moment lay aside the Bible, and look at things from the standpoint of reason alone. He who can look into the sky with a telescope, or even with his natural eye alone, and see the immensity of creation, its symmetry, beauty, order, harmony and diversity, and yet doubt that the Creator of these is vastly his superior both in wisdom and power, or who can suppose for a moment that such order came by chance, without a Creator, has so far lost or ignored the faculty of reason as to be properly considered what the Bible terms him, a fool (one who ignores or lacks reason): 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' However it happened, at least that much of the Bible is true, as every reasonable mind must conclude; for it is a self-evident truth that effects must be produced by competent causes.

The guiding factor for the development of Christian doctrine is the Bible itself! The text of Scripture provides the grounds and, most important, the limits for this development over time. Rather than bringing in outside influences (such as tradition), we recognize that no one has ever plumbed the depths of God's revelation contained in Scripture; no one has ever come close to exhausting what is to be found in its pages. Therefore, real development of Christian doctrine is simply our ever-increasing understanding of the Word. It is a delving deeper and deeper into the truths of the Word.

We are part of a holy community that for three thousand years and more has been formed inside and out by these words of God, words that have been heard, tasted, chewed, seen, walked. Reading Holy Scripture is totally physical. Our bodies are the means of providing our souls access to God in his revelation: eat this book. A friend reports to me that one of the early rabbis selected a different part of our bodies to make the same point; he insisted that the primary body part for taking in the Word of God is not the ears but the feet. You learn God, he said, not through your ears but through your feet: follow the Rabbi.

The Bible is full of evidence that God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a Great Cosmic Cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us—loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here—and—now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew—laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” (Ps 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Cor 4:16). Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life—all the cooking and cleaning of a people’s domestic life—might be revisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do. It is this God who speaks to us through the psalmist as he wakes from sleep, amazed, to declare, “I will bless you, Lord, you give me counsel, and even at night direct my heart” (Ps 16:7, GR). It is this God who speaks to us through the prophets, reminding us that by meeting the daily needs of the poor and vulnerable, characterized in the scriptures as the widows and orphans, we prepare the way of the Lord and make our own hearts ready for the day of salvation. When it comes to the nitty—gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God’s love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it gratefully, as a reality that humbles us even as it gives us cause for praise. The rhythm of sunrise and sunset marks a passage of time that makes each day rich with the possibility of salvation, a concept that is beautifully summed up in an ancient saying from the monastic tradition: “Abba Poeman said concerning Abba Pior that every day he made a new beginning.

In the great song of Isaiah, which assuredly is Messianic in value, there is an indication of this method, and perhaps the key to the interpretation of the whole Scripture, as a Divine revelation. The first lessons concerning God that men had to learn were of Him as the “Wonderful Counsellor.” Then through long centuries there was unfolded the fact that He is the “Mighty God.” Then in the mission of Christ, in which are included the days of His earthly life, and these years of the application of His work, men are learning that God is the “Everlasting Father.” And yet again, in an age that has not yet dawned upon the world, but which must surely come, men will know Him as the “Prince of Peace.

In sum, disciples might do well to avoid the bibliolatry that characterizes scripture as unerring truth. Parley Pratt made this point himself in The Fountain of Knowledge, a small pamphlet he wrote in 1844. With elegant metaphor, he noted that scripture resulted from revelatory process and was thus the product of revealed truth, not the other way around. We do well to look to a stream for nourishing water, but we do better to secure the fountain. That fountain, Pratt noted, is “the gift of revelation,” which “the restoration of all things” heralds.21 Or, in George MacDonald’s metaphor, we should hold the scriptures as “the moon of our darkness, . . . not dear as the sun towards which we haste." p56

We can say all the right things about the Bible, and even read it regularly, but when life gets difficult, or just a bit boring, we look for new words, new revelation, and new experiences to bring us closer to God. We feel rather ho-hum about the New Testament’s description of heaven, but we are mesmerized by the accounts of school-age children who claim to have gone there and back. From magazine articles about “My Conversation with God” (see chapter 2), to best-selling books where God is depicted as giving special, private communications, we can easily operate as if the Bible were not enough. If we could only have something more than the Scriptures, then we would be really close to Jesus and know his love for us.

Therefore, if we restrict our studies of apocalyptic to the canon of Scripture (Daniel, Zechariah, the Gospels, 22 and Revelation), we can make a case for drawing a sharp distinction between apocalyptic (symbolic imagery for this-worldly events 23 ) and eschatology (theology of last things, the parousia , and heaven and hell 24 ). We run into difficulty when we conflate and literalize the two, which is precisely what happened as the apocalyptic-Talmudic-infernalist stream developed. Their authors progressively converted imagery of God’s furnace from a metaphor for historic destruction, which acts to judge and refine his people, into actual ovens of material flames into which damned souls are tossed in the afterlife or on Judgment Day.

I'd be willing to bet that the notion of the end of time is more common today in the secular world than in the Christian. The Christian world makes it the object of meditation, but acts as if it may be projected into a dimension not measured by calendars. The secular world pretends to ignore the end of time, but is fundamentally obsessed by it. This is not a paradox, but a repetition of what transpired in the first thousand years of history. ... I will remind readers that the idea of the end of time comes out of one of the most ambiguous passages of John's text, chapter 20... This approach, which isn't only Augustine's but also the Church Fathers' as a whole, casts History as a journey forward—a notion alien to the pagan world. Even Hegel and Marx are indebted to this fundamental idea, which Pierre Teilhard de Chardin pursued. Christianity invented History, and it is in fact a modern incarnation of the Antichrist that denounces History as a disease. It's possible that secular historicism has understood history as infinitely perfectible—so that tomorrow we improve upon today, always and without reservation... But the entire secular world is not of the ideological view that through history we understand how to look at the regression and folly of history itself. There is, nonetheless, an originally Christian view of history whenever the signpost of Hope on this road is followed. The simple knowledge of how to judge history and its horrors is fundamentally Christian, whether the speaker is Emmanuel Mounier on tragic optimism or Gramsci on pessimism of reason and optimism of will.

Jesus said in Revelation 2, “I have one thing against you, you have left your first love.” The scripture doesn’t say you’ve lost love, the passage says you’ve left your first love. That means you can go get it. You haven’t lost your passion. You just left it. Go get it. You haven’t lost the love for your family; you’ve just left it--now go get it. You haven’t lost that dream; it’s still there in you. You just left it. You have to go get it. Stir up what God put on the inside. Fan the flame. Don’t be just barely alive. God wants you to be really alive. You may have had some setbacks, but this is a new day. Dreams are coming back to life. Your vision is being renewed. Your passion is being restored. Hearts are beating again. Get ready for God’s goodness. Get ready for God’s favor. You can live a life of victory. You can overcome every obstacle. You can accomplish your dreams. You can set new levels for your family. Not only are you able, but I also declare you will become all God created you to be. You will rise to new levels. You will live a blessed, successful, rewarding life. My encouragement is: Don’t settle where you are. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. Put these principles into action each day. Get up in the morning expecting good things, go through the day positive, focused on your vision, running your race, knowing that you are well able. Winning is in your DNA. The most high God breathed His life into you. You’ve got what it takes. This is your time. This is your moment. Shake off doubts, shake off fear and insecurity, and get ready for favor, get ready for increase, get ready for the fullness of your destiny. You can, you will!

The farther you get from the actual historical person of Jesus and His time, the more the church knows about Jesus and understand more deeply the truth of the Scriptures. We know more of the truth of Jesus the Risen Lord and His Word because we have been the recipients of more than 2000 years of faith, of life lived in the power of the Spirit and the Word in our midst. The power of of the presence of the Risen Lord is not static, but dynamic, and growing ever stronger as the kingdom of the earth comes more into its fullness in time and place. It is an awesome thought that calls us to responsibility and gratefulness for having been given the gift from those who have gone before us in faith. It is our privilege and inheritance, which we must be sure to pass on to those who come after us, in forms that are ever richer, more expressive and inclusive of others.

The myth of redemptive violence is, in short, nationalism become absolute. This myth speaks for God; it does not listen for God to speak. It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own; it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical judgment by God. It misappropriates the language, symbols, and scriptures of Christianity. It does not seek God in order to change; it embraces God in order to prevent change. Its God is not the impartial ruler of all nations but a tribal god worshiped as an idol. Its metaphor is not the journey but the fortress. Its symbol is not the cross but the crosshairs of a gun. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not the unconditional love of enemies but their final elimination. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. Its usurps the revelation of God's purposes for humanity in Jesus. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous.

...the Kabbalist was interested not in the perfected text whose author is dead and can no longer respond but in contact with the living Author for whom the text is an intermediary. Even when the pneuma was needed in order to better understand the Bible, the content of this deeper apprehension was, in many cases, a better insight into divine matters. According to the French philosopher, the death of the author is a condition for finalizing the text and rendering it into a static perfection, allowing for a "complete" relation. This request is based upon a rigid attitude toward the contents, which are to be approached when they can no longer change. It is an axiom of the Kabbalists that the sacred text is in an ongoing process of change, evidently a symptom of its inherent infinity and divinity. For them, Scripture is a way of overcoming the post-prophetic eclipse of revelation, an endeavor to recapture the presence of the Author and its nature; the biblical text produces a silent dialogue and eventually even union between Author and reader,..

First, the biblical descriptions regarding the coming of Jesus the Jewish Messiah bear many striking resemblances to the coming Antichrist of Islam, whom Muslims refer to as the al-maseeh al-dajjaal (the counterfeit Messiah). Second, the Bible’s Antichrist bears numerous striking commonalities with the primary messiah figure of Islam, who Muslims call the Mahdi. In other words, our Messiah is their antichrist and our Antichrist is their messiah. Even more shocking to many readers was the revelation that Islam teaches that when Jesus returns, He will come back as a Muslim prophet whose primary mission will be to abolish Christianity. It’s difficult for any Bible believer to read of these things without becoming acutely aware of the satanic origins of the Islamic religion. In 2008, I also had the opportunity to coauthor another book on the same subject with Walid Shoebat, a former operative for the Palestine Liberation Organization. This book, entitled God’s War on Terror, is an almost encyclopedic discussion of the role of Islam in the last days, as well as a chronicle of Walid’s journey from a young Palestinian Muslim with a deep hatred for the Jews, to a Christian man who spends his life standing with the Jewish people and proclaiming the truth concerning the dangers of radical Islam. Together these two books have become the cornerstone of what has developed into a popular eschatological revolution. Today, I receive a steady stream of e-mails and reports from individuals expressing how much these books have affected them and transformed their understanding of the end-times. Students, pastors, and even reputable scholars have expressed that they have abandoned the popular notion that the Antichrist, his empire, and his religion will emerge out of Europe or a revived Roman Empire. Instead they have come to recognize the simple fact that the Bible emphatically and repeatedly points us to the Middle East as the launchpad and epicenter of the emerging empire of the Antichrist and his religion. Many testify that although they have been students of Bible prophecy for many years, never before had anything made so much sense, or the prophecies of the Bible become so clear. And even more important, some have even written to share that they’ve become believers or recommitted their lives to Jesus as a result of reading these books. Hallelujah!

Liturgy gathers the holy community as it reads the Holy Scriptures into the sweeping tidal rhythms of the church year in which the story of Jesus and the Christian makes its rounds century after century, the large and easy interior rhythms of a year that moves from birth, life, death, resurrection, on to spirit, obedience, faith, and blessing. Without liturgy we lose the rhythms and end up tangled in the jerky, ill-timed, and insensitive interruptions of public-relations campaigns, school openings and closings, sales days, tax deadlines, inventory and elections. Advent is buried under 'shopping days before Christmas.' The joyful disciplines of Lent are exchanged for the anxious penitentials of filling out income tax forms. Liturgy keeps us in touch with the story as it defines and shapes our beginnings and ends our living and dying, our rebirths and blessing in this Holy Spirit, text-formed community visible and invisible. When Holy Scripture is embraced liturgically, we become aware that a lot is going on all at once, a lot of different people are doing a lot of different things. The community is on its feet, at work for God, listening and responding to the Holy Scriptures. The holy community, in the process of being formed by the Holy Scriptures, is watching, listening to God's revelation taking shape before an din them as they follow Jesus, each person playing his or her part in the Spirit.

Luther's opponent in the Peasants' War, Thomas Muntzer is deeply rooted in mystic tradition . . . Muntzer calls the first step in preparing for God "wonderment": amazement and fright begin when the eternal Word comes into the human heart. "And this wonderment at whether it really is God's Word or not begins to happen when one is a child of six or seven years of age." . . . Muntzer's interest in Gregorian chant and his attempt, rejected by Luther, to integrate it into the German mass, may perhaps be understood as a manifestation of his mystical love for wonderment. In connection with "wonderment," Muntzer quotes from Deuteronomy: "But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart" (30:14 RSV). . . This inward word, heard through God's revelation in the abyss of the soul, speaks to human beings without mediation, even without the Bible. Muntzer opposed Luther in the understanding of Scripture. Muntzer's view of the living Word of God as being "so very close to you" - and which constitutes the first step of mystical cognition (cognitio experimen- talis) - represents a break with Luther's appeal for sola scriptura, (the Scriptures alone) as the basic principle of the Reformation puts it. What in the controversy over indulgences had served well in fighting the financial manipulations of the Church of Rome's authorities, namely this basic principle and its critical force, soon came to serve the consolidation of a new clerical domination.

It is for his great mental faculties that I dread him," said he. "It is incalculable what evil such a person as he may do, if so disposed. There is a sublimity in his ideas, with which there is to me a mixture of terror; and, when he talks of religion, he does it as one that rather dreads its truths than reverences them. He, indeed, pretends great strictness of orthodoxy regarding some of the points of doctrine embraced by the reformed church; but you do not seem to perceive that both you and he are carrying these points to a dangerous extremity. Religion is a sublime and glorious thing, the bonds of society on earth, and the connector of humanity with the Divine nature; but there is nothing so dangerous to man as the wresting of any of its principles, or forcing them beyond their due bounds: this is of all others the readiest way to destruction. Neither is there anything so easily done. There is not an error into which a man can fall which he may not press Scripture into his service as proof of the probity of, and though your boasted theologian shunned the full discussion of the subject before me, while you pressed it, I can easily see that both you and he are carrying your ideas of absolute predestination, and its concomitant appendages, to an extent that overthrows all religion and revelation together; or, at least, jumbles them into a chaos, out of which human capacity can never select what is good. Believe me, Mr. Robert, the less you associate with that illustrious stranger the better, for it appears to me that your creed and his carries damnation on the very front of it.

Is a Can Opener a Can Opener . . . ? As we explain in The Shaping of Things to Come,[157] one of the “trick questions” we use to get group discussion going around the idea of purpose is, “Is a can opener a can opener if it can’t open cans anymore?” This usually initiates a lively discussion around the idea of essence versus function. When the discussion turns to the application to the idea of church, it generates insight into the issue of purpose of the church. Is the church simply a church because it confesses Christ, or is there some functional test that must be applied? When answering the question, “What do you do with a can opener that doesn’t open cans anymore?” most people will say that unless it is fixable, it is not fulfilling that which it was designed for and it should be thrown away. Without getting too heavy about it, and recognizing that we do live by the grace and love of God, we must recognize that in the Hebraic worldview, fruitfulness and functionality are very important and tend to trump the concept of “essence,” which derives largely from Platonic idealism and Greek philosophy. (Idealism basically states that concepts and ideas are real in themselves and are the essence of reality, and forms are just expressions of preexisting ideas.) This is why Jesus always applies the very Hebraic test of fruitfulness to any claims of belief (e.g., Matt. 7:16–20; 12:33; 21:19; Luke 3:8; 13:6–9; John 15; Rev. 2–3). The ultimate test of faithfulness in the Scriptures is not correct intellectual belief (e.g., Matt. 25; Luke 6:46; James 2:12, 21–26) but rather an ethical-functional one—in 1 John it is whether we love or fail in love; in James it is faith with works, about how we care for widows and orphans; in the letters of Peter it is our capacity to suffer in our witness for Jesus; in Hebrews to stay true to the journey. And as politically incorrect as it is to say it, judgment regarding fruitfulness is a vital aspect of the revelation of God in the Scriptures (e.g., John 15; Rev. 2–3; as well as the many parables of judgment that lace Jesus’s teachings).

Kshemaraja says: Let people of great intelligence closely understand the Goddess Consciousness who is simultaneously of the nature of both revelation (unmesha) and concealment (nimesha). The best attitude is to regard everything that happens in the group as the play of Chiti. Revelation is Shiva and confusion is also Shiva. However, there is always recourse to A-Statements, statements of present feeling. An A-Statement (I feel mad, sad, bad, scared or glad), is already at a higher level than a statement in which the A-Statement is not acknowledged or expressed. A person might be angry and not know it. That anger will colour all his opinions and attitudes and distort them. The simple statement, ‘I am angry’, is much closer to the truth and also much less destructive. Making A-Statements keeps thought closely tied to feeling. If thought wanders away from feeling, that is, if it is unconscious of the feeling underlying it, it can and does create universes of delusion. When thought is tied to feeling, it becomes much more trustworthy. If I were to look for a scriptural justification of the concept of the A-Statement, I would point to the remarkable verse (I.4) from Spanda Karikas: I am happy, I am miserable, I am attached—these and other cognitions have their being evidently in another in which the states of happiness, misery, etc., are strung together. Notice the A-Statements (I am happy, etc.). Of course, the point that Vasugupta is making has to do with the old debate with the Buddhists. He is saying that these cognitions or A-Statements must exist within an underlying context, the Self. The Buddhist logicians denied the existence of a continuous Self, saying that each mind moment was essentially unrelated to every other one. Leaving that debate aside, the verse suggests the close connection of the A-Statement with the Self. The participant in Shiva Process work makes an A-Statement, understanding that with it he comes to the doorway of the Self, which underlies it. I think of the A-Statement as a kind of Shaivite devotional ritual. The Shaiva yogi sacramentalises every movement and gesture of life and by making a perfect articulation of present feeling, he performs his sacrament to the presence of divinity in that moment. Once the A-Statements are found, expansion takes place via B-Statements, any statements that uplift, and G-Statements, those B-Statements that are scriptural or come from higher Consciousness. Without G-Statements the inquiry might be merely psychological, or rooted in the mundane. Without A-Statements we are building an edifice on shaky foundations. Balance is needed. Mandala of the Hierarchy of Statements. Self-inquiry leads to more subtle and profound understanding. A-Statements set the foundation of present feeling, B-Statements draw on inner wisdom and G-Statements lift the inquiry to higher Consciousness.

What if I say to the church, “God chose you for salvation and Jesus died for you,” and then some of those people fall away and apostatize and end up in hell? Haven’t I lied to them? No, I haven’t. I have spoken the truth. In Scripture, truth is more than just conformity to the facts. It is trustworthiness and faithfulness.10 I have spoken to these people in a trustworthy manner. I have spoken to them in a faithful manner, a manner that they can bank their whole lives on, because I have spoken to them in accordance with God’s revelation. There is a tough, challenging, and surprising passage in Ezekiel 33:13 and following. The Lord says there: When I say to the righteous, he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. But when I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes of life [NASB margin] without committing iniquity, he will surely live; he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he will surely live.11 Yet we want to say to God, “You said to the righteous man, ‘You will surely live’—living you will live, in the Hebrew idiom—but he died. You said to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die’—dying you will die—and he lived. You lied to them, didn’t you? You didn’t tell the truth to them.” But who are we to teach God how to speak the truth? This is how God speaks. He says to people, “You will surely live,” and then they die because they trust in their own righteousness instead of trusting in Him. But God was telling the truth when He said to them, “You will surely live.” He was not lying to them. He was saying something trustworthy. When He says to the wicked man, “You will surely die,” He’s saying something trustworthy to that man and the man takes heed to what God has said. He trusts what God has said. He believes that if he stays on the path on which he is going he will surely die. In faith he trembles at the warning and he will surely live. God speaks this way and we must learn from him how to speak. God speaks to His people and He calls them elect, and therefore we also need to speak to God’s people this way. We must. We have no other choice but to let God teach us how to address his people, even if we don’t have it all worked out in our minds. If we are not comfortable with biblical language, not only hearing it but also saying it, if biblical language sounds strange to us, and if our theology gets in the way of our speaking and receiving the language of Scripture, then what has become of us—we, who are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord?

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.

Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized