Copenhagen's Dance of Death, 1536

Read these dialogues with Death and realize what the armor of God means, and what development of being means, now, and when you face that day. To be able to stand, and to know that Death has been defeated. To know it then, when you are face to face with it. To be a knight, of Christ. To be present. A king.

Regeneration, then, conversion

I was reading up on Oliver Cromwell and came across this statement:

Oliver Cromwell was a Christian, a Protestant Christian. We have already noted his conversion to God. Conversion teaches a man to pray, and Cromwell's life was a life of prayer.

I thought it was a good, on-the-mark, and concise way of explaining or describing conversion. Conversion teaches a man to pray.

Great works of higher music

Great classical music, works that you know, is so effective in getting you back 'on keel' when you are particularly disheveled from difficult interaction with the world. It can draw you back together and upward. A strong - and quick - influence to remind you what you are in relation to the world and everything else.

Must...finish.....

There's still something to be said for having the handful of truly great novels under your belt, so to speak. They are potent little cosmoses that you can get into total understanding. I mean, you may not be able to have total understanding of them in your youth or pre-Work development and all that, but once you are able they exist to be acquired in that sense. Of course, epic poems are the same and pretty much all other categories of literature, yet still a great novel will have a higher content of human nature and 'ways of the world' in it. In the worldly sense. Maybe not a profound language like a Homer, or deep patterns of anything like a Thucydides, but something more 'fully orbed' in the human nature, societal dynamics realm.

I write the above to inspire me to finish Tom Jones. I'm still in the 400s...

This 'now, not yet' tension

This 'now, not yet' tension in the life and experience of a Christian is interesting. It seems too Rube Goldberg for anything to do with God's great plan of redemption. You're in Christ, in the heavenlies NOW, yet you are still in the flesh, in the fallen world, waiting for the completion of it all.

Now I know the Bible speaks directly to this waiting period and talks of patience and trial and the positive effects of it and so on. Running your race to the end, all that.

But also there is something in the now, not yet reality of our situation (the tension) that seems to call for being reconciled.

I think we are called to reconcile it by living NOW *as if* we already have all that is given in the consummation. That is the task, so to speak. That is doable, and is what we are called to do. The tension births this that is new.

It is here that all the teaching regarding being and vertical development, level of being, comes in. Presence. We are, for instance, in heaven NOW, so, to indulge resentment now at worldly things is really very beneath us. It's empty. The Bible also has clear teachings on this being and having now everything. Ask and ye shall receive is one.

A striking Vos quote

This Vos quote is somewhat striking because it is the type of thing mystics know and say and Vos of course was a scholar and academic all his life; and Reformed theologians of the 20th century aren't exactly known for seeing the mystic teaching in the Bible or Calvinism (Calvin was a barefoot mystic compared to modern suit and tie wearing Reformed seminary professors) as in things such as separation from the world (real separation, not Village of Morality separation which means separation unto people who are as worldly as anybody else just who wear the same clothes you do).

"The necessary consequence of this life of the Christian in hope is that he learns to consider the present earthly life as a journey, a pilgrimage, something necessary for the sake of the end but which does not have any independent value or attraction in itself." - Geerhardus Vos

"...something necessary for the sake of the end but which does not have any independent value or attraction in itself."

That's a strong realization and hardcore statement. It's also true. The moment you start seeing some value or attraction in this world *after* you'ved been born again you kind of are entering illusion and delusion. (Maybe happy illusion and delusion, but illusion and delusion nevertheless. And, happy until you see the limits and the reality.)

And by 'value' Vos isn't - and Christian teaching - isn't saying there is no value in this life after one has been regenerated by the Word and the Spirit. We aren't translated to heaven immediately after regeneration and conversion for a reason. Evangelization is one. Sanctification is another. Jesus' life is the example.

An email, from deep cover to deep cover

Here's an email I wrote to a person who is under deep cover. I thought it would be interesting to just archive it here.

Since you're familiar with the Companion Bible and Figures of Speech Used in the Bible - and can see their worth (with discernment of course) - I'm wondering if you ever spent some time listening to Arnold Murray. He's very off-the-ranch and totally unmentionable in the mainstream, for various reasons, but he's also not a bad gateway into the faith in that the main thing he imparts is to read the Word of God *complete* over and over and over.

If on the other hand you've never heard of Murray don't make the mistake of googling him and learning that he's a racist neo-nazi gun-toting yahoo from the deep South.

In California his satellite show was a strange animal, but I have to say he made the call (by simply reading the Word of God) that became effectual for me back more than a decade now.

Of course when you then learn doctrine you realize Murray inhabits something close to a Celtic grail realm, which is OK, whatever hooks the imaginative rebels we can be. And so you find Calvinism, if you're hardcore for the truth.

I also have a background in what Christians would call a cult, and which it is, for 90% of the people involved with it (and I mean *real* cults, as in isolated groups, recruitment, various control methods, money, leaders worshiped, etc.) but the language itself is really a high form of what the Puritans called experimental Calvinism; it is called the Fourth Way. Sometimes called the Work. Ouspensky would be it's main source. Knowing that language made me able to see Calvinism at the practical level. Classical Covenant Theology even.

But these are all development things. Things you go through prior to connecting with the truth. This is why seminaries can be so dangerous. They give people who have yet to really develop in life and in terms of engaging influences and so on a sense that they *know*, and then of course they inevitably careen off the tracks getting 'original' or getting bored with the truth (which they aren't yet able to see or value to begin with) and they then carry that combination of ignorance and arrogance (i.e. the person who doesn't get the joke so then thinks it's a bad joke and the person who told it is an idiot, you know, one of those invincibly unreachable, unteachable types) that can cause so much mischief regarding biblical doctrine and so on.

I read the PuritanBoard and you read these people who teach, teach, and admonish, and reprove and so on (many of them young theonomists too, unfortunately, for the record) and then they go to another thread to discuss culture or whatever and you see that their main influence there is Battlestar Galactica or something similar. I'm talking about pretty much all of them. The grown-ups even.

Engaging higher influences is like climbing a mountain (or a ladder, choose your metaphor). You have to get understanding of each level before you can move on up. Sometimes you engage a 'summit work' first which lets you know the mountain itself exists (like when you're young and you read the Odyssey or the Apology of Socrates or something), but inevitably you have to start at the ground level and climb upward. Art, music, history, imaginative literature, philosophy, science, religion. You find the summit works eventually (a rare occurence, professors of literature for instance even take the Iliad and a comic book at the same level, for the most part). The Bible is beyond-summit level. But at that point you're able to recognize that and to value it.

Meanwhile the mainstream Christians see myself and others like me (there are others like me, I know....*four* of them in seven years of being on the internet...one in England, one in Australia, one in Maine, and one in Australia who moved to Canada). Everybody else freaks out.

I say "Read the Bible complete seven times, make it your goal!" and they say: "What is that some esoteric, occult number?"

"OK, pick your own number!" Hey...ha ha.. um....sorry to bother you...

Just in case there may be somebody coming upon this blog after searching one of the names or things mentioned above and will find it interesting to see them all mentioned together...

From plowboy to king

One of the reasons (a big underlying, unrecognized reason) it is so rare for someone to connect with and get real understanding of the Bible (other than issues of regeneration) is the fact that the Bible is a document for royalty. To get into it is like getting into, at first, something that is above you, or that is 'not you', sort of like getting interested in aristocracy when you are a plowboy. What does that have to do with me? the plowboy says and feels. A Christian is a king, and part of a royal priesthood. It takes awhile to come into realization of that. Meanwhile the Bible presents itself to the still-plowboy as some kind of transaction or business carried out in a royal court where the plowboy has never been nor would be welcome. In the worldly sense. But as the plowboy by degree comes into realization of his new state of being a king and a priest and a prophet he begins to not only see the royal nature of the teachings of the Bible - covenants, for instance - but he slowly begins to appropriate them just as by faith he appropriates the saving work of the King of kings Jesus Christ.

And to survive their sting yeah, you have to be the king yeah

Imagine how a conscious man would act

The agent for securing this heavenly dynamic, according to Vos, is the Spirit of God.87 Christ is equipped by the Spirit for his mission; now, the Spirit equips the Church for her mission. The Spirit is the epitome of the age to come. The Spirit is the communication of that life which pertains to the world to come. The distinctiveness of the Christian religion as it is lived by those who embrace it and the ethic derived from it is through the Spiritual realm. The Spirit's proper realm is the future age, but from there he projects himself into the present, and becomes a prophecy of himself in his eschatological operations.88

Reading the Scriptures, then, in light of Christ's accomplishment (which means the dawning of the new age and outpouring of the Spirit upon the elect of God), Vos challenged his readers to see the Christian's heavenly citizenship in all of its fullness. As Vos stated in The Pauline Eschatology, the church is used to thinking and theologizing out of the present into the future, because its base of existence is in the future. However, the more biblical way to think and theologize and live is out of the future—a future which has become a reality with Christ's resurrection. Vos preached, then, that the Christian must bring the ultimate things which are now his to the forefront of his consciousness in order that in light of these he might learn the better to understand the provisional and preparatory.89 Consequently, Vos argued that the gauge of health in the Christian is the degree of his gravitation to the future, eternal world.90 The Christian possesses the goal in principle even as he moves towards it and is directed in his thinking by it.

Every task of Christian service is at the same time a means of grace from and an incentive to work for heaven.91 The Christian's outlook is not bounded by the present life and the present world. The Christian sees that which is and which is to come in their true proportions and in their proper perspective. The center of gravity of the Christian's consciousness lies not in the present but in the future.92 What Vos challenged his readers to see, then, was that the end conditions the present existence of the believer. Vos wrote, "eschatology posits an absolute goal at the end of the redemptive process corresponding to an absolute beginning of the world in creation: for then, no longer a segment but the whole sweep of history is drawn into one great perspective, and the mind impelled to view every part in relation to the whole."

From here.

Thomas Hooker on Union with Christ

A single, short paragraph.

Calvin quote

"Since then he arms and equips us by his power, adorns us with splendour and magnificence, enriches us with wealth, we here find most abundant cause of glorying, and also are inspired with boldness, so that we can contend interpidly with the devil, sin, and death. In fine, clothed with his righteousness, we can bravely surmount all the insults of the world: and as he replenishes us liberally with his gifts, so we can in our turn bring forth fruit unto his glory." ICR II.15.iv.

Broken-spirit Christians

I've got a good term for real Christians: broken-spirit Christians. Broken in their vanity, worldly pride, and self-will. Broken in their worldly illusions and desires and demands. Broken in their fear and reverence of man.

It seemeth to me...

It seemeth to me that it would be practical to make a list of only a small number of things you'd like to accomplish in the coming year (this is an early January thing to do).

Like, I'd feel good on Dec. 31, 2008 if I'd finished my 6th complete reading of the Bible in '08.

And, I'd feel good on Dec. 31, 2008 if I'd logged in 300 hours of third state of consciousness effort (self-remembering/non-identifying) in '08.

(And one could add more precise Work efforts that have beginnings, middles, and ends, based on various features of false personality, or different kinds of self-remembering, or something similar.)

And maybe you can identify one non-Bible book that you know would be profitable for you to actually read complete.

There are worldly goals too, but I don't refer to them. I refer to goals and efforts that you have come to know are foundational and real and practical for the most important things.

Starting over

Sometimes you need the liberty to just start over. Throw off baggage and start anew. It's not really starting from scratch, but in terms of feel it needs to be.

I need to, for instance, load up on influences that are at least reasonably new to me.

And get into some fast work. You know, no screwing around, fast, zealous, doing things.

For instance it's new to me to see Protestantism as a 'school.' So to see it in history, throughout history, as a school, using influences I now know about, is new. 'Protestantism' sounds like a banal, or pedestrian, or boring name, but if you know it basically means the school of individuals who confess and give witness to the Word of God (the very Word of God itself) you can see the power and centrality of that school.

There were two historians of the Reformation who really caught this vision and wrote in an almost prophetic style on it. J. A. Wylie and J. H. Merle D'Aubigne. Both are very prolix, but the latter tremendously so. The only thing by Merle D'Aubigne I have is a smaller work on Oliver Cromwell called The Protector. Of course J. A. Wylie's great work is The History of Protestantism. Also, his various shorter works on the Pope regarding it being the antiChrist are worth reading as works of spiritual warfare.

Everything for me vortexes (if that is a word) into spiritual warfare. Knowledge and understanding of the Bible; knowledge and understanding of biblical doctrine, the deep archetectonic understanding that is the Covenant of Redemption from eternity to eternity; knowledge and understanding of the Work; the most important things that come to fruition at death; the most needful things; the whole armour of God; development of level of being; union with Christ; it all involves spiritual warfare. That is the practical point of convergence while in this world.

Seeing Protestantism as a 'school' - getting back to the first subject above - allows me to run through worldly history from a deeper, perhaps more meaningful, angle. There is even deeper history, which is the history of redemption, which is what you find in the Bible and in works of biblical doctrine, but that also plays out in real time in the era between the first and second comings of Christ, and seeing Protestantism as 'school' is an angle on that history that is new to me...