The increasing demands of the context of Work

> I've been getting back into the Work a lot lately in a
> real practical way.
> It's come about I think due to the process of
> journaling, or in particular
> trying to sort out my life, my ideas and my beliefs -
> I've been just dumping
> it all on the page for several weeks and looking at it.
>
> I also seem to be on fire with a desire to get back into
> the Bible, it's a
> new feeling. The summer is coming and I am feeling
> inspired.
>
> I think I need to commit to it and go for it.
>
> S

It's just that you really have to make it the first thing in your life. Valuation. That's what gets lost after the initial main stage of lifetime build up and then discovery and then enthusiastic practice.

If you see it in the context of faith and spiritual warfare and moving forward in life guided by the Spirit, not really knowing what you will be getting into, even though you are still doing what you have to do, it can all get encapsulated into a bigger thing that can demand the valuation necessary. - C.

Seeing Christian doctrine in the light of real history and life 2

In the previous post with this title I was talking about how cruel life is when you have no Mediator between man and God (like the religion of Islam).

I should have added that in those cases not only is there no true Mediator (which can only be Jesus Christ, the Son of God become man), but the people will inevitably adopt human mediators. I.e. mediators with original sin and the spirit of the devil in them (usually full to the brim).

"What do I do, Imam?" Find a way to torture the victim in the most painful way possible. "Then what?" Then prepare to be tortured yourself. "Praise Allah."

"What do we do, Holy Father (Pope 'Innocent')?" Massacre the entire population man, woman, and child in the most horrific ways possible. "Yes, Holy Father. You are Jesus on Earth."

Spurgeon Quote

"[T]he offending of human nature is sometimes the first step towards bringing it to bow itself before God." - Charles Spurgeon

He's referring to the doctrines of grace, or five points of Calvinism, that so assault fallen man's sense of what is 'right' or even 'logical'...

Spurgeon sometimes gives the impression of a middle eastern wise man or poet. I mean, there's a poet in swashbuckling Persion dress somewhere in there. Something like that...

Words and new wineskins

I think everybody (or just myself) is tired of words. I find that I can write down the most practical penetrating real insights and truths about the plan of God or the only real goal of a human and all that, and still, really, it is just words. Because you walk away from the paper or screen and the thought just stays there and you go to whatever you are doing in your everyday life.

Words of course though have real power up to a point. When I first encountered the words that described self-remembering to me, and I was ready for it and knew what it was, I didn't walk away from the page the same person. I was changed.

But after awhile words reach their limit.

Really, what it is is this: pouring new wine into old wineskins. You need a new wineskin to hold the new wine. You need to develop capacity for understanding to develop new understanding.

The old Work teaching that it is knowledge plus being which equals understanding.

So you have to increase level of being at the same time of taking in new knowledge and new insights and all the rest.

This can be forgotten.

But the original point I thought I was going to make, which is still worth making is this: hmm...actually it's the point I ended up making... I was going to say when words reach their limit one can only read the living language of the Word of God and do the being-increasing efforts of the Work. Things that effect essence.

Interesting 7 book list

I've come up with an interesting seven book list (I know, I'm an exciting person). It is a Christian book list. Here it is, then I'll show why it's interesting:

Holy Bible, AV1611
History of the Christian Church - Schaff
Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan
Institutes of the Christian Religion - Calvin
God, Heaven and Har Magedon - Kline
Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach
Fourth Way - Ouspensky

The Bible is unique in the list, for obvious reasons. It isn't paired with anything.

The other books are in the categories of history, imaginative literature, and philosophy (basically). The model I struck on was to see the other six books as being paired up into exoteric/esoteric representatives.

Schaff's history is exoteric Christian history; Kline's book is the deeper, even esoteric, history of redemption from eternity.

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is exoteric; Parzival is esoteric.

Calvin's Institutes are exoteric doctrine and practice; whereas the Fourth Way represents the esoteric level of knowledge and being.

And when I look at that list, if you count the abridged version of
Calvin's Institutes I read complete, and if you include a one-volume history of Christianity I read complete (Schaff's work is 8 volumes) I really have read all seven books.

Which tells me I may have run the course of this subject.

Seeing Christian doctrine in the light of real history and life

It strikes me that a profitable way to see the truth of Christianity is to contrast it with something anti-Christian like Islam. One insight as example is how life is very cruel when you don't have a Mediator between you and God. God, after the fall, is not well-disposed towards human beings. The only thing that give some degree of protection is the common grace type mediation between God and man, effected by Jesus' work, and the full protection that God's elect have via having faith in Jesus and having Him as our personal Mediator between us and God the Father.

Islam only has God the Father, El Elyon, God's name as He's known to the nations (and, of course, their false idol god allah who the really satanic in Islam worship).

Because Islam only has God the Father with no mediator their lands are barren, their lives are cruel, their nations are tyrannous. Etc.

Life is cruel for fallen man when you have no mediator between you and God. And, again, non-believers benefit by being in the lands of Christians because common grace flows down on all. He makes the sun to shine on all. That doesn't mean all who are in Christian lands are regenerate believers. They just benefit by being in the vicinity. But when you get into the truly dark lands of peoples like Muslims, where there are no Christians, where the truth itself is suppressed, you see how mean and cruel life without a mediator between man and God is.

Muslims are Arians. They refuse to recognize Jesus as God come in the flesh. Islam is a Christian heresy. They have no Mediator, in a common grace sense, or in a salvation sense.

Seeing this makes doctrine practical. You see the doctrine of the Mediatorship of Christ practically in the light of real history and real life on this planet.

Deep theme seen by the piercing eye of faith

Remember how big it is to 'see' the theme of idol worship all through the history books of the Bible. This is big because it's an example of what the Bible communicates on deeper levels, 'scholarly exegesis' and their 'exegeting' notwithstanding. The theme itself, the reality of false idols, of worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, is foundational for understanding and awakening.

A high form of what the Puritans called experimental Calvinism

For regeneration and justification - salvation itself - one doesn't need the Work, but once one is born again and desires the practical level of the faith (the Puritans just knew it as spiritual warfare and assaulting heaven) the ideas, practices, and goals of the Work, as especially found in the main works of Ouspensky, are the real thing.