7.24.2010
A list of higher world things, just like lower world things
You have to find, or connect with, the people, places, things, events, and ideas (or language) of the higher world.
7.22.2010
Something about historical time and eschatology
I'd had some left-over difficulty (mainly due to not pondering and meditating upon it but letting it hang there) in trying to see the history of redemption in a temporal context. It *is* temporal, but then it becomes non-temporal. Sort of leaves time. Shoots upward, eschatologically.
It's like this: Adam in the Garden; then the fall of man and creation (still in historical time here); then (leaving historical time) individual regeneration by the Word and the Spirit; then (the end of time) glorification.
Of course when we are regenerated we are still alive in historical time, but of those four states - innocence in the garden, corruption after the fall, regeneration by the Word and Spirit, glorification after physical death - it's difficult to place individual regeneration in a historical 'time-line'. Regeneration is also, meaningfully in this context, when an individual is separated out from the world and becomes a stranger in this world; in this world not of this world. And a bit more timeless. Out of recurrence, even, it can be argued.
(In this sense the Work teaching is the unavoidable 'making-more-complicated' by 'pressing' into it intellectually - pressing into the Truth - of which the Bible and the simple-yet-profound and probably rare experience of regeneration actually IS.)
I'm not discounting the Work teaching at all in the above, simply stating that much of the experience described is contained in the experience of regeneration; and really what the above refers to is the 'Work person' who does not *have* regeneration by the Word and the Spirit. This is the 'making it complicated and intellectual' referred to, really. I had regeneration prior to connecting with the Work teaching. Prior to that I'd come into contact with it, but couldn't - or refused to - connect. It's a big difference we can forget: having the Spirit *and* Work understanding vs. not having the Spirit and merely having Work books and the attendant babble that usually accompanies it all.
In God's plan He is *gathering* his elect (believers, his people). The analogy of fishing is used in the Bible. Once a fish is 'hooked' and pulled up out of the water it is no longer in its world. When you are regenerated - gathered into the Kingdom of God - you are pulled up out of the world and out of time. Then you say: "Gentlemen, this world of ours is a bore!" or many similar things. (It's murky, it's cold, there's a lot of horror of fish eating other fish...)
It's like this: Adam in the Garden; then the fall of man and creation (still in historical time here); then (leaving historical time) individual regeneration by the Word and the Spirit; then (the end of time) glorification.
Of course when we are regenerated we are still alive in historical time, but of those four states - innocence in the garden, corruption after the fall, regeneration by the Word and Spirit, glorification after physical death - it's difficult to place individual regeneration in a historical 'time-line'. Regeneration is also, meaningfully in this context, when an individual is separated out from the world and becomes a stranger in this world; in this world not of this world. And a bit more timeless. Out of recurrence, even, it can be argued.
(In this sense the Work teaching is the unavoidable 'making-more-complicated' by 'pressing' into it intellectually - pressing into the Truth - of which the Bible and the simple-yet-profound and probably rare experience of regeneration actually IS.)
I'm not discounting the Work teaching at all in the above, simply stating that much of the experience described is contained in the experience of regeneration; and really what the above refers to is the 'Work person' who does not *have* regeneration by the Word and the Spirit. This is the 'making it complicated and intellectual' referred to, really. I had regeneration prior to connecting with the Work teaching. Prior to that I'd come into contact with it, but couldn't - or refused to - connect. It's a big difference we can forget: having the Spirit *and* Work understanding vs. not having the Spirit and merely having Work books and the attendant babble that usually accompanies it all.
In God's plan He is *gathering* his elect (believers, his people). The analogy of fishing is used in the Bible. Once a fish is 'hooked' and pulled up out of the water it is no longer in its world. When you are regenerated - gathered into the Kingdom of God - you are pulled up out of the world and out of time. Then you say: "Gentlemen, this world of ours is a bore!" or many similar things. (It's murky, it's cold, there's a lot of horror of fish eating other fish...)
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