Christianity: the real thing that the world knows in a deficient way

See Christianity from a different, perhaps new for you, angle. It is the grand gnostic plan (I'll use that loaded term, gnostic) that is found in non-Christian teachings and beliefs and speculations and so forth, yet it is the real thing. Created on high; fall; drawn back up to a higher level than originally created at. All the mechanics of it are what are described in the Word of God. The world gets it all wrong because the world demands that their vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will have a part in the proceedings.

Christianity is difficult because it is God's plan where man rises while at the same time has his vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will (and hence illusion of liberty) mortified. The plan of God effects this, and is the only way for this to be effected. The goal is to have created beings that aren't mere robots. That have real consciousness, understanding, and will. That have the image of God while at the same time 'knowing the difference.' That have the full image of God after having eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Only Federal Theology (which is three-covenant, Classical Covenant Theology systematized) gets all this right; i.e. holds to the teaching of the 'full counsel of God.' This is not to say that Federal theologians understand it because one needs development that the average theologian never acquires; but lowly, born again Christians who fear only God and hence are able to pursue wisdom are able to get this development. When you are willfully lodged in the Village of Morality, fearing and revering man more than God, you stay dumb. Increase of level of being increases capacity for understanding. To increase level of being you have to provoke your limits so as to then be able to make the efforts to extend your limits. You don't get these opportunities in the Village of Morality. You can't be afraid of any influence or the policing of man.

Scenario: seeing God

Example of how what you read in the Bible now may not be clear as to why it is valuable until you are in the afterlife.

A scenario: you die a believer, and you are in heaven, which is where God is. You notice most people have gone in one direction and are congregating together there, and few people go in another possible direction. In the first direction are people who are uneasy about seeing God directly just yet. They feel they may not be ready in terms of having their thoughts and valuation and so on in line for such a big thing. The people who go straight to see God do it based on...what? Confidence? Are they right to go directly to see God?

Imagine being in that position of making a decision to go one way or the other. If you have the Word of God in you from zealous engaging of the Word of God in your life then you, if you were wise, could draw on it for giving you guidance.

And the part of the Bible that would apply here would most likely be a part that when you read it during your life in the flesh you had no idea would apply to such a situation you now are in.

Exo 3:2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
Exo 3:3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
Exo 3:4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see...

There are many possible verses and passages in the Bible that would give guidance here. My inclination would be to see God, and I would be prepared. Like Moses..."Here am I."

Three influences

3 Influences:

1. The Holy Bible (AV1611)

2. Work knowledge and being

3. Higher music (classical music of all kinds and eras)

A Reformation era definition of 'fourth way'

How I got to it is complicated, but Sebastian Franck believed this:

At this time his standpoint was strictly Lutheran, and he attacked the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists. But in his Turkenchronik (1530) his radicalism began to find expression. Here he treats of "ten or eleven nations or sects of Christianity" of which none possesses the full truth, and at the close he intimates that beside the three faiths, the Lutheran, the Zwinglian and the Anabaptist, there would soon arise a fourth, an invisible spiritual Church which would be governed by the eternal invisible word of God without any external means such as ceremonies, sacraments and sermons. Thus Franck appears as the representative of a mystic spiritualism which placed him in strong contrast with ecclesiastical Protestantism.

Ha, ha.....yet...

Here's what's needed now

I started this, a false start, on one of my old websites, i.e. 'what is needed now' in the form of a rule of operation that draws in everything important and needed to be retained in memory and practiced in real time.

In a sense every Work list I've made has been in this category.

But something new is needed. Utilizing language of the Bible and the Work together, words like circumspect and prudence and glorifying God and so on.

You start with aim. Small aims and big aim.

Active reasoning in the moment to know what your aim is and how it is best to achieve it.

A rule as well to do things such as read the Bible daily, prayer, fasting, Work practices such as self-remembering and non-identifying to accumulate energy. Things you to daily in a ritual manner (though not mechanical, ideally).

Things you do in solitude, things you do in the world, in battle.

You have to formulate a practical overall aim too. It can be personal (increasing level of being) and involving your neighbor (evangelizing the faith - in whatever ways - for instance).

Like, what's most important? You get to what is most necessary and practical. What you value, ultimately, will be found.

The metaphor of the Grail knight is complete in all the above sense (I'll reference Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival as my example). Three lines of Work. You see the personal in the solitary effort in the trackless forest. You see the traditional acts of a knight itself, the helping of others. And you see the striving to attain the ultimate and being of use to and glorifying God.

You also see the pattern of accumulating (self-remembering, non-identifying), containing (battle), and transforming (entering new realms). You can see where you are at any given time using this all-encompassing metaphor of the Grail knight. In this sense it is more useful than even the Homeric epics (the Homeric epics teach and give language to cultivate contact with higher centers, among other big things). I won't compare it to the Bible though because the Bible is not in the same category and is the material of understanding and being itself.

Wilhelmus à Brakel

[Archiving a comment I wrote to Paul...]

Psalm 141:3 is a good prayer for your effort.

I've been discovering even more clearly how Wilhelmus à Brakel's Christian's Reasonable Service is a unique work for a Work Christian. He doesn't get into Work ideas and practices, but he DOES get into practical matters of being on the Way. And it is all striking to a degree that I couldn't communicate fully here.

Look at the insight on contentment he has that I posted on my Fourth Way blog. That's one example, but it is a massive four volume work and a treasure of similar insight.

He speaks from understanding regarding being in conflict with the world. He has a chapter on prudence that speaks to much that we converse about regarding Work efforts yet from many different angles.

Worth looking into.

If you acquire it used, single volume by single volume, I would acquire volumes 3 and 4 first, speaking from a Work perspective (volume 4 having the most material on practical matters you don't find in systematic theologies, but volume 3 too, it's just that 3 is mostly taken up with a discourse on the ten commandments, but it then goes into the practical chapters like contentment). The first two volumes are worth having, but they cover what most good systematic theologies give you.

Prayer and Fasting vis-a-vis Self-Remembering and Non-Identifying

Here is a passage from Andrew Murray's With Christ in the School of Prayer:

And prayer needs fasting for its full growth… Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible. […] Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen; fasting, the letting go of all that is of the seen and temporal.

It gets at the fact that both prayer and fasting in the Bible are practices that are not concretely defined (or, in the case of prayer, are defined as more than one thing).

I got the passage from this short article which is worth reading. The site itself also has other interesting articles like this list of 12 of the most important Christian books.

Address to Christian Warriors

ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN WARRIORS.
SOLDIERS of Christ, be aware that you are highly
advanced in God's creation, that you occupy an
important station, that you have an arduous work
allotted to you, and that you have neither time nor
talent to throw away. For you are enlisted under the
banner of Christ, you have entered the armies of the
Most High, and have taken the oath of allegiance to
the King of Sion, and bound yourselves by an oath,
to fight the good fight of faith, against sin, Satan, the
world and the flesh. What formidable enemies are
these ! You have to encounter all the powers of hell,
and their name is Legion. Fight them you now must,
for you have put on the armour, and taken the field to
fight all the enemies of God and man. When you
survey the enemies' camp, and see their strength, their
number, their stratagems, and inveterate malice ; and
are then made to feel your own weakness and nothing-
ness, you tremble, and say, How shall I go against these
mighty hosts ! Yet I must conquer them all, or die
an eternal death. O soldiers of Christ! banish all
your guilty fears. There is, after all, far more for you
than against you. You are on the Lord's side, who
fighteth for you. He is your refuge and strength,
your sun and shield. He is with you_in the field, to
teach your hands to war, and to cover your head in
the day of battle, and hath promised you the victory.
If God be for you, who is he that can overcome you,
and put you to death, when you are hid in the Lord's
pavilion, and surrounded with the wall of salvation ? "
While in the heat of the battle, be filled with the
hope of victory, and feel assured, that you shall finally
obtain a complete and glorious conquest over all that
come against you ; for hath not the Captain of your
salvation engaged to subdue Satan and all his armies,
shortly under your feet ? Trust him, and take courage,
then, you cannot meet with disappointment, " for
faithful is he that promised, who also will do it."
With a view to strengthen your hope of victory, keep in
mind that you have not an enemy, difficulty, or danger
to encounter, but which has been already conquered
and subdued for you, by the great Captain of your
salvation. And the countless millions of his soldiers,
who are now arrived safe in glory, singing the song of
Moses and the Lamb, were once here below, wrestling
with all the enemies and difficulties which you now
have to encounter. Only war a good warfare, then,
and rest assured, that he who carried them safe through
the war, will carry you also to the triumphs of the
world to come. Not one of all his true soldiers was
ever left to perish on the field of battle. Put on
courage, ye Christian Warriors ! fight the good fight
of faith, be faithful unto death, and then, your Captain
will release you from the war, and give you the
crown of life, which you shall for ever wear, in
honour of your gracious Lord and Saviour. T. J.

[From the forward material of an edition of The Christian Warrior by Issac Ambrose.]

Though not intentional this quote captures some of the teaching on Recurrence

"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

- Mark Twain

On Christian contentment, from Wilhelmus a Brakel

This is a strikingly insightful passage from Wilhelmus a Brakel's Christian's Reasonable Service:

"Contentment is a Christian virtue consisting in a correspondence between the desire of God's children and their present condition... The unconverted are to all good works reprobate and are not acquainted with the nature of this virtue. When they perceive it in God's children, they despise it as a low level of intelligence, day-dreaming, stoic insensitivity, and deem them unfit for loftier matters..."

He also notes that in this state:

"...they rest with delight [in God's will and sovereign determination], in quiet confidence, joyfully, and with gratitude, trusting that the Lord will cause the present and the future to turn out to their advantage. This causes them to utilize their present conditions to the advancement of their spiritual life and to the glory of God." Chp. 64 of Vol. 3 - The Christian's Reasonable Service, Wilhelmus a Brakel

Yes, I've received the insinuation of "low level of intelligence" and also "day-dreaming" and probably also something akin to "stoic insensitivity." I know I look strange to the world. Kind of like a living suicide. And there is really no way to explain it without sounding more strange to them. It's actually decisions I've made to not go in the direction of what I deeemed to be a living death. But the world hardly is looking for understanding anyway, it wants to tempt you or to kill you or imprison you at least. You have protection if you walk the high road, so the stand-off exists...

Triad

Be awake (self-remembering)

Fear, reverence only God (non-identifying)

And walk the King's Highway (become a fused, conscious center-of-gravity)


I like the metaphor (reality) of the King's Highway because of its elevated nature. You get on it, stay on it, and the world around you is at a lower level. Like when you rise above the level of the law of accident. And because the King's Highway is a straight line, above the chaotic sleepwalking lines of the world. (And, of course, the King's Highway has an aim: the promised land.)

The moon and the departed

This echoes some things (I should say that the character speaking this is referring to his despised wife who is no longer alive and he and Tom Jones have been talking about the moon and love and so on):

"However, heaven be praised, she's gone, and if I believed she was in the moon, according to a book I once read, which teaches that to be the receptacle of departed spirits, I would never look at it for fear of seeing her..." - spoken by Partridge in Tom Jones, Bk. 8, Chp. 9

Suffering

In God's Plan suffering precedes glory.

Real suffering though. Not fake suffering. Not poor baby me suffering but loving your enemies suffering.

Human idols

I recoil from attention because I recoil from being made an idol.

Knowing the difference

A major aspect of consciousness and understanding is "Knowing the difference." I.e. to really know glorification you have to know the fallen state and thus know the difference. You have to know the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Being comsos/aura phenomena

Common language describes cosmos-aura phenomena. 'Hold your ground.' 'Get a hold of yourself.' 'She's very self-possessed.' 'Get yourself together.' 'Keep it together.' Etc...

Think in context of your being cosmos/aura. The Work practices change your aura and get responses and challenges from people and the world around you. Be aware of this. They want you to come apart. Stand your ground.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia - the illusion of good times - brings us back (recurrence). Kill nostalgia.

Machiavelli noted in his Discourses that people will even be nostalgic for the most tyrannous times a human being can endure through because once the danger and violence and chaos and torment and evil is passed and no longer around to threaten they then look back and only see what they knew (or imagine) to have been good. In our times notice how Russians who lived through the tyranny of the Stalinist regime will now look back at that with nostalgia and idealize it. The devil can't beat humans up enough in his kingdom that those same humans won't be nostalgic for it all when they are looking back on it.

Nostalgia - the illusion of good times - brings us back (recurrence). Kill nostalgia.

Let God use you

Let God use you. By degree show yourself able to accomplish deeds for God so He can use you for ever bigger, more important deeds. Do this by being trustworthy in faith and in glorifying God and making oneself able to be in communication with Him by effort to be in 3rd and 4th states of consciousness.

Microcosmoses

Humans as cosmoses experience - and are able to experience - nature and life differently. A higher degree cosmos will experience times of day and environment (and seasons) more physically, acutely, and suffused with more time as in history, personal memory and more general history or even world history. More pleasure and joy as well. Environments and weather and place are relative. Sterile and dead for one person, suffused with meaning and sensation and joy for another person. Things like feelings of safety and calm and feelings of danger and chaos can be relative to the same place and environment too, as a general example.

The Wicket Gate Magazine

This is an interesting magazine. The pieces are short. This is the only page I see to get at each of the pdf editions.

Here's the front page of the main website.

It says: Magazine of the Reformed Baptist Church, Inverness Scotland.

The Bible is like unto a magnificent palace

The Bible

The Bible is like unto a magnificent palace constructed of precious oriental stone, comprising 66 stately chambers. Each one of these chambers is different from its fellows, and is perfect in its individual beauty, while together they form an edifice incomparably majestic, glorious, and sublime.

In the book of Genesis we enter the grand vestibule where we are immediately introduced to the records of the mighty work of God in creation. This vestibule gives access to the Law Courts, passing through which we come to the Picture Gallery of the historical books. Here we find hung upon the walls scenes of battles, heroic deeds, and portraits of valiant men of God. Beyond the Picture Gallery we find the Philosopher's Chamber - the book of Job - passing through which we enter the Music Room - the book of Psalms - and here we linger, thrilled by the grandest harmonies that ever fell on human ears.

Then we come to the Business Office - the book of Proverbs - in the very centre of which stands the motto "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people". Leaving the Business Office we pass into the Research Department - Ecclesiastes - and thence into the Conservatory - the Song of Solomon - where greet us the fragrant aroma of choicest fruits and flowers, and the sweet singing of birds. We then reach the Observatory, where the prophets with their powerful telescopes are looking for the appearing of the "Bright and Morning Star", prior to the dawning of the "Sun of Righteousness".

Crossing the courtyard, we come to the Audience Chamber of the King - the Gospels - where we find four life-like portraits of the King Himself, revealing the perfections of His infinite beauty. Next we enter the Workroom of the Holy Spirit - the Acts of the Apostles - and beyond that the Correspondence Room - the Epistles - where we see Paul and Peter, James, John and Jude, busy at their tables under the personal direction of the Spirit of Truth.

Finally we enter the Throne Room - the book of Revelation - where we are enrapt by the mighty volume of adoration and praise which is ever addressed to the enthroned King, and which fills the vast Chamber; while in the adjacent Galleries and Judgment Hall there are portrayed solemn scenes of judgment and wondrous scenes of glory associated with the coming manifestation of the Son of God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Six Short Rules for Young Christians - By Brownlow North

Six Short Rules for Young Christians
(By Brownlow North)

1. Never neglect daily private prayer; and when you pray, remember that God is present, and that He hears your prayers. (Heb. 11:6).

2. Never neglect daily private Bible reading; and when you read remember that God is speaking to you, and that you are to believe and act upon what He says. I believe all backsliding begins with the neglect of these two rules. (John 5:39).

3. Never let a day pass without trying to do something for Jesus. Every night reflect on what Jesus has done for you, and then ask yourself, "What am I doing for Him"? (Matt. 5: 13-16)

4. If you are in doubt as to a thing being right or wrong, go to your room and kneel down and ask God's blessing on it. (Col. 3:17). If you cannot do this, it is wrong. (Roms. 16:23).

5. Never take your Christianity from Christians, or argue that because such and such people do so and so, therefore, you may. (2 Cor. 10:12). You are to ask yourself, "How would Christ act in my place"? And strive to follow Him (John 10:27).

6. Never believe what you feel, if it contradicts God's Word. Ask yourself, "Can what I feel be true if God's Word is true"? And if BOTH cannot be true, believe God and make your own heart the liar. (Roms. 3:4. 1 John 5:10-11).


NOTE:
Brownlow North was a man greatly used of God in the great 1859 Revival that swept the North of Ireland. His grandfather was the Bishop of Winchester, who was the son of Lord North, and once Prime Minister of England. Brownlow North, then, was an aristocrat; but, as we well know, position has no bearing on a man's spiritual quality, and Brownlow North spent his days in godless living. "For forty-four years of my life," he tells us, "my object was to pass time pleasantly; so long as the day was spent agreeably I was satisfied". In 1854, God laid him low with a severe illness and raised him to life eternal to work the works of God. Two books give us an insight into the life and work of Brownlow North. "Wilt thou go with this man?" The story of his life; and "The Rich Man and Lazarus", which is a collection of the sermons which he preached during that great awakening in 1859.

Speaking of ways to read the Bible...

Speaking of ways to read the Bible (Paul discussing it on his blog, and me talking about it here and there recently) I just re-read this post from my '+' blog.

It has the virtues of being concrete, doable, and thorough. Not to mention historic.

One could substitute another doctrinal work for the Decades, if need be. Even Berkhof's Manual of Christian Doctrine would work. There's something about the older, massive, historic work that seems to fit the project better though. Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion would work too.

Non-Identifying and fearing only God

I've experienced that non-identifying is the hardest Work practice - or reality - to describe. Though it's not really since the main Work sources do a pretty good job of it, but you just have to see it in real time. But having said that I want to repeat an insight that there is a real, strong, correlation between non-identifying and fearing God only. Because what happens when you are in a state of identification with your environment and people? You are fearing man more than God. You are allowing yourself to be cowed by the General Law, by man's opinion of you, by people's mechanical demands of you; by also people's confronting of you because you are not 'in the stream' of the 'world' (when you are present in real time, or just merely a regenerated believer in the Lord, King, and Saviour Jesus Christ and you fear God more than you fear man). The world will attack you for this and you will inevitably succumb to the 360 degree unrelenting attack and become identified and obsequious to the great mocking joy of the devil's slaves; so to come out of that (to practice non-identifying) is much like realizing you are engaging in the fear of man and thus you forcefully leave that and fear God only, like a king and a warriour.

I'll add that when you are in a state of fascination with the illusions and distractions of the devil's kingdom and thus in a state of identification with your environment in that sense you are also not fearing God alone. Because you are showing lust and fear and so on with the devil's kingdom rather than God's Kingdom. Coming out of identification with all that illusion and distraction, especially when you are drugged by it (all the influences and also actual drugs such as alcohol or substances or flesh or sport or what have you) is difficult because it's the most difficult to see. It's like the air you breathe. It's the medium you are operating in, like water to a fish. But...you just have to discern influences and levels of influences. Discern your environment and the worth of the various phenomena going on around you and in you.

If you're a born again (regenerated by the Word and the Spirit) Christian on the Way when you are a stranger in this world, and by default a spiritual warriour. You need to be awake and to have and use the full armour of God.

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...

J. A. Wylie - History of Protestantism

J. A. Wylie's History of Protestantism is an esoteric document for this reason: he treats Protestantism as it were a 'school' which alights here, now there, stronger in one era than in another, but everywhere it appears, the school that is, its effect is all out of scale with its numbers or seeming worldly influence.

Protestant is a term that means 'one who confesses and bears witness to the Word of God.' In this inherent meaning of the term you can see that Protestants existed from the beginning of the Christian era.

Wylie's History of Protestantism is also unique for its style. It would probably be called romantic in style by a critic, but it's really more unique than that. It is full of metaphor and bracing scenery and heroism, yes, but it is a style completely free from constraints of the world or the devil. The substance in this sense is the style as well. Wylie sees clearly (faith hath a piercing eye) and describes things with no thought of being artificially 'unbiased' or anything similar. He's writing like a man who doesn't care what any critics will think. He knows God's own, with the Holy Spirit, will see and understand what he is presenting.

It's a unique book also because it is a complete history of Christianity (up through the Reformation) while focusing, as mentioned before, on Protestantism. I.e. focusing on the Word of God and the 'school' that it is and creates wherever it appears and focusing on the individuals and cultures it quickens wherever it appears.

Did I mention it's 2,112 pages? And that would be large pages. Yet on a scale of one to ten of page-turning readability it is a ten. This is a two thousand page book one can actually read complete, with the necessary dedication of time and effort of course, but it's not trudging type reading. The ISBN is: 0-923309-80-2. The latest published edition is by Hartland Publications and is in 4 vols.

It fills the spot of a universal, on-the-mark, inspired history of Christianity, just as Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion fills the spot of inspired, on-the-mark work of theology, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress fills the spot of universal, inspired work of imaginative Christian literature; and then of course the Word of God itself, the pure and whole traditional text Authorized, King James, Version being the obvious fourth work, the foundation, to give one a rather complete, four-work Christian library. I'd add the Fourth Way by Ouspensky, and Thomas Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State, and Petrus Dathenus' Pearl of Christian Comfort, and Herman Witsius' Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, and Meredith G. Kline's God, Heaven and Har Magedon, and Louis Berkhof's Manual of Christian Doctrine to make a basic ten.

I can't praise this Wylie book enough. Just start on page one and see how it gives you the history of this age that has been successfully buried by all worldly forces and motivations. It's an unveiling type history, written by a historian both mainstream and competent, yet also inspired and of real faith and understanding.