AFSC interviews relative of Japanese-American Friend Gordon Hirabayashi
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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again
Are we hearing from God?
I was thinking today how quickly people will grab a Bible Commentary, read a book, listen to a YouTube Video or ask a friend for spiritual answers, yet they are deathly afraid of listening to allow God to teach them. We have been trained to think it is impossible for God to speak to us or teach us directly, even through the Scriptures. The religious culture always points us to "experts" who are more learned than the rest of us.
Yet the Scriptures often speak of waiting and hearing from God. We are told in the Scriptures that we have a much better covenant than Moses (Hebrews 7:22), and yet we are told by the church world that it is normal to live in a spiritual experience far inferior to that of Moses. I've often heard it said by professing Christians that they wish they could have lived in the Old Testament when God was working and speaking to the people directly. Yet the Scriptures tell us that we have closer access to God than Abraham or Moses had.
This attitude must change in the hearts of people. The reason there is so much confusion in the church world is because people are parroting the "experts" and finding their source of truth in the multitude of opinions rather than in God.
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Comment by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 3, 2012 at 6:37pm
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We do know, via those experts-- much more than our predecessors about how, when, and why particular passages were written. & why certain texts were copied (and thus preserved) while others were lost, altered via copying, etc.
& still, to know what God can teach us in particular from any book, we're dependent on God. We may know that "this" meaning of a phrase is ancient, while "that" meaning is a later interpretation. But then, is that later meaning entirely mistaken?-- or is this an example of what "Continuing Revelation" looks like?
The Bible itself is full of prophetic exhortations to turn to God for teaching, guidance, security-- which were answered by people turning to their ideas about God. And coming to grief, over and over and over.
As Sufi Sam Lewis put it, "God is not an idea of God." But ideas of God are so much easier for human minds to grasp.
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Comment by James C Schultz on 3rd mo. 3, 2012 at 6:58pm -
Unfortunately it seems to be an inate reaction in us to tell Moses to go up the mountain and find out for us what God wants so we can then do it. The reason "there is that of God" in everyone is so that we can be one as Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father are one. Moses was God's friend because he would go up the Mountain and spend time with Him. Thanks to Jesus, we don't even have to go up a Mountain. In fact the funny thing is God talks to everyone but most of us don't recognize His voice and I think it's safe to say none of us recognize His voice all of the time.
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