Rob,
Thanks for caring enough to respond – and reprove. I agree with what you say about teaching. In the “authentic New Testament text” thread, and the thread before that, teaching is the approach to these issues.
Is it not true, there is a time to teach, and also a time to war? Wisdom is knowing the proper time and place for each.
I am not a “nice” Christian. I have stood up for the gospel and for righteousness and taken beatings, and revilings. I know this may happen to obnoxious fanatics, but I am a preacher of grace, and mercy, of righteousness, and of judgment to come.
To take a godly stand when “the whole world lieth in wickedness” 1 Jn 5:19 (NKJV: “lies under the sway of the wicked one”; NIV: “under the control of the evil one”) is to make instant enemies, often among professing “Christians.” This
is a war.
As you brought out, there is a time for teaching in the Spirit of Christ, not striving, gentle, patient, in meekness instructing…. The same Scriptures show there is also a time for war, “the pulling down of strong holds…casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:4, 5). Were I to be “a nice guy” when war is called for, would not that be either cowardice or foolishness?
The Faith is not a “religion” to me, but a visionary adventure of life and death, wherein we are held by a great and terrible love, walking with Him who is Friend, Captain, King, and Lover of our souls.
For teaching see the teaching threads. This is a thread where I chose to reveal deception by exposing it to the light of a blade eternally forged in the Glory.
David didn’t teach Goliath, he slew him. Knowing I do not wrestle against flesh and blood (Eph 6:12) I go for the satanic strong holds, even though they may be lodged in the minds of men. I do not go for the men, but for those alien infiltrations.
You don’t like my vision? Counter it. But this is my method of war, or one of them.
Which is not to say I do not like and prize scholarship, and congenial discussion in this realm, for I do. It is just that “to every thing there is a season”.
You said,
i would have to ask, then, if the tables were turned, and a supporter of the CT wrote a poem castigating the TR and/or the Byzantine mss, would you feel that such a poem was convincing in a whimsical fashion?
Returning to your earlier use of the word “inflammatory,” do you think because a poem starkly casts a matter in what to some is a shocking light, it is any less “inflammatory” because one uses scholarly language to deprecate what is sacred? In my view scholarly language has been used to do the devil’s work too many times to count. Because lies and deception are couched in gentle and soft-spoken words (consider the Garden), does that make them any less vile and violent? Those gentle and reasonable words spoken to our first mother perpetrated havoc, ruin, and misery untold.
We sometimes are thoughtless about the trends we accept today as normative, and the impact they will have on future generations. It is all well and good to vaunt our faith and confidence in the scientific “neutral text” given us by the Academy – in lieu of the sacred text of the Church – as the churches we attend in 2006 still (many of them) retain at least a modicum of spiritual vitality. Yet those among us who observe the diminishing of this spiritual vitality, the weakening of faith, the corruption of doctrine (can you be unaware of the mounting attacks on sound doctrine even
from within historic Reformed orthodoxy?) as the decades pass, leads us to consider grave trials await the faithful Church as an island amid a raging sea of apostasy among professing Christians and outright hostility from both them and the world. I would say one causative factor in this declension is the uncertainness of the (I repeat) reliability and authority of the word God has spoken and enscripturated.
One wonders if the prophecy in Amos 8:11-13 has any relevance for the days to come, as well as times in the past (such as the hiatus between Malachi and John the Baptist):
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
Could it be related to this that Jesus, after His parable concerning how men “ought always to pray, and not to faint,” said,
Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?
I see the effect the loss of faith in the Greek and Hebrew texts has on many souls. Some of you may not be bothered by the uncertainty and unsettledness (with no resolution in sight) of the texts, but not all are as strong or confident as you. It is not that what remains is, as you put it, Rob, “
that bad”, but that what remains is no longer certain. The text of the Church as been (in the eyes of some) debunked. This in itself, whatever you say, will cause the faith of many to fail, or in the case of the elect, weaken.
The primary reason I write in these threads is, having been nurtured and taught by the Lord in these things (so I assert), I desire to share with others the reasons for my confidence in the providential preservation of the Hebrew and Greek Received texts, and their excellent translation into the King James Bible, so that they may have like confidence in the Bible He provided for them. There are many reasons to believe, and I share them as best I can. I also seek to interact with those who oppose this confidence, to show that a relatively unlearned person can stand up to the experts with but a basic understanding of the facts and issues and history involved. There is coming a time, I think, when there will be “a famine…of hearing the words of the LORD,” and it will be of Him. Like Joseph in ancient Egypt, I think that storing provision before the famine hits hard will redound to the saving of God’s elect, though I be thought the fool by many. The Master said to Peter, “Lovest thou Me?....Feed My sheep.” So I seek to do. He will sort us out at the End. I do what I gotta do.
I do not conduct the scholarly discussions on the other threads in what you might call an inflammatory manner, but there reason and weigh.
Those were my poems. What poets do
you like? Among my favorites are Patchen, Ferlinghetti, W.C. Williams, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, David of Israel. And I’ve recently been reading the essays of
Dana Gioia. Your teaching position sounds like a wonderful job.
A couple more poems (the second written after reading the essay, “Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture”):
SPIRITUAL WARFARE
I'm glad I saw the Star Wars movies
'cause one gets an idea
of fighting against the odds
in a mythic world
of amazing powers and weapons
Afar off I see the Orthodox embattlements
flying the Star of David,
but how weird it is
there is no light of God at all
in that great and fortified death-star
It purports to be holy and of God
but is itself deceived, and deceiving,
a horror spinning a spell
blinding multitudes to the true God
and killing those who oppose them
The worst is
they believe in themselves
unaware they are tools of demons
destroying faith in Him
who is Champion of Israel
So I ponder this dark sphere
bristling with evil powers and weapons
as it lays waste multitudes
and gathers them in the devil's net,
mighty, but vulnerable.
A wise man scales the city of the mighty
and casts down the strength
of the confidence thereof.
Grant it to be so, Lord,
show how the assault is to be made
That Your light penetrate the sphere
and shine glorious within
exposing all dark ways and thoughts
and capture with Your love
all those who love Your Spirit
destroying the dark star
of lying Orthodoxy,
bringing to the dust its false ways,
leaving only the sons & daughters of God standing
in the Shekinah of Yeshua's face.
------------------
HIS BRIDEa man…shall be joined to his wife,
and they two shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery: but I speak
concerning Christ and the church.— Paul to the Ephesians
She is the knock-out of the ages, His bride;
even the angels are astonished, wide-eyed
at a beauty beyond what they see in themselves
and seeing such mysteries desire to delve
into how it could be, this shining like deity
in one once consort with the dark prince, in infamy
before she was redeemed, and party to the deicide.
The price He paid to win her back was steep,
a horrid cost much wondered at in glory’s Keep,
but He got her, and led her through the wilderness
of hearts, through enemies and great distress;
He taught her to stay near to Him,
hold to His word and heart when the way grew dim,
to trust Him, her friend in trouble, her guard in sleep.
It is the story of God the Son’s bride;
she is many, male and female, for whom He died;
she is rugged soldier, little child, woman fair,
all one they are, all dependent on His care.
Safe now in the Kingdom, His glory their reward,
she shines full back the glory of her Lord,
He who ever lives, and for her was crucified.