Grave Soakng

Bil Johnson's  Bethel Church, in Reading Clalifornia  preaches a phenomenon (though it tries to deny it does, but that is beyond my scope) they call Grave Soaking.

In it they claim that by laying on the graves of famous dead Christians they can pick up "the anointing"  or the "power"  that was atttached to these dead saints  and that the can reclaim it for themselves

Grave soaking is utterly irrational.

It regards the power of God as a THING  ( the technical  word for turning an aspect into a THING is reification). and this is pure superstition.

For example: Though I might love someone  - a name does spring to mind  - though you might find a token of said affection, a gift a note you will never find the love itself laying on the ground or floating in the ethr. It is not an entity, but an attitude. It is therefore NOT a thing. It is real but not materially so

So clearly any emotional experience the feel at said gravesite is of no significance. People feel all manner of things all the time. They mean nothing. Truth was never based on feeling

For a church that professes to be protestant  it is rather odd that they should treat the appurtenances of the dead  as if having reified power attached to them. Incidentally they misuse the word "anointing" to justify this.  In medieval  catholic Europe  it was the bones or clothing etc of dead saints that was believed to have this power, with Bethel it is the  graves of them)

and even if this power were an existing entity rather than their  memory of an ability that some  person now dead  was given by God  why would they seek to go to IT directly rather than to God Himself?

This is idolatry. It makes the corpses or gravesites of dead belivers a mediator between God and Man. and there is none bar Christ Himself.

I distinguish power from ability. I have the ability to play a musical instrument to a professional level. but this did not happen by anything other than inborn talent and  much work. it did NOT result from me being imbued with a reified energy -  that which charismatics all too often call "power".

So I, who really was once a musician,  (my logon on some social media outlets) have the ability to perform on the classical upright bass but I  not have , as they define the term, the power to do such.

I end by repeating to reify power into an essence, a THING,   like electricity is irrational; and idolatrous. for the power whereby they misdefine  the ability of God as being a reiftied essence,  DOES NOT EXIST.

in terms of the biblical text to turn God's power into a thing that they may seek in itself  is pure eisegesis (bringing to the text what is NOT in it). and they  got there by liking his power to electricity and then twisting scripure to fit.

Even though Samson was embued with strength and the first christians with the  power to preach these are not entities in their own right separate form God Himsel. Rather they were God Himself in action.

But as always they seek  the power of God rather that the God of, among a huge host of other things, of  power

The Ride of a Lifetime

 I saw a video, it does not matter which, in which a preacher was denouncing heretics.

That I agree with who he said  the heretics  were  is beside the point

But I wrote in the comments:

Why is it always only ever the OTHER fellow who misrepresents the gospel of Christ?

Have none of you ever been taken on the Grand Tour of your own sinful hearts, with  no less than the Holy Spirit as your Tour Guide,  to see your own unbelief, heresies ( ie misrepresentations of Christ) and outright pretence at belief,  hiding your own real belief - whatever it is -  beind a legalistic commitment to truth?

Then you have missed the ride of a lifetime and have also refused the only way to ever come to an honest maturity whereby any of us have even the  ability  let alone the  right to contend with those in error.

After all the dictum "logs and splinters " also apples to us all. we have NO right to contend   with an error our hostility to which indicates that we are likely embued with it ourselves

And i know from my own bitter experience that the most zealous for truth are in fact the deepest hypocrites as regards it who are riddled with the most heresy. IOW, as they say, "been there done that." So heresy hunting no longer impresses me

Except for the barest minimum requirement of belief  (namely that Jesus is God and that He rose from the dead)  I am a christian because of my  one on one relationship with the Holy Spirit, not my  honest doctrinal orthodoxy - for of the latter i have very little.

So my days of pretending (as opposed to genuine belief) to orthodoxy are over.

When and if I ever come to full orthodoxy this will show by a radiance of life, the Fruit of the Spirit, without which i know that I am full of unbelief and which unbelif i see in other preachers

Science, Politics, Religion: The Odd One Out??

I am considering the notion that there are three main phenomena when it comes to judging human affairs.

These are politics science and [human] religion. 

I consider Biblical  Christianity to be outside of this equation for I am speaking of the world, not the truth

So I might ask which two go together and which is the odd man out?

I venture that science is the odd man out, for in its pure form it is about skepticism debate and evidence whereas politics and man made - carnal - religion are about kowtowing to authority and obeying it without question.

Time and time again our govts are acting like cults - demanding compliance and not offering any evidence but only the oracular pronouncements of authorities

but they have forgotten that appeals to authority are logically fallacious even when the authority is a world renowned expert

in the true spirit of science they the expert should show their work and the submit it to debate. but this has not been done. Science without skepticism is cult religion

And when this submission of reasoned evidence to open debate is not done what we have is not science but scientism, a  view that regards science as yet another religion  and operates the same way

We are not a scientific society but a religious one and where our faith was once  counterfeit church Christianity now it is scientism.

Of course God always has his elect in there somewhere, but we the few are the few and it is only luck and indifference  from the authorities whereby we are not yet persecuted as believers. But that is clearly changing -

Politics and man made religion are acting true to form and science has forsaken its own basis to become as I said scientism, namely a religion . The rot is contributed to by post modernism  which rejects notions of truth outright leaving men with nothing but feelings which  matter more than facts

It really does not matter which issue is being trotted out to feed scientism and post modernist cultism. An observant reader can notice a few on his own.

If and when these fall into the dustbin of history some other madnesses of crowds will emerge

The Transformative Power of Classical Music??

 I regard the notion that classical music has "transformative power"  is self flattering  and self indulgent hogwash favoured by people with no real insight into their own natures.

I wrote this in response to a video about said transformative power

the classical music profession is brutally competitive and corrupt. egos strut their stuff there and think their arrogance is justified; colleagues are eagerly eyeing their section leader in the hope that he botches the solo and they can get his post; attractive young women can get good rank in an orchestra by sleeping with the music director or management of the orchestra; and of course the jaded professional  who is only there as he feels trapped and thinks he can do nothing else is always a sad spectacle.

This last i first saw aged 17 as a young trainee musician, and this last i ultimately became myself 25 years later

so clearly the solution, if classical music is transformative, is that a full time symphony orchestra, actually plays some more classical music!!

so professional classical musicians, of which i was one, having more exposure to this transformational "power" are more transformed than others?

To have an overwhelming emotional experience from hearing a symphony or something is simply not the same as being transformed by it.

I was BLOWN away by the finale of Mahler's first  the first time i noticed it (not the first time i heard it BTW)

was i changed as a person?

no

was i kinder more  patient, more focused, more at peace?

none of these.

I have, to put it plainly, too much self awareness to be fooled by the notion that i was transformed even by an overwhelming emotional experience from music.

what people are seeking in classical music is religious experience. and this is as absurd as it is blasphemous

sometimes an absurd idea is exposed simply by asking the right questions.

just to clarify, the only genre of music that ever interested me for the last 50 years is classical  IOW rock music bores me to death. i have a  bachelor's degree in composition, i was a professional orchestral player. i was soaked in the western classical tradition. and I KNOW  it has no transformative power because i also know myself

Metaphor and Creation: what is a metaphor?

Many people are fond of saying that the genesis creation account is a metaphor for something else.

I submit that is is at best ignorance of what a metaphor is

What is a metaphor? I will put it like this. A simile is when you say something is LIKE something else and you use the word "like"  . A metaphor, by contrast,  is where you say something is LIKE something else but you leave out the word LIKE and simply say that something IS something else.

For example Jesus said he is  like a vine  by saying he is one, a classic use of metaphor. And it is a metaphor for to take it literally and say he is one is clearly absurd

So the biblical creation account is a metaphor? what is it a metaphor  for ? what in evolutionary theory does   creation  resemble, or is like?  What is the literal truth that a metaphor is expressing in non literal language?

I submit that they, Biblical creation and evolution,  are totally different, that one is not like the other,

Therefore is evolution is true THE BIBLE IS WRONG and that it violates the very meaning of the concept "metaphor"  to call the genesis account a metaphor - unless the proponent of the theory that it is metaphor   can demonstrate HOW it is a metaphor. But can they ?

All too often people call a biblical concept a metaphor because they simply do not want to believe what it  says when it speaks plainly, but they lack the courage or consistency to reject it outright.  Or they do not know what a metaphor actually is

Yes, there are metaphors in the bible.  cultures of the ancient near east, and the modern near east for that matter,  speak in metaphors far more than we modern rationalist westerners.

To declare that a bible passage is metaphor  because modern science is a benchmark  of truth  is not rational. A bible  passage is a metaphor if the style of the  passage or plain common sense context requires it.

And i submit that style and context of genesis 1-3 is plain literal history.

Or it is wrong.

I do not hold that old earth creationism is an error of salvific significance, ie a heresy. But to a mind like mine such a view violates the  logic of scripture as a whole and i could not be a Christian if I really believed that the earth is billions of years old for the Bible plainly says and logically requires that it be not so.

I know Christians who believe this but it is of  no real concern for me, for though error it is not damnable heresy

What Are The Nations? a Brief Biblical Study

From a post I wrote in reply to an anglican minister fulsomely praising the Queen of England

 And again, if  we are going to glorify the nation and seek an embodiment of it in the person of a monarch what , I ask, are nations?

The bible is clear.

they are a drop in the bucket  (ie insignificant)  Isaiah 40:15

they rage against God and devise a vain thing  Psalm 2:1 and as such they comprise the first of that ungodly trinity the world the flesh the devil

they were created in order to prevent Man from uniting and doing prodigious evil, IOW to keep men's evil limited by having his energies diffuse and thus wasted  Genesis 11:6, and this after they had defied His command to spread out and separate. So he confounded the languages at Babel thus forcing compliance 

We might be good citizens that the name of God be not blasphemed by our misbehaviour (I Peter 2:12) but we are citizens of heaven primarily, not our own native nations (Philippians 3:20); therefore  we are strangers on this earth for this is not our home.

So of what import the nations?

As C S Lewis said, one of the few things i agree  with him on, a nation might last 1000 years but an individual human has eternal existence from his conception onward.

so, subject to the limitations i mentioned above as to good behaviour   of what value a nation?

they are all passing away, something the modern church, in all its worldliness, has essentially  forgotten.

as to the Queen, if she is saved well and good but church religion saved no one being a form of godliness that denies the power thereof