New Anointing of the Church

There is and has been within the Church a notion that the Church (gentile and Israelite) replaced the Israelite people as God's chosen people. Let's assume this is true, but let's use I Samuel as model. That is, when Saul "lost" his anointing from God, and gave it to David, how did David treat Saul thereafter? Simply, he gave him his due as King as long as he claimed it, while serving the Lord himself as he was able. I think that works well, no matter what your take is on promises filled and unfulfilled with the Israelite people. Until they as a nation accept Christ as Lord, I give them deference as God's chosen people. And when they do accept Him, they will again be God's chosen people! But I will seek the Lord for guidance, not the state of Israel (which is incidentally what the state of Israel was / is supposed to do itself anyways).

A New Look at Mysticism

Mystics tell us that there are things about God which we cannot understand. This drives the followers of Reason bananas. But, what if Romans 11:33, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" means we just wouldn't have enough time in our lives to do so? And maybe not in a thousand life times? What if 70 years in this time limited, spatially limited dimension simply isn't appropriate a period to cover such an awesome subject? Do we look at something as mundane as Biology and blithely declare that Reason will allow any human to completely understand it in a single lifetime? That we will get to the End of the Knowledge of Biology in our life time? I don't think so.

The only way we have anymore than a cursory knowledge, as it is, is due to thousands of life times accumulating the knowledge of the ages, and compressing it down (not without compression errors, I'm sure) to transfer it to the next generation. And, if the Knowledge of Biology could seem such a barely approachable subject, imagine trying to understand the force of God that created Biology, and then expand it across every other subject of human learning. And then expand it into multiple dimensions. It may be, under our strict definition of Reason, that God is not "unknowable," but that the time required to "know" God approaches infinity as we learn more and more, with each layer of learning expanding geometrically the knowledge we must attain to gain complete understanding.

So, what is the result? Can we only understand God through special revelation, that which He chooses to give to us? In the short term, yes. In practicality, in the long term, yes. And yet Reason is not diminished, only rationally set in its place.

Philippians 4

Trying to go over a whole chapter every week, instead of a verse a day, a chapter a day, etc. So, after reading Philippians 4 several days in a row...

"Rejoice in the the Lord always" This is a good verse. The exhortation is to always be rejoicing! But what about all the tragic moments of life? Well, Paul is not exhorting to rejoice in Life always, but rather to rejoice in the Lord. When we keep a sense of who it is that we "in" we can always rejoice in Him, even when life is in chaos around us. If He is the rock on which our house is built, we need not fear the storms of life.