A Collection of Christian Spiritual Readings

a POST TO COLLECT LINKS FROM TIME TO TIME.


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Continuation of Previous Post About Watchman Nee

Computer won't let me post much in one place so I'm making a separate post out of this.

Later. Well, no, I don't think I'll be listening again to Nee, oh maybe once. the thing is he's powerfully cerebral and that is an entirely different spirit from Tozer's which is of the heart more than the mind. The more I listen to Tozer the deeper is my feeling of love, adoration, worship toward God. That happens to some extent with Nee but much less. I learn a lot from Nee though, but it's an entirelyh different kind of experience.

As an aside I want to mention that I'm always happy to find anyone who tackles the interpretation of the Song of Solomon, speaking of writing that aims at the heart. I don't even give a second thought to the preachers who treat the Song of Songs as a poem to marital love and there are many of those. To my mind that is a carnal level of interpretation. If it's not about the love of God and the love of God toward the believer or the Church it's an empty mental exercise. The theme of adoring love between God and believer is only touched on here and there in scripture but it is enough to pique the interest of anyone for whom that is the main point of the Christian life. It many not be many of us but there are alsways some who are looking for this experience. it is the theme of those called the mystics, or most of them. I think there are some cerebral mystics but most of them seek the Person of God in rapturaous adoration. "As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so pateth my soul after thee, Oh Lord."

Nee is one of those who has written an interpretation of the Song of Songs so I found a copy onkline and listened to some of it with the "reead aloud" function of my computer. As one might expect of him he is more thorough in his approach than others are, takes it verse by verse and makes connections between them at some length and so on. But for me it lacks that passion of love that I e must be the whole reason for the Song or it is mea ningless. In my opinionj. When Nee describes the relationship between the King and the Shulamite as "fellowship" when he brings her into the secret chamber under the banner of love I wonder at his seeming obtuseness. I stopped listening after only a few verses.

I have yet to find anyone who has explored the Song of Songs as I would like it to be explored. What Iv'e found is that those who have tried have a habit of making pronouncements about what its various symbols and figures of speech mean, and I doubt many of them agree with each other on any of them though they all have a habit of making flat pronouncements about what they mean. Nee does that too. Surely those symbols and figures are ambigfuous enough to defy such certainties. Anyway it's frustrating. I'm still hoping to find a commentator who does it justice in my opinion. Someone who illuminate the core of throbbing love in it.

It is that in Tozer's "Pursuit of God' that brings me back to it again and again, always to find some previously unnoticed word or phrase that contributes to the message of adoration of GGod.

But Nee in the video above does bring out meanings concerning salvation and sancitification that Are very useful so I still think it worth listening to.l

The Amazing Watchman Nee Unpacks Salvation in Christ like Nobody Else

I find myself listening over and over to Tozer's "Pursuit of God" and I thin kI'm going to do the same with Nee's "Normal Christian Life." These are the food for the soul I need, and I am bitterly sad that I've not made the use of them I should have over the last three decades since I beame a Christian. I don't know how I made it to the age of eighty and it's hard to imagine I have much more time to live but if the LORDD has mercy on me I'd want to take in these two books along with the Bible for whatever time Hew gives me.

Another Deception from the Fertile Minds of OUr Demonic Deceivers: "Negative Spirits"

Heard Coast-to-Coast radio again last night. Sigh. Sometimnes I think they must be trying answer my blogs about them. Guess that's qa pretty megalomaniacal thought but it's interesting how the topics they air lately seem related. Anyway, last night's guest was someone who works with demons ahnd "netive spirits" to help people protect themselves from them.

He believes that negative spirits abount "out there" in the universe and that they are the souls of dead human beings. He thinks demons are not so numerous. Asked if he thinks demons are fallen angels he said yes but he doesn't seem to have much of an idea what a fallen angel is. It's the usual situation we're in these days in which few understand that this is a fallen world, that we are fallen human beings, and that fallenness is the condition of being a sinner againt the Creator God and His Moral Law.

A third of all the angels fell when Satan rebelled against God, taking that many of the angels with him. that many angelss are thought to amount to billions. I don't know how it is calculated but that's the idea I usually hear. That's not the few the radio show guest has in mind. Surely what he is calling negative spirits that are really dead human beings are also demons, up to their usual masquerate as human beings. Sometimes they haunt houses, sometimes they show up in seances etc. AThis radio show guest believes they are human beings who exert a lot of "negative energy" or anger, against living people and he considers it his job to help people get free of their influence.
He says he believe in God, as so many do who certainly do not have the God of the Bible in mind bu5t rather a god of their own imagination. He says it helps people to protect themselves from these neatie spirits and from the demons to have a religion and use the energy of their rightoues teacherrs to help protect them or something like that. So much for the all-powerful Jesus Christ who alone has power over the demons.
A biblical view of what happens to people when they die does not have them roaming freelly around the universwe or hanging out in houses or cemeteries or whatnot, or coming back to communicate with loved ones they preceded into death. If the story Jesus told of the rich man and the poor man Lazarus can be taken as a model, there are two places people go after death, to Hell or to Paradise, in that teaching known as "Abraham's bosom" for the Jewish poor man Lazarus. The rich man is depicted as suffering the flames of Hell. The one exception in scripture is the appareance of the prophet Samuel to King Saul which Saul had request of the Witch of Endor. The real Samuel appeared to Saul in that case to rebuke him for calling him from his rest. THAT WAS A SPECIAL EVENT ORDAINED by God, not to be taken as typical. What mediums normally cal up is demonic impersonaltions.

So this man who claims to be psychic and deals with demonic spirits though he thinks mostg of them are departed human beins, is deceived about this spirit world he is dabbling in as they all are. A man called into the show though who claimed to be a Christian and praised the man as having his psychic gift from the Holy Spirit to serve humanity, an astonishing claim. How on earth did he maintain such an idea in the context of a church which he said he belonged to? Was the church totally apostate or was he a rebel against its teachings, in which case they should have excommunicated him. You can't have the Holy Spirit unless you are a born again believer in Jesus Christ.
T

A Post About C.S. Lewis

Hre's one of those posts where I mainly want to preserve something I enjoyed and hope anyone reading it also enjoys it. this is a play about the life of C.S. Lewis ("Mere Christianity" and Narnia books among others). I'm not a fan of rht eacting style but I always enjoy Lewis' story and this covers the main events. The last half is about hi brief marriage to Joy Gresham which is very romantic and very touching.

I think I read all of lewis' books during my reading binge about religion which finally led me to Christ, and Lewis was a big part of what turned me to Protestantism. I'm really not a fan of his children's books but Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man are I think my favorites. How he became a Christian is an interesting part of his life story and this play touches on it:


then I watched an interview with his stepson, Douglas Gresham, about whom I had known nothing until then, and what's particularly interesting to me about it is that When his mother Joy was diagnosed with bone cancer and given a few mweeks to a month to life, Douglas who was ten went and prayed for her to be healed, telling God that he couldn't live with out her. And that day she went into remission which gave them all some happy years. He was ten at the time.


tgeb U found the movie "Shadowlands" about Lewis' life with Joy and I've watching it. But I'm disappointed in it. The character of Joy doesn't come across as the vibrant witty genius Joy Gresham was in reality, which does come across more in other accounts of their life together. By the time they fall in love I don't see that much ground for it has been established. In life she was a tr4ue genius who had written poetry and books herself, someone Lewis later described as his intellectual equal in a way he hadn't found in any of his men friends. In the movie she comes ac5ross as ordinary and a bit forlorn, at least in the first pat of it. I'm hoping for better to come from the point of his marrying her during her hospitalization and the cancer's going into remission. the movie has also left out the boy's praying for her which is no doubt the reason for the remission. I love the actors, Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, but although Douglas Gresham recommended it I'm not happy with the movie yet. Nevertheless here's the link:


Well, I finished it and it didn't get any better. She spends most of her time in the movie sick. What about those almost four years of remission we'e heard about in which they had a passionate happy marriage. What about the endless wit at the dinner table they exchanged wsith each other according to her son> What about their happy trip to Greece just beffore she died, when she behaved "impishly" in the restaurant, flicking pieces of bread at the members of the very bad Greek band. No no no. This movie is not what their lives as they've been recounted elsewhere would lead us to respect. Not this unrelieved sadness. No no no.