A Lot of Us are LIving a Subnormal Christian Life

The point of a spiritual renewal project such as I've been pursuing is to get the world and the flesh out of your life and receive exhorations and encouragement to a stricter Christian life. Soaking up good Christian teaching, books, sermons, long sessions listening to the Bible, prayer and even fasting when possible, staing away from the usual worldly input, it all helps.

Read the scriptures. How clear it is that we don't possess the spiritual power that should be ours. I guess some think this tepid level of spiritual life is all we're promised but that's not how I read it. "Rivers of living water" says Jesus, those who believe in Him will experience. Don't tell me the Church in general has this spiritual experience. Don't tell me even the best preachers and teachers have anything like it. They may have a fair amount of success at winning converts but it looks pretty feeble compared to the scripture if you ask me.

I want that living water. I want the spiritual power that implies of being able to represent God Himself to the unsaved so that God influences them instead of me. One thing I've been learning over this last month is how much of my life is mired in fleshly attempts to live the Christian life. I picked teachers to read who are stronge on that message, how fleshly and worldly today's church is.

Do we really "walk in the Spirit" if we don't even really know how to identify His presence in our lives? Isn't it too often simply assumed that we are walking in the Spirit because we know we have the Holy Spirit if we are believers, so we don't need any personal experience or evidence of it beyond that basic recognition. These writers I'm reading think otherwise. Tozer, Murray, Nee, Lloyd-Jones. >bri
>br? Dp we deny ourselves. die to ourselve Dp we lmpw pir p;d ,am. pir f;esj. os cricofoed wotj Cjrost amd dp we lmpw jpw tp act pm tjat Mpt veru we;; ot wpi;d see,/ We [reacj om tje f;esj amd assi,e tje S[orot os tjere. amd Je [rpbab;u os. bit mpt om tje [pwer we meed. we wrote b;pgs om tje f;esj amd jp[e Je giodes sp,e pf ot a;tjpigj we dpm t lmpw of Je os pr mpt fpr sire/

Just a hint at what I've been hearing and thinking about for now.

End Times According to the Pre=Tribbists, And My Usual Reservations

Jan Markell's Understanding the Times radio is heavy on the Pre-Trib Rapture scenario this week and I'm going to post it although I have personally pulled back from it. this program shows some opponents of the view who are awfully condemnatory against it, and I'm certainly not with them. I just keep having problems putting the scriptural sources together to build up that scenario that they are so sure about. And I object to their own characterizations of everybody who raises questions about the scenario as having some kind of nefarious motives or mental incompetence or whatever. I think there are genuinely legitimate questions BASED ON SCRIPTURE that make the Pre-Trib system shaky. I've spelled out a lot of my questions in previous posts and won't repeat them here. I still think there are valid elements in the Pre=Trib view, I just don't think it holds up as one coherent story line so I'm expecting some rearranging of parts and reinterpratations of some of the scriptural sources to characterize the final reality. Meanwhile I'm dedicated to an intense spiritual renewal on a personal level and the possibility of a revival to deal with theis corrupted world, and if the Rapture intervenes, graet, if not such a strengthening is desperately needed by both me and the Church.

The Spiritual Project A Month Into It

Since April first I've been pursuing spiritual strengthening with a passion. It started with a familiar thought that what is going on in the world is beyond human means of correction, it's God's doing for one thing, God's judgment on a corrupt world, becoming more corrupt as part of the judgment process, and it's beyond us to deal with such a trend on that level. I've thought it of course for some time, but one day I just got fed up with myself and decided I have to act on this recognition. I'm giving up any hope in human means and focusing exclusively on God. I soon got even more disgusted with myself as I realize how much of my Christian life has been misspent for so long, how much time I've squandered on political and other human systems when I should have been doing what I'm now doing, putting enormous energy into seeking God. Reading the books I've posted here and more besides, well listening to them since I can't see well enoughj to read any more, so many wonderful books in audio formats online, what a Blessing from God. He's dealing with me personally and taking the project in His own direction. I may write more later as it keeps unfolding, or I many not, at least not for some time. I'm seeking God Himself for His own sake, and seeking the power the Church should have and doesn't.

Another Brief Bleat About Evolutionary Assumptions.

Today's Dark Horse Podcast with Bret and Heather, No. 124is one in which they spend most of their time on biolobical phenomena which of coursse they discuss from their evolutionary perspective. So I'm writing this brief response as usual just to make my usual point that nothing they discuss validates the evolutionary persepctive at all. Everthing they say about the flora and fauna today is easily explained by the Creation of God. They mock the idea at one point but the mockery is a silly straw man. Nothing they report needs any other explanation. They are always talking about adaptations that a created creature would make, they don't need eevolution to explain it. Or they are talking about microevolution which is a misnomer since it has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, it's really just normal built-in variation, built into the genome of any given creature. NO OTHER EXPLANATION IS Required. tHEY ARE NEVER EVER TALKING ABOUT EVOLUTION, SAYING ANYTHING THAT REQUIRES AN EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION. nEVER.

Continuing to Hear Messages on Spiritual Power

John MacArthur on spirfitual power, from Ephesians

Yes I'm finally giving up on the Pre-Tribulation Rapture Eschatology

When I accepted the Pre-tribulation Rapture end-times explanation a few years ago I certainly didn't expect I'd be changing my mind about it, but that's what's happening now. I just have too many questions about it. I don't like any of the other systems any better, however, they all raise questions. Amillennialism also requires the spiritualizing of events that are described in remarkably literal terms and that has always made that system completely unacceptable to me. As for preterism I do think there are events the Pre-trib system makes future that are in fact past, but in themselves they don't undermine the general outline of the Pre-Trib system.

What still supports that system to my mind are the unfulfilled prophecies that need a literal fulfillment, such as the Seventieth Week of Daniel. Such as the Day of the LORD. Such as the great tribulation that Jesus prophesied. And a literal three-andp0 a half year period of the reign of Antichrist. I can't spiritualiz3e any of that away. The terms they are described in are too emphatically literal, and that fits the Pre-Trib system better than ano other.

But what calls the Pre-Tribe system into doubt is the doubling and even tripling of some events, that somehow never gets noted by its supported. Two maybe even three resurrections? Two bodies of sainbts? A group of martyrs expecting to be joined by another group while presumably all the martyres of the last two thousand years have already been raptured? That one continues to defy any kind of resolution I can come up with. Because the martyrs are clearly described in Revelation Six as a spec8ial group apart from the rest of the believers. Yet millions of martyrs must have been included inthe Rapture. It just makes NO sense.

So. I simply have no clear eschatology right now.

And I continue to be bothered by the fact that scripture that clearly refers to the Roman Catholic Churchwhen it first came into being in the seventh century are absorbed into the futurist There's a lot more ininvolved in this but my computer needs help whcih I can't get it yet so I can't write a longer post.interpretation.

continued