Letters to Stephen, 1: The Biggest Error in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

"I entirely disagree with everything here. It sounds like you've elevated yourself to God and have fallen for the same lie as the snake lured Eve in the Garden of Eden, “You will be 'like' God knowing Good and Evil”...it's the same trap many who are into psychology fall into. Beware. In doing so, the cross has been eliminated: “It is not I who lives but Christ.” It is not my life to Live but rather being Alive in the Life of Christ to be shaped and molded into His image, not to shape and mold myself into His by my imagination..."

By  Stephen, at 1:13 AM

Stephen,

I appreciate everything you said above in your comment on my post, How to Think Right Biblically. I am more aligned with your thinking than you may think (you do, in fact, sound exactly like me not too long ago). I am hoping that you will not write me off just yet. You see, I would like to try a little experiment, because I am facing an enormous challenge, and you can help me by just listening.

I find that I write better in correspondence explaining the things I have learned to a live person. I see from your comment that you are very typical and representative of my target audience (me, actually), and I would like to write to you. I will address you as a general “you” typical of other Christians.

The challenge I face is quite Biblical, and it involves you whether you like it or not. I believe I have found a better, more mature and practical way to think of and relate to God. Not another God, not a foreign God, just the God of the Bible. It is to understand and operate in the spiritual life of the True God by another perspective than we typically do as Christians. Nothing occult or voodooy, just a more Biblical perspective.

The trouble I face is trying to get this more Biblical perspective out and “over-to” the audience before getting cut off by their doctrinal prejudices. We tend to cut-off anything that challenges what we “know.” We do not seem to have much faith in the ability of God to keep us.

I ask you to consider this passage you know well: “How then shall they call upon Him in Whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10: 14). This is my question and meditation: If I cannot call upon a God I have not heard of, have I heard of and believed on the True God of the Bible?

My answer is, “Probably not.” Why not? Because the people who have been telling us of Him have never heard of Him, either. No, in all Biblical honesty, they have heard, but they deny him because the True God doesn't fit their theology. How could they possibly preach the True God except they be sent BY Him? They can’t be sent by Him unless they know Him, and they cannot possibly truly know Him if they have not had the experience of his revelation.

Yes, we have the Bible, and the preachers know it, and we know the Bible, too. But what if we know the Bible amiss? You do not have to be much of a Greek or Hebrew scholar to know that what we read in our English translations is not what it says in Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic. We have shelves full of study Bibles, commentaries and lexicons which we dig through constantly trying to fathom what the Bible’s authors were trying to tell us. We pride ourselves on knowing and being able to share what a verse's words actually mean.

We study the ancient manners and customs of the Biblical peoples. Some analyze their philosophies—the mind-sets of the ancient peoples. What we have been told that the ancient peoples believed is NOT what they actually believed, and the actual history of the Bible lands was not anything like what we have been taught. Our common understanding is simplistic, truncated, and almost wholly errant.

Something else was going on. A lot of other things were going on. The ancient people were a lot more dynamic than we have thought. People and their ideas were constantly moving about, influencing others. The whole area was heavy with philosophers arguing their points of view. I think it was three places in the Dead Sea scrolls I found reference to the Book of Meditation—from which fathers were admonished to begin teaching their sons from at least the age seven. My daddy didn’t teach me how to meditate, but it was their expectation.

Ethelbert Bullinger in The Companion Bible discusses how the Bible—correct that—the ancient scrolls have been changed, by whom and why. There seems to have been some evolution within the scriptures. Having learned some of the breadth of possible meanings in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, I started taking a wider view of what the whole was saying. More importantly, I learned some of how the ancient mystics thought, how they taught, and the meanings of relevant ancient myths.

Ancient history, philosophy, and psychology. Why bother studying all that stuff? Because some time after being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I saw Jesus scourged and crucified, and he spoke to me. He looked right at me and said, “Come unto Me.” Audibly, but directly into the brain’s nervous system, not through the ears. Cool trick. I wanted to know what else he had said to men. Not what people think about him, not what they think the scriptures mean, but what he said and what he meant by what he said.

This started in April of 1975, when I was a just 25 years old. I went to a Charismatic seminary (Melodyland School of Theology) where without day one of college prep or junior college—I just barely graduated high school—they put me in upper division theology classes. I suddenly had to read like hell, study and analyze and compose theme papers. But I learned how to READ. I have been through a number of universities, and one thing I have become certain about over the years is this: what we read in the Bible, as “we” read it, is NOT what the authors meant.

We misread the scriptures. This is why I know that we do not worship the God of the Bible as he is to be worshiped: we do not know him, at least, not as he should be known.