For Jeff: One
I received an e-mail a few days ago from "Jeff." Jeff had a lot to say about how far off track I have gotten from orthodox Christianity and had much encouragement about how to get back in line. I am afraid I dismissed Jeff rather brusquely, and it has not settled well with me all the places he was off and how little I did to correct him. This is what happens when we leave religion in order to find God: they want to correct us, and we want to correct them. Almost point for point, we each think the other is wrong.
I just sent a second e-mail to Jeff apologizing for the first and asking him if he wanted to have a mature and balanced dialog:
Jeff,
Dan Steele
but he had already blacklisted me and the e-mail was returned.
I do not know Jeff from Adam (unless he is my cousin Jeff in Westminster). He has me at a disadvantage in that he has almost six hundred posts of mine to judge my doctrines by, and I have only one e-mail from him. Inasmuch as I cannot contact Jeff to engage in a healthy dialog, and his points against me were such excellent examples of Christian error, I am going to answer a number of Jeff's arguments in a short series of posts. Let's see if I can hold to logic and Truth and not get cynical about the ironies of doubt involved.
Jeff's e-mail was like reading a Jehovah's Witness Watchtower Magazine, wherein they do not realize that Jesus in the New Testament IS Jehovah. You wonder how they could have such an adamant doctrine based upon such absolute error.
My credentials do not count five cents for someone who disagrees with me, just as Jeff's are not worth a plug nickle to me. But briefly, I was raised among Congregational Methodists and the Methodist Youth Fellowship in the San Gabriel Valley 1950's and 60's. I spent the year after the Summer of Love (1967-68) in San Francisco and the next four years in the Navy during Vietnam. In the Navy I was exposed to more exotic religions, and I greatly expanded my reading of spiritual texts in the 1970's. I learned about Hinduism, Buddhism, Islamic (Sufi) mysticism, spiritualism, and learned Transcendental Meditation, but it was in a different, occult type of meditation I encountered what I considered to be a demon.
The demon, I observed, had been grooming me for possession which it could not accomplish without getting me to lower my authority to it, which was naturally below mine. Suddenly seeing the demon for what it was, I demurred, and left the meditation. Someone there -- some conscious and spiritually powerful person -- had opened my mind's eyes to see the demon without needing my permission to affect my eyes. He was naturally above my authority, knew what was going on in me (and was controlling from above), and I realized that he must be Lord and that I was going the wrong way!
That same week, a close friend was saved at the House of Praise in Kaimuki, Hawaii, and the next week I was saved there, too. Or at least I thought. I acknowledged that Jesus was what the Bible says he is, the Son of God and our Lord and Savior, and I had given him my life, but he did not baptized me with the Holy Spirit BECAUSE HE DID NOT ACCEPTED ME.
I am sure this causes Jeff mental rejection, if he reads it, because he has been taught that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord -- and I did confess and believe sincerely -- you ARE saved. And this is the crux of the matter between us: the general Christians' idea of believing is not necessarily what the Bible means by believing. When at Grace Bible Church in Honolulu I did surrender my life to God -- in actuality and not in mere acceptance of doctrine -- he did baptize me with the Holy Spirit. The glory of the moment, the euphoria and the ecstasy, is something you do not forget. I have been a tongue-speaking Pentecostal now for over forty years. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit does not happen automatically when one believes just because it is a doctrine. It is an actual, demonstrative event of imbuement and infilling by God's action when one is prepared to accept it and God accepts the person. It does not happen to a person without feeling, emotions, and expression. It is not our definition which changes, but our innermost being.
Anyway, to make this short, after Jesus spoke to me in a vision at the House of Praise I decided to find out what he has said to others. Having barely gotten out of high school -- no college prep classes, no remedial classes, no junior college classes, and no money -- I was accepted at Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California. They were being innovative: allow Bible Study students to do the upper division classes and petition for a bachelor degree after they get their AA. The accreditation committee shut that down as soon as they heard about it, but I was already in, so I got grandfathered. And everything came together for me to stay there three and a half years for a degree in Theology. Then I had a year and a half at William Carey International (U.S. Center for World Mission) for a cert in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and a master's degree in Intercultural Studies at still another seminary/university. I have been studying the Bible, ancient history, religions, and philosophies for over forty years. And yes, overseas mission work, too.
Unlike Jeff, most certainly, I work diligently to DISPROVE the things I am taught. I know have been misled before, and I know that demons of ignorance are always working on EVERYBODY, including our teachers. I only keep what Word I cannot disprove, and my understanding is constantly, progressively evolving through revision. Everything I have learned and experienced and proven has led to the view point I now have. Not only was I saved from occultism, I was also saved from the unbelieving "orthodox" Christianity Jeff represents. I would like to save him from what he now thinks is faith, and if I can convince you too, dear reader, it would be an honor to share the Living Christ with you.
So, Jeff's e-mail went like this:
"Dan,
"Please, you are entitled to your view point but the view point you perceive is leading you astray from the essence of our Lord."
Jeff, by the word 'but' you negate what you said. And I disagree that my point of view is leading me away FROM the essence of our Lord. In fact, just the opposite is happening. My point of view is leading me TO the essence of Jesus Christ. The thing is, your view point is keeping you from the essence of our Lord. You cannot accept him, because the real Jesus Christ is against your doctrines. Just as when I was in the occult, you are going the wrong way -- not as badly, but degree of unsaved does not matter. You do not accept the real, biblical Christ, and he does not accept you.
"We are not God, you are not God."
You have a bigger problem than you think, Jeff. I know you think God created Creation ex nihilo -- out of nothing and separate from himself, but that is not the case. Most simply: there is nothing but God. He himself -- his intelligence -- is the No-Thing he created everything out of, for there was and is nothing else. There is nothing separate or divided from him: we are his manifestation. His manifestation, his form, him in form.
The mechanism by which this is coming about is a little complex: he had no corporalness but his imagination, the "Child" of Proverbs chapter 8. His intelligence is the power to become what it imagines itself to be -- the "Eve" of Adam's desire. This is transcendence: Intelligence imagines it IS quantum particles, and it IS quantum particles. BANGO. Quantum particles have been proven to have intelligence. Duh; they ARE intelligence. God imagines experiences, and the particles FACILITATE those experiences. They occur naturally, for he is nature. They, he, we, are all ONE. Welcome to the meaning of e'had in Deuteronomy 6: 4 -- everything altogether is one. The Ineffable is EVERYTHING ON ALL LEVELS OF BEING, all at once. Really, he the only game in town. THAT is our God -- a really, really big show: ONE BIG GUY! -- too marvelous to imagine. And we are in there, too! If you don't believe me, just ask him.
In your philosophy of creation ex nihilo, separate and divided, there are TWO: God and Creation. Separate, we are a god unto ourselves. THAT, Jeff, is the big heresy: 'dual' is the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit who testifies day and night that we are ONE. Advaita: without division: there cannot be two! The deal about the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit never being forgiven is not that if you do it you can never be forgiven, it is that WE ARE ALWAYS DOING IT AND CAN NEVER MAKE REAL, SPIRITUAL PROGRESS UNTIL WE STOP THINKING AS SEPARATE AND DIVIDED FROM HIM AND ACCEPT THAT THE ONENESS OF GOD INCLUDES US!! We are the Ineffable Most High doing whatever it is that he is doing in and through us -- like it or lump it. Look in the mirror. That which you see is Him.
Don't think, "Ugh!"; think, "That thing is destined for glory!" Not the body you see. That is a facilitation. The inner man. The inner man is God correcting a unlikeness: what we were before as God's consciousness was in one way unlike the Ineffable Most High. We are in a do-over to correct a defect. Who says God can't have a do-over?
Okay, I am going to work on For Jeff: Two.
I just sent a second e-mail to Jeff apologizing for the first and asking him if he wanted to have a mature and balanced dialog:
Jeff,
I apologize for dismissing you out of hand in my previous reply. I started to use your e-mail as teaching
points in my blog as they are excellent examples of Christian confusion about the scriptures, but as I got near the end I realized that you might
just be a well meaning Christian and not really a troll. At
least you are reading my material even though you do not understand
it. All I can really tell about you is that you attend an
anti-charismatic church and that you might fancy becoming a pastor
yourself some day.
If you want to have a mature
and balanced conversation, tell me something about yourself. Do you
really want to learn something about the Bible, or were you just looking
to goof on someone?
but he had already blacklisted me and the e-mail was returned.
I do not know Jeff from Adam (unless he is my cousin Jeff in Westminster). He has me at a disadvantage in that he has almost six hundred posts of mine to judge my doctrines by, and I have only one e-mail from him. Inasmuch as I cannot contact Jeff to engage in a healthy dialog, and his points against me were such excellent examples of Christian error, I am going to answer a number of Jeff's arguments in a short series of posts. Let's see if I can hold to logic and Truth and not get cynical about the ironies of doubt involved.
Jeff's e-mail was like reading a Jehovah's Witness Watchtower Magazine, wherein they do not realize that Jesus in the New Testament IS Jehovah. You wonder how they could have such an adamant doctrine based upon such absolute error.
My credentials do not count five cents for someone who disagrees with me, just as Jeff's are not worth a plug nickle to me. But briefly, I was raised among Congregational Methodists and the Methodist Youth Fellowship in the San Gabriel Valley 1950's and 60's. I spent the year after the Summer of Love (1967-68) in San Francisco and the next four years in the Navy during Vietnam. In the Navy I was exposed to more exotic religions, and I greatly expanded my reading of spiritual texts in the 1970's. I learned about Hinduism, Buddhism, Islamic (Sufi) mysticism, spiritualism, and learned Transcendental Meditation, but it was in a different, occult type of meditation I encountered what I considered to be a demon.
The demon, I observed, had been grooming me for possession which it could not accomplish without getting me to lower my authority to it, which was naturally below mine. Suddenly seeing the demon for what it was, I demurred, and left the meditation. Someone there -- some conscious and spiritually powerful person -- had opened my mind's eyes to see the demon without needing my permission to affect my eyes. He was naturally above my authority, knew what was going on in me (and was controlling from above), and I realized that he must be Lord and that I was going the wrong way!
That same week, a close friend was saved at the House of Praise in Kaimuki, Hawaii, and the next week I was saved there, too. Or at least I thought. I acknowledged that Jesus was what the Bible says he is, the Son of God and our Lord and Savior, and I had given him my life, but he did not baptized me with the Holy Spirit BECAUSE HE DID NOT ACCEPTED ME.
I am sure this causes Jeff mental rejection, if he reads it, because he has been taught that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord -- and I did confess and believe sincerely -- you ARE saved. And this is the crux of the matter between us: the general Christians' idea of believing is not necessarily what the Bible means by believing. When at Grace Bible Church in Honolulu I did surrender my life to God -- in actuality and not in mere acceptance of doctrine -- he did baptize me with the Holy Spirit. The glory of the moment, the euphoria and the ecstasy, is something you do not forget. I have been a tongue-speaking Pentecostal now for over forty years. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit does not happen automatically when one believes just because it is a doctrine. It is an actual, demonstrative event of imbuement and infilling by God's action when one is prepared to accept it and God accepts the person. It does not happen to a person without feeling, emotions, and expression. It is not our definition which changes, but our innermost being.
Anyway, to make this short, after Jesus spoke to me in a vision at the House of Praise I decided to find out what he has said to others. Having barely gotten out of high school -- no college prep classes, no remedial classes, no junior college classes, and no money -- I was accepted at Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim, California. They were being innovative: allow Bible Study students to do the upper division classes and petition for a bachelor degree after they get their AA. The accreditation committee shut that down as soon as they heard about it, but I was already in, so I got grandfathered. And everything came together for me to stay there three and a half years for a degree in Theology. Then I had a year and a half at William Carey International (U.S. Center for World Mission) for a cert in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and a master's degree in Intercultural Studies at still another seminary/university. I have been studying the Bible, ancient history, religions, and philosophies for over forty years. And yes, overseas mission work, too.
Unlike Jeff, most certainly, I work diligently to DISPROVE the things I am taught. I know have been misled before, and I know that demons of ignorance are always working on EVERYBODY, including our teachers. I only keep what Word I cannot disprove, and my understanding is constantly, progressively evolving through revision. Everything I have learned and experienced and proven has led to the view point I now have. Not only was I saved from occultism, I was also saved from the unbelieving "orthodox" Christianity Jeff represents. I would like to save him from what he now thinks is faith, and if I can convince you too, dear reader, it would be an honor to share the Living Christ with you.
So, Jeff's e-mail went like this:
"Dan,
"Please, you are entitled to your view point but the view point you perceive is leading you astray from the essence of our Lord."
Jeff, by the word 'but' you negate what you said. And I disagree that my point of view is leading me away FROM the essence of our Lord. In fact, just the opposite is happening. My point of view is leading me TO the essence of Jesus Christ. The thing is, your view point is keeping you from the essence of our Lord. You cannot accept him, because the real Jesus Christ is against your doctrines. Just as when I was in the occult, you are going the wrong way -- not as badly, but degree of unsaved does not matter. You do not accept the real, biblical Christ, and he does not accept you.
"We are not God, you are not God."
You have a bigger problem than you think, Jeff. I know you think God created Creation ex nihilo -- out of nothing and separate from himself, but that is not the case. Most simply: there is nothing but God. He himself -- his intelligence -- is the No-Thing he created everything out of, for there was and is nothing else. There is nothing separate or divided from him: we are his manifestation. His manifestation, his form, him in form.
The mechanism by which this is coming about is a little complex: he had no corporalness but his imagination, the "Child" of Proverbs chapter 8. His intelligence is the power to become what it imagines itself to be -- the "Eve" of Adam's desire. This is transcendence: Intelligence imagines it IS quantum particles, and it IS quantum particles. BANGO. Quantum particles have been proven to have intelligence. Duh; they ARE intelligence. God imagines experiences, and the particles FACILITATE those experiences. They occur naturally, for he is nature. They, he, we, are all ONE. Welcome to the meaning of e'had in Deuteronomy 6: 4 -- everything altogether is one. The Ineffable is EVERYTHING ON ALL LEVELS OF BEING, all at once. Really, he the only game in town. THAT is our God -- a really, really big show: ONE BIG GUY! -- too marvelous to imagine. And we are in there, too! If you don't believe me, just ask him.
In your philosophy of creation ex nihilo, separate and divided, there are TWO: God and Creation. Separate, we are a god unto ourselves. THAT, Jeff, is the big heresy: 'dual' is the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit who testifies day and night that we are ONE. Advaita: without division: there cannot be two! The deal about the blaspheme of the Holy Spirit never being forgiven is not that if you do it you can never be forgiven, it is that WE ARE ALWAYS DOING IT AND CAN NEVER MAKE REAL, SPIRITUAL PROGRESS UNTIL WE STOP THINKING AS SEPARATE AND DIVIDED FROM HIM AND ACCEPT THAT THE ONENESS OF GOD INCLUDES US!! We are the Ineffable Most High doing whatever it is that he is doing in and through us -- like it or lump it. Look in the mirror. That which you see is Him.
Don't think, "Ugh!"; think, "That thing is destined for glory!" Not the body you see. That is a facilitation. The inner man. The inner man is God correcting a unlikeness: what we were before as God's consciousness was in one way unlike the Ineffable Most High. We are in a do-over to correct a defect. Who says God can't have a do-over?
Okay, I am going to work on For Jeff: Two.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
1:34 AM
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