I share some ideas, today, on the various creation stories that feature Adam and Eve, on divine revelation through utterance (the Word), and on the accuracy of a believer’s sacred knowledge. A reader at thoughts.com requested I share my understanding of what are found by many to be conflicting and confusing accounts of Creation from the holy writings. In accordance with the faith from GOD deposited within me, there are no contradictions or errors within the Scriptures. GOD is a spirit, and we must worship him in spirit and in truth. Saying the Scriptures are “the word of GOD,” we say, the Scriptures are put forth by a spirit. The Scriptures, therefore, must be understood through spirit content, spirit process, and spirit substance. When taken as a product of flesh (carnal, material, social beings), the Scriptures display multiple patterns and similarities among the accounts found there that some will attribute to human characteristics, human error, and human nature. While there are multiple ways to apply, explain and relate the information shared through sacred documents only a narrow band of these acknowledge, describe and demonstrate divine consciousness, holiness, and eternal purpose.
THE GOLDEN ARROW: No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1st John 4: 12-16, KJV)
THE DOUBLE DAGGER: To Express the Fullness of GOD? (07/09/2015); The Words Are Spirit? (06/03/2015); Getting It Right About Angels (05/10/2015); Those Who Read? (02/17/2015); The First Book of the Bible? (11/20/2014); The Beginning of Wisdom? (11/21/2014); The Male, the Female, and GOD (02/09/2014); Destroying the Resurrected Body? (02/10/2014); Before Abraham Was… (03/14/2013); A Golden Ticket? (11/30/2012); And This Was Good News (12/01/2012); Before the Fruit? (11/10/2012); Why "Mysterious" (11/11/2012)
Many seek to read and study the holy writings as a narrative using chronological order, and having a beginning, a middle, and an end. However, the intent and process of divinity is one of introducing permanent change and transformation of ones spirit content. While the narrative can be absorbing, rich, and riveting, it is incidental and minor. The narrative is only a device to foster spiritual focus (we say, attention), and generate an appetite for genuine sacred power. Those who hear, who understand, and who submit to Christ are to be used as living stones for a spiritual house of GOD upon the earth. Those in error, who want to introduce other architectural plans and blueprints, fantasies, and vulgar notions of beauty and symmetry also are willing to use foreign materials and non-biblical resources they have seen others display in houses and structures to promote philosophy, science, technology and the world. Christian believers are challenged to operate having a new consciousness of GOD that is to gradually overcome their inner process that now upholds continuing arbitrary differences, complacency, denial, digression, inconsistency, irregularity, and straying from the path of righteousness.
The Holy Spirit has encouraged me to understand that the books of Moses and other scriptures (e.g., Proverbs) have been developed from collections of oral histories and tribal legacies along with ancient ceremonies, mysteries (i.e., special knowledge shared only with those initiated), practices, rites, and rituals provided by divinity for a priesthood upon the earth. Such facts as dates or names of persons, places, and bodies of water may have had more than one spelling, may have been lost, and may have become different from local group to local group among the tribes of Jacob that were challenged to escape assimilation and genocide within Egypt as a cosmopolitan empire. In addition to introducing civil code (we say, a formal system for recording and publishing legal statutes) with a written covenant and ceremonial law, Moses began the work to transform the diverse tribesmen and a raw multitude into a polished nation before GOD.
Because our study is to gain knowledge about the attributes, character, nature, and power of the Creator and Savior who is divine, the Bible allows believers to discover and realize the existence of GOD as divinity appearing through thousands of events, occurring within thousands of lives, over the course of thousands of years. So to speak, readers are provided a divine listening post and point of view where even the feelings and private thoughts of others are audible and visible. Quotations and references to things spoken by others do not have to be by-the-letter, exact, and word-for-word. It is the gist, and intent that must be conveyed. Where multiple accounts appear, their effect is to be additive (edification; more information is being supplied through distinctive details). The goal is not to have the peace that comes by arrogance, ignorance, neglect, presumption, or self-importance. Rather, it is to acquire balance, certainty, fullness, maturity, peace of mind, and stability.
Information that seems absent or missing from Scripture accounts, in fact, are supplied through operations of the Holy Spirit. Many of the facts that appear within the Bible are in the nature of abbreviations, suggestions, and a vocabulary intended to provide possible approaches, examples, guidelines, outlines for understanding, general principles, and useful terms; and are not to serve as an accurate and exact compendium of all sacred knowledge that a believer must rely upon for all truth. Thus, there is no list naming all the children born to Adam and Eve; and, while the Egyptian name given to Joseph appears, such names do not appear for his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh. There is much that can be dealt with as secular knowledge irrelevant to ones continuing in faith. For this reason, readers should receive peculiar translations and versions of the Bible as aides and tools, never as idols and mandates. The reader’s need is less for accurate and exhaustive data, an ability to recall and recite obscure details of esoteric information, or the skill to amuse and entertain as would a court storyteller. The divine intent is to provide information that lifts and maintains awareness on a cosmic scale for comprehension, discernment, exchange and revelation.
Revelation is accomplished by divinity acting to show or speaking to provide new and otherwise hidden perception as well as by reconfiguring consciousness to establish fresh comprehension or insight. The process of divinity for salvation even includes groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26, KJV). Sacred knowledge is not solely by the finite and mechanical operations of intellect (we say, logic, reason) or sense (e.g., seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting) within created beings and living creatures. Flesh must be overshadowed by living Spirit.
There is much more I could say that readers should carefully consider and spiritually internalize. (For example, for the sake of completeness, the things revealed through the Scriptures also must address preexistence, the conditions and events before the creation of heaven and earth. Yet, how much must believers know for their salvation and eternal life established through grace, by faith? It is consistent with conceptions of divinity as having all authority, knowledge, and power that Deity should exist being immortal and sovereign as well. Additionally, that GOD would breathe and impart substance permanently existing within divine person into figures and forms set apart to become living souls is no less appropriate as a clear and legitimate explanation for the origins of human life than the acknowledgment that mankind is an outcome of operations by an exalted will to complete deliberate, directed action upon an object composed and constructed within the divine mind. Where we trust GOD to have given us the answers we need through the Bible, we stop asking questions to get the answers we don’t need.) Even so, I trust this fragment will be useful. Be it unto you according to your faith.
THE BLACK PHOENIX
Washington, DC
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