June, 2015

Hello Tim, and thank you for the thoughtful letter. Having not heard back so long from you since I last wrote, I concluded you also probably had just too many problems with my spiritual direction as well, and were content to leave things be. Thank you for being open to consider my views and teachings.

 

You invited me to let you know of my studies and beliefs.  As you know from my website, the focus of my teaching is in bringing people to a completed love in the Lord through openness and obedience to the totality of Christ’s living dynamic nature through the Spirit.

 

In this regard, Christian believers have great problems reconciling the truth of the codified (written) word of God with the immediacy of the living Holy Spirit.  A carnal mental barrier is erected between the two.  Most believers never progress beyond a rudimentary encounter with the Spirit at the level of conviction of sin and repentance, holding and developing only a mere intellectual (non-living) grasp of scripture. Consequently, God is no more real or present to them except as a story book character.  He has no present Voice.

 

The truth is however that all of the written word of God was originally given as a living dynamic. The scriptures did not fall out of heaven. People heard and received the Voice of God as a living communication to their spirits, which they then wrote down after. And the faith expected of them was faith in that living Voice, not in something that had already been written down previous or would be written down later. 

 

Abraham’s faith was in a living Voice to his spirit. Moses’ faith was in a living Voice to his spirit before he wrote anything down. The prophets’ faith was in a living Voice to their spirits before they wrote anything down. The apostles’ faith was also in a living Voice, first to their imperfect natural ears in the hearing of the incarnate Son of God, but more importantly to their spiritual ears after they had at last been baptized with the Spirit as promised to them at the Last Supper.

 

All these who came after scriptures were written down “believed the scriptures” before them, but their faith was not in the scriptures! That is a critical distinction. Their faith was in the living Voice to their hearts. And that Voice had the liberty of coming to them through the preceding scriptures, or apart from them. The Voice came to the prophets apart from the preceding scriptures usually making no reference to them. The Voice came to the apostles both through and beyond the scriptures. They quoted the scriptures. And they heard beyond the scriptures.

 

This is important. Once the scriptures were written down, the living Voice now had the option to speak through the written words. But the living Voice was never confined to the words He had spoken that were now codified. Once the scriptures began to be written, there was no new “law” composed that said the living Voice of God could now only speak through the scriptures. No such belief is taught or evidenced anywhere in the scripture.

 

Yet this very concept that the living Voice of God can now only speak through the scripture (if it can speak at all)  is at the heart of all orthodox, fundamentalist and evangelical “belief,” a belief not in the living Voice—but faith in the scriptures themselves.

 

“Belief in the scriptures” is not belief in Christ and is not saving faith. Yet in the realms I just identified, we are taught to believe in the Bible as if such were the same as believing in Christ Himself.  And it is not. If the heart does not hear the Living Voice of God, there is no faith.

 

By contrast, the scriptures demonstrate that those who had a faith only in the scriptures were opposed to true faith, and were guilty of unbelief. That was what pharisaism was all about: Belief in the scriptures—as if that was the same as faith in the living God. It was those who believed in the scriptures but who had never heard the living Voice that put Jesus and the apostles to death.

 

And nothing has changed. Those who teach that it is not adequate to believe in the scriptures but that we must hear the living Voice, and that the living Voice still speaks today as He always has throughout history, and that the living Voice can speak through scripture or beyond scripture as He always has throughout history—are still “put to death” by the Pharisees of orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism.

 

(Those who use the scriptures to try to deny the present tense reality of the living Voice of God are forced to craft “interpretations” entirely outside the mental framework of the apostles or of their first hearers, because nowhere do the scriptures ever admit to taking the place of the living Voice of the Lord. A study of the terms “word,” “word of God” and “word of the Lord” as used throughout the entire Bible refer 75% - 90% of the time exclusively to the living Voice of God.)  

 

The baptism of the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation is critical for opening our inner ears to the living Voice of God within unto the increasing of our faith. That is why He was given. And that is why He has been poured out again and again throughout Church history to those hungry enough to ask more of God than mere intellectual belief in scriptures. And that is why we have seen a restoration of apostles and prophets and of all the giftings of the Spirit especially in the last 200 years as we approach the return of the Lord.  It is because segments of the church have diligently asked the Father to send Him.

 

The scriptures show that the Holy Spirit was ordained to be sent by request. When He is asked for, He is sent. When He is neglected, He leaves. And for most of the Church Age in most quarters of the Church, there has been no belief or desire for the Father to send the Spirit, defended by a self-fulfilling theology that says God is done sending the Holy Spirit to the Church.

 

This raises the question, why do “believers in Christ” not believe in the present living Voice of the Lord and of all the manifestations of the Holy Spirit as originally sent by the Lord, and instead use the scriptures counter-intuitively to the record to defend that un-belief?

 

It is because they do not want to believe in the living Voice. And why do they not want to believe in the living Voice? Two reasons: Fear and Control.

 

People are afraid of what they cannot understand and control. The Holy Spirit can neither be carnally understood nor controlled.  The Holy Spirit is not predictable in how He speaks and demonstrates Himself. The Holy Spirit brings chaos to human order in order to bring about divine order. And no one wants chaos.  I understand that as well as anyone. My life has been brought to many places of chaos beyond my control and comfort zone in order to have divine order brought about instead. But I have had to ask the question, do I want God in my life more than I want my own order? And if not, then how can I call myself a true disciple? How can I say I truly “believe” in God more than just as a historical figure?

 

The Holy Spirit came into my life in a fully immersing way eight years after I was born again, and only after a time of desperate seeking for something more stable in God than what I had. I was in a place of great need. I asked and begged God for deliverance, and I received it by the gracious infusion of the Spirit into my life beyond anything I knew or understood was available to me. And when He came, my eyes were open to revelation, and no longer mere interpretation. I now “knew” and “heard” the Lord in my spirit with the same immediacy of the first hearers. And have ever since, and have so read the scriptures ever since.  

 

Where there is faith, there is risk. There is risk of being wrong. There is risk of making a mistake. But true faith overcomes the fear associated with risk to take the risk, and to believe that God is greater than any risk taken in the course of believing His living Voice. And that is the belief I have lived by over my lifetime of taking the risks necessary to engage the Holy Spirit as a living dynamic. In turn, my writing ministry has been to pass on to others what I have learned in the course of this journey.

 

That is my testimony. All the rest is history.

 

That gives you a basis for understanding where I come from in everything else I have to say on my website. ...
 

Looking forward to your visit.

 

Blessings,