[aron]

On another thread on the 'trinity' I made a brief excursus, noting that in the synoptic gospels there's an interesting statement by Jesus, which I label a 'proto-trinitarian' formula. It's about Jesus and the Father and the holy angels in glory.

Matthew 25:31 When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne.

Luke 9:26 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

Mark 8:30 For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.

Paul probably stresses the "one Spirit" (Eph 4:4-6) more than the "many [ministering] spirits" (Heb 1:14-2:2), and growing up in Fundamentalist Baptist Christianity we typically didn't acknowledge the presence of angels in the NT, except once a year at Christmas, where in our nativity pageant we allowed angels to announce the Good News to Mary and the Shepherds. And this is understandable: after the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church toward icons and angels and the Mother Mary, Protestantism delivered a stripped-down Jesus. Our mantra was 'Jesus/faith/Jesus/faith/Jesus/faith' etc etc.

Now I come to my point. Suppose I read Stephen speaking in Acts, and he says that "Moses received the lively oracles of God" via angelic mediation?

Acts 7:38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:

Acts 7:53 you who received the law ordained by angels, yet have not kept it.

Suppose that I remember that the Job narrative references "the sons of God" in 1:6 and Genesis 6:2 calls the "sons of God" and the NT likely references these - at least in Genesis - as "angels [who sinned]". See epistles of Jude, 2 Peter, etc. And suppose I get to thinking, and put together my own "jigsaw puzzle". Witness Lee told us once that was what he was doing, but he mispronounced it as "bigsaw puzzle" and we all laughed.

Suppose I start to formulate and postulate and so forth, and come up with my own revelatory variant of the "Christian trinity" or whatever. (Now, mind you, I'm not convinced in my own mind of anything, but am simply looking at this gospel text as an example. There could be dozens of others.) Suppose I got convinced that I had some light on something, and wanted to share. My point here is that all of us, all of us, can get light, can see things, can think and ask and tentatively propose.

But if anyone thinks that they see something, they should be very, very, very, very, very cautious, or they'll end up like Mister Witness Lee in Pasadena California in 1988. His own words tell us what happened. Division, captivity, and ruin. What so-called truth is worth that? Back to the first post, the Christian truth, held by all, is centered in Jesus: the spotless, sinless, obedient Lamb of God who died and rose to glory. And everything either looks ahead to this (the OT) or looks back to it (the NT). Our hope is in Him and not in any ideational formula. Doesn't matter how many verses you crowd together, how many books you publish and churches you start up: if your 'revelation' brings ruin to others it isn't truth. It's not from God.