[aron]

Mark 7:37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Mark 10:36 And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?”

Look at how often the gospels portrays both the disciples and the people of Israel as being surprised and bewildered, even frightened, by Jesus the Nazarene. And in the preceding post (#43) I noted that the presence of the Divine Speaking, whether through intermediary angels or throught the Spirit of God, brought the same effect.

It is possible that the "outpouring of the Holy Spirit" on Azusa Street, the Toronto Blessing, the Lakeland Revival, et al, were unconscious attempts to manifest what people felt they should be experiencing in God's salvation. I don't know. But any charismatic or ecstatic experience should draw me deeper into the Word in both study and discipled living. If not, it is vain.

WL may have tried to tap into charismatic revival with his "eating Jesus" rhetoric of the late '60s & early '70s. Again, I don't know. But there's a danger if we end up chanting footnotes, outlines, musical stanzas, and so forth as a kind of spiritual stand-in; if we judge the "interpreted word" as of more interest than the Word itself.

And I feel that if WL realized that the Holy Word of God was truly of spirit and life as he feigned to do, he never would have dared to wave off dozens and dozens of chapters of the Bible as of no value.

Just because we may not see anything of value in God's Word doesn't mean God isn't speaking. Maybe it just means that "you have not yet struggled unto blood", a la Hebrews 12:4. Maybe we haven't struggled enough yet. With the Bible we shouldn't be like Aesop's fox, who walked away from the unreachable grapes and muttered to himself, "Well, they probably are not very good."

There is a lot of the Bible that I just don't get. For example, Job is largely an unassailable mystery. There are books that I have only a passing acquaintance with. I know they are there, and that is pretty much it. I haven't yet found "honey in the rock". But I believe the rock is there.

And likewise I believe the 'building up' is there. I may not have seen it, or entered deeply. But it is there.