Quote:
Originally Posted by Raptor
So how many Spirits are there? How many are divine? How many can give life? How many are Holy?
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How many Spirits are there? Good question. We don't know.
In the gospels, Jesus says that "Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."
Here you have the glory of the Son, the Father, and the holy angels. The NT says that angels are spirits (Heb 1:14), so holy angels are holy spirits. How many holy spirits? We don't know. But why does Jesus in his proto-trinitarian formula, superimpose 'holy angels' for what
we expect should be Holy Spirit? I don't know. Do you? Did Lee? Or did he ignore this inconvenient verse?
I don't have an answer, but I suspect that the writer of the Apocalypse, the disciple John, was there in the gospels and heard Jesus speak of multiple spirits thusly. When John wrote of multiple spirits before the throne of God, and going out to all the earth (Rev 1:4, 4:5, and 5:6) did his gospel experience factor in? Of course it did. How much? We don't know.
When the holy angel carried John away "in spirit", how could John both be "in spirit" and carried by a non-capital "H" holy spirit? How many holy spirits are there?
When the tongues of flame sat over their heads on Pentecost, how many spirits were in the room? Just one?
Then we have the plural spirits in Hebrews 12:9 "Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" Does the Holy Father give life to holy spirits, plural? Apparently.
The question before is is not, "What do we [want to] believe" but "What did Jesus believe", and what did John and the author of Hebrews believe. If you read Jesus' recorded statements in the gospels, or John's Revelation, it isn't as "clear" as Witness Lee said it was. So, should we be subject to WL's truncated Bible and partial logic? I say, No. There's a spirit of control at work, and we should reject it. Only be subject to the Father of spirits, and live. Do not be conformed to the spirit of this age.
Religious conformity is one of the strongest spirits of this age. Please - let the Bible be your guide... all of it, not just the 'convenient' parts. Please don't 'become' an unwitting vector of the spirit of control and conformity that ran WL and now runs his minions.