A word from the Lord

[bbyrd009]

Have I come close to your thoughts or have I missed it completely?

um, maybe replying to the "convo" part, can you have a conversation with a "spirit" iow

 

[amadeus]

ha, sublime
interpret those logically lol

If God will help me… :

"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" Matt 18:7

"Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?
But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Matt 15:12-14

Sounds as if Jesus was the offender of the Pharisees in the second citation [Matt 15:12-14] and reading then the first citation [Matt 18:7] Jesus should or would be the recipient of the "Woe". What was it that Jesus said which apparently offended the Pharisees?

He was speaking of the traditions of men which the Pharisee applied which worked to make the Word of God "of none effect" [from Matt 15:6].

What I see is the difference between a man speaking from conclusions of his own corrupted heart as opposed to Jesus speaking from that which God gave him to speak. That which comes from God alone is uncorrupted:

"Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things." John 8:28

If we are speaking always the Father's Word, then there will never be a "woe" attributable to us in spite of what men may think or say. We can agree to this being the case with Jesus. Our [man who has been and in some measure still is corrupted] difficulty is how much are we really like Jesus? Are we always speaking ONLY what our Father God has taught us?

 

[amadeus]

@bbyrd009

amadeus said: ↑
Have I come close to your thoughts or have I missed it completely?

um, maybe replying to the "convo" part, can you have a conversation with a "spirit" iow

What a question! Well what is it when we have a conversation with God? A prayer!?!? Is God not Spirit or a Spirit? Sometimes when I do I speak with Him it is aloud with my mouth and sometimes not. Sometimes I speak in an unknown tongue, and sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in German, sometimes in English and sometimes my lips don't move... but the words are going forth.

How does He answer me? I have never heard an audible voice unless you count the times when His response was through the mouth of another physical person. Sometimes the answer is in my head or heart or even on the printed page... usually of a Bible on this last one. I don't recall Him speaking through the printed page of another book, but that is not to say it has never happened.

 

[Helen]

um, maybe replying to the "convo" part, can you have a conversation with a "spirit" iow

Don't we meet that every day...even on this site...I am often conscious that I am doing just that.

 

[bbyrd009]

@bbyrd009




What a question! Well what is it when we have a conversation with God? A prayer!?!? Is God not Spirit or a Spirit? Sometimes when I do I speak with Him it is aloud with my mouth and sometimes not. Sometimes I speak in an unknown tongue, and sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in German, sometimes in English and sometimes my lips don't move... but the words are going forth.

How does He answer me? I have never heard an audible voice unless you count the times when His response was through the mouth of another physical person. Sometimes the answer is in my head or heart or even on the printed page... usually of a Bible on this last one. I don't recall Him speaking through the printed page of another book, but that is not to say it has never happened.

i mean "conversation" in the literal sense though, such as persons conduct, or even such as many believe, that when they "get to heaven" they might ask for and get answers to certain questions directly, etc.

 

[bbyrd009]

Don't we meet that every day...even on this site...I am often conscious that I am doing just that.

i would deem that more like a discerning than having a literal conversation though.

 

[Helen]

i would deem that more like a discerning than having a literal conversation though.

Yes, and that was also 'tongue in cheek'
On the serious side...NO, no more than Jesus did ..but He had full authority when He spoke to them ....my own encounters with deliverance is that they want to speak..we have to tell them to shut up. They even whine and cry and plead. It is the foolish who allow them to speak.
So " conversation" NO!
Matt 8- ""What do you want with us, Son of God?" they shouted. "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?"......The demons begged Jesus, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs."... "And He said unto them, Go! And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine".

To me that is not quite a "conversation"...but it happens.
Is that the kind of thing you are talking about?
For sure not sitting down all comfy, and having a cozy chat!

 

[amadeus]

i mean "conversation" in the literal sense though, such as persons conduct, or even such as many believe, that when they "get to heaven" they might ask for and get answers to certain questions directly, etc.

For me even the word literal too often conveys the wrong meaning. To me literal means "exactly so", or the material thing as opposed to the shadow when the material thing blocks light. To me the spiritual is real as the shadow is real but either one of them or both of them may also be literal.

Are you meaning what I might call material? But when it relates to a conversation I am not so sure unless the vibration of air by sound would be considered material. I guess they would. Communication is doubtlessly frequently a problem, isn't it? If both of us could communicate by telepathy, would that solve the communication problem...?

God gave of evidence of the communication problem in Genesis 11 and in James 3.

Yet you are still speaking of conversation between a spirit or Spirit and a physical being such as carnal man. Maybe you are still going to need to clarify a bit so I understand exactly what you are asking. I guess that I have muddled the issue and confused myself.

 

[amadeus]

Don't we meet that every day...even on this site...I am often conscious that I am doing just that.

Sometimes I wonder if I am even conscious? Or it could be that I am and it is everyone else that are unconscious?

 

[Helen]

Haha!! Agree

 

[Nancy]

Sometimes I wonder if I am even conscious? Or it could be that I am and it is everyone else that are unconscious?

 

[Mjh29]

Then how do you explain verse 31? Fulfilled already?

All God's People Will Prophesy (excerpt from John Piper)
Joel goes on to say that when God makes himself known and felt in people's lives, this can manifest itself in three ways: they may dream dreams, see visions, and prophesy (Joel 2:28). What a person dreams about is a sign of what his mind is saturated with. What looms up in his mind's eye while strolling alone signals whether he is soaked in God. And you can usually tell whether a person has been drenched with the Spirit by whether his mouth is given to declaring the excellencies of God. When God almighty pours himself into an individual, the inner life is changed; it is filled with God. And since the mouth is simply the pressure valve of the inner life, when the inner life is full of God, the mouth prophesies.

We must not think of prophecy mainly as prediction, though it is true that those who are closest to God will know best what he is likely to do next. Nor should we think of it as the fulfillment of a special office. Prophecy, as it is used here I think, is primarily verbalizing the great things you have seen of God for the sake of "upbuilding and encouragement and consolation," as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:3. Joel is not trying to get us excited that we will all one day be able to know the future before it happens (there is nothing especially holy about that). He is looking to a day when men and women everywhere will be so filled with God that they catch visions of him in the daytime, dream about him at night, and speak of him continually with their mouths. The best evidence for this is that when in fact the Spirit was poured out like this at Pentecost, the result was that those filled with the Spirit "spoke the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:11). The miracle of "tongues" enabled all to understand, but the important thing is what they said. Tongues is just one variety of prophetic speech. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: your sons and daughters will prophesy.

 

[Hidden In Him]

All God's People Will Prophesy (excerpt from John Piper)
Joel goes on to say that when God makes himself known and felt in people's lives, this can manifest itself in three ways: they may dream dreams, see visions, and prophesy (Joel 2:28). What a person dreams about is a sign of what his mind is saturated with. What looms up in his mind's eye while strolling alone signals whether he is soaked in God. And you can usually tell whether a person has been drenched with the Spirit by whether his mouth is given to declaring the excellencies of God. When God almighty pours himself into an individual, the inner life is changed; it is filled with God. And since the mouth is simply the pressure valve of the inner life, when the inner life is full of God, the mouth prophesies.

We must not think of prophecy mainly as prediction, though it is true that those who are closest to God will know best what he is likely to do next. Nor should we think of it as the fulfillment of a special office. Prophecy, as it is used here I think, is primarily verbalizing the great things you have seen of God for the sake of "upbuilding and encouragement and consolation," as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:3. Joel is not trying to get us excited that we will all one day be able to know the future before it happens (there is nothing especially holy about that). He is looking to a day when men and women everywhere will be so filled with God that they catch visions of him in the daytime, dream about him at night, and speak of him continually with their mouths. The best evidence for this is that when in fact the Spirit was poured out like this at Pentecost, the result was that those filled with the Spirit "spoke the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:11). The miracle of "tongues" enabled all to understand, but the important thing is what they said. Tongues is just one variety of prophetic speech. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Without wanting to sound disparaging, this is a typical traditionalist way of dismissing genuine supernatural gifts. It justifies a form of godliness that denies the power thereof that was originally inherent in it. It borders on Cessationism, yet is more deceitful, in that it attempts to molify concerns of those who have questions about it while in reality dismissing them.

So he is making the argument that true NT "prophecy" is no longer predictive but simply exhortation and encouragement now, yet he probably also attests that numerous OT prophecies predicted the coming of Christ. It's hypocritical. He can believe encouragement is now held in higher regard than genuine prophetic utterance all he wants to. I regard it as a religious excuse for weak faith, and not walking close enough to God to know any better.

 

[bbyrd009]

For me even the word literal too often conveys the wrong meaning. To me literal means "exactly so", or the material thing as opposed to the shadow when the material thing blocks light. To me the spiritual is real as the shadow is real but either one of them or both of them may also be literal.

Are you meaning what I might call material? But when it relates to a conversation I am not so sure unless the vibration of air by sound would be considered material. I guess they would. Communication is doubtlessly frequently a problem, isn't it? If both of us could communicate by telepathy, would that solve the communication problem...?

God gave of evidence of the communication problem in Genesis 11 and in James 3.

Yet you are still speaking of conversation between a spirit or Spirit and a physical being such as carnal man. Maybe you are still going to need to clarify a bit so I understand exactly what you are asking. I guess that I have muddled the issue and confused myself.

well imo you didn't do that, but just like every other term i guess, we mean diff things when we say "spirit" right. I might mean "angel," and i might mean "angry." And as believers we have been given the impression that the Holy Spirit--or any other spirit--has some properties that Angry doesn't, and Scripture even "helps" here bc it personifies angels.

 

[bbyrd009]

Prophecy, as it is used here I think, is primarily verbalizing the great things you have seen of God for the sake of "upbuilding and encouragement and consolation," as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:3.

interesting how the v contrasts with the "prophecy" recorded in the Bible imo; i'm at a loss to come up with a single prophecy that does any of those things, at least functionally? By that i mean that we certainly have "prophecies" like "if you do _____, it will go well for you," but "prophecy" in Scripture most often infers "doom" to us, it seems to me. Imo Paul is using a little psychology there, or being facetious in a sense, to contrast what prophecy is v what it should be or something.

And even the prophecies that might seem to be uplifting, say "Jesus is returning" perhaps, are contrasted in other passages, where say "the Day of the Lord" is illustrated as...a pretty unpleasant day, let's say, and a little more digging reveals that Jesus is not returning at all, and this "returning" cannot be Quoted anywhere, not Matthew 24, and certainly not in any of those links, at least on page one; you might get to some truth by about page 4 maybe lol.

 

[bbyrd009]

note Isaiah 24:21 misquoted in link 2, i see that one a lot,
"Isaiah 24:21-23 — When the Messiah returns,"

nope. And see this is supposed to i guess be a "prophecy" right.

So don't get me wrong, i love Paul's def of "prophecy,"
but he is strictly poking fun at us, and imo being misunderstood

 

[lforrest]

note Isaiah 24:21 misquoted in link 2, i see that one a lot,
"Isaiah 24:21-23 — When the Messiah returns,"

nope. And see this is supposed to i guess be a "prophecy" right.

So don't get me wrong, i love Paul's def of "prophecy,"
but he is strictly poking fun at us, and imo being misunderstood

I think there are two perspectives for prophecy. There is one from Inside God's will and one from outside. From outside they will mostly be negative. But from inside positive.

 

[amadeus]

well imo you didn't do that, but just like every other term i guess, we mean diff things when we say "spirit" right. I might mean "angel," and i might mean "angry." And as believers we have been given the impression that the Holy Spirit--or any other spirit--has some properties that Angry doesn't, and Scripture even "helps" here bc it personifies angels.

You understand then why I had difficulty answering your question about a conversation between a man of flesh [carnal man?] and a spiritual or Spiritual being. God is always speaking or He has already spoke it all, but we can listen and hear now with the right ears if we are paying attention. When we are conversing or speaking with another carnal man how well do we communicate with regard to the things of God? As we see on this forum, sometimes there is a real lack of communication.

It comes back to what Paul wrote about only God giving the "increase". Communication between two should be a two way street, but we know from experience that it too often is not. Someone who really has God in him and is yielding to God may speak the right words, but whether or not the supposed hearer will hear with understanding God's message depends on where that person is with God. Is it different with a spiritual or Spiritual being? I probably depends upon whether is "S" or "s" if we have same understanding as to the difference the two.

 

[bbyrd009]

I think there are two perspectives for prophecy. There is one from Inside God's will and one from outside. From outside they will mostly be negative. But from inside positive.

so in your opinion is Scripture just being contrary, presenting us with a perception of Prophecy as "Doom," or is it just being misinterpreted, or what? Hard to deny that the Bible seems to repeatedly present prophecy as foretelling disaster?

 

[bbyrd009]

Is it different with a spiritual or Spiritual being? I probably depends upon whether is "S" or "s" if we have same understanding as to the difference the two.

tempting to think that maybe, but imo neither one is a soul, nor Soul, like we like to imagine. Spirits are "being" in a sense, bc they are manifested, they do exist, but imo any personification of them is strictly for purposes of illustration, or to hide truth from the wise. Even the Holy Spirit cannot speak for "Himself," right. This is a profound admission imo; there is no "body" there iow. A S/spirit cannot make a decision, or have an opinion, or a change of "mind." Or any desire, or remorse. etc