Published 2 years, 7 months agoOn New Year’s Day, in a small studio deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I commenced 2006 with my third spiritual Journey. Earlier that morning I had spoken to my Friends Meeting about my hopes and fears for the Journey, and traveled north bearing good wishes, deep ministry, and the knowledge that my community would be holding me in the Light that day.
Outside the studio the redwood forest alternately murmured and shouted sibilantly of rain and wind; inside, the light of two candles animated the masks on the walls to uneasy life. There was no power, so the music that would have been my road was silent. Instead, the shaman—such I must call him, although he has no animal totem that I know of—sang to me in Hebrew, ancient prayers of a faith forged in the searing deserts of the Middle East.
Outward, the sibilance of wind and rain, inward, the music of the spheres. As the Journey took me farther up and further in, I began to mutter: “Ha-Shem Tov, Ha-Shem Tov,” the phrase devout Jews use to avoid speaking the sacred Name of God: “The Blessed Name.” For I was coming into the presence of the Holy, and in all traditions, the Holy Name is ineffable.
Now, as fellow travelers on this path will know, there comes a time in the Journey when the lid comes off the universe. One feels as though one’s mundane life has been spent at the bottom of an abyssal deep: dark, silent, and oppressive. Then, suddenly, the weight is lifted, the world opens up, and one stands upon a mountain top, not breathing in so much as pervaded by an aery substance less resistant and more nourishing than one’s accustomed atmosphere, looking up into Light beyond Light.
Then I saw Ha-Shem enthroned in Light and cried out Sh’ma Ysrael Adonai elohenu Adonai echad! Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One! For although I stood in those regions where there is neither Jew nor Christian nor any other religious distinction, the Galilean peasant who is the focus and meaning of my faith lived and died a faithful Jew, the shaman’s Hebrew prayers were in my ears, and it was the language in which my prayer of awe came most naturally.
Awe…and agony.
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Hopefully, the person in this story will be led to the One True God by acceptance of the Son. Jesus said He was the only Way. Something to think about.
Christian Quakers are not so much concerned about what Jesus “said” in the Scriptures as what he says in our hearts. For us, the Second Coming is right now: Jesus Christ has come to teach his people himself. The Inward Light, the Christ, is in all human beings, and will lead them to all Truth if they but listen to its urgings.
In his contentions with the Puritans who, like many modern Christians, exalted Scripture to a primacy it does not deserve, George Fox was moved to declare:
“…that the holy Scriptures were given forth by the Spirit of God; and that all people must come to the Spirit of God in themselves in order to know God and Christ, of whom the prophets and apostles learnt: and that by that same Spirit all men might know the holy Scriptures. For as the Spirit of God was in them that gave forth the Scriptures, so the same Spirit must be in all them that come to understand the Scriptures. By this Spirit they might have fellowship with the Father, with the Son, with the Scriptures, and with one another: and without this Spirit they can know neither God, Christ, nor the Scriptures, nor have a right fellowship one with another.”
Christ isn’t in all of us. It is only by Faith in Christ’s death and resurrection and believing that Jesus Christ is God that one has Christ in our hearts. “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has risen from the dead you shall be saved.” Scripture is Word of God. God breathed the Word of God in John 1:1. However, it is by the Spirits prompting from the outside to the unbeliever and Spirits prompting in the inside for the believer that one understands the Scripture. It also is a matter of whether or not we are “accurately dividing the Word of God.” Many people believe certain things that are inconsistent with what God says or what the spirit says (which I feel is consistent with the Word of God). This doesn’t place a greater emphesis on the Word but that when God says something He is consistent with what He says and the God as Trinity operates consistent with that and is soverign in all of His dealings with humankind for a personal relationship available to all but actualized by those who accept Christ by Faith in Him alone.
dh–with all due respect, you’re quite wrong. John says very clearly in the 9th verse of his gospel that “the light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.” He doesn’t say “that enlightens every man who believes in Christ.”
I won’t enter into further argument with you, but if you want to know what Christian Quakers believe, and the scriptural warrant for it, I commend to you Robert Barclay’s An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, which can be found online here.