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WINDOWS of REVELATION
For about eight years I have been fooling around with computers,
yet just a few days ago I learned something very important while
working with a computer consultant I know.
He was running my computer remotely from his office in Austin,
Texas. He created a file for me and named it. What I could not
follow was how he moved the file and suddenly it showed up in
the “Microsoft Word” window. So I asked “how
did you get that file into the “Word Program”? He
answered, it is not in “Word”, it is on your hard
drive” I said, “no, I saw it in “Word”.
He said no, you saw it through “Word”, the file is
stored on your hard disk”. This was a revelation to me!
Right up to that very moment I sincerely believed that everything
that I had written in Microsoft Word was somehow stored in this
“Program” called Word. Likewise I believed anything
I had created using the “Word Pad” program was stored
in it. There was a fundamental flaw in my very basic comprehension
of what goes on in a computer when you store data. I thought the
program I used to write something somehow kept it in it's own
"memory", independent of any other program. To me, these
separate programs appeared to each have their own independent
"storage space" for files.
What I didn't realize was that data is actually saved to the
computer's hard disk through whatever program is used to create
the content (Word, WordPad or whatever). Now, to those of you
who are "Computerites", you will simply say, “of
course, what’s the big deal”. Well the big deal is
this!
Did you ever wonder why wonderfully earnest and sincere people
could look into the same Holy Bible and come up with so many different
concepts of what God said. Well, it all became very clear to me
when I realized that God did not write His revelation in our Credo’s,
philosophies, or ideologies. But Holy men of old spoke as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit. We are programmed to believe that
all we need to know about God we can find looking through our
window:
There you have it, each of us looking through our own window and
thoroughly convinced that the truth is in our window and wondering
why everyone else can’t see it. When all the time our window
is a perceptual distortion of the truth limited by our own empiricism.
If we had been born and brought up with another frame of reference
(denominational window), we would be just as certain that it was
all the truth.
Is there then no truth? Or, even if truth is admitted, is there
no way to find it? Take heart, Our God has not left us destitute
of truth, any more than He has left us comfortless. Before He
suffered He told his disciples I will not leave you comfortless,
I will come to you. That same evening He told them He was the
Way, the Truth, and the Life. He said “you shall know the
Truth and the Truth shall make you free. Before the night is out
then Jesus prays, “Sanctify them through the Truth, thy
Word is Truth”. The psalmist cries out “”Forever
O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Jesus says, “the
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life”.
Maybe we have been looking for the living Word among the deadness
of the letter.
If we really believe that Jesus is “the Word” then
it is really Him who we should be looking for and in finding Him
we will find “the Truth”. And remember He has ascended
on high.
Perhaps instead of vying for our perspectives we should lift
our eyes toward heaven and align ourselves properly with Mal.
3:10 and let God “open the windows of heaven” to us
all. Why? So we can see Jesus.
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Cor. 3:18
Our first concern is not the right doctrine, or the right rules,
or the right behavior, what we really need is the right image
and likeness. The incontrovertible purpose of God’s deliberate
counsel with His own will from the beginning was “Let us
make man in our image and likeness”.
Genesis 1:26, Ephesians 1:11.
So He started the work with the first Adam, and He is finishing
it in the last Adam. The corporate Man.
Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with
joy, For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until
now; Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun
a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
Phillipians 1:4-6
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which
is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man
is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is
the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we
have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image
of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit
incorruption.1 Cor.15:46-50
If we think that all of God’s truth is contained in “our”
frame of reference we limit God to the size of our revelation.
God is much larger than any one denomination’s concept of
Him. What we see of God through our Church’s description
of Him is only part of what he reveals Himself to be in the Holy
Scripture. Let us then allow God to show Himself to us through
the eyes of all who call on the name of Jesus Christ.
Each of the Churches are like (operating systems) through which
we have access to God, but His full revelation is written in His
Holy Scriptures, (Hard drive).
“Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal
life: and they are they which testify of me”. John 5:39
The Body of Christ is comprised of more than any one member.
-bjv
