In <<Revelation>> we encounter something called "the wrath of the lamb", which should immediately clue us in that something does not compute; that this image involves an interior meaning as distinct from its nonsensical letter ( 6:16). Obviously lambs are not known for their wrath, making this verse one of those which, in addition to communicating other meanings, also provides a clue for the alert as to the existence of a special category of verses. This category involves what the Writings call fallacies of the senses, such as the imputation to God of wrath or of casting someone into Hell. Let us consider another verse which follows exactly the same procedure.
In <<Jeremiah>> we read, "Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?" (7:19) Here the Lord specifically highlights the fallacy of the senses which imputes wrath to Himself, being also that lamb in <<Revelation>>. Their "confusion... of faces" involves falsity in interiors, for the interior meaning of "face" involves precisely such (AC4299) The text certainly implies the wrath of humankind rather than the wrath of God; and indeed in <<Apocalypse Revealed>> "we find anger and wrath attributed to God, even though no anger or wrath exists in Jehovah, but is found in man directed at Him (673).
Numerous encounters with non-Christians over the years have confirmed that some people do not just dislike Jesus Christ but actively go into a rage at the mention of Him. Precisely the absence of Jesus from their hearts invites this bondage of rage and its associated falsity, for as we read in <<Apocalypse Revealed>>, "they who are in falsity are in wrath" (AR635). It may well be wondered why the Lord should ask the rhetorical question "Do they provoke me to anger?" in one verse and then immediately refer to "mine anger and my fury" in the very next (Jeremiah 7:19-20). He does this because "to speak otherwise than man apprehends is to sow seed in water" (SE2230).
That would be why <<Genesis>> reads, "And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou?", even as it later says of Sodom, "I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it" (Genesis 3:9; 18:21). We know of course that our omniscient Creator neither needs to ask Adam a question nor physically to inspect Sodom. Solomon similarly states, and quite rightly, "the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded" yet continues to speak as though it were indeed the case that the Lord would dwell there as a human might, following standard Biblical procedure (1 Kings 8:27).
As to the Divine Human, "who is the image of the invisible God", He represents among so many other things the ultimate expression of our need for comprehensible, approachable, human language about spiritual matters (Colossians 1:15). When the people say to Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die", being discouraged by among other things "the lightings" and "the mountain smoking", they give voice to this need (Exodus 20:19). Additionally, there is the delicate matter that those present with "the mountain smoking" were themselves in "thick darkness", this being their not perceiving "God's truth" (Exodus 20:21; AC8928).
Those who saw thick darkness instead of God's truth, seeing also "the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking", quite naturally "removed, and stood afar off", being more in a state to receive fallacies of the senses such as the so-called God of wrath than to accept the truth that "God is love" (Exodus 20:18; 1 John 4:16). Such people naturally need a human to "speak... with us", to gradually inculcate good behaviour and sound understanding, the God Man upon whom we can look and live, having "seen the Father" (John 14:9). Now, 3-person Trinitarians will frequently make much of Jesus praying to the Father.
They reply to our claim that Jesus and the Father are one, just as Jesus Himself states, as though the concept that Jesus might pray to Himself were obviously absurd (John 10:30). Of course, the fact that such an objection would ever be made is very revealing of two things, one about the Bible and one about Jesus. It indicates that those who make the objection do not recognise a distinct category of Bible verses having to do specifically with fallacies of the senses. It also indicates that they do not know something important to remember about Jesus: He alternated between states of glorification and humiliation, much as we might have good days and bad.
As Jesus Himself states, "It is enough for the disciple to be as his master", an indication that just such good days and bad, spiritually speaking, necessarily follow from our being disciples (Matthew 10:24). And being disciples, we should not be surprised "concerning the fiery trial which is to try you", being of course the temptations which tempted Jesus the same as they tempt us (1 Peter 4:12; Hebrews 4:15). In Jesus' case, the temptations -- which took place much of His life from wilderness to Gethsemane -- involved a state of humiliation; and those junctures when He referred to Himself and the Father as "one" involved a state of glorification (Lord 59; John 10:30).
As we read in <<Secrets of Heaven>>, "The temptations in which a man overcomes are attended with a belief that all others are more worthy than himself, and that he is infernal rather than heavenly"; in other words, such temptations involve just such a state of humiliation as has been predicated of Jesus (AC2273:2). Small wonder, then, that Jesus refers to "the poor in spirit" as "blessed"; for they can scarcely expect the blessing of Heaven as opposed to the curse of Hell without such; it is after all those who "mourn" who can be "comforted", and those who are "meek" who "inherit the earth", that is go on to enjoy eternal life in Heaven (Matthew 5:3-5).
He who "is meek and lowly in heart" will certainly "draw nigh unto them that are of a broken heart", whereas the same God -- showing "Himself froward to the froward" -- "knoweth... the proud... afar off"; the fact that the children of Israel "removed, and stood afar off" is not coincidental but the exact same situation, for they who perceived darkness were in evil, and pride is of course evil (Matthew 11:29; Psalms 34:18; Psalms 138:6; Exodus 20:18). But those who abandon the sugar rush of pride may be sure that the "the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them" and will lovingly supply a quiet confidence in its place, a New Man for an Old (Luke 9:56; Ephesians 4:22-24).
In sum, the language of the Bible -- by accommodating fallacies of the senses and singling out the very human thus visualisable, approachable diagram of Jesus Himself -- has been carefully modulated so that real people can get to know and apply the Word in everyday life. We who are bound in time and space and human falsity and evil have been given a spiritual textbook which speaks to this gritty reality; and His Divine Human represents the best expression of this provision for our frail humanity of all. For He is designed to be comprehensible to minds bound by fallacies of the senses, for we who can at best do good as if of ourselves. May we even do so.
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment