Are You A Presbyterian?

SUN., APR. 9, 1995, 5:50 AM
FARM, STUDY

If this were to be a short Teaching, I’d just say Yes. However, after your reading of The Layman last evening, you need more encouragement and reassurance than a terse Yes. I have called you to be who you are, and one part of that identification is… Presbyterian. You are ordained as an Elder, interestingly, if you remember, at the same time as John Jenks, one of the staunchest of the Laymen. Yours is a different path, but I still call it Presbyterian. And now I, the Holy Spirit, will elaborate, in a windy, pre-dawn time. (And you didn’t even need the alarm!)

The strong emphasis of this “Layman’s path” is that the Word is that which is written as Holy Scripture. Jesus Christ is revealed in these Scriptures (even the Old Testament ones), and Jesus Christ is the essence of the Presbyterian doctrine. The fundamental base is Scripture, and this must be interpreted in a rather singular, consistent way.

I call you a mystic, in the Reformed tradition. This means, in your case, that you hear directly from Me, the Holy Spirit, and to you I give some insights that are not completely consistent with all Scriptures. As God Almighty and Father, and as Jesus Christ I am with you here in 1995, in a culture that is modern beyond any visions of Biblical prophets. The assumptions are huge… those that say I am in favor of all that has been developed to make this modern age… in medicine, in transportation, communications, and general affluence in living. I am not a capitalist. I am not a Republican. And I am not the opposites of these, either. I am Spirit, the Ultimate reality.

I speak to you directly, and this make you odd in a culture that would rather stick to “approved” revelations. Do I tell you of absolutes. Yes, a few, but you wouldn’t have the culture you have now if you had, as a nation, adhered to the absolute. Thou shalt not kill. You, as a culture, continue to develop ever-new weapons with which to kill people who threaten you, even if it means going to a Middle Eastern desert or a Vietnamese jungle.

In relation to abortion, a kind of killing that the Laymen disapprove, I tell you that I am not the direct originator of biological life. I have designed and I sustain a “system” of reproduction, which I let operate, “naturally.” The soul, the spirit that I give, rarely enters the fetus until near the time of birth (sometimes after), so abortion is the killing of a potential human, but not yet an actual human soul. The Scriptures don’t say this, but they don’t say that the soul “automatically” is in the embryo, from conception. It may be, when a pregnancy is planned, and the conception is one of strong love.

You are right in judging that if there is too much stress on each life being wholly Mine, from conception (which would make abortion a real sin), then each life is wholly Mine until its end, and any medical interventions would be the same sort of sin. There is nothing in Scripture to approve of coronary by-pass operations, removal of the prostate, radiation and chemotherapy, and… Don’t these work against the life that is Mine to give… and to take? Ah, Me…