Walt wrote:Is the Ruach Qodesh actually active in individuals lives?
Leading and directing and teaching - guiding into Truth - empowering Yah's children?
Or is this concept a christian religious myth?
Observationally I have to say She isn't
Thank you Walt for starting this thread!
This is the only thread along these lines that I've found on this forum, and I am particularly excited to participate in discussing the topic you introduced (which means I may ramble and rant and generally carry on for much longer than I could get away with in a normal non-online conversation -- you've all been warned!).
Here's my response to this first part of your post. In my experience...
(1) Yes, the Ruach Qodesh
is actually active in individuals' lives.
Yes, leading and directing and teaching them.
Yes, guiding them into Truth.
Yes, empowering Yah's children.
Maybe not very many people total, but it is happening in the world today.
(2) No, this concept is not a christian religious myth.
Well, it's probably a myth among christians, but it isn't completely a myth when you include all of us "non-christians" who nevertheless love Yahuwah and seek to know him. This "actual involvement of the Spirit in the lives of individuals" is happening on at least a small scale that I know about.
My further (unsolicited) thoughts on all of this are as follows:
Anything of significant value is counterfeited -- whether paper money or designer goods or spiritual things. Since one's individual relationship with the Spirit is of great value, of course the enemy would seek to counterfeit it.
Counterfeiting something (1) rips people off, (2) creates confusion, and (3) ultimately threatens the acceptance of the original (genuine) article.
For example, if Germany was flooded with counterfeit Euro bills, individuals and small businesses (and anyone without stringent counterfeit measures already in place) would lose millions -- that is, assuming the banks caught the fake bills and wouldn't accept them in the deposits. Next, individuals, businesses and banks would be extremely wary of accepting bills in those denominations, and may stop accepting cash altogether. Ultimately, everyone's confidence would be degraded, and the general acceptance of cash may be threatened. And the problem would quickly spread to all the rest of Europe, since nowadays a common currency is shared between all the member-states. Was the problem anything to do with government-issued money? No, it was the counterfeiters who caused the problem.
I believe this has been the enemy's strategy behind introducing / promoting false spiritual experiences (that are falsely attributed to the Ruach Qodesh), and also the strategy behind introducing / promoting the loose use of the phrase "the Spirit told me."
I'm certain that at least a few thousand people in the world today
do experience the Set-Apart Spirit's genuine involvement in their lives (in all the ways you described), but that number is probably 1:1000 smaller than the multitudes of christians in churches who experience something counterfeit and mistake it for the Set-Apart Spirit.
If I'm doing the maths correctly, even a number as large as one million people (in the world today having an active relationship with Yahuwah) is less than one-fiftieth of one percent of the world's population. That would be a "small minority of people" (remnant) if there ever was one. What's the likelihood of knowing many of those people (who are probably scattered all around the world, and mostly separated from each other), without being specifically led by Yahuwah to the cave where a group of them is hiding out? It
would seem like a myth that such people exist if one doesn't know about them!
To continue with the counterfeit explanation: the charismatic church gives us some great examples of legitimate spiritual experiences that are nonetheless counterfeit. That is to say, those experiences do not have their origin in the Ruach Qodesh, but are still legitimately "spiritual" -- having their source in an unclean spirit. Examples would be roaring like a lion, rolling around in hysterical laughter, and most all of the speaking in tongues that goes on in that church. I'm not at all inclined to write off such experiences as merely psychologically-induced. All the stories I've read or have heard first-hand (or have seen first-hand) indicate a spirit of some kind was involved -- it's just a question of which one!
Counterfeit Ruach Qodesh experiences throughout the centuries, combined with loose use of "the Spirit told me" have definitely ripped people off, created confusion (on which experiences are genuine), and have threatened the acceptance of an individual having a genuine experience with the Set-Apart Spirit (is a genuine experience even possible, or should we limit the operation of the Spirit to something less?).
If you happened to read my initial post to this forum (in the "hello my name is" thread, under this same "Fellowship" category), I shared that my experience has been "walking with the Ruach Qodesh" for over sixteeen years. So, I myself am at least one example of a person who has experienced (a) the Spirit being active in my life, (b) the Spirit leading and directing and teaching me, (c) the Spirit guiding me into Truth, and (d) the Spirit empowering me. To me it is not at all a myth. I could tell you stories upon stories for each of those activities in my own individual life...
But attached to me (friends and relatives) are others who also have a similar experience to mine. I currently know at least ten others who experience this close, individualized attention from the Spirit, and who "hear" her speak to them in the same way I descibed in the "hello my name is" thread (which is to say, as an internal voice). I've also known a few other people (years ago, and with whom I'm no longer in contact) for whom such an experience was normative, so we are getting close to fifteen. If I wrack my brain, I might be able to think of others. The point is that this is a statistically significant group. If you heard some of the stories, they would be even more significant. I've heard (and even experienced first-hand) a lot of these people's stories, and have seen the evidence of the Spirit's direct personal involvement in their lives -- not something to dismiss easily.
Now, if I loosened up your idealized (high) level of active involvement -- maybe stretching it out to include people's experiences with
any of those referenced activities, rather than all of them at once -- I could add a lot more people (maybe on the order of fifty more) who could contribute credible stories of individual attention from Yahuwah himself. Of course, most of these single-experience type stories are told as testimonies of miraculous interventions, rather than as normative experiences. But the evidence would be that lots of people have such stories of involvement on some level at least. And cumulatively they testify to an active and present-day involvement of the Set-Apart Spirit in our collective lives.
So, basically my response is that such an ideal as you described is not only
possible, but is also possibly
normative for those who can "find" it. But such an ideal is most certainly
not normative for the millions of religious christians (and catholics and orthodox christians) who do not know Yahweh / Yahushua and for whom their only connection to "the man behind the scriptures" is the gospel of Paul -- which isn't a connection at all -- but you most certainly already knew that. =) You're on this forum, after all!
Walt wrote:Maybe Yahuweh isn't close and personal as we desire - but it is a distant, observational relationship He maintains
Reminds me of a song I heard once back in the 90's: "God is watching us... from a distance." Scripture definitely paints a picture of a more active involvement in the affairs of men than that.
It's easy to reach conclusions based on limited evidence, and to be discouraged that something isn't happening at all, if we aren't seeing it. But there are caves in various places, with people having "set apart" experiences.
Walt wrote:Just look at YY
Both the co-authors (Yada and Ken) assert that they are led by Yah - but many of their conclusions are diametrically opposed to each other (and this can create confusion in those seeking Truth)
Both can't be correct - where is the Ruach Qodesh in this???
If church is our reference point, then it's no surprise that observationally we wouldn't be able to see anything that would suggest it's not a myth. We won't find such an involvement there. People in church aren't following Yahuwah (and by extension aren't experiencing his Ruach Qodesh)-- except for the very rare person who either (a) hasn't been led to leave Babylon yet, or (b) has been led to go back into the churches to witness to people about the Truth. (I've been in both (a) and (b), and let me tell you it is slim pickings, trying to talk to that "class" of people -- ie. religious people -- about the Truth.)
You cite the writers of Yada Yahweh as disagreeing, so maybe
your reference point is more the community of "non-christians" here on this forum and elsewhere (you guys like being called "non-christians"? it's kinda fun, right?), or maybe it's those people you see as leaders? If that's the case, my feedback remains the same. It's possible for those who "find" it (usually after seeking for it).
Just because a man writes something deeply insightful about one thing, doesn't mean he is automatically right about every other thing he ever writes about. Using myself as an example, I say that I have an intimate relationship with Yahuwah via his Spirit (for over sixteen years), and yet probably every post I've made so far on this forum, I've had to go back and edit to improve my communication.
Where's the Spirit in this? After last edit, maybe up to 85%. Early versions maybe as little as 50%.
If I am generally "led" to talk to somebody about something (or generally to write a book about something), that doesn't mean
every word out of my mouth is going to be correct (or even make sense). Maybe some of us
are getting a leading, and even some specific details here and there along the way, but we aren't following as closely in all the other details as we should be (and thus are making the mistakes / creating the confusion). That's one possible explanation. Another explanation could be that the process of considering the concept of "Yada Yahweh" in great detail (as the authors had to do in order to even write the book) was as much the point of the Spirit leading them to write the book, as was our reading it. In other words, the perfection of the message was less important to her (Ruach Qodesh) than the concept of "relationally knowing Yahweh" being considered by all of us.
I'm not as familiar with the writings of both men as you (and probably everyone else on this forum) are, so I'm not sure whether Yada and Ken claim specifically that the Spirit has revealed diametrically opposed viewpoints to each of them separately, or whether they just generally claim some type of leading in what they generally write about, but then end up disagreeing sometimes. If you think it's worth elaborating on, I'd be interested in some examples of such disagreements.
Q
Edited by user Friday, September 17, 2010 1:17:21 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified