The influence of the Hegelian Dialectic in the Christian Community.
The Rise of the Inflexible Christian Conservatives.
MattS AMTM February 2019 Part 23 (heresy and false teachings)
I have been aware for some time now, of a group of Christians who sit on the periphery of the online Christian community. When I say “periphery”, I mean more accurately that “they” sit to one side of the Christian community. I have always intended to write about “them” at some stage, as they have become the “polar” opposite of movements like the “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR for short). I am choosing my words carefully here as I have no desire to single out groups, individuals or organisations that sit near to these groups. All sounds very cryptic does it not??
This article is in a sense an unintended continuation of my last article, and in my opinion, a warning or a caution, until I am able to “get all my ducks in a row” on this matter. What I am seeing is yet another split or breaking away (albeit gradual) within Christendom. Satan is thoroughly enjoying this stuff as he engineers it, and then drops in a well timed “chaos” bomb.
Who are “they/them”?
Let me be a little more specific. “they/them” are groups, organisations, individuals and ministries that have probably started out with good intentions but have become super critical, and appear to be adopting extremely narrow views on all things Biblical and spiritual. They are rigid, inflexible and have to be right, and if I’m honest, I would say that is me on a bad day. “They” seem to be extending their influence to what I call “good but conservative folk”. These groups will often have “cessationist” theology, but not always. They will sometimes have good academic credentials, but not always. What I see most often now is a growing rigid and inflexible thinking that does not allow for “stuff that we just don’t understand“. These groups and individuals remind me of atheist scientists who rigidly refuse to consider that there is a God who created the universe, they are dogmatic in their attitudes, and hold fixed and firm in their beliefs, because they have done research and tested all the possibilities in their own thinking and of course that makes what they say, right. In my opinion, they are as rigid and inflexible as the New Apostolic Reformation folks are fast and loose. Yes, there are things that stand as the truth, things that you don’t mess with, like the Word of God for example, but we don’t “cherry pick” scripture to make it suit our needs.
I freely admit that I sit on the conservative side of things these days. Some years ago I went down paths on the lunatic fringe of the “Christian Truther” movement and got my fingers burned because I failed to discern and check things out. This led me to formulate a set of informal rules for myself as follows;
If an idea/piece of information is whacky/unbelievable and poorly executed without any factual basis, I will dismiss it out of hand.
If an idea/piece of information has some basis in fact(or scripture) but is not immediately provable, I will park it up in the “interesting but unproven” box, to be considered again in the light of new evidence.
If an idea/piece of information has a clear basis in scripture or provable fact (subject to good exegetical study of the scripture) I will accept it as truth unless someone can prove to me otherwise.
If an idea/piece of information/passage of scripture just makes no sense, and after careful research it still does not yield understanding, I place this in the “God will show me what this means when He is good and ready” box.
These rules have kept me safe as long as I adhere to them, they are not foolproof but they serve me well to remain open to ideas that do not fit inside a “rigid and inflexible” box. I have learned from reading the Bible, that there are scriptures that I do not understand and upon investigation, looking at a quite a few Bible commentaries, I realise that many others simply do not understand, but make it sound like they do (square pegs in round holes). This square peg WILL fit in this round hole!!
As are many other Christians, I am curious by nature, but I have learned that my curiosity needs to be tempered with caution and discernment. I also understand that there are folks out there who are fearful of stepping outside the box, they shun curiosity, they seem unable to see things in shades of grey, they only see black and white, correct and incorrect. If it sounds like I’m getting all fuzzy on you, that is not my intention. Yes there are things that are right, and things that are wrong. God is actually very clear about that in his word. Satan loves to make it all confused and chaotic.
However, the shades of grey I talk about are ideas or opinions that are shaped by our world view, by our culture, by our definition of things. I have learned that people can say a particular word or have a particular concept, but their definition of it is completely different to my own definition.
So, What has the “Hegelian Dialectic” got to do with this discussion?
I like to put a picture at the beginning of my articles, and I was fascinated by the result Google gave me when I asked for variations on “free images of two people bashing each other“. Things are just so PC nowadays, I had to do some bad image editing to get a picture of one caveman chasing another trying to bash him. That’s how I see the “Inflexible Christian Conservatives” (the name I have given this group). They have become no different, in my opinion, to the “Flat Earthers”. They (the ICC) will roll out any number of scriptures to prove that they are right, sometimes they may be right about things, sometimes may not. But they rigidly and inflexibly hold firm to their ideas without any latitude for grace or an admission of “I don’t understand this”.
The “Hegelian Dialectic” is a tool used by Satan to create chaos, it starts with a “Thesis”, which is an idea or situation that gives rise to an “Antithesis”which is a reaction to the thesis, this then allows for “Synthesis”or a solution to the chaos/animosity created. Phew!! Did you get that? By the way, this is a very simplistic view of the “Hegelian Dialectic”. However, it is interesting that the dictionary definition calls the “Synthesis”part of the “Hegelian Dialectic”a higher level of truth. As an example of the “Hegelian Dialectic”, in simple terms, just think Republicans vs. Democrats. Lots of reaction and chaos going on there!!
The statement re a higher level of truth is what leads me to draw comparisons between the “Inflexible Christian Conservatives” or (ICC for short) and the use of the “Hegelian Dialectic”. The ICC are at a polar opposite to the NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) and the ICC seem to maintain their own “higher level of truth”, based on their ability to prove things through scripture. That seems like a good position , right? Well, in my opinion, this may potentially set up the possibility of conflict for Christians over biblical ideas that are not altogether clear, or easily understood. There is now less grace with the ICC folk , there is no latitude for shades of grey that reside in the area of opinion, or with ideas that may not be wholly provable but have some merit. They don’t understand the concept of acknowledging an idea, but not fully accepting it as truth. They also do not understand “agreeing to disagree on ideas that may have “grey status”. They just seem to react.
If I was to ask Christians, “do you understand everything in the Bible?”, the vast majority would answer “no” (as in 99.9999999 %). I am one of those who would answer no, however I do the best I can to understand what the scriptures say without putting my own spin on it too much. Sometimes I do speculate or “put my own spin” on what I believe certain scriptures say, but I state that this is my speculation or opinion. It is not an inflexible position. If I am honest, I like to be right about things, I want to be right, I want to be on the side of right, I don’t want to be wrong, but I do get it wrong, my opinions can be wrong, I have a skewed view of the world that at times messes with my ability to see things clearly, that is why I always rely on the Bible to make sense of things, and it does. However, at times the Bible says things that I don’t understand and I am unable to find satisfactory answers from learned people on such matters. I have to put those things in the ” God will show me what this means when He is good and ready” box.
Satan is doing everything to separate and destroy genuine unity amongst Christians today, as stated in previous articles he is very clever at this, it is his outstanding and most infamous quality, Eve will testify to this followed closely by Adam. Satan’s ability to manipulate our thinking and outsmart us is beyond our human ability to manage, Satan is much smarter than we are, that is the way God made him and how we are as humans at this time. This is why we must allow God to have our backs at all times and stand firm in Him (James 4:7).
Satan is a schemer Ephesians 6:11, he will continue to scheme evil things until God stops him, and God will stop him. Satan loves to bring in divisive ideas like “we must be unified at all costs”. This of course simply allows those bringing in false ideas and heresies, to bash people into to accepting their false beliefs in the name of unity. Satan likes to bring division and disharmony into Christendom to render it ineffective, that is why I use the term “Hegelian Dialectic” as there appear to be elements of this at play here. Satan knows that God working through Christians, is the very thing that will reduce his ability to work effectively. We as Christians know Satan is there, we can warn others about Satan and stand against him, and we are called to do so in Ephesians 6.
It is my belief that we do not need to understand everything that is said in scripture, I believe that one day God will allow us to know these things, but there is some stuff which I believe we are just not ready to understand at this time. There are some strange things that happen in this world as we pass through. These things defy rational human explanation, but when placed through the lens of a supernatural account (The Bible), God’s word, stuff can start to make sense. I remember an event some years ago (vividly), where my family were having encounters with demonic entities, every member of the household experienced these entities, including the dog. They came out of nowhere and then stopped after about a week (after much prayer). I do not know to this day why they occurred, the house that we lived in was never a nice place to live, and there were other occult manifestations, there were odd things like an occult symbol that had been drawn on the back of the garage of this house by someone, the garage faced a nature reserve that may have been used for occult rituals. I do not know to this day that it was any of these other factors, but what I do know was the demonic manifestations were real. What I do know was that God intervened and the manifestations stopped interrupting and disturbing the family. Yes, other manifestations occurred after that, but they were sporadic and way less intense. Strange things that defy normal human experience happen to us, as Christians we know that we live in a supernatural world.
I have never had any manifestations on the same scale in other homes with the exception of having inadvertently accepted occult paraphernalia from a relative. God intervened, the paraphernalia was dealt with and the problem stopped.
There are Christians that would doubt my experience and call it a figment of an over active imagination. I know there are Christians who even doubt the existence of demons and avoid anything to do with deliverance of demonic spirits, however when reading the New Testament, Jesus regularly dealt with demonic spirits and sent them packing. God worked through the foundational apostles to do the same thing. There were those that were not qualified for this, and tried to imitate Gods work (the sons of Sceva) and paid a nasty price.
There are other scriptures in the Bible that seem unusual, and I accept that God does not dwell long on these things, He mentions them but does not make a big fuss about it, the Gospel message of salvation and restoration to God through His Son Jesus is far more important. Never the less, these scriptures are there and they bear some investigation. An example of this is the account of Genesis 6 where the sons of God came and took for themselves daughters of men, and the Nephilim were created as a result, Genesis 6. God does not dwell on this subject and I understand why, these creations and their fallen angelic fathers were evil. They fell (excuse the pun) outside the realm of normal angelic behaviour.
I saw an article written by a man known for his work on “The Coming Elite Technocracy”, this man withdrew as a speaker from a prophetic conference because one of the co-speakers held the belief that Genesis 6 speaks of fallen angels and the nephilim. That it was the nephilim that were most likely responsible for God destroying all breathing life upon the earth except for eight people, Noah and his family, is very possible, but not absolutely clear. Noah and his family were perfect, but not perfect (what does this mean), because Noah had a wee drinking problem from time to time. Here is the article in question, and I most certainly want readers to make up their own minds about this matter.
What concerned me about this article was the way that this man whose withdrawal from the conference was applauded at this website (a website that I have visited and used for reference material from time to time, and they do very good work). The article justified his withdrawal from the conference with much scripture and calling the beliefs around the Nephilim and UFO’s etc as science fiction fantasy. However, the man did ask some good questions around this topic in his rationale for withdrawing from the conference, and yes, these are questions that I have asked myself. However, he then went on to try to use scripture to justify his position. I believe he should have said, “I don’t understand this stuff”. Rather than rebuff his article and some of the issues that come from it (in my opinion), I will try to tease out some of the reasons why we need to be more careful in the way we deal with scripture by me asking you a whole lot of questions.
I have looked at this whole area of scripture (Genesis 6) and held it in check until I was able to look more closely at the details and translations of scripture, not only that, I was finding scriptures throughout the Old Testament, and some New Testament in my regular readings that supported the idea of the Nephilim and fallen angels.
So, here are some questions for you that I am “not” going to provide links for, you can get this information for yourself. Bear in mind that there may not be readily available answers to these questions, you may want to respond with an “I don’t know”. If you get stuck send me a message through the AMTM message facility, but be prepared for me to be unable to answer your question, I will however, do my best though, and there may be some speculation coming from me! If you think I’m being silly here, I’m not. Although, any silly time wasting questions, for example, dickering over the meaning of words, rude one-upmanship etc, will be treated with the contempt they deserve, a non response. The questions are as follows;
– Who was Og of Bashan and why was he the last of his kind? What was Og of Bashan?
– How tall was Og of Bashan and how long was his bed frame?
– Why were the spies who were sent into the “Promised Land” so afraid, why did they regard themselves as “grasshoppers”? (no kung fu jokes please)
– Why were Joshua and Caleb so optimistic about taking the promised land?
– Why did God ask that certain tribes of Canaanites down to their animals be wiped out to the last? What was the consequence for the Israelites in failing to do this, clue (the book of Esther)
– Is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of New Teastament?
– Who was Nimrod and why and how did he become gibborim?
– What is gibborim?
– Who was the “giant man” who had a fatal encounter with David, and what was the nationality of this giant man? How many giant brothers did he have?
– Which son of Noah spawned the Canaanite line (and also the Philistines) and why does this line seem to have so many groups that were the enemies of the Israel?
– Did Satan have an agenda to corrupt the seed of the woman (the lineage from Adam to Jesus) and how did he achieve this?
– Was Satan fully aware of God’s plan to send His son Jesus to earth to be the antidote to the fall of man, and was Satan successful in eliminating Him? If not, why was Satan not successful?
– Does God give us all the information all of the time, the exact moment of the rapture, the second coming of Jesus etc?
– Does the Book of Revelation sometimes read like a science fiction novel with what sound like fantastic and unreal futuristic events?
– Does Satan have an agenda to corrupt the human race, and how exactly is he trying to do this, has this been his plan for the last six thousand years?
– Who are the Rephaim and what does the word Rephaim mean?
– Does the bible speak of a giant man with six fingers and six toes born of a giant (Raphah)? if so where does this occur?
Who is the “they” in Daniel Chapter 2:43 – (NASB)?
– Which New Testament book has references to angels who abandoned their own domain and were bound with chains?
I have more questions that I could put out there, but these will do for the moment.
Does God dwell on the Nephilim in the bible? No He does not, I don’t either, but as you can see from my list of questions, there are some strange things recorded that do not fit neatly and tidily with ready explanations.
My appeal with this article is to the “Inflexible Christian Conservatives”, please loosen up a bit, you may not agree with everything you read or hear, it may be wrong, but you may be wrong for dismissing other peoples perceptions out of hand, as it does not suit your particular version of what you deem unscriptural. You may not agree with me on what I say here, but, be gracious enough to say “I do not understand” for the things that sit in the grey areas. Yes, we are permitted to stand against heresy and false teachings, and we should, this has always been a problem, and Satan’s choice domain is twisting the truth. However we need to deal with these issues kindly, if possible, I know that I have not always been kind, and it is my aim to do this as much as possible (although I know I will not always be able to). So if you can, be kind, you may receive a much more favourable response in doing so.
God does not always give us all the information, He does not give us neat and tidy timelines. We can trust that God as the creator of the universe has it under control, and we just need to be following and listening. Even though we may not know what God is planning all the time, we can be assured that He has the perfect plan though for us.
RESEARCH. (The author of this article may not necessarily agree with all the views expressed in the research material)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+6%3A11&version=NASB
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Samuel+21%3A20&version=NASB