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The Feminine Holy Spirit; An Interesting Article
Here’s an article that Gary found today on the subject of the feminine Holy Spirit. As most of you know, one of the mysteries which God is revealing to the Body of Christ as we speak, and which we are currently teaching in the Final Word TV seminar entitled “The Seven Spirits Of God”, is the fact of the feminine Holy Spirit. Some of you may also know that this piece of Scriptural information is enough to cause more than one self-proclaimed bible scholar to totally lose their cool.
So for those of you who may have heard angry arguments that the idea of a feminine Holy Spirit is heretical, pagan, disturbing, or obviously a conclusion that could only be reached by a woefully uneducated mind, a cult-leader, a reprobate heretic, or (worst of all) a woman–I thought it might be refreshing to share a bit of sanity with you.
This article was written by R. P. Nettelhorst, whom you will be shocked to learn is neither a Gnostic, a Branch Davidian, or an ignoramus. (Not to slander those who are—in fact, the apostles themselves were uneducated men.) This is a person who, in fact, graduated with honors from a Baptist College, and serves as a Professor of Bible and Biblical Languages. Mr. Nettelhorst is founder and Academic Vice President of Quartz Hill School of Theology. Here is a short bio on Mr. Nettlehorst, from his website, www.nettelhorst.com:
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I’m married with three daughters. I live in southern California and I’m a deacon at Quartz Hill Community Church. I teach Bible, Theology, and languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac at the small church-based seminary Quartz Hill School of Theology. And I write books.
I spent a couple of summers while I was in college working on a kibbutz in Israel.
In 2004, I was a volunteer with the Ansari X-Prize at the winning launches of SpaceShipOne.
I’m a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion, and The Authors Guild.
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In my research for this seminar, though I employed (as always) many study tools, I used only one textbook. That would be the Bible. I will say, however, that the pure research included in Appendix 3 to this paper would certainly have saved me a lot of work….
Here are the links to the article / research. Enjoy!
Fire And Faith
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“These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.”(1Peter 1:7)
“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
Man, I’m telling you what—just about the time that I start to feel ok with my own heart, the Lord (in His perfect kindess) turns up the heat, and a whole new batch of putrid, sinful humanity rises to the surface. I am at least grateful that I’m becoming familiar enough with this process that I anticipate Satan’s next move. Inevitably, the enemy of my soul chooses this moment to come, cleverly cloaked as my own conscience, and flog my soul with shame and condemnation. Should I choose to listen (and thank God I’m learning not to), having removed my breastplate of righteousness, my heart forgets the unmerited favor that Christ purchased for me with His blood, and I revert to hiding. And hiding is not good, because Jesus said:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”(John 15:5)
So, if I felt like the task of overcoming the endless supply of sin in my heart was unlikely before, I have now guaranteed that I will be bearing NO fruit of the Spirit, because I have allowed myself to be cut off from the vine. Man, Satan is sneaky.
But you know what? I’m just not gonna listen to that garbage from the evil one, because I know that my fight is not a fight to prove myself to be, or make myself into, something good. My fight is the fight of faith. My job is to seek out and believe God’s Word: His job is to perform it. I can no more make myself a new creation than the man in the moon. No, the same Creator who knitted me together in my mother’s womb and caused me to be born, is knitting me into a new creation, and causes me to be born again. Over and over, God’s word affirms that my entire sufficiency is in Christ—and He is in me.
“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”(Philippians 1:6)
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”(1 Peter 1:16)
| “ LORD, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or awesome for me. |
| But I have stilled and quieted myself, just as a small child is quiet with its mother. Yes, like a small child is my soul within me. |
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It is not my goodness God is testing. It’s my faith. My faith in the fact that all the fullness of His goodness abides in me…and that it is enough. So I’m going to bed believing God tonight—I’m going to sleep with a smile on my face. And, speaking of going to bed, it is 2:15am, so I’d better be doing that right now…
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Holiness As Salt
December 9, 2005
It’s been said that we start the process of dying the moment we’re born. Though it would be difficult to pinpoint, it would probably be more accurate to say that we start the process of dying the moment we stop growing.
Generation is the antithesis of degeneration– the power of life is obviously stronger than the power of death, but we know too well that decay is always crouching at the door, waiting for its moment of opportunity. Angry at being denied its prey, the rot of death storms in with a vengeance the very second the generative power that is life starts to slow down– the minute we stop growing, there is no force to bar the inexorable push of death into our bones. There is no middle ground, no grace period– the moment life leaves our body, it starts to rot.
So then, it’s the growing that keeps us– and so it is with our spirit. The quest for holiness, at first glance, seems futile to our human minds– I mean, if the mark we are pressing toward is God’s perfect holiness, aren’t we setting ourselves up for failure? Obviously,we will never reach that mark until after we die, so what’s the point?
The point is that the rot of sin is crouching at our door, waiting for the opportunity to drag us into decadence. We can see so clearly how the frog has been boiled in our society when it comes to morality and our standards of holiness. It’s easy to set the bar of morality at what we think is an acceptable level, and then leave it there. But it doesn’t work that way, does it? The bar doesn’t ever stay where it is– it gets inched down, one compromise at a time, until we look around one day and realize we are wallowing in filth, and that our love has grown cold. You know– kind of like that corpse we were talking about. Rotting. Dirty. Cold.
The point is: it’s the growing that keeps us; that stops the decay from advancing into our spirits. We must not “grade ourselves on a curve”, fooling ourselves into thinking it’s just fine to stay where we are. We must set the bar at the only level of holiness that is acceptable to God: that is, His Holiness. His perfection must be the mark that we set for ourselves. You see, by setting our eyes on a standard that is ever above what we can attain, we are choosing a life of forward motion– a life of perpetual growth. The standard of love and holiness that I live by today is higher than the one I lived by a year ago– and yet, I dare not stop here, lest the sin in me grab its opportunity– next year, the standard must be higher still.
Paul said it like this: “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13,14) This is not the empty pursuit of the Pharisees– of creating more and more religious rules to disguise our deep rooted sin. It is the pursuit of a person madly in love with Jesus Christ– one who will be satisfied with nothing less than laying hold of Him, and becoming one with Him… in His death, and in His resurrected perfection ( Philippians 3:10-11). And just as salt preserves meat, so our constant pursuit of God’s holiness will preserve us, until the day our Lord Jesus is revealed, and we are made to be like Him:)
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