Sadly many Christians are every day and this is ongoing and their lives and families are being destroyed.
These Christians may really want to be serving God and Jesus and are very anti the devil and all his works.
One of the most gifted Christian writers with much insight in this sad business was Jesse Penn-Lewis.
You can google her on the internet.
He most famous and important work was and is "War on the Saints".
Many Christians over the years have dismissed her views and indeed for a while were translating her book without parts they disagreed with.
You can download the whole unabridged work from the internet.
I have included just a little bit below from the book on the dangers of passivity for the Christian.
This is not saying that people so deceived are not Christians but of course being set free from such deception can be prove to be a very liberating experience.
if you are not a Christian and reading this you would benefit from reading some basic tenets of the Gospel found in other places on this blog.eg there is a whole scanned booklet on Heaven and how to get there.
FROM WAR ON THE SAINTS BY JESSIE PENN-LEWIS
The text that such believers misinterpret is Phil. 2: 13, "It is God which worketh in you, both to will, and to work, for His good pleasure." The "passive" person reads it, ". . . God which worketh in me the willing, and the doing," i.e., "willeth instead of me."note 2 The first means God working in the soul up to the point of the action of the will, and the second assumes His actually "will"-ing instead of, and "working" instead of the believer. This wrong interpretation gives ground for not using the will, because of the conclusion "God wills instead of me"; thus bringing about passivity of will.
The
believer whose "will" has become passive, finds, after a time, the
greatest difficulty in making decisions of any kind, and he looks
outside, and all around him for something to help him to decide the
smallest matters. When he has become conscious of his passive
condition, he has a painful sense of being unable to meet some of the
situations of ordinary life. If spoken to, he knows he cannot will to
listen till a sentence is completed; if asked to judge a matter, he
knows he cannot do it; if he is required to "remember" or use his
imagination, he knows he is unable to, and becomes terrified at any
proposed course of action where these demands may come upon him. The
tactics of the enemy now may be to drive him into situations where
these demands may be made, and thus torture or embarrass him before
others.
Little does the believer know that in this condition be may, unknowingly, rely upon the assistance
of evil spirits, who have brought about the passivity for this very
object. The faculty unused lies dormant and dead in their grip, but if
used it is an occasion for them to manifest themselves through it. They
are too ready to "will" instead of the man, and they will put within
his reach many "supernatural" props to help him in "decision,"
especially in the way of "texts" used apart from their context, and
supernaturally given, which the believer, seeking so longingly to do
the will of God, seizes upon, and firmly grasps as a drowning man a
rope, blinded, by the apparently given Divine help, to the principle
that Godnote 3 only
works through the active volition of a man, and not for him in matters requiring his action.Passivity does not change the nature of a faculty, but it hinders its normal operation. In the case of passivity hindering the memory, the person will be found looking outside himself for every possible "aid to memory," until he becomes a veritable slave to note book, and helps, which fail at a critical moment. With this is also passivity of the imagination, which places the imagination outside personal control, and at the mercy of evil spirits who flash to it what they please. One danger is to take these visions, and call them "imaginations." The passive state can be produced without crystal gazing,note 4 i.e., if a person gazes at any object for a prolonged period the natural vision is dulled, and the deceiving spirits can then present anything to the mind.
In pure inactivity of the mind, the mind can be used at the will of the person, but in evil passivity of the mind, the person is helpless, and he "can't think!" He feels as if his mind were bound, and held by an iron band, or by a weight or pressure on his head.
No comments:
Post a Comment