Tangible Mysticism 2/3

From Adam to Moses, men had the ability to communicate and interact with spirits through their physical senses.  Men spoke with, walked with, and touched God.  These men were not simply greater mystics than people today; they were physically different and lived for hundreds of years.  Direct contact with spirits had a negative side that was so strong by the time of Noah, all the other sons and daughters of the line of Adam without exception had become corrupted and evil. God declared his answer to this problem – limiting the lifespan of men to 120 years and creating a gulf between men and spirits.  Beginning with Noah’s sons, this decree is gradually implemented and life spans decline until Moses lives only the 120 years God promised.

After the flood God spoke to Abraham in Gen 17 and promised to be the God of his descendents, “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.” He accomplished this when Moses led the people of Israel out to meet God on His mountain.  When God met His people at the mountain and gave them His commands they cried out, “Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.” This pleased God and He implemented a new way to interact with His people, through a mediator.  “They have spoken well. I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.”  Moses, God’s first great mediator, documented the revelation of God for His people for all time. 

After Moses, all revelations of God had to be consistent with the God Moses knew and described.  God continued to speak to His people through His appointed prophets who spoke words consistent with the words of Moses.  In Deut 13 and 18 we see that God gave His people objective methods to determine whether He had sent a prophet or not:

1)      The prophet was never wrong in his predictions.

2)      The prophet never brought something “new” inconsistent with what Moses had revealed.

So all God’s interaction with His people came through a man; His mediator, Moses and the prophets God chose and sent.  For the most part, the role of the prophets was to lead people back to the God of Moses and encourage them to obey the will of Moses’ God as expressed in His commandments – the Law of Moses.

Moses himself predicted another Great Prophet whom God would send and commanded the people to listen to this man – the Great Mediator.  Because God had decreed a genetic degradation that created a gulf between man and spirit God bridged this gap by becoming man Himself, born of a virgin.  Thus, the disciples of Jesus heard the words of God with real ears.  The message of God to the world was not mystical, nor were the disciples mystics.  They were normal men who heard a man give them the very words of the Father.  These are the words that they documented and wrote down for us.

The gulf that God decreed in Genesis 6 to separate man from spirits – this still exists.   To bridge this chasm, Jesus became a man, spoke as a man, died as a man and sits at the right hand of God; He is the Great Mediator between mankind and the Father.  Jesus was resurrected and has a glorified body – still human but something more than we currently possess.  He has promised that all his disciples will also receive a glorified body that is greater than what they currently posses and once again, like Adam, they will be able to interact directly with the spiritual.

God bridged the gap He decreed between man and spirit through His Son Jesus.  God’s revelation was given objectively to men in history, men that were not mystics.  John says,

“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.”

This concept is central to the gospel of God and is central to all discernment of spirits.  In 1 Jn 4:1, John claimed that the confession of the tangible Jesus, the objective physical man, separated those who spoke for God and those who spoke for other spirits.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

God has revealed objectively how we are to approach Him and receive His forgiveness—the means never included some mystical experience.  The revelation of the true God, the God of Moses, is an objective tangible revelation heard by human ears and written down by human hands. 

By K. Jentoft Click here for bio and archived articles