We need to be careful accepting the definitions provided by some theologians of what they have defined as only a metaphor. Unless we are careful about accepting all we have been taught to believe, we will accept a logical understanding for things not meant to be easily accepted or understood. That unexamined acceptance will stop our faith in its tracks and blind us from seeing what is at work in and around our lives.
Some have accepted these definitions to such a degree that many of the otherworldly biblical experiences are now viewed as just metaphors and not something that was real. These hard-to-understand situations have been explained away leaving us with a limited understanding of the unusual and mysterious aspects that define our faith.
For example, the purpose and activity of the Nephilim and the possibility of their current influence on the world have been defined away and removed from today’s consideration. The witch of Endor calling Samuel up from the dead at Saul’s request, or Moses’ burning bush and his staff turning it into a snake have been described as just metaphors, not something that really happened. The sheet coming down from Heaven before Peter was only theological image, not something that really happened. The appearance and interaction of angels with people. The Book of Revelation and its predicted imagery have been limited to the comprehension provided to us by human intellect. These happenings are too unreal for our tamped down understanding of God’s word.
While some of these things may be hard to understand or too easily dismissed by over energetic theologians, they were real. To deny or dismiss them as only illustrative metaphors will remove from our faith a miraculous and mysterious component that has defined the history of God’s people across time.
The Lord is calling us out from the blindness and delusions that many metaphor-happy theologians have defined as not real. A wave of revelation is currently moving across the Church giving us a deeper understanding of God’s mysterious interaction with people and the mysterious manifestations of His will upon the Earth. That wave of revelation will prepare us for what is coming. It will turn our metaphors into a living realities so we can rightly interpret God’s intervention between Heaven and Earth.
A Church that has everything theologically figured out will lack the mystery required to seek God at a deeper level than the shallow definitions we have been told to believe as fact. The deeper our faith travels, the more mystery that journey will reveal.
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