This is not the Christian Life (a Study in Rene Magritte)

(The Betrayal of Images)This is not a pipeMagritte painted below the pipe "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not "satisfy emotionally"—when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.



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Here is a whole page of HTML sourcecode trapped inside a yellow box in order not to confuse your computer, and impossibly reduced in size. In the Green box is just a tiny tiny subsection of the same code to show you it's not a fake.

















This is the web page version. So much nicer eh?


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This is a church at worship. There is a powerful Presence of God here. To Christians it is the source code. Inside Christians is a mechanism that came inside them when they were born again, that knows how to "read" the music,the meaning of the words they are singing , the surface emotions that a non-Christian picks up, but a Christian knows how to "go inside it all" to feed from the Kingdom that is in our world and beyond it at the same time.
Unless we are born again we cannot see the Kingdom, Jesus said. We have no reading device. It is meaningless.

Even Magritte's Pipe has no possible means of conveying to a non pipe smoker the smell of the smoke, the feel of the pipe on the lips, the movement of the pipe smoke, so well described in the Lord of the Rings etc etc.I am not encouraging pipe smoking, just using Magritte's train of thought.

The HTML source code is to most people meaningless. It needs interpreting. The idea of web pages completely renders obsolete the need of people to ever learn the old computer languages of MSDOS or various other commercial languages from the 1980s.

You know where I am heading with this?

The praise meeting is commonly regarded as "the Christian Life". In 1 Corinthians we read the duality of some people being impressed by prophecy etc but others being totally put off, not understanding anything of what is going on.

But really these meetings are where we "learn the source code". THEY ARE NOT THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
The Christian Life is the third level just being unwrapped now. The discovery that if we have used meetings correctly to eat Christ's Word properly....and this would connect with the shewbread around the table in the Holy Place...

If we really eat this stuff....

We get hold of the third level trick....
To realise that Christ now IS our Life, on the inside of us fulltime.
Christ in us, the hope of Glory.
The Hidden Manna on the inside of the Ark of the Testimony....gold on the inside, gold on the outside, in the Holy of Holies.

This walking talking fusion version of Christ is otherwise known as a living letter.
This is something like a webpage that can be read by everyone.....not just by the only experts who can read source code.

That's why the Third level is infinitely superior. The first two levels were never God's END GAME. Everyone got that!

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This is Daniel Yordy using the same type of analogy for DECODING the Word.
The Bible VS. The Word God Speaks by Daniel Yordy
Wednesday, 07 April 2010 at 16:47 Facebook
The following two paragraphs are from my book, The Jesus Secret.

When a movie maker records a movie, he uses a recording system to
turn the sights and sounds of the movie into a digital format. The recording
system then “writes” the digital format onto a DVD disc. If I want to watch

the movie, I buy the disc. But having the disc really does nothing for me. I
cannot “see” the movie by studying the disk. No amount of mental penetration
can force that disc to give up its secrets. It is, entirely, a mystery. Rather,
I place the DVD into a machine that is designed in the exact same format as
the original recording device. That machine translates the “mystery” in the
DVD into a movie I can watch and enjoy.

In the same way, I do not “know” the Secrets of heaven by studying the
Bible any more than I “see” a movie by studying the disc. The original “recording
equipment” who recorded those words in the Bible is the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit knows God. I am filled with the Holy Spirit; I am filled with
the truth. The word of God as recorded in the Bible “plays” through the Holy
Spirit in me, and I see and hear and understand all the Secrets of God.

---

God speaks to us through metaphor. So often, God's people demand that things be one way or the other. If their minds cannot grasp how two opposing things could be true at the same time, then they make the choice that seems best to them, clinging to one and rejecting the other.

People who get a revelation of Christ in them begin to have a problem with the words of the Bible. They make the claim that "It's not in the Bible - it's in Christ." And so they are easily led away from large parts of the word God speaks as recorded in the Bible because they do not understand the relationship between the words on the page and Christ.

The metaphor of the DVD eliminates the need for us to do that. Let's take that metaphor a little further. You cannot watch the movie by studying the DVD. In fact, the DVD will never even indicate that there is a movie recorded secretly upon it. Yet, unknown to you, every element of that movie is found inside the DVD, in fact, there is not one frame of the movie that is not already recorded in the DVD. And there is nothing on the DVD that does not also translate into a frame of the movie.

The recording equipment that decodes the DVD and turns it into a movie we can watch and enjoy is the Holy Spirit. But we can take the metaphor a bit further. The transfer of the movie from the DVD to the TV screen is by electricity, by which all things consist, which is a picture to us of Christ. And the screen upon which the story written in Christ is played is my life and yours.

Everything that is Christ played in our lives comes out of what is recorded in the Bible. It is not dependent on a continual direct link with the Bible, because those who walk with Christ have so much of the Bible inside of them. Yet, when you want to eliminate the Bible because you have found "Christ," you soon begin having episodes of grainy spots and fuzz. More than that, there are scenes in your story, recorded in the words of the Bible, that have not yet played in your life, scenes that you do not yet know.

If you disconnect yourself from allowing the Holy Spirit to bring through Christ into your story every word recorded on the pages of the Bible concerning you, then you must miss scenes of your life that God intended. Now, that's fine. Because God will finish the work He has begun in you - some day.

But Christians should not speak against those who are determined to see every word recorded in the Bible played through Christ in the story of their lives in this age and on this earth. They cannot keep God from doing what He says, and they cannot keep them from knowing Him in all that He speaks.

I get frustrated when I see God's people speaking against the words of the New Testament. To understand them by the Holy Spirit as a revelation of Christ in you - Absolutely! But to speak in such a way as to remove them is to cut at the very heart of God.

For years I was a part of a group that cut things out of the New Testament because we were "hearing a Spirit word." All Christian groups do the same thing, they just differ on which words to cut. When you cut all the grace words and keep all the jeopardy words, soon the New Testament speaks only jeopardy from beginning to end. That's how it works.

I find that very few people want every word God speaks in the New Covenant revealed by the Holy Spirit to be played out in their lives by Christ living in them.

I am not smart enough to know what things God speaks I ought to eliminate. Or when I ought to join with the serpent and whine, "Did God really say that?"

By the grace of God, I want to know every scene of the life God has prepared for me that is encoded in the Bible and played in me by Christ my life.