The Holy Spirit is my muse
and all I have is His to use.
No other spirit need I choose.
Through Him there’s living water.
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Ronovan Hester offers the inspiration “promise” to be used in this week’s Ovi Poetry Challenge. Also posted on Poet’s Corner.
John 4:10
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.
“Simply because the Bible has a different view of origins to those put forth in human philosophy, there is a period of conflict whenever the church comes under the influence of a human philosophical system. Thus, any defender of neo Platonism in Augustine’s day or of Aristotelianism in the late Middle Ages found himself in trouble with Genesis.” Noel K. Weeks, The Hermeneutical Problem of Genesis 1-11, originally published Themelios 4, no. 1 (September 1978): 12–19
There’s a lot of historical information in Genesis that one would not have imagined could have happened especially in the first eleven chapters, such as, the Lord’s creation in six days of everything from nothing, mankind made male and female in His image, the fall of mankind and its consequences for the world, the global flood that reworked everything, and the creation of language families as a response to disobedience.
Much of this is offensive to non-Christian philosophers whether they are promoting evolution, neo Platonism, Aristotelianism or whatever other rationalized treasure they have gilded with fool’s gold for our consumption. In Genesis the Lord gets so messy through His personal interactions with the material world and mankind that He becomes intolerable to philosophers hoping to be guided solely by the authority of logical deduction from a minimal set of axioms of their own choosing.
Admittedly, in perhaps the only defense of these philosophers, without being told any of these events most people would likely start just as they have done with simple axioms. If we didn’t know better, we would likely also have imagined a clean, transcendent deity removed from material interactions with the world except for occasional mental connections through psychic fields or forest faeries. Our philosophies would rely on uniformitarian processes based on patterns of material change we observed in the world without getting a deity involved rather than messy events we had no control over or, worse, were our own fault.
That’s what we would have done. The problem is, we’ve been told what happened. We don’t have to make those mistakes.
Genesis As a Test
Because of this potential conflict, a Christian could use Genesis as a quick test for philosophical error. Genesis could also be used to test whether a professed Christian has capitulated to some erroneous philosophy. If the Christian reinterprets or rejects what is in Genesis to make it conform with what is in some philosophy, then capitulation has occurred.
Here are some tests.
1. Has “day” been reinterpreted to mean “billions of years”? (Genesis 1)
2. Can the philosophy correctly count how many genders there are? (Genesis 1-2)
3. Has mankind, a special kind of creature made in the image of God, been replaced with talk about a human animal species evolving with other animals from primordial pond scum? (Genesis 1-2)
4. Does evil originate with a fall of mankind or does the finger get pointed elsewhere? (Genesis 3)
5. Was there a global flood that completely churned the face of the earth, set tectonic plates in motion, destroyed radioactivity as a clock, flipped the geomagnetic poles multiple times, raised mountains, allowed glaciers to form, filled the oceans, buried fossils, dug canyons, and left, since then, only about 5,000 years of non-biblical history or are there allegedly archeological sites still around dating from before the time of this catastrophic event? (Genesis 6-9)
6. Does the diversity of languages have a miraculous origin with the intent to disperse a rebellious population or did languages evolve over tens of thousands of years coming from pond scum which came from some explosion which ultimately came from what precisely? (Genesis 11)
Why Is the Test Important?
The historical events in Genesis are the context in which the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah and the prophecies of His return make sense. They are part of the revealed plan of salvation. The messy, but wondrously miraculous, events throughout this plan of salvation (past, present and prophesied future) characterize the Lord of the Bible as personal and powerful unlike any other deity ever offered by philosophy including New Age pantheistic projections of the human mind.
Without Genesis Christian salvation history would have no justification since there would be no need (no fall) nor way (no promised miraculous intervention) to redeem mankind. If Genesis were false as history, then Christian history and its prophetic future would be false as well. If one removed Genesis as history, the plan of salvation would unravel into a New Age philosophy of sentimentality and self-help where death, not life, dominated all available future outcomes.
The Guidance from the Authority of Scripture
From a philosophical perspective one might as well accept the history in Genesis as true no matter how messy it is. It does account for the world we see around us. Since the alternatives to it lead to death there is no point in wasting one’s brief lifetime in philosophical investigations at all if any of those alternatives were true.
However, once we accept Genesis as the history of what actually happened it becomes authoritative for our philosophy. If there is any conflict between our philosophy and Genesis, it is our philosophy that must change, not Genesis. The authority of Genesis guides the construction of our philosophy.
One way to make sure Genesis is that authoritative guide is to explicitly insert the authority of the entire Bible (which includes Genesis) as the First Axiom of any philosophical system or scientific theory we attempt to construct. Then as an axiom it would guide our intellectual system building by steering us away from error through the threat of derivable contradiction with that first axiom which is all that would survive such a logical collapse.
Circumventing the Authority of Scripture
One would think this would be an obvious thing for Christians to do. However, as Noel K. Weeks notes conflict can arise if the church comes under the influence of a human philosophical system. When under the influence of a human philosophical system such as atheistic evolution, neo Platonism or Aristotelianism a Christian philosopher would try to tweak Genesis to suit his needs rather than modify or reject his own philosophy.
For example, if the authority of Scripture were really guiding Alvin Plantinga, who was busy assigning God the task of guiding alleged evolutionary processes that don’t exist, he would never have written, Christian belief just as such doesn’t include the thought that the universe is young. As another example, if the authority of Scripture were really guiding William Lane Craig he would never have jumped into the pit of big bang mythology turning the personal Lord of Genesis into an impersonal first cause.
In both of these examples, Christian philosophers circumvented the authority of Scripture as a first axiom. They rejected the guidance that Scripture could have provided them in their philosophies to help them avoid error.
However, I doubt that either of them think they committed any error. In their minds they likely imagine themselves innocently coming under the influence of a human philosophical system that just happened to be offended by Genesis. They would likely see themselves as having nothing to repent of even if that philosophical system were later acknowledged as wrong since philosophy is little more than a hypothetical mind-game where no one gets hurt by false teaching. All such a defense would show is that capitulation to human philosophical systems results in delusion.
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You need two things to write a poem. You need inspiration and you need to know a few techniques. I’ll cover one of the techniques called meter, but ultimately inspiration is what counts.
Inspiration
Before you can even begin to write a poem, you need something to say. Once you have that then you need words.
Occasionally you will hear poets talk about their muse who tells them what to say and how to say it. To avoid the distraction of Greek mythology, I will stop referring to a muse, which none of the poets who use that word in a modern context believe in anyway, and talk generally about a poet’s source of inspiration. However, the good thing about those poets who acknowledge a source of inspiration is that they know they themselves are not that source no matter how responsible they are for the final product.
Poets who do not believe in a source of inspiration give themselves full credit for what and how they say things. For them, poetry is self-expression. I would like to assert, so there is no ambiguity about my own views, that self-expression is tedious and overrated.
In addition as a poet you are always serving your source of inspiration. You are always serving that spirit who is inspiring you, helping you and comforting you even if you mistakenly believe that you yourself are that spirit.
That spiritual source of inspiration may be a good spirit. It might also be not so good. If you write about topics that glorify, incite or condone anger, lust or some habitually dysfunctional thinking in your readers, then your source of inspiration is not so good. The poem may sound nice and people may write mushy music to sentimentalize it, but that source of inspiration will remain, in spite of all that sugar-coating, not so good.
Once you understand that you are not expressing yourself when you write a poem but you are serving a spiritual source of inspiration and that source may be good or not so good you will begin to see what is morally at stake when you offer a poem to a reader. I hope you won’t mind me drawing the conclusion that any not so good source is a demonic source. It is out to get you so it can use you to get others.
I see the good source of inspiration as the Holy Spirit, a Person of the Trinity with Whom the poet can enter into a relationship. I identify the demonic sources with spirits of antichrist. They are deceivers who manipulate those foolish enough to play with them.
Bottom line: Writing a poem is not a neutral artistic expression of oneself, but a moral act of service to some spiritual source of inspiration. Make sure that spirit is the Holy Spirit.
1 John 4:3
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Technique
Once you have a topic, you will need to express it. Although the words may come to you from the Holy Spirit, you need to make it melodious. In English that means paying attention to meter.
Meter is the pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in the words you use. The most memorable, and influential, poetry repeats metrical patterns. Some of these patterns are given names such as limericks or common meter, sonnets or blank verse. Others are specific to the poem itself.
As an example, listen to the song, What a Beautiful Name, and try to note which words are accented and which are not in the lyrics. In particular there are four stanzas in this song with an almost identical metrical pattern except for an unaccented syllable on some lines. I’ve listed two of those stanzas below. The ACCENTED syllables I put in italicized bold red capital letters. The unaccented syllables I wrote normally.
YOU have no RI-val.
YOU have no E-qual.
NOW and for-E-ver, GOD, you REIGN.
YOURS is the KING-dom.
YOURS is the GLO-ry.
YOURS is the NAME a-BOVE all NAMES.
Were you able to find the other two stanzas?
If so, you know what meter is. You know why those lyrics are powerful even without the music. Make your poems memorable by using metrical patterns.
If not, great! You now have an opportunity to start building your relationship with the Holy Spirit by asking Him to show you what you don’t understand. If you don’t think He’ll talk to you, ask Him anyway, sleep on it and wake up refreshed. Then thank Him regardless what you hear. Giving thanks means you acknowledge that you are in a personal relationship with Him.
Conclusion
There are many tricks that will help any poem be more powerful no matter what the source of inspiration. They are just techniques. One could even program a computer, which is neither intelligent nor inspired, to follow the meter and other aspects of the sound of a poem.
Ultimately what matters is the source of inspiration. To write a poem you need to first choose whom you will serve.
And that’s all there is to it.
Joshua 24:14-15
14 Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.
15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Yesterday afternoon (Thursday, June 1, 2023) I was one of the members of the audience at the It’s Supernatural program featuring Larry Sparks, Lydia Marrow and Tommy and Miriam Evans. I live only fifteen minutes away from the studio, so it is easy for me to attend. Since moving to the Charlotte area this was the third time I attended.
Normally there are three shows filmed one after the other. The audience claps and gets to see and hear the speakers live. Afterwards the audience is ministered to in a live show that is posted on the It’s Supernatural channel. I expected a sermon of sorts but yesterday there were prayers for healing and blessing. Almost twenty-four hours later I still feel the effects of it in my breathing.
Admittedly for some this may not be the sort of service you find acceptable. I offer it because it is recent (happened yesterday), unusual and I was in the audience.
Although I was not one of those who fell to the floor under the Spirit many did including people I know personally. As I left I had to step around the cameraman who was also on the floor. Fortunately, the studio was able to quickly switch to another camera.
May it be a blessing to you if you have time to watch it or at least provide you with a better understanding of what such ministries are like.
9 Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night.
10 And the Lord discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Bethhoron, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah.
11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.
12 Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel. Joshua 10:9-14 (KJV)
There are two kinds of explanation of what happened at the conclusion of this battle that I don’t find satisfying: (1) claims that the miracle involved the sun ceasing to move across the sky, and (2) claims that the avenging process could have occurred naturally. I am looking for a miraculous explanation that is relevant to what Joshua likely wanted to accomplish.
When people today say the sun moves across the sky they mean the earth rotates. The sun only appears to move from the perspective of our activity on earth. Because the sun appears to move at a regular rate, we can use it as a clock to estimate how long something took.
Bernard Ramm described various explanations for the sun appearing to stand still in The Christian View of Science and Scripture, 1954, pp 156-161. He found three that he was willing to accept preferring the third.
John Walton approached the problem as a misunderstanding of an ancient text. His view is that Joshua’s intent was merely that the Amorites be psychologically disadvantaged in seeing the positions of the sun and moon as a bad omen. Although I am suspicious of this theory, it does make a good point: Whatever Joshua asked for he likely wanted it to benefit the Israelites and harm the Amorites.
One doesn’t get such selective treatment that favors only the Israelites by asking for a change in the environment. Environmental changes such as a mirage of light to lengthen the day or clouds to shelter one from the heat would also aid the Amorites. They, too, would cool off. They would have more time to escape to walled cities. So these environmental explanations should be put aside including views that the earth or even the sun actually stopped moving.
If that’s correct about Joshua’s intent, and we choose to take a traditional reading of the text rather than Walton’s, then only Ramm’s poetic option remains. However, this explanation, as Ramm expressed it, suggests that Joshua somehow motivated his men to overtake the Amorites before they reached safety. While that might help, it would not give us a day such that “there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel” (Joshua 10:14).
The good thing about the poetic explanation is that it shows a way for the sun to appear to stand still. If we felt the Lord overwhelm us to the extent that we moved faster than we knew we could have moved on our own, we might be inclined to think that the sun stood still while all that happened. The sun would be a confirmation that something miraculous had happened within us.
For this to be satisfying as an explanation, I need to clarify what such a miraculous overwhelming by the Lord might look like.
Before I describe what I think happened, especially since I could be wrong, we should keep in mind the advice from the Got Questions site: “While we may not fully understand how this “long day” occurred, a miracle does not have to be scientifically proven—just accepted.”
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The Holy Spirit Explanation
After the Amorites fled and suffered losses from hailstones all the way to Azekah the sun appeared to stand still only for the Israelites. They alone were overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. This gave them the power to avenge Israel against the Amorites. For a brief period of time as measured by the sun, but a whole day as measured by the normal bodily movement of the Israelites, the Lord as Holy Spirit filled them allowing them to rapidly overtake and avenge themselves on the fleeing Amorites.
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UPDATE October 5, 2023
Although they are not described in terms of the sun standing still there are other passages in Scripture where the Lord assists people to perform tasks much faster than others could have done them. Here are two:
Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Psalm 103:1-2 KJV
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
How can we be thankful if we don’t remember what to be thankful for? How can we give praise if we have forgotten the goodness of God?
Andrew Wommack begins a discussion of remembrance at about 5:30 in the following video. He says (at 6:55), “The reason it’s a command to remember is because it’s our tendency to forget.” I didn’t realize it was a command before.
Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?
Mark 8:18 KJV
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:4 King James Version
At the end when God makes everything new He will wipe away all tears as the former things pass away. At this point where might those tears come from?
Perhaps they will come from realizing our missed opportunities to praise and give thanks. Perhaps they will come from finally seeing how our wicked ways wasted our brief time here. Perhaps they will come from knowing how we failed to see our brothers and sisters filtered through loving hearts.
In Chapter 11 of Living in the Balance of Grace & Faith, Andrew Wommack offers another possibility. If we are born again he states that in our spirit, not in our body nor emotional nor mental states, we are “full of the glory of God” (page 102). We will weep when we stand before God because we will finally see what we had all along.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
Psalm 139:23-24 King James Version
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
While we still have time may we ask the Lord to know our hearts, test our thoughts and show us those wicked ways that will bring tears to our eyes when He comes again. While we still have time may we ask Him to lead us on the way everlasting.
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Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Korach, 3 Tammuz, 5782 – July 2, 2022
Torah: Numbers 16:1-18:32
Haftarah: 1 Samuel 11:14-12:22
Brit Chadashah: Romans 13:1-7
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 