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10 Nov 2007 Alpha Course: The Day Out part 1
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As part of the Alpha Course there is an opportunity for people to go out for the day for a special session. The main purpose of this is to cover the three Weekend Talk session covered in the course; 'Who is the Holy Spirit', 'What Does the Holy Spirit Do' and 'How Can I be Filled with the Holy Spirit'. In this case it meant a day trip to a Christian community centre in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Not wanting to do this course half-arsed and with a desire to complete the course in its entirety I agreed to attend the day trip.
Once everyone had arrived and had a cuppa tea we were all seated and the first session entitled 'Who is the Holy Spirit' began. The usual minister speaker told light-hearted jokes and stories to break the ice and gave his talk on the subject, with the sound of a dozen people flicking through bible pages echoing throughout the hall. The talk featured:
- God passed his message to prophets in chunks, not the whole thing. He spoke these chunks to different prophets that lived in different areas, even in different times. Therefore the complete message is written in the bible but must be discovered and pieced together.
- God intended to inject His spirit and His law inside the heart of humanity for them to 'instinctively' follow.
- The ministers read out a quote with said something along the lines of "If you thought of God as a influence then you wanted more of it. However if you thought of God as a person then you would want a relationship with Him".
- The Holy Spirit came upon particular people at particular times to do particular tasks. One person that was mentioned was Bezalel.
- There was a gap of around 400 years between the end of the Old Testament and the start of the New Testament where there was no activity written in the bible.
Wait a minute. There was a gap of around 400 years missing in the bible? 400 years unaccounted for. I didn't know about this. What happened during that time?
After the talk I approached the minster and asked him about what happened historically during that time (presumably between 400BC and 0AD). He told me about how the prophets were no longer getting messages from God for some unknown reason; in fact there were no prophets. People began to form their own groups. However that is not to say that nothing was written down. There are a series of literatures called Apocryphas that documented all the events happening during this quiet period. But despite being written down they are not included in most bibles. Because these Apocryphas were not written by prophets they were shunned as they were not The Words of God. Another minister at the session added that during the bible's formation there was a Jewish council and a Christian council that got to decide what should go into the bible. Presumably they didn't think it was important enough to include the Apocryphas in the bible.
I know the bible is big enough as it is, but withholding information from the masses almost seems like they were trying to hide stuff that they don't want the people to know. Something... sinister and un-Christian like. Then again these Apocryphas are easily available to people who seek them.
Also during that 400 year period Israel was invaded by the Greeks and then later by the Romans. When the Romans invaded they created a stable and 'content' society. Which got me to thinking; if there was a content society were everyone thought they were happy then perhaps there was no need for religion. After all, why hope for something better in the future when everything is OK right now?
Perhaps that's one reason why today's society is spiritually and religiously numb.
More to follow.
Posted at: 19:00 PM
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