By Fred Pruitt
Paul said, "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom,
which God ordained before the world unto our glory" (1 Cor 2:7) ....
No matter what comes my way, be it a question, or circumstance, thoughts about
this or that, adversity, joy, pleasure, pain .... no matter what, everything
goes back to this: everything is One Person manifesting Himself ....
Recently I was taking in the night air and the crowd was buzzing in my head ....
all the voices who attempt to have say-so, or assert themselves and their
opinions about what is going on, or what should be done, or what hasn't been
done, along with a million other things they have on their minds .... they're
the crowd i regularly take with me wherever i go, so it was nothing new hearing
their buzz in the background, as some other part of me was enjoying the relaxed
pleasure of the moment ....
Suddenly everything changed in an instant .... it struck me for just a moment,
and by that i just mean it seemed to open up for a momentary glimpse, and i
immediately knew that every voice in the crowd was only one Voice speaking ....
it all came crashing in .... In the Beginning was the Word .... eternally the
Father has only spoken One Word, the Son, of Whom, by Whom, and in Whom, all is,
and of .... by Him all things consist -- without Him was not anything made that
was made .... therefore only One Voice has gone forth, speaking One Word, which
is Christ -- out of that One Word all things exist and are continually upheld
.... therefore every voice, no matter how distorted, no matter how disguised, is
His Voice ....
tonight the real John Nash, the person about whom "A Beautiful Mind" was made,
was on "60 Minutes" .... Mike Wallace asked him, "Did you reason your way out of
your delusions?"
Nash looked thoughtful for a moment, then answered, "I became disillusioned with
the delusions." ....
again it all came crashing in ....
the "delusions" are there so that we can see that they are exceedingly
delusions, and the spellbinder who wove the web of those delusions, those ghosts
that haunt the dark places, he has been found to be only a trickster in his
wickedness, and having no truth in Him, all he has spoken of us in his
accusations before the Almighty comes to naught, in the Light of the Majesty
....
let the demons rage, let them walk in the periphery of our eyesight, if they
wish, to taunt us and rage about how they're gonna do us in, how we belong to
them, how there is no Solid Rock on which we stand ....
but as Nash said, "[we've] grown disillusioned with the delusions" .... the
delusion is that there is a secret conspiracy that i have to fight against, and
that the Communists are after me everywhere i go .... and i'm on a secret
mission for the government ....
Nash found his salvation in love .... love brought him through and sustained him
moment by moment, even though he was still suffering from his delusions ....
(his wife's) willing-to-die love drew him out, into the world of the real, and
showed him what was real and what wasn't, and a fierce battle ensued, between
the real and the unreal, because the unreal wouldn't go out of his sight .... he
could see it and hear it, how could he deny it? ....
But love won the day, and continues to win every day, even though the delusions
continue ....
I don't know about anybody else, but this is a pretty good parable of my life
.... down to the part about the delusions continuing ....
One day, or maybe over a period of time so that it went unnoticed, but at some
point the delusions and the voices & all the contrariness and even all the
wickedness and evil shifted in my inner consciousness into the One Person
Manifesting Himself ....
There is no explanation for that .... theology breaks down here, because it
can't cover this .... it wants to make sure we don't fall headlong into
pantheism, or quietism, or some other "ism" that is disapproved .... there is
pressure on this writer to want to stop and explain myself, to one more time go
over how evil & rebellion fit into the picture, so that we can not associate God
with evil, etc etc, but i've done that in the past & it bears no repetition now,
because no matter how precise the answer, crossing the gulf between separation
in our consciousness from God into an inner awareness of union with Him is not a
matter of being convinced of the right doctrines or having all our i's dotted
and t's crossed on the mystery of evil .... it is the wisdom of God hidden in a
mystery, and only revealed and walked in by the Spirit ....
There is only one crossover ....
"He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him" ....
To believe that "God is" has for me increasingly meant just what I've said above
.... it's ALL Him .... to believe that He "IS" is to see Him, everywhere, in
everything, in every sound, in every picture, in every feeling, in every
sensation, in every color, in every conversation, in every piece of mail, in
every driver on the freeway in front of me, HE IS ....
Diligently seeking Him is to unmask every character in the play and realize they
were all working from the same script, that there is no end to Him, no matter
how far you unravel the thread, no matter how distant you travel to unheard of
galaxies, whereever you go, whatever you see, inwardly, outwardly, up or down,
is only the Living God upholding & sustaining all things by His Love ....
Isaiah 11
9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth
shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an
ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be
glorious.
For me the lesson of John Nash underscores what we have been saying. This pull
into the chaos of the world continues in this life, but in the settling in of
the Spirit life in us, as the Spirit teaches us Himself, we likewise become
"disillusioned with the delusion" and find that secret country, where "they
shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain."
Living in God's holy mountain is to be in the fire and smoke and lightning with
God .... in the mountain there is nothing which will hurt or destroy .... our
earth (ourselves) is full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the
sea .... as the waters cover the sea .... the root of Jesse, Christ Jesus the
Lord, is our ensign, and His rest is glorious ....
in the mountain of God all the voices only do one thing -- they sing the stories
of God -- which stories we are ....
(Psalm 137)
3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they
that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
4 How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Yet the song wells up, doesn't it? It comes up of itself, because that Song has
become ourselves, the Song of God, and we come to realize that the strange land
He sent us to in our captivity, and those who wasted us and mocked us, taunting
us for our misplaced faith, as well as our disorientation in this strange land,
has been naught else but He all along, that we ourselves are the Song He has
been singing, and now even in this strange land, we can sing the Lord's song
because we dwell in the midst of the Holy Mountain, where "they shall not hurt
or destroy."
This is the fundamental "truth" out of which all the others flow -- there is
Only ONE PERSON, and everything is a manifestation of Him in some form ....
Now how can we not sing the Lord's song? ....
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ....
Ah -- ah -- men ....