Israel’s Testimony and the Birth of Science

But before the manifestation of the Son of God, there was another work done for the souls of men that was begun as the labor of the community of ancient Israel fell into eclipse.
The labor that God gave the children of Israel was the testimony to their neighbors of the true and living God.

Exod 31:18
18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
(KJV)

That labor fell into eclipse when the nation fell into the occult darkness of its neighbors.

Ezek 8:7-12
7 And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall.
8 Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.
9 And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here.
10 So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about.
11 And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.
12 Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth.
(KJV)

Ezek 8:15-18
15 Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
16 And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.
17 Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose.
18 Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.
(KJV)

The apostle Paul’s commentary on this eclipse sheds light on it.

Rom 8:3-4
3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
(KJV)

The covenant of the law that LORD made with His people Israel was weak in the fact that it’s observance could be an external thing that could exclude internal communion with Him.

To be sure, there were always men of God in Israel, like Ezekiel, who had internal visitations from the Holy Spirit of God and could profess His mind to Israel. But the nation as a whole was overcome by the natural man’s inclination to love that which is not God.

One day, that testimony will be restored:

Matt 19:28
28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging [administering ] the twelve tribes of Israel.
(KJV)

Isa 62:1-4
1 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.
2 And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name.
3 Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
4 Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah [ “my delight is in her” ], and thy land Beulah [ “married” i.e. someone wanted it.] : for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
(KJV)

With the manifestation of Christ, that work of testimony now operates internally in men through the Holy Spirit of God as He uses men and women indwelt by Him through Christ by grace.

But along with the work of Christ that was to come later on, secular history records another work that begun just has Israel’s visible testimony to the world wound down. It was a work that began as Israel received the prophecy of a new covenant:

Jer 31:31-34
31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
(KJV)

It was after the prophet Jeremiah uttered this prophecy, that the Greeks (who had learned art from the Minoans, astronomy from the Egyptians, and writing from the Phoenecians) experienced what classical scholars have long called “The Greek Miracle.”

Alone of all their neighbors, the Greeks suddenly passed from mythos to logos, from mythology to philosophy, from the worship of idols to atheism in respect to those idols, and from magic to science. From them would come, not only the Western civilization that would culminate in the Newtonian worldview, but also the language of the Greek New Testament that would spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

At a stroke, the Greeks produced the language and thought forms of man’s salvation by faith through grace by the Spirit of God. And with this was also produced a secular salvation from the dread of magic: Science.

I believe God did a delicate two step with the hearts of men here. On one hand, He let the partial Newtonian explanation of the world gain the ascendancy so that people in general could be liberated from the fear of the dominating synchronicities and communications wrought by magick. But yet on the other hand, it is the claims of Newtonian science that hold most Christians back from really believing in prayer.

I think the clincher in God’s mind is that He knew science would be more effective in causing disbelief in magick than it would be in causing disbelief in prayer. His people have Him as their resource and very present help in need, and He can increase their faith. Magicians have only Satan, who is not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent - or even very kind.

But now, we have - as Aleister Crowley proclaimed - a New Aeon, or New Age. Only it’s not a New Age, but rather a rolling back into an old one.

With the failure of the Newtonian model to fully account for all that even science has discovered of late, the a-casual world of synchronicity is coming back into vogue again. Because of men at the borderlands of science like Carl Jung, the magical worldview is starting to retake it’s place with the scientific worldview.

Because Carl Jung was the first scientist to observe the phenomena of synchronicity from a scientific world view, it was he who was able to coin a fifty-dollar word for something that has always existed, and then use it to give credibility to things like astrology, alchemy, mythology, spiritualism, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, divination, and Extra Sensory Perception. Jung was one of the key players in the occult revival of the 60’s, which became the New Age movement of the 70’s, and which has now become the Gnostic Revival of the present.

All of these movements have brought back the practice of magick without being aware of either the holiness and justice of the true God, or the wiles and cruelty of Satan. Everyday, dunces everywhere are stumbling head long into things that the pagans of old new better than to mess with if they could avoid it. Take this example.

http://www.flowpower.com/What%20is%20Synchronicity.htm

“In her book The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self (HarperCollins).
Jean Shinoda Bolen writes about being at a dinner party with friends when one
woman raised a question: Occasionally, when she closed her eyes, frightening
demonic images would appear. Should she confront them? examine them? immediately
turn her attention elsewhere? As they discussed the matter, a skunk started
scratching at a sliding glass door in front of them, trying to get inside. The
hosts had never seen a skunk in the area, and after discussing how odd it was to
see one trying to approach people, they joked about how unlikely it was that
anyone would open a door to one. It was only later that Jean and her husband
realized that the skunk provided a synchronistic answer to their question: Just
as a skunk would stink up a living space, allowing demonic images in would do
the same to one's inner space.”

It just stops my heart to think of how narrowly that woman avoided that particular spiritual bullet.

There is also in of all this a leveling that is going on where the magicians blithely claim that what they do and what Christians do in prayer, are pretty much the same thing.

http://www.flowpower.com/What%20is%20Synchronicity.htm

“Belief systems also dictate what people attribute the workings of synchronicity
to. When it occurs, they may thank their luck, or fate, or destiny, or karma, or
a miracle, or angels, for example. ‘Synchronicity happens when God wishes to
remain anonymous,’ goes one saying. Carrie and Dan view as divinely inspired the
string of happy coincidences that have allowed them to adopt and raise eleven
disabled children on Dan’s salary as a school cafeteria worker. One month, hit
with several emergencies, they had no money to pay rent -- until lightning
struck, hitting two of their trees. When the insurance adjuster came by, he
wrote out a check so they could have them taken down, but he said to Carrie with
a smile, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t bother taking those trees down -- you’re
only going to lose a branch.’ The check exactly covered their rent. Said Carrie:
‘We thanked God. We walk in his shadow.’"

And this is not without it’s affects on Christians.

Christians who are Newtonian in perception look upon these kinds of statements and are further confirmed in their barren prayer life because they are afraid anything more is somehow “occultic.” Some in this camp would go on to accuse George Muller of somehow being a crypto-occultist because he got daily answers to prayer in the form of amazing coincidences.

How many Christians do you know of who pray quietly, in their closet, but persistently and with faith, with Biblical knowledge of what should and should not be prayed for, and who receive answers like George Muller? I think you’d be lucky to find even one.

How many Christians, on the other hand, do you know of who pray noisily, with a lot of fanfare, hoopla, before an audience, and ultra-importunately for things that are questionable? Probably a lot more than you’d care to count. And most of them will likely be on television.

Being effective in prayer without being suborned by the occult is probably the pivotal battle of Christ’s assembly in the present day. Aiding Christ’s assembly in this regard is my principle reason for writing this book. It is not that I would have Christ’s assembly trust in the reality of synchronicities, but rather that it should trust in the Author of them who makes Himself known through them.