I really enjoyed Bible study yesterday. We discussed Mark 8. There's a passage in this chapter where Christ heals a blind man. Christ has to do it twice. The first time, the man says he sees men and they look like trees. Someone in the study group wondered if Christ had to heal him twice because the man was blind from birth and didn't understand what he was seeing, so Christ had to heal his mind in order for the man to fully comprehend what he was seeing.
I got to thinking about how I read the New Testament for the first time when I was twenty years old and how I didn't really understand it. I read it again at age 42 and then I had a new and different understanding; one that eventually lead me to change the who way I viewed Christ.
I told the group about how I had given up on God and decided that if my life was going to be an eternity of hell (because I kept sinning and believed that recommission of a sin negated previous forgiveness). I told God that I forsook him and I lost my will to live. Two weeks after I had made that decision, the voice of a Christian began to open my mind and my heart to a new understanding of God's mercy and grace. It eventually lead me to the understanding that God's forgiveness is eternal and a new believe that "once forgiven, always forgiven". Six months after I had decided to given up on God, I met a pastor who asked me if I wanted to accept Christ into my life. I told him I did. I prayed and asked Christ to come into my life and the next day I was born-again. I knew I was saved.
I'm not entirely certain how we go to that point in the discussion. I remember we were talking about the scripture where Christ tells Peter that he knows what he knew (about the divinity of Christ) because God had revealed it to him. We discussed how the Roman Catholic church interprets this scripture to mean that God had given authority to Peter to take over once he was gone. I explained that the Mormon church interprets this scripture to mean that God has founded his church on the "rock of revelation" or a prophet and this is their claim to a line of authority that goes directly to Christ.
I asked if I could offer my personal interpretation of the scripture, the group facilitator allowed me. I said that when I received my personal witness of Christ, the answer I received was that it was not important to belong to a church (in this sense I mean church as a denomination, not as belonging to the body of Christ) but important to have a relationship with Christ and belong to Christ. The facilitator said that he believed too that this is what Christ was telling Peter; that we all must receive a personal witness of the divinity of Christ, from the Holy Ghost, to know that Christ is God.
I don't claim to have received a revelation from God or the Holy Ghost. I'm learning from my Christian friends that we cannot trust our feelings, that we must back our feelings with scripture. Yes, I got a feeling, which I believe is the Holy Ghost, that Christ is God. I got a feeling that I now have a personal relationship (something I never had before) with Jesus Christ (who is God).
I am not a better person now that I have accepted Christ. I recognize my fallen nature. I recognize that I am a sinner who is saved by grace. I have done some really stupid things since I've become a Christian; things of which I'm not proud. My old understanding would have taught me that I was sinful because I did not have the Holy Ghost. My old understanding would have told me that the crises and trials I've brought upon myself, due to poor choices, were from a lack of the Holy Ghost. My new understanding teaches me that God allows these things to occur because they are things I need to overcome (I'm referring to my bad temper and anger issues). My new understanding gives me a recognition that these are things that God can help me overcome and things that will, ultimately, give me strength and the ability to help others who find themselves in the same position.
This will come across as an indictment of Mormons. I write it not out of anger or hatred toward Mormons. I write it out of love, in hopes that someone else might have Christ heal them a second time, so that they can understand what they're seeing. Since becoming born-again, I have felt, what Mormons would describe as, the Holy Ghost more often than I ever did as a Mormon. I frequently feel that burning in my bosom that I can only describe as the love of God. I feel it now, as I write this. I was taught, as a Mormon, that this feeling would leave me if I ever left the Mormon church. On the contrary, I feel it more frequently and in stronger intensity than I ever did as a Mormon.
The church of Christ is all the followers of Christ combined (in all the various denominations), it's not one single denomination. God had revealed to Peter the divinity of Christ. If we all pray for a personal witness of that divinity, we too can receive it and have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, if that's what we desire. The Holy Ghost will bear witness of Christ in our hearts and our minds. Biblical scripture will back all these evidences that the Holy Ghost witnesses to us.
