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SPIRITUAL FOOD AND SPIRITUAL DRINK

 

THIS IS THE REAL MISSING LINK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published by World Wide Web Witness Inc.

 

May 2009

 

ISBN  978-0-9806 136 7-2

 

 

 PREFACE

 

Spiritual food and spiritual drink

 

Food that revives the spirit and drink that issues to and from the heart! that is the point here.

Take the words from  I Corinthians 10:

 

“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers,
    that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea,

and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

 

“All ate the same spiritual food,

 and all drank the same spiritual drink,

    for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed    
    them, and the rock was the Christ.

 

“Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.

These things happened as examples for us,
    so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.

 And do not become idolaters, as some of them did, as it is written,
    “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.”

 

“Let us not indulge in immorality as some of them did,
    and twenty-three thousand fell within a single day.

Let us not test Christ as some of them did, and suffered death by serpents.

Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer.

   “These things happened to them as an example,
   and they have been written down as a warning to us,
   upon whom the end of the ages has come …”   (New American Bible, colour added).

 

Here are a number of interesting aspects. The ROCK which followed the children of Israel throughout their desert experience was CHRIST. That accords with Isaiah 45 and Philippians 2, used concurrently; for thus we find that there is NONE but GOD ALMIGHTY to whom every knee is going to bow, and it is to CHRIST that every knee is to bow, so that Christ is God Almighty (as John 1 and 8:58 show),  He is God Expressive, the Eternal Word of the Living God, equal in status, one God.

It is not Peter, who at once suggested that the Cross idea be dropped (Matthew 16); no, that was no rock, but a stone (cf. SMR p. 99). The play on his name has been ludicrously parlayed to ignore the difference in petros and petra (transliterated) in the Greek. He is ALSO AN ELDER (I Peter 5), and does not violate Matthew 23:8-10, which forbids the erection of rocks in this manner, as if to vie with God! There is, as God says, NO OTHER ROCK (He does not know any – Isaiah 44:8 - do some then seek to know more than God Almighty! in the false glory of Rome … cf.  II Samuel 22:2,3, Psalm 62:1-2).

Alas,  Romanism’s plan has, for this reason,  been a gutting of the glory, were it possible, in this mock ascendancy. But this is not our topic here, but spiritual food and spiritual drink; for sometimes it is necessary as Professor E.J. Young noted, to show a meaning by indicating both what negates it and what confirms it, so narrowing the field for comprehension.

Spiritual food and spiritual drink is a name given through Paul for the divinely bestowed food (manna) and drink (water by command through a rod!) which sustained the people of the Lord in the desert environment. It was so, the context in I Corinthians 10 is indicating, by the power and presence of Christ (pre-incarnate) who is the Rock. The apostle proceeds to move to the topic of what is called Communion, the partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

In this, incidentally, in the last Supper, Christ did NOT commit suicide, being God incarnate, nor was it a sacrifice, which came later, nor was there shed blood without which there is no remission (Hebrews 9:22), nor was there suffering which is essential to the case (Hebrews 9), nor are these conditions met in the Romanist mass, which is therefore anti-biblical in its self-definition, blatantly askew from Hebrews as from reality.

Thus, in format, He was real man like His brethren, but without sin (Romans 8, Hebrews 2); for He had one body, which could not be broken in two without cessation of its normative functions, in death. That could come only at Calvary, once made, once in the history of the world, and not often, for otherwise as Hebrews relates, He would have had to suffer often, but now: ONCE. The bread was bread, not body. The Lord's Supper has nothing to do with saving sacrificial action in process. It is statedly to be done in memory of HIM.

In what way then did Christ’s customary use of symbols with depth of meaning apply here ? The point is simple: when you partake of this Supper, you enter into an action by faith in which you are receiving revitalising realisation of His presence in you (Colossians 1:27), His action for you (I Peter 3:18, 2:22ff.), and His grace through you (cf. (II Corinthians 12).

It is not putting food in your stomach, for it is spiritual food which counter-designates any such idea (cf. John 6:63, in this precise ideational context). However, the mere presence of such symbols confers nothing; for unless there be faith, there is nothing. Hence Paul is used to warn the people not to play about with symbolism and imagination, but to have saving faith in the living God.

Just as the baptism that saves (I Peter 3:21) is NOT the washing of the body (cf. John 13, symbolically), but the witness of a clear conscience through faith in the resurrected Christ: so the point of the Lord’s Supper is not the eating of flesh, but the cleansing of the heart through the death of Christ in which the sin being focussed and forgiven, there is life anew and that, eternal.

The work on the Cross, redemption, ONCE ONLY, leads on to the work of regeneration in the heart, ONCE ONLY (John 5:24). What did Christ say of this topic in John 6:63 ? The words that He speaks are spirit and they are life!

What, He asks, if I go back to My Father in heaven! Where then the physical (cf. Acts 3:19ff.)!

Wilful abuse of His speech makes for woeful results. But wise use of it makes for life (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H and in particular, 1086ff.).

Thus in this volume we have a wide ambit. Spiritual food and drink is biblically a phrase capable of use concerning any sustaining work of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Rock and ONLY ROCK (II Samuel 22:32, Isaiah 44:8); and it is even capable of referring to Holy Communion; but from the immediate context of I Corinthians 10, it has the broader meaning in focus, which is here in this volume, our own.

As God is not to be confused with symbols, so is He not to be shunted into the magical trances of evolutionism, the rabbit of life out of the hat of nothing (ultimately) and bits of things (in passing). This too is brought out as the actualities of life and indeed eternal life are shown afresh.

For the rest, concerning the title of this volume: increasingly, realists are despairing of ever finding any ‘missing link’ between man and other creations, this having been a choice topic for 150 years or so, and a dead one, like the bones that do not come. More and more, it is being acknowledged that the very earliest cases of relics are not diverse in kind from those of modern man, and as Professor  Oxnard indicated, finds in this field are frequently sensationalised.

Thus, it is hard to find any new ‘find’ which is not set down as the missing part of the imaginary paradigm. The actual words of the Professor Oxnard were to the effect that a find is almost routinely turned into an epochal discovery, and in irony, he indicated the folly of such idle sensationalism. Indeed, the more it differs, the more it is the same; and the more dates are toyed with on philosophical assumptions, the more they return to short notation.

 On these topics, see for example:  News 81 and references therein, SMR Ch. 2, pp. 234ff., TMR Chs. 1, 8, and. 7,  of the last, esp.  Section D and Section E, The Defining Drama Ch.   3, Christ, the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch.   9, Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch.   6.

Where then is the real missing element ? It is not in the bones; they have been given more than a fair trial. It is in spirit. The linkage severed in silence, it is not to animals but to God: the one that matters. It is stricken wilfully, though it is in this case, abundantly present. the absence of this link is volitional, not objective. It is this which is missing just as surely as the inferior one is not there, bereft of light, both rational and empirical.

Not wanting the spiritual link, many among mankind seem earnestly to yearn for the lower one, which after all, has fewer problems for control-minded mankind, whether to receive or to deceive. With God, there is truth, and truth can indeed hurt; but without it, man is unmanned. He becomes prey for beast not on four legs, but two.

 

Separate and sundered, man is stranded and looks like it. However, while his sundering from creatures categorically different (like motor-bikes and Boeing 737s), is a matter of honour and dignity, that from God is one of debasement and is open to satire, like the misdoings of an indulged, rich kid. The Bible does not entirely avoid this, since at times even love reprimands with a scathing scorn which may awaken (cf. Matthew 23, Isaiah 1, Psalm 50, 94).

Man's political, national and international movements are becoming increasingly a thing which would have allowed Gilbert and Sullivan to have treated this world as they did Britain, and laughed it to shame; but it might have been a bitter laughter, as this world, unlike the Britain of that day,  has no Christian base even nominally, and has an inveterate desire for glory and power. This is to come for a short, shabby time (remember how illustrious the suicidal bunker-victim, Hitler made himself appear very high,  FOR A LITTLE WHILE).

Meanwhile, let us eat and drink, not in the sublimely foolish sense of IGNORING the decadent realities of this fast falling world, but partake of the spiritual food and drink which is to be found in the Saviour, amidst His unsearchable riches, not limiting ourselves to symbols, as if to be illusory, but having real commerce with Christ that is not capable of or susceptible to spiritual degradation, nominalism and mere formalism.

The word of God is spoken of as something (spiritual) to eat and His wisdom and Spirit  as something to drink, so let us set to at the banquet hall of love, and find His word and will for us.

On these tasks, see such biblical passages as these: Ezekiel 3:1, Revelation 10:8-11, Proverbs 9:1-6; John 4:10,14, Revelation 22:17.

It is then dinner time, a time for refreshing, fortification and regaling with spiritual food and drink; and let us grow by it.