So...you can be wrong but your feelings can't be?tulc(finds that a little...unlikely)
That they (all nations) should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us... -Acts 17:27
There is a feeling that goes along with the faith.
I was brought up in the Marine Corp and it was not considered manly for men to touch one another. I was also cold and arrogant. I was also, having been brought up Baptist, of the Sardisean church age variety. My religion was in my head and whatever did not fit in the mental web was rejected. I am afraid that I was rude to my fellow Catholics. I knew one by the name of Bob in which he reached out with a hand of fellowship in which I heartedly refused. I have tried to look up Bob in the last decade to apologize but have never found his contact address.
My point of view changed with the likes of the early 1900's type Pentecostalism in which I spent the summer after high school with my grandmother and had a rather eventful run in with the Pentecostal Holiness church, as this area of Virginia was in a time capsule, I got an experience of early 1900's Pentecostal anointing.
I fell in with the Pentecostal Holiness church not because of the tongues, but because of the people, which were the finest I have ever met in my entire life. Pictured below is Dallas Linkous JR, which is probably the 'shoutingest' man I have ever met in my entire life. As a teenager I would put up hay with him and go with him to the revivals at night. Both him and his wife were tongue talking, shouting, happy type Pentecostals. The joy was there equally there at home as well as at work. Every one of the fruits of the spirit lamped within their lives like a great over heated pot belly stove. There was also a decency among the people like I have never seen. My grandfather was good friends with Dallas. In the 1950's they would have revivals that would go for weeks and early in the AM. Granny said that grandfather could worship the Lord until 2 AM and not have any trouble at all rising at 6 AM for work.
I remember well as a young man Dallas coming behind me to pray with me at the alter, with tears running down his cheek and onto my neck. As a guy who did not like to be touched this was quite profound. At the end of that summer we had a good revival in which the Lord seemed there in a mighty way. On reading the book, Run Baby Run, by Nikki Cruise, I felt a voice telling me to put the book down. I paused, and then continued again to read. The voice said again Put the book down. I slept in my Grandmothers living room on an old fold away cot by the open living room door. The Katydids seemed to be singing very loud that night. There in my Grandmothers clean linens I heard the Spirit speak again,Where is all the stress, worry and hatred? In which, upon examining my heart, there was nothing there but pure beauty. I thought to myself. Oh my! I got exactly what those people got! I would spend the rest of the summer rejoicing with the people and in revival until I went back to Michigan later that September.
I have described the anointing as I experienced it spiritually, So, how do I mentally describe the anointing? If E = mc2 then we can divide and conclude that m (mass) = E / c2 (Energy)...And there are three varieties...
Natural (mass)- God put everything together with Energy and light
Intellectual E/c2 - Our thinking can produce a spiritual light
Spiritual E / c2 - Energy (Motivation, warmth, love) Light (Faith, hope. charity, joy)
This is the only way I can spiritually describe virtue, which is neither mass or intellectual. The intellectual properties of c2 is that it is the speed of light squared. But there are physical properties that go along with it as well. There are also spiritual properties, which I can only describe as the Spiritual E/c2... How can one describe that which is not intellectual or mass?
I particularly worry that in this day in time, as we have such a wild focus on materialism and education, that the spiritual virtues have taken a back seat. In which case is obvious in the photo in the OP. These scientist would not know virtue if it walked up to them with a red hat on!
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