Rather than storing data on our computers, the industry now wants all
of us to store our data in The Cloud. The promotions say when you need the
data, you simply reach up to and retrieve what you need. When I hear people
talk about the cloud my mind goes to the book of Hebrews. Here the writer gives
us the image of a great cloud of witnesses (heroes of faith) who cheer us on as
we run our race. “…let us throw off
everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run
with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Heb 12:1b
NIV) I have to say that I’m much more confident in the cloud of witnesses than
I’ll ever be in the data cloud.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----You have provided a great opportunity to compare the cloud of witnesses and fog of the anti-Christ. We can receive something from both; we can add something to both. Although there is a difference in what is received or added, there is no difference in the sense of receiving and adding. The difference in what’s added or received is in its authorship and purpose.
-----For sure, don’t take me to be saying the internet is becoming the anti-Christ. The internet is a tool. Good people use it for good, and evil people use it for evil. The same can be said for clothes, houses, cars, and pretty much everything else. Even Paul noted that some in prison with him at Rome preached the gospel from envy and rivalry to afflict him. The internet will become very handy for the anti-Christ, but it is not the anti-Christ.
-----The beast who will be the anti-Christ rises out of the sea, a Biblical metaphor for the world’s mass of people. The sea does stir turbulently, but this turbulence is a systematic effect happening through the combined consistencies of billions of similar molecules. Billions of people’s consistency of not honoring or thanking their Creator and suppressing the truth by their evil creates as many hearts’ loose ends seeking a secure tie to something larger than themselves. The anti-Christ will rise to that size by the shear volume of souls having the will to recognize him as such. This willingness emerges by people feeding twisted truths to others who regurgitate their digestions as food for yet more. The authorship of the internet’s content is continuously becoming more proportionately not God‘s, as is the content of all other communication amongst mankind. This culture of souls is therefore careening into the ravine of darkness, each soul feeding communication of dishonor, each soul eating communication of dishonor, all to the covert purpose of their destruction.
-----But the cloud of witnesses is not authored by mankind. It’s authorship is from the spiritual dimension dwarfing this physical one. In a sense, the fog of the anti-Christ is also authored by spirit, but that spirit is in this world. The Author of the witness cloud is not. His message can not naturally stir up from the minds of mankind, since these are constrained. Nor does He choose to simply write it on rocks all over the world for our reading (other than the two He wrote for Moses.) But He chose people willing to be faithful, since they were not being entirely obedient, to serve as portals of sorts for His messages. This is a difference. And as that cloud of witness is written in a book that does not change like the fog does, this is more of that same difference. Then our additions to the cloud of witnesses, though not those of our names to it, are of godly deeds faithfully done within a dark world, deeds born from our spirits’ joined by His and brought through our faithfulness (since our obedience is not consistent) for the purpose of lighting the way to God’s construction of new life. By these additions to it, we, not the cloud, are changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another. But the fog is changed from one degree of despair to another by all the regurgitation done within it.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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