I attended a church that
began with the pastor inviting people to come forward to give testimonies about
what God has been doing in their lives. One man had only a few words out of his
mouth before he switched from giving a testimony to preaching. His mini-sermon
wasn’t bad, but it lacked the power found in a testimony. Using John the
Baptist as an example, “Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come
down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not
have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me,
‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize
with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this
is the Son of God” (John 1:32-34 NIV).
2 comments:
Gail;
-----I never appreciated the importance of testimony until I thought metaphorically upon I John 5:8, “There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree.” Commentaries are going to tell you this verse means the witness born by regeneration from the baptismal waters, the power of His blood to wash our sins away, and the resulting involvement of the Holy Spirit in our actions, thoughts and emotions, and relationships. The testimony of these witnesses is of Christ to the believer.
-----Indeed, the believer needs the testimony of witnesses. So do non-believers; after all, non-believers are the judges who must rule on evidences correctly in order to incline their hearts to the right and so call on the Lord for salvation. But these witnesses appear highly subjective to folks who have not God’s Spirit in their lives. And that subjective nature does not do much good in a world of men denying subjectively experienced evidences of any reality which might constrain their subjective choices of belief or behavior. So is there any witness seen in this scripture born to the non-believer by God for an effort of winning that heart’s inclination towards God?
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-----I don’t know. But I like to see a metaphor in I John 5:8 that does show God’s witness objectively put forth to non-believers. “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has borne witness to his Son.” (I John 5:9) This metaphorical witness comes from paying regard to the broad categories containing as members each of these three, the water, the blood, and the Spirit. What are the differentiating properties of each? Water is material substance, but not living. It contains life from the microbial to the greatest -whales. But in itself, it is not life. Correlation is one of the basic tools of science. When things correlate beyond coincidentalism to the point of being predictive of other correlations, science accepts realities. For two years I have studied every aspect I can find about the forty-eight constellations of the zodiac and history. Every one of these signs not only correlates with the gospel, but several Old Testament scriptures address the zodiac from this aspect of its having been given to man by God as a message. Moreover, the second law of thermodynamics is the wearing out of the universe (Ps 102:26,Rom 8:21.) These are non-living entities bearing witness to the truth of God’s Word. But blood is a living substance. It does not just contain life, as does water, it is life. Its very structure bears the mark of life in that it is highly organized unto performing a living function as opposed to being a chaotic substance as is water. The entire realm of this world’s living creatures testifies to Christ’s being the bread of life in that every living creature must eat living creatures to live (every good metaphor has its limits: some nematodes live on dirt, and plants extract nutrients from the soil. Yet both enter the food chain which partakes in the metaphor.) Moreover, in the highly organized nature of blood’s structure is witness to the fact that eternal life requires the highly organized structure of every creature in it serving a particular purpose within the overall structure that is eternal life. This concept is the nature of Spirit, the third witness. God’s Spirit is seen all over in the various elements of this world’s make-up. It is seen in the Bible’s correlation around a focused message though it was written by some five dozen different authors over a span of no less than sixteen hundred years. Archeological and paleontological evidences also form patterns discernibly telling of the truth of God’s Word. These patterns also are witness born of God’s Spirit to any who have eyes to see and ears to hear, correlating by the Word’s formulae otherwise seemingly unrelated information into intelligible facts about God.
-----I doubt this is exactly what John had in mind when penning (quilling) I John 5. But it is a metaphor extractable from that scripture which portrays a definite truth about God’s calling gone forth to men.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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