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How the Jewish Prayer Service Resembles Pentecostal Worship
Most visitors to a mainstream Jewish prayer service would not typically describe what they witness as “ecstatic.” In Orthodox contexts, the mitzvah is to say the prayers, not to have an ecstatic experience. Even in non-Orthodox contexts, the main goal of the service is often seen as “getting through the prayers,” with perhaps some time for reflection or contemplation. But outside of Hasidic, neo-Hasidic, and Jewish Renewal circles, as well as a few unusual congregations like B’nai Jeshurun in New York, there is little ecstasy in shul. Singing, yes; community-building, yes – but ecstatic experience, not so much.
In the summer of 2005, Newsweek Magazine devoted an entire issue on the subject of “Spirituality in America.” The premise? There is a growing fascination with the ecstatic experience: to know God directly; to viscerally feel God within; to have the ecstatic, transcendent personal experience...
And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? 31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed [their] stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. (Acts 16:25-34)
Jim Lincoln wrote: Add it to the AV, John, it would fit right in there.
Surprise surprise, an article on Jewish Prayer Services evoked yet another attempt to attack the Authorized Version, which God has set his seal on for many centuries and which is beloved of many.
Poor dab, deluded and deceived.
Those Jesuits sure are clever to have bewitched IHCC and its merry men.
Add it to the AV, John, it would fit right in there.
Gil Rugh said or, wrote: Mysticism looks for truth within. You come to know God through your subjective experiences rather than His objective revelation. This is what I feel is true. The Scriptures are objective truth. They stand unchanging. My feelings change. My personal convictions have been altered. But the Word of God does not change.
Colossians 3 3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. 5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.---NASB
"If one has not personally experienced the realm of glory, one might be inclined to read material about the state as metaphor, as poetry, but those who have experienced it report a sensory phenomenon, an ecstatic synesthetic experience. “Synesthesia” is the experiencing by one sensory organ of a sensation normally attributed to a different sensory organ. It is caused by the confusion or crossing of sensory channels, as a result of a “disinhibition” of normal sensory filtering processes. The experience of glory is aroused and “induced” through group excitation and suggestion and seems to be a threshold experience or phase shift, a sudden change in perception at a switch-point, writes consciousness author Ken Wilber (1998)."
Don't you just love this modern language?
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