The uniquely helpful systematic theology for people who know the Work

The uniquely helpful systematic theology for people who know the Work is Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. The reason for this is Grudem is truly Reformed (i.e. biblical in the 'says what the Bible says' way), while also being charismatic, which is unusual. Charismatic basically means he believes in the operation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christians to a degree and in ways that the usual run of Christians and Christian denominations don't believe in.


So, for instance, he has an entire (great) chapter in his Systematic Theology on what Baptism in the Holy Spirit is. This chapter is gold for someone who knows the Work and knows about accumulating higher energy and what kinds of things it leads to. It correlates self-remembering, or the first conscious shock, with baptism. He shows in the Bible six clear verses that speak of being filled with the Spirit. He mentions the subject of level of being and ability to hold only a degree of the Spirit based on level of being, though he mentions this in non-Work language of course, but he broaches the subject.


I also went through his chapter on the Lord's Supper to see if he had any correlations to the second conscious shock that I could discern, and he didn't. Though it's just occurred to me just now that the Last Supper took place in the Upper Room of a house. 'Upper Room' is always symbolic of higher centers and also of just getting there, which is what the second conscious shock effects. It is also said that the house where the last supper took place was on Mt. Zion. And the Lord's Supper symbolizes Jesus suffering and death in life and on the cross. And it is intentional suffering. Which is what the second conscious shock is. (The Bible wouldn't specifically say 'upper room' is it didn't have symbolic meaning, if you think about it.)


In the aforementioned chapter on baptism in the Holy Spirit he also talks of the touchy subject of different levels of Christians. I.e. ordinary Christians, and Christians who have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He has some good visual charts for that. Ordinary Christians sounds bad, but you have to read the chapter.


I've lately really attained complete understanding of covenant - federal - theology (which is nothing less than seeing the parts of the Bible in relation to the whole of the Bible). I.e. all the difficult aspects of it have been worked out and seen to have been ad hoc intrusions by paedo-baptists to fit their doctrine of infant baptism into biblical doctrine. These were parts of it all where I'd kind of squint my eyes and think, "This doesn't seem right." And now I know why. I was helped to get across the finish line, so to speak, by a paper I listed on my PPP blog in the 'books I've read' section in the right hand margin. It's the last book on there currently, with a pdf link. (The website is unusual, not exactly a pdf, and you have to wait for it to load. I found you can download it as a pdf if you go fullscreen then back to the regular screen. For some reason that gives you a big 'download' link that actually works.)

It's all very powerful knowledge. Ultimate knowledge. You don't enter the new realms with the knowledge alone though. Knowledge plus being, and higher states as your average state. - C

ps- I forgot to mention also that the difficult subject of speaking tongues is really, according to Grudem, speaking in languages. Of course tongues means that, but he says it's confusing saying tongues instead of languages. This speaking in tongues occurs after baptism with the Holy Spirit. I just can't help but think of language as the Work defines it: regarding circles. Outer circle (of the confusion of tongues), and inner circle where everybody understands each other (which is what happened at Pentecost). The Work is the beginning of such a language (remember the Work sources themselves tell us that it is merely the language of Man #4 and not of the inner circle of Man #5 proper. Probably higher centers, access to them, is what is alluded to, so language in this sense being more than the mere words that come out of our mouths. I just can't help but see a correlation there.