God is Still Speaking

I would take better to the theology that "God is still speaking" if it didn't seem to always come up in the context of a single doctrine that a group had a special interest in. It seems like special pleading. When I played in a band in college, guys would come up and say "Y'know what this band really needs? A harmonica." My roommate would reply "Hey, that's interesting! You wouldn't happen to play the harmonica would you? Yeah, I thought so." He would then inquire what they guy liked to play and politely dismiss him on that account.  The same thing would occur with girls who thought some of our songs would be improved with a female vocalist. 

In mental health, art therapists would tell us that our patients needed more art therapy. The list goes on.

Over the last 20 years, the idea has become strongly attached to the blessing of gay ordination and gay marriage. When it broadens at all, it seems to have settled on being a late-60s, early 70's liberal.  Not even an early 60's liberal.  God was apparently not speaking quite clearly enough then. To be fair, they would say the Church was not listening clearly enough.

There are brands of conservative Christianity that don't use that exact phrase, but mirror the concept.  These are usually around end-times prophecy, and wouldn't you just know it? Our own Reverend Elijah Blanchard and his wife Blanche are anointed preachers bringing a powerful message that is going worldwide.

This was a lot of the trouble with the various Gnostics in the early Church, that they believed in continuing revelation, as if Jesus had just missed coming to the final necessary conclusions. The Montanists had this new convert to Christianity Montanus, who may have been a priest of Apollo or Cybele (a Great-Mother goddess.  That happens a lot, too.) Whatever he had been before, he claimed to be a prophet in the 100s. About the same time Marcion had new ideas about Jesus and edited the Gospel of Luke into the Gospel of...Marcion. 

It never stopped. In the next century Manichaeism, from the prophet Mani, went for it all and claimed to supersede Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Jesus with an elaborate dualism that included bits of every religion in a thousand mile radius. Make that two thousand. Mohammad was the new and final prophet until Baha'ullah became the final prophet much closer to our time. In between The Albigensians had this new (not really) idea of dualism, that the material world was evil and the spiritual world was good. Rinse, repeat for other new philosophies. Ferdinand and Isabella though that they were going to usher in the Last Days by getting the last of the Muslims - and oh yes, Jews now that we are at it - out of Spain which would then rule the rest of Europe and who know? Maybe the whole world. Rinse, repeat for other secular rulers.

Mary Baker Eddy, Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Smith - new revelations, and the 20th C is chock-a-block full of them. Are there any out there who believe in this ongoing revelation idea who don't have something to gain from it? As I said, I'm not opposed to the idea, but it doesn't seem to have a good track record.

Before people get into it, yes I have thought of this in terms of slavery and am not convinced that it qualified as a New Revelation in the church. I admit the defining of terms could get messy, but I think I could at least get the defense of that started, though others with more intelligence and wisdom might have to finish it.