EVERY MORNING IS A NEW CREATION
The sages hold that every morning is a new creation, and the very person is newly created.
1 Kings 19:4-8: 4 Elijah himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die, "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." ... 8 He got up and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
Once upon a Time there was a Christian theological seminary. A there professor headed the systematic theology faculty, which was responsible if not the creating of new doctrines but at least for defending the old doctrines. The very defending of the old doctrines were usually called orthodoxy. Ortho is true in Greek and doxy is saying in Greek, so the compound Greek word 'orthodoxy' basically means saying the truth. However, often it was almost nothing further from the truth, they claimed that they teach the truth and only the truth under holy oath.
They claimed for more than a millennium, that Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, which means in Latin, that there is no salvation outside of the Church.
Note: Not Jesus, but the Church. It meant that any beliefs, which are outside of Christian orthodoxy not only that thy cannot be true but they must be even sacrilegious, idolatrous and consequently evil.
It is practically nothing else but demonizing any other, sometimes way older traditions, including the tradition of the Jews, whose Abraham supposed to be one of the cornerstones in the Bible, not mentioning the role of the Jewish Moses and the very Jewish Jesus Christ.
Ironically, during a seminary class the head of the theological seminary tried to defend the decency of the Jewish Prophets by saying that it is not like of the pagan shamans and the wizards, but the Jewish prophets needed no drums, no musical instruments, no ritual dancing to talk to God or listen to God.
Especially, there had been no need, but ever to dive into a transcendental ecstasy to get into the mood of prophesying.
Then a student stood up in front of the class not to challenge the professor, just stating the fact that it is in the Bible that a prophet asked for musicians to create some music and drums in order to get into the mood of prophesying.
The professor insisted that there has been no such thing ever mentioned in the Bible, regarding prophets demanding music as a preliminary action for prophesying.
He had to keep insisting that there is no such thing, if he had wanted to maintain the theological judgement over the shamans and the wizards and the medicine men and women, the very ancestors of the theology students sitting in the class room.
Their very ancestors used the shaman drums, a variety of flutes and string instruments as help to talk to the spirit world, to give thanks to the Sky God and the Mother Earth, and to get into the other worldly transcendental trance, the so called shaman journey in the spirit world, asking for advice, for remedies in the spirit world, for insight into the future fate of a person or of the whole community. Since Christianity had been introduced in that country, these traditional activities became banned by rigorous laws and were subjected to serious penalties. Serious penalties like imprisonment, torture to death, simple execution on the spot, or public impalement, crucifying, burying alive with the whole family, burning alive at the stake. Sometimes the punishment was just exile and confiscation of all properties and possessions. This happened for centuries, until even the memory of the old tradition was cut out from the hearts.
Still in the modern seminary class, when the old shamanistic traditions had been buried for about one thousand years, a student kept insisting that the Bible explicitly mentions the practice of using musical instruments including drums to talk to the spirit world.
Nonsense, said the head master professor.
However, the student took the Bible and read the following passages from the Second Book of the Kings, chapter three where the allied Kings turned to the very Prophet Elisha in a desperate war situation as they marched against the infamous Moab in the desert:
The King of Judah, Jehosaphat said: " 'Isn`t there here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him?` One of the King of Israel`s servants answered, `Elisha the son of Shaphat is here, who poured water on the hands of Elijah.` Jehoshaphat said, `The word of Yahweh is with him.` So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him. ... Elisha said, `As The Lord of Armies lives, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I respect the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward you, nor see you. But now bring me a minstrel musician.` It happened, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came on him."
Actually, prophesying as a profession was very often intertwined with providing music or using music as a prophesying tool, as it is written about the court of the very King David,
It is in the First Book of the Chronicles, chapter 24, that King “David and the captains of the army set apart for the service certain of the sons of Asaph, and of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, with stringed instruments, and with cymbals … under the hand of Asaph, who prophesied after the order of the king (and) under the hands of ... Jeduthun with the harp, who prophesied in giving thanks and praising Yahweh."
The headmaster of the seminar was very wrong regarding the usage of the musical instruments including drums in the process of prophesying or talking to the spirit world, because these practices are not demonic, but even biblical practices.
The doctrines which created the imperial orthodoxy, were created under the pressure of Roman Emperors, who wanted to unify and homogenize their Empire by the mandatory doctrines for faith and life. Any deviation from the prescribed doctrines had been considered a rebellion against the Empire and the Emperor himself.
And the empire maintained the imperial order by any means, that is why Martin Luther had to give up his life to face the imperial court in the city of Worms Germany, in front of the Hapsburg Emperor and the archbishops of Germany, gathered against the heretic Luther in 1519. They were there to oppress the biblical truth in the name of the imperial order, meanwhile Martin Luther escaped the certain death and in hiding he finished to translate the Bible into the vernacular German. The translated German Bible led to the protestant revolution in Germany, and then to the formation of the Anglican Church in England.
Elisha who asked for the musicians in order to prophecy was the heir disciple of the Prophet Elijah the Great, who had a new morning and new mission in the desert.
May the mission continue daily anew, by listening to God to obey the WORD, AMEN
