Finding God in All Religions?

I've been thinking lately about a comment that a friend of mine made fairly recently, essentially to this effect: "Why do we have to choose just one religious tradition to be in? I find God in all of them! God isn't different in any of the religions, just the way in which we relate to God. I find beautiful ways of really relating to God in all of them. But I don't accept any religious tenets that claim an exclusive place for any one religious tradition." I was indeed surprised by some of my other professing Christian friends who wholeheartedly supported her sentiment.

Now, the first question I had about her initial statement was.... which god? Are we talking about Thor, the hammer-wielding Norse god of thunder? Are we perhaps talking about Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas? Or the Sumerian deity Enki, lord of mischief, waters, and creation? And what then of the Assyrian patron god Ashur, and the Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli, and the Moabite god Chemosh, and the lion-headed Meroitic god Apedemak, and the Canaanite orchard goddess Nikkal-wa-Ib, and the Nabatean god Al-Qaum? Is it any of these gods that my friend finds at the heart of Islam and Confucianism and Kemetic Revivalism (Egyptian Reconstructionist Paganism) and Christianity? That doesn't seem especially likely. I rather doubt that, for instance, the "God" she finds in "all religions" is any of those; I doubt she has any of them specifically in mind. Unfortunately, my friend simply ignored my question.

But seriously, which god? Which god is the one my friend can find in all religions? Now, perhaps someone would charge me with being a bit tendentious here. After all, perhaps my friend really meant "all major religions". But isn't that rather provincialist? After all, there may be just a handful of prominent world religions today, but it's a matter of pure chronological contingency that she happens to live in a world in which a significant portion of the population adheres to Abrahamic monotheism, and none of those ancient polytheistic faiths are still around as statistically influential options. But surely my friend doesn't mean to discriminate against Reconstructionist Pagans, does she? That certainly doesn't sound like her. She prides herself on being a beacon of tolerance and love, not one of those bigoted exclusivist dullards like, well, virtually everyone who's ever lived.

So perhaps the god she has in mind is the God of Abraham. Let's explore that option for a moment. Is the God of Abraham - the one who created heaven and earth from nothing with a simple divine edict, and who has an exclusive and absolute claim on the ultimate loyalty of all humanity, who acts in history, and who is a just judge of the sins of the nations - the deity that she finds in, say, Asatru (Norse Reconstructionist Paganism)? It's hard to see where. Which of those gods is he? Which of them created heaven and earth from nothing with just a command? Which of them claims the right of exclusive worship? Which of them is a judge of the actions of people in distant lands? Well... none of them. So how, exactly, does my friend find the God of Abraham in Norse Reconstructionist Paganism, or in its ancient Norse precursor? But perhaps we should try another religion - say, Confucianism. Is the God of Abraham the deity she finds in Confucianism? Where exactly does she find a deity in Confucianism anyway? The same goes for, say, Theraveda Buddhism, which also doesn't focus on any god. Does my friend find the God of Abraham in Theraveda Buddhism? If she does, where does she find him? How does Theraveda Buddhism offer a means of relating to the God of Abraham when Theraveda Buddhism doesn't put the focus on any gods at all? Or how does Asatru offer a means of relating to the God of Abraham when it explicitly offers you many gods, but one of the defining characteristics of the God of Abraham is that he refuses to share his servants with other putative deities? And even supposing that you could find the God of Abraham hidden somewhere in Theraveda Buddhism and in Confucianism and in Asatru; what on earth would make anyone think that those religious traditions offer means of relating to the God of Abraham that are every bit as good and valid and useful as those offered by religious traditions that are explicitly devoted to the God of Abraham?

What about, say, Brahman, the impersonal sole reality that constitutes all things in many of the philosophical traditions of Hinduism? Is that the 'god' that my friend finds in all religions? The first thing I should add in response to that notion is that I have to wholeheartedly agree with contemporary philosopher Peter Van Inwagen when he argues that words like brahman that refer to impersonal abstractions like this are just plain wrongly translated if they're rendered as 'God'. As he remarks about those who hold that, in Eastern religious traditions, God is an 'impersonal first principle': "I think it would be plausible to maintain that the person who said this was translating some Hindi or Pali or Sanskrit word into English as 'God' when he ought to be translating it in some other way. (And why not say this, if the history of the word he is translating as 'God' has no connection with the history of the English word or with the history of Deus or theos or elohim?)" (Peter Van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil, p. 156 n. 1). Even setting that problem aside, does my friend find Brahman in Islam and in Aztec religion alike? Where? I mean, I suppose that if you believe in Brahman, you could believe that Allah is a manifestation of Brahman, and that so is Huitzilopochtli. But that wouldn't be bridging different religions at all. It would be standing quite firmly within a Hindu tradition. And it would involve saying, for instance, that neither Muslims nor Aztecs really understand what they worship, and that they have most of their religion all wrong (though it works anyway)... but we, the knowers of Brahman, understand Allah better than Muslims do and Huitzilopochtli better than the Mexica did. And while that may not be a soteriologically exclusivist claim, it's certainly exclusivist in some sense that might make my friend a bit queasy.

Here's the thing. If you're finding 'God' in all religious traditions, then it isn't any of the gods they worship. There is no god worshipped in common in all religious traditions, especially since some of those traditions don't worship gods at all. There's not much overlap in the world's numerous pantheons. Furthermore, if you're finding 'God' in all of these traditions, then you're not standing in all of them at once; you're standing in something novel of your own making. You don't get to call yourself a Christian or a Muslim if you believe that you can please the God of heaven and earth by cutting out a victim's heart and lofting it up to Huitzilopochtli. That's just not what Christianity is, and that's just not what Islam is. For all its breadth, Christianity is a specific religious tradition; it has boundaries. The same goes for Islam. One cannot be a Christian and a Buddhist, for instance, without using at least one (and probably both) of those words in a way that is, quite frankly, dishonest. To be a Christian, a real Christian who stands in solidarity with the broad Christian tradition in all of its historic richness, involves believing that the created world is good and that we really do have selves and that our final state will be one of living in resurrected and glorified bodies in a community that worships one (and only one) personal God. To be a Buddhist, a real Buddhist who stands in solidarity with that tradition, involves believing that our existence in this world is suffering caused by desire, and that we have no permanent selves, and that our final state is to break the cycle of birth and death and new birth by achieving nirvana, which is likely not a state in which we can worship a single personal God. Those are two radically incompatible pictures of the world and humanity and God and our destiny. One cannot truly be a Christian and at the same time truly be a Buddhist. And that's simply one example.

So there's a very good reason why a person can't be part of all religious traditions, or even many of them. Most of them are, as defined by their essential beliefs, non-overlapping. (That isn't, of course, to say that some minor beliefs from other traditions can't be accepted, so long as the coherence of the whole system is kept in tact without violence done to the major essential beliefs and practices.) To attempt to be part of all of them is to be part of none of them - which, in many cases, is simply to create a new one, the religion of Kyle-ism or Lucinda-ism or some other novel -ism, tailor-made by its founder as a private religion exalted above all the many historic religious traditions. For my part, I may be an arrogant man, but I'm not arrogant enough to class myself as a peer to Jesus and Siddhartha Gautama and Muhammad and Moses and Baha'u'llah and Confucius and Lao Tzu and all the other principal religious figures in human history! But that is precisely what is done by those who try to break free from being part of just one religious tradition; they create their own novelty to put alongside the rest. And furthermore, even if their newly created religion is very soteriologically inclusive ("Oh it doesn't matter who you are or what you've done or what you believe or what you do, you can relate to God just fine. Please, Mr. Stalin, take your place next to Mr. Gandhi. I'm not yet sure what exactly it is that you'll both be doing when it's all said and done - do I believe in heaven and hell, or just heaven, or nirvana, or Valhalla, or...? - but I'm quite sure that you're both perfectly fine as you are. Now Mr. Stalin, I'd like to ask you not to order any more ethnic purges. But if you do, just remember that God and/or Brahman and/or Chemosh will love, accept, or tolerate you anyway. You just relate to God/Brahman/Chemosh/Whatever in a different, more ethnic-purging-type way than I do, and that's fine because what matters is that we all love each other. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. LaVey, I didn't mean to offend you! It's fine if you relate to God/Brahman/Chemosh/Whatever by seeking vengeance on those who wrong you. Just so long as you aren't against gay marriage or a grown woman's rights to decide whether or not to kill her children before they exit the confines of her body, of course."), it still has to be 'exclusive' in some way by saying that someone (actually, a lot of someones) is just plain wrong.

Ultimately, I just don't think that my friend's pluralistic proposal can work. Not because it's impractical, but because it runs into far too many intellectual difficulties, to say nothing of the moral ramifications or the spiritual implications. For these and other reasons, I don't think any faithful Christian should accept this kind of pluralism; it is not only clearly wrong, but also incompatible with the historic Christian faith delivered once and for all to the holy church of God (Jude 3).

A Eucharistic Meditation

What is the staple of life? As I contemplate it, it seems that it must be the meal. For the meal, in its highest form, is an occasion of fellowship and sharing with others while, together, we rejoicingly co-partake in that which sustains us in being. A meal is sustenance - that is, life - in community - that is, love. The meal, in its highest form, is life renewed and shared in love. And the eucharist is the highest of meals. For in the eucharist, the fellowship and sharing is the communion of the baptized, the togetherness of those who have tasted the heavenly gift, the mutual sharing of the sons and daughters of God destined for unfathomably glory. And in the eucharist, the sustenance of abundant life given/received, renewed, and shared in divine love is none other than the very substance of Life and Love made flesh and blood and revealed to us in the most basic of food and drink - bread and wine. That in which we partake through the eucharist is not merely a means of sustaining physical life; it is that means subsumed into the very reality - it is Life itself in whom we as the Living Community, living together, share. It is the 'medicine of immortality' shared in common by the inheritors of immortality, who in this meal have the sacred opportunity to partake in the Wellspring of Immortality - the Crucified and Risen Messiah, whose atoning passion we proclaim before the world every time we faithfully celebrate this act through this meal. This meal is our redeemed sharing in the death whereby Christ trampled down death and thereby ushered us into the freedom of the children of God. This meal is the Divine Life made flesh and blood and given as flesh and blood through bread and wine so that we might in the meal be made participants by grace in that Divine Life, that our table-fellowship might be a communal participation in the Eternal Community that is God in Trinity.

This eucharist, our meal of thanksgiving, looks to the past and to the future. It looks to the rescue of the Israelites from their bondage of Egypt and to the meal that celebrated God's mighty liberating act - which itself looked forward to our rescue from the bondage of sin and this eucharistic meal that celebrates God's mighty liberating act for us in Christ. It looks back to the manna, the bread of angels, that sustained the Israelites in their wanderings through the wilderness, just as this eucharistic meal - which is Christ, the "bread of heaven", given for us, broken for us, poured out for us - sustains the church of God in our wanderings through what remains of "the present evil age" as we yearn and plead for God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. It looks back to the Last Supper, when Christ in anticipation of his death took the Passover and made it new, made it fresh, made it signify yet again a new deliverance of God. It looks also forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb, that banquet on God's holy mountain when ultimate victory over sin and death and all the powers of darkness and pain will be celebrated and announced, and when the union of Christ and his holy church will be made full, fuller than our wildest imagination. It looks forward as an anticipation, a participating shadow, of every meal in the glory of the kingdom of God, of dining in the unmediated presence of Love, of Life.

Thank you, O Lord, for this meal! When I partake of this most holy sacrament... why do not my knees give way when I approach the table of the Lord? Can I not see that this is the body and blood of God's Messiah, broken and poured forth as a sacrifice and libation to remedy my sin, our sin? Are my senses so dulled that I fail to perceive that what I take in my hand and place in my mouth is the source of life? How can I bear it? How can I survive taking it into me, sinner that I am - save that you, O Lord, have cleansed me and prepared me by your Spirit? Little wonder that your apostle warned of partaking lightly, and so eating and drinking judgment to ourselves! But Lord, how I feel such delight when I behold a banquet of mere food, and yet so often fail to rejoice all the more greatly when I see that your own body and blood are set before me - the food of the kingdom! And Lord, how I dare to approach without the gravest trepidation when I contemplate that this food signifies the very death of the Son of God! Forgive me, Lord, for not perceiving the sacred mystery as fully as I ought! If I did, I should walk to the table trembling in awe-filled jubilation.

Can even the cherubim or the seraphim grasp what transpires at the Lord's Table? (For note: it is not we who have invited him to our table; it is he who has invited us to his.) Can even they perceive the full depth and breadth of this meal and what is represents? How much less can we! And yet, while we do not understand its mystery, still we are called to consume its mystery - and thus to be consumed by it, by the joy and redemption found only in Life, in Love. O Lord, you who go so far as to give your own divine self to us as a meal, consume us in living love to be vessels of life and love who spread love and restore life wherever we go - not on our mission, but on yours!

Deliverance Past and Present

During the course I'm taking this term (Church History I), each student signs up for a day to deliver a brief morning devotional before class gets underway. Recently I had my turn and chose to focus a bit on Habakkuk 3, so there are a variety of thoughts I've been having about it, which I'll have to spread over several posts. The opening verses of Habakkuk 3 make clear that the chapter is a prayer to God crossed with a song celebrating God's strength and power. And the basic point it makes is a very simple one: long ago God saved his people from their troubles by kicking some serious butt, but now the prophet and the people are once again in trouble and their only hope is for God to once again kick some serious butt and rescue them. Or in other words: "Yahweh, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Yahweh. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2).

Most of the rest of the chapter (3:3-15) is a powerful, gripping, awe-inspiring roar of God's power to deliver - our God is mighty to save! Habakkuk 3:3-15 is a picture of a God you really, really, really don't want to mess with. His footsteps shake the earth with plague; he looks all the peoples of the world... and they flinch. He shoots his arrows everywhere, carving through the land with rivers. When the mountains see him on the warpath, they squirm and quake. When the heavenly bodies see his arrows and his spear, they hold still for fear. He makes the oceans churn, trampling them underfoot. That is the God of Habbakuk - and that is our God, too. No wonder Habakkuk says that when he heard about what God once did, his lips quivered and his legs trembled (3:16)!

And yet what does he then say? He says that he waits patiently for God to do it again. Habakkuk's prayer/psalm is an impassioned cry to God: "When we were in trouble before, you bailed us out! Please, please God - we need an encore now!" And yet... he waits patiently! He waits patiently for God to make good on that prayer. Habakkuk has faith that God will punish and drive off the invaders. And so no matter how dire things get until then - even if everything they rely on is gone and they're left with nothing - Habakkuk says that even then he "will rejoice in Yahweh, [he] will be joyful in God [his] Savior" (3:18). Even when all the nations of the earth are arrayed against him, Habakkuk trusts that Yahweh, the God of Israel, will be his strength and give him the power to "tread on the heights" (3:19).

Habakkuk can trust that he's praying to the very same God who once did all of those things - and who hasn't lost his touch. Habakkuk can trust that God will carry through. Habakkuk can cry out for the God of then to be the God of now, for the God of deliverance past to be the God of deliverance present.

And I have to ask myself, do I honestly have that faith? Do I have the faith to believe that when I pray, the God whose throne of grace I boldly approach (alright, so usually I approach it timidly) is a God who not only is the greatest of Deliverers, but who is still in the deliverance business? Do I have the faith to believe that maybe, just maybe, my prayers are being heard... and I might get a response more explosive and earth-shattering and breathtaking than I ever thought possible?

Honestly, I don't know that I do. I'd like to, though. I want to have Habakkuk's faith. I want to have the faith to look back on what God has done for his people when they needed him, and to cry out, "I need that now too!", and then to wait patiently in the assurance that I'm in good hands. I was not brought up to trust; I was trained to be anxious and paranoid and fearful. When it comes to developing Habakkuk's sort of faith, I have a long way to go and, honestly, very little clue where or how to practically begin. But imagine what the church could be like as a whole if we could read the Old Testament and the New Testament and the stories of God's powerful acts in the two thousand years since then... and confidently, joyfully, expectantly, rightly pray, "Today as well!"

Happy New Year!

[Originally posted at Study and Faith]

Happy New Year, everyone! In celebration of the new year, I'd like to reprint here the words of a little-known New Year's hymn. (There really are such things, you know.) The title is simply 'Hymn I', and it's taken from John Wesley, A Collection of Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord: and for New-Year's-Day (London, UK: Thomas Cordeux, 1810), 19-20. I hope you won't mind if I modernize the spelling and remove a few minor eccentricities in punctuation.

Wisdom ascribe, and might and praise,
To God who lengthens out our days,
Who spares us yet another year
And lets us see his goodness here;
Happy and wise the time redeem,
And live, my friends, and die to him.

How often when his arm was bared,
Has he our sinful Israel spared!
Let me alone, his mercy cried,
And turned the vengeful bolt aside,
Indulged another kind reprieve,
And strangely suffered us to live.

Laid to the root with conscious awe,
But now the threatening axe we saw,
We saw when Jesus stepped between,
To part the punishment and sin
He pleaded for the blood-bought race,
And God vouchsafed a longer space!

Still in the doubtful balance weighed,
We trembled while the remnant prayed;
The Father heard his Spirit groan
And answered mild, It is my Son!
He let the prayer of faith prevail,
And mercy turned the hovering scale.

Merciful God, how shall we raise
Our hearts to pay thee all thy praise!
Our hearts shall beat for thee alone,
Our lives shall make thy goodness known
Our souls and bodies shall be thine,
A living sacrifice divine.

I and my house will serve the Lord,
Led by the Spirit and the Word;
We plight our faith assembled here,
To serve our God the ensuing year;
And vow when time shall be no more,
Through all eternity to adore.

Technical Difficulties, Please Stand By

[Originally posted at Study and Faith]

Hello, everyone. Just wanted to put up a notice that I seem to have encountered some hardware... difficulties... with my laptop. The sort of difficulties that have the unpleasant side effect of preventing me from accessing the Internet with it. (Technically, I can open an Internet window, I just can't make it larger than a tab.) Right now I'm using one of my previous computers, which is currently held together with substantial quantities of tape. Because of this issue, I most likely won't be posting much for the next week or two until I can (hopefully) get the issue straightened out. [...] In the meantime, please feel free to look over the many other posts I've made [both here and at my other blog] in the past month and give feedback to your heart's content.

The Communion of Saints: A Wesleyan Poem

[Originally posted at Study and Faith]

I found this a few weeks ago in John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems, 4^th ed (Bristol, UK: Felix Farley, 1743), 301-311. It was printed as a six part poem, and I'd like to transcribe it here with minor alterations (mostly updates to spelling):

Father, Son, and Spirit hear
Faith's effectual, fervent prayer,
Hear, and our petitions seal,
Let us now the answer feel.
Mystically one with thee,
Transcript of the Trinity,
Thee let all our nature own,
One in three and three in one.

If we now begin to be
Partners with thy saints and thee,
If we have our sins forgiven,
Fellow-citizens of heaven,
Still the fellowship increase,
Knit us in the bond of peace,
Join, our newborn spirits join
Each to each, and all to thine.

Build us in one body up,
Called in one high calling's hope;
One the Spirit whom we claim,
One the pure baptismal flame,
One the faith, and common Lord,
One the Father lives, adored,
Over, through, and in us all,
God incomprehensible!

One with God, the Source of bliss,
Ground of our communion this;
Life of all that live below,
Let thine emanations flow,
Rise eternal in our heart:
Thou our long-sought Eden art;
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Be to us what Adam lost.

Bold we ask through Christ the Son,
Thou, O Christ, art all our own;
Our exalted flesh we see
To the Godhead joined in thee.
Glorious now thy heaven we share,
Thou art here, and we are there,
We participate of thine,
Human nature of divine.

Live we now in Christ our head,
Quickened by thy life and fed;
Christ, from whom the Spirit flows,
Into thee thy body grows;
While we feel the vital blood,
While the circulating flood,
Christ, through every member rolls,
Soul of all believing souls.

Daily growth the members find,
Fitly with each other joined;
Closely all compacted rise;
Every joint its strength supplies,
Life to every part conveys,
'Til the whole receive increase,
All complete the body prove,
Perfectly built up with love.

Christ, the true, the heavenly vine,
If thy grace hath made us thine,
Branches of a poisoned root,
Fallen Adam's evil fruit;
If we now transplanted are,
If we of thy nature share,
Hear us, Lord, and let us be
Fully grafted into thee.

Still may we continue thus,
We in thee, and thou in us;
Let us fresh supplies receive,
From thee, in thee ever live;
Share the fatness of the root,
Blossum, bud, and bring forth fruit,
With immortal vigor rise,
Towering 'til we reach the skies.

Christ, to all believers known,
Living, precious cornerstone,
Christ, by mortals disallowed,
Chosen and esteemed of God;
Lively stones we come to thee,
Built together let us be,
Saved by grace through faith alone:
Faith it is that makes us one.

Other ground can no man lay,
Jesus takes our sins away!
Jesus the foundation is:
This shall stand, and only this:
Fitly framed in him we are,
All the building rises fair:
Let it to a temple rise,
Worthy him who fills the skies.

Husband of thy church below,
Christ, if thee our Lord we know,
Unto thee betrothed in love,
Always faithful let us prove,
Never rob thee of our heart,
Never give the creature part;
Only thou possess the whole,
Take our body, spirit, soul.

Steadfast let us cleave to thee,
Love the mystic union be;
Union to the world unknown!
Joined to God, in spirit one,
Wait we 'til the Spouse shall come,
'Til the Lamb shall take us home,
For his heaven the Bride prepare,
Solemnize our nuptials there.

Christ, our Head, gone up on high,
Be thou in thy Spirit nigh,
Advocate to God, give ear
To thine own effectual prayer:
Hear the sounds thou once didst breathe
In thy days of flesh beneath,
Now, O Jesus, let them be
Strongly echoed back to thee.

We, O Christ, have thee received,
We the gospel-word believed,
Justly then we claim a share
In thine everlasting prayer.
One the Father is with thee;
Knit us in like unity;
Make us, O uniting Son,
One as thou and he are one.

If thy love to us hath given
All the glory of his heaven,
(From eternity thine own,
Glory here in grace begun)
Let us now the gift receive,
By the vital union live,
Joined to God, and perfect be,
Mystically one in thee.

Let it hence to all be known,
Thou art with thy Father one,
One with him in us be shewed,
Very God of very God;
Sent, our spirits to unite,
Sent to make us sons of light,
Sent, that we his grace may prove,
All the riches of his love.

Thee he loved e'er time begun,
Thee the co-eternal Son;
He hath to thy merit given
Us, the adopted heirs of heaven.
Thou hast willed that we should rise,
See thy glory in the skies,
See thee by all heaven adored,
Be forever with our Lord.

Thou the Father seest alone,
Thou to us hast made him known:
Sent from him we know thou art,
We have found thee in our heart:
Thou the Father hast declared:
He is here our great reward,
Ours his nature and his name;
Thou art ours with him the fame.

Still, O Lord, (for Thine we are)
Still to us his name declare;
Thy revealing Spirit give,
Whom the world cannot receive:
Fill us with the Father's love,
Never from our souls remove,
Dwell in us, and we shall be
Thine to all eternity.

Christ, from whom all blessings flow,
Perfecting the saints below,
Hear us, who thy nature share,
Who thy mystic body are:
Join us, in one spirit join,
Let us still receive of thine,
Still for more on thee we call,
Thee, who fillest all in all.

Closer knit to thee our head,
Nourish us, O Christ, and feed,
Let us daily growth receive,
More and more in Jesus live:
Jesus! We thy members are,
Cherish us with kindest care,
Of thy flesh, and of thy bone:
Love, forever love thine own.

Move, and actuate, and guide,
Diverse gifts to each divide;
Placed according to thy will,
Let us all our work fulfill;
Never from our office move,
Needful to the others prove,
Use the grace on each bestowed,
Tempered by the art of God.

Sweetly now we all agree,
Touched with softest sympathy,
Kindly for each other care:
Every member feels its share:
Wounded by the grief of one,
All the suffering members groan;
Honored if one member is,
All partake the common bliss.

Many are we now, and one,
We who Jesus have put on:
There is neither bond nor free,
Male nor female, Lord, in thee.
Love, like Death, hath us destroyed,
Rendered all distinctions void:
Names, and sects, and parties fall;
Thou, O Christ, art all in all!

King of saints, to whom are given
All in earth and all in heaven,
Reconciled through thee alone,
Joined, and gathered into one:
Heirs of glory, sons of grace,
Lo! to thee our hopes we raise,
Raise and fix our hopes on thee,
Full of immortality!

Absent in our flesh from home,
We are to Mt. Zion come:
Heaven is our soul's abode,
City of the living God;
Entered there our seats we claim
In the New Jerusalem,
Join the countless angel choir,
Greet the firstborn sons of fire.

We our elder brethren meet,
We are made with them to fit,
Sweetest fellowship we prove
With the General Church above;
Saints, who now their names behold
In the Book of Life enrolled,
Spirits of the righteous, made
Perfect here in Christ their Head.

We with them to God are come,
God who speaks the General Doom,
Jesus Christ, who stands between
Angry heaven, and guilty men,
Undertakes to buy our peace,
Gives the covenant of grace,
Ratifies, and makes it good,
Signs and seals it with his blood.

Life his healing blood imparts,
Sprinkled on our peaceful hearts:
Abel's blood for vengeance cried,
Jesus' speaks us justified:
Speaks, and calls for better things,
Makes us prophets, priests, and kings,
Asks that we with him may reign--
Earth and heaven say, "Amen!"

Come, ye kindred souls above,
Man provokes you unto love;
Saints and angels hear the call,
Praise the common Lord of all:
Him let earth and heaven proclaim,
Earth and heaven record his name,
Let us both in this agree,
Both his one great family.

Hosts of heaven begin the song,
Praise him with a tuneful tongue,
(Sounds like yours we cannot raise,
We can only lisp his praise)
Us repenting sinners see,
Jesus died to set us free,
Sing ye over us forgiven;
Shout for joy, ye hosts of heaven!

Be it unto angels known,
By the church, what God hath done:
Depths of love and wisdom see
In a dying deity!
Gaze, ye firstborn seraphs, gaze!
Never can ye sound his grace:
Lost in wonder, look no more;
Fall, and silently adore.

Ministerial spirits know,
Execute your charge below:
You our Father hath prepared,
Fenced us with a flaming guard:
Bid you all our ways attend,
Safe convey us to the end,
On your wings our souls remove,
Waft us to the realms of love.

Happy souls whose course is run,
Who the fight of faith have won,
Parted by an earlier death,
Think ye of your friends beneath?
Have ye your own flesh forgot?
By a common ransom bought?
Can death's interposing tide
Spirits one in Christ divide?

No: for us you ever wait,
'Til we make your bliss complete,
'Til your fellow-servants come,
'Til your brethren hasten home:
You in Paradise remain,
For your testimony slain,
Nobly who for Jesus' stood,
Bold to seal the truth with blood.

Ever now your speaking cries
From beneath the altar rise,
Loudly call for vengeance due,
"Come, Thou Holy God, and true!
Lord, how long thou dost delay!
Come to judgment, come away!
Hasten, Lord, the General Doom!
Come away, to judgment come!"

Wait, ye righteous spirits, wait,
Soon arrives your glorious state;
Robed in white a season rest,
Blessed, if not completely blessed.
When the number is fulfilled,
When the witnesses are killed,
When we all from earth are driven,
Then with us ye mount to heaven.

Jesus hear, and bow the skies,
Hark! we all unite our cries;
Take us to our heavenly home,
Quickly let thy kingdom come!
"Jesus, come," the Spirit cries,
"Jesus, come," the Bride replies;
One triumphant church above,
Join us all in perfect love.

New Blog Alert

Just wanted to add a notice here that, in addition to this blog, I've added another one. Study and Faith is a blog devoted to exploring issues relating to cordial dialogue between Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints (Mormons). Now, on this blog, I try to only post when I have a sense that the Spirit may be leading me to do so. That's one reason why I haven't added anything in the past five weeks. At Study and Faith, however, I try to post on a fairly regular basis - maybe once every other day or so. I'd really like to invite all the readers I have here to subscribe to that blog as well. Of most relevance to readers here, especially those who aren't especially drawn to LDS-Evangelical dialogue, I'm doing a series there where I work my way through a variety of Evangelical documents like the Lausanne Covenant.