Profanation: The Unforgivable Sin?

November 3, 2011 By Coleman Glenn 2 Comments

In the comments on my previous post, Kendall pointed out that it’s important to be careful with the way we talk about “profanation.”  Without a doubt, I think the teachings on profanation are some of the most frightening in the Writings, and I think it’s important to look at them more closely.  I’m going to go into a fair amount of detail and use some fairly extensive quoting, because I think it’s an area that can’t very well be dealt with simply.

The Writings teach that profanation is basically the mixing of evil with good, or the mixing of  falsity with truth.  It happens when a person lives in goodness and acknowledges truth, and then rejects these.  When a person does this, it is much more harmful than if they had never accepted the truth in the first place.  The Lord didn’t use the Word “profanation” when He was in the world, but He did teach the concept:

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest; and finding not, he says, I will return to my house whence I came out; and when he comes, he finds it swept and adorned. Then he goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and entering in, they dwell there; and the last things of that man are worse than the first. (Luke 11:24-26).

And while He didn’t link the two teachings together, He did talk about the sin that could not be forgiven:

Wherefore I say unto you, Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men; but° the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven men. 32 And whoever says a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but° whoever shall say it against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in that to come. (Matt. 12:31, 32).

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Sermon: Naaman’s Leprosy

August 14, 2011 By Coleman Glenn Leave a Comment

I preached this sermon on August 14, 2011, at the Dawson Creek Church of the New Jerusalem in Dawson Creek, BC.

NAAMAN’S LEPROSY

“My father, if the prophet had spoken unto you of a great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Bathe and be​ ​clean’?” (2 Kings 5:13)

What should we do to be cleaned?  How can we be cured of our spiritual diseases?  The answer is simple: wash, and be cleaned.  Cease to do evil, learn to do good.  But that simple answer is often unsatisfying.  Sometimes we want something much bigger, something immediate and powerful that heals us in an instant.  In those times, we are like Naaman, who we read about this morning.

Naaman was the commander of the army of the king of Syria – “a great man.”  He was a hero of his people – but he suffered from leprosy.  In those times, there was no known cure for leprosy.  It would have disfigured Naaman, and made his skin hard and white.  Besides this, when a person has leprosy they lose sensitivity, and they can easily hurt their bodies because they don’t feel pain.

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A Pleasure that “Soothes, Favors, and Allures”

August 7, 2011 By Coleman Glenn 1 Comment

A few days ago I read a passage from Arcana Coelestia that keeps coming back to me:

They who are in the loves of self and of the world cannot possibly believe that they are in things so filthy and unclean as they actually are in, for there is a certain pleasure and delight that soothes, favors, and allures, and causes them to love that life, to prefer it to all other life, and thereby to suppose that there is nothing of evil in it; for whatever favors anyone’s love and the life thence derived is believed to be good. Hence also the rational consents, and suggests falsities which confirm and cause such blindness that they see nothing of the nature of heavenly love; and if they were to see it they would say in their hearts that it is a wretched affair, or a thing of naught, or something of the nature of a phantasy that takes hold of the mind, as in sickness. (AC 2045)

The part that particularly struck me was the description of the pleasure that comes from self-love as “soothing, favoring, and alluring.”  The description of it as soothing especially resonated with me.  It reminds me of a part of the first letter in C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters.  The senior devil Screwtape is advising his nephew, the junior devil Wormwood, how to keep a man away from spiritual thinking:

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Sermon: Preparing the Way of the Lord

November 23, 2010 By Coleman Glenn Leave a Comment

I preached this sermon in Dawson Creek, BC on November 21, 2010.

PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE LORD

A Sermon by Rev. Coleman S. Glenn

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, To give knowledge of salvation to His people in the remission of their sins.” (Luke 1:76-77)

When John the Baptist was born, his father Zacharias prophesied that the child would “go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways.”  In every gospel, John is said to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.”  Three months before the Lord was born into the world, John was born to Mary’s cousin Elizabeth; and before the Lord began his ministry, John went before Him to prepare His way.  The children of Israel had to be prepared before they could accept the Lord – and in the same way, we have to prepare ourselves for the Lord to be born into our hearts, as He was born into the world at His first advent.

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