What's in a Name?

What I have recently been shown - something I didn't want to see for a while - on the journey, is that in leaving IC and all that it entailed behind me, I discover a thirst for the quest or search for knowledge; new books to read, deeper insights or experience, which, if I am not careful, becomes an idol in itself; a new kind of security to replace the idol I left behind me, while I am still waiting in the wilderness. I am prone to looking for substitutes, when the Reality is always there in and around me, and I can see Him by faith alone. I don't mean that it's wrong to read books - just that I need to be led by the Spirit and not by my natural hunger.

I had an animated talk with my friends from the esoteric scene last night in town. One of them, J., is obssessed with his intellectual search for new esoteric and historical/political knowledge, and this blocks him from coming to an experience of the Truth. Even B. who is also into the esoteric, can't bear to listen to him any more, but she is being convicted of her own sin and is beginning to feel that she is in desperate need of forgiveness ansd cleansing. I was so surprised when she told me this. I haven't seen her for a while, so it hasn't been as a result of anything I've said to her. I think Father is showing her her reflection in His mirror; His kindness leading her to repentance. I asked her if I could pray for her, and afterwards (I prayed in the Spirit for a while as well) she looked up in wonderment and said that she was feeling an incredible peace - no more voices, no more fear. She has a way to go, but the Lord's drawing her. Am also praying for Y., who is a practising white witch and does life counselling sessions. She charges 30 Euros an hour to lay out cards, cast out spirits, burn incense, etc. I asked her if she'd ever asked Jesus to help her and she told me her story about how He had appeared to her when she was a child. She's been reading a book by Wilhelm Busch - 'Jesus-unsere Chance!' which she carries about all the time with her. She's very touched by the story of the Lost Son.

It hit me this morning under the shower, that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was actually nothing other than the Tree of Death (just as God has always set before us the choice of life and death) but because it was called the Tree of Knowledge, I had never made the so obvious connection, even though in the Hebrew, when God says to Adam that if he eats from the Tree of Knowledge, 'dying, you will die'.

Funny that. I wonder why God didn't say to Adam that he shouldn't eat from the Tree of Death? Or perhaps the fuller explanation of exactly what the Tree purported to be - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which if Adam ate from it, dying, he would die, was actually kinder. It gave him more information; not less. Adam was a highly intelligent being. He ought to have worked it out. So it actually made his sin even less understandable. He had no excuse.