Fixes/Enhancements needed for "Thinking Out Loud" series, cont.

So it's even simplistic to say God wants compatible beings. It's true, and common sense would agree that rapport depends on commonality (well, if we could ever have common sense with respect to God). So, it's not too difficult to understand that we have to become Like Him in order to even execute the First Commandment. OT folks had a limited degree to which they could 'love' Him, especially since He hadn't yet come in the flesh (John 7:39 comes to mind). But Church! Hoo-boy, we get the Thinking of Christ (corr trans of the action noun "nous" in 1Cor2:16). So, then: let's dispense with the language of accommodation, and talk about what this promotion is really about.

God's Decision Matrix: a thing has to be Gorgeous, not merely justifiable, in order to warrant His approval for it to be true. [previously covered in "Nexus" section of Fixes.htm and Part II's "Decree" yellow brick table ("In the beginning, angels" section).] So, if a thing is desirable, but not justifiable, it can't be approved. If it is justifiable, but not desirable, it can't be approved. If it is costly, but not Gorgeous, it can't be approved, even if it is justifiable. For, the first truth is, God is, and Being (His given-to-Moses Name, the Sacred Tetragrammaton, translated, very funny and very profound) first means, enjoyment. For, what is right but not enjoyable, is not Righteous. It must also be Gorgeous or Love can't justify loving it, as Part I's "Integrity Properties" explained. (Of course, that means all works are anathema to God, which of course they are, to Infinity, which never has to 'work' at anything. Good morning!)

Think about all this for a moment. Pretend you're God. What do you make? Well, whatever you make will be so far lower than you, it will be unacceptable to both YOU and the one made, for anything short of Infinite is.. disgusting. Fragmentation is the heart of what makes for finity, because finity depends on compartmentalized modules in a precise balance to stay whole. And 'whole' means, integrated with Infinity. That's why the Hypostatic Union, as we saw in Fixes.htm's "Nature of God" section.

So, it's not Gorgeous to create unless that integration can be had.. forever. It is very costly, though: so it also has to be Gorgeous to pay for the cost -- to the point of pure profit. Parts I-V show the profit concept, passim. Gifts among Them. Even the Cross, which after all, is perpetually in the face of Omniscience. On Purpose. Gladly. Producing yet endless crosses as a consequence of that First One. So, it must be Gorgeous indeed. So, justification is the 'floor', as Paul explains in Romans 5:1ff and 1Cor3. But Gorgeousness is the clincher. Justification alone, no; Gorgeous and justified (approved by +R), yes. Both, but most of all, Gorgeous.

Frankly, common sense should have produced the above conclusions, even absent the Bible, when one tries to think about God. For what use can we be to Him, of ourselves? Like David said, so would any human common sense say: "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" (Fancy old English for: why do You think about us, care about us?) Of course, we don't care much about how God is, we just want Him to do for us. Our appalling lack of interest in Him is our own fault. Not the fault of all the fake religious people who we blindly accept because so many others do also: we are fitting in to the mass, not really caring about God! Not the fault of the teachers who don't teach us these things: if we were interested, God would send us better teachers. Heck, even Scripture has been lost through most of its history -- why didn't anyone seek it? So, then: let's stop seeking someone to blame, and just admit our weakness. We Need Him. And, He has Mercy on us: 'new every morning, like Jeremiah, one of those who sought and thus found the lost Scripture, exulted. (Lam3:24, I think. Note that "Mercy", chesedth, is really "lovingkindness", and is a play on the meaning of the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. This wordplay matters because it was Jeremiah who explained that losing the Ark was not something to be missed, since the Word, the Mercy Seat Himself, was to be written on their hearts and minds in the Millenium: Jer31:31-34. The Ps119 people, who underwent the death march to Babylon, were Jereimiah's 'disciples' (students), and they sure depended on that promise! See that Psalm. Also, Greek LXX uses "hilasterion" for this Seat. NT uses that term a lot -- Paul in particular references the wordplay. Most of the quotes of OT in NT are from the LXX, not the Hebrew.)

Ergo: It's not enjoyable for anyone to be lower than self: because, especially if "self" is God, self experiences the pain/ suffering/ incompetence/ bewilderment of the one lower more than the one who himself is lower. It's totally heartbreaking to know! Who can live with another's suffering?! Who can stand watching family -- those poor, starving Christians on IRC who are so addicted to goofball substitutes and beating each other up, who are so very ignorant of the spiritual life; and as a consequence, suffer so palpably, even their keystrokes tear? The pain of watching them hurt so, is beyond bearing! Who can stand watching those poor, starving children in Africa (who are used, by the way, and rarely get any of our money)! Who can stand seeing someone with muscular dystrophy or other disability? Who can stand it when the nasty clerk at the counter screws up your order, or the badly-written Windows program crashes yet again? Instead of getting angry, ask: what would life be like for YOU if you were that incompetent?! It's painful enough to suffer the incompetencies of the 'lower', but harder still to watch them NOT KNOW, and stab themselves with their endlessly fractalizing obsessions! Vessels of Destruction (Rom9:23), whose god is their emotion (Phil3:18-19), who are drunk with the doctrines of demons (2Tim2:26's ananepho etymology, plus 2Tim4:1, 1Tim4:1 plus Rev17)!

You can also prove how horribly painful it is to see those 'lower', if you've ever done any de facto parenting, teaching, management, mentoring, etc. You just ache to give them the answer, but know they must learn on their own. Welfare programs strip away the ability to learn, so demean the poor. Parents and mentors know better. But oh, the pain of wading through with them, all the objections, bucking, questions, doubts -- and of course, the parent/mentor is the one always at fault, just as Moses was in the eyes of the Exodus generation! But that's not painful: what's painful is that you know the person will really get hurt by not learning the easy way, so you yourself beat yourself up to help them GET the easy way. But of course, you will be rejected, for your help is considered demeaning, rather than recognized for the love it is. That's why one 'higher' would want to hang himself, if that would spare the 'lower'. (See Paul's reasoning on this topic in Rom9:1-23; and of course, in his famous sin of going to Jerusalem: Acts 19-26, Rom15:24ff, and many other passages.)

You can also prove it by looking at some big deal in your own life, and recognizing that, While You Were In It, you didn't sense very much the impact; but oh boy, before or after, that's when the shock hits! That's why shock treatment in accidents and war is so critical, and why psychological trauma shouldn't be regarded as sissy or wimpy (though 'tough love' is still the best Rx -- see Matt9 in Greek). Many's the story in WWII magazine or like publication of a true hero (i.e., CMOH winners) who, after doing some great feat becomes.. restless, upon release from the service. John Steinbeck described mindset in shock (Grandfather) when he penned the short story, "The Leader of the People". (The aftermath (or anticipation) is worse because it's only then that enough thought is Free To Evaluate. Trick is to come in for a soft landing by accepting that the trauma/abuse is just another part of life, and so is the duller 'main' portion of life. That's a hard transition to make. The Christian will experience this regularly in spiritual adulthood, and it's only Doctrine which can pull him out of a spin.)

Basically, suffering in combat/pressure spikes life's intensity; then, you crash back into routine when it ends; but you are no longer the same, so the routine you used to find familiar, becomes uncomfortable. Because, the spike CHANGED you. Also because, when under spiking pressure, one is totally occupied with each moment itself. Soul isn't flying-aerial over meaning, and thus mediating the experience. For example, in combat, you can't really spend time evaluating the existential meaning of things; you gotta dodge those bullets! So, if you know in advance you are going to land on Omaha Beach (as in the movie, "Saving Private Ryan"); or, if you just finished scrambling to safety on Omaha Beach, Shock! Now you are at rest, and the impact smacks you so hard, you can't breathe! So: now it should be easy to see why someone superior, who IS 'aerial' with respect to one lower, suffers more, to have to watch that lower one's suffering.

So only an insane or ignorant person would enjoy being 'superior' to another. Either one must fantasize his own sense of superiority, and be dead to another's living, to get any kind of enjoyment. Sadly, lots of people are so obsessed, they themselves are fantasizing and dead: ergo the need for works verses and James2-5, in Scripture! Love wouldn't need such admonitions. Instead, as 1Cor13 loves to say, there is a better way: RAISE the inferior one, and end his inferiority! That's the motive behind all the actions of Love Paul lists in that passage: Love PROMOTES. That's why it doesn't seek for itself, why it endures all things, etc. Moreover, to Justice, it's intrinsically satisfying to do this, because that other is a live being, and since "I" am also alive, that person should have as much as "I" do. This is how God Himself thinks, as we saw in Part II's yellow-brick table on the Decree's raison d'etre (the "In the beginning, angels" section).

Marxists would have a field day with this reasoning. Marx, of course, was a tortured soul: it shows through every word he writes. For example, he was mistaken about how to get the communal Thomas-More-type 'utopia' he sought. Marx thought that by making tyranny you could make freedom, and he uses the (dingdong Feuerbach's) supposed 'logic' of thesis and antithesis to construct his ironic 'theory'. But tyranny only begets more tyranny, as the history of communism proves (which history actually goes back at least to 5th Century BC Athens: Marx is nothing new). Like Descartes, Marx did grasp some essentials, one of which was that IRONY is essential (hence thesis and antithesis). Like Descartes, Marx began his analysis in the wrong place: at the bottom, where the lesser truths are. Bad Move. So, he too ended up running in circles, and ruining lots of lives with his kant (pun intended). He should have started his analysis at the top, where Truth is, because the uppermost truth is, God is. Truth has its boundaries: for example, Freedom Must Continue. Else, Truth isn't Truth anymore. So tyranny is not and will never be the method to obtain freedom.

However, here's the irony Marx (et alia) were looking for (they weren't stupid, just lost), but misidentified: the role for 'tyranny' MUST be by the self OVER the self. Because that's how one fights for his Freedom. Individually. Freedom begets more Freedom, and in a state of freedom all beings necessarily end up UNequal. Which, ironically, is a good thing, because it's IN a state of freedom. So, Freedom 'makes' inequality; Inequality makes equality via synergistic function of inequality. However, only Infinity makes that structure work, for the same reason that only Infinity can make finity stable and happy: by uniting Best to Worst. Thus a society needs to have a free economy and minimalist government, so that Freedom can be free to have its unencumbered results. So also, in God's Economy (so to speak): thus the flow of Infinite Quality Doctrine makes us all eager (spoudazw, Greek in Heb4:11, not "labor", "strive" or "be diligent") to give to each other. Because, it is not pleasant for one's brother to have less (see Heb2).

Therefore, God is out to promote you. He promoted even Pharoah, by giving him a role to play in Scripture. So how much more, the believer? Even believers who were under severe demon influence. Like Judas, an apostle, which means he was personally appointed by Christ, the Sole Authority to grant such an office. (So much for the idiotic claim Judas wasn't a believer, or that apostleship continues after the 13: see Matt10 and 1Cor15. By the way, 13 is the 11+James=12 for Israel, 1 for Gentiles (Paul). Ibid. That's why God disciplined Paul for going to Jeru, violating his own teaching about both law and invading "another man's territory" in Gal and Romans.) Judas was a believer so afflicted with monetary lust he betrayed the Lord, and then regretted it with such guilt he hanged himself: see Matt27. Judas was used by God: see the John 17 prayer's "son of perdition" verse. Like Ananias and Sapphira. They were promoted, in that their deaths were used to BLESS the entire church (see Acts 5:11 and following -- Peter's congregation really turned around from their prior babyish gawking at works). So also, "the wrath of man shall praise Him" -- so, even the wrath of man gets promoted, into doing something connected to Him. No matter what bad act or badboy you see in Scripture, Note how God FLIPS the bad into a bigger blessing -- in that same person's name, as catalyst! -- than would have obtained, had the bad not occurred! What a blessing that is! What a promotion that is! Even Abram's phallus was made a catalyst for salvation...

So, beneath the commandment and other teaching-children rhetoric, is this: whatever you do or think promotes God by Divine Design; therefore, you likewise are to be promoted. Did you sin? Well, use 1Jn1:9, and move on, secure in the knowledge that your sin will be used to glorify Him and help you; secure that, lest you be arrogant(!) -- your sins can't compete with Christ's Payment, so to say you can lose your salvation or you must do pennance is the most arrogant claim there is! "Crucifying the Son afresh", WAY worse than Judas! (See Heb5:11-6:6; the quote is in 6:6.) Conversely: did you have a success using Bible Doctrine while filled with the Spirit? Well, move on to even more GAIN (karpos, tamely translated "fruit" in English, but the term is used to mean PROFIT). In short, like Paul wrote, "Living, Christ! Dying, Profit!" No matter what. But even better, if you know Who: HIM.

God wants to promote you, and that means RAISING you to make you higher: so He lifted the serpent in the wilderness; so He lifted the Christ, the Stone too heavy to lift; so He lifts the Church by giving them the same spiritual life as their Archegos invented (Heb12:2 -- "archegos" is explained in Part IV). So He lifts all those in covenants before or after Church by means of Christ, by means of the Church (theme of Eph1-3, Hebrews 10:1-ll:40). In short, SUNERGEI (Romans 8:28's "works together"), synergy. Flow from high to low and back again, so that ALL get more than they would have gotten if alone. Of course, you have to know this is the purpose, and know how it works, to enjoy it. So, God is out to make you like His Most High Son. So, He turns upside down the problem of anticipatory and aftermath shock, making it Happiness instead. Even more: so that, like Christ, you can also come to have True Happiness during the trauma (Heb12:2, again: "chara" isn't "joy" but "unalloyed happiness"). That's promotion! (See Philip2:5-10.) For, "he is not ashamed to call us brothers" (see Heb2). Found sheep, found coin, found happiness, found Savior!

I realize it sounds unbelievable that God would and could do this. If you truly understand the horror of being superior and watching an inferior suffer you will realize better how He actually thinks. Satan would have us think of Him being spiteful, condemnatory. But Scripture says "No condemnation" in Rom8:1. Flip through the pages of the Bible, see if you can't tell when God is using childlike language of accommodation, and when he stops speaking in babytalk. He does both. Think also how finity is by nature inclined to be churlish, due to it necessarily being a derivative power. Think also how Christ had to overcome the unbridgeable via Infinite Truth infusion. Then ask yourself, isn't this what Infinite Righteousness would have to demand? Then ask yourself, isn't this truly Promotion, too? Why else do you think the Holy Spirit caused James to write the humourous James 4:10 "Humble [lower!] yourselves before the Lord, that He May Promote [lit., lift up] You At The Proper Time"! [Corr trans, concatenated from the following verses: Jas 4:10 (first half) and 1Pet5:6 (last half), because both quote the same OT blessing rule: James likes to quote just a clause in a verse, like he does with kalos poiete "you do well", bad trans; shorthand for Lev19:18), at the end of Jas1. So I'm doing that with a verse of his, and patching Peter's last half to James' first. See also Luke 14:11, 18:14; Job 22:29. A lot of verses in Scripture are concatenations of and even allusions to, other verses. HS does this to show their application.] Heh. Karl Marx, eat your heart out!

So if ever you hear in self or others any kind of accusing, putting-down, belittling, condemnation, complaining, dismissiveness, etc.: such negativity comes from within those insane and ignorant Energizer Bunnies. Or, from Satan&Co. influencing them. But it's never coming from God. The most you can say is that God employs negative language to help us understand what is good, and what is not. Since we can't discern a thing (which is why any tripe Satan peddles we devour), God has to tell us what is good and bad by means of do's and don'ts, baby-praise and baby-warnings. Johnny, if you don't bathe, you'll get spanked. How sad, to never grow beyond that babytalk, to never see what God really says in adult language: like Romans 8, 12:2-3, Ephesians and Hebrews, passages and books which Shout God's Will To Promote You, as promised by Isa54:1!

Remember what was said in the first bullet of Fixes.htm: Adam's sin genetically rendered us spiritually dead, thus spiritually blind: therefore, blaming. All the neurons of the brain are shot through with Adam's rejecting me-be-god reflex, embedded in their very DNA. So, it's like a house wired by a mad electrician: every time you flip a switch, something malfunctions. That's why one needs to believe in Christ to even begin to understand God. Prior to that, the most one can do is recognize God exists, and hear the Gospel: Holy Spirit enables that process to work. It's very traumatic to the brain, since volition has to keep on bypassing the mad electronic impulses to even say YES to the idea of Absolute God; to even say YES to the Gospel. That's why it has to be repeated so often: gotta redo the connections!

Upon salvation, then, what does God do? Well, there are at least 40 things, assets, really, that you get immediately. However, you're getting these things without changing your soul, without changing the way your neurons hook up to each other. To fix that problem, you first must get new information: Bible Doctrine, taught by whomever is YOUR right pastor-teacher at the moment. Absent this influx of truth, you will remain madly-wired, so to speak.

Say you get into Doctrine and stay there. [HS will either move you to a better pastor than the one you have, as you grow (kinda like changing to a better school), or He got you to the right one for you at the beginning, and you stay there.] What happens, is that you keep on getting the information. It will be hard to see any kind of sense, at first, just as a child is taught about 1+1=2 and Instanbul is the capital of Turkiye, but he doesn't have a clue WHY he needs this information: he just trusts it, because he trusts the teacher. This first stage of getting Doctrine builds a new database and new connections in your soul and brain: without this stage, the others can't occur. That's why getting your spiritual food is so important. Just as the Perfect Christ could not have grown up enough spiritually to be fully integrated despite His Finity absent 'eating' (believing) Bible Doctrine, so also a believer cannot be rehabilitated and grow up without daily food deposits: the Thinking of Christ.

The more the Doctrine builds up in you, the more it challenges (by merely existing) all the bad-wiring ideas your brain and soul kick out. So, you'll actually feel worse at times than you ever did, because now your bad wiring has 'competition'. As volition successively votes for the Doctrinal side, the bad wiring gets replaced and the new doctrinal 'wiring' is woven in. This is a very delicate process, for the HS will not coerce volition, and the soul, trashed as it is by the mad-wiring output it accepted, is extremely fragile. So it takes time. Heb4:12 plus two verses in Timothy liken the process to surgery and war. Here's how my pastor used to begin Bible class (corrections in the translation of these three verses are his; I type from memory). "For the word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any machaira (nickname, "knife"), piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a critic of thoughts and intents of the heart." "All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, for instruction in Righteousness: that the man of God may be mature, thoroughly equipped for all good-of-intrinsic-value-achievement." [Some of the words are KJV.]

This war will either exhaust you, and you'll reject God's Script in favor of some chippie substitute, or you'll keep on going. If you keep on going, you'll come to recognize that all those commandments and other language of accomodation for children are no longer useful that way. Instead, you'll come to redefine everything in your life.

• Suffering is not suffering, but learning (Heb5:8-9), so when suffering, you'll instead be looking at what lessons are being conveyed in that format. It's a mere format! For, you've learned now that it's not about sin, so it's not about failure: it's about learning. Success is Learning, so any seeming failures are still successes, if you Learn from them. Conversely, any seeming successes are nonetheless Failure, if you don't learn from them. This realization relaxes you, for you come to redefine all the so-called bads and goods which hit you and others in your periphery.

• While you undergo some activity or thinking, the way you view its meaning completely changes. Instead of being preoccupied with things and people and the future, you instead come to see patterns, which are your syllabi. So, you study them. So, if you have problems lifting your leg, it's not leg-lifting, but an exercise in patience/ concentration/ control, etc. If someone is a thorn in your side, that's not a thorn, but a Class In Woulda-Been, what it was like for the Lord to hear it, compassion (the thorn obviously is unhappy), etc. In short, you begin to SEE; the blindness is going going going gone, on that topic. Blamesmanship declines, because Learning is more interesting.

• Making the transition from right/wrong thinking to agathos/kakos thinking. Children need to be told right and wrong because they have no ability to evaluate anything except that they feel good or bad. So you can't talk to them in terms of good and bad per se: you have to link it to right and wrong, so they will come to associate "right" with "good". However, as one ages, it becomes imperative not to be shackled with childhood methods of evaluation. One must transition to what is Good (as in "desirable" because of its intrinsic value, hence "agathos", the meaning of that Greek word). Anything which doesn't fit "good" is "bad" (Greek "kakos": worthless). Thus, self redefines everything in terms of what good it can be made to do for the spiritual life. If it can't be made good for the spiritual life, it's no longer desirable. Thus, the normal human pattern of thinking, which is preoccupied with fixing things or people; which is preoccupied with making everything buttress ego.. diminishes. One begins to see that the whole "me thing" is ridiculous, kakos, and of no value whatsoever to Enjoyment.

• Most of all, you come to see it's a Tragedy turned to Triumph, a hopelessly diseased condition made "alive again". Not some competition to salve ego. So, the 'offense' you used to feel at the surrounding stupidity, which is ever more clearly revealed as you grow in Christ, that offense transforms into grief-based compassion. Like Paul, you will come to yearn to give your own life for them (Rom9:1-6). Like Christ, you will come to regard any 'cross' as an OUTLET, a relief for all the pent-up watching you've had to oh-so-helplessly 'do'. For, all the childish ideas of Scripture are the only ones heard, so inevitably the children scrap and fight and murder their own spiritual lives: that's the history of Christendom; before that, the history of Judaism; before that, the history of believers. Black/white, what-i-do-counts-with-God-more-than-what-you-do, nyaaahhh nyaah nyaah. Drooling, eventually retarded, we believers atrophy with our god-dolls, and never come to "grasp the idea..heighth..depth..length..breadth..Love For Christ..the fullness of Blessing from God." (Eph3:15-19, keywords in corrected translation. "fullness of Blessing from God" is a better way to translate "Pleroma" there, my pastor reminds us.) So what a blessing, then, to know the Redefinition: that even the least of us will forever enjoy, post-death! What a relief! What an inestimable pleasure, to know that one will be perfectly kitted out to give forever, to those above, and those below, and especially, to Father, Son, Spirit! Unity, at last! 2Cor13:14 forever!

The Cross means God turned everything finite on its head. Because, as we saw earlier, there is an inherent antagonistic contradiction between finity and Infinity, as Paul so deftly explains (using the finity of sin) in Romans 6 through 8: for, finity depends on division, Infinity 'depends' on Unity. So, to do the impossible was alone enough. Thus, Infinite God can have even a hupostasis! with finite man. Incarnate first, then..through Him, with all life. Particularly, with free-will creation (angels, humans). By going to the lowest, then, He accomplishes the highest. So, turned upside-down.

Being finite, we humans of course love our finity. In fact, that's ALL we love. Of course, as we age, we become truly annoyed with finity -- but in our minds the problem is simply that something else is to blame, because it doesn't work! Thus preoccupied with our small worlds, we humans don't think about God, and it's not in our natural sin nature to do so. When we do have some passing thought, it's always tainted by human values: the tit-for-tat, the be-nice, the be-good. These are all Dividing Barriers. So, we can't "see" God even though His Nature permeates every living and dead thing we see: for example, in every natural law, in math, in economics, etc. So, we humans don't think about what it means to GOD, this existence of ours. The closest we naturally come in our thinking is, Oh, I gotta obey. So, we end up treating "God" as if He were spelled backwards: we talk to Him in funny voices, and we are always asking Him to fetch this, do that.. we train Him. Which, of course, 1Cor2:15-16 tweaks! He's to TRAIN us! Not the other way around. So, when we recognize this, we feel bad. That's all the 'relationship' we know.

So try really hard and put yourself in God's Place. Looking down at all these guilt-laden offers of dung -- what would you do? Wouldn't you want to reverse that situation? Is this what having creation is good for? Just a bunch of ninnies with their lame prayers, their lame taboos, their lame rituals, their lame caricature ideas of a 'god' who never exists? Their Thinking is Divided, fractured still further by the sin nature. Their thinking is small, because even one 'dot' below Infinity is tiny. Worst of all, they are unhappy! They don't even see why they are unhappy unless deprived of some perceived goodie! They don't even know what Love is, instead defining it in terms of feel-good! Oh, wretched beings that they are, Who will save them from their body of death?!!!

No finite creation will find any kind of happiness in even being alive together with God, if the inherent antagonism isn't resolved. So, then: why create at all? Well, although from our perspective God's doing miracles is a wow thing -- from His Perspective it's no challenge. Not a ho-hum, for He knows all the bad so truly appreciates the ease with which He can just speak the entire universe into existence! But what else? What about GOD getting a miracle? Not having Himself to do it, but GETTING one! Even better still, since it truly is (for Him) far more enjoyable to give than to receive, what about giving His All, so that others can have that same pleasure? Ahhh, but that means creating finity, and endowing finity with the ability to give back. Which means, turning everything upside down from what would otherwise be its natural property. Without gerrymandering even one iota of what would otherwise be its natural property. "Verbal plenary inspiration", writ large. Ahhhh.

Perhaps you've figured it out by now: we need the Cross more than God does. For, technically, He is Inviolable; so Cross or no Cross, He's not 'touched' by our badness. But WE are shattered, rendered insane by our badness. For, as said earlier, even finity is innate hell: if we love God, we'd hate heaven, for in seeing how Gorgeous He is, we couldn't live with the pain of Him not being truly paid! Doesn't matter that He doesn't need to be paid because He's Inviolable. See, even though God is Inviolable, if HE doesn't insure Justice, no one else can. It's Unjust for Him to be Unpaid for ALL sin. If God doesn't execute Justice toward Himself, first (for the first truth is, God is) -- then He's impotent: either He fully insures justice, or He's a liar. We can't live with either of those problems. Fortunately, God Himself would never allow even the tiniest sin to be unpaid by Christ. Our sins were never imputed to us in the first place, so we can't pay for them and neither can anyone else but Christ: that's what Passover always means, for crying out loud! Because, only God can insure justice. (Ergo the concept of Allah and other God-doesn't-need-payment flavors, are all completely insane. It's not a question of need, but of Justice. So, Satan peddles the reverse: so of course folks believing in Allah or Vishnu, etc are duped. Pray that they will see they're being used like cannonfodder; and don't get sucked into Christian activism against them, yourself. Only God can solve soul problems; activism is completely Satanic, so it only worsens soul problems. Moreover, only the Biblical God makes sense, a fact which can be determined by any brain anywhere in the world, even without a Bible (folks just need someone to tell them Who He is). So He needs no defending. Carefully analyse what must be Divine Characteristics: test this claim yourself.)

By contrast, to Him the concern is, to Unite us to Himself, and to Bless us without Himself judicially compromising His Own Essence. That's HIS goal. Bigger goal: Son-to-Father wants infinite excuses to show Love, as Part III's "Third Reason for Royalty" explained in detail. So, a unity-of-goals: Son gets to do for Father the biggest thing, ever; and we get the total and utter reprieve of knowing our shortfall was utterly wiped out; the total and utter heaven of being free of finity's weakness; the total and utter unity with Him! For He, even He is the one who Nailed our transgressions to Himself. [Play on Isaiah verses.]

So all bads are rendered what they really are: lies. Sure they are real. But their effects got flipped, as we saw in Fixes' first yellow table. For, what would have been the natural property of bad, destructive, is instead made constructive, due to the Cross turning finity upside down. So Salvation is also "for free". What would have been the natural property, endless Sisyphean cost, is instead just a nanosecond-of-belief 'away'. NO DISTANCE. UNITY. NO DIVISION. HARMONY. So, the post-salvation life is also for free. What would have been (and is cast as) endless, mindless servitude of no enjoyment to anyone is instead, Glory. As in, Shekinah. As in, Indwelling. As in, steadily growing in Divine Attributes. Beginning with, the Instant Regeneration and imputation of BOTH +EL and +R at salvation. So, turned on its head: we share in His Nature. When any of the writers of Scripture talk about this, they get so excited, they drop their verbs. Lost, but Found! UNITY! Like Paul wrote in Romans and Corinthians: "who hopes for what he sees" and "But we have the Thinking of Christ"! [Romans 8:24, RSV and 1Cor2:16, my pastor's corrected translation of nous.] What would have been the natural property, endless fantasy that the unity-with-God pea is under some walnut shell somewhere, instead is instantly and permanently true! For, "Hope never disappoints"! (Rom5:1-5.)

So, as the believer grows steadily in 1Jn's Script, he CHANGES. He steadily comes to regard things once viewed as good, important .. as small, unimportant. Christ comes to matter more. And as Christ comes to matter more, the Cross comes to matter more. As the Cross comes to matter more, the more the believer comes to want to share in its function. Which means, turning everything upside-down. Pain becomes pleasure, not because it's a masochist thing, but because the so-called pain was never correctly defined in the first place: the feeling thingy was all lies, hooray! Because, it was turned upside down, in the Decree. Then, Finished (tetelestai!) on the Cross. So now, the Finished Mind of Christ can be in us. So now, we come to see the Cross in the same way as He does. So now, we come to want to 'pay' as well. Because, paying is Getting! Upside down! Because, the believer's finity was turned upside down. By Truth, Bible Doctrine, the Thinking of Christ. Meaning, Infinity circulates inside finity: in harmony with those Infinite Attributes of +R and +EL we received at regeneration. So, the believer is bigger. So, the 'pain' is less: eventually, even pain is turned upside-down, into a catalyst for enjoyment; especially sometime after Spiritual Maturity.

So of course the real spiritual life is extremely humorous. Instead of working, one gets paid for nothing! Paid the most Beautiful Diamonds, Bible Doctrine! And still the believer doesn't work for what seems like a lifetime; he just studies under his pastor and plays with his doctrine all day, like Adam and the woman played in Eden.. until near the end, when the treasure in one's "earthen vessel" is overflowing. Oh boy: now what? Got to spend it somewhere! Where, though? Well, by then, only a "cross" is enough! Because by then, the believer's soul is SO big, everything else is too small a purchase! Because by then, the more the believer tries to spend his Beautiful Diamonds, the more Beautiful Diamonds are generated: endless Diamontic Fractals! For, only a big enough accumulated deposit can create such a miracle: finity actually Thinking And Doing Like Infinity, heh. So you can live on the doctrinally-defined intrinsics, with nary a care about how far beyond your humanity they are! Funny, huh? Cry all the way to the bank, baby! All that bad stuff you experience, is Profit, because the pain got turned upside down! It's sure nice to experience something bad, and know that it's merely an actor: a lie! It's nicer still to know that nothing got gerrymandered, so you can know what would have been true, absent the Cross!

So then: the Cross means GOD GETS A MIRACLE. By GIVING us One: His Son! His Son's Thinking! Forever fractalizing in finite souls! wowowowowowowowowow!

If you don't know much doctrine yet, all of the above probably sounds magical or fuzzy. It's not. The True Spiritual Life is entirely supernatural, yet entirely concrete: you take the same 'middle', whatever your life or circumstances are, but look at them from God's viewpoint, rather than your own. To look at anything from God's orientation rather than one's own is to be looking at Infinity's view: that makes the difference between heaven and hell. Remember the example of Infinity's viewpoint of that toilet episode in the first page of Fixes? It represents the gist of what 'upside down' looks like, in practice. What would have been a flattening experience, a frightening experience, a worrisome experience.. flips. Permanently. All because you Learned The Truth about what God made that experience mean. Only Doctrine can interpret it for you accurately, because only Bible Doctrine is truth. Of course, truth is first a language -- so you have to learn lots of doctrine before you will be able to see clearly. Part III explained the process. The more you practice what you learned in Bible class that day, the sooner you will become fluent in Thinking Doctrine: just as with a language. The payoff is phenomenal.

Life is both good and bad, by our standards, but as one grows older physically, one realizes all too well how problems predominate; it doesn't really matter what your status is; who is superior, who is healthy or wealthy or any other accoutrement: instead, it matters who is HAPPY. Some people have to become very rich before they realize it bought them nothing. Some have to become sick, poor, whatever; what they all come to realize is that most of what's touted as 'happiness' in this world is just smoke and mirrors. This, they invariably find out too late in life. So, most people end their lives rather bitter.

God has a different view. Problems come in many categories. There are people problems, logistical problems, body problems, time problems, defective things, you name it. Using Doctrine to discern what meaning God has given to the problem you face (and there is no problem which lacks a God meaning -- remember the 4 Decisions underpin everything) -- learning or remembering the God-given meaning to that problem.. kills it. While it even lives! So you don't need some cheap miracle or other removal of the problem, to kill the problem's effect on you! That's the power of Knowing the Truth. Like the Lord said in (I think) John 8:32: "You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free." Truth, aletheia in Greek, means nothing hidden, literally. It's a play on words with the Greek word for "set free". See also Paul's freedom in 2Cor12:1-10 So: your option, to learn this truth, and be set free. Even when the problems get worse!

So, before going on with this page.. ask yourself a serious, private question: why do I want to be in the spiritual life? (Use Luke 14:25-35 for 'help' here, if you need it.) For, if you read to amuse yourself or feel good.. just stop reading right now. The reading gets a lot tougher after this bullet. But if you are reading because you yourself are genuinely interested in God Himself, even if you have other motives which shame you.. keep reading, to see how God flips all shame! Account yourself truly interested in God if you keep on reading spiritual stuff, visiting Christian chat channels, etc. It's an interest heavily-barnacled with fakirs, but that interest is hidden down among them. For, only indifference is true disinterest in God (i.e., the nod-to-God-on-Sunday people); hostility and other nearly-obsessive manifestations betray a trapped genuine interest in Him. Trapped by fakirs, no doubt: but God can free you from them, if you want Him to do so! It Takes Time.

False and true motives for being in the spiritual life co-exist in the soul, just as the imputation of sins and His 'reply' to them co-exist on the Cross. That, because we were trashed souls when we got saved, and to rebuild us takes time. Just as, when a demolished house is being rebuilt, the builders gently replace the old material with the new, so the residents can keep living in that house the meanwhile, so also the Holy Spirit does for us. So, it takes Time. So, don't be discouraged if you find yourself having fakirs in your motives. These fakirs are particularly strong the younger you are spiritually. Moreover, some of them hang on to the bitter end; Doctrine defeats these last: for God won't clear away the debris cluttering your old house until the new one is nearly finished! For God USES that old trash as fuel in construction!

Thus, spiritual childhood feels rough, but it is easy, once you get on Doctrine. Same for later periods of growth, but in later adulthood, because the doctrinal mosaic finally becomes clearly visible -- His Soul! -- it gets very rough, internally. (Spiritual adulthood and maturity are defined by God as a degree-of-completion of the doctrinal structure IN you, never experience, as Part III's "Reasons" progressively explain.) So, one is thereafter experientially 'on edge'. You're living with reference to infinity, as the Third and Fourth Reasons of Part III explain. So it gets very rough, though your outer life may seem easy. All one's spiritual quirks coalesce, even as Doctrine coalesces in the soul. Preparing for your own Armaggedon. You won't necessarily be aware of this development, until sometime AFTER you've been in your own Megiddo.

2nd INTERPRETING ONESELF KEY ==> So, if you are truly interested in God, and that interest keeps on being there, you will keep on growing, but will think you are failing; if you are not truly interested in God, those fakirs will rise to the surface of your awareness, to give you the option of recognizing them; if you do not, you will think you are a spiritual giant, and in fact will tumble down the lying road to an Ananias-type death. In either case (interest or lying), because you once believed in Christ for salvation, you go to heaven. Forever.

Ok: you understand that you have to live on God's Script (aka "1 Jn's Script) in order to grow up. You read the steps in "1John ..God's Script" in Part I. But..um, how do you do all this applying of Doctrine during a day? Well, frankly, IT's YOUR JOB to decide the how's. Part III explained why. Think of Scripture as your general for this purpose. Actually, the Holy Spirit is likened to Mentor, in Greek: "parakletos" was what Mentor was to Telemachus, the heir apparent of Odysseus. The Holy Scriptures are interpreted by the Holy Spirit, the Author of the Written Word. He delegates that authority to certain men (never women) for Teaching. (All believers have adjunctive roles to teaching, but only men who are prepared and appointed by the Holy Spirit are valid pastor-teachers with the Authority to Teach.) He delegates to you the job of deciding for yourself how Scripture will rule your life: for he's training you to become a King (all are but one 'gender', post-death) under the King of Kings. Your decision, then, as to how much of that escrowed future you yourself want to have. No one else can make it for you. You can't blame someone else, either, nor will anyone ELSE be held accountable for YOUR decisions. We each are held accountable only for our own life & role before the Lord.

So, then: look for patterns in the Scripture itself, and in the doctrine you know. Scripture's original language texts display the characteristics of the spiritual life itself, by the way its language is crafted: associative, incisive, ironic, multilevel, pairing, thesauretical, and above all intensive: depicted by succinctness, zipfile-quality of each verse. (Seems like James Joyce in his Ulysses tried to imitate that style, even making references to Biblical Greek morphological ironies.) So, precise and all-encompassing; qualitative taking over, conquering quantitative. So: big is little, upside down, low-slow-constant (repetitive, moving horizontally across a broad front every day), matching, modularity (hence flexibility and innovativeness), wordplay, humor, enthusiasm, not-stuffy, unafraid, loving, tender, intimate, and also decisive, absolute, non-hedging. That's just a start on the characteristics, before even noting that they are all thesauretical! For, synonyms and antonyms tell you critical data about how similar truths relate to each other. So, too, the actual Bible's content (Doctrines) has these same characteristics. The harmony between the way a verse is styled and the content of the verse helps immensely to know you aren't hallucinating a meaning in the passage. The associative and multilevel qualities help you account for fit with respect to other doctrines. So, think of the patterns as parameters, boundary lines for deciding what to do not do, think not think, and why. All these variables and their fitting-togethers, being Truth, help you see how to fit together your own life with its variables. It takes time to learn this skill, but oh! it becomes SO enjoyable to see the Doctrine in everything, no matter how small!

For example, for myself I try to analyse and live by the following (but some of these might not be right for YOU):

• Focus on uppermost truths, not lower-ended truths (like how something feels). This step is also critical to avoid 'stuckness'. When we become emotional, we become stuck on lower truths (eyes on people, self, feelings, bad day in traffic, etc). Paul, for example, became stuck on the fact that God wanted him to become the head of the Roman church, and to give up on evangelizing his fellow Jews. So, he used the lesser truth of the gift for the Jerusalem church to rationalize a trip there. You can see it in Romans 15:24 and following. Acts 19-21 records more. Of course, if you read on in Acts, you'll see that Paul got in lots of trouble: and God took him to Rome anyway.. in chains. Of course, Satan long ago got stuck on the lesser truth of his beauty versus the other angels.. and look what happened to him! NB: Matt4 is a test of uppermost versus lower truths. Satan wanted Christ to 'slip' by drawing His Attention to lesser truths. So does our Energizer Bunny. 'The very essence of sin: for temptation is ALWAYS based on a lower truth.

  TRUTH KEY: Virtually all wrong/incorrect ideas, all unhappiness, all misinterpretations of doctrine, all conflict in life can be traced to focus on too-low truths. You can't analyze properly if your viewpoint aims too low! So, for offensive (efficient finding of truth) reasons, seek the uppermost truth, first. For defensive (avoiding stuckness) reasons, do the same.

  Example: Say you and someone with whom you have an intimate relationship are constantly at loggerheads. Doesn't matter who's right (you will tend to think you are, and the other, that he/she is). does matter what is the uppermost truth: God IS. He has a role for your life, and that role is far bigger than being catywampus (sp) with whomever. If you are right, then that person is being used as an "ftx" for you, because the bigger truth is, you're in the Angelic Conflict. Another bigger truth: what you are right about, will be known.. forever, to that person. So you don't need to correct that person now. Person couldn't take it, anyway, without requisite eaten Doctrine. All will be known, post-death. Keeping that in mind will raise perspective beyond the Energizer Bunny's narrow vision!

  Thinking like a soldier helps me immensely. So maybe it will help you also. Soldier's thought: I don't have the right to regard things from a personal standpoint. I'm Under Orders. That is the perspective of looking up to superior authority, which always is Superior Truth.

• Find the "litmus" discussed in Appendix: what doctrinal boundary, and what doctrine interprets the rest, in a situation where there are several uppermost truths or I am under pressure.
• Decipher, by means of the G-2 "flip" discussed in Appendix: quick way to find the uppermost truth, especially under pressure. Find the OPPOSITE of what one is pressured to choose. Then, test to see if a hidden flipped temptation (i.e., guilt) was used to 'flip', by flipping again. Sometimes only one flip is enough. Sometimes reviewing the pros and cons of a decision as if each emotional idea were right helps cancel them all out. (The pitting-against threshes out lesser, obfuscatingly-used truths.)
• Design my day around "low, slow, constant"; and watch for its obverse, the long, slow, slide of carnality as evidenced in Satan's fall, Isha's Fall, and Paul's fall -- to spot developing 'cracks'.
• Recognize where my four major weak spots are hit (quick! too much time spent here is not good). For example, routine routine routine is where all my weaknesses and strengths collide. Repetition, too. Repetition is vital vital vital to success.
• Aim for multilayer living (like multitasking, thinking and doing more than one thing at a time, and trying to concentrate on everything in a coordinated manner).
• speed: Intensive pace. This is a rapid-fire skill to keep on improving, in the foregoing categories. Folks who concentrate well can lose sense of time. Speed helps subordinate that to the overall birddogging goal for the day.
• Treat prosperity like adversity, and adversity like prosperity. They are really two sides of the 'coin' of Intensity. This obversing helps blunt the temptations which inure to either condition. Both tempt one to give into them. So, pick the flip value: be stricter in prosperity, ease up in adversity. See how that mediates so well?

In sum, Growth in learning Him changes the person to become more like Him, because the Truth is Him, and one gets more and more of the Truth in self as one keeps on living by 1Jn's Script. So one comes to want to 'pay' because the Beauty of the Truth is so awesome. It takes time to see this Beauty, but if you keep on in 1Jn's Script, it's inevitable. The many battles fought along the way are used as training aids. There's no reason to be discouraged. There's no reason to be cocky, either. The problems are real or imagined, big or small, but all things are used to train you to grow up in Him. That's the uppermost truth, for all of us. So wrongs we commit, wrongs we suffer, rights we do, rights done to us: all these are lesser truths. For, we are alive because of and for Him (see 2Cor2 and 5, Colossians, Romans 6-8, Eph1-4). Nothing else compares to this reason. That's the highest truth about the meaning of our lives, whether or not we see it. Seeing that highest truth is the greatest joy there is. It's the hardest way to go -- no work can even be on the same playing field! -- but it is also the most contentment. Seeing Him is Everything. Bar None.

The Fourth Reason (or maybe First..Invisibility) needs some elaboration regarding the process of how the Doctrinal Meaning eventually takes over all other desires and abhorences. The way the text is written, it almost sounds magical, which it is not. (Truth doesn't need genies.) As one learns Doctrine, the items seem unconnected, and babyish Faith-Rest gets one through. Sometime in adolescence the dots connect noticeably (though they have been, for awhile -- HS is very delicate about it). Trauma, etc., in those stages occur due to the recognition of the connections, and one feels bad, etc. because he realizes how short he is versus how far along he wants to be (this, because Love for God is born).

What happened? The Meaning became a challenger to the erstwhile values. Thus, love for the Meaning gets born, and the Meaning is a Person: at first, Father. Later, Son. All along (and this never stops), there are two sets of values: first, related to Doctrine (which personifies in Father, then Son, from the believer's perspective); second, related to everything else. The trauma occurs because the 'everything else' is no longer the undisputed object of the believer's desires (including abhorences, which are negative desires). Doctrine challenges them, so there's a big fight. It keeps going, too -- but eventually, the "just because" He Lives, "just because" it's His Thinking, "just because" Father likes to see something -- starts to conquer the 'everything else'. It happens point by point, like in house-to-house fighting. But it happens. Slowly, but persistently, if one persists in Doctrinal intake and use. So, eventually, the Meaning is so much stronger than desires for 'everything else', that the 'everything else' becomes the servant of the Meaning (Him, at this point), and the 'everything else' becomes an Expression Of Meaning. The Cross is a total fusion of the two, with everything else perfectly docked below Meaning (Father). For, Truth is an Attribute of God, so Meaning is Truth, is God: no divorce.

For the believer, there will always be struggle, since he will never be perfect in this body. However, the many lost battles but contribute to winning the war anyway, if he keeps on with Doctrinal intake and usage. So, he will come to love what he once hated; will come to not need what he once needed. Item by item. So the 'needle' (pointer) of volition, so to speak, motivated by the Meaning of the Doctrine, gradually shifts from negative to positive position. I call this the 'flip', and I got that idea by the way the Lord shouted Ps22:6 while on the Cross. The very thing which should DIVORCE one from God, and even used to (for us), marries one to Him even more, when the 'needle' has moved to positive. It wiggles, that needle, in us -- but it wiggles less and less, and the backward movement at some point never goes back to Egypt (negative).

Of course, the same thing works in reverse: the unbeliever or negative believer, persisting thus, eventually has no positive 'dots' of volition left. It seems (educated guess) that God takes a believer home when there are no 'dots' left which can be developed (because the believer won't respond to Divine Discipline) -- or, like Pharoah, the believer is kept alive longer as FTX for others (Part V covers this). The Divine policy regarding unbelievers is somewhat similar. Ironically, just as the Pleroma believer comes to want to suffer to know Christ better, so too do the negative folks -- but for the sake of their self-righteousness, which to them (at that point) is their 'god' (viz., Satan, or any long-negative person you know well). So, whether positive or negative to God, one 'grows' (up or down) to the level where only suffering is desired. Item by item.

PSDs#7, Personal Love for Father, and #10, Occupation with Christ, and #9, Happiness of God, are obvious, above. But so is #8, Impersonal Love for all mankind (akin to rulership love of those ruled), and it is likewise a slaveship attitude: the believer comes to want SO badly to be made a "sweet savor" with Son TO Father, for the additional reason that he knows Father will bless periphery due to association. Added Motive on-Cross. Because, what Father can do is infinitely better than what any believer can do; because, those 'below' don't have rapport, are uncomfortable around the believer, are hostile (etc). So, this "Combat" creates a bond which otherwise would not exist. Just as, Our Lord bonded us who would otherwise be hopelessly cut off from any kind of fellowship with Father, Son, Spirit. It's Glorious. This attitude thus 'baptises' whatever was previously-regarded-as-bad, into agathos. Doo-doo becomes Diamonds, all the while remaining doo-doo, and even because doo-doo! What a joy: Heb12:2, the answer to Heb12:1! Circulating Metabolized Doctrine (circMD, heh)! Doctrine makes doo-doo do a Diamond's 'job'! We died with Him on the Cross (main theme of Romans 6), so now let's live with Him on the Cross! (Main theme of 2Cor5 and Romans 8.)

This motive is not to be confused with the immature spiritual growth glitches like ascetism, legalism, preaching-on-corners, memorizing verses, and a wide variety of other kiddies-clomping-in-Daddy's-shoes. Granted, if you're "hot to trot" in the Christian life, you'll get into some of these playpens. And hopefully, grow out of them. God will stop 'being' Yucky Gertrude Cheese, Sugar Daddy, Dour Judge, Denomination-God, Feeling-God, Prophesy-God, Ritual-God, Taboo-God, Tongues-God, Wicked-God, Zombie-and-Zany-God, and like god-dolls Christian spiritual children get from other children: you know, the ones with degrees and 'holy' behavior. You know, like the ones Peter warned about in 2Pet2-3; like the ones Paul warned Timothy about in 2Tim2:26-3:7; like the ones John warned about in 2John; like the ones the Lord warned about, in Matt6 and 23. For, those children are still playing with their dolls. In self-imposed autistic fantasy.

Here's a quick way to understand the difference between pseudo-spiritual motives such as in the preceding paragraph, and the real ones: the Pleroma believer doesn't care a whit about status, goodies, opinions of others, earthly things. All he wants is to see Him, to live for Truth. He knows that in God's Plan, you get what you want (Part I's first WARNING LABEL); he knows that what he wants is JUST HIM. Everything else, of itself, is a complication. It's not ascetism, but preference. Goodies take time to play with, maintain. He'd rather just look at the Lord, so to save time for looking at Him more, such a believer would rather forego the goodies. Status is good for those below self, for the status of self makes those others have more pleasure looking up (since the Pleroma believer derives TOTAL pleasure from looking up, he appreciates this). Mass love symbols, goodies, and can't hack the Truth of itself: they need the dilution that symbols, goodies, and status offer. Fine: let them have them. What interests the Pleroma believer is the 'baddies', so to speak, for they are a sort of 'final frontier': they too get in the way, and if he can convert them into expressions of loving, seeing his Lord, then the baddies are desirable.

Though it is true that only the Pleroma get the goodies, even like the rich of this world, the owner never spends much time with his goodies: the underlings take care of them, and actually enjoy them more than the owner, who's busy with other things (thinking about his business, for example). Do you think Aristotle Onasis spent a lot of time in self-satisfaction on his yacht? No! He was busy working on the deals he had going, or planning new ones. The higher you go in even this life, the more your life is devoted to Thinking, to Principles and Ideas.. and the less, to the goodies your wealth acquires. But your servants get to see them, and far more than you do. That is satisfying to you, for those things are nice and someone should enjoy them. As for you, Mr. Rich, you enjoy the Thinking and the Challenge. As for you, Mr. Pleroma (no gender distinction after death), you enjoy seeing Him and the Challenge of passing on the enjoyment to those under you: for their sake. HE is Truth, and HE is your life, and you really don't have inclination, room, for the goodies, except to use them as tools to depict Him. So, you want to throw all the goodies, as it were, to His feet (Biblical metaphor of Enjoyable submission, here): See Rev4:6.

Until PSD#10 is stably running in your soul, this motive of "fellowship of His Sufferings" seems frightening, insane, masochistic. The spiritual children will react if they see it in you; Satan & Co. will make sure of that. Moreover, the "me" Energizer Bunny is really exercised over the idea of emulating the Lord's Humanity. Probably the good ol' boys at Satan&Co. chip in a lot of highjinks to 'help' you not want to go on further. Or, will tempt you to conclude you must be arrogant to want to suffer. [Antidote: Truth supercedes the 'me thing' -- HS, not you, PUT the Doctrine in you, so the motive is not arrogant, but rather warranted, to demonstrate Doctrine, give Truth a 'workout'.] How nice. But, miracle of miracles, you too want to Know Him Better by means of Combat. It gets to the point where nothing less will be satisfying. And, by then, anything else truly is "less": you've grown past the puerile, insane idea that God needs us to suffer. So you're not motivated by that, but rather you now see resistance as a gain; and the only kind of resistance left to conquer IS one that combats.

If someone notices that desire in you -- and by this time, even mere acquaintances who don't know you're "on" doctrine make comments as if they did know! -- lots of admiration and compliments will be given. You, on the other hand, are unpleasantly surprised. Wha???? Because, you're not looking to looking at you..you're looking to be looking at HIM. Because, being in combat is the highest and best form of being Close to Him. Because, what He went through ON the Cross, what it was like for the Father to judge Him.. this you want to know above all else. Just as God would never want what could be true to remain 'iffy history', but must have happen, because it is so Glorious; so also do you. So you want to know the Cross, not just imagine it. Know, not just write about it. Know, not just read about it. So, everything else is but a prop to that end; for, everything else is too small; knowing the Cross alone is satisfying. That's the "relationship to life" (2nd Evidence Test Issue, my pastor's term) you want. Ardently.

Oooohhh, "satisfying"? As in hilasterion, Kopher, the Mercy Seat, Propitiation?

This is the basis for all life, the First Laws, The Cardinal Operating Principles Of Life, which Justify Creation. Under the Beta tier, I'm now convinced that if the Christian understands these 4 Decisions, and gets in the habit of using them to drive his PSDs like breathing (next bullet), he'll be invincible. This is the secret of how Christ Could Do It, Stay Perfect -- how His Humanity thought about the Doctrine He knew. Wow. I probably sound like a raving maniac right now; but I'll rewrite this bullet with calmer fingers later. [It's not sin which is the problem, since Sin Was Nailed To The Cross. It's our believing, that's the problem. Can't believe what you don't know! So "invincible" doesn't mean we will ever stop sinning. But it does mean we can't be permanently knocked out of the Witness Box, and will reach Pleroma!]

Of all the doctrines I've ever heard my pastor teach, what he calls the "4 Decisions" matter more to my life than even my breath. If I do make it to Pleroma, this doctrine will have led the way. I can't stress it enough, and I never want to stop thinking of it: for, it depicts Him! Frankly, "supercedes" is the value that comes to mind here: imagine, we can learn Him? Thus 'doing', we can actually honor Him? What an unfathomable privilege! Superceding all others: so, the hassle of life is superceded by the glory of this privilege. Superceding is what the 4 Decisions are all about -- dead, impossible, hurts too much -- flipped! Alive again, glory now! Word above Name! Word above all other needs, exchanged for all other needs, FAR more enjoyable than if any other needs met! Word supercedes!

So what are "The 4 Decisions"? Put simply, they are an explanation of 1Tim2:5, which is an eternity-past 'report' on how the Lord 'decided' to take on Humanity. There is no verb in that verse. So, it's shouted. Need to see it in the Greek. The word 'decided' is kinda anthropopathic, since there never was a time when the Omniscient, Perfect Son didn't choose to take on Humanity. So, then: why? 1) To ATONE (OT meaning, paying for the offense per se, akin to a penalty for criminality; 2) to PROPITIATE, (Mercy Seat, in OT, which in Greek of LXX is "hilasterion") meaning, to pay for the opportunity cost (see Part II's "God's Genius Transforms" table); 3) to RECONCILE (OT meaning, to make peace between warring or disputing parties; also has connotation of prosperity: shalom, eirene); 4) to REDEEM (ransom, pay for the Restoration/Freedom -- a type of fix the damaged-goods reparation).

These terms are all familiar to most Christians and Jews. But what I'm extrapolating from the above teaching is, these 4 Decisions underpin all life, as the first table in Fixes.htm explained. Everything and everyone must be brought into redemption for finity to remain stable, in equilibrium, homeostasis. Else, Justice Is Not Served. So, if someone wrongs you, the 4 Decisions operate. Whether or not you benefit from them depends in part on whether you are positive to God. Even if not, though, since God is the Owner Of All, these laws operate to benefit Him. [This is not saying that everyone gets saved. It IS saying that Christ paid the entire price to Father. What anyone else gets depends on whether he will be reconciled to God (a Biblical metaphor for believing in Christ for salvation -- OT version is patterned after Gen15:6). If "yes", then the person gets redeemed. Post-salvation, though, he can also refuse: that's where 1Jn1:9 comes in, to put you back online. Most Christians will at some point permanently go offline. They are still saved, as per 1Cor3, but just get the deminimis benefits. Which are fantastic, compared to this life. But very low -- called "naked" in Bible -- compared to what they could have had in eternity. Parts III-IV covered all this in detail.]

See how this works? A thing which has doctrine associated with it plays a doctrinal role DUE TO that association, which role was impossible, absent that association. So when Father looks at that thing, He sees the Doctrine. Just as He does, when He looks at some sin Christ associated with in His Thinking, on the Cross. It's the same principle. That's how we can "redeem the time". The ugly, disconnected thing which suddenly has a Diamond meaning -- becomes, in essence, a Diamond. Even while it remains doo-doo. Doing a diamond's real job! So the more often you 'exercise' this associating, the more fluent, instinctive, and humorous your doctrinal reflexes become; the happier you become. Note the Lord's reflexes in Matt4; in the crucifixion passages. So, the memory of those usages is the 'sweet savor', making it yet even happier to AGAIN make the same kinds of doctrinal associations. So, eventually, what once you loathed, you now love; what once you feared, now 'gives' you confidence; what once drove you nuts, now 'calms' you. All due to the switch in association from negative, to positive. For Good Reason: the truth, God's meaning for the thing's existence, role, etc. is Gorgeous Gorgeous Gorgeous. Look: if you had a couch which had a million dollars hidden in it -- would it matter how ugly the couch was? Wouldn't you want to keep the couch after you extracted the cool million, just for the happiness of the memory of its rich meaning? Well, that's how it is with doctrine 'buried' inside anything you put it into, even more!

Remember the Rev4 Four-Part Escutcheon discussed in Parts III and IVd? Well, look:

Lion (Gold, Royal Profit) ATONES. The thing you associated the Doctrine with is now worth far more to you than if you did nothing; Far far more than if you associated sin with it (i.e., got upset). So, were it not for that thing, the doctrine would not be used, and there'd be no sweet savor to you. Far far more, are all these things true for Father. So the use of the Doctrine 'atones' for whatever 'bad' or 'not enough' value the thing had had. It's hupostatized, now, with Doctrine. Thus, ATONED!

Ox (Blue, Loyalty-to-Standard) PROPITIATES. It's innately satisfying to make good out of a bad thing. This, Doctrine always does. No barriers, because Doctrine is Infinite Truth. This, Doctrine does, because it changes the meaning of a thing via the bonding which occurs when you associate Truth with a thing. God's Meaning for that thing. Like, suffering becomes something to enjoy, not for the suffering itself, but for the Meaning of it. So you become satisfied with the 'cost' of the suffering, for it now is doing a Profitable thing, via the doctrine baptised onto it.

Man (Purple, Royal Mediator) RECONCILES. Doctrine made peace out of the thing associated with it, thus the thing now has a prosperity role in your life, due to the Doctrine. Thus you no longer need to 'war' with it (i.e., react to it) -- at least, not so much as before. A bit of Peace/Prosperity has been added, due solely to the doctrinal association!

Eagle (Red, Battlefield Victory) REDEEMS. The thing itself was a 'slave' to its too-low, too upsetting, not-good-enough nature. Doctrine 'freed' it to have a bigger and far better life, simply due to the association with the Doctrine itself.

Perfect, eh? Is this matchup fabulous, or what! I just recognized it today (4/11/03).

Of course, Satan's got his own four-fouled Escutcheon, explained as a four-pronged attack strategy in Part IV, which strategy also probably mirrors the four decisions he made while still perfect, the iconoclastic matrix he forever believes, so to justify his fall -- and now, ours. So we need to know how to spot them. Satan's deadly decisions are really so multilevel in their thesauretical wordplay, I can't succinctly tabulate them. Note how they are only about me, me, me -- putting down, denigrating, despising, all else. So, using the four typologies depicted in PartIV:

In SatStrat.htm, you'll find Satan's "D-I-O-S" plan to make God 'foreign' to us, is likewise four-pronged: each of the prongs runs throughout the matrix above, and runs through each prong IN the matrix. For example, Derision is what morality does -- deriding grace, deriding the Atonement He made. Imbalance results from stressing how one feels, over how one thinks. Of course, that derides thinking, and likewise derides the idea that any innate benefit can accrue from either Atonement or morality. Something Else -- namely, feeling, is needed to be satisfied. Obfuscation, accomplished by loudness, is easily seen in "Gross sin" -- for everyone trumpets it. Thus hiding the real evil, choosing reconciliation (by means of warring redress against the gross sin) as superior to reconciling with God. Substitution is amply demonstrated by Apathy: the cynical preference for self to be the arbiter, the cynical hatred of all other objects, which should be but slaves to whatever self wants. So, self is SUBSTITUTED not only for God, but for all other beings, as well. People set prices on their works for others, and expect to get paid by those others: the tit-for-tat mentality prides itself on being lenient -- but ahhh, that leniency is to buttress one's own ego, and -- well, it has a limit. Yeah, what 'I' do is worth a bizillion dollars, but what 'you' do, is worthless!

See? The ego has to be palliated, when the 'price' is reached. That's total depravity's essence. So, 'I am good' must be the 'compensation', beyond the price owed to self, for doing for another. Granted, nearly everyone has some true moral standard, and doesn't need 'compensation' within that standard's limits, which volition alone, sets. But beyond that 'price', well -- ego had better get paid! Of course, our pricing of our own efforts is inflated, compared to anyone else. Even, compared to a spouse. We are liars, all of us. We pretend to be good, we pretend to grace, but we lie. We have a price, so .. where's the standard, then? Where's the grace? Above all, Where's The Love? No love at all: for love is not love, if it has a price. Period.

• So Derision, for example, is woven into the morality attack thus: morality derides, despises, detests those not agreeing, puffing itself up with self-superiority about its obediences. In turn, morality is DERIDED (etc) both by those disagreeing, as weakness, rather than a natural prosperity God designed. (See Romans 1-3, Gal.)
• So Imbalance is woven into the morality attack, as if morality was of utmost primacy in God's Plan;
• So Obfuscation is woven into the morality attack via 'noise': loud stress on morality, drowning out the true Biblical definition of both Gospel and Spiritual life (which are thinkings, not doings);
• So, biggest of all, Substitution is woven into the morality attack, substituting morality, for God Himself: since man-being-moral is supposed to EARN something from God. That makes man god, see: if man can/must EARN something, it means he is capable of doing something as good as God -- thus making himself like the Most High. All in the name of serving Him, of course!

  Cute, eh? You can probably figure out how these D-I-O-S weavings thread through the other three attack prongs (emotionality, gross sin, apathy) to make God foreign to us. For example, emotionality disatisfies the person, because over time he becomes more and more addicted to feeling, so upon coming down from each successive 'high' of feeling, life becomes ever more intolerable. So, with emotionality, thinking is derided in favor of feeling; as a result the one so feeling is eventually derided by his periphery; so Christ is derided, since relationship with Christ is being sold by the feeling crowd as a feeling thing. (Note how you could substitute "morality" or "gross sin" or "apathy" for "feeling", and from these four derive every religion the world has ever sold mankind.) Imbalance is clear, and the person hung up on feeling actually becomes imbalanced, eventually, since thinking is more-and-more abandoned, so eventually atrophies; Obfuscation is accomplished by means of loud stress on feeling; Substitution is easy, then, because feeling becomes the god, instead (see Phil3:18). So one must feel saved, or feel guilty, or feel 'right', whatever -- note how feeling replaces truth as the criterion of reality.

By contrast, we defeat Satan's plan by using the Lord's Four Decisions. So we too get the benefits of the Lord's 4 results when we use Doctrine. Not only with respect to salvation and the other BIG things, but also the little deliverances/ benefits in each moment of the day: in fact, it's in the little things that the big victories are made. For, the usage of Doctrine atones, propitiates, reconciles, and redeems every time it is used. Whether we know it or not. The astonishing thing is, because we are His Body, His Bride, Spirit-filled use of Bible doctrine in us also directly from us does this job additionally, for others. Because, His Thinking is replicated in us progressively via 1Jn's Script (Part I). That's how blessing by association worked to a far lesser degree in the OT. But now He's Risen, Ruling, and we are being Prepared. Hence, we are the blessing-by-association, as Part III explains.

So, then: say I have a stomach ache, and I use Doctrine on it: forever after that instance of a stomach ache has doctrine associated with it. Remember, time only goes forward, so there's no undoing a moment (e.g., the moment you first believed in Him). So, it's permanent. So, then: were it not for the stomach ache, that usage of the doctrine would not exist. One less Diamond. Moreover, pretend that God looks at 'my' stomach ache and its doctrinal use, when He sees some other stomach ache in my periphery: that doctrinal use will 'associate' with the other ache, too. It's pleasing, to be reminded of a Diamond! So the pleasure gets partly spent on that other person, since that person's stomach ache came to be associated with 'mine'! (Something about the foregoing is true, but maybe not quite as depicted. It's the doctrine which is intrinsic value; so wherever that doctrine is located, wherever it is used, becomes the connector, and hence the blessing gets associated due to that connector. So it's not arrogance to say that someone else gets blessed due to 'me', since I got blessed due to Christ; since, like Him, I got Doctrine due to the Holy Spirit. No one owns himself, and no man is disconnected from others, in God's Plan.)

So, then: isn't it well worth it to get the stomach ache, if one gets the Doctrine as a result? That's the reasoning path which God used to design our so-great salvation. For, when He sees our sins in time, He also sees His Son's Thinking applied to it -- on the Cross. So, then: that thought on the Cross wouldn't be there, its Living Anarthrous Beauty -- if we hadn't sinned! So blow, wind, crack your cheeks! Now the sin is a catalyst for Incomparable Beauty! (Look for "a funny example" in Fixes.htm, if you've not read it already.)

Atonement, Propitiation, Reconciliation, Redemption. Linking verses to the believer are the theme of 1Tim2; also in the commands of our Ambassadorial Message "be reconciled to God", and "redeem the time" (Pauline, i forget where). Ergo, the decision matrix starts with PSDs#4&5 (GODO team, Grace&Doctrinal Orientations) rationale: everything in this world is essentially dead, because not spiritual, so need to be made alive again via Doctrinal association/ baptising/ hupostatizing. So, IL-PL team, PSDs#7&8,10, backed up by 2Cor5 and Phil.3 reasoning-paths: just as He made the 4 Decisions for us and took on Humanity to do it all on the Cross, so also we get the paradigmal structure in the spiritual life, krateis ho exeis. [If I put this concept in LvS, I'll have to explain first the different types of Redemption: soul, @salv; body, @Rapture -- L1520 has some relevant cites to help that explan.]

'Atone' is damages (offense); 'Propitiate' pays the opportunity cost; 'Reconcile' unites the warring parties (dead world to live circ MD) and creates a harmonious state between them (Isa54:1ff ties in); 'Redeem' ransoms the dead to be made alive. See, Live Doctrine applied to a worldly thing accomplishes the last two functions, and the first two are spiritual motives and the doctrinal content itself, as the only legal tender in the spiritual life. Have to have circMD to do this; mere function is divorced, still fleshly, so can't accomplish any of the four actions, hence "dead works" keyword in Scripture. So the believer who is growing up in circMD is the only one who can make these four decisions in his daily life, and thus is the conduit through whom the Father blesses the world, during time on earth. Again, all this is true ONLY because Our Lord finished the Cross, and gave us His Spiritual life, so that we are Bride. That and that alone, is the reason why we have such an efficacious and so-high position and potential function: as a sweet savor for Our Father, to Whom (under Our High Priest heb2&4) we are Royal Priests.

For example, krateis ho exeis means to Take What You Have And Master It. So, the 4 Decisions first require having circMD; then, living on it. The time for study must be balanced by USE, and that use develops a skill at precisely correct procedure, as Col. would say. So, then: I should, having been trained, use Doctrine I already have first toward the Father, directly (study is slightly more diluted than this, because part of the concentration is diverted to content). I should, moreover, emulate My Lord by function (which is applying Live Doctrine I have circulating (aka "MD") to the dead world I live in). That Atones and Propitiates (beauty-of-Doctrine thought motivated by the fact that Father will see the moment of its use forever); but Reconciliation, applied to the dead thing (brushing teeth, giving, whatever-is-the-proper-indirect-recipient-of-the-moment). For, now the dead thing is united, harmonized, at peace with, the Live Doctrine applied TO it. Next, redemption: what would otherwise be a useless thing to the Father (brushing teeth helps teeth temporarily, but never Him) is instead Live with the Doctrine applied to it. Skill levels increase the number of stories' meanings (multiple Doctrinal levels applied all-at-once), as one 'ages' in this practice (true pragma). Mastery thus occurs; the generalship usage of MD directed the use of the eus(ebeia) to the 4 Decisions.

Example of this usage follows in the indented paragraphs below. Notice how each of the paired from-for opposites form defensive and thus offensive phalanxes, trebuchets, castles: 'stories', so to speak. With Walls that move. Walls that invincibly move through, eventually, all opposition. Notice even more how the entire cycling of Doctrine is a punning game. Turning everything on its head! Dead made alive! Barren made Bearing! Sterile made Sterling Stars! Kingship made Slaveship, and Slaveship made Kingship!

Let's use sozo and its cognate noun, soteria: to save, and salvation, since such castle walls are often deliberately built in Scripture verses using these words (and their synonyms). Bottom meaning is saved from (defensive) Hell. Next 'floor': saved FOR (offensive!) Heaven (e.g., Sealing Ministry). Next 'floor': saved from the devil's world while down here. Next 'floor': saved FOR the Kingdom. Next 'floor': saved from a meaningless life while down here. Next 'floor': saved FOR training/development into Fit Bride. And so on: the number of floors are endless, lol.

So, then: losing money, saves you doctrine (God has a Better Money in mind); losing health, saves you even more Doctrine (God saves the best for the worst); losing loved ones or loved things, saves both them and you bigger blessing (God never takes away, except to add more, just as Abram lost a little phallus flesh to Gain Nations of Sons). See, the Truth is, you can't lose, but only win more! What a comfort it is, to know that a loved one is saved! See? They gained! "No more sorrow, no more tears, no more pain, no more death..the old things have passed away!" Not Lost, but Found is the ever-running Doctrinal principle, and nothing can ever stop it from becoming ever-bigger in benefits. "For His Name's Sake" (Ps23: "name" really is Person -- kinda like the "He cannot deny Himself" verse.)

Ok. Say that you get into a bad car accident. You're trapped behind the wheel, and you feel as though your back is broken. You're just sitting there, shocked, bewildered: what's the temptation hitting? Fear of death, of being permanently disabled, of hurting your loved ones financially, and most of all -- Why? The "why" is really a sly claim (you don't mean it this way, but your sin nature sure does) -- why did God let this happen to me? As if He were a sadist (Satan's constant, bitter, accusation). It's a natural thought, a constant urge of the Energizer Bunny, so don't feel guilty. Satan&Co. will really enhance the vehemence of such temptations, if you are growing in Doctrine. So, you're under attack!

What to do? Answer The Objections Like The Lord Did In Matt4. First: the entry 'floor' being breached is..all of them. What's 'saved', if you're hurting like this! So, then: "Death, where is thy sting? " Disability, "the Lord has need of it" -- meaning, you will not be living a life of no value or of burden to others, no matter what, for God Loves. Hurting loved ones financially: "the cattle on a thousand hills are His". And most of all, the "why". Why did this happen? Because He will use it to grow YOU. That is always true, cannot ever be untrue, for He Owns You; you are part of His Body. "For, He cannot deny Himself."

Now, let's crank it up: Let's use Doctrine to both calm down and get "intelligence" on purpose. Death: Christ died for all, so if I die blessing by association will pass to my periphery. Disability: Christ paid for all sins, so I can share in the fellowship of His Sufferings and get a better idea of what that was like for Him. Financial hurts: Must be some kind of witness to the all-sufficiency of Bible Doctrine, so we must not really need to be financially 'okay' by world's standards. Why did this happen to 'me': demonstration that Only He Matters, don't need anything but Him; to SEE HIM, to enjoy intimacy with Him, and how this thing won't get in the way!

Now, all those quotes are Scripture, which I thought up on the fly in response, while typing. The cranked-up ones are concatenations of many verses, so aren't marked by quotes: they are super-enjoyable. Takes a long time for them to be instinctive, and it's a real joy when they just run freely. Of course, you remembered all these -- or other ones. There are soooo many endless Doctrinal gems to admire! And just imagine: they're all real! Above all, every circumstance in life is but for one purpose: To Bless You. Cannot be otherwise, for -- remember about the too-heavy-stone? God's out to grow you up to be bigger -- so you can come to the "fullness of the stature of the Measure of Christ" (I didn't quote that accurately, but that's the meaning in corr. trans.) So it's impossible for you to lose! "No one shall pluck them out of My Hand" (John 10:28, I think).

Oh? Look: you're doing what the Lord did! Like, in Matt4! Multistoried Building Of Living Gold!

• You drive out, bit by bit, old malprogramming by replacing it with the Truth, upon every 'hit' of temptation. (He had no malprogramming, but notice how He stopped it from happening!) Frankly, the First and top-tier meaning for everything: 'seeing' what it was like for Him to be here, to be on the Cross! So: regard your failures as illustrations of what the Cross felt like for Him. Thus after using 1Jn1:9 (if you sinned) you get a faster forward-looking meaning, which is really the purpose, anyway. (Sin is not the issue: learning Christ is the issue. So it doesn't matter if the failure is yours or someone/something else. Everything DEPICTS Him. 24-hour Bible class!)

• You have the PLEASURE of stating the REAL MEANING (instead of the pain of the false meaning infecting your soul);
• You have the PLEASURE of SEEING the REAL MEANING in a circumstance which heretofore was not pleasurable at all!
• You have the PLEASURE of VICTORY over a thing which would normally defeat you!
• You have the PLEASURE OF KNOWING FATHER IS PLEASED BY SUCH THINKING, and will ALWAYS be pleased to see that moment forever! (I swear, this is one of the BIGGEST benefits, ever!)
• You have the PLEASURE OF KNOWING YOUR LORD IS EXTREMELY PLEASED TO SEE THIS, TOO. Rapport (easily the top of benefits, since Father and Spirit WANT this, to honor His Son, and Son wants it to honor His Father, and you are smack dab in the middle)!
• You have the PLEASURE OF KNOWING that innumerable dividends are and will continue to occur FOREVER to strengthen and benefit you, even from this ONE instance of doctrinal use, for TRUTH IS UNCREATED, so replicates forever (famous Word will not return void verse).
• You have the PLEASURE OF PROPITIATION, for -- absent this experience -- you'd not have the JUSTIFICATION for the particular doctrinal uses you got, and thus you'd have MISSED these SPENDING! PLEASURES. (This one is key to moving INTO a desire to always have too-heavy stones.)
• You have the PLEASURE OF BLESSING BY ASSOCIATION, for Father will bless your periphery as an expression of His Pleasure in forever seeing that doctrinal usage.
• You have the PLEASURE OF SEEING AS HE SEES, at least some! For, Doctrine is His Thinking. So, any Doctrine you see in the situation is seeing SOME of how HE sees it. (This is another top-tier benefit, for seeing TOGETHER with Him..indescribable happines.) It's no longer just words, but ALIVE!
• You have the PLEASURE OF REALIZING WHY EVERY SPECK OF DUST IS PLEROMIZED, baptised (identified, hupostatised) with VALUE forever -- since God has to see it forever. Why leave out the lame, the blind, the broken, even one small 'turd' (Greek word for 'dung' in Philippians 3:8)? Should ANYTHING be so powerful it is beyond the reach of Omnipotent True Righteousness? Why, that would be UNJUST! So, even the lowly turd can have a noble role to play. Just like the dead skin on a phallus.

• Best of all, you have the Sublime Pleasure of Knowing that He is being glorified in it. This pleasure probably won't be much until you have learned enough Doctrine to "come to know the Love for Christ" (Eph3:15ff). Once there, you will enjoy the most knowing that, no matter what you do, don't do, think, don't think: "The Lord has need of it", and "when I am weak, then I am strong", and "by Him for Him through Him and to Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made". (That last one is Col1:18 or so.) See, everything depicts Him, whether by contrast (e.g., even the wrath of man shall praise Him), or by semblance (e.g., all doctrinal uses are 'dots' of His Thinking). "The Lord has need of it" (Gospel passage about what the disciples were to say when they found the donkey-colt for the triumphal procession) is always true. So, it doesn't matter who's a stubborn arse, what's a problem. This knowledge is such a great source of comfort! For, once you are Occupied with Him, the ONE thing you care about is that He be, as Paul puts it, "glorified in my body". And, He always is. No matter what sin, no matter how low the thing, no matter how low the person. And Father sees this Always. Propitiated. Ergo, the "peace that surpasses understanding shall garrison your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:7, corr trans in caps; it's a military term.)

  Really, there are many more floors of Living Gold: these are but a few big categories. As you age in the practice of thinking doctrinally, you'll see more and more 'floors' of an endlessly-high building. After all, God Is Seeing Them All, And All At Once, And Always. ONE BIG NOW. So, endlessly high..just like Him. If there's a higher pleasure than this, in all the earth throughout all history, combined, I'd have to ask, "Prove it!"

HUH???? Look: kinda like Elihu would say, what good is it to God if you got in a car accident? Does HE need a broken car? A broken believer? Does HE need to 'feel' (really know, infinitely intense) the pain you are feeling, forever (since this moment never 'dies', to Omniscience)? Does HE need insurance claims and all the blamesmanship (C&B, claims-and-blames)? Will He want to hear all that Forever? Moreover: He's gonna take care of you no matter what..so the accident means He's got more to do! Now, why would it be worthwhile to complicate what He's got to do for you, anyway? Well, because it will benefit you more. Ok. But, um..a car accident is gonna be somewhere connected to a sin. And, itself, is not good. Ahhh -- but if you are thinking Doctrine, that 'atones' for the damage (Doctrine's Beauty is always higher than anything else's ugliness); that 'propitiates' the damage (makes it 'do', via your thinking, a beautiful thing, which of course it should do but could not do); that thus 'reconciles' the damage (its ugliness is no longer at war because of the Doctrine applied TO it); that thus REDEEMS the damage (it's no longer a slave to being intrinsically harmful). See? Is there a sweeter way to see the world's ills be 'healed' than this? "Blow, wind, crack your cheeks!"

But wait! Didn't the Lord pay for all sin? Yeppers: but you are down here representing Him (see 1Tim2, 1John4:12-17), so you are a conduit for blessing or cursing (Corollary "3" in Part III). So, then: what you think will help or hurt you and your periphery (true anyway secularly, but here, spiritually too since you are a Representative and King in Training). So, then: Rule! Think Truth, or..consequences. Let Doctrine BUY it, or..pay on your own, out-the-nose! Your free choice. Always.

God's Free Choice is "VPI", "verbal plenary inspiration". That's a theological term; the underlying Bible principle for it is expressed in such verses as "but God meant it for good" (Joseph, to his brothers, at their reconciliation). Thus, the thing itself is what it is or wants, etc; but also, atop it, are God's assigned meanings, usages, etc. So, for example, VPI essentially means that God communicated through the writers of Scripture in such a way that not one iota of their own natures were waived/modified (so they were really the writers, it wasn't some magic trick) -- yet God's Will and Thought ("complete and connected") is really inerrantly and infallibly communicated, in writing; moreover, that such writing in itself bears His Authority. [The actual theological definition is very good. I don't do it justice, here.]

So, 'a kind of functional hupostasis (union between disparate natures). The doctrines are coherent, flawless, perfect. That doesn't mean that the papyrus was perfect (or, Codices), it doesn't mean the scribed-copies are perfect copies, etc. But it doesn't have to mean that either, for the exact thought of the writers in writing 100% accurately represents God's Communication. This exact thought can be retrieved, as it were, from the writing: doing so is an arduous task, but it is possible, because HS empowers this, and since He was the One who "God-breathed" (theopneustos) the information into them, HE of course now knows what is really Scripture and what is not; how it should be interpreted, and how not. It's just a question of being online with Him and, for a pastor, the requisite preparation.

VPI is but one model of how God 'baptises' or 'empowers' a thing to have an efficacy beyond its own nature. In doing this, a type of hupostasis is always created: the thing has its own natural properties, freely; but also, 'on top', as it were, God-meanings. God Lives, and so can make use of His Creation: here, by bonding it to Truth in some particulars (usually judicially-matching, see Matt7:2). Clearly He'd have to do so, since 1) the thing isn't God, so its nature is below Him, and HE has to decide its use -- the thing/ person can't decide how it should be created! 2) God is living, and HIS decisions have properties of their own. Kinda like a car; you own the car, but the car can't drive itself nor decide what transportation purposes it should serve: YOU have to make those decisions, and then 'baptise' the car by such usages. Or, with the believer, the believer is free to choose what he wants; but God is still free to choose what God meanings to make out of what the believer chooses or rejects. For, the believer by nature cannot make himself, of himself, do or be anything with respect to God (which is why we needed salvation, and why it must be free consent, belief in Christ). So, the upshot of Doctrinal usage is that one keeps on asserting and using the Truth: seeing GOD'S meanings. Gotta want to see HIM, to want to do this; can't see Him or His meanings except clumsily and infrequently, until one grows up enough in 1Jn's Script. But oh, if one decides to grow in Doctrine, and use IT to pay -- nothing can compare. Isa55!

All of Satan's attacks are punning satires, as the Appendix explains. So, the word "pay" here is used as the point-of-impact. Just as it was, when he initially tempted the woman in the Garden. See, the Tree prohibition was a cause-and-effect warning of something harmful. Satan took the concept 'harmful' (which is in the same conceptual family as "pay" and "bad feeling") and turned that into an accusation that God caused harm, or had a harmful purpose. Because, God created the Tree. Satan then flipped/reversed the effect and the cause: so eating from the Tree, because God is at fault, effects a superior state than the one obtaining before the fruit was eaten. Again, because God is at fault. Notice also a second reversal of subject and object in that Gen3 passage: God will be harmed, not them: that's why "Elohim" is allegedly afraid that they will be as smart as Him. See how much hatred had to be in the motive to take the fruit?! The motive to eat it had to be two-fold: one, to get revenge on "Elohim" (nasty epithet, in the passage) for withholding smarts from them; second, to compete with Him in smarts! Ooooh, this thing is dripping with anger, bitterness, iconoclasm. They couldn't even BE motivated to do this thing if some disquiet hadn't been long pregnantly developing in them (James' metaphor of how sin is born in Jas1).

Think the passage over carefully, for all of Satan's thought pattern and methodology are succinctly told there. It's awesome how deftly God creates a zipfile of a bizillion megabytes within just a verse or two. Part II goes through the whole rationale Satan used in the "The Fall" subsection (toward Part II's beginning). Also review Job1 and 2, Isa14 and Ez28, Matt4, Rev13-17 (you'll need a good study Bible for Rev to cross-reference the OT passages which use the same metaphorical keywords).

So also, when the believer notices some command or issue related to Righteousness, "pay" looms large in his associations. HE paid..so shouldn't I do so also? It's a natural reciprocity motive, which of course the Energizer Bunny has going ALL the time; but also, developing Love for God will likewise be motivated to reciprocate for right reasons. Bammo -- Satan's got a wedge! See, Doctrine is the Payor, by Divine Design. That's why the solution to sin is believe in Christ; then, get Doctrine. Pouring Truth into the believer's soul via 1Jn's Script turns the whole "pay" thing into a joyous experience: eventually, even during pain/suffering. That's God's Design. But because the believer is so affected by the twin reciprocity drives, it's real easy to substitute self for "Doctrine". So, even if the believer uses Doctrine to 'pay', instead of getting JOY from that, he gets guilt. Why? "Oh, YOU didn't do all YOU could have done with that Doctrine!" See? The "you" is supposed to be the object, the recipient 'vessel' for the Subject, the poured-in-Doctrine. Then the Doctrine does the work in through and for the object, the "you". But oh! Reversed! Satan's thinking reverses subject and object, thus blaspheming God's Thinking..and putting the believer in prison.

What a horrible prison it is. Doctrine is (sotto voce, of course) made to be 'at fault'. Man has to do something; doctrine isn't good enough! Same argument as the rich man in Torments spat out to Abraham in Luke 16! So, the imprisonment: if "I" am the subject, not doctrine, then "I" am forever on that hamster's wheel, trying to do this thing which I ought to do. Of course, it's always possible to run faster..until, having gone too fast, "I" die. Meanwhile, of course, "I" have gone nowhere. By contrast, if the True Subject, The Lord's Thinking, is doing the work, I'm receiving it, not doing it. Or, even doing it (for Doctrine is a true independent possession, made such by the Holy Spirit even as it was made in Christ and sustained Him on the Cross) -- I'm 'participating in the action of the verb' -- middle voice, not active voice! Coming along for the ride. And, enjoying it. So, Doctrine didn't do all it could do -- of course not! Doctrine can do everything! There's no end to Doctrine's works, because it's the Lord's Thinking! Duh. So, instead of a guilty loss, you have a happy gain..with confident expectation (true meaning of Greek word elpis, not the insipid "hope" translation English bibles use)..of More Profit. Endlessly fractalizing. Pure Profit. One moment at a time. So all the 'hits' -- internal and external temptations to "think differently" just help increase the yield. By Divine Design. Just as it happened, on the Cross.

My pastor calls this, "Momentum". Military concept of concentration-of-force, and coordinated logistics. Think of a small, wet ball rolling down softpack snow. Because softpack, as the ball rolls more and more snow will stick to it. So, the ball grows bigger as it rolls. So, the ball grows heavier as it rolls. So, the ball rolls faster. As it keeps going, whatever is in its way of lesser weight will be knocked out; whatever is of greater weight will be rolled over. So, the ball keeps on going.

This is how the Energizer Bunny, our sin nature in Adam, works. But this is also how Doctrine works. One of the Hebrew words for "trust" has the etymological meaning of something which starts as a thin thread; other threads get woven into it, over and over and over: until you have an unbreakable veil. (The Temple Veil was extremely thick and tall: so when God tells you the veil split from Top to Bottom, that's a BIG deal!)

That's how the Energizer Bunny works. But that's also how Doctrine works. So, it's a question of rolling, of knitting. Game is, what do you roll or knit? The Energizer Bunny gets a 'handicap', because it IS one: a head start, in the game of life. It influences you from birth. But oh, once you start getting 1Jn's Script, no matter how late in life you begin -- well, now there's a counter momentum. War is joined, baby. Which side shall win? Well, we know nothing defeats Doctrine, because Doctrine sustained Him on the Cross. In particular, Love for Father, and Love for mankind, the motive phalanxes. But also, the Meaning of what He was undergoing: Father gets paid! People get saved! Those are Doctrinal Truths. Meanwhile, against these truths was all the pain; all the jeering; all the extreme fatigue of His last 36 hours; all the itching from the wood He was nailed to; all the push from His body to make Him unconscious (crucifixion position is asphixiating by nature; you have to push against it to keep breathing); many many pressures. But Doctrine defeated them all! That's "momentum".

The ever-bigger ball, the ever-thicker veil: these are accumulations, multiple layers; or, if we switch to a building analogy like Paul does in Eph3:15ff -- multiple stories. Chock-full of riches of Doctrine. God is multistoried, so to speak. Being All at once, seeing all at once, appreciating all at once -- and the huge volume never reduces, not even an iota, His TOTAL appreciation of each thing/ person. Even so: as the believer ages in Christ, he too progressively comes to see multiple layers at once. All the time. So even brushing teeth has a lot more meaning. As, indeed it should, for what good is brushing teeth, all by itself? How much more, if Doctrine bonds to it, creating a symbiosis? How much more, if brushing teeth is thus enabled to do a far bigger job than its own nature could do? So, then: how much more is the Believer With Doctrine enabled to do a far bigger job than his nature could do?

The nature changes with momentum. Toothbrushing got rolled, knitted, kitted out with Doctrine. So, it's no longer mere toothbrushing. The believer got rolled, knitted, kitted out with Doctrine. So is no longer a mere human. For, Truth is an Attribute of God, and God is Omniscient. So Truth is multistoried. And this Truth is now in the believer: so the believer becomes multistoried. For, the objective is to become Fit Bride, compatible with the Son, for the Father. To serve forever. Aha. So the Father expresses His Appreciation in a multistoried way: by blessing the believer's periphery.

Meanwhile, the believer himself is getting Bigger. Faster. So whatever tempted him in the past, 'shrinks'. Even if it grows. At some point, the temptations themselves add to his size and growth, rather than merely acting as temporary slowdowns. This, because as he gets Bigger, because Truth makes him bigger, thus changing his nature, the believer switches his perspective about old, troublesome chestnuts: from negative, to neutral, to positive, to spoudazw: enthusiastic eagerness to have more of the old chestnut attacks! So, he emulates the Lord's enthusiastic acceptance of sins and judgement. So, he will emulate the Lord's Result of having Unending too-heavy-stones! For, like the Lord, he will come to the place where it's a thrill to pour self out..forever. Just because. That's "momentum". Never-ending. [It just kills me that translators readily translate "spoudazw" correctly as 'to be exitedly eager' everywhere except where legalism would frown upon it; in which instances, they use "diligent". What a crock! Hebrews 4:11 should say, "Let us be eager", and the "let us" construction is an imperative -- a Command to Enjoy!]

Of course, that's how the Energizer Bunny works, too. When I was 16 or 17, I was seriously interested in psychology; that interest was born at age 12, when I was finally able to learn what "Auschwitz" meant. I couldn't understand how a whole country of (presumably) nice people could be so vicious..so cold. So, I wanted to study psychology since then. By age 16 or 17, I had the good fortune of seeing first-hand what neurosis can do to a patient. She was about my age; she insisted she was pregnant by the (to her) "late" [famous singer very much alive]; and she looked, and tested, excepting there was no fetus, as if she really was pregnant. The phenomenon is called: "hysterical pregnancy". It's an imagined thing. But your body doesn't know that. To your body, what you tell it as "truth", is an Original Power.

See, if you tell yourself something is 'true', just like with 'pain', your body (which can't think) accepts what you tell it. And (shudder!) acts accordingly. So, if someone tells himself that he's having heart problems..he really will manifest the symptoms. Yet, the echocardiagram is clean. Yet, a chem stress test is perfect. It's really bizarre, the power of mind on the body. So, then: if you tell yourself that some UNtruth about God or Bible (etc.) is true, you gain momentum toward more lies. So, you become bigger with lies: Jas1's pregnancy analogy, again. So, you gain separatist, derivative momentum away from truth. So, you roll down, knit up yourself, and..crash. Paralyzed with lies the way the psychosomatic paralytic was in Matt 9, you can't move. Only fantasize. 9/11 proved how much we Americans are paralyzed, divorced from truth. Even our calls to "get back to God" are hopelessly mired with the fantasy of me-be-good. Note the (barrier-raising!) blamesmanship in all such "calls". That's why America is now so hysterical, the poor sop running for his flight is deemed a terrorist! That's why a devout Christian won't even go to the City to see the beautiful Christmas tree in the Center..because, oh! Terrorists MIGHT be there! Just like that girl I saw when I was 17. Just like Deuteronomy 28 and Lev26 warned, about fleeing when no one is chasing you. Hysteria. Fantasized. For, that's "momentum", too. Knowing Makes The Difference: but the bigger difference is, what do you value knowing? For, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matt6:21, Luk6:45, Luke12:34.)

Just as in investing, one's 'portfolio' of dead things must be diverse, and nothing is to be despised. Balance means a balance between High-Low. As Part IV's "Numbers Properties" subsection explained, "balance" isn't 50-50. It can be, but it is more profitable if a small percentage leverages the rest. Like, the Christ leveraged the salvation of all mankind. One Person..the whole of mankind! Ultimate Trebuchet!

Even so, for the believer's 'day' portfolio-of-things-to-redeem. All things are to be profitably redeemed, and no thing is left out; and yes, there's a hierarchy -- which only metabolized ("eaten", believed) Doctrine can mediate. That is why, for example, even brushing teeth is essential. Just as with food, the low things are made causes of the High, so without the low, nothing high results. Thus the real ROI ["Return On Investment", the (e.g., interest) yield on capital, an investment term] from the low is not merely the differential between High Doctrine and the low 'target', but rather that the role the Son designed the low to play is causational. Without teeth, you can't eat. Without food, you can't live. Food itself, though, is seemingly a cost, productive of no revenue. So, 'give money' By Eating Doctrine (implicit in Isa55, throughout); 'rebound' (my pastor's term for use of 1Jn1:9) is sorta analogous to brushing your teeth. Heh.

Can't have Doctrine without Filling; can't have filling, if carnal. So the 'cost' of using 1Jn1:9 repeatedly keeps your doctrinal teeth alive. So you first eat Doctrine, and then aim it at experience. Until then, nothing. But IF THEN, then do do do, not merely study study study. The prepared believer has been capitalized, and NOW must spend the capital he has, not play Midas. The investment mix for the prepared believer has been changed into a heavier emphasis on stock. Really, on running the business (yourself!), because the Son's 'business', is to make Doctrinal Profit Out Of You for Father, and we are Bride to the Son. Hence, Krateis ho eXeis. The bizillion-dollars steel mill is there, in the prepared believer (Spiritual Maturity onward -- see Part III, "First Reason for Invisibility"). So, operate it. Evidence Testing's completion is the proof that the steel mill is operating profitably, no-matter-what. Operating Doctrine is Operating Capital, and that Capital is invincible: demolishing all strongholds. "Having done all, to stand"! (Eph6:13, KJV is best -- the Greek is military language, meaning to have become victorious against the enemy and won the war.)

And just what have we done? Gotten Ready For Our Wedding. It's incredible how the only ones who don't know how worthy we've been made in Him, are us! Would Satan&Co. be fighting as they are, if the Bride is not worthy? Didn't the Lord pay the Bride Price on the Cross? Isn't Eph1 the Father's statement of our dowry? Isn't the spiritual growth process the spending of both Bride Price and Dowry ON us? So we can see our increasing beauty (versus weltering in our birth-blood!) develop? So what is all this breast-beating! Smoke and mirrors, that's what it is. The entire spiritual life is one big beautification process, which the Beauty gets to watch and participate in. With a lot of impotent hecklers on the sidelines, jealously trying to steal a little of the fun! God isn't saying anything but tharsete..go on, get up, move out, have fun, everything is fine! "For I am convinced that neither powers..nor life, nor death, nor any other creature can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus." (Paul, end Rom8.) Ok: now where did I put that smoothing oil; what About-Him doctrine does it depict (heh)?

It's axiomatic that "opposites attract". And why? The beautiful root reason is the Hypostatic Union, as we saw in the first two tables of Fixes.htm. Can't get more 'opposite' than Infinity and finity: but the Stone too heavy got lifted! So, it's not surprising that people tend to be either aggressive, or passive: one of the two personality orientations tends to dominate, though we each are 'mixed' of both types. God, of course, is the Perfect Balance of both. So, the aggressive personality will view God aggressively, and hence will tend toward a works-slant in all he is and does. The passive person will of course tend toward the opposite slant. So, when aggressives and passives unite, they also clash: aggressives can't stand the passive's tendency to withdraw in the face of aggression. Passives find the aggressive's 'harshness', ugly. Aggressives seem strong; then, bullish. Passives seem weak; then, scheming. Only Love can resolve all these problems, but until these opposites know each other well enough, they can't resolve anything: much less, love. So, until the believer comes to know God, he also can't know anything about the personality orientation which is opposite his. So, can't learn to love it. So, will continue to be distracted from learning God by all the oppositeness he sees. So, will have trouble embracing anything, all his life.

So, for this and other reasons I explained in Part IV that Evidence Testing appears to run in series, so the SM-Pleroma phase is rather long. So far I've not heard Thieme say that, so watch for what he does say. Obviously those within the Pleroma top class aren't equal among themselves, either; Pleroma is the last threshold, but it ain't over till the fat lady sings (death). One can always lose out; still, upon completing (GK: teleiow) that threshold, the Trial Witness is Victorious (via that believer's testimony, reaching Pleroma) for Prosecution (God). [So, then: should Part IV say more about this witness function? Really, it only (seemingly) asserts it, providing no great detail. More detail is in Parts II and III, but yet not enough for the uninitiated reader to grasp what the believer's witness signifies to angels. Do I want to explain the whats more explicitly? Thus far, you have to read between the lines (i.e., derive corollaries from knowing what the Trial is about), to catch on. Problem in being explicit is reader titillation and misinterpretation which will result; and the fact that I'm really writing the piece more for myself than for anyone else, and I don't need explicitness for moi. (If HS gives them to read it, it's up to Him what they get out of it, I'm not in that loop.)]

Here, I gotta use a very specific example to show how the game is played. At times, I tend to get very upset when I see God maligned. Obviously the person maligning him has no clue that's what he's doing, so my upset tends to be generic -- mad at the practice per se. Still, I often react. Especially, when it comes to the prolife movement, among whom are the most insane folks I've ever encountered; I'm all too aware that Deut28:28 is playing on them, and Satan&Co. are laughing their heads off, because their slapstick satire of the Truth is sooo bald here. Also, since I'm adopted, I don't react in favor of abortion, for crying out loud! Instead, it's because the Bible very explicitly, and in many verses, says that you are not human until born. Since miscarriages commonly occur without any intervention, God would be a murderer, by prolife standards. Moreover, for the state to take authority over something which belongs to God alone (life!) would also be blasphemous. Moreover, what right do people have to stick their noses into other people's bodies? God is a God of privacy. Etc., ad nauseaum.

What am I doing? Justifying my upset. Bad Move! Ok, so time to play the flip game, (here) after using 1Jn1:9! So, what's the flip? Well, what's the point-of-impact? Anger. Self-righteous anger (yikes, a horrible sin). How does it happen: i'm reciprocating their anger by anger, thus violating Lev19:18 (even though only in thought). So, how to flip it? Aha: anger..what FLIP value is here? Aha: what do the 4 Decisions say? God is using the prolife movement to knock down barriers IN them. That's very punny, if you know James' pregnancy analogy. Kinda hard to be angry, when such a thought 'replies'!

What does God do with the prolifers? Well, what's happened to others like me? 'Show others what is not in the Bible, to give a respite from the crusade! Show others what is not being "Christian", to give a refreshing truth! Show the prolifers they are not in the spiritual life, to give "better things" (Heb7:18-19). All these "shows" take time: but God loves helping them see the Truth! And He's doing it! In short, the flip is, God is right now using this malignancy to cure their aborting themselves from the spiritual life! Oooh, I see that! Love replaces what would have been anger, and in a tender and humorous manner: for the other thing that bothers me the most, is to see others suffer, and I am too aware that belief in falsehoods wrecks one's life!

The actual process is much faster: takes but a second, usually. So what would have been anger is changed to a smile. Due to understanding how the 4 Decisions underwrite all life, culminating in the Cross! Moreover, the next time I get or am tempted to get upset, the prior 'flip' answer will come up again to battle..and win! Never underestimate the kill-shot power of Bible Doctrine. [Racquetball term: a killshot is a skilled return of your opponent's ball such that he can't hit it. A 'rollout' is the best of this kind: ball doesn't even bounce, but rolls out perfectly from the front wall.]

CROSS KEY AND LIFE KEY ==> Christ spent Doctrine like one spends money. That's why it was a Pure Profit Transaction between Him and the Father. The Doctrine was first paid to Him, for free! So, He spent it like money all His Life; as a result, He had so high a capital base He BECAME "The Way, the Truth, and the Life" in His Humanity. So, He spent Doctrine (thought exchange) on the imputations of all sins, and on the Judgement from the Father. And didn't even flinch! That's how powerful Bible Doctrine is, and why no works, not even all works from all time added together..even compare. See Rev 20:12ff if you don't believe it: there, all are judged short because ALL their works don't add up to even one quark! on the opposite scale (to His Payment). So, read the handwriting on the wall about works, too: mene mene tekel upharsin! (Dan5:25ff.)

See, the thing is, with Doctrine (unlike secular money), the more you spend it, the even more it's worth! Unlimitable Capital. That's why getting Bible doctrine under your right pastor using 1Jn's Script is so vital. Its power is incalculable. As we saw in the "Nexus" subsection of Fixes.htm, Doctrine Held Him Together On The Cross. So, Bible Doctrine circulating in your soul is YOURs by Divine Gift; true wealth. And, there's nothing which this "true riches" can't do, if you are filled with the Spirit. (He runs your investment portfolio, investing wherever you want the money to go.) See, you determine where the Doctrine should be spent. Hence, the PSDs are directives to your Broker, which He assiduously 'obeys'. Why? Because He likes Seeing the Beauty of the Spending, so He will never gerrymander the use of Doctrine. He will no more lift a finger to help you than He would Jesus on the Cross. Your Parakletos will, however, give you investment advice. Don't rebuff ("grieve" , a poor trans of lupew in Eph4:30-31) Him; don't wet on Him ("quench", in 1Thess 5:19, originally a putting-out-fire verb); don't LIE to Him (Acts 5); don't insult Him (Heb 10:29). He has to hang up if you do that, because then 1Jn1:8 or 10 becomes true. Then 1Thess5:15 or 22 becomes true. Then (shudder!), if you don't get online again, 2Tim2:26-3:7 roll out! So use 1Jn1:9 and get back online, right away!

Why won't He lift a finger to help you, then? Isn't "Helper" how Parakletos should be translated (rather than transliterated)? Ahhh. He's not a "helper", but your Mentor [Homeric Greek "Parakletos" was Mentor's job]; and you are an archetype of King Odysseus' son, Telemachus: so, you are a king-in-training. So YOU have to practice taking responsibility for your own decisions. But there's another reason why He won't 'help' you. Because He doesn't have to -- the Doctrine Can Do It! See? You really have an Infinitely-valuable asset to spend on Father! The Son's Thinking can and will hold you together under ANY and all circumstances! It's yours for the asking! So you don't need those (relatively-speaking) stupid miracles, dreams, visions, that job, that house, your spouse to be nice to you..or even sleep, food. Doctrine Does It All: Matt4:4! This is what Paul means by "the Power of His Resurrection"! For, He was resurrected due to the fact that He successfully paid for all sins of all time -- by spending Doctrine! Not by using His own Power, nor Father using His, nor Spirit using His. The Doctrine Did It!

Of course, Satan&Co. know how Thought Is Power! quite well, so have their own crafted expressions, representing their own attributes: the "strongholds" (fortresses/ castles, really -- demonic ones) of Eph6. Only God's thought can fight these guys. Only God's thought in you can defeat these guys. No amount of hocus-pocus (exorcism, what a joke!) or works or anything human can defeat them. Lots of metaphors for their castles, and their castle-building, abound in Scripture: each one references a different function or attribute; or, the whole from a particular 'window'. Tower of Babel metaphor, Doctrines of Demons (1Tim4, 2Tim4), "father..the devil", "prince of this world", "come to their senses" (stop being drunk, in Greek of 1 or 2Tim2:26), "drunk" (harlot in Rev17 and OT; also Isa28), "earthly".. well, too many to remember quickly and type. Point is, a whole COSMIC SYSTEM (my pastor's term, and aptly taken from Scripture keywords) exists. Which, of course, has as its purpose, replication. In you. See, you're here, dumb as a stump, moving along on this planet, thinking that all you see is all there is. But ho! You're really here getting filled up with either: God's Script, or Satan's. Your choice. Whether you know this is happening, or not!

As noted earlier, Satan's system tempts the believer in the same way as Satan himself tempted the woman and Adam. It's a very effective system! Introduce 'doubt', and hold out a carrot for accepting the doubt. Is Elohim really that good, if He makes a Tree which would harm you if you ate from it? Oh, and if you do, why [carrot time!] You'll Be As Smart As Elohim!

This same ploy hits us all so constantly, and in so many fractilic combinations, we barely 'hear' it. We don't notice it in the 'gotta give to the poor' baloney. We don't notice it in the 'gotta hustle for God' baloney. We don't notice it in the 'tax the rich' tripe. We don't notice it in the millions of incompetences which people get sucked into buying every day -- all that money spent on defective products and services would feed the poor forever! That most devastating of pre-sin (stool!) softeners, doubt -- hits the believer more strongly when he IS growing up in the spiritual life. For, Satan&Co. aren't stupid -- they select only productive targets for individual attention. The hoi pouloi can be 'managed' through the macro (propaganda) herding device.

How is the growing believer targeted? Well, first he's studied for his STRENGTHS. Not just weaknesses. What made the Matt4 temptations so devastating, was that Satan was playing to the Lord's Strengths: His Loves. So, the growing believer's strengths, not his weaknesses, are the prime targets for..you guessed it..doubt! Oh, how is it this doctrine can baptise a drop of pee and make it forever valuable to God, that must be magic. Oh, how is it God would like it if I use Bible Doctrine on such a small thing..but not do the BIG thing [always cast as some body/money thing, mind you -- a great pun]! Oh, how is it plain ol' study will enable me to better Live before the Lord. Oh, how is it that just trusting Him does anything FOR Him. Ohhhhhhh...." and the fractals just keep playing their tune in syncopation with the Energizer Bunny! Tokyo Rose took lessons from Satan&Co.!

Ohhh...never mind that Abram was circumcised to effect a covenant! Which he'd remember as he peed! Ohhhh...never mind that the Savior came from that peeing forefather. Ohhhhh...never mind that Father chuckles at the Son's sense of Humor in choosing how to effect the covenant..forever! Ohhh...never mind that, as Romans 4 explains, Abram trusted God (the Son) even after he became sexually dead! and could only pee. So, Abram sure had to use Bible Doctrine on "pee", every day! So, ohhh how is it that plain old study of Doctrine will enable Abraham to bear NATIONS of sons?! Heh. As it stands written, "For he believed in the Lord, and it was Credited To His Account As Righteousnss. Gen15:6 is a Bible verse. Which Abram practiced. Which James extols in Jas 2. And why? Because Doctrine is Divine Thinking. Can't get more 'righteous' than that. Starting with, that first doctrine we all believe to be saved, the Gospel: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall ['from that moment, forever', aorist tense] be saved!" Acts 16:31!

So it looks like pee is pretty important! For, Abram had to watch himself pee for 99 years, and nearly every adulthood day it reminded him of what he was not getting! But lo! snip snip and a covenant is born? from the same peeing organ? Tell me: do you think Abraham ever looked at pee or his phallus the same ol' way after that day? Talk about low becoming high! We'd not be here, except for Abram's pee! For without him trusting that peeing promise, there'd have been no Christ. Without a Christ, there'd have been no Church. So, you wouldn't be here to read, and I'd not have been here to type!

So, then: since Thought Lives, whatever 'attributes' it carries will become ALIVE in you. Notice how, since God is the SOURCE of all thought (in the sense that He knows all thought which could or would or could not or would not exist) -- the very inherent property of THOUGHT is tremendous Power. So, too, if a Truth is rejected. Lies derive their power from rejecting Truth, always. Equal-and-opposite reaction principle of physics is rooted in the property of Truth. Moreover, destruction is always easier than construction. Because, as we saw in the "Topics Related to the Nature of God" in this page, anything one 'dot' below Infinity is an unbridgeable chasm. That, of course, also explains why there had to be a Cross. The destroyed thing (trashed soul) can't reconstruct itself.

So, then: if a thought's attributes are lies and you believe the thought, then its lies live in you. And YOU die. Slowly. That's how Adam and his wife died spiritually; that's why we all die physically. That's why a believer atrophies both mentally and physically if he doesn't get into and keep living on, 1Jn's Script.

So, then: if a thought's attributes are Truth, and you believe the thought, then its truths live in you. That's why the Lord, Who BECAME The Truth in His Humanity, had to dismiss His human spirit, so He could die physically. That's why we are born again when we believe in Him, for the Gospel is True; thus the HS is authorized to create a human spirit and replicate +EL and +R into it. [The first act of faith can't be destroyed by later rejection because the Holy Spirit, not you, is the One Who makes you born again. Your own faith doesn't do that job, as James reminded his readers in Jas2:11 and :26. The text between those two verses illustrates how Doctrine works (v.23a is its crescendo, Scripture Being Fulfilled), which is the main theme of James, beginning 1:1.] That's why we can grow up "with reference to [our] salvation" (corrected trans in bold; two 'bookends' are 1Pet2:2 and 2Tim3:15); that's why we can "work out [our] salvation" (Phil. 2:12-13 -- note God's working out something you already have) by means of "growing in Grace and in the Knowledge of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ"..from glory, to glory. (2Pet3:18, 2Cor3:18) Floor by floor, all the way up to the Penthouse, Pleroma. From the foundation, salvation (1Cor3:11), to pantopleromatouTheou, all the fullness (of blessing) from God (Eph3:19).

In sum: Thought Is Living. So, it repeats, replicates. So, every instance of a thought is an acceptance, or rejection: whether the thought is inside your own soul, or coming from your body's brain-database, or..coming from anywhere outside your soul. Good thought builds life; bad thought speeds death; and the irony is, since bad thought has to carom off Truth, bad thought's power is more destructive! So take care what you think!

Don't miss the opportunity to get God's Script. Religion lies: God is out to give you something, not get something from you. And what He gives, costs Him nothing, by nature! And what He gives, is of far more enjoyment than all the wealth of a thousand universes. That's not hyperbole. And you can prove it, because, Truth Is Uncreated. So, obviously, not something you can make or do to give Him: "for who has known the thinking of the Lord, that we should instruct Him??? But we have the Thinking of Christ." ('Taken from 1Cor2:15-16, corr trans of nous.) So, obviously, by redeeming everything with Doctrine, you aren't working at it either. So, obviously, God gets what He didn't work for, the only way it can be done! Pure profit! Cry all the way to the bank, baby.

It's not sophistry, but a real alchemic change. Let's take an example. Most people start to feel bad about themselves if something makes them look bad. Doesn't really matter whose fault it is, the result is to feel 'ugly' in some way. Doesn't matter if it's really true, either -- someone ELSE will consider 'you' in a negative light due to this 'weakness' which you really have or you are thought to have. So, if related to your job, maybe you get demoted, fired, or don't get the promotion you wanted. If in love, the one you love is less attracted, etc. You can think of other categories. Now, watch: "for when I am weak, then I am strong." That's a rationale used in 1Cor1:27, 1Cor4:10, 2Cor12:10, 2Cor13:9. Next, add these: "For, the Lord will fight for you today" (Moses, to Exodus generation, just before God parted the Reed Sea.); "If God for us, who against us?" (Rom8); "For, He cannot deny Himself [meaning you are part of Him!]." (Timothy, i think 1Tim3). See? God Loves You And Empowers You. So who gives a flip about weakness, when in fact your being weak justifies Him pouring the Power (Doctrine!) into you (2Cor12 passage)! Ok, baby -- so where's the feeling of inadequacy? Gone!

Feelings come from many sources, and your brain accepts every stimulus. Every thought you think, every sound you hear, everything within your periphery is acting upon your brain, telling it informations and associations. Your brain accepts them all; Your soul tells your brain what is and is not 'true'. So if your soul accepts a stimulus, the brain records it as 'true'. If your soul rejects a stimulus, your brain records it as 'false'. That's why it's so hard to change habits: you've been telling yourself A for so long, to switch to its opposite, B, is all uphill! So feels, awful! So, then: wouldn't you feel stupid if you've been telling yourself something is true..when it isn't? Like, a feeling which has no basis in fact? Like, a feeling that you are lousy, though God says you are a 'saint'! (Look up "saint" verses, and chuckle over who God calls, saints! Why no one brings this up to the saint-makers..oh well.)

See, the brain itself really doesn't think: it's just a sponge. A relational database. So, the biggest 'source' for your feelings, is the accumulated database in your brain: what you told your brain a thing was; what assessment/ feeling/ truth you baptised/ associated with the item in question. So, if you've been telling yourself how lousy you are, how lousy you feel x gezillion times, you'll get constant feedback to that effect. It's just the Energizer Bunny using old programming. Mentally-ill people suffer from this to such an extent, they can't even function, at times, in society. It's the brain-feedback, malprogrammed, running amok. So, in rehabilitating such folks (and the success rate is not good), the trick is to get them to see the Truth of a thing. Much more, is this how Bible Doctrine works. Truth Heals. So, you'll still have those old feelings for quite some time. Spend Doctrine On Them; heal them with Bible Doctrine; redeem your brain's sick, mindless cells with Bible Doctrine. tell your brain cells The Truth: God Loves You, and God is right, not your brain cells. The Energizer Bunny will run down: fire at it! (My pastor calls this "epistemological rehabilitation".)

One of the greatest Doctrinal uses against feelings of inadequacy I've discovered goes like this: if I were Pleroma (highest spiritual status), how would I think about x-item? Then, simply practice that answer, to the extent you know it (don't worry about what you don't know, but practice what you do know). It's a lot of fun. More: if you aren't sure of the whole, by practicing that part you ARE sure of, you will learn more about what you don't know. This is true, because all Truth is flawlessly connected. So by focusing on what you do know for sure is true, the things you don't know related to that truth will become clear. It's a great satisfaction! And a relief, for you don't focus on anything else: not your status, not how you feel, not what people say. Instead, all ya gotta do is..practice! Simple, plain, and easy. Another version of this is the now-famous WWJD, but changed to "What would Jesus Think?" For Thinking is Doing the Word, and any do's without the word are sheer trash. So, technically, WWJD is incorrect, or is answered by, what He would do, is Think! That's what paid for sins. So that's what pays for everything.

So: He's the Pleroma of Pleromas, so..if 'I' were Pleroma, what would I think? Then, (here's the best part, the true fun in life) practice that thinking. The whole spiritual life is an apprenticeship in Kingship, as Part III explained. Your inheritance, reserved for you from eternity past by God the Father is a Kingship. To honor the King of Kings, you are slated to become a King with your own kingdom. Like-mindedness: Kings think alike. That's why you have this inheritance. That's why you have this iron-clad guarantee from Each of the Members of the Godhead to train you in what only They can do. (One of the purposes of Their Indwelling us is to witness to this guarantee, and to provide us with a success in supernatural training only They can empower. So one's own inadequacies are wholly irrelevant, just as one's competencies are wholly irrelevant. What is relevant is our agreement. So use 1Jn1:9 like breathing, and keep on wanting God's Script!)

Now, you need to practice kingship to become able to actually be a king, post-death. It's a profession which has a workday round-the-clock. So it is to become you, natural, instinctive. And as we know even with secular athletes and other professions, practice practice practice. Practice what you know is right, aiming to practice better. Don't worry about what you get wrong. Practice alone will get you there: stay online with your Personal Trainer, your Mentor, the Holy Spirit. Keep on the steps of "1 John's Outline of God's Script" (Part I), and you'll get there. Your Mentor will be guiding you. He will make the practice efficacious. It's a lot like training to become a torero, if you know anything about (so-called) bullfighting. It's a lot like becoming a Seal, if you know anything about that branch of the US military. More, though: it IS how one trains to become a King. Perfect Trainer. Perfect Doctrine. Practice away, and have lots of fun!

Yep, entirely a problem of having wealth. We start with the wealth of a trichotomous life, at salvation ("1 John" and "Bride" sections in Part I). As Romans 8 explains, the point is to fill all compartments of these three parts with Doctrine, and for all three to function together in synergistic, coordinated skill. Olympic-level, going for and getting (at Pleroma), the "gold". So, then: learning Doctrine per se "transforms" (Rom12:2-3) the believer line by line, thread by thread (batach, baby). The Soul is where volition, memory, etc (8 compartments) are located, so filling up (plerow) is actually run through it. Technically, then, the process and result of filling up the compartments is achieved in the form of coordination between soul and spirit, soul and body. Spirit runs human spirit, and then fills up the soul with Doctrine; but soul's (your!) volition must assent to each discrete transmission, in order for that transmission to complete; volition must choose as well the intra-soul storage and usage functions, in order for the Holy Spirit to process them -- that's why 1Jn1:9 is so vital. As to Body: it's acted on by soul; if Spirit-filled soul, then body gets filled (i.e., neurons of brain) with Doctrine via that process. [Is this description clear enough?]

These four problems, like the 4 decisions, seem to be (I'm guessing) parallel to what the Colonel calls the "2 Tactical" and "2 Strategic" Objectives. First Tactical Objective, PSD #6, "Personal Sense of Destiny". That is a type of stasis, motive, purpose 'sense'. So is the 1st of the 4 Decisions, Atonement. Christ wanted to take on Humanity in order to Atone, so He wanted to be ALSO alive humanly in order to Gift the Father; so, He chose that Destiny to fulfill that purpose (heis.yar Theos..heis mesites). So too, the believer's motive at the stage/PSD of #6. Second Tactical Objective, Spiritual Maturity (aka SM), completes the structural wealth: so, resembles Propitiation. The 'condition' which motivated the Lord to want to add Humanity to Himself in the first place, was to satisfy the Father. Atonement alone doesn't satisfy, for Atonement pays for damages, not the opportunity cost. The believer at SM now has the ability to satisfy, and, like the Lord, wants to do so, for the same reason. So, the SM believer 'lives on' PSD #10 (e.g., Phil1:21 and 3:9).

That is the 1st Strategic Objective, for in order for Christ to satisfy the Father He had to be structurally teleio'd (completed) and then function as Atoner and Propitiator. The believer Occupied with Him (a stable condition, by SM or shortly thereafter) has the same attitude, but Occupation with Christ alone enables him to get the requisite skill. Ergo, the two how's of the last sentence of crimson paragraph. These correspond to Reconciliation and Redemption, first in the sense that the believer's consituent parts go through a reconciliation (harmonizing, synthesizing) process, via which process the remaining non-coordinated functions of him are 'redeemed'. Thus, the first Recon and Redempt is inside the believer himself: he becomes functionally "one", united, harmonized. Ergo, the second Recon and Redempt: outer, toward the Father, using PSD#10 as his motivational base, plus the attendent wealth-skills the other PSD battalions engender. So, now the "how's" are operating, and (with Evidence Testing) at progressively-more-inviolate levels, thus producing the "sweet savor". So, a THIRD Reconcile&Redempt function ensues: outer, toward the world, resulting in a competence and productivity the world rarely receives. It doesn't have to be felt or visible to be working, since Truth, being of Infinite Quality, has no 'dimension'.

So, a Fourth Reconcile & Redempt function completes this rondelet:blessing to the believer's periphery can be reconciled and redeemed, too, as an expression of Father's Pleasure in that sweet savor. That's the heart of why "blessing by association" works: for the foundational and paradigmal blessing-by-association, was the Cross.

The First Strategic Objective, stable residence and usage of PSD#10, Occupation with Christ, thus gives rise to the Second Strategic Objective, Pleroma. For, in the constant function and use of PSD#10 at SM onward, even through the Evidence Tests, the now-built steel mill proves it keeps on working profitably no matter what is thrown at it. In short, @Pleroma threshold the believer himself is an inviolately profitable entirety which not only knows why to want life and wealth, but how to live and use wealth.

"Strategic Objectives" means the overall goal which is sought (i.e., in deciding whether to go to war, or sell a product/service). Why do the thing? "Tactical Objectives", by contrast, are those benchmarks which have to be obtained in order to have the requisite base on behalf of the Strategic Objective. So, we needed to take the bridge at Remagen (tactical objective) in order to get occupation of Germany (strategic objective) in WWII. In turn, the purpose of the occupation of Germany, was to secure peace -- so, that was the biggest Strategic Objective. So, PSD#6, Atonement, are "bridges" to a thing; so, SM was the "bridge" to Occupation. ('Because you need the whole realm of Doctrine metabolized and fluently running in you in order to be occupied -- great play on words, that -- He occupies you, so you are occupied with Him -- aha! 2Cor5!) Occupation is the First Strategic Objective, because living FOR Him is the whole point of living, just as the Son's own desire to be Human was FOR the Father. So, we live for the Father with the Son, so to speak, in our thinking, from PSD#10 forward. Ergo, the Second Strategic Objective, the completion of you as Fit Bride: Pleroma. At that point, an inviolably complete, full functioning entity. Fit for a King. Fit for a kingdom, therefore, of your own On His Behalf.

However, it might be good to say more about the 'fake inequality' bullet (above, in Fixes.htm) within the series. This, to emphasize why it does not matter how long it takes. So the Energizer Bunny has less of a 'charge' when that stupid question hits the soul.

It truly is a stupid question. We all have, as my pastor puts it, areas of strength and weakness in our souls; in our sin natures (OSN, the Energizer Bunny). These are a result of decisions we've been making since birth. We might fool ourselves that we are covetous because we grew up poor; that we are anal because our parents trained us to be; but all that's just hogwash. we chose it. Doesn't matter why. So, these little strengths and weaknesses become inextricably woven into our personalities: so, in the spiritual life, we have glitches.

For some, the glitches are BIG in the beginning of the life: is God really the God of the Bible, is the Gospel true, was there really a world wide flood, is the Genesis account true (lol no one really even agrees on what it says!), etc. ad nauseam. It's a starting-gate glitch. But, many's the race where the one who had beginning trouble, got past it, and then zooooommmeeeeddd past everyone else! Look at the apostle Paul! He's a classic example.

For others, the glitches occur late in the spiritual life (my guess is Satan's the classic example). They got in easy, were gung-ho, ran and rocketed, then..slump! Paul of course hit this also. So did Moses (who seems to be yet another example of someone who had trouble at beginning, and late, but was gangbusters in the middle).

So you can't say anything about how long it lasts, because you can't say what someone else's glitches will be, nor how long they will stay stuck in them. You can say that 99% or so of believers historically, spiritually arrest somewhere around spiritual age "10" or earlier! That accounts for all the babyish Church history! We just don't seem to break into puberty, en masse. But then, neither did Israel. Every once in a while, you'll see a generation break out, like the Ps119 people did; like Hezekiah's people did; but then it goes back down. America's big growth periods seem to be the Civil War and WWI aftermath. We started careening south somewhere in the 1950's. Europe's appear to have been 1700's or 1800's (going by how availability of Bible skyrocketed). In short, whether in the individual spiritual life or even on a macro scale, the glitches can't be timed; so, the length from babyhood to Spiritual Maturity (the stage, not the generic moniker) -- can't really be defined. It's long. Life-Long, in fact. Which, even absent any growth thresholds one can define, is not only necessary, but desirable. He's Gorgeous: who wants anything less than a forever!

Here's the process, so at least the length can be objectively understood. At whatever age we first believe in Christ, two things immediately are true: 1) we enter the spiritual life via the HS regenerating us (as explained in the "1 John" section of Part I); 2) we enter the spiritual life with all of our accumulated understandings of life -- right ones, and wrong ones. So, then: the critical importance of immediately finding one's right pastor-teacher becomes obvious: gotta eat! Eating will gradually or quickly replace the wrong understandings with right ones. One meal at a time. So eat often, the pattern of '1 John.. Script' in Part I!

For example, say that you had long thought that you had to do something besides "just believe" in Christ in order to be saved. One day, it 'suddenly' clicks in your head that no, you only need to believe to be saved! Wow! So you do that. (Maybe you had already believed, and were already saved, but now you know you are. Big deal, that.) That clicking, which was really a whole logistical operation God the Son orchestrated for however long it took to get you to 'click', added and replaced knowledge in your head. Still, your understanding (suniemi in Greek, Eph5:17, interconnected knowledge) is still small. You can only use what you both believe and understand. But, even a dot of such knowledge is infinitely valuable! And, at first you're excited about your 'insight' (phronesis, another Bible word), so you use it a lot! Aha. Lots more understanding is manufactured from that dot. So, lots more dots, because you're eating it over and over, heh. So, your faith grows.

Since all Truth is perfectly and infinitely connected, this one dot now opens perspicacity to lots of other dots. So you eat more and more and begin to see the connections between the dot of believe-only and other doctrines! So, again, additions and replacements are going on. And on and on. More than the Energizer Bunny can cope with!

So, your Energizer Bunny gets excited. Doubts about what you 'ate' bombard. People 'help' those doubts (Satan & Co. use them, don't blame them). So you start to QUESTION. Aha. The questions, if you keep on them, add and replace more doctrinal understanding: aha, the bad thing, the doubt, is used to do a good thing, more Bible class, the spiritual life!

And so on. It's kinda tumultous, at times. Gets more so, the more you understand, but by then, the tumult is kinda interesting, and you find yourself more curious to learn than bothered by the tumult per se. In the beginning (unless you're starting growth late in physical life and can afford the faster-and-higher intensity), it's easy. Fun. Relaxing. But in all events, it takes time.

What the Pharisees in the Lord's day objected to, was that He claimed to be the Son -- not that there was One. So also, after He paid for us, you don't see Acts or the Epistles spend time clarifying what's Scripture, or what Trinity is. It's very obvious, from their matter-of-fact "Him" "He" usage, and by verses like 2Cor13:14 that everyone knew these things. Instead, the writers spent time clarifying other issues, like how the ending of the OT affected spiritual life (central theme of Hebrews); like, how to live the life in light of certain Roman customs (whether to eat meat, cut hair, in Corinthians); like when the Rapture would happen (when, not "if" -- very important point, in Thess). Like, the whole panorama of the spiritual life now (main themes of Hebrews, Ephesians, Colossians, Romans 5 et seq). So you can tell what they knew and didn't know.

But oh, by Constantine's time, people are so stupid they argue over whether the Lord is God as well as man? No one argued that in the Bible. But oh, by Constantine's time, people are so stupid they have to have a council to decide? What about seeking counsel from the Lord, for what one can't fathom? "Father, please help me read these verses better, because I'm confused about the Lord's Nature" -- what about that question? Or, "Father, please help me explain Trinity and Hypostatic Union to these confused Arians, since the Lord paid for them too" -- and, if the explanation doesn't work, leave it up to God to help them, rather than persecuting them? Oh no -- can't defer to God, must defer to religious (satanic!) councils and state-sponsored persecution!

The importance of this stupidity is to show how Total Depravity has operated historically, so that folks can see better that the so-called 'unknowability of God' is entirely a lie. God Can Make Himself Known. Again, it's who and what God is, not man. Duh. [But, if I do this, doesn't it detract from the flow of the series, and where should it go? Do I want to allocate this subtopic to the Appendix? SatSpin and Musings already have scatterings; should they be redone?] The only use for lambasting the incredibly poor historical Biblical scholarship is to show that it can only be incredibly poor due to satanic blinding, so we too should be on alert, rather than revolting against pastoral authority, etc.

The Lord pays, dies, is Resurrected..and the whole world seems to go nuts. Scripture goes everywhere..by 96AD it's so widespread (despite persecution) that it goes 'political'. That trend, coupled with those who really got the spiritual life right, progresses side-by-side for about 100 more years: the Five Good Caesars. By then, the 'activists' were overwhelming majority, so SPQR dives into a rapid decline. It's so bad that they even forget how to read and use greek properly, according to Cary (and maybe Gibbon too, I forget). No kidding: that's why they needed those stupid councils, and why it could even be argued whether the Lord was God as well as man (which even a cursory read of Matt4 answers loudly: how could Jesus be tempted to use Deity three times, if He wasn't already God? duh.)

Ok: so we're dumb as stumps by Constantine's day, so of course any ol' Roman customs can be sold as being original Christianity. We can't even read by this time, so..hey, whatever. That accounts for the cold shoulder everyone gave Jerome..until his translation into (then-modern) Latin became patina'd with venerability due to age (as deHamel notes) -- which, of course, was by then a Latin no one could read anymore, even if that stupid script was actually legible for a change! Great: so we just keep chanting psalmodies, and keep the Bible under lock and key: though few can read it. Satan's taking no chances! Drat...etc. (The "drat" paragraphs in Appendix.)

Ok, along comes Reformation and the whole thing breaks open. But now, what was Momopoly becomes Oligomopoly (oh leggo! Oh Lego? Kids in sandbox, for sure). Everyone's the "right" answer; state religion, instead of imperial religion. Still, the Bible manages to sneak out here and there, with the result that Europe goes to war (there has to be a correlation). Meanwhile, evangelism spreads, so does the Industrial Revolution. Which eventuates, with 20th century, in a total iconoclasm toward authoritarianism, yet at the same time, in the name of the people(!) the most tyrannical forms of authoritarianism come to the fore. Of course, all during this time, such vicissitudes provided handy occasions for burning Bibles and Bible teachers, outlawing translations -- to discourage reading, of course. Chanting, yes. Learning, no. Reading piously, yes. Understanding, no.

So, of course, Satan was real careful to see that the one country which desired to separate Church and State -- England -- would have the worst language! A mutt language! Formed of the ones preceding it, willy-nilly! So, big surprise: the English translations strip out almost all flavor in the original Scripture, and render what's left, tortured and ambiguous, so both Catholic and Protestant can proudly say Bible 'supports' his sect's view! Yeah, baby, now we can all kill each other with more conviction! [My best friend says the food in England is prepared specially to suck out all the flavor before eating. The language is definitely afflicted with that dryness quality. English is great for legal contracts, but terrible at communicating attitude or precision. Just try getting any true 'help' from Windows! (English words are naturally ambiguous, owing to English's polyglot formative history and defensive need to play middleman/diplomat for national survival.)]

So, here we are, in the 21st century; all this while, the good-ol'boy interpretations of the Bible have remained dominant. However, as part of the iconoclasm came a breaking-up of the good ol'boy network, and new mini-cliques came about. Some of these were really brilliant in scholarship. Most descended to clique level, but in the process the whole network is a lot more decentralized, and it's less of a crime for the RSV to use different words in English; wow, even an NIV can come along (well, Luke1:15, which alone properly translates ek koilias, must have missed the rabid prolife censors). So into the vacuum formed by the rotteness of the good ol' boy network comes all these other competitors. Most are bad, true -- but some good ones. So by the end of the 20th century, it's a free-for-all. Kinda like where the world was circa 180AD. Well, we learn from history that we learn nothing from history, again.

Meanwhile, the people are the beneficiaries of all this internecine strife among the so-called scholars (the real ones just studying and teaching, like good scholars always do). For, now it's so controversial what a verse says, Joe Average Believer has to come to learn something of the original languages. Strong's is way inadequate, to be sure -- but it's a start. So now I got this Bible on CD! in 50 languages, including the largest original-language texts! though 100 years ago, I'd have to be a pastor to be allowed to know anything about the Real Scripture.

Hmmmm. So at this point in the unfolding RECLAMATION (whoa! a play on you-know-what! I realized that after typing it!), millions upon millions of folks have a chance to really learn Scripture. Which, of course, was the original intention -- the NT was written to plain folks who informally gathered to learn Doctrine -- and they didn't need anyone but their pastor to explain it. They didn't need religion! So now, during this part of the RECLAMATION, people aren't needing it anymore. Hmmmm. 'Full circle'. And, the crop of curious people (for that's all it takes: interest, not 'smarts') -- well, 'they want to know'. God. Personally. Just know Him. So, Gramma Satan must trot out his trick bag of emotionalism/ritual/etc. And especially, oh-let's-end-this-controversy-and-unite-again-to-Mom. Oh, let's just be at peace together, and feel alllriiighhht. All religions are the same, all truth is relative, all serious students need to be persecuted as disturbers-of-Nirvana! Yeah, while everyone vies for who's the Best Reclaimer, and who's the disturber! Calls for unity always precede war, in history. As predictable.. as treaties & alliances. You can practically set your watch!

Whew. The 21st century is gonna be tumultuous, then. In the process, the good and bad of the good ol'boys network is getting exposed, collated, absorbed..a sort of coalescing database. Moreover, given the 1950 et seq discoveries, the real ICE information is getting likewise exposed, collated, absorbed..another coalescence. Whew. Best-and-worst time to live, a climactic century. For this century, unlike those since the first, will be the one which has such widespread, easy availability of both good scholarship, and bad -- to the common man. Can't keep the Bible under wraps, anymore. Plus, best of all, the Real Bible. To love, hate, cherish, chuck, beat on or build on. Most will turn apathetic, as usual, so one of the lessons of the 21st century is that people (in prior centuries) who didn't have the Bible easily available were no more interested than those who did. So one can't blame the RCC or whoever's-claimed-the-badboy for whatever false teaching one 'discovers' self to have believed. For, now the Bible IS widely available, and what do folks do with it? Nothing! As usual. The Abuse of Scripture, then, passes from the ranks of the scholar.. to the common man! Can't blame authority, now! At which point, when that lesson is learned, the pendulum will swing back to embracing authoritarianism. The trend in that direction is already in place: people want Daddy, again. So, nothing will be learned from this history. As usual. Even so: what a time to be alive! The #2 Trial issue resurfaced on a macro level with regard to the Bible, beginning about 1700-1800..and is reaching a series of crescendoes. 21st century is the biggest since Patmos, looks like...

In this unfolding drama of the interest in and slants on Scripture since Adam, the following interpretations have been trotted out, played out in history..over and over. The goal is for folks to see the multistoried meanings in each verse in concert, rather than taking a few of the 'stories' and then spinning too-narrow distortions as 'the' meaning. Watch: [Is what I'm writing here what I really mean to say? Re-evaluate, esp. since the gist of this commentary is already passim in Part II, Appendix, plus Musings. The first four points are new, but what's under #4 ends up too panoramic. Instead, I wanted to cite categorical types of religious belief, by belief-content, rather than by religion names. 'To show the fractals, and how they are gradually refining at the below-radar level.]

1. As shown in Part II: Eve, the first religious person in history, spins the Tree Prohibition as a physical thing, In ignorance, taking it literally instead of spiritually. Ergo, all the physical-meaning distortions, like: God has emotions, the Father has a Body; Satan had sex with Eve; "proceed"; the Son was only human or didn't die on the Cross -- all these 'flow' from the body distortion pattern of Eve. No wonder all the phallic cults of old (and now) fit in here! An Eve-flavored distorter tends to put too much 'body' in any Scripture verse he reads. That's why the "oneness" controversy occurs: to insist God must be One in Number, esp. when Three Persons are depicted in Scripture, is to be thinking like Eve: bodily, rather than spiritually. Another example: if someone asks about you, and you find yourself defining yourself in terms of outer inconsequentials like your age, your sex, your occupation..you're thinking like Eve did. If you find yourself constantly evaluating everything and everyone, constantly thinking in terms of looks and actions..you're thinking like Eve did. If, most of all, you find yourself discomfited by what you feel is the proper recognition of your role or worth.. you're thinking like Eve did. So, we all think like Eve, too.

2. As shown in Part II: Adam, the second religious person in history, spins the Tree Prohibition, even though he knows better, into a 'do good for people' thing -- to allegedly honor his wife. That's why the first thing he does at his fall is a good deed: the fig leaves. Oh, he's gonna throw himself away for his wife, what a good man! Ergo, all the do-good spins on the Bible flow from the protective distortion pattern of Adam, from murdering heretics to patting oneself on the head for the sacrifice of the weekly laundry-chore visit to God (church attendance). 'Always In God's Name, yet always looking instead at People. No wonder there's always a drive for a sacrificial, sacerdotal/ritualistic elite to tell the poor, unwashed masses what the Bible says -- while hiding/chopping the Bible's own words! Big Brother would be proud! An Adam-flavored distorter tends to put too much 'protectionism' and 'work' into any Scripture verse he reads. For example, if you find yourself constantly wanting the government to fix problems in society; if you find yourself constantly evaluating everything and everyone in terms of society-recognized accomplishments.. you're thinking like Adam did. If you find yourself reticent to disagree with some group you belong to.. you're thinking like Adam did. Above all, if you are plagued by guilt, or needing to 'do more'.. you're thinking like Adam did (fig leaves). So, we all think like Adam, too.

3. As shown in Part II: The Lord, the first and only Savior in history, announces the salvation package after the pair admitted their sin: that He would take on humanity, pay for sins, and thus defeat Satan (depicted, as Isha/Eve knew, by that serpent). The salvation "bruise" clause is very cleverly stated after Eve's punishment of childbearing is announced; so it's very funny! The mother-of-all-sin becomes the 'mother'-of-salvation! (Paul caught this; he told the woman-dominated Timothy, too, when he said the woman would be 'saved' by childbearing! LOL!) Ergo, all the salvation distortion patterns. See, the sentence is: man must work on Earth, no more freebie Eden; God the Son will add on Humanity, and be sacrificed for all sins of ALL mankind, and thus both: 1)forever save every man who once believes in Him, by giving him eternal life; and 2) defeat the angels who war against God and man. Now: for your homework assignment, play with the bold-font clauses; see if you can't derive every kind of god-and-man-and-salvation distortion ever espoused. 'Like we did as kids: take some words out "the" sentence, and rearrange them into other sentences! The 'sentence' is the primordial DNA of the idea. To me, it's sooo obvious that every propitiate-god idea comes from this one. You can literally see them fractalize from it! (This is the only 'story' which has all the elements necessary to be parental of all the others.) [Reword the two clauses though, so it's clearer how the distortions fractalize? Reincarnation looks like a combo of Satan's "I will make myself like the Most High" and the mechanics of demon possession, i.e., entering and leaving one body after the next in an endless succession. Starting, of course, with that first serpent. Could the God-adds-Humanity clause be used?]

4. 'Progeny' of these distortions will thus manifest a combination of the First Parents and the Lord's salvation covenant; so, these combinations will mutate in every possible permutation, fractally.
   In the OT, the information started with largely-correct transmission; then branched into phallicism of various ascetic colors; for the point was to get 'close' to God! But "God" of course got shrunk into polytheism, so everyone could have someone to get close to! So the phallicism, comes from the Eve distortion; the ascetism, from the Adam distortion; the get-close, from the salvation package. Thus you have the oooh-aaah of intercourse, but also the 'ouch' of burnt-sacrificing; (i.e., children, very common); castration, virgin-perpetual-priestesses, cutting skin, etc. ad nauseam. Feeling IS emphasized; which compensates for the fact that the faith precepts-and-definitions make no sense. Concert becomes cacaphony.

   As noted in Part II, as time progresses, man develops productivity from his environment, so has more time to rest, so has more Time To Think. So, comes progressively to want the story to make sense. So, begins to philosophize. Actually, the trend begins quite early, but as time passes this philosophizing begins to replace "God" with "man" as the object. As noted in the "Spiritual Pathology" link, Julian Jaynes does a fabulous job of tracing the change in man's thought pattern (though he's wrong in his conclusions, because he wants to prove that belief in God is insane). Of course, en route, fractalic combinations of 'reason' and the old-school distortions combine and combine and combine...

   [Add in para. about how the Mosaic Law's arrival affected the distortion patterns.]

   As noted in Part II, by the time the Lord 'arrives' (Heb10:5), every form of religion which remains in force today was then in force. Every religion since that time either bases its claim in that time, or derives its authenticity, from that time. Apparently, most historians date "modern history" beginning with Constantine's time. I would date its beginning from the Incarnation.[Finish this para. after figuring out some succinct-yet-accurate way to explain it.]

   [Need para. explaining the aftermath of His Resurrection, the various losses, recombinations, reclamations in Christianity. Also, how every non-Christian faith went through a major renovation/revolution. Include a blurb on Mahayana Buddhism and other non-Christian faiths which mutated markedly afterwards. Objective to illustrate how there are always TWO trends: one, below-radar, an ever-increasing body of correct doctrinal information pushing up through the soil, as it were; two, the as-usual loud distortions, becoming progressively more refined, like the classic Syrian pil-pul, over time: these are the tares, and the whole crop thus looks like wheat. Meanwhile, the true wheat is hidden in there, for those who want True Bread. First find a succinct-yet-accurate way to explain such a sweeping purpose?]

The question naturally arises, when reviewing the incredibly childish and apostate history of Christendom, why did they last? Has to be true that some grew up, in each generation: enough, to preserve the whole, when combined with the ongoing blessing-by-association due to past believers and especially the Lord. So, then: how did these few folks grow up, if the Bible wasn't available?

Lots of ways to do it, really. At first, teaching was widespread and everyone understood it. You don't see Paul having to explain what the Filling of the Spirit means: all he does is remind the Ephesians, 5:18. You don't see Paul having to explain what "Stop quenching" (corr trans, imper. of prohib) means to the Thessalonians (1Thess 5:19). Again, just a reminder. Nowhere is it necessary to explain that God is Three Persons, because everyone knows. So clearly is Trinity known, that all Paul and the other writers (including the Lord, in the Gospels) have to do is say "He" plus an activity/quality, etc. The reader knows which "He" is meant. (Plus, that's a beautiful way of stating equality-of-Essence; one of the most beautiful ways in Scripture. My favorite is 2Cor5:21, which employs the same 'pivot' use of the accusative of autos as does Romans 8:28.) So also, nowhere was it necessary to explain what "Messiah" means. Instead, what you find are facts related to what "God" is or does, brought together with some particular quality of God. Why? To explain the relationship between the related thing and God. So also, stuff about the Messiah is given as reminder, and to tie together old prophecies, to explain how a given event or issue is related to Him. Hebrews spends a lot of time on this. So do the Gospels. Upshot: Christian history starts with a known database, which over time gets gradually ignored, and thus succeeding generations don't know as much as their forebears. The Deut 6 order to pass on the teaching is, as usual, successively distorted and abandoned.

So, then: widespread knowledge exists at first; this is variantly passed on, and variantly ignored, to succeeding generations. How passed on? Orally. Why? Because it isn't needed in writing if it is conveyed orally. Which, of course, in that first century, was a good thing, since the compilation of the final books of Canon didn't finish until Patmos (96AD). Moreover, whatever is passed on can be turned over by the recipient; pondered, looking for how things connect, etc. Spiritual tfellin. Deut 6 process. So, then: a person would only need certain key Scriptures and interpretations of them in order to compose his own fractals. So, could grow up from a little turned over a LOT.

So, then: even though the number set of knowledgeable believers dwindles rapidly from 96AD onward (figures!), the information is "out there", and people are free to use it while they plow the field, go to the bathroom, sit at a banquet with fellow kings. When one gets up, when one goes to sleep: meaning, all the time. Nice thing about this low life we all live, is that so much of our BRAIN is left free for thinking. Like, thinking about Scripture, God's Doctrine. So, a peasant could reach Pleroma even if all he knows is Gospel and rebound(1Jn1:9's function), and even if all he knows of it, is 2nd-hand (taught by some passing teacher or neighbor). So, a King could reach Pleroma even if all he knows is the same thing. HS runs the system. No handicap on either 'side' of life can hinder growth. Only V- can hinder growth.

Clearly, though, most people didn't turn over whatever they heard. Moreoever, they distorted it so horribly, 'Christianity' became this slapstic-satire of the Bible (Satan's autograph is slapstick-satire, filigreed or not). But some did turn it over. Additionally, those who really had a lot of interest in God probably got themselves into priesthood, nunhood, convent or whatever, so they could get more of Bible. That's a natural conclusion, if you are "hot" for God. I remember that, just after I knew I believed in Christ, I was so hungry for finding out how to Get The Word, I'd daydream in Italian class. Still have the book: on the side (paper side, not binding), I penned across all the page edges, "Te Desidero Imparare". Obviously I was a baby! Just as obviously, I Got The Message! So, back in the days when you could only see a bible if you were in a convent (and that, not easily, hoo boy) -- if you wanted to know..you did what you had to.

Remember when that german count (his name begins with "T" and just flew out of my mind -- not Tregelles) went travelling in the 1800's to that monastery and found rolls of scripture given him for his evening fire? Who had to petition the Czar, finally, to get release of what became known as Codex Sinaiticus? Ok, well: during his second stay at the monastery, one of the monks had secreted in his own cell another whole mss. Clearly that monk wasn't using it as a paperweight; and, since obviously the other copy of the text used for fires! was not cared for, it doesn't surprise me that the monk had to hide it.

It's God's Attribute. No Divorce. However, in any given moment it's easy to slip into a dissociative (divorcing) mode, even if filled; when feeling runs high or one is busy comprehending a doctrine. Awareness, in either case, diminishes: and that's the break-in-ranks Satan&Co. exploit. Not to mention, one's own old sin nature! So no wonder the rituals which were developed (pretend) to illustrate and marry real Doctrine in the life, end up replacing Doctrine; why study of Doctrine tends to replace the Person. What a mess! who will deliver us from this body-of-death! Thanks to God, by means of/ through Christ Jesus Our Lord!

It ought to be said that many a religious person in history probably caught on to the spiritual life..but at some point either dropped out in discouragement, or actually grew up but was substituted out much like has been done with Moses/Peter/Mary, etc. In short, Satan targets successful believers and then so distorts their lives as to make a complete mockery of them. Part IV's "Retire" subsection partly covers this topic. Maybe it should say more. For example, suppose Calvin really did grow up to Pleroma. We'd not necessarily know. Any writings he had done which were improvements on the Institutes maybe have been lost, or otherwise 'appropriated', such that Beza's 'spin' on Calvin is less correct. Ergo, bang the drum on Calvin, because he did grow up -- but misrepresent him. Same ol' dog, same ol' tricks. Or, suppose some translator or cleric during Nicea or Westminster came up with the right description, but was drowned out/ ostracized by the oh-so-holy 'majority' (really a clique). Well, we'd not know that, either. So what's 'my' point? Like Stalyin said, it's important to glamorize the banal. [Find out in what version of Fainsod's tome that is; it's on one of my Russian A&E videos; of course, Col. has quoted the 1936 speech dozens of times throughout the years.] Of course, he got that idea through the kindly services of Satan&Co. So, then: we should be on the lookout for the still, small voice; not the flashy, popular, or titillating one. Truth will not cast God as a genie, Bozo, black-garbed skullhead prelate, or Dr. Respectable. Truth will cast God as making sense, not brownie or political points, pot pies or gee-whiz miracles. So, then: we should respect pastors (and scholars) more, because theirs is the toughest of jobs; but be likewise more chary of whatever 'spin' is being promoted..for it is probably the wrong 'version'. The wrong version will always be popular: too facile, senseless. After all, God, not man, wrote the Bible (pea-brain Bible-bunkers notwithstanding); God, not man, should thus always be consulted first.

Trial-balance accounting essentially says, "ok, this comes in -- where does it go?" And, then assigns it the place it belongs, depending on the nature of what it is. That's how the debit-credit method of accounting came into being: it's a tracking system. Idea being, for every income there has to be an equal and offsetting outgo: money spent on an asset "goes" to that asset, etc. So you can catch any 'funny' transactions. Then, at the end, everything is added up to see if what's on the left side of the balance sheet and income statement, equals the offsets on the right side. If so, then likely (but not error-proof), everything got accounted for. If no, then maybe a mis-entry was made (but usually several which offset each other, so a $5 imbalance may be hiding a $500,000 error). So, one hunts for the mis-entries.

Bible Doctrine works like math: so it is testable. "Ear tests truth" verse (Elihu, one of my favs) is but one of many mandates to test. (See 1Jn4 also.) So, then: since the accounting method is a fabulous method of testing, even better than science; since Bible Doctrine works like math -- this method is essential to seeing any inconsistencies and hence possible errors in one's belief thus far. Great way to make a fast correction and know why, too!

For another reader, the issue will be more involved. At the same time, the purpose of sites for another reader will be simply exposure to ideas. Not validation. He has his own spiritual life, and his own 'trial-balance' to do before the Lord. So sites like this one do not do his work FOR him. Rather, kinda like any other happenstance, something in its contents acts as an alert, a connector, an insight -- and even, validation. So, then the reader applies that information (or not, as he chooses) to his own daily accounting testing before the Lord.

In sum, so far I don't think I ought to go into a lot of detail about the doctrines and their linkages unless I need to do so for myself. Which, so far, is what I've done. And, happily, will always need to keep adjusting and refining. Cry all the way to the bank: wow, I must look at His Beautimous Thinking forevermore! It's a Commandment, heh: the FIRST one. Awwww.

In L1552 it sounds more like a civil war or claim of Independence: class is 7/4/99 and Thieme makes a deliberate parallel between the Declaration of Independence and the A.C. In doing so, there's a sort of double-entendre usage of "when in the course of human events" (substituted with "angelic" for "human") -- like Satan&Co. were using the same rationale for rebelling, but it's really the Lord Who is the Freedom fighter; that Satan&Co. are sentenced (Matt25:41) because, for all his genius as the highest angel ever made, Satan couldn't provide freedom. Satan wins appeal on the grounds that he can prove he's right, that he did do good things and would do good things. That's all he said directly; but the clear point of the message is that mankind was created to demonstrate what freedom really is: then, the 4 Decisions were reviewed, as "the birth of freedom". Really, ties in completely to all the conclusions in the Thinking series, but of course the format and wording are quite different. However, if the real nature of this is more like a civil war or rebellion-for-independence, I ought to weave that 'color' in more. But, who 'divorces', except in the self-justifying name of independence, and isn't it always a civil war, divorce?

God's whole point in making beings is to Enable Them To Rise Above Finity. True Freedom. So, to rebel is to choose tyranny. No wonder Satan couldn't provide freedom 'his way'. finity is trapped by nature! Derivative power is rejectionist by nature! So of course, not free, and of course, will mistake its own rejecting quality as a fight for freedom! Wow. Why didn't he figure this out? If dumb me can do it.. wait. Then he knows all too well, and just doesn't care. That goes back to the inferiority complex and iconoclastic/ jealous-woman motive, which is what drove him to sin in the first place. Wow, bitterness really does know no bounds.

Hmmm. I gotta refine the "fit" of these facts. On the one hand, it is true he "can't but try to use" God's creation for his own purposes; on the other hand, he only wants to use God's creation for his own purposes, and he wants to satirize everything God is and does, out of his nearly-bottomless bitterness. The Appendix makes this attitude clear, but Part II does not; further, Part II does not explain adequately (imo) that the underlying productivity of God's initial design is unwreckable. So, then -- on the one hand, yes, Satan's usage of creation has indeed accomplished much of the so-called "advancements" man praises, but for purposes of diverting man's interest away from God -- so, all these accomplishments end up wood/hay/stubble ennui, making man more unhappy than if he didn't have them. By contrast, God's design not only results in the "advancements" (however, along a much slower, stabler, permanent path), but also in man's true happiness, whether or not he had them: even if the man remains an unbeliever (because even positive orientation to the Laws of Divine Establishment provides superior happiness, vs. Satan's plan). Thus, in the "middle", Satan's usage overlaps and caroms off God's Plan, which likewise accomplishes his goal of making himself look like The Most High. Very clever. However, the true author of the "advancement" inevitably is displayed, for what God does, results in happiness; what Satan does, results in atrophy. "Same middle, different orientation" -- a running subtheme in the series since Part I.

Yeah, I gotta fix the Part II portrayal to reflect these points better, because all these points are vital to a better understanding God's Design, the Trial, and the Lord's authorship of Our Church Unique Spiritual Life.

Some of his vocabulary is so much a part of my thinking I just naturally use it, and forget to explain; well, that's ok, so long as some kind of definition is given. Yet not too much, because really -- if the Holy Spirit has chosen to 'lead' someone to a page, isn't it to help the reader find his own right pastor, or for some like purpose? We students of the Word need the building blocks, not someone else's building. We need to build doctrine in our own souls. It's truly helpful to hear someone else's architectural design-in-progress, just as scientists read other scientific works and even laymen's work to look for unseen connections. That, though, is entirely adjunctive. Critical component of the spiritual life, yes; but, in order to better use whatever you yourself learned yourself, not as some kind of substitute.

• First: 1Jn's Script, under your pastor teacher;
• Second: turning over what you learned in class (per se), to better understand it;
• Third: applying/living on what you learned in every second of your day.

So, part of the Second, is a sort of spiritual auditing: checking one's own understanding versus others helps reveal spiritual accounting flaws. On the positive side of the ledger, it helps one better see what one learned, and it better helps one USE what one learned. For example, being in #scripture was of tremendous benefit to me. Bible classes in the past, current, and future were massively increased in value, because I had been exposed to a welter of conflicting interpretations in IRC (a new phenomenon, for me). IRC was live, not merely reading somebody's view of Genesis, or whatever. It made a big difference and rocketed the "fit" of all the doctrines I'd learned. That's what the Holy Spirit did with it -- to me. Moreover, He orchestrates every particle of dust, every second, to make a fit Bride out of any believer, anyway. So it's a good thing, this auditing. Trick is to not go overboard with it (and I'd done that for awhile, so engrossing it was). Trick is not to substitute some part of the other two functional components of the spiritual life, for in that case it's Satan&Co's relentless kidnapping, 'scoring'.

Notice how everything is "Bible class". God is giving you His Most Precious Asset, The Truth, 24 hours a day! So, capitalize on this gift, heh. How? Well, there's the daily formal bible class ("assembling themselves together verse, but that's for teaching, so a tape recorder can be your 'assembly'); then, the other 23 hours are two other types (at least) of Bible class: the Second, above, which is the turning-over (thinking, pondering, meditating, whatever you want to call it) of meanings, analysis of what you've been learning, kinda like homework; then, the Third, which is living on what you've learned so far while you shop, work, eat ..even go to the bathroom, or sleep. Principle is James' "kalos poiete" (Jas2:8 I believe calls this "you do well", not a good trans) means doing a right thing in a right way: Do The Word aright: neither to the left, nor to the right. ergo, balance in all three.

To redeem a thing, you have to 'touch' it via your Doctrinal Thinking while in a Spirit-filled state. That's how we were redeemed, for Christ touched our sins, so to speak, with His Thinking. That Atoned, Propitiated, Reconciled (on God's side) and Redeemed (if we too 'agree', meaning that first belief in christ). So, also, all the things of this world need to be touched by Doctrine. That converts them from having a one-sphere this-world puny meaning, to a toward-Father meaning -- just as Jesus did with our sins. So, then: unlike a magic wand, which has to KILL a thing to make something good, you can baptise everything in your day with Doctrine. It's a picture of what happened on the Cross, so everything can be holy. Like the Lord told Peter, "What the Lord calls holy, you must not call common" (Acts 11:9, paraphrased). We saw how Infinity wants everything united: so, let's baptise everything! With the true meanings we (so far) know! After all, Every Church Believer Is A Priest Forever, under the King-Priest kata Melchizedek! (Heb5-10 explains; 1Pet2:5,9, Rev1:6, 5:10, "saints", the Indwellings, Filling, growing-up-in-Christ verses,etc.; these are all priestly functions.)

While in the Spirit (1Jn1:9 used regularly), you might recall a promise about how God makes good on everything, has a good role for it. You might play a game, about what the thing depicts in God's Plan: for, even brushing teeth depicts how nothing is too low or left out; and, subordination to Him: "we must fulfill all Righteousness" (Matt3:15). You might ponder some doctrine you're learning while you wash dishes, or wait in line (since some of your brain is free); you might baptise it with meaning, too. Like, while exercising your legs, how your spiritual legs are thus getting more strength. Punning match! While sleeping, you might turn over the significance of some doctrine you learned which needs that kind of pondering (this happens to me all the time). So, when you wake up.. it's on your mind. Just as it promises in Jer31:31-34, shema! Since Deut 6:4, onward! For, He is near (68 verses, but my favs are Rom5:1-8 and Heb10:19-23, tied to Heb6:18)! For, He will never leave you nor forsake you (Deut 31:6,8; Josh1:5). For, He cannot deny Himself! (2Tim2:13)

Doctrine is incredibly powerful, because it is Truth. Truth about how a thing is; truth about how a thing belongs, relative to other things; truth, most of all, about how what's deemed big, is little; and what's deemed little, is really big! Irony. Infinity. Uniting opposites. Via baptising with Truth. That's how even we became 'big', even to Infinite God! For, He cannot deny Himself. So, let's not deny Him anything! Baptise everything, recognizing the beautiful, even compassionate irony that even brushing one's teeth is worth more money (via Doctrinal use) than all the wealth of all nations in history! For, no amount of money could have paid for even our teeth. For, We "were bought with a price": His Thinking. (1Cor6:20, 7:23)

[The foregoing middle indented para. is technically true, but I wonder if the wording is too ..chirpy. The actual usage might be chirpy (and still right, good!) in spiritual childhood; but the aging of the habit produces the really big payoff during usage in adulthood, in the sophisticated irony one sees; also, how huge insights hit hard and fast, literally punning the speed of His Thinking, giving one an even better sense of what the Cross was like for Him! After all, should Father hear a too-slow Bible turnover in a spiritually-mature adult? Heh. None of the adulthood Glory is communicated in the foregoing paragraph, and the micro section on the 'game' of Doctrine seems kinda fuzzy. Irony is no where near enough portrayed. So, who's my audience? If "me", then why don't I phrase it more the way it really is? After all, this "Third" daily classification-of-Bible-class (heh) unites all the doctrine learned, so one is Gloriously Living it! "Glorified in my body" verse! God really saves the best for last, the Highest for the most low-level aspects of life! The irony of that is beyond description!

Ahhh. Maybe that's the problem. I can't describe it. Words give a too-cheap description. That, I'm afraid, is true. The words will either sound like magic, or even arrogance, to someone who's not gone through the process. The fact that you can see the process happening in each epistle of NT (and in a lot of OT also) kinda requires some familiarity with the process: can't recognize a Corvette you've never seen before, until you know what one is, or at least whether it's a type of boat, or Car!

Aaarrrgghh. No wonder Thieme gives us the building blocks, stressing those! To explain the applications to a large group might make those young, discouraged, but those older, bored! It's right for spiritually-young folks to play; it's right for those older, to play in a more-adult way. No One Is Unloved, less-loved, etc. Problem is, there are a lot of physical adults who are spiritually-young, and they will feel intimidated, not knowing that if they just forget about being intimidated they just might rocket up in spiritual growth; so, their being 'behind' won't matter one whit; and instead they might just whiz right by the Bible whiz-kids, me included! So, how do I explain this process?

I don't know if I can actually write this properly. Reevaluate the why of this and the micro section's depiction of doctrine as a game. It really is the most fun game ever, but..when you play it as a child, you think of it one way..then progress into the fine-wine nuances of irony and Glory in spiritual maturity. How to communicate all that?? Should I try, since I know what it is, but this is also a webpage? Wait: that's the answer. I need more "Third" to figure out how to condense the explanation. Moreover, Part III's last yellow-stone table on #Learn does explain the mechanics adequately -- doesn't narrow the reader to 'my' further refinements, because He's supposed to craft His own -- that's the joy of it. So, "wait and see." (The "wait and see" verses are many, mostly OT).]

Some other reader's view and impression is a matter between the Holy Spirit and him. I really shouldn't concern myself with that issue, except to keep what's written on a high enough plane so that God remains the only focus. Descent into particular misinterpretations or problems isn't intended to point the finger, but rather, to further the explanation of the Trial, God's Design, how vulnerable we Christians all are, how Gorgeous His Design, His Son, truly is. So goes my reasoning thus far, and this revisiting of the topic isn't generating any litmus reason to change the style, yet.

Whew. I'm sure glad I'm not a pastor! I don't know why people get so upset if a person makes mistakes, or, especially, corrects his own mistakes. We can't be perfect: that's what study of the Word is partly For, to grow us up and out of more-childish views! Who gives a flip about being wrong, when it's such a pleasure to get the correction? God is soooo Gorgeous. Who cares about anything else? So, I'm just going to fix whatever's wrong with my interpretations/ learnings when I find them, and then glory in the correction. If some reader has a problem with that, won't the Holy Spirit who Loves the reader infinitely, help the reader with whatever is the problem? Of course!

It's amazing, how this "Thinking" series keeps on developing. While reviewing the text, questions/ objections/ problems come up in my mind. So, I write the doctrinal-recall answer which the HS gives me (for I literally breathe 1Jn1:9, having discovered the hell of carnality and 'hating' it); then read the new writing/ revision, evaluating/ checking it for accuracy -- then notice that..hello, it fits perfectly with what went before or after! Or, other connections show up which I didn't notice earlier! That's why I have to keep on revising! So it's not simply corrections to beliefs of my own, but also corrections for connections I didn't before notice! Thousands upon thousands of them! So let no one think I myself can, of myself, be so 'smart'! For, "Nothing Is Impossible With God"! For anyone. Anyone at all.

Also: just did a study on the "son of perdition" moniker in John 17 of KJV. Apolumi, apoleto there. Searching BGT (LXX and Greek NA27 combined) shows that the verb is translated in a number of ways, and many of them don't mean one is an unbeliever. So 'perdition' in KJV has a connotation of only referencing an unbeliever, but the real BIBLE doesn't only use the verb that way. Fail, unaware of, fade away, destroy, lost..in a wide variety of contexts (some believer, some unbeliever, some physical, some spiritual). So it's again CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT. Believer blooper in reading Scripture, not Bible blooper. And not saying Judas was an unbeliever.

Of course, Satan 'filled' Ananias (see Acts 5), and he was a believer, too. Satan caused Peter to urge the Lord not to go to Jerusalem. Satan wanted to sift Peter like wheat. So obviously the whole childish idea that no believer can be demon-affected is Scripturally wrong. Moreover, since empirically speaking many believers are clearly demon-influenced (which makes sense: we are targets in the Conflict, for crying out loud), we can see it happening right now. So we see play out what Scripture says.

Better still, he repeats (Thank you Father!) how the Lord getting the imputations of the actual sins themselves (made sin verse, 2Cor5:21) was an acceptance of the sentence; then God the Father, as Presiding Judge judged those sins (hence Atonement, Propit, Recon, Redempt). In short, we humans didn't even have legal standing to accept imputation. I guess only a trial lawyer would get the staggering import of that statement. It's impossible from a legal standpoint for us to do even one iota of works or anything, because we aren't the proper legal recipients for our self-caused damage! Which of course is true, since all creation is HIS property. So He as God is owner, so He as God makes the 4 Decisions, so He as Human pays for all the sins. We Don't Own Ourselves. He makes us at birth, He makes us on the Cross. We have NO legal standing. So, can't 'help'. Devastatingly conclusive proof. Wow.

WowII: The Mosaic Law Began And Ended With A Passover! "Christ is the teleios of the Law" verse in Heb (7, I think, near end of chap) flew into my brain and tipped me off to this layer of its meaning. It's because HE is the "teleios" that the paradox of the Law being ended yet never-ending occurs! Because He Is The Fulfillment of the Law (root idea of teleios: you come to the end, because complete), and HE never dies, nothing, no jot nor tittle, ever passes away from the Law. Because He BECAME the Law, by becoming the Lamb. So, that's why He's the Archegos (Heb12:2): author/founder/father (Isaiah's use, immortalized in Handel's Messiah), Originator/Leader/Archetype (etc). That's why He invented a new spiritual life, also: for, in fulfilling the old, He has to replace it with something (point made in Heb Chapters 7-10, main theme). Awesome.

Whole book of Hebrews and Paul's epistles back up the interp. Look: Moses first led the people to deliverance, which began with the death-of-firstborn passover, and then they passed over the Reed Sea (Baptism of Moses); Second Moses (Christ) became the Passover (died, as Firstborn, but then Resurrected), and we were Baptised in Him, even as He was Baptised with our sins; so we too pass over the 'sea' of death, the Law. ("..power of death is sin, and power of sin is the law" verse; see also Rom6 and 7.) Which is why, in the Church Age, the ONLY ritual we have is the eucharistew. It keeps a tie between the Old Law (cf Heb7:18, 9:15) and makes a bridge to the return to the Jewish Age in Mill, when even then passover will be celebrated as the NEW Passover, the Cross: "Christ Our Passover" verse, plus 1Tim2:5, plus "same yesterday, today, forever." (Heb13:8?) So much to say about this, but most of all: not understanding this bookending of Passover causes misinterpretations galore in Christian and Judaic sects, because they miss what covenant applies to Church; of which anyone between the Advents is a part who has once believed in Christ. (See Hebrews 2, 9; Gal3. Rapture is the next type of Advent, though the Lord doesn't come to earth; for, we go up to 'join Him in the air': 1Thess 4 and 1Cor15.)

L1534's S.2 is really detailled. On each side of the asyndeton are types of adikia (in v.15, and 22). The staccato in between them is fired constantly, thus keeping the adikia at bay. (One can't help but appreciate the pun in v.19 about stop quenching the Spirit: this asyndeton style conveys a picture: like camping out where there are wild beasts all around, and you keep the fire going to keep the wild animals at bay! Or, you keep firing arrows at the enemy; or, stay in your castle. Etc. So, I guess the cute way NIV translates the verse is more apt, after all! L1534 Thieme said he liked "squelch" or "extinguish". Given the etymology, I can see why NIV made the cute trans. Pretty good!)

Ok, looking at the passage post-1533class (1st heard 1/14/2003): definitely a change in flow, from long flowing sentences, to short ones, almost like a song? (I guess that's why, over 1000 years later, the Parisians set these into separate verses?) Definitely a different problem than sin, a resultant state, set right in the middle of the list! The Greek words appear to be metered; there's a definite cadence, anyway; I can't yet read it aloud fast enough to 'hear' the flow correctly. So, me sbennute fits in the cadence -- yet communicates what does NOT, yet communicates that they were doing what does not fit. Fabulous. And why were they doing what didn't fit? Because they were disregarding the teaching (next verse, 20). (Also: end of those L's repasaban the whole adika doctrine.)

----- Reword what's between these dashed lines. Too unwieldy. ---------

1/23/03 just thought of something: God rejects sinning Himself because the content of each sin in question is harmful and repugnant to Him. Additionally, anything which was 'touched' by sin would likewise have been 'touched' with harmfulness and repugnancy: hence, 'unclean'. Hence, adikia. Ergo right thing in wrong way, etc. are all tainted. Moreover, the being who sins is rejecting God, separating from God on a particular topic: the sin is preferred to God. Hence, all sin is a rejection; anything else it is, is content, having its own properties. So when the Lord's Humanity paid for all sins on the Cross, He paid for both the rejection (heart of sin), and the content (properties of each sin in question). He didn't pay for human good, evil, because these are adikia. The way adikia is redeemed, is by the spiritual life. Thieme seems to say that He wasn't judged on the Cross for our rejecting the spiritual life, but we are (L1551,2nd side, 2nd hearing on 2/03). Rethink. However, the way he says it sounds like he looking at the Godward aspect, and that makes sense to say God didn't Judge Him for adikia because adikia would have been factored into Propitiation, as a line item in the valuation of sin, for opportunity cost. Wow. That's a big concept.

1/24/03: Not exactly apt that He didn't pay for adikia. He did pay Father. The payment for adikia would fall under Propitiation opportunity cost, because He paid for each of us the Highest and Best use, net-present-value calc based on forever. We know this has to be true, because otherwise Righteousness would not have been propitiated. Actually, there are a number of line items: opportunity cost (highest and best use), funds to apply the opportunity cost to the damaged being, and funds in the event of more damage (including punishment 'funds' for LDP, hell, Lake). So that when we are punished in time for LDP, the funds for that punishment were paid at the Cross. Else, the cost of punishing us would cut into the opportunity-cost value, and +R would be shortchanged. So we know for sure that Father got paid for the adikia. (If Father, then all of Them: Father is Chairman of the Board, so to speak. So probably 3x payment. Well, it's impossible to actually make the proper formula. It is totally knowable that "enough" was paid!

Atonement would be damages, so would not only constitute the criminal penalty (for crime per se, not a restitution line item); but could also be said to consitute civil damages (like court costs and other time-and-paid expenses which, absent the sin, wouldn't have been incurred). The LDP punishment-cost line item I (in Fixes.htm) lumped under "opportunity cost", though it probably belongs to "Atonement" (glad GAAP for this is flexible). That's why adikia can be purified out: for the problem is, Father wants to apply the (some or all or "all plus") opportunity cost (Propitiation) payment to us, but if we aren't in a spiritual state, the payment portion for that increment of time won't be made: because, there's no judicial basis for transmitting it to us, since we are in a carnal state; so also, no capacity to receive it, for the same reason: HS has to be running the system for us. Ergo we get punished. So 'funds' have to be spent punishing us, to wake us up: that's the LDP punishment-cost line item, which of course is distinct from the line item of highest-and-best use. In L1552, s.2, his (frequent) statement that "we can't be punished for sins" would tie in here: it's Because Christ Paid that we get punished; for, God wants to use the payment on us. That's why Eph1 reads as it does. Oper. Footstool purpose (Church portion).

Just as Thieme always says, results are manward. So, man must consent to be saved, which he does when he first believes in Christ. So, pre-salv forgiveness, a result. Ergo, for carnal Christians, rebound is a subsequent required consent, which the Christian does when he uses 1Jn1:9. Meanwhile, there's the damage of what the Christian thought and did between spiritual states. All that 'between' would be adikia, and all that becomes the value of the punishment the Christian must receive. Way greater than the 'value' of sin per se, because he damaged his spiritual life, in addition to whatever other damages occurred. So it's a major thing, the katharizw. All because the Lord did pay the opportunity cost to Father, plus punishment expenses.

1/25/03: still not accounted for, really. It's clear that only the negative is katharizw'd. It's also clear that punishment might continue post-rebound, because punishment itself is always to bless: backstop further damage, accelerate growth, catch up on past opportunity cost-type loss, etc. All those funding period type questions God would know how to value; hence the shorter funding period remaining for the 'normal cost' of spiritual growth would dictate the type and duration, etc. of any continuing punishment. What remains unaccounted is the productive value of punishment if the person doesn't rebound. There must be some. In Part III's "Fourth Reason for Royalty" it was assumed that the punishment to the perpetually-carnal believer is at root designed to keep him big enough to enjoy Heaven, since the promise of salvation is guaranteed, but the soul shrinks due to carnality. Ok, then: so any interim punishment ought to have like objectives; these would constitute the de minimis layer of blessing. It's probable that the productive value of the punishment would have been an offset variable in the calculation of the net present value of the opportunity cost and/or punishment expenses.

Then there's "unclean", as noted below in more detail. You never see an unclean person become clean by katharizw. All you ever see is an isolation period, or a washing function; then, deemed 'clean'. Wow: that's a big difference from katharizw! So the interp Col. makes of 1Jn1:9 is soooo apt (though I've not yet heard him reference akathartos in his connection-paths). This adikia differential between OT and NT is really a big deal. Need to weave it in the series a lot more than I have, once I understand it enough.

Thieme's main p is that adikia is a bundle of things, all grouped under the rubric of failing "kalos poiete", a right thing done in a right way, a point he's emphasised time and again since '85 Eph series (Protocol definition). So, adikia is anything done when out of fellowship, however 'good' it is. (That ties to the series, for the series is a depiction of how Satan divorces everything God makes or is from Him. Truest & Biggest Evil Is This Divorce. We see Satan actually doing that in the passage.) Moreover, due to being in a carnal state, people are thoughtless, silly..whatever (the 2Tim3:1-7 roster was selectively explained to distinguish between adikia and sin per se). But Most importantly, rejecting the spiritual life, for that is what is supposed to be going on: grieving, quenching (really squealching), lying to the Holy Spirit. 3 Arrog skills in the last one emphasize deception. I'm not sure I understand enough yet why the term "ying" is used, because it's obviously some kind of shut-down. So, a threshold, rather than acute acts. (So "against Thee and Thee only have I sinned" David remembers -- all resulting carnality is, no matter what else it is, lying to the Spirit -- because no rebound.) Verb is pseudo (heh). The big fake-out.

The heart of adikia is, considering how katharizw is used in 1Jn1:9, "unclean". I get that conclusion from looking up "unclean" in the OT; Heb is "tamT", and LXX translates it with "akathartos", according to TWOT (full version). So, has to be purified (katharizw) -- which, non-coincidentally, I'm sure, ports over to NT with 1Jn1:9's katharizw. How current scholars can even imagine that sins post-salvation need not be named to God with not only 1Jn1:9 being Scripture -- but with katharizw having such a pregnant OT meaning, I can't fathom. Observing Jews today go through enormous trouble to avoid or get rid of "unclean". A recent novel communicates this cultural phobia rather well (though it limits the novel to Hassidim, as I recall): The Sacrifice of Tamar. What I'm trying to say is this: "unclean" is a horror, kinda like being dumped with excrement. Adikia is "unclean" in 1Jn1:9 with all the force of Jewish OT meanings: menstrual rags. The fact that adikia is also the opposite of dikaiosune adds, not changes, to the meaning a Judicial Exigency. For, the Hebrew equivalent of katharizw is kadash, another pregnant OT word (idea of not merely cleansing, but sanctifying, purifying, making holy).

The whole interChristian competition thingy is also an integral part of this passage. So-called "Christian fellowship" gets distorted from its true meaning (fellowship with God!) into fellowship without God but with other believers in the "name" of God. Divorce! It's interesting (but I've not heard Col. yet speak of it) that God chooses not to mention how much money. That omission tells the reader several things: 1) it's not relevant, and don't-value-your-actions by such standards; 2) God thinks the value is meaningless; 3) the value was meaningless for Ananias and Sapphira, too: they died just after they did this -- so got dorean for it. Dead works killed them. That's what's relevant. So, if they gave more money to church than Barnabas did (likely, else why try) -- well, it killed them more. So, if they gave less -- it still killed them. Dead works kill: that's the point. No amount of money can compare to the Holy Spirit's Work, so just forget it!

Anyway, the point is that Ananias and Sapphira were killed by God because their soul leprosy (mature anti-integrity) maxed out. See, to sell land and lay it at the apostles' feet out of a motive of being noticed and lauded by others in the congregation shows the utmost hatred of God -- so no wonder Satan filled Ananias, for Satan never misses a chance to "diss" God. Why? Think about it: in doing this, the couple were saying that 1) what THEY did was important; 2) being in the congregation was only worth the admiration they got (so Bible Doctrine was worthless -- wow, how blasphemous can you get!) 3) LYING about how much the actual sale was, mattered and was beneficial to them 4) God is just a tyrant -- gotta bribe Him. Can one blaspheme the Holy Spirit's riches to us more than this? These works were based on all these LIES! So, the work is unclean! 5) In later lessons, Thieme noted that they had convinced themselves also that they were doing a good deed to God! So, yeah, lying to the HS about what the meaning of the gift even was!

Most of Christendom's works are also adikia, even if the people doing them don't intend to be lying or bribing or hating, etc. For, truth is truth. Whether you know it or mean it or not doesn't alter the intrinsic nature of what a thing IS. So, anytime someone thinks or does something based on "owing" God -- it's unclean. Why? Because the hidden blasphemy is, you can pay him from the source of yourself. That's the lie of lies. The next blasphemy is, what you do for Him doesn't benefit you. That's why people seek some kind of blessing in return for what they do -- however subliminally they expect it. See how ugly this is? How dirty? No wonder our righteousnesses are menstrual rags (lit. from Isa64:6)! Unclean!

Notice how such hidden rationales -- or, if not hidden, innocently conceived -- are still unclean. But not necessarily sin. The sin is something you wanted to think or do, and thought or did. Whether you knew it was a sin or not. Similarly, the rationale surrounding a thought or deed can be unclean. Whether the thought or deed was sin, or not. The Holy Spirit won't fill a dirty soul. So, the adikia needs to be cleaned out. So, if the person doesn't frequently use 1Jn1:9, he will soon be mired down. It's obvious everywhere just how devastating adikia is: look at the muck of all Christian activism! As if God needed their evil assistance!

Detecting-Evil Key ==>Evil is always in the thought, action, or statement which contains the word or idea of "should" with an implication of approbation if the "should" item is 'obeyed'. For, such a "should" is contending that the item in question has no intrinsic value. For, if that intrinsic value was recognized, the person would want it for itself. Needing to use "should", therefore, denies intrinsic value. Thus, denies truth. Do you know how many times a day "shoulds" are used by churches, Christians, people -- to run other people's lives? To get something? See how utterly evil "should" is? No wonder God hates that, and says instead, "For the Lord loves a cheerful!!!!! giver." (2Cor9:7.) Thinking/Doing a thing because you love it. And being grateful that you are allowed to do so -- because, the Truth is, it's so Gorgeous.

The unbeliever goes to hell because he doesn't even once in his entire lifetime, ever believe in Christ. How is it such an unbelief can be sustained, since it becomes evident to everyone how fragile life is? Evil is why. The unbeliever essentially remains so because he remains so childish in his ideas about God that he refuses to believe in a "God" who says his works don't count. Can't believe in the Gospel except by recognizing that one's good is ugly, too, compared to Infinite Righteousness. People who are competent in worldly things (even if during a short period, kinda like how nations glorify some short period in their past histories) -- such people can't accept that their competence isn't worthy of some kind of reward. Ask one: see what he says. You'll always get an answer which essentially translates into the following: Good people should go to Heaven, and I am one. Or, its less-honest version: God would be mean if he didn't save everyone (except a few really vile folks like serial murders, etc).

I remember a conversation where someone said this second version in the context of a famous serial murderer who everyone knew was a believer (it was on ABC): "If God let him in Heaven, then I don't want to go!" See? True Evil. Satan's mindset: it's not okay to murder a bunch of people, but it's just fine to murder Christ! To murder the Word! For, the one who insists on his deeds 'counting' has the same murdering mindset: see Heb5:11-6:6, and Romans 9. What's weird is that the people who are soooo offended at others' wrongs, are actually proving themselves just as guilty. That's why they react. (Defense mechanism of projection: we are most upset by what most reflects our own flaws. Yikes, I'd better edit my personal reactions, heh!) What's also weird is that, even after death, the unbeliever still insists on his own merit (see Luke 16, Romans 9, Rev20:11ff). So, like Pharoah, then. (Part V explains more on this.)

The typical believer also thinks in this same evil manner, and shows it by his preoccupation with works. Again, aiming at competence in earthly things reflects the selfsame evil thought pattern as does the unbeliever. Satan loves this: so the unbeliever sees no difference between himself and the believer, so is validated in his disbelief. So, God's got to punish the believer, because 1) it's adikia, 2) to witness to the unbeliever that the believer he's using to validate himself is not good, 3) to hopefully wake up the believer himself to his too-old-now-Johnny ideas.

The other 'side' of this lingering is more common. Johnny obeys because he wants Mommy and Daddy to love him; because he gets spanked if he doesn't obey. So, it becomes really hard to make the transition to "why it's okay one gets spanked for doing 'good'". We know it's okay, for Christ was Perfect yet was 'spanked' more than everyone put together! Spanking in this category reveals where one's spiritual glitches are located: do we resent it (Heb12:5 says to stop despising); do we recognize that this is "suffering for blessing", if true? Do we rejoice in the accelerated growth 'spanking' affords? Etc. Every Christian, says Heb12:5, gets spanked a lot. All the great believers had unbelievable suffering because they were great, not because they disobeyed. So, 'spanking' is for two reasons, not one. But too-old-now Johnnys won't "get" that. So, the spanking has to intensify. All the way to death (1Jn5:16), if need be. Of course, if spanking will not wake them up (and only God knows what kind of spanking, and how visible the spanking needs to be) -- then why bother. Unlike man, God doesn't punish or allow harm which will not profit the recipient or his periphery. So probably the worst thing that can happen is to not be 'spanked', as Heb12:5ff explains. Yet again, can't look at your prosperous neighbor who (jealous you) is oh so clearly not spiritual, and puff up with pride how he must be worse than you! Yeah, it's a too-old-Johnny who does stuff like that: adikia in spades!

The Energizer Bunny, our totally-depraved genetic sin nature, is 'behind' all this childishness. But it is not the cause. Volition and volition only is the cause, even for everyone born from Eve. Volition has to agree to the incessant brain-urge to 'be-good'. Defined, of course, in bodily terms. That's the tip-off. Second tip-off: status, approbation, etc. result from whatever that 'good' is said to be, if one does it. Doing, of course, is the third tip-off that the Energizer Bunny, not God, is 'behind' the evil "should" urge. Satan's not stupid. His entire system is aimed at those bunny-baby urges. Unbelievers get so trapped in their body-urges; their volitions so love those definitions of 'good' -- that they refuse to believe.

Only God can break through these urges, whether in believer or unbeliever, and He does it through orchestrating one's circumstances. Kinda like "verbal plenary inspiration", God communicates His Nature and Will through the independent, natural nature of all in life. To the believer, God is always saying, "learn Christ via His Thinking, Bible Doctrine". Son 'says' this through the externals, since the Son rules all the externals; Spirit says this directly to the soul (via the human spirit, if Filled); Father says this through both Christ and the Holy Spirit. That we can't hear Them is only a measure of our hard-heartedness, as well as the natural in-Adam blindness with which our faculties are saturated. Because, we agreed to the Energizer Bunny so much in the past.

The growing believer will come to understand that his do-good urges are NOT good. So, he gets tempted in a different way: to do nothing. Black/white conclusions are also lingering childish notions. If works are bad, then no works are good. That kind of stupid 'thinking'. You know, like was done with blacks in America two generations back: because they were poor, it had to be due to their biology: meaning, their color. Only children think like this, because children haven't yet learned enough to distinguish shades of grey, and other colors, so to speak, in life's truths. So also, with God's.

The key to avoiding the trap of black/white thinking is to look for intrinsic properties and even more, boundary lines. For, the truth will always be that thing "A" is good in circumstance "A", but not in circumstance "B"; or, even good in circumstance "B", but to a lesser extent. Compartments. Truth, because it reflects all of God's Attributes, is compartmentalized. So Love, for example, never transgresses the boundary of Righteousness. So God won't use His Omnipotence to just bing away some problem you have, even though He always Infinitely Loves you. So also, Scripture teaches: thus you have "kalos poiete" and "neither to the right, nor to the left", and "precept upon precept", and "all things are lawful, but not all things contribute", and "God loves a cheerful Giver". Bible doctrine is thus compartmentalized, and the child will not notice the boundary lines. So will conclude salvation can be lost, because he sees an "endure to the end" verse, or a horrible MIStranslation like Col 1:23 (which in Greek says the opposite of what it looks like, in English). So will see "works" in another horribly (backwards!) translated verse like Col 1:10, and think that's what he should always do. The point of that verse is that "fruit" is due to knowledge, and "works" are that kind OF profit (karpos really means profit, not fruit: 'poetic word for "profit"). The fact that hundreds of other verses confirm that knowledge, not works is the life thus go unheeded, since the one mistranslated verse makes the Energizer Bunny 'happy'. Ergo the need to constantly search for intrinsics and boundaries, in life; and especially, in Scripture.

Col.'s frequent in-passing comments tie in, like "Pleroma is just a short step" after Occup, and the "very close to executing the spiritual life" statement in L1529 (heard 1/7/02), which he's also said many times before (so it's not a slip of the tongue). Moreover, obviously the Lord was in Pleroma when He went public; and Scripture says Moses was Jeshurun -- which he obviously was already, Y+1, when the Lord offered to wipe out Israel. So, it's a stage; so, it's what Col. means, too; so P/MGG is the finish of it, and the "short step" is entrance. ETs turn on after entry. Which makes sense, given that unless Occup IS your life, you can't weather the ETs at all, since they are all CONTINUAL headgames, and thus so subtle.

Col. has always taught that Evidence Testing is after SM (the stage, not the sweeping term for adulthood) reached. So, once he made public the Jeshurun/Pleroma levels, it made immediate sense; for what's the point of the ET's (besides the Trial), if not completion of spiritual growth? The three phases, though, I've yet to hear him say: 1st phase, paradigm of Matt4, wholly invisible, how the Lord was first tested by Satan; 2nd phase, when He then went public; 3rd phase, then went to the Cross; that's clearly the paradigm for us, since we get His Spiritual life. Cross itself represents (also) resounding-yet-postscript testimony, for it's no longer Satan&Co. and the world doing cross-examination, but only God. Third Phase God does it to you. But again -- I've not yet heard Col. mention anything about successive phases analogous to these. So, reanalyse yet again, later. As of this updated bullet typed 7/19/2005, the above description still looks accurate, and the websites don't need correction, so far as I can tell.

It would be better also, in Part II, to make clear that it's not knowledge which needed to be 'improved', but rather, the valuation of the knowledge had to be developed -- because valuation is an act of volition, so can't be coerced and can't be done -- until one is alive. Obviously, another development as a consequence of valuation is the connecting of the dots of data. Same middle, but what orientation? The orientation connects the dots (or re-connects them, again -- because volition should RULE on the information's meaning and value).

Wait: the Greek wording also would convey highest, because he's singled out, especially given the word order (meta must mean 'beyond, above' there, and it's the first word, and it's in Hebraic and greek worplay with mesoi). But why didn't they translate all the words Masoretic text has? It's a BIG deal to leave out "anointed", because that term is only for kings and priests; is it left out due to some Greek idiom which conveys the status was lost? The English translations are weird. Of course, what we know as Masoretic text is a later copy than would have been available to the translators for the LXX. Well, when you look at the other verses about Satan, and his title of Haylel-ben-Shakar, the "highest" initial status would still be the right interpretation. Particularly, since the Lord's Humanity is now the replacing Morning Star. (That title was used for Apollo at the later Delphi, too. Quite interesting.)

Re this and "stones of fire", review Eze 28:14 exegesis tapes plus their later refinements. Now I think "stones of fire" is a Hebraic double-line idiom for the other angels (wordplay with cherub)? Well, that's a new thought, maybe because I mis-remembered the interp I'd learned. Recheck. The Heb and Greek texts sure don't look like they are talking about mere gems!

Only the bolded text probably needs to be woven in brown font of Part II's beginning; since most of the 'error' here was my own not seeing clearly, rather than error in text.

Also, it seems clear many of Satan's arguments are quantitative, i.e., a majority don't clear the bar, so that has to mean the standard is wrong. It's true, too, that almost 100% don't clear the bar: whether the nanosecond it takes to believe, or the post-salvation plan of each Dispensation/covenantal period. But is that overwhelming rejection not rather more a sign of how people don't want to be with God, or barely want to? Why should volition's choosing ipse be some 'defect'? Does that argument even make sense, or does the argument itself rather prove the point that it's volition only, and not a defect? Same middle. In the series, of course, I don't even bother with the "majority" argument, for its fallacy is even recognized by former liberals today with respect to welfare programs, etc. But should I bother?

Next, maybe I should add in the Gen6 summary in Part II some small-font explanation about how it is that fallen angels could procreate. Although what follows might not be the right way to answer the question, it at least proves that a plausible answer exists which is absent all the goofiness people come up with on this topic.

Angels' bodies are composed of light (lots of verses on that in the Satanology tapes); the Lord is called the "Angel of the Lord", but under that form He appears as a man, and can eat, drink, etc (e.g., Abram prepared for Him the fatted calf under the Oak of Mamre). So, being light, the form the light takes can be like a man's. Also, obviously a light-based body doesn't have the atomic structure that we do (hence the Lord just walked through the tomb and the door at His Resurrection) -- but just as obviously, could take form which has the kind of biological solidity we have (they could touch Him in His Resurrection Body, and He could eat food they could eat). So, could procreate.

We know from science that light makes substance, matter just being a dense form of energy, so the idea that angels can simultaneously be of a dissimilar atomic structure, yet also at WILL take form like ours, is very plausible. Of course, there are some types of animals who can radically change form (catepillars become butterflies, maggots become flies, etc) so the basic idea of being able to change form, even with the identical biology, is not news. The will to change causing the change we know concerning color (cameleon) and maybe other limited things -- but those are animals. By contrast, the angels are one step down from Deity, so could have a wide range of creative abilities. I remember Thomas Acquinas wondering in his Treatise of the Six Days whether it was angels, rather than the Lord, who created the universe! (I guess he didn't have access to Colossians 1:16 in the Greek, which is quite emphatic that only the Son created the universe, and distinguishes the types of angelic powers/authorities after the word (rendered in English) "invisible". Romans 8:38 and Eph6:11-12 use the same terminology, so we know these are keywords for angels, like beni-ha-Elohim in Gen 6 is also.)

God's disabling the fallen angels' procreative ability as a result of them breaking Trial rules in Gen6 aftermath would not disable their ability to take our form; and in fact we know this is true from the descriptions of angels, both in OT and in Rev. btw:Maybe these facts about angels generated the idea sci-fi folks get about "shape-shifters" (e.g., in Herbert's Dune series).

Beginning in L1567, he starts to cover verse foundations. The way he adds these verses together, and given what he's saying, a lot of the basis for the interpretation stems from inference, reading-between-the-lines. Which, of course, makes sense: many verses are clearly understood so well by the writer and his audience, the writer doesn't have to explain anything (like who Father is, etc). So, in this vein, for example, redemption is never said to apply to angels. For another example, in Col1:16, ktizw is api, which justifies the interp of en autos as instrumental of personal agency: combining both of these, instantaneous creation is indicated (constantive aorist, stressing instantaniety). "Perfect" then by inferred definition BEGINS with +EL. Terms for angels and their organization, in passages like Col1:16, Rom8:38, Eph6:11-12, reviewed; L1568 corrects some of '57, and supplies valuable etymology, esp. for exzousia (a term which originally connoted authority-to-decide, free will): see notes on both classes. Of course, another reason why Thieme says initial +EL is that angels, unlike man, are never said to die (using the Gen muth muth clause to demonstrate the point). In short, the hermeneutical path he's taking is largely inferential. Well, at least so far. I've only got 40 or more lessons to go, lol!

Yet, thinking over what he's said so far, I still find myself tentatively concluding that salvation is possible, because it's the +R imputation, not the +EL imputation, which justifies salvation: a fact which he has always and unwaveringly taught and proved from Scripture. To wit: +EL is a type of life one needs to Live With God Forever. So far as I can tell, while many other pastors in the past do say that Salvation permanently justifies us (and Scripture has so many verses to this effect, it would take 1000 years just to write them all out), I can't find yet one who distinguishes the parts the way Thieme does. He's the one who specified the imputation of +R (i.e., in his exegesis of 2Cor5:21) as the exact line item which justifies all following imputations for us (e.g., +EL). So, although I seem to be concluding opposite his teaching in 92SD L1563 et seq., I derive that conclusion from his teaching about +R and hamartiology -- and, of course, because I see verses on these topics in Scripture myself. What I don't yet see is a clear statement (or omission indicating, or indirect ref or allusion) in Scripture that angels had +EL at their initial creation. That the "elect" angels have +EL is clear; but did they always have it? That I don't yet see. He's not yet covered the what-about-God-getting-paid side of the question. (In the past, he's always taught that somehow angelic sins were also paid for on the Cross: who else would be in a position to do it? All this, I covered in 'my' assumption in brown font of Part II.)

So, if instead they all had +EL from the get-go, and 2/3rds DID execute the perfection plan (apparently the only way to sin was to choose Satan's side), then the 1/3rd who did not -- lost +R if they had been imputed with it at creation, or .. never got it (presuming the perfection plan, when executed, resulted in getting +R, as it appears to have done, for the Lord's Humanity).

Obviously for a perfect angel (or human, Adam/Isha pre-fall), having +R initially to lose, or having to grow up to get it resolves to the same issue: growing to Value Knowing God so much, free will +Love becomes an intertwined strength analogous to God's. For, God never wants to sin. Presumably a perfect person could grow up in his own valuation of God so that he also would never want to leave God. Obviously, the desire to sin would diminish as one grows in Love for God -- until, nothing else can compete.

So the whole concept turns on the properties of +R and +EL. Surely, as God, and being Omnipotent, God can sin. He just never does. Since all is online, it's not like there could be a 'succeeding moment' for Him in which He would potentially fail. If there was ever to 'become' such a moment, it would have been before the Decree to Create became operational; for, why go to all that bother. Of course, sin never solves problems, but only creates massively bigger ones, so to sin would not solve the Omniscience burden. Only what He decreed would solve that burden and make it into a joy. So again, no sin. It's not tempting to do what wrecks one's life, if one knows fully that would be the result! What, would any of us want to stab ourselves? Not particularly attractive, so not tempting!

Thus, if it's true that angels were binged with +EL at their initial simultaneous creation, just like God they could lose +R (if they had it initially given them); thus the 'parallel' between man and angel is only partial, and the parallel to God is the more significant of the two. Man manifestly did not have +EL (muth muth clause, Gen 2:17, maybe). That's why he couldn't stay in the Garden either, after his fall.

The initial +EL story, if true, shows the Conflict to be far starker, esp. on Satan&Co.'s side, rather than contraindicating webseries conclusions. (So the kind of error I would have made was to dilute the story too much.) Better still, the +EL initial angel-attribute would much better account the parallels to God's Own Nature and 'Risk'. Nature, in being the closest to God's Own Structure, yet finite; 'risk', in that, if God had ever sinned... [I've not heard Thieme yet draw analogy between what-if-God sinned to what-if-angels did. Usually he just remarks that it's blasphemous, which of course is true.] Since the theory which explains more is the superior one, the +EL initial story appears to be superior. So much so, in fact, that I'd need to recast everything in the webseries.

For example, the whole sin issue is way less relevant than I portray, even though I too yell how it's choosing God, not sin, that's the issue. For, if angels initially had +EL, and the only sin they could sin was to choose to go with Satan; and that's the parallel to Adam's sin because he knowingly chose fallen Isha over God (stressed in L.1568ff) -- then all the rest of sin, which is a consequence of being born a sinner, anyway, is barely worth mention. Rather, the real issue is as stark as the angels faced: never believing in Christ is never wanting to be with God. So: 'permanent, just like the effect on God would be if God sinned; just like the effect on Satan&Co., who rejected Him.

Wow. This initial +EL assumption results in so much starker a conflict than I've painted in the webseries. Think how difficult it is to be a perfect angel, in perfect environment, constantly around a Gorgeous Son you can always see: why even want to sin for any reason whatsoever? Where are there any temptations? Pure Grace is on display! Analogously, but at the opposite end: think how difficult it is to be an unbeliever, in this obviously-cruddy environment called "life": so weak, so helpless -- and never believe in Christ? Where are there any obstacles to faith? Pure Grace is the Gospel message! So Legalism is the greatest evil, for only legalism can motivate a perfect angel or an imperfect unbeliever to choose against God! Analogously, for believers, only legalism can account for the insane obsession that the spiritual life must be works we can do!

Ahhh, but what's the basis of legalism: me-ism. ME ME ME ME ME. Where's the benefit to me, why does something go to someone else but not to ME, why am I not loved/honored/ rewarded the way I I I I I think I I I I I should be! Satan sure must have thought that, at least when he learned His Lord would take on a lower creation, and become HIGHER even as a creature, than Satan himself! Man sure thinks that, when he objects that serial murderers shouldn't 'get away with' their crimes by being able to live with God forever simply by believing in some Guy who died on a Cross 2000 years ago! What about my good deeds! Wow. Is there a greater jealousy-based evil than this? See how 'the ME thing' is a total put-down of God, and what I I I I I do is the more valuable? whoa -- what kind of sin is greater than this? How hard must someone become to have this attitude so deeply, he never believes in Christ? Oh -- no wonder the unbeliever is just as hard as Satan, even though the former never had the strength of +EL! No wonder the believer who rejects the real spiritual life ends up such a shrivelled soul, obvious to anyone who has the sad task to be in his periphery!

So, back to whether fallen angels can ever be saved, if they initially had +EL. Even so, salvation must be at least funded for fallen angels, since we know it is funded for unbelievers, the idea being that God Must Be Paid. For example, look at these costs:

What if I originally learned them all in Bible class, so the extrap is less so, and more instead a rephrasing? Well, then I'd want to reference the fact somewhere, and note any differences. Student is never (Thank You Father) above the teacher. I don't recall him saying anything but that Hell lasts forever. He never says that one can get out, but also says that God's love never fails. My conclusion that one can get out is a strong running subtheme in the LvS series, because it explains the vehemence of God's love on what to many -- me included -- is a painful topic. Even the 'new' (L1563ff 92SD) view that demons have no "redemption solution" (so far) doesn't alter the conclusion much.

Then there's the Footstool section of Part V. That's an extrapolation of his teaching us Footstool (since '67AC tapes, which I didn't even hear until well after writing that section -- i was extrap'ing from Rev tapes and 900+ SD). That section is one of the best sections in the entire series, excepting Fixes.htm's "Nature of God" (first) section. Part III seems almost wholly a rephrasing of his teaching, except that I don't recall him interpreting the wedding parable with so many levels(i.e., first layer of parable referencing angels): but then he explains things more simply to us, so we can grow faster.

Again, this bullet is about checking the underlying building blocks. So far, overall the material as written looks like it fits, looks like the linkages which needed accounting got accounted for; but until I've gone through these reference materials again, I'm not wholly comfortable with the portrayal. It's critical to recognize what's just a rephrasing and what's an extrap, so I can test myself better. Also, it's a handy way to incorporate all the note locations, for easy reference later on.

Verse 9 lists epignosis first, then pasei sophiai! Got to learn doctrine before you get wisdom! aaarrrrggghh. Why do they reverse the word order in v.9, but follow it in v.10? When, in v.10, you have to translate the participles first, to get the fact that the participles are the entire foundation and meaning of the verse? aaarrrgggh. [New review of v.9 is in L1547.]

Re v.10: Since in Greek the action of the participle precedes the action of the main verb (a fact which even Greek students on #scripture and #prosapologian know), in v.10 the two participles prove why Paul prayed what he did in v.9: that there are no works until one has grown in knowledge of Him; also, that so-called fruitbearing is the knowledge (epignosis! believed Doctrine, knowledge you can BUILD on! from whence comes sophia, wisdom about the Will of God): looks like it is in apposition. Find the exegesis to be sure. Stupid English translation makes it look like works come first! Why didn't the translators put it in chronological order? LOL! Why is it nearly every verse which has ergon in it suffers from such mistakes? Ahhh. Probably the job of Scripture translation appeals to ascetic folks, so naturally they would see a verse in an ascetic light. Plus, that's the overwhelming flavor of interpretation people have given Scripture over the millenia. God must be boring to be Holy. If I don't feel bad, I'm not obeying God. Ok.