Intra-Part I Links in this table also serve to list webpage theses. Italic links are subtables.
The Real Conspiracy? Core Trial Issues Integrity Properties Anti-Integrity Properties
So Free Will means "Hell" must Exist Seduce, or LOVE? God's Script Now 1 John's Outline of God's Script
Royal Script, Royal Power, Royal Bride DDNA, God's Apodoses make Bride Fit for Christ, 5 verbs in Isa 53:10-11, LXX Satan would Stop the Wedding
Webseries Related Links: |Home Page| |God's System| |Introduction, assumptions| |Part I, Overview| |II, 'then'| |III, 'NOW'| |IVa: Church Alpha basis| |IVb, 'Body'| |IVc, Conflict| |IVd, Destiny| |V, Trib-Mill| |App: Satan's Strategy| |Trial Sum: Paradox of Merit| |Kingship: Due.Dilig.Disclosure| |Infinity-finity Dichotomy| |DDNA solves Dichotomy| |Spir.Pathology (viral dDNA results)|

Part I, The Lord vs. Satan: SupCtHeaven;

aka, the Trial of Human History.. aka, Did God err?

The Real Conspiracy?

Isn't life on earth hellish? Were we to pile up all the defective products and make a big bonfire out of them, what would be left afterwards? Kleenex? The lone Windows computer which doesn't crash? Your favorite cup? A Barco Lounger? Not much would be left, would it? We make a jet, but it crashes -- why? Because it had the wrong amount of lubricant. The incorrect amount of lubricant caused a plane to crash in the year 2000, destroying 200 people. Lives depended on lubricant, for crying out loud. Makes you wonder, doesn't it, if we aren't just animals, after all? Biology says we are. Strange beings, we: even most animals would not do the stupid things we do. Yet we can fly to the moon? Does that make sense? How is it we can't even get lubricant right, but we can fly to the moon? Have you ever done something so stupid, you later asked yourself, "What the heck did I do that for?" Yet, at other times, you find yourself doing something so brilliant, you shock yourself?

Maybe Dante's Inferno is right down here. What an annoying life we all have. Used to be, man spent a whole day just hunting, catching, skinning, and cooking his ONE meal. It took THAT long. Even now, how much time do we have to spend just keeping body and soul together? Even in our modern age? Clothes need cleaning, the body needs food, the car needs to go to the shop, we've not enough hard drive space, the house always needs fixing, we always need more money. Then, what happens? We no sooner get 'enough' -- and then become too old, too tired, too sick to enjoy it. Or, technology renders whatever we slaved to get, obsolete. Or, we move out of the dream house, because it's now a nightmare. Or, the spouse is now a problem. No wonder we are always frustrated, always living with our nose to the ground. Will there ever be any respite? No wonder we love television, movies, and computers so much. No wonder we love religion so much. They all give us 'escape'. Escape from the mountains of trivial duties which choke our lives. Even in this modern age.

Ahhh, escape. Back to a better time. Or, up to Heaven. Better still, let's try to make heaven out of this hell. Escape! So, life down here is one big propaganda machine: improve, improve, improve. Nirvana is just around the corner. If we can just afford that car, that house, that suit, that jewelry -- things will be better. Self will be fulfilled. Looks are important; feeling is important; thinking is 'too hard'. Let's just 'enjoy'. On the news, we see crime is everywhere; it's always someone else's fault; government should 'do' for us; everything makes us sick. Yeah, let's just enjoy. But wait! The car needs a new tire. The dishes need to be washed. Johnny needs a haircut. The roof is leaking, again.

In short, give up on life, or give in to hell. So, it's nice to hear "Daddy will take care of it"; or, "Daddy's to blame." Of course, "Daddy" is Sugar-Daddy, Uncle Sugar, the one to pay all the bills, who has all the authority. So, whatever is the problem, Daddy's to handle it -- or to blame. Santa Claus, God, Government, the spouse, the neighbor-next-door. Please, someone fix this. Ahhh.

Sounds good, right? Ahhh, but conspiracy theorists warn "they" are pulling the strings, seducing us. "They" are out to control the world. "They" promise us poor, beleaguered folks an escape: to become our Daddies -- by promising us goodies. We are to salivate over the goodies, and thus become enslaved. Then, they can bend us to their evil will, to satisfy their power lusts. George Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. 'Merged, into a "Matrix". The New World Order.

Yeah, well maybe it's not so "new". Yeah, well maybe the "they", are Satan&Co., playing the time-immemorial game of seduce-and-destroy. God, see, has sentenced them to the Lake of Fire for rebelling against Him, and they dispute the verdict. Hence, we exist. If they can prove (via us) that they can rule the better, well -- they can escape that burning Lake.

They get free rein, to prove God wrong. We, like Job, know we're the stadium and players for their appeal. Many a poet, many an author has written about what Satan&Co. do. It's entertaining, of course. Still, most of us consider the idea kooky! Other beings exist who are greater than us? These beings use us for their own gain, to crown themselves? Well, we just gotta laugh that off, right? The whole idea is just too bizarre to contemplate, right?

    Never mind that Satan's crowning strategy is succinctly yet wholly revealed in Matt4's "Three Temptations":

  • Body over Bible;
  • Splashy over Spiritual;
  • Fantasy over Freedom.

  • Never mind that the Lord, Who Alone could have instantly fixed the world "by the Word of His Power", has always refused that strategy. Never mind that He is now Seated as Ruler of All -- "waiting", as the Bible says in Heb 10:12-14 (and elsewhere), for the Father to make the "enemy", "the footstool of Your Feet."

What are we to think, then? What are we to do? Should we ignore all this conflict, and just go on with our lives? Why are we told about it at all? Clearly something's to be learned, else the Bible would be silent about this unseen conflict, which prompted the Trial, which prompted the creation of the human race to display the arguments of both sides. We don't get to hear those arguments directly -- but we do get enough information to figure out the aims of both sides, and thus the general themes of their arguments.

    Scripture outlines the background like this: MorningStar (Haylel ben-Shachar, Satan's real 'name', cf Isa 14:12) had rebelled against God the Son; 1/3rd of the other angels allied with Satan. Why? 'On the grounds that God was unfair (beg. Job1 and 2 reveals Satan's basic claim that God is unfair). After some undenominated period, a Trial was held, and Satan's group was sentenced to the Lake of Fire (Matt 25:41, for example). Satan's appealed the sentence, so we are created to be evidentiary witnesses of the superiority of one side, or the other. ("Satan" is a title, "Adversary/Accuser" -- it's a legal term for "opposing attorney"; the beginning of Job1 and 2 in Hebrew, is legal language -- formal Trial convocation.) Whoever wins the Appeal, though, also gets to rule. That's the deal: the stakes couldn't be higher.

    Enough is said about Satan in Scripture for us to know, really, a great deal about this Conflict -- enough for us to see it in our daily lives. Further, from what is said, we can know his 'plan' to aid mankind. Scripture accomplishes full disclosure directly, and obliquely -- so to provide both proper context, and objectivity -- rather than gushiness, or fear.

Satan's plan, after all, is an option for our lives, too. We have the option to pick-and-choose among the elements of either plan: Satan's, or God's. 'The issue? Who's better? Ergo we need the disclosure, so to make informed choices -- with eternal consequences.

Warning Label

You get what you want from either Plan: God's, or Satan's. Whether you know it or you don't, each decision you make picks from among elements in either plan. The element(s) chosen go into operation, you see: so, those elements which you chose determine how the inner 'you' develops. Likewise, for your personal 'outer', the characteristics of your immediate and eternal, future. Ergo the disclosure.

So, even though you are always deciding who will be your lord-for-that-moment, the Lord, or Satan -- you alone program yourself with each decision. That's the deal.

Satan's Plan, of course, is intended to prove he does a better job ruling man than the Lord does. To Satan, 'management' is all top-down, a matter of programming man by using his strengths, but also by appeal to his weaknesses. God's philosophy is different. God is all about bottom-up, using nothing of man's at all. God doesn't believe in programming -- not even for man's own good. To God, the person himself matters; to Satan, the human is a pet, to do tricks pleasing his master.

Satan nattily accuses God of having this same motive; of pretending to love man, but instead merely toying with him. So, man was poorly made by God, and as such is but a pet. Ergo his comments at the beginning of Job 1 and Job 2, and his philosophy behind the highest-echelon temptations of Matt4.

In short, Satan's contends that God (Son) not only made rational creation improperly, but also that He is hypocritical; the Trial is thus a sham, a kangaroo court. With Courtly manners (sometimes), or irrepressible contempt (sometimes), or genuine hurt (sometimes), and even genuine yearning for reconciliation (on his terms, of course), Satan (&Co.) makes his appeal arguments in the court of Heaven -- but also, to men.

    We hear his arguments, loud and clear, and we parrot them. Shouldn't "the rich" (God, and, per militant Islam, the US) be made to pay for "the poor" (creation, or all non-US freedom fighters)? Isn't it so-and-so's (God's, and now, the US') fault problems exist, since he can fix them (God/the US can snap his fingers, as it were, and fix all)? Does so-and-so deserve to BE so influential/powerful (does God deserve to be God) if he doesn't fix things? The "rich" (God/US) oppress the poor (creation/palestinians/whoever-wants-our-money); the poor (creation, etc.) are all victims, can't help themselves. All injustice is the fault of the more-powerful (God), never the fault of the least-powerful (creation). See the top-down logic, here? See the venom against God? See how Satan plays on the greed of those who have (legitimate or not) grievances? See how cleverly a criminal intent is clothed in sheep's wool? Yeah, pulling the wool over our own naive eyes.

    Naturally, the unbeliever concludes God does not exist, for if He did exist, the problems would not exist. Name any unfairness, and God is responsible. So, God must not exist, since the unfairness exists, and man must have invented God to comfort himself about death; to lord something over the lesser humans, and thus control them. See how this line of logic makes man think of himself as god? 'Like the Most High? See the stamp of satanic programming?

    Satan's 'deal' offers the little human's ego what he wants, in return for slavery. Enslavement, which is of course for man's good! -- is accomplished by dispensing, or withholding, goodies. 'Freedom' is reified to mean solely the possession of goodies. 'Slavery' is reified to mean solely the deprivation of goodies. So such distorted definitions are promulgated as good-and-true; they constitute the driving force behind a God-should-be-Sugar-Daddy definition.

    Its variant, Judgmental God, is equally childish and shallow, but is handy for those who want asceticism: self-righteousness 'goodies'. For them, the idea of becoming like the Most High is the ultimate fun in life. 'On par with Him, earning a right before Him. Religion, my friends. "The devil's ace trump", religion, comes in many flavors, including the one we see a lot these days, "taliban". Top-down. Control.

    See how crafty Satan is? He dismembers God, and hence our spiritual life, down to the proverbial "Brother Foot." (1Cor12:14). Never mind that we are of the Head, that is, Christ. Satan, in his unquenchable desire for revenge, wants Christ under his feet, so casts Christ (and the Godhead) as of no more value than a foot. A runner. A "go-fer", a peasant. A person who does only menial tasks. A person who is petty, judgmental. A Hander-Out of goodies. Or, a Withholder of them. Such a despisingly-cheap idea of God naturally filters down to a shoddy spiritual life: do, do, do -- doo-doo.

    These two definitions of God, Sugar-Daddy and Petty Judge, are made opposites so that the believer is caught between them, in a spiritual blitzkrieg. Trapped between these two narrow falsehoods, the believer is blinded to the real nature of God. So, for added entrapment, Satan often binds both ideas together as one: you get Sugar-Daddy if you are a good person, but Petty Judge if you are a bad person. All the world's religions tout this model. Mainstream Christianity touts it, too.

So, these are the ideas of God most humans have learned and been Pavlovly-trained to love. So, we make Satan look good, and we enthusiastically proselytize others on his behalf. Good marionettes, we are.

    We define everything, including ourselves, including God, by goodies. And why not? How can we avoid it, in a world which constantly needs mending? So, our mantra: a person is only worth what good he does. A person is only worth what good he does for 'me'. So I too am only worth what I 'do' for 'you'. So, what kind of life do we end up praising, or living? Wouldn't a life based on such values entirely revolve around goodies? No matter what lofty name -- say, 'love' -- we give to it? See how Satan has cleverly made believers, even, obsess over "earthly things"? And how can we avoid this obsession, since everything around us is defective? How can we avoid thinking that our trying to fix things down here, should win us something, even from God?

    People doing for people as a scorecard of one's worth; people doing for people as a scorecard of the spiritual life; people, people, people. If Satan and Co. can keep us busy enough here, God has no room in our lives, and is merely a designer label, something to 'have' to make self feel sufficient, a status symbol, an award. Busy accumulating points before this 'God', we prove we don't want the Real God; we don't think about how He is, we don't know Him, and we don't want to know Him. We just want to bustle around, feeling 'holy' through rousing rituals or sermons; and most of all, we want to bustle around, feeling we have done something 'worthy'! So we give Him our vegetables, like Cain tried to do.

    Cain slaved to make vegetables. Abel, he didn't work at all. The animals, what work were they? He had to watch them, that's about it. Let those lambs into pasture. Cain's work was a lot harder. Wouldn't God appreciate all of that effort? How could God dare spurn Cain's work? But He did -- so, Cain jealously learned murder from watching Abel's sacrificing the lambs, and thus learned how to murder his brother with the very sacrificial knife Abel had used on the lambs. [John 8:44 and 1Jn3:12, compared. 1Jn3:12 uses one of very many murder words Greek has. That particular word means to slay as an animal sacrifice, i.e., slitting the throat.]

    Like Cain, we despise God's scorecard. His scorecard is poor; after all our hard work, all our efforts, He doesn't take away our problems? We get terminally ill? How fair is that? Why do we have 'x' problem? Didn't our work count for anything? His Gifts relative to His Wealth are so small to us, we are insulted. It's no wonder we blame Him so easily for every mishap.

    Or, if we are less honest, we deem ourselves holy martyrs under God's harsh hand -- so any criticism against us is obviously a sign of our holiness! We will be resolute! We will be firm! We will be punished! And we will never see the truth.

But wait! aren't we supposed to help people? Wouldn't God want that? Doesn't the Scripture laud "good works"? Hmmm.

    Why do people want to have a relationship with one another? Is it to use the other person? To gain something from him? To gain self-esteem? To fulfill some need self has? Many of us painfully remember being victims of such motives. When such motives are the true reasons behind 'good deeds', a lack of reciprocity makes the good-deeder feel cheated: "after all I've done for YOU!" is the mind's reaction. It wasn't reciprocated the way the person felt it ought to have been.

    So the need for reciprocation, evening up the scorecard, slowly defeats whatever 'love' there was. Whatever 'love' there was, wears out like an old garment. It has been 'dirtied' too many times by being unrequited. It has been 'laundered' too many times by hurt tears. It has been torn too many times by ripped hopes. So, although we don't mean love to be conditional, we do have a 'price': we love, or help others, only for so long as we get whatever 'scorecard' reciprocation we seek. Is that really loving? 'Helping them? Or, us?

We apply this reciprocation scorecard to God. And we apply it with a double standard, to boot. God owes us, see. Never mind that we have no real reciprocating love for Him: He's just supposed to do what WE think He should do, and then we 'reward' Him with our praise. See, He's supposed to do all the giving, unconditionally. True talibanism, that. We call the shots, see, and then call it God's Will!

    We look at the problems in our world, and we don't see Him solve them the way we think they should be solved -- so we fly planes into buildings in His Name, or otherwise interfere in people's lives. Top-down, baby.

    Can't God take care of the people He made? Why do we feel such an urge to do it? Don't we trust Him to do it? If we say "yes" (and we will, stridently), then why don't we wait and first learn if the 'good' we have in mind agrees with the 'good' He has in mind? "But wait!" someone will say reading this, "how can you know, for sure?" Ahhh. Kinda gotta know the PERSON to know his opinion, eh?

    "But we do know: Scripture says give to the poor, give here, give there", someone will huffily reply. Hmmm. Scripture also says "the poor you will have with you always", and "he who will not work should not eat" (cf. 2Thess3:10-12), and "these people worship Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me", and "dead works", and Lev 26 punishments. So, maybe it is not good to do a 'good deed' in that particular place. Maybe we are being Pharisees, but in our zeal are blind to our real motives, or -- blind to the recipient's real need. God, of course, is not blind. Shouldn't He be consulted for longer than the soundbyte-minute it takes to point to a verse and exclaim, "Aha!" in self-justification?

Maybe the do-good urge is coming from Satan&Co., whose program of world improvement is rife with good deeds. Good deeds are its cornerstone. Sin is sponsored so to make people want to do good deeds. After all, the tree was named "the KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil". Adam didn't need to know what "good" was. Satan tempted the woman to eat from that tree, to know "good and evil". And, after the Fall, what was the first thing the pair did? A good deed: covering up their genitals.

    All the temptations in Matt4, are temptations to do good deeds! Speak stones into bread, feed the world (as well as self)! Jump off the Temple, so everyone will instantly believe in You and be saved! "Kneel" to take over the world, so to benefit the world, so to defeat the ruler of it! Yeah, Satan: feed the belly, not the soul. Seduce people into belief, rather than let them freely look at the truth; fix all visible offenses, yet leave the souls as empty as they were before. Yeah, these are good (for nothing!) deeds, allright.

So, not all 'good deeds' can be said to be of God.

Do we bristle at 'doing nothing'? Do we feel helpless, do we feel it's 'right' to pick the pimples we see (especially in others, mind you)? Do we need to fix things because, in reality -- dare we admit it? -- we are offended that the problem we see exists? Is not our urge to do 'good' rather more an expression of our offense that God Himself is allowing the problem? So we fantasize His 'hiring' us to handle the matter, thus making us good-like-God ('same temptation as Satan made to the woman)?

    But wait! Bread feeds, but stones starve! But wait! We should jump with joy! But wait! We should be humble workers for the benefit of the world, no matter what the cost to self! Yeah, Satan: we, not God, do the fixing, right? So we, not God, get the credit, right? So we, not God, are visible, right? Yeah, cut Him out of view! Heh.

None of these motives are godly. We thus have merely "a form of godliness, but deny its power." (2Tim3:5) A right thing must be born of a right motive, and be done a right way. Sure, it's hard to see a kid abused by his drug-crazed mother, but God isn't stopping it -- should we? What gives us the right to intervene between the child and his parent? Why isn't God stopping it?

That observation should give one pause. Maybe the solution we see (taking the child away, for example) is not God's solution, but Satan's: enslave people so they can't sin -- for their own 'good'. Keep them busy doing what pleases the eye of the beholder.

    Yeah, see, God's not doing something to help an innocent child. Maybe He doesn't care. After all, He cared so little for His Son He made His Son fast for 40 whole days, though fasting was never a law in the Law, but merely a popular custom. Fasting was excoriated, even (Zech7), but look how inconsistent: He made His Own Son go hungry, to prove Son's Love for Father? What about Father's Love for Son, huh? Won't even let the Son feed Himself at no cost to the Father? Won't even bother to save the Son if He jumps off the Temple, despite the promise of Ps91? Won't even spare His Son the Cross? Well, I'll give Him those Kingdoms so He doesn't have to go to the Cross. I'll spare the Son, allright. I won't abuse Him the way the Father does. I'll be the savior of the Savior. I'll save that innocent child from the drug-crazed mother.

    Yeah, Satan: above all, prefer looking down to looking up: see self, rather than the Most Gorgeous Person in the Universe. Preen, instead! Yeah, so 'good'! Heh.

'Sounds real familiar, don't it? Turn on TV, listen to any Congressional Hearing, have a conversation with anyone, go to church on Sunday. It's everywhere:

    Let's feed bodies -- oh, the poor children. Weep for the poor children. Weep, weep, weep: see how much we CARE? Let's get mad at bodies, too. Like at those no-good hussies who dared to have some fun and got pregnant. Let's call them murderesses cuz WE think that's what the Bible should say. Let's hunt them down, punish them with childbirth! But WE don't take the child and raise it, no! We force those hussies to raise the child. To keep on seeing what bad hussies they are! We want those hussies to SUFFER childrearing! Yea and hallelujah! To give the child the bad thinking which made their mammas get pregnant in the first place, so we can make MORE hussies from the kids! So we can keep on having a SUPPLY of hussies to get mad at, which we LUV to do!

    We gonna splash around, too. We gonna sing songs, and bake cakes, and ask everyone to give us money, doing God's Work, we are! We then gonna exorcise all dem nasty demons, and even tempt danger, like go to Afghanistan where missionary work is a crime! Why, we'll write nice tracts in a language they can't read -- so people can see 'God's' love in us. Us, not God.

    Yeah, we gonna make lots and lots of laws, too, so we can rool the world. We gonna rool, and we gonna kill sin. So WE gonna do it, not the Cross. We gonna fix it, not God. And God will reward us, yonder, in the good ol' bye and bye.

Yep, we're sure faithful satanic megaphones, huh. We do our father proud, yep we do.

Christians are the choicest hawkers for Satan's message, and throughout history we Christians have long had special grooming by our demonic handlers. Before us, of course, it was Israel who was the top target (not that demons have now abandoned the Jew, since God never will). Before Israel, it was anyone who had a thought (or two) of desiring to be with God -- "just because".

Why are such folks, targets? The ongoing vendetta Satan has against the Lord fuels him. Once, oh too long ago, he romantically loved Him. Thus, he didn't really see the Lord as He is, but rather iconized Him, much like a romancing couple view each other. Puppylove. Attraction. Ahhh, but if puppy love doesn't grow up to mature love, it atrophies into bitterness. Attraction must mature into Compatibility, for the attractions you find in the love-object are not the sole characteristics of that person/thing. So, Attraction motivates one to reciprocate, to subordinate to the object, even with respect to unattractions, so that Compatibility results.

    Compatibility, in turn, must mature into Rapport, which is a melding -- the thinking in the two individuals becomes harmoniously joined. The 'attractions' have expanded to become the whole object, because in Compatibility you came to appreciate ALL the characteristics in the object, even the ones which cause you discomfort. You thus come to love the object because it IS, not merely for what 'good' it does you. So your values meld -- it's hard to say where one of you begins, and the other ends, in thinking. So, both you and the object thus become more free, during this stage, of having to be 'worthy' -- evidenced, for example, by a desire to defend/come-to-the-aid of the object, "just because". Just because, you want to. For love, loves.

    Finally, this Rapport stage needs to reach Mature Love: the Object of love becomes more important than self. The hallmark characteristic of this Love stage's completion? Self regards what others would call "sacrifice", a joy. No reciprocation from the object is needed at all. Only when the Love stage completes, then, is the relationship completely free, because only then can either party be wholly 'whatever', without fear of loss. Only then, is the energy of Love fully freed to operate, because only then are all inter-object obstacles (due to differentials in characteristics) under the "feet" of Love.

    This process occurs item-by-item, and its 'progress' can be due to irrational compatibilities, etc., as well as real ones. So some items of attraction might rapidly progress toward Love, whereas others are 'sticky', so to speak. Thus, a wife might completely disregard her husband's beatings, because the beatings don't interfere with her love's stage-of-development. Yet if he pees on the sidewalk, she might become so disgusted, she ups and leaves him forever. On that item, there was no desire to subordinate at all, and it broke the relationship.

Satan got stuck in the (quite-vulnerable) Compatibility stage. Queer thing, about Love. If you don't grow up fully in it, the point at which you become stuck ruins your life. So, in Satan's case, he'd passed most items in the Attraction stage, so the attraction became permanent. Some attraction items progressed into Compatibility. Some even progressed into the Rapport and Love stages. However, some attractions, as we'll see below, never progressed into Compatibility. So he got stuck. On those items, the need for self to adjust to the object, so to become compatible with it (here, the "object" is the Son), required a level of subordination which -- was so UNattractive to Satan, he just quit. Notice how, because he was indeed IN the Compatibility stage, that it 'stuck', too: he ardently wants to become like the Most High. Yet he also needs to make the Most High do the subordinating, so he can justify his own insubordination, as 'virtue': as something owed him, rather than owed the Most High.

    Attraction demands receipt of (its idea of) 'reciprocity' FROM the love-object. This, because Attraction is inherently traumatic, for its goal is to reach Compatibility, which in turn stresses Subordination. The person Attracted has a attraction-based love, so is weak. He needs the love-object to evidence its own subordination to him via some kind of reciprocal attention. Receipt of 'reciprocity' from the love-object is reassurance of that attention, so that self won't fear 'hurt' if it subordinates to the love-object.

Satan came to feel disillusioned, then, because he didn't perceive he got enough reciprocity from the Son to justify overcoming his unattractions. Precisely how he came to that conclusion, we don't fully know, but it's clear he feels 'let down', unloved by the Son. We do know the paradigmal elements of his Fall (a scenario depicting those elements follows in the brown indented paragraphs, below), since of course they form a gestalt we all face -- one God faced first, given the impossible inferiority (compared to Infinite Righteousness) of any creatures being made. [One of the running weaknesses in Parts I and II is the question of how much angels and man knew at their respective creations. I assume here that 1) the human race was going to be created anyway and 2) that this fact was communicated, at least to Satan, before his Fall. Our being part of this Trial, then, constitutes an extra use of our otherwise-purposed existence. Such assumptions don't have to be true, and one can maybe argue that the Bible is relatively silent on these points. Still, the assumptions are used for a different reason: so to illustrate the known data. So also, in Part II, I assume that Adam and the woman didn't know of any Gospel for themselves prior to their Fall. Again, I made the assumption in order to flesh out what IS known. These assumptions will later be corrected as I learn more.]

We also know Satan's extreme beauty was somehow a material factor in his decision to rebel (Isa14, Ez28). Moreover, being "full of wisdom"(ibid), Satan knew the Father's Plan for him and the other angels -- they all knew. So also, he knew the Father's Plan for the Son to become the Messiah for yet-future human race, for he was the Guardian of the Throne, the highest angel of them all. Closest to the Son, walking to and fro among those huge gleaming gems, "the stones of fire".

    What a time to be alive. Way back then, "in the beginning", even though every angel knew all from first breath, the knowing-all was just so many libraries in the mind -- how each felt about the information varied considerably. For, with the first breath, came curiosity, and reviewing, comparing ideas and understandings. It was a glorious time, full of every kind of enjoyment. Conversations among the stones of fire were stimulatingly fantastic. Everyone was in love with the Son's gorgeousness, and longed to emulate Him, "just because". Everyone was new. Everything was new. Oh, what a glory, to sit and play with the excellency of the knowledge, all the time!

    And as time passed, the knowledge-volition interactions birthed and raised understandings. It became clear that the Plan was beyond angelic ability to execute. But, Righteousness was gorgeous, right? Yet, the daily confrontations with one's own inadequacies, the inability to measure up to those Divine, gorgeous Standards, well -- that was hard to take. Kinda hard to constantly see self falling so short. Kinda hard to have one's failure to measure up constantly staring one in the face! What, He has to pick me up yet again?? When will I ever be able to do this myself? When will I ever be able to give Him something of my own self, rather than something I had to get first FROM Him? The initial love of being associated with Someone So High, atrophied into a constant reminder that self was so inferior.

    So too, the Plan for humans was disturbing. It was analogous to the Plan for angels (cf Heb2, esp verses 2 and 16), and it began to bug him (cf his bitter comments in Job 1 and 2, and Matt4's Greek, esp. his tone-of-speech). Its tenets didn't fit his romanticized notion of the Most High. Like Isha (Adam's wife) would later do, Satan came to question the Motive of His First Love, because the Plan was pretty disturbing -- and was meant to be disturbing, as he well knew. He well knew that the entire goal was to develop the being beyond his own nature, and that this development could only occur via God's infusion, so to speak, of Divine Attributes: through learning Him. So, the creature never never never has, of himself, any merit at all, because he is too puny. Anything he gets, he gets only from the Most High. Yet he is supposed to obey the standards of the Most High. Or burn. So whatever abilities he does have, he can't use to honor the Most High, because all of his own abilities don't meet the Standards. Such abilities are the creature's own, to have for himself, to enjoy with his fellows. But! To be 'good', he has to reject himself, be a nothing, totally dependent on whatever the Most High chooses to do to/for him, in the name of Love: to supposedly 'grow' him. Forever.

    How fair was that, to give finite creatures such an impossible standard of INFINITE Righteousness, a standard which they could never meet, and thus hell would be inevitable, unless they grovel (believe in Christ)? How fair was that, to the Most High Himself, even, to demean Himself so low, paying the foreknown-to-occur sins of the human race? Such a stark choice! Fair, to whom? No way anyone can become 'good enough', so the shortfall forever stares one in the face. God forever foregoes His Standard, yet keeps on insisting it be met -- what for, since loud and clear everyone knows only HE can meet it! Man forever must see how small he is? It's intolerable to live so low, even for angels, how much more for mankind? No sugar coating, no easing, like -- even a little seduction, a little romance, to give the creature a way to earn righteousness via his own limited abilities to do something? So he won't feel utterly hopeless? Granted, God knows the human can't ever measure up -- but why impose that horrific knowledge burden on man?

    Really, it's too much to bear. It's like throwing everyone away. Something's wrong with this Plan. Maybe the Most High doesn't love, after all. Maybe it's all a ruse. If God really loved His Creatures, why set up for them a standard of righteousness that they can't possibly meet? Why impose on them the frustration of trying to be as good as the Most High in order to serve Him, when -- over and over, mind you -- the Most High constantly makes it known, "no one is as good as Me"? Wouldn't it be more loving to at least make a substitute method of righteousness they can actually do, one laden with good feelings of accomplishment -- rather than burden them with this nasty, tyrannical 'choice'? Why create them with independent abilities, but say they can't act independently of God and be 'good' toward Him? Isn't that hellish?

"Familiarity", so goes the saying, "breeds contempt." As the one Closest to Him, obviously it had been Satan's job to know the most, to be the liaison. So, he was the most familiar with the Son. And, to him, the Son's 'scorecard' was not good, enfin; Satan came to feel that he did all the sacrificing, and the Lord was just using him. MorningStar, the incurable romantic, became Satan, the incurable cynic. Pride blinded him to the naked Love message that God will do the impossible, God will fill up the creature for FREE! to make him worthy -- to the extent he freely consents, for Love Never Coerces. No romance, no seduction. Pride considers such an 'offer', emasculating. So he concludes, in his disillusionment, "I will MAKE MYSELF like the Most High [replacing the Most High, the Hebrew text means]."

Therefore, he became iconoclastic. Neat trick, that. Iconoclasm gives him a way to ease his inferiority complex, by putting him in the driver's seat: he, not God, sets the standards, and it's God, now, who doesn't ever measure up. Defense mechanism of "projection", that. Iconoclasm also gives him the satisfaction of putting down the God(Son) Whom he feels never loved him (the way he wanted to be loved). So, he gets 'even'. So, he makes hell for the God Whom he feels made his life hellish. Gotterdammerung, baby. Oh, what power, what sweetness, to hurt Him! Such sweetness is worth losing one's own life for, even in an eternal Lake of Fire! Yeah, baby, every second I burn YOU'LL KNOW THE PAIN EVEN MORE!!! Every second someone else I bring with me burns, YOU'LL KNOW THEIR PAIN EVEN MORE!!!!! Ahhhh.

Therefore, he's on a vendetta against the Most High. Therefore, anyone whom God favors must be a target for his bitter iconoclastic revenge (i.e., Christians, Jews, anyone with even a glancing interest in the Most High). Someone on a vendetta finds revenge the sweetest when love objects of the vendett-ee are used to produce that revenge. Someone on a vendetta is jealous. Jealousy is the mutation of the old attraction-stage of love -- the attraction never dies. It just turns bitter. Steal them away from Him. Get them to turn on Him. It's like, "Ha! You don't love me, so I'll make them hate YOU!"

Oh, how faithful we are, to hate Him! We superimpose Satan's cheap ideas on God -- saying God wants what WE say should be our works, for example -- and then worship those ideas. Who are we really worshipping? Surely not God -- we don't even bother to know Him. We instead choose our pet taboos, our pet crusades, our pet rituals, our pet 'good deeds' -- and we do pet tricks, preening -- and call it all 'worship' -- even, 'love'. We romanticize our body functions as making our souls worthy of Divine Reciprocity.

    Romantic notions are really not love, at all. Like Madame Bovary, the romantic fantasizes someone or something which pleases -- to fill a need, to make self feel good. The need is to receive unconditional love -- but the romantic sets all the conditions. It's quixotic, at best. It's also cheap, for the romantic's idea of 'love' depends entirely on goodies: appearance, wealth, importance, attention, wit, charm, status -- all of which, of course, are directed in favor of moi -- thus moi is wonderful, too. It's egoistic to the extreme. The so-called love object is, really, unknown. Only the object's accoutrements are actually loved. Possessively. Obsessively. And above all, CONDITIONALLY.

    Many a marriage fails because the couple can't get past the need to romanticize. Hollywood-style 'love' is demanded, and goes unmet. The dating is glamourous, but after the initial newness of setting up housekeeping together, the drudge of daily life takes its toll. Why? Because the definition of what constitutes a 'good' relationship has been reified into looks and actions of a very particular nature. Tahiti is 'good'. Dullsville is not. Shallowly-defined 'good', shallowly-defined 'love'. Ergo, disillusionment and iconoclasm.

    By contrast, God's Love knows all our flaws, and loves in spite of them. Which love, we spurn -- because we, like Satan, can't tolerate the truth: that we are unable to be worthy (Rom8:7-8). The fact that such a truth is the greatest joy of all -- that we need not be or do anything in order to get this love (Phil 3:9) -- alas, such a truth goes unenjoyed. Rather, the unconditional love we crave, we at the same time spurn, because to admit God's unconditional love means to admit our unconditional UNworthiness. You can prove this fact quickly: "to believe in Christ" for salvation requires zero merit, but is instead a simple act of faith in the MERITORIOUS OBJECT (Christ), yet is derided as a totally unfair 'condition'! As if it were us, not Christ, who 'sacrifice', by believing in Him! Or, the flipside, that "to believe" is not enough -- that we must do something, too! Ahh, yeah, baby -- gimme gimme gimme some credit, God.

    So, like Satan, we insist on romanticizing ourselves worthy of that unconditional love, and we won't let that fantasy 'go'. For example, the very idea of a 'hell' means, to us, that at least some of us are unworthy -- so maybe moi is, too. Not tolerable! So we invent a god who likes our pet tricks, our goodies -- and then idolize 'him'. We want a god we can appease, not a god who is Absolute, even if that means giving up 'unconditional love', of which only an Absolute God is capable. We want a fantasy god, like Satan does: one who seduces us, and one whom we can seduce in turn. Ahhh, romance with the Sugar Daddy/Petty Judge!

Looks like we're rather involved with this conspiracy, eh? So, what should we learn? Do we care? Whose side do we want to be on, and why? Our life is a movie, playing at every "theatre near you". Our call, as to how we want it to go. Satan's script, or God's.


The Lord vs. Satan: Core Trial issues

Then what is God's Script? To understand God's Script for us, we first have to understand what the Trial between God (maybe Father, not Son, is Prosecutor?) and Satan is about. On the human level, three fundamental categories of arguments are at issue:

  1. God made Himself obvious via the physical universe, but
  2. some folks just reject Him anyway, even though they KNOW, and
  3. some other folks really DON'T see Him via the universe, genuinely DON'T know, so don't yet believe because they can't tell He really exists.

The root question in these points? Why should unbeliever folks go to Hell? Regarding believers, Satan's variant root question: why should believers, who also behave like the #2 and #3 people, avoid Hell?

Satan's arguments are just. God's making the same arguments -- made them first, actually. (God had to determine how creation would be, so dealt with these questions first.)

Notice how these three topics coalesce into a Central Trial Issue: what decision does one make about God based upon both what he thinks he knows, and what he thinks he doesn't know?

Now you see why mankind is part of the Trial: man's decisions are Trial Evidence. The fact that 2/3rds of the angels opted not to rebel is not used in the Appeal Trial. Instead, an entire new class of rational creatures are created -- so that Divine Judgement can't be accused of being partial, even by the Defense (Satan). We are the conclusive evidence, and our decisions prove who is correct, of the two sides. Moreover, the degree of cognizance or ignorance we have about God is itself an inherent part of the Central Trial Issue. Not our 'works'. So, what are the contentions of both sides?


Free Will means Freedom to FAIL -- or, Grow In Love: Integrity Properties

Satan argues that failure (i.e., to want God) must mean God made angels and humans DEFECTIVE. Behind this conclusion is the idea that if God is perfect, what He makes should not be capable of failure. Thus, God is UnJust and UnLoving, for:

  • How can a creature ever be INDEPENDENT, and thus FREE, if his life forever remains DEPENDENT on God? If 'Freedom' and 'Independence' require the creature to be capable of failure, doesn't he fail solely due to how GOD made him? Did the creature make himself? So, then: the creature can't help himself, so why should he go to the Lake of Fire?

  • If God gives the creature free will as God contends He did, including the knowledge-and-power to rebel against God -- why should God punish the creature for the very knowledge-and-power God HIMSELF gave the person? So, then: the creature only rebels because God GAVE him that attribute -- should the creature thus be blamed for what God did to him?

  • God holds creatures to the Standard of His OWN Infinite Righteousness. Yet we know God's Own repeated Testimony that only HE is good enough. So, then: how is it fair to impose this impossible Standard on creatures, especially since this Standard is FOREKNOWN to result in inevitable creature failure?

  • God disregards the above issues, and instead requires only the Gospel as the standard for salvation. So, then: isn't the Gospel's "believe or burn" standard "arbitrary and capricious"? ["arbitrary and capricious", among other things, is a decision/rule which constitutes a violation of the fiduciary nature of someone who has an office of public trust, e.g., a judge. Satan's making a mortal abuse-of-power accusation, here. Variations of this accusation come up time and time again, in the Bible, i.e., regarding Job -- that God was bribing Job. Satan's language is seething, in parts.]

  • This Gospel is claimed Righteous on the grounds that creatures, being helplessly inferior to Righteousness, can only BECOME acceptable if they accept the Divine Gift of Salvation, and the post-salvation 'infusion', so to speak, of the Word. However, such believers fail the same ways as unbelievers do. So, then: how can it be said that this 'infusion' properly works, if they keep on failing? Alternatively, if they keep on failing despite this higher provision, why should even one believer NOT go to Hell? [Here, Satan's saying that even if one pretends God's Standard is not arbitrary and capricious, it doesn't work -- which is then further proof that His Standard is phony, to start with.]

  • How can a Loving God cast any of His Creatures into the Lake of Fire? ["arbitrary and capricious" argument, again, but this time to show that not only is God UnJust, not only is God abusing His Innate Fiduciary Power, but also God is UnLoving. In short, God has no integrity at all, and has no right whatsoever to rule, by God's Own claimed Standard.]
SATAN'S TRIAL ARGUMENT KEY ==> Notice how Satan's arguments don't even reference sin, except as symptomatic of a God-made defect. Thus, Satan and his Angels, though initially made with full knowledge-and-power, having free will, rejected the relationship with God based on that same knowledge. They thus represent Category #2, above. Their rebellion is based on a claim that God made creatures defective: so, if they can reduce or eradicate the defects in creation, they are better than God, and they should be the rulers of the universe.

    Therefore: Seduction, Lying, etc. are but good tools to reduce/eradicate these defects. For, Seduction requires good deeds toward the seducee. So, Tyranny is good, if that tyranny is seductively promulgated and seductively imposed. Because Seduction, free will is indeed choosing it. So, the 'tyranny' is actually Freedom. See the top-down logic? See how the world is so infested with it? Most of all, see how they come to embrace the philosophy they have toward themselves, toward life, toward ruling us puny humans? They really know the Truth. They really reject it. The Lie Is Better. And they claim God's using the Lie also -- but, lying, covers the lie with His so-called 'Truth'.

God, by contrast, explains that a rational creature cannot independently exist, be a person, absent free volition. Free will means freedom to will, and to will against. If volition is not wholly free, any 'creature' is nothing more than a super computer. Volition, being free, includes the freedom-to-fail. Absent this freedom to fail, 'free' is a sham. Further, Love cannot exist apart from free will, lest it likewise be just so much programming. wanting is the beginning of love, its root (being "pro" a thing). Further still: Love depends on knowledge; so, knowledge must also be a choosable thing. So, one chooses based on #2, what he knows, and #3, what he doesn't know. To make that choice, one must want the content: here, God. So, if a person wants God, he chooses to know -- whether he sees proof at the moment or not. Also, if a person doesn't want God, he can #2, reject what he knows, and/or #3, choose not to know.

Therefore, the ability to avoid failure must be built into the person by means of his own free will, because if not freely chosen, it is -- again -- imposed programming. This ability must be freely chosen for another reason: love. One avoids failure only if one loves not failing more. That is a choice, a decision. With every decision, one foregoes the rejected option, in favor of the choice made. Thus, a preference is expressed: positive, "for" the choice; negative, "against" the alternative. So, in every decision -- based both on what one knows and what one doesn't (yet) know -- one is also choosing to forego any alternatives. So, in every decision, one "loves" the choice made over and against the choice(s) foregone. LOVE MEDIATES choice.

However, love might love choices which compete. "Compete", because they aren't all compatible with each other. Or, more likely: "compete", because they may need to be mediated into a hierarchy, compartmentalized, so that they all can be achieved. For example, if one is, at the same time, hungry and needing to go to the bathroom, which desire should be satisfied first? If one wants to purchase a thing, but the money available means something else desired can't be purchased, how does one choose between these two "competing" desires?

One thus needs internal strength, integrity -- so to mediate between the competing wants. "Integrity" means the ability to hold together well despite pressure from the "competition". If the integrity is violable, then even if one loves, the love can be violated, worn-out, even killed, by the "competition".

Hence the need for Truth, Righteousness and Justice, so Love has a secure basis for mediation. God is Inviolable because He is Infinite. The Infinity Attribute means, among other things, that all Attributes are in INFINITE homeostasis. Infinity's Integrity is thus totally stable, unchangeable, yet wholly free to fail because the Freedom is infinite, too. Free will is thus infinitely balanced to execution power: the ability to execute choices is in homeostasis with the desire, that is, the choices themselves. So there is no competition, because all desires are subordinated to Righteousness, and all power is balanced to desire. Love is what makes this subordination, this balance, this equilibrium 'stick': so God's Integrity holds together, infinitely stable, against any and all pressure -- even the pressure of Judging His Own Son.

    HAPPINESS KEY ==> Thus, true happiness: the freedom to fail remains inviolate, also, by forever remaining foregone, unused. So, it's a 'glory of the foregone/unused', so to speak. Finity cannot inviolably forego, even if perfect (unless deprived of free will), because it is not big enough. But God's Attributes are 'big enough'. God is Uncreated, so there is no way to 'create' Infinity in Finity and thus make the finite creature 'big enough'. However, God can share Himself, without loss, because He is Uncreated Infinity. So: if God grants this Sharing in response to a finite-but-free volition positive to Him, even finity can "grow" in God's Own Integrity, and thus become, independently, "big enough". That growth, in turn, is alone the way to become "good" by God's Standard.

    (Satan nods, here. His central argument is that God didn't make angels and humans 'big' enough.)

    For The Truth is, whether angel or human, the person is alive. Hence, has desires. Hence, is expressive. Hence, needs both to give and take, which is a normal part of being a person. Yet, these needs compete, until the needs can be "docked" into a hierarchy, such that ALL of them can be harmoniously achieved. Love, when it grows enough to "bond" with Truth, and therefore Righteousness and Justice, becomes competently mediative, so accomplishes that "docking". Until this happens, one is not happy, but is assailed by warring needs. In short, Integrity is a "Mediator", and makes peace. Thus, happiness.

So Happiness requires love-for-righteousness, to exist. So, angels and humans have free will. Love Must Be Learned, and Learning depends on free will CHOOSING to learn. In short, the person (angel, human) needs to grow bigger than he is, by means of love-choices which are pro-Righteousness. As noted earlier, God's making one initially perfect cannot trespass free will. If it did, then the being wouldn't be free; tyranny of any kind is anathema to God. So, the initially perfect person nonetheless needs to "grow" -- in Love. 'Love for what he already knows about God -- or, love to learn more about Him. So, if either one favors what one already knows about God, or favors the (i.e., further) acquisition of God's thinking, one chooses "for" God -- which results in a growth in Integrity, owing to a growth of Love-for-knowledge-of-God. (Rejection, of course, would mean sin, and the loss of perfection. How God solves that problem is progressively explained here in Parts I-V.)

    In short, God grows a person by means of the person wanting (i.e., to know) God. That wanting is a choice; God freely responds to such a free choice by transmitting God's Own Knowledge, the Truth, (for us) Bible Doctrine, which only He can do: this transforms, "grows" one's soul. (cf. Rom12:1-3, Eph3:15-20, Jas1, 2Pet3:18. Search also on "enlarge", a Bible keyword for this concept.)

    This is how God's Own Integrity gets built into the person -- for the Truth of God is part and parcel of all of His Other Attributes. So, the Knowledge also has the property of Truth, Righteousness; Justice, Love. So, the creature thus being built can develop the ability to avoid failure, by means of Learning to Love Righteousness -- which Love results from the Knowledge of the Truth of Righteousness, if the person is positive to the Knowledge. [John 8:32, Gal5:1, etc.] It's not enough to merely know what is right. How does one value what is right? So, even if one didn't know (i.e., God), how does one value getting the knowledge? So, it's not merely the knowing, nor merely the wanting, but both, which make for (or destroy) the ability to avoid failure. Either one comes to love something else more than God, and hence fails, or comes to love God more, and hence succeeds. This is the lesson Satan didn't "complete": the lesson of Love.

So, developing a Love for God is the critical issue, not the creature's own attributes (so, not works). It's the volitional attachment to God's Integrity which justifies the sharing of God's Integrity, and the sharing of God's Integrity produces the inviolable happiness, the inviolable ability to avoid failure. Love is the key to everything, the reason to live. The "bottom" of Love is WANTING a thing, being "pro" a thing. The "top" of Love is giving one's all to a thing. So, "developing a Love" means growing in Love: from the "bottom", to the "top".

    See, the "heart" of Integrity is composed of Truth, Righteousness, Justice, and Love (its driver components): +T+R+J+L=I. The first three, absent the last one, make life hellish. What joy is there, if Truth is not Loved? What joy is there in self being right? Yet also, L apart from the R, J, T, is storm-tossed, since Love -- loves. It needs a mediator, a protector. T, R and J do that. Yet also, L husbands T, R and J, for it is through Love that the RJ find fulfillment and happy function. It is through Love that Truth is cherished and thus "in front". (See Ps89:14-15 Lord loves Righteousness, Justice verses.)

    Here's the irony, though: Love by nature is also 'transitive' -- it goes to an object. Question is, what's to be the object? If the object is not Righteousness, Love self-destructs. Why? Because The Truth is, whatever is not Righteous is harmful. "Righteousness" is not merely "rightness", because there is no glory (Love! enjoyment!) in merely being right. To qualify as "Righteous", it must also be Gorgeous, not merely right -- so Love can love a Desirable Object. So, think of "R" as a concatenation: Right[ness], + [gorg]eousness. So it is Gorgeous Rightness, not merely rightness. So it is Gorgeous Rightness, not merely gorgeousness.

    In short, Love needs to be mated to Righteousness. Absent this mating, L is no good -- but also, R is no good, for then Truth is divorced, so 'righteousness' would instead be mated to Lies. So Righteousness ceases to be Righteousness if not espoused to Love. Justice is the expression of Righteousness, the carrier-outer, the executor of Righteousness. So, Truth, Justice, Righteousness, and Love must all be espoused, "one". (Sidenote: The Bible's Hebrew word, "tsedekah", and the Greek word "dikaiosune" mean both Righteousness and Justice -- because the two cannot be divorced. Unhappily, English has no single word to match, so translators must use either "Righteousness" or "Justice", thus divorcing what cannot be divorced.)

    Why must they all be espoused? Try imagining R and J 'run' by hatred! Or, just R and J alone: what happens? Life becomes a dry 'diet' of rules and regulations, judging or approving, do's and don'ts. It becomes autonomic, rotelike. Dead, even while living. That's true hell, is it not? Granted, one does need to learn what's right, and live by what's right. But why? Because it's good -- but what IS "good"? Is a thing good if not gorgeous? If gorgeous, then one LOVES it, revels in it -- so only then is 'good', good. R and J alone aren't concerned with the requisite that "good" be enjoyable. Love, though, IS concerned with enjoyment. So, absent Love, there is no enjoyment, however 'right' or 'gorgeous' a thing might be. So, they need to all be 'married', in balance -- or, life is hell.

    Worse, R and J alone can only adjudicate -- they can't solve anything. A murderer can be sentenced, but the victim is still just as dead. Two lives die because one murdered another. Sure, it's just for the murderer to also die -- but the loss is never recovered. R and J alone, then, are sterile. They can pronounce blessing, or punishment; they can pronounce rewards or loss. They can't solve any loss, for to solve the loss, requires foregoing -- which means to forego R and J.

    Thus, for R and J alone, a hopeless paradox exists: the R and J standards must be met, but cannot really be achieved, because the Standard must be foregone in order for the loss to be recovered. So, R and J alone are unfulfilling. Love, however, is innately foregoing: that is its nature. So, only Love can fulfill R and J, and Love can only do that by means of bonding to, living on, The Truth.

      As noted earlier, Love needs an object. Absent R and J, Love alone has no object, either, so is constantly unfulfilled. R and J give Love something worth loving. Absent R and J, love has no protection, so goes to any object -- suicidally. Absent L, R and J are sterile. So Love solves the loss, solves the paradox, by Giving Its All to R and J -- again, by means of bonding to, living on, The Truth. Of course, to be able to forego itself, Love must itself BE Righteous and Just. Which it becomes, if Righteousness/Justice is the Object of Love. For Love bonds/melds when it is complete, whole: not merely Attraction, not merely Compatibility, not merely Rapport, but United. So it is, in God. So, Love's Bonding to R and J makes Love inviolately Righteous and Just -- so it can always retain its "foregoing" nature, yet always Satisfy and Solve. Because, Love first bonds to, lives on, The Truth. (That's how Christ became "The Way, The Truth, the Life".)

      Therefore, if Love is Righteous and Just itself, it can indeed forego its own Righteousness and Justice, if it can give itself to serve Righteousness and Justice (the Love Object): and thus, solve everything. Dock everything. Without compromise. And of course, it's not Righteous to be vulnerable, is it? Integrity means being able to withstand all offenses/opposition, doesn't it? If a building can be knocked down by something, then the building lacks integrity to that extent, cannot 'hold' against what can knock it down. So, Love Fulfills Righteousness and Justice, and Holds All, Withstands All, makes Integrity 'stick' Against All Opposition. Happily. All this, by means of The Truth.

      That is why Integrity isn't Integrity, unless all four attributes are sufficiently-developed, and in balance. For these attributes to develop, there must be sufficient knowledge -- hence, learning -- hence, free will choosing to learn. So, if one hasn't learned Truth and thus Love sufficiently, or rejects Truth, Love, any prior learning of R and J are "deformed", and therefore heinous, destructive. Hence, they all need to be 'married', in balance.

So the "top" of love is to pour oneself out, give one's all. One is willing to forego everything, do whatever it takes, to benefit the love-object. So love's nature requires the mediating "strength" of Integrity. Absent R and J, either love self-destructs, or does something stupid, because -- again -- apart from RJ, Truth is DIVORCED. So then Love would stupidly imagine itself to be doing 'good' for its object, or would stupidly imagine itself doing 'good' for itself. So, absent R and J, Love could not accurately fulfill its pour-out goal. Instead, love would eventuate in madness. It wouldn't know that what it did was no good. Unable to stop trying, though, it would drive the self crazy. Because love, loves. So, absent R and J, love 'thinks' itself "in the Light" (1Jn) -- but is not. So goes round and round and round. Insanely. Just like that song in the movie "Please Don't Eat the Daisies", starring David Niven and Doris Day. While rehearsing a play, Doris Day beautifully sang the problems with love: "Some days you're up, some days your down...Love's like a circus! and you're on a trapeze...High, low, anywhere the wind blows..goes love."

SELF-DESTRUCTION KEY==> In sum, if one mates his love to anything but Love for God, Who Alone is Infinite +T, +R , +J and +L, such other-mated-love becomes hell itself: 'destroying the lover, and all the lover's love-objects, too.

Since the "top" of love is to pour oneself out, give one's all, what does that mean, in God? God, being Infinite, is Infinite Truth-Knowledge, Infinite Love. So, due to what He Infinitely knows, He accurately and forever chooses to forego His total freedom-to-fail, because He Infinitely Loves R and J. This Love-attitude is His Thinking, and thus His Power. (Omnipotence, like all other attributes, has no purpose, apart from Love.) Therefore, God's Love for creatures is Independent of their worthiness. He doesn't need reciprocation. He doesn't need reciprocation, because Love for Righteousness replaces that need, Substitutes for it. So, Love can accurately pour itself out totally to creatures, inviolably. Forever.

So, God's Thinking (Bible Doctrine), which is the dynamic of His Integrity, when poured (for example) in man, results in this Integrity being built in man, "line upon line, precept on precept". Slowly, easily, a little each day, enjoyably, like food. Like food, this Doctrine needs to be freely chosen, moment-by-moment, lest the person become a pet (God won't force you to "eat"). See? a person can choose to have God "grow" (or remake) him; of course, this choosing means he WANTS God.

    For example, the Holy Spirit "grew" Christ's Humanity by means of Truth Deposits (Bible Doctrine), way beyond His Human limitations -- so much so, He could pay for all sins on the Cross. As Parts II-V will show (plus "Nature of God" section, the Home page's "Fixes" link), His Love became so high, each successive laceration with our sins was actually a successively-greater JOY to Him (Greek of Heb5:8-9,Heb12:2, among other cites). How? Because, when Love is high enough, even pain expresses Love. Even pain becomes pleasure, at that level: pain fuses into pleasure. To us, this sounds like masochism. To Christ, the pain meant He was getting what He wanted. It was an outlet, to maximally express, pour out, His Love for His Father, for the Gorgeous Truth (Bible Doctrine), which the Holy Spirit gave Him in advance; and, to pour out His resultant Love for us. For, He kept on shouting parts of Ps22 in triumph: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani! My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!" He was Happy about it! Celebrating! Like the first Adam, who waited so long for the woman (see Part II), this Last Adam likewise said, in effect: "AT LAST!" He'd trained His Entire Life for this moment. He yearned for it, as He told the disciples at the last Passover. He Got It. And, He's Ecstatic, Fulfilled. ON the Cross.

    Please pardon the sexual metaphor (although Paul himself alludes to it in 1Cor6:16-17), but no other comes close: it was like a long orgasm, with one's totally-beloved spouse. The 'effort' of making love makes the love-act's pleasure intensively increase, even though one is sweating, maybe even tiring. Neither spouse cares, for they are too busy enjoying each other. The intensity climbs to such a level, they climax. That is the closest analogy I can think of to explain what His Joy meant. [Frankly, it's a common analogy, in Scripture's original languages; why translators cover it up I'll never know, for one of the main themes in Scripture is that life with God is designed to be like intimate marriage. Sadly, given all the prissy coverups in translations, the reader misses this most-important message God relays. If this idea bothers you, use 1Jn1:9 and ask Father in Son's Name to help you find the verses which you will recognize illustrate this most-important doctrine. That way you know it's God telling you, not just some brainout writing a webpage. Btw:If you do keep reading these Parts I-V, you will find some of those verses.]

For fallen humans, "salvation" means the Holy Spirit spiritually regenerates the person (John 3, Tit3:5), so that, post-salvation -- if the individual wants it -- He can spiritually grow him up to have Inviolable Integrity, just like the Most High -- but with the Most High. 'No matter how 'defective' the person might otherwise be or become. So, then and only then is the person "good", because he's been "grown" big enough to independently have the Happiness and Love of God. In short, the person has "grown" big enough, because God poured Himself into the person. Through Love. (Rom5:5.)

    Think about it: what good is it to "be good"? Is "good", good, if not happy? Is "good", good, if alone? To preen in front of a mirror, is that all "good" is worth? To have people praise you for being "good", what benefit is that? Then they control you; they control your happiness. Is "good", good, if dependent on reciprocation? If it has a 'price', or if it only comes from being influenced, manipulated, coerced? God says "no".

    'Good' is good-for-nothing, if 'unmarried', on its own. Absent the completion of Integrity, which only comes from learning to love God, 'good' has no purpose. Learning to love God creates a Replacing Reciprocation -- so one doesn't need 'goodies' or even 'good': God is the meaning of 'heaven', and God is 'enough'. Else, 'good' is a Talibanesque tyrant, seeking to salve its loneliness, by mating with pride. Learning to love God, that's the proper 'mate', and true freedom. Such learning is voluntary, so requires wanting God, wanting to get and 'live in' knowledge of God. Then and only then is one free, happy. Then and only then is life, living.


Free Will's Choice-to-fail causes Anti-Integrity 'Properties'

Development of Integrity and Love must therefore also freely work in reverse. For, to reject Truth, is to reject God. To reject God, is to reject Truth, for "God is Truth". So, to reject learning Truth, is to reject God also. So if Truth is rejected, then so is R, J, L. So, anti-Integrity properties REPLACE whatever Integrity properties were there or were being developed.

For, By God's Design, Volition freely programs the soul, and thus the brain's neurons, because the brain is the outlet for the soul, the material interface for it. The brain, in turn, is bi-directional, feeding back TO the soul: a) the stimuli it receives from the environment, b) associated past memories and data, so c) Volition's Prior Programming Commands. Upshot? Whatever choices one makes, make him. "As a man thinks in his soul, so he is" (Prov 23:7, KJV). Choices to reject thus create the impulse of rejection. If volition doesn't override these prior programmings, such programmings are 'approved' again: thus they widen and deepen. So, if the object of the rejection is some truth the person doesn't want, other truths will become infected, too: a vacuum is thus created (Greek: matiotes), and then lies rush in to replace the truth rejected, so stasis can be maintained. Romans 1 explains this sad process in detail, as does Romans 6 and 7.

So, any choices which are anti-God have the innate properties of destruction, death (cf. Romans 7 and 8). So the neurons, thus programmed with a lifetime of rejection, only 'understand' rejection, because such a person's soul has programmed itself and the brain to only send or receive communications of rejection. That is why God forever chooses to forego His eternal freedom-to-fail. That is why He condemns anti-God choices. Condemnation is but the recognition of (and, if one 'awakens' due to hurting, the potential escape from) these deadly properties.

    Choices to gain non-God knowledge at the expense of knowledge of God, at the expense of relationship with God produce an anti-integrity: a self-destructive, romanticized love, due to the imbalance: one's righteousness and justice are not balanced by Love-for-God. So, the person becomes unbalanced: since, Truth was Rejected, and thus is absent. This anti-integrity romanticizes (feigns) balance; it counterfeits, as integrity components, obsessive, even masturbating, preoccupations: with self, with works, with 'wrong'. The preoccupation with self, replaces Love; the preoccupation with works, replaces Righteousness; the preoccupation with 'wrong', replaces Justice. So, the person joylessly disintegrates, as he 'ages' in this substitute anti-integrity. To keep going, he must fantasize (substitute for truth). As each fantasy inevitably dies, it is replaced by another. Over and over. So, his unhappiness intensifies. Each successive disappointment calls up the memory of all others, so even a small loss causes the 'sin' of them all to lacerate him. Over and Over. One becomes maddened by the pain's taunting, torturing desolation, desperate for solace. Escape! Run away! Retreat from reality! So, in self-defence, one becomes gradually insane.

    Why? This 'unholy trinity' of anti-integrity is a negative orientation to life, rather than a positive one; its negativity derives from rejection of God. No one can withstand prolonged, negative obsession. Hence the person shatters, within; he shrivels, becomes embittered, and -- eventually -- goes insane, unknowingly tormented by fantasized, unfulfillable urges for self-esteem. This happens because Love has no proper object. Its proper object, Righteousness, was substituted. So love becomes suicidal, and the person fragments, disintegrates, and then deadens, within. The affected individual is wholly locked inside a progressively-hypersensitive quest for self-esteem. All other persons become objects, since a prolongation of anti-integrity kills empathy: there becomes no room for any other 'person' BUT the self. So, the insanity insanely 'protects' him, by a constant hallucination that he is "in the light", right, happy. But really, dying, locked inside the self-absorbed dungeon which can't afford any truth to shine inside.

    Therefore, fantasized 'happiness' definitions, i.e., preoccupation with "earthly things", goodies -- fill the empty, gloomy dungeon. The substituted definitions of 'happiness' are all illogical, but the person who's rejected God has rejected truth, so is blind to his own insanity. This blindness is abetted by the (usually) large numbers of fellow-beings who share that same blindness, for the hallmark characteristic of arrogance is, more-makes-right. So, the person fantasizes himself 'normal', and never sees how insane he truly is. Moreover, the anti-integrity has its own veneer of stability, to prevent insanity's detection. To use a psychiatrist's quote, the veneer causes the person to "present himself well". He becomes a good actor, in essence. Fooling even himself. (See Anthony Hopkins, as "Corky", in the old movie, "Magic".)

    Thus the person who chooses non-God at the expense of rapport with God destroys himself. No matter how 'good' he thinks he is, he is no good, and miserable. Condemnation is the only thing God can justly do for such a person. Why? Because condemnation is the sole means of providing such a person with a link to sanity. Condemnation 'speaks the language' a negatively-oriented person can understand. Even a criminal can understand punishment; it is the one Truth he recognizes. The fear of it can protect him from making further bad decisions. We are all 'criminal', because our negative orientation destroys us. Ergo the need for condemnation -- and, the blessing it affords.

So: based both on what we know and what we don't, we choose to either keep the knowledge we have, or choose to get more. Conversely, we can choose to reject what we know, and/or choose not to know (or choose not to know more). That is the heart of the issue: what/who do we want to know (or know more)? Our choices end up being our love objects, because accepted knowledge begets love. So, what we keep choosing to know, we come to prefer , and eventually -- love. So: we are voting. Do we vote to learn anti-integrity, and thus come to love insane, masturbating, negativity? Or, do we vote to learn God, and thus gain true Integrity -- from loving Him, which likewise produces a free, positive orientation to life? (cf. Eph3:19's "and to come to know the love for Christ" -- corrected translation, for the ingressive aorist of yinosko, "know".)

Satan, of course, prefers the windblown "circus" idea of Love, and is giving his all to it. By contrast, he deems God's "Love" His tragic flaw, His core weakness. "Give oneself away for someone else? Pour oneself into someone else? Without reciprocation? Is He kidding? Where's the so-called 'balance' in that? Ahhh God rationalizes away His faulty ability to create. He's lying, isn't He? Pretends to love us, so sells us on giving ourselves to Him, when all along -- heh, he wants to be served! Aha! Just as I thought!"

    So Satan feels that God somehow 'lucked out' in creating Satan, making by accident a creature who is actually superior to God. God has the superior power, this Satan does not dispute. God, however, has a faulty Righteousness, Justice, Love. In short, God is brute force with faulty thinking, at best. God is really stupid, carried away by his own lust: being in love with Love. So Satan intends to parlay God's tragic flaw into Satan's victory. Then, that same Love will be Satan's pawn. Forever.

    So, Satan's using the Trial to trick God into some kind of failure. If God fails to deliver on even one of His promised covenants, for example, then God proves Himself to be less-than-advertised, and should relinquish His Authority, in favor of the more-able to rule (Satan&Co). Or, if Satan proves that he can make man happier than God can do, Satan has proved himself the more able ruler. If Satan can pull off either of these two goals, God will abdicate. That's the deal.

    Satan's also using the Trial to create Gotterdammerung. You know, Richard Wagner's fiery end: If I can't win, then you don't get to win, either. So, burn up even Valhalla. Satan's not stupid: he knows by now he's very unlikely to win. Still, it's better to go down, taking as many of the people Christ paid for with him, so to 'get even' with the Son. Even back in Matt4 (Third Temptation) he proved how he hates the human race, for failing him. After all, only unbelievers can be demon-possessed, and look how they get treated? 'Thrown into fires, made to gash themselves, made to drool, made dumb or deaf or otherwise-goofy. Or, made sooooo very smart, building soooo many 'good' things, only to become totally bitter in the end (e.g., Herod the Great). Believers, too: Satan&Co. love their bitter endings (viz., Ananais in Acts 5, Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed the Lord -- see Matt10).

    So Satan&Co. love to satirize us. One of their favorite ways to ridicule humans is religion: oh yeah, they do want you to believe in God! But not by His Real Name. See, God loves. Won't seduce or mislead. So, will ONLY answer to His Real Name (cf 2Chron7:14 and Isa 44-45). So, Satan&Co. delight the most in getting folks to buy religious tripe: "all religions are the same" (yeah, they are all sadistic, tyrannical, me-be-godlike, but clothed in such seductive language!); or, "any form of worship, if sincere, is okay" -- yeah, because they are being worshipped, not God! Oh, how they laugh themselves silly at these puny humans who can possibly think that their intellectualizing, their moneygiving, their avoiding cowmeat buys them something with God. So, Satan&Co. invent the wildest forms of observances and taboos, and we puny humans just eat up the Yucky-Gertrude-Cheese definitions of God. "Y" for "Yahweh", "G" for "God", "C" for "Christ". Yeah, let's change haShem, "The Name". Satirize Deut6:4!

    Again, believers and Jews are the top targets, for those folks actually have the Word -- at least, in their living rooms. Believers can't be demon-possessed, but they can be toyed with mentally, and (to a lesser extent) physically. So, Satan&Co. opt for getting such folks to be enthralled with flashy ceremonies, miracles, powers, or other magic. You know: ponderous robes and incantations, with that wonderful music which makes you feel so close to 'god'! Or, power stuff, like tongues; "healing"/casting out demons, either of which is really one demon telling another demon, "Okay, leave now" -- so the stupid Christian thinks he did it. Satan&Co. just love a good joke, you see. More mundanely, they opt for getting Christians and Jews to overvalue their works. This is a much richer revenge, for such folks get certain protection from God, and thus Satan&Co. can leverage the protection for their own purposes: to build a nice world which needs no God. In sum, they aim to get as many folks as possible to join them in the Lake of Fire. 'Especially, nice people. Moral people. Preferring-self's-good-to-God people. So they can torment them forever. After all, Christ paid for all humans, so every human is therefore a love-object. By putting down humans, they are putting down Christ.

The upshot: Satan's stuck on 'wrong', but God's 'stuck' on Love. Satan's stuck on putting down, and God's 'stuck' on putting UP: putting up Truth above His Own Person (Ps138:2b), putting up the serpent in the wilderness so that all can be healed; putting up His Own Son, making a shameful public display of Him, so to put Him above all powers; putting us up IN Him forever, putting up with our inanities so that we might learn Christ. (OT and Gospel brazen serpent passages, Col2:14-15, 1:25-27,Heb1 and 2, Phil2:5ff, 1Tim 3:16, Gal3-5 esp 3:19.)

BIGGEST INTERPRETATION KEY ==> Notice how both God and Satan look at, and talk about, the same data, but from two opposite perspectives: Love, or Hatred. SAME FACTS. Opposite premises, opposite conclusions, because the NATURE of the person viewing the facts is 'opposite' in orientation!

    So, what does the 'middle', the fact database, add up to? Did God create a "believe or burn" Gospel because He's a sadistic son-of-Belial, or did He create a Totally Free Way to have a relationship with Himself, out of Totally Unencumbered Love? A negative orientation puts down the Gospel, just as it is in the habit of rejecting/putting down everyone and everything else in life. A positive orientation puts up the Gospel (and puts up with the Gospel, so to speak, because God is trusted to have a good reason for creating it so) -- which, with sufficient spiritual growth, eventuates in putting up everyone and everything in life, even its 'crosses'.

    Look: when we accuse God of being unfair to make (say) such a Gospel, we interpret the Gospel's "Believe or Burn" message to mean God's motive for such a requirement is egotistical. Therefore the God of the Gospel can't be God, or the Gospel can't be the Gospel. But wait a minute: are we really looking at the Gospel? What does it say? "Believe or Burn". One of two "B's". Very stark choice, that. So: we can look at BURN and not BELIEVE, to justify an offensive conclusion as to what the Gospel means. Or, we can look at BELIEVE and not BURN to justify a happy conclusion as to what the Gospel means. God says both things. He looks at both. Now, do we look at how easy is the upside, merely believing? Or do we obsess over the downside, the burning? Does God get any benefit-of-the-doubt that, since He'd be having to look at burning people forever, He'd not allow such an alternative -- unless all other alternatives were all worse? More importantly -- unless this alternative wasn't wholly a glorious, pure-profit "best" for all parties, and all other alternatives were not only unprofitable, unglorious, but even more hellish?

    A child doesn't understand, when Daddy or Mommy spank him, that the spanking benefits him. It seems like Daddy or Mommy is mean, egotistically asserting power and bigness. The child might never come to understand that the spanking, is love. Then again, if he grows up -- he'll come to see that the highest expression of his parents' love was in their being willing to hurt the one they loved in order to benefit him. After all, if you stub your toe, you'll forget the pain, but Omniscient God forever knows that pain -- Omniscience 'can't' forget and stay omniscient. So your pain is pain to God, too. Bigger pain, for Him than you, because HE is bigger.

    See, it depends on your orientation to God, how you conclude the meaning of the Gospel. If you're negative to God, you'll be negative to the Gospel. If positive to God, you'll be positive to the Gospel. The Gospel is not to blame. The people from whom the Gospel seems to 'come' are not to blame. In all events, the issue is God, and God alone. God is really 'whoever' God really is. Our view of Him may or might not match the reality of God's True Nature.

    So: arguments that the brown man's god is worse/better/same as the white man's god, and similar excuses, are just as much nonsensical put-downs as looking at "Burn", but ignoring "Believe". What, does man own God? What, is a culture or race superior because it just happens to have a correct belief? What, is this some kind of competition, 'my god is better than your god', with the result that the god isn't honored at all, but rather the ones claiming to have the correct belief? Conversely: what, God must accept any ol' definition of Him you want to make, but you get the right to be upset if someone misstates your name and nature? Over and over again? If your name is "Clyde", but someone insists, "No! You are Yucky Gertrude Cheese!" -- are you unfair to turn away? Of course not. So why is God branded as unfair? 'Especially since, if He answers, He's in effect LYING to the person who calls Him by the wrong name? 'Especially since He wrote a whole Book, a Will, even, to disclose Himself and His Decisions?

    Such put-down 'reasoning' is a handy way to chop God into Brother Foot meniality, and Satan loves it. Man's relative superiority or inferiority has nothing whatsoever to do with what the Truth of GOD is, right? Right. God is whoever He is. What, is a thing true because you or I say it is, or is it true because IT -- repeat, IT -- is? What, does the fact that person "A" knows a truth make him something over Person "B", who doesn't know? Of course not. And, of course, it doesn't benefit God that you 'give' him your belief, either, no matter how correct that belief is. If your belief is in the real God, that benefits you. No matter your background.

    We all know someone who delights in putting down. Whatever that person does, is good -- and God help anyone for whom that person does a favor! The recipient will never be allowed to forget it! Makes no difference if the recipient didn't want the 'favor' in the first place! The one delighting in putting down, does the favor to put himself up: "I did this! After all I've done for you!" See? Even more tragically, such a person puts himself down, too, with his god-complex: I must do this I must do that, do do do doo-doo. Nothing but misery there. Tragically, all too many believers use the Gospel as an ego-salve. Pity them, but don't fall into the trap of rejecting God's Plan for your life because they are idiots. They use the Gospel to put unbelievers down; God uses it to put everyone UP.

    By contrast, we all also know someone who delights in putting up. No matter what the problem, 'no problem' is this person's attitude. "How can he be so happy?" is our reaction. He looks at the same facts as we do; he suffers (say) more than we do -- so much more, even we are taken out of our own self-preoccupations enough to gaze AT him. How can he be happy, hurting that much? How can Christ actually want the Cross? Enjoy it, even (Heb12:2, Ps22)? Well, that person sees an advantage in putting up, just as the negative person thinks he sees an advantage in putting down.

Same facts. Different orientation. After all, one really can cry all the way to the bank (making a large deposit), if he's not looking at the deposit, but only at his own effort. Gratitude is the attitude, and Love begets gratitude. By contrast, the negatively-oriented person is a black hole. Self-absorbed with his own efforts, no matter what you give him, it 'disappears', engulfed by his self-preoccupied ingratitude toward everyone -- including, himself! Constantly being offended by others who don't meet his unrealistic expectations (arrogance's 'heart', that) -- constantly guilt-ridden over any (rarely-perceived) failures in self -- misery, misery, misery. Put-down, put-down, put-down. No wonder the god-complex is its own worst hell: cf. 1Jn4:18, KJV. [Another major theme in 1Jn is the contrast between putting-down, and putting up -- 1Jn4, especially.]

So, in the 'middle', both sides (God's and Satan's) often appear identical, which is another reason why one can think himself to be "in the Light". Why? Because Satan didn't finish growing up in Love. He grew some, so shares SOME of the same perspective as God. But not enough. Had he finished growing up, his perspective would be God's -- just as God(Father) intended in the Decree. [The Decree (Heb:dabar, Gk:logon) is essentially a covenant/contract between the Members of the Godhead with respect to Creation: it's a Love Contract. For example, Son did all the creating, but the design choice was the Father's -- Son gifts the creation to the Father. Spirit performs what can be termed a mother-like role. Cf. Gen 1-3, Heb1-2, Col 1:16-18 (well, all of Col12 are on this topic), 1Cor 2-5, Eph5, John 1:1-10, inter alia; also "Footstool" verses. Or, just read Romans, Ephesians, Colossians and especially Hebrews as whole books. The 1970's NIV is best for whole-book reading, in English.]

    Satan, during his spiritual growth process, hit a snag which to him was so great, he spiritually arrested, and then permanently rebelled, before "finish[ing] the course" (2Tim4:17). His snag was apparently romanticism, the tendency to iconize. (That's a normal obstacle in childhood through early adulthood, which a stark Gospel helps obviate.) So Satan, thus arrested, sees the 'middle' as justifying his own desires -- but is blind to his own gerrymandering of the interpretation of the data. To him, the interpretation is 'true'. And he's willing to live in hell forever for it. That's his way of putting the 'truth' above his own person.

    Because his love for God remained stuck in romanticization, he didn't grow enough to cross the inviolability threshold. He grew quite a lot, but when faced with the 'competition' of his own abilities, would no longer accept the idea that God has to do all the giving. To Satan, that would be demeaning. Satan had come to associate giving more with power than with love, for he loved the power of God more than the Righteousness of God. 'Good' is a status, a power label, to Satan. So 'good' has nothing to do with the object, but with the SUBJECT. Doing 'good' for others is a way of proving the superiority of self. Love is not in the 'doing good', at all. Rather, it's a form of putting-down: hatred. So 'doing good' toward the object is an unpleasant necessity, nothing more. Pleasure can only be derived by preening over self's accomplishment in withstanding the unpleasantness of 'doing good'. (<== 'heart' of all religion!)

    Thus, Satan is deeply and truly offended by all God is, by all Christ is. Back before his Fall, he came to need Their Love as a compliment to him -- which the you-can't-earn-My-Love message erased. He wanted to believe that his own WORTHINESS was the catalyst for Their Love. To finally realize that God's Love is not predicated on creature worthiness is, for Satan, to forever condemn himself to inferiority. He sees such "Love", thus, as an insult. "The demand syndrome", as my pastor calls it, is the hallmark characteristic of hatred. All, of course, in the name of "good"! DEMANDING "good". Demanding -- because, the self is weak and needs that demand met. So, any love message which is unconditional -- is insulting.

    So, he rejects that Love. So, his rejection mutates his prior love into hatred. Love putrefied, therefore, into jealous revenge. So Satan's thoughts, ideas, and plans all reflect incomplete and MUTATED Righteousness, Justice, Love. Because 'incomplete, 'the most evil. Nearly-white. Nearly-Light. Anti-Christ. It's the nearness which beguiles Satan into thinking he's more right than God. Counterfeit good is the worst evil there can be. Incomplete development leads to counterfeit good. So, the one beguiled by the counterfeit can't see the counterfeit. So, the one thus beguiled can't see that his enjoyment is progressively weaker and vulnerable: any "competition" destroys it. Any enjoyment due to 'success' is but a breeze, a vapor trail in the sky: it takes progressively-more effort to get a progressively-weaker 'thrill'. So one becomes ever-more-adamant, ever more "hard" (Bible term); one is addicted to the drug of arrogance: demanding, demanding, demanding! It's obvious, it's pathetic, and the one in it becomes even more blind, by the day. The more friends try to help such a one, the more that one hardens in his addiction. There comes a point where the kindest thing friends can do, is separate from him.

For, such a one becomes irreparably insane. Watch: Satan contends God didn't furnish rational creatures (angels, humans) with the correct amount of Power and Knowledge at their (several) creation, so no one rejecting Him deserves to go to the Lake of Fire. Notice how he makes an argument which he well knows is impossible. He well knows that volition is needed to VALUE the power and knowledge in order to receive Divine Infusion, so to speak. So, because God didn't OVERRIDE volition (binging into creation the 'right' choices, too!), God is impossibly wrong: thus anything God does in creating can only be wrong. Like Dostoyevsky's Inquisitor, Satan's saying Happiness depends on tyranny. That, of course, is an argument which only arrogance can love. Arrogance begets insanity, and arrogance is unrealistic thinking. Unrealistic (i.e., insane) thinking always blocks out undesirable facts. This blocking is done by free will choosing the lie, so to block out undesirable facts (theme of Romans1-2). Here, Satan willfully blocks out the Free Gift of Divine Integrity, so to justify his conclusion that God is innately wrong. Psychological defense mechanisms (denial, projection, here) are thus used to do this blocking. Such mechanisms underlie all non-organic mental illness. (The "Spiritual Pathology" link at top/bottom of this page go into the problem in great detail. So does Part II.)

So, what does God do? He won't coerce. So, He gives Satan&Co. grace. Ergo, He grants the Appeal Trial -- so, ideally, they can yet come to see their own blindness for themselves. Formally, it is held to prove who's right in his contentions: God (the Son), or Satan. If Satan is right, then he's the one fit to rule the universe; if God is right, then He's the one fit to rule.


So Free Will means "Hell" Must Exist

See how tender is God's Love for Satan? 'For us? God, knowing in advance all of Satan's (and our) thoughts, made him (us) anyway. God, knowing in advance what would bollix Satan (us), in essence gives him his own world to rule his way -- so he can come to learn that his (our) idea of what's right, is in fact hellish. 'For him, for the fallen angels, for those ruled. In short, human history is an illustration of hell, a foretaste of what living apart from God is like. The potential lesson from human history is, essentially: life with God is innately sublime, and life apart from Him is innately burning pain.

Further still, God's root contention is that any method of making rational creatures results in some type of "hell", so the only alternative to "hell" is not to create anyone. Had God made rational creatures so that they couldn't go to hell, as Satan contends God should have done, one of the following "hells" would result:

a) Say God made angels/humans without free will (i.e., with no souls). He thus prevents sin, so no Lake of Fire, but then the rational creatures are like computers, Stepford wives. Isn't that hellish? They can't love, since love requires free will; enjoyments are but programmed instructions, so no integrity. In fact, such beings would not even be persons! They would be pets, at very best. Isn't that hellish? So, to prevent a Lake-of-Fire future, POWER given them would have to be less, not more; KNOWLEDGE would have to be less, not more.

b) Say God made angels/humans with limited free will. There are two variations of this b): First, "Free will" would only be free to the extent it can choose among non-sin options. There would be no "tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil", for example. So there would be no awareness of sin (awareness is an essential component of free will), and no ability to reject God in any way.

    Second variation: to make them with sin-terminable souls. Here, free will is still limited, because the moment the person chooses against God, he obliterates. There is no grace. The moment one sins, one obliterates. How pleasant is life with God, in such a case? Isn't such a life evil, hellish? (Notice how, if one posits that one's soul obliterates due to never believing in Christ, one is claiming God makes free will limited, which goes against His Very Being -- so one is unintentionally calling God 'evil'.)

    In either variation, rational creatures are super-computers, super-Stepford wives. They have a wider range of options, more like a Brave New World set of beings (oh, roof!) -- isn't that hellish? Still there is no true love, for there is no true ability to go-against. Hence, no freedom, and 'free will' is but a sham, a spin. The greater POWER is still less than needed for free will; same, for KNOWLEDGE.

c) Say God made angels/humans with full free will (interminable souls), with FULL POWER and KNOWLEDGE at the get-go (which He really did do, for all the angels, and for the first two humans), but with No Ability To Reject the KNOWLEDGE. Here, the scenario depicts a free will that is only 'full', if positive, thus no one can go to the Lake of Fire. The ability to reject, however, is denied -- so no one can go to the Lake of Fire. Hence, 'free will' is not wholly free.

    This scenario would be the same as b), because the creatures weren't given the option of rejecting the knowledge; Because they weren't given the option, their 'love' is but programming (based on foisted knowledge), so there is no true enjoyment; their 'integrity' (power-to-hold-together) is likewise fake. They are, in essence, seduced into obedience, made helplessly addicted to the knowledge, made helplessly addicted to God. Is that Love?

    Worse, these creatures would be aware that they did not choose their lot, and instead are but marionettes, tugged into the 'right' way due to God's programming, because they do have free will, POWER, and KNOWLEDGE -- but NOT sufficient power to SIN (the Knowledge would prohibit it). So, yeah, they avoid the Lake-of-Fire, but are in hell anyway, forever manipulated by attributes God gave them absent their consent; absent any power to reject those attributes, yet aware of their addiction. So, 'a life of torture, forever 'Run' by their Knowledge And Power, rather than by their own free will.

    So, had God made angels/humans with free will, but UNBALANCED POWER and KNOWLEDGE, He'd be subjecting them to tyranny of the worst kind: awareness of being manipulated, with no way out of it.

d) Say God made angels/humans with full knowledge-and-power, as well as full free will (interminable souls), just as they are in reality, so they retain the power to sin; further, just as in reality, they retain free will, even after sin. However, God prevents anyone who rejects Him from the Lake-of-Fire outcome. Again, this d) reflects what God really did, except God OVERRIDES the result. No matter whether one wants Him or not, one goes to Heaven. What kind of life is that? Isn't it hellish to be around someone you don't want? Isn't that still tyranny? Isn't it worse than c)? Surely it is, because now someone is FORCED to be with someone he REJECTS, forever. So the extra knowledge and power given by God, so that free remains free despite sin, is used to reject further "knowledge dividends" from God, of knowledge about God. Yet such rejection is tyrannically overridden, is it not, if the person is FORCED into Heaven, anyway?

    Moreover, the person is denied knowledge he wants. Free will is always enabled to choose what it wants to know. If it rejects knowing more about God, it accepts knowing more about non-God. So, by forcing the person to Heaven, the person's choice to eternally know non-God knowledge is likewise tyrannically cut off.

    Power goes with the type of knowledge, so the power to sin increases with the added non-God knowledge, and the power to reject sin increases with the added God-knowledge. The increase in the power to sin is due to the individual wanting it (evidenced by the conquering desire for non-God knowledge). Again, this power to sin, which free will had freely chosen, is tyrannically denied -- by forcing that person to live in Heaven. Worse still, since that power was chosen, not the power to avoid sin, the power to avoid sin does not exist. So, the power he had, was denied, due to being forced to live in Heaven; worse, the person has no replacement power in his forced-Heavenly status. He is thus in effect paralytic, forever. Isn't that hellish?

    Why can't God give the person a replacement power? 'Because power depends on knowledge. To want something non-God instead of ("anti") God, is to reject knowledge of God -- the non-God knowledge is deemed preferable. To make this rejection requires the person to want something else more than God, based on both what he knows, and what he doesn't know. So the choice is "pure". The individual programs himself. His free choices "beat a path", as time passes, making himself more and more addicted to his 'loves'. So, although he technically retains free will, his accumulated decisions have a self-programmed momentum. The choices he rejected become more and more hateful to him. So, in effect, he builds walls around the rejected choices, and eventually renders himself 'impregnable'. The Bible calls this "hardness of heart". (Bible doctrine in the soul, circulating, has the opposite momentum, but is never addictive, since God is Free.)

    The individual who has thus programmed himself to forever reject God remains free to choose Him, though, because God made free will inviolate: which after all, is the only fair thing, the only loving thing, to do. So God can't justly give the person a replacement power, to make Heaven tolerable, since the person never wanted the God-knowledge he needed to get the replacement power.

See all the tyrannies which result? So, for God to deny the effects of free will (here, rejection's effect is denied), how loving is that? Shall God be inconsistent?

What's left, then? Well, a) through d) above all result in "hells" God would have Himself caused, so He elected none of them. Instead:

e) God makes angels/humans like d) above, But They Receive The Full And Free CONSEQUENCES of their own decisions. Choosing-God 'consequences' are God's empowering responses; choosing-against-God consequences are native to their own natures. 'Eternally. Ergo salvation, so that one can learn God, be with God, despite sin's destruction. In short, one receives from God the freedom to make mistakes -- and to recover from them, by means of grace, by means of God remaking the person. In a word, by means of Love.

    Of course, the flip side of salvation, is eternal condemnation -- but, unlike all other versions of hell, this one is totally avoidable, Even While In Hell -- the person can CHOOSE to get out of it, because free will remains inviolate. Just one little choice, faith in Christ. No effort is required, no works are required. Just one little choice. To have that eternal option is only fair, only loving -- after all, it is God's 'fault' he gave the person free will, just as Satan says. However, now that the creature has inviolate free will, it becomes the CREATURE's choice -- i.e., fault -- if he keeps on choosing to reject God. Of course, the only reason why any creature would reject God -- especially throughout his life -- is that he, like Satan, keeps on concluding pride more attractive than God.

Let's summarize by putting Satan's and God's arguments in modern dialogue, as if we could all hear them talking to each other:

    "If, Satan, you want divorce, should you not be allowed to get it? If I love you, should I deny you what you want? 'To be away from Me? If then, I force you all to Heaven, won't that be hell for you anyway? Don't you hate Me now, don't you blame Me now, don't you hate your situation now, even though you are not in the Lake of Fire? Wouldn't you rather be out from under Me?"

    "And," God the Son adds, "Isn't this desire of yours due to the fact that you have sufficient Power And Knowledge to avoid sin, but you don't want to -- because you don't want Me? So, it's not about how I made creatures, it's about how you don't want Me. Shall I tyrannize you for that? Or should I give you what you want? 'A place without Me forever? And what should be the characteristics of such a place? If I am Good, and you don't want Good, then such a place must be bad, no?"

    Satan, genuinely hurt, retorts, "What's so wrong with c)? Didn't You love us enough to make staying with YOU pleasant? What's wrong with d)? Didn't You love us enough to make staying with YOU the more desirable, versus sin? Why didn't you make us via the c) or d) method, but use seduction to make our free will have a reason to enjoy what would otherwise hurt us to do? After all, we can't be as good as YOU anyway, why make the relationship frustrating to both YOU and us? Seduction is a Kindness. Seduction IS Love. Seduction Teaches Love, and does so by Promoting The Very Abilities YOU gave us, to do 'good' in return! But oh, no, God won't do that! Instead, You leave us ALONE to make the decisions ourselves, with no enticements to remain with YOU! You coldly leave us ALONE to make the hard decisions, painful decisions, after having given us all these abilities -- but say, 'if you use them, you burn'? What kind of love is that?"

    God the Father now replies, though: "Did I make salvation too hard to obtain? I placed no works requirement, so that no one could be shorted salvation due to some knowledge or power handicap: all the person needs to do is believe in My Son. That requires no work on his part. You could have believed; they can believe. Free will can choose either one. Works by the body have no relevance, lest salvation be too hard for someone, due to power or knowledge limitations."

    Satan counters that God didn't make things sufficiently-known: "Look at all the #3 people who reject you because they see no proof!" he cries. "You could have prevented their pain! You could have prevented the pain of the #2 people who do reject, and ours, by seducing us. We are weak, not like you -- so how else can we be sufficiently-motivated to choose You, based on our abilities -- abilities YOU gave us! Wouldn't that be the more loving thing to do?"

    "Ah," replies the Spirit, "Why is it the #3 people do not know? Is it because it is too hard for them to see, or because it is too upsetting, at present? Doesn't an upset block the ability to understand? A person in shock, doesn't he blank out in his understanding? Shall I not give them time to learn? Shall I force that knowledge on them, manipulating them, despite their upset? Is it fair to impose? If 'yes', at what point do I stop imposing? Isn't any imposition hell, per Creation Scenarios a)-d) above?"


So, the Trial also resolves the Question: "Seduce, or -- LOVE?"

Because Satan didn't finish growing up in Love, he is obsessed with his own abilities, and with creature abilities, period. He is likewise obsessed over his idea of right and wrong. He projects his ideas and his problems onto God, adducing them to God. So, it's God, not Satan, Who's bad, wrong. So it's God, not Satan, Who's evil. So, Satan thinks God is out to sadistically seduce, hypocritically claiming to 'grow' the person in 'Love' -- if the person first chooses God with no idea whether God will be faithful. This 'giving', as Satan sees it, is a sham, because if God thinks imposition-by-seduction is unfair, how can the Lake of Fire sentence be fair? Is that not an imposition, too? In short, God's Explanations fall on deaf ears. Whatever valid points God makes, Satan 'hears' them as evidence proving Satan is in the right. He's too obsessed to hear reason. So, his attitudes, policies, motivations are love-hate, contradictory, and traumatizing. His bitterness and desire for revenge so totally fuel him, he will never want to change his mind. Even though he will always be able. For, he has learned to 'love' his anti-integrity.

Satan thus genuinely believes there is no value whatsoever to living with God. Satan also genuinely believes that pleasant, seductive appeals to creature ability to do 'good' -- i.e., by dispensing or withholding goodies -- is the way God should have chosen to 'educate' man. So, Satan keeps trying different ways to manipulate humans to prove which levels of imposition are superior to God's way-of-creation.

    Therefore, mankind reflects the 'success' of Satan's mindset, since he really is the ruler of the world. Therefore, any Christians and Jews are special targets, because they are recipients of God's promises -- which Satan must discredit at all costs. That's why in Talibanesque Islam, for example (apparently precedented by Mohammed in 632AD), it is a virtue to kill the (especially Christian or Jewish) "infidel": one inherits wide-eyed houris and paradise automatically, even if one commits suicide to accomplish the killing, for such an instance of suicide is, instead, martyrdom.

    Of course, unbelievers with even a remote interest in God are targeted, too. After all, any unbeliever can become "Christian" by faith in Christ; just as (in the OT, Trib, Mill) any Gentile could become "Jewish" by faith in Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad. So, the unbelievers must be 'protected' from God: and also used as weapons against Christians, Jews. Further still, the Christians and Jews must be likewise sold into the same seductive plan as the unbeliever is 'taught', so to bludgeon God with rejection. There is no limit to which Satan will not go, here. Whatever you most love, he'll want to give you. Whatever you most hate, he'll want to withhold -- unless you need later 'correction', of course. Because, it's not about you, at all: it's about beating God.

    Thus, Satan primarily sponsors 'good'; he only sponsors (what we call) 'sin' and 'evil' to motivate people to want 'good', to seductively manipulate them to want it. In short, Satan's saying that the meaning of happiness, of even life itself, is to be a 'user' (American slang); that the value of having relationships with others is what one gets from them. Satan thinks "relationship" ought to mean everyone using each other to get 'goodies'.

God disagrees. First, even if relationships were only for getting goodies, 'using' people, no amount of imposition is worthwhile: once you start to tinker, you must keep tinkering. But of course the value of having relationships, is instead the Free Association. Opposite of being a 'user'. So that no differential in characteristics mars the enjoying the relationship. Giving is for the benefit of the recipient to freely accept, or reject. Not imposition, not tinkering, because Free Association is what makes relationship enjoyable. It's the Person-To-Person Love which God stresses, not the person's 'goodies.' God thinks "relationship" ought to mean Unencumbered Love. No matter what worthiness in the object. No matter, the 'goodies'. Any 'goodies' are condimental, at best.

Granted, His Authority requires him to order punishment or blessing, which are types of 'goodies', so to speak, related to the person. However, hitting someone over the head with some punishment doesn't impose; it gives the person an opportunity to learn from the hardship -- learn God, or learn good/sin/evil. This, to remind the person that the objective is to CHOOSE to grow bigger, even beyond one's nature, so to become able to enjoy God, if he desires: enduring learning (e.g., punishment) leads to endearing; and endearing, to enduring enjoyment. Heh: to Love. 'Or, the opposite, if the person desires. So,

    The Three Trial Issues:
    1. God reveals Himself -- but not so much as to manipulate free will;
    2. some folks (angels, humans) reject Him based on what they KNOW;
    3. some folks genuinely DON'T yet know, so reject Him (so far) because they DON'T know.

    In either case, the issue remains, does one want God, or not? Based on what he knows, and based on what he doesn't know?

Because, it's not about creature abilities or failure, it's about wanting God. After all, if creature failure wasn't provided for all along, would God have gone to the trouble to make creation and reveal Himself? Why not rather just make a bunch of pets, and spare Himself Forever Knowing The Total Suffering of the Lake of Fire? After all, it's not as though God isn't Omniscient.

It is, though, about Love: God foregoes His Rights to full obedience in favor of free will choosing to obey -- only Love can be the motive for such foregoing. That is why Righteousness would require a Cross, so that Love remains inviolate, even though foregoing. Christ, Who had Full Rights, really owed the Father nothing (Son is God Himself also, and in His Humanity never sinned). Christ, the Perfect Inviolate Human, voluntarily forewent His Rights, to pay for our sins Due To Love: as a GIFT to the Father (Atonement). So the Father can offer permanent salvation, due to Love, not due to rights: Gen15:6, Rom 5:8-9, 2Cor5:21.

    TRUE INDEPENDENCE KEY ==> Most importantly: Christ, Because God-Man, Alone Has True Ability In Himself To Meet Divine Standards. Satan's big upset started because he had to depend on 'Daddy', so to speak. He couldn't really do anything of himself. So, whatever 'Daddy' gave him became successively associated with a negative connotation, in Satan's mind: a reminder that he was inferior. That's why he was so flummoxed that Christ would actually turn down his offers in Matthew 4 [More on this follows in Part III-Appendix.] Satan well knew Christ alone had, in His Humanity, a power Satan did not have -- despite being merely human! All the Matthew 4 Temptations are temptations to Christ to USE that power!

    For Jesus could have called upon His Deity to make His Humanity fulfill the Standards. But He did not. Instead, He relied on the Holy Spirit (John 1, etc.), because He loved the Standard more than His Own Divine Ability to meet it. He loved the Father more than He loved His Own Righteousness. That's the key difference.

    Of course, He also thus avoids a charge of cheating. Satan would cry "Foul!" if the Christ had tapped into His Own Deity, for such use of power would prove a creature couldn't obey God's Righteous Standard, thus God shouldn't impose such a Standard, thus no one should go to Hell. More importantly, the Christ proves that God's method of conveying "Integrity Properties", successfully works. Even if a measly human is ordered to do the truly impossible: paying for sins on the Cross. Not even any angel was held to that standard. So yes, God is right; so, yes, a Loving God can sentence those who never want Him to the Lake of Fire. So, yes, that sentence has nothing whatsoever to do with creature merit, but the creature who prefers his own merit, can't 'earn' what Christ paid.

    For, only God is "good enough", and even Christ used the Power of God to execute the Love of God, rather than the Power of His Own Deity to execute His Own Worthiness.

And that Love never shuts off, either (owing to Omniscience) -- even in the Lake of Fire. Satan&Co., and their allied humans, will end up preferring the Lake of Fire to Heaven. Does Love abandon them there? Oh no -- God doesn't shut off His Knowledge, doesn't shut off His Love for them. He's right there with them, Infinitely. They reject Him -- but He never, never rejects them. His Love is so very deep, He'll even live forever in Hell with them, and in fact has done so forever, owing to Omniscience always having that pain-knowledge in full. For, "love never fails" (1Cor13). He keeps on waiting for them to change their minds, even though He knows they will never choose to change their minds. In short, Love forever loves: for Better, or for Worse.


God's Script Now: Learn => Know => LOVE

Satan will forever Refuse Love. Will we? We humans echo Satan's view, most of the time. We want a 'love' we can 'win'. We want a 'love' which makes us important, worthy, feel-good. We don't want a 'love' which is 'tough'. We don't want a 'love' which permits pain, even though the pain is used to bless us. Oh no. We want the movie-love, the huggy love, the soundbyte love. We want to say we are worthy, see. Because we are sons of Abraham, or because we know someone important. Like, Daddy. After all, back when we were kids, we felt better than we do now. So, in politics, in the workplace, at home, in IRC, everywhere, we debate what 'love' ought to 'do'. Never what Love ought to BE. All our 'be's', are 'do's'. Just like we were taught, as kids.

Problem is, we're now adults. So, our egos are bigger -- but not necessarily our souls. We've big bodies, but still retain little souls. That's why the huggy-i-love-you's feel so good: just like we got when we were kids. So, we're kinda sensitive to the idea that Love is a being, not a doing. We're kinda sensitive to our smallness, so we look for something to do to make us feel worthy, special, loved. So, things like inequality bug us even more than they did back when we were kids. Back then, it was okay for Daddy to be 'better', but not now. We're all grown up, now. 'Just like Daddy. So, inequality is no longer 'okay'. So, we adults argue: Freedom, or equality -- which is more beneficial to man? Folks reflect the satanic idea, 'equality=freedom', not realizing that to obtain equality requires manipulation which cannot stop. Until we are all pets, we can't be equal. And of course, as George Orwell had the pigs explain in Animal Farm, "some -- are more equal than others." Heh.

Love does not equal 'doing good'

Satan's 'love' plan aims at these childish ideas. Technically, his plan is a hybrid of the c) and d) "hells" (above), in order to fashion a mankind which 'does good'. Satan is saying Love ought to be 'learned' via seduction: so, should be predicated on man's works. So, man needs to be influenced in this direction, for his own good -- constantly. Tyrannically. By means of seduction and enticement, man will come to love such a state, because man is more innately suited to being a child, and God should cater to that nature -- if God was fair, of course. Moreover, actions and behaviors based on 'do good' thinking create a viable world which needs no God -- hence, no such person deserves a Lake of Fire for not wanting God. In short, God unjustly sentences those who do not love Him -- solely for that reason -- thus is Himself flawed. After all, if even mere man can be good without God, how can God justify condemning him? God thus is condemning good, which is inconsistent -- and even, hypocritical.

We humans echo Satan's argument, again. Oh yeah, baby: 'doing good'='love'! Turn on any television, look at any newspaper, listen to any conversation. Do-good is the be-all and end-all of life. Like Satan, we are blind to how this insistence on doing 'good', actually makes 'good' wholly repulsive, robbing 'good' of the sheer free joy of doing it "for nothing". So, who's being hypocritical? We are. Just like Satan&Co.

Let's look deeply at how this hypocrisy uses the defense mechanism called "rationalization". Here's how our thoughts go: how can we, who are so very nice to each other, be 'bad', simply because we reject the Bible's demand that IT be followed, versus some other course? What does it matter, the method we choose to worship? Why can't our vegetables, like Cain's, be accepted by Him? Why do we have to believe in the Son to be saved? In thinking these things (and we all do, no exceptions), we show we don't believe that anyone nice can really be so bad. We can only agree (well, somewhat) that folks like serial murderers, etc. should go to the Lake of Fire.

    In short, we presume that how folks treat us, is how they treat God, too. Yet how is it, that one rejects a so-easy salvation? Shall God not be Righteous? If He is, then would not sin have to be paid for? Can we pay for it? Would it be right of God to make us pay the unpayable? 'Of course not, on both counts. So, if we reject the payment, the free gift He had made, what are we? In other words, how deep is our niceness?

    After all, what are we saying, when we reject this Gift? We are saying God is unfair. We presume that any different ideas of God solely exist because they don't 'know' the Gospel, as if God couldn't manage (thank you very much) to communicate in ways we ourselves can't fathom. Or, we say that God shouldn't be so mean not to excuse them. It's just not possible that the person is mean. Only God can be mean.

    We are saying, thus, that we, not God, are the omniscient ones. We are saying, thus, that we, not God, have the right to arbitrate what is fair. We are saying, thus, that we, not God, should dictate what forms of honor should be acceptable to Him: Sincerity, cultural-ritual, bribes, the-dog-ate-my-homework. Oh: and He should answer to "Yucky Gertrude Cheese" if we say so, even if his personal name is "Clyde" -- because WE say that is 'love'. We say it's not important that we properly identify Him or know Him. He's just supposed to 'understand', and be our genie.

    "And so it goes", as Kurt Vonnegut likes to write. Over and over and over, we thus say God has lower rights than we do. We tell God His Rights, and we set our own. Ok, where is the love, in us? Should love be a matter of rights? If 'yes', then 'love' has strings, and is no love at all. So if we say God is unfair, and has lower rights, how is it we won't view our fellow man that way? So, is our niceness real and deep, or hypocritical, shallow? Are we nice to get something from each other, since we are viewing the issue with God based on rights, rather than based on a love-gift?

    Notice how it doesn't matter if we are overtly hostile, or whether we pick a different view of God as the 'right' one. Either way, we are rejecting the Love-Gift of the Cross, and self-responsibility to choose. 'Just like Satan&Co., we really want that gift to be deserved. So we can feel good about ourselves. Pride, not love. God's 'gift' is supposed to honor us. Us, not God. If He's lucky, we might remember to nod at Him on Sunday -- if He plays His cards right!

Most Christians grasp that the unbeliever has rejected God. Yet believers who childishly react to that rejection, by demonizing unbelievers, by vilifying Satan and his cohorts, mimic the same rejection. They rationalize their reaction as a 'witness': to cover up their own offense, they claim themselves 'holy', to denounce. In reality, they denounce, not because of any desire for God. Oh no. Rather, it's to make themselves feel secure about a faith they doubt; to feel better about their 'sacrifices'. 'Key pathological symptom? They can't relax about this terrific (and terrifying!) freedom. Instead, they point-the-finger, like spoiled children. Legalism is like that. Pride is like that.

Their reaction is understandable: like the unbeliever, they too lack spiritual growth. The unbeliever has no human spirit, so of course he doesn't understand, and instead has a soul's childish reasoning with respect to God. Christian spiritual children have human spirits -- but little spiritual knowledge. So, still children.

    Children are taught first right-and-wrong. They don't understand love, yet. They thus evaluate "love" based on rights-and-wrongs -- just as they learn "obedience" in those terms. Assuming they later grow up, they will come to realize "obedience" benefitted THEM more than their parents. They will come to realize "love" itself has no virtue, so needs to be married to virtue (God's Righteousness/Justice). So "love", while still childishly-understood, needs to vilify the opposition. It's the child's way of being loyal.

    We Christian children, just like the unbelievers, hold the satanic idea that what we do ought to count for something, positive or negative. Thus, that 'love' is some kind of reward system, rather than Grace, irrespective of rights, of do's. Like Satan, we can't understand a 'love' which doesn't seduce, entice, please, in order to get its way. Like Satan, we want to be seductive, enticing, pleasing -- so to merit, earn, win, love from others. We, like Satan, count all of these seductions, these tit-for-tat rules, as virtues: 'good'.

    So, as immature believers, we still reject God as much as the unbelievers do. Like Satan, we childishly presume that what we know -- viz., the morality rules of God -- is the whole truth, the whole spiritual life. We arrogantly ignore the "undesirable fact" that morality is but gift for man to get along with his fellows, and per se has no spiritual merit. We arrogantly ignore the 1st commandment, which demands one choose to learn God via Bible doctrine, in order to come to love God. Oh no, that takes too much time. Oh no, we're not 'doing anything', then. So, we reject God-knowledge, in favor of works knowledge. 'In favor of knowing 'good', of the "good-and-evil" plan of Satan. So, we substitute our ideas of works, of good, of worship, and deceive ourselves to be in the light (1Jn's theme). We do Satan's jobs, but in God's name. If we knew that salvation could not be obtained via works, how is it now that we go off on our own way, working working working? Is that consistent? Ahh, but we are too irrational, too blind, to see the glaring inconsistency of our bustling about in God's name. (Cf. Gal3-5: Paul's explanation is fabulous!)

    We substitute our own ideas of God's character, and call that substitution, His. For example, perhaps we claim man has no free will, due to the Fall, and are thus blind to the convoluted and insane 'logic' we use to defend that claim; we twist Scripture, like Satan does, in the 2nd Temptation of Matt4. We thus satanically overemphasize Sovereignty, at the expense of Righteousness and Justice, thus blaspheming Sovereignty, Omnipotence, Love -- because well, see -- God's too weak! to insure free will.

    Or, we cheapen God into an emotional jerk, by overemphasizing Love, at the expense of Righteousness and Justice, so rationalize away thinking, in favor of the 'high' of miracles, rituals, mysticism, so-called 'sacred' movements, do's. Or, being lazy, we overemphasize His Bigness, at the expense of His Command that we learn Him (e.g., 2Pet3:18) -- does God give a command to make bricks without straw? Yet we fancy that knowing Him is 'a mystery' and throw up our hands -- well, we pat ourselves on the back about how humble we are, to throw up our hands -- another way we show we couldn't care less about God, just like the believers in Deut 30:11ff. Ahh, we must make Him Inscrutable, to justify our laziness? Whatever do we think the Bible is for, anyway? A paperweight?

    Or, we argue endlessly over minute traditions, like the Pharisees used to do. Or, we cloak ourselves in established doctrines, in our erudition -- "cloak" being what we've done to our eyesight!

Isn't it amazing, that God foreknew all of this and yet decided to make us anyway, didn't take the cheap way out and make us pets, instead CHOOSING the total grief of our free existence? And, doesn't even common sense turn on the proverbial light bulb? If God wanted works, he'd have made us pets. Satan wants pets, so wants works. God doesn't want pets, so doesn't want works. (Heb 10:5) God forever foregoes His Rights to works, to obedience -- in favor of Love. If Love isn't first built in the person, He wants no sacrifice (ibid, plus "cheerful giver" verse). And, if the person loves God, he regards nothing he does as a sacrifice. Only sacrifices need to be compensated. The one who loves wants no compensation. Again, even common sense yells: "FORGET WORKS!" Works are utterly repulsive, to Love. 'Suppurating Corpses. "Dead works". Smelly.

We've just seen how the 'nice' standard of doing-works-equals-love is really an ego trip. Now, let's look at the very works themselves. Are they really nice, for the recipient? Watch: if 'I' do something nice for 'you', how the heck does God benefit from it? [Cf Job4:6, 35:3,6,7, NAS] Did He need 'me' to do that nice thing? Or, did 'you' really need it? Or, did 'I'? Certainly God didn't need it. God doesn't need anything. So, to have the colossal gall to claim that something nice done for a human being, ought to count with Holy God -- is that not the epitome of childish arrogance? Moreover, should you be beholding to me because I did this thing? Whatever for? If you should be beholding to me, then how 'nice' is what I did? In truth, it wasn't nice at all, for now you have an obligation to me. Where is the love in that? So, my 'good deed' imposed on you. Now, you get guilt if you don't reciprocate. That's not nice. That's not love. What is that? Repulsive. Just like the folks God excoriated in Zech7, as well as Amos, and Malachi -- their many sacrifices had become a stench in His Nostrils, so to speak. Repulsive.

The most repulsive thing of all, is an unwanted 'gift'. [That's how the unbeliever feels about the Cross: a disgusting/fantasy/enslaving/ veiled-threat 'gift'.] To top off the ugliness: the 'giver' wants reciprocation, and on his terms, as well?! Of course, to deny that reciprocation earns condemnation from the 'giver'. Gee, what a nice thing to do, huh? Is this repulsive, or what?

    Think it over: here is Joe Blow. He's bustling in works. Each time he does one he thinks, "Ahh, I did a good thing." And -- ever so slightly -- pats himself on the back. Then, he thinks God will reward him for his sacrifice -- ever so subconsciously -- and does yet another good deed. Over time, he's done all these works. So, he's got a lot of confidence in what he will get from God. One day, though, he gets sick. Doesn't know why. It is really bad. "Why oh why did God let this happen to me? After all I did?" will be running through his mind. [Job's self-righteous friends show this reasoning in spades. Take Pepto-Bismol before you read what they say.]

    And what is God thinking? "Why oh why did this person keep insisting on doing works he himself wanted to do -- and putting My Name on them? Now, he thinks I'm supposed to reward him for what I never asked him to do? For never learning what I wanted? How ugly, how repulsive, to demand of Me a reward, for works I never requested!" (Cf. Zech7 -- it uses the same 'reaction'.)

'Not only repulsive, but insane. Look: who of us wants to be loved, for our works? Who of us but wants to be loved, for ourselves? Yet we demand God credit us by our standards, for works we do for mere people? Aren't we being irrational? What does GOD get? Yet we think God should love us based on what we do? How rational is that? How rational is it, to say that we must practice a certain taboo, or a certain ritual, in order to be 'okay' with God? Whatever does He need with that ritual, that taboo? Who benefitted? How repulsive is it to say, in effect, "Dad, I bathed: now you owe me." Or: "Johnny didn't bathe, Dad. Now you should punish him!"

    Aren't we being childish, irrational, and repulsive, like Satan is? "Who has known the thinking of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But [instead] we have the Thinking of Christ." (1Cor2:15-16) -- "for the purposes of being rational, without illusion." (Rom 12:3, corr. trans. of "so as to have sound judgment" in NAS.) He does the instructing -- His Thinking is our instruction. Not the other way around, thank God!

    Like Satan, we do not see our insanity. If Christ paid for us, what does that mean? It means He Loves us! US, not our works. But, like Satan, we are stuck on failure -- so when we think of Christ paying, "PAY" is all we insanely see. Sacrifice. Pain. Work. Hustle, hustle, hustle. So every verse in Scripture is bent to that interpretation. Just like Satan did, in Matt4. We hustle, because we feel BAD about what Christ paid. We resent our weakness, and want to instead feel WE are good. We don't want Christ to sacrifice for us -- we want the PRIDE of doing it ourselves! We wanna be grownups, waaah! Just like Satan wants. So, to cloak our true desire, we deceive ourselves to be in the light, and claim our idea of 'works' (etc) as God's desire -- and thus ease our puny consciences. We apply the Bible like Mommy's lipstick -- smearing it everywhere. We aim verses such as "faith without works is dead", like Daddy's gun, not respecting that it's loaded, and so maim/murder James' teaching there of GRACE. We brush away Paul's "elative conclusion" in 2Cor12:7-10 as if it were mere martyrdom, instead of the Secret of the Cross. We don't want to have the power of Christ -- we want to be strong in ourselves! What colossal arrogance. What a tragic flaw. What a missed opportunity for receiving Love.

Can't give, until one receives, for true receiving is inhale, and true giving is exhale. Ahhh but we can't breathe, until we get enough of God's Knowledge built into us -- for that makes us truly strong: the Power of Christ is the thinking of Christ -- which is both how He paid for our sins, and the payment itself. [Content of His Thinking was the currency paying for the content of our sin-thinking -- thinking is the sole content of any action.]

We prove we can't breathe His Love, when we hustle about, rather than listening to the "still, small voice" of the Spirit teaching us "God-breathed" (theopneustos) Bible Doctrine. No wonder we are so blue-in-the-face with frustration; so crusading, so hardened, so jaded. So crazy. 'Just like Satan&Co.

By receiving Love, one learns Love. Love, God's Way, is to transmit successive deposits of Christ's Own Thinking, into one's human spirit (which is why one first needs to be saved to become "good"); from there, into the soul. Each such transmission is made upon the believer's assent. By means of such successive deposits, "Doctrine works", to use James' 1:3 expression. ("Faith" usu.="believed doctrine", in Scripture: see also 1Pet1:7-8e), to grow one up spiritually.) 'To make one wise. Thus, one ages to spiritual maturity. During that process, one grows out of the childish idea of "love", and instead comes to have the joy of "good" without strings. One learns that Love is not love, if based on strings (rights, reciprocation). One learns to have integrity, so to hold together despite foregoing one's rights. Only then, is love, Love, because only then, is Love FREE of need-for-rights. Love means loving despite. Again, without a power to go-against, free will isn't free -- and love, is not love.

Love does equal "Learn My Son's Thinking, Bible Doctrine,
Under the Holy Spirit via 1Jn1:9"

What does God want, then? Ahhh. Witness the irony and genius of God, and God's "superior power", as Ephesians 1-3 stress: He wants like-minded beings, freely-developed! But wait! Only God can empower that, right? Right. You can smile now -- see how even a handicapped person is not left out? If no human power can accomplish what God wants, then where is works? It's excluded, laughs Paul, in Romans 4-15.

Why shouldn't He want us to be like Him? Who doesn't want someone like self? Rapport requires like-mindedness. The Son's Humanity is totally compatible with Deity -- the only Such Person in the universe to be so compatible. Now, think: what 'works' came from such compatibility? Didn't the compatibility precede the Cross? Didn't Christ have to "grow up" to be strong enough to endure the horrendous imputation and judgment of our sins, so as not to react? And, as Hebrews 12:2 tells us, what was His response? Joy, not sacrifice. He "disregarded the shame" -- disregarded it, despised it. (Greek word means "despise" in the sense of disregarding; disregarding, because unimportant.) He was so happy, He ignored the cost. It was of no value to Him. He was too busy being happy.

Now, that's the "work" which being like-minded 'buys': Joy (cf. John15:11). Which, to the worker, is no work at all. That's why Abraham wanted to sacrifice his son, as James 2 explains. Abraham, like Moses after him, was occupied with "Him Who is Invisible" -- not preoccupied with self, with works. Not seduced into the 'proper' behavior, with the result that what the seducee gave into, was the seduction, rather than the Righteousness itself. Not 'helped' by the ever-arrogant elitist method: "well, we can't actually teach the masses what's in the Bible -- they can't take it. Let's give them simple do's, instead." Not needing some romantic fantasy relationship, with signs, visions, miracles, and other emotional junk to drug ego. No, none of these. Instead, the truth can be served unsauced, naked. Even to puny man.

THAT's the life God wants for us. That's the life Christ prayed we receive, as a result of (what would be) the Cross, in John 17. To become one: Via His Life, we get ours. So, then: do we want God, or not? Our first "yes", of course, is to believe in Christ. That saves us. That makes us Able To Know God: so it can't be arbitrary and capricious, because until then, we don't have the spiritual equipment to know Him. (More on this topic follows, below.) After that, if we say "yes, I want to know God" -- He happily replies, "What, is My Arm too short?" (e.g. Num 11:23) and "For with God, nothing is impossible." (e.g. Luke1:37)

So, If we say that first "yes", we have the free-will (heh) task of learning Him, a task which only the Holy Spirit enables at each "yes" of our free will, but He will provide only so much knowledge at a time -- lest free will be manipulated. Ergo, one learns a little each day, "line upon line". Not everything at once. So, not 'sacrificially', but enjoyably. That is why God Beats Satan. Satan wants sacrifice via seductive romance: after the conquest, there's not much thrill. God wants just plain Love.

    Have you ever seen an old couple who were still in love with each other? Take the on-screen actor-team of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. They manage to portray the point: real romance is based on real, naked, unvarnished love. It needs no goodies to dress it up. Wrinkles and sickness don't diminish it. Age only makes it bigger. So it is, with God's Love. Emotion is way too small for this Love, so if one needs to associate a 'feeling' with it, to get a sense of how total this Love really is, the closest word for that feeling is this: ABSOLUTE HONOR.

    Honor dresses up, too. Back in Victorian England, there was a Royal Standard that one dressed properly. This standard existed because the self ought to HONOR whoever saw him by a proper appearance. It wasn't at all about self being admired, but rather about the OBJECT getting a pleasant view. All the other Royal Protocols also had this purpose in mind. It was a looking up, not a putting-down. Some of those who were of the lower classes, of course, were reminded of their own inferiority by such superior appearances, so interpreted them as snooty putdowns, "putting on airs". Much of what has become our blue-jeans culture today grew out of those who felt insulted, though being honored!

God's plan is superior enjoyment, happiness. So, those who are offended by God's superiority will interpret His Plan as an insult to them. Like Satan, they are intimidated by the Standard, upset that they are inferior, and the offer by God to fix their vegetably-naked inferiority by clothing everyone in Christ (Rom13:14), is the most offensive of all! By contrast, look at God's protocols, which the Son Himself -- alone not inferior -- which the Son Himself preferred: "Sacrifice", even if true sacrifice (the Cross!) is an enjoyment (Phil2:5ff, Heb2:9-10,Heb 5:8-9,Heb 12:2). So, the key is -- to have the integrity to enjoy, rather than the anti-integrity to be insulted (Heb12:1-15). To get the integrity, one needs the Thinking of Christ, Royal Law, the Royal Honor Code, God's Script, happily circulating in the soul: the Bible.


1 John's Outline of God's Script:

  1. become a believer (believe ONCE in Christ for your salvation -- that He paid for all of your sins, be they past, present, or future -- it doesn't matter you don't now understand the how's -- you will, later on);
  2. use 1Jn1:9 to be online with the Holy Spirit ("abide", in 1 John's lingo); AWARENESS is '#1 critical' to your spiritual life! As you'll see in Part II and the "Spiritual Pathology" link, lack of awareness is the prime symptom of descent into mental illness -- that's true in the mental sciences, because it's first true spiritually (i.e., spiritual state radically influences mental and physical states -- more on this follows in Part II, and passim in the rest of the webseries).
  3. Keep learning Bible Doctrine spiritually, as follows. God doesn't need human IQ to teach you, only Satan does -- hence be sure to use these steps, so you're not under Satan's fake-God 'teaching':
    • use 1Jn1:9 habitually, to stay in fellowship with the Holy Spirit;
    • in such a state, listen to your God-given pastor (He'll show you who);
    • God (Holy Spirit) sends what you hear to your human spirit for "translation",
    • and from there to the academic "mind" (Gk: "nous"), so your soul can understand it; when you understand,
    • if you "eat"/BELIEVE it, God (Holy Spirit) 'metabolizes' it for you, depositing that information in your soul's "heart" so the knowledge can circulate usefully, like blood.
    • To think out/think on/recall any doctrine (i.e., on your own), use the above steps -- when you wake up, or when you go to sleep, as it says in Deut -- meaning, all the time. The idea: basically, keep up a conversation with God. Keep on pondering what you think you know; like, what is it like to be God? Test yourself, try to answer the question. Be curious: when you read a passage, or hear it taught by your pastor, PONDER WHAT IT MEANS. Ask God about it. Try to answer what it means. In short, keep the doctrine moving through your soul, to nourish you. Keep thinking how it applies to your day, play with it when brushing your teeth, standing in line. [The Doctrine itself (about which you are thinking) is the "pastor" step, by the way, during the rest of the day.]
    • Remember as many Bible promises as you can. This will get you through trouble, especially guilt. The believer is especially prone to feelings of insecurity. There is no need to be insecure, but until you get 'fluent' in remembering God's promises, you will be vulnerable to those typical feelings of 'I'm not good enough'. (It's a Big lie that you're not good enough, because Perfect! Christ Perfectly! Paid For You: but incipient love always feels it's not good enough, so you will be plagued by such feelings.) Entonces (therefore), AGGRESSIVELY RECALL God's Promises.
    • Pray as often as you think of it, aka "talk with the Father". It cannot be stressed enough: without this step, a growing constant conversation with God, Satan will conquer you. For awareness of another person vitally depends on conversation with that person. Especially, when the Person is God. So this step uses the doctrine you know intensely, and getting into this habit will so increase your awareness you'll find it vastly protects your spiritual life!

        Prayer protocol: a) use 1Jn1:9 to be online; b) pray TO the Father c) IN the name of the Son (it's a Royal Voting protocol, as the penultimate section in Part III will explain). Make sure your requests line up with the doctrine you know, too. John 17 is a really good prayer outline. Note the tone, too. No flowery language needed!

        So-called "backsliding" in the spiritual life results when the person arrests in the childhood stage of the spiritual life. There is no way one grows OUT of this stage, if he doesn't develop a conversational usage of prayer, like David did. Prove this quickly: what absorbs your attention? Notice how other things which compete for attention get blocked out? Notice how the more attention you pay to something, the more it engrosses you? So pay attention to God. Keep talking to Him in your soul, on whatever topic, even if it's hello, here's what I ate today. "Where your heart is, there shall be your treasure." Where you put your attention is where you will eventually be engrossed. So put your attention on God. Again, this point can not be emphasized enough.

    • Use DOCTRINE to solve problems or learn Answers to what you face in life, constantly. This OPENS your soul, makes it BIGGER. You'll have many problems. Ask: what doctrine do I know which answers this issue? You WILL know some, for you won't get the problem until you know enough to be able to USE what you know on the problem. Part V of the "Tulips" link on the Home Page has a 10-category listing of what my pastor calls "Problem-Solving Devices" (10 litmii of how to think when a problem hits, 10 attitudes to develop) which might help you with your analysis, here. (Search on "10 classifications", once you're on that webpage.) Learning Doctrine per se makes you bigger, but you hit plateaus, kinda analogous to physical exercise. So, to get BIGGER still, have more capacity for fellowship with God, you have to USE the Doctrine you learn in your daily life. It's analogous to Christ's experience on the Cross, the why of which you'll understand, by the end of Part IV.
    • The accumulated "eating", over some years, makes you grow up spiritually, so it thus produces
  4. Love for God (due to increased integrity being produced by that knowledge); which produces
  5. Love for all mankind (illustrated by love for "the brethren"), which is EVIDENCE of God, in the world (1Jn4:12); so to produce a result
  6. "we shall become like Him" (1Jn3), and thus
  7. will have full joy and fellowship with Him (1Jn1:4-5), and thus will have
  8. "confidence in the Day of Evaluation -- for just as He is, so also we are, in this world" (1Jn4:17, corrected translation).
  9. Love is not the childish gushing and sending of cutesy emails. Love is not the huggy-bear statements and emotional rollercoaster rides. All that, is mere emotion, with a good bit of Satan&Co. 'help' to make you fantasize you are spiritual. Love is an attitude, not a feeling at all. It is an attitude which remains no matter what you feel. And it always backs off. So all that gushy, pushy, typical Christian behavior on irc and real life is bogus. Urges are never Love. Because Love, is innately foregoing. See 1Cor13.

God wants mature spiritual beings for companionship with His Son, not pets or Epsilon morons. God is BIG. So, "mature spiritual beings" means something like the size and profitability of a whole steel mill, not a factory worker in the steel mill. It costs millions and millions of dollars to build, then run, a steel mill. It only costs some thousands of dollars a year to be a factory worker. GOD IS BIG, not small. Your being a mere factory worker is not enough for His Son. So it takes time to INVEST IN YOU the spiritual 'money' to make you Spiritually Mature: much more, than the millions upon millions of dollars one must first accumulate to buy and then operate a steel mill. See the irony? We Christians all too often think God wants us to be a factory worker. Not Enough! See the irony? Satan had wanted to become like the Most High -- which was God's Script for him, all along. 'And now, His Script for us! "For He is not ashamed to call them brothers" (Heb2). "Brothers" means of the same Parents. Not, pets. Not factory workers, either. We Are To Be Sons Of The Owner, Running The Place. Not hired hands.

    People who've only been hired hands fantasize that the owner or executive has an easy job, so somehow is making money off the hired hand, oh-how-unfair. Same way that children think of parents: Oh, big adults, I'm small, they have power over me, they tell me no, they must be mean. And if you've ever had kids, you know how you slave over them. Well, it's no different for the owner or executive. Those are parental jobs. They eat your life, you have far less social life (it gets spent on cultivating more business, instead), and you are no longer your own person. Just as it is, being a parent. Exactly.

    Gonnna be billions (hopefully many) Christians in heaven. 99.9% of them will be comparatively childish, compared to those who spiritually-matured, down here. We will all be light-years bigger than we are now, but the differential in maturity, remains relatively the same. Look at the angels. They are not equal. Neither will we be. So who will parent, those relatively younger/weaker in understanding? That's the problem. Down here most Christians will not choose to live in God's System. So by comparison in eternity, they will need to be ruled. Sad fact. Part III will cover this problem in great detail.

    Mainstream Christianity calls Brother-Foot action, 'spiritual'. Nothing could be further from the truth. You don't become a doctor by waiting on tables; you become a doctor, by many years of study study study before you go out and even practice on a patient. Much more true, of the real spiritual life. It's a training for Kingship, so takes a lifetime. God will match the do's to your personal learning curriculum; it's all tailored for the eventual office God CHOSE for you from before creation. It's not a denominational thing. So better get in God's System, and learn His Personal Agenda for you. Which involves a lot of downtime. For Christ, it was 30 years -- nearly His Whole life. So what do you think the Pattern is, for Church? Not waiting on tables, that's for sure!

    Notice how the unbeliever always regards "Christian" as being about morality. Well, they are the waiters. Waiting to be convinced. So waiting on tables, the meanwhile. Satan is big on morality and works: to keep people from learning God! Why else do you think he tempted Christ with good deeds, in Matt4?

See? In order to live with GOD, forever, you've got to be as good as God is. That's impossible, though: even if you were perfect, God is INFINITELY perfect. So you can't be as good as God is, even if perfect. So, God imputes His Righteousness (aka "+R") to you at salvation (i.e., 2Cor5:21 "Righteousness in Him" verse). That makes you good enough. But it doesn't stop there. Your body also needs to have the same type of life God is, called "eternal life" (aka "EL") in the Bible, so your resurrection body can survive and thrive forever in His Presence (i.e., 1Jn5:13). So, at salvation (the first time you believe in Christ for salvation), you are imputed with that, also.

    [See Jn3 and 5:24-27, 10:28-29, plus 1Jn3,5:11-13,18,20b verses to help see salvation is permanent upon the first act of belief. Furthermore, there are hundreds of verses about the Baptism of the Spirit, which is HOW salvation is made not only permanent, but Royal: He puts us in Permanent Royal Union with Christ upon salvation. See 1Cor12:13, 2Cor5:14-21; 2Thess 2:13; Gal3:26ff (really, all of Gal3-5 is on this topic); Romans 6 (e.g., vv3-5); Eph1 and 4:5; Acts1:5,8; 1Pet1:4ff,2:5,9; Hebrews 10: 10-14, in context; Rev 1:10, 5:10. The foregoing verses are pretty obvious even in the English -- also all "sanctify" and "saint" verses ("sanctify" really means "to set apart to God" -- "seal" verses tie in here also). Greek tenses in all these verses makes it impossible to misconstrue that SALVATION IS INSTANTANEOUS AND PERMANENT. English doesn't properly translate the full meaning of these tenses, so folks get confused and wrangle over "head and heart belief", "Lordship", "Faith-plus-Baptism", and other satanically-inspired, obviously stupid ideas. Remember, Satan&Co. are out to prevent folks believing in Christ, and out to ridicule. So, the obvious stupidity that "belief" is somehow a non-mental activity -- wow, sell more snake oil? Oh, I can make Christ something? Oh, excuuuuse me -- He's not already the Lord? Isn't that why you believe? Sell some more snake oil? Oh, I must get wet to be saved -- come on, now! Do you see why the demons fall over laughing? Do you see why unbelievers say "no" to these adulterated 'gospels'?

    Also, even fallen angels have at least some type of eternal life, but not +R; even unbelievers get a resurrection body at the Great White Throne (see Rev20), so then get some type of eternal life -- both kinds of beings, so to live in Hell forever. See? Eternal life cannot be lost; and of course -- neither can God's Attribute of +R, for crying out loud. So once you get the +R, you can't go to Hell, ever. You can't add to it by any work you do; nor can you lose it by some sin you do; because, BEFORE YOU WERE BORN, Christ paid for every sin you will ever commit. That's how you got the +R in the first place! See 2Cor5:21.]

Ok, so you're judicially good-enough, at last! And the Eternal Life means that after you check out of this body, you'll get one which can't die. But, um, how do you see Him? Talk with Him? Do you just float around? ESP'ing, "ohhhhmmmm?" Oh no. God is Real, not some floating ball-of-light, like in the movie, "Contact". You yourself must become a spiritual being. The Real God is a Spiritual Being. So you also have to become the same type of being, to have a basis for communication. Just as communication between a human and a pet can be wonderful, but must 'go through' the commonalities of their bodies, so communication between a non-spiritual being and a spiritual one is almost zero. So, God the Holy Spirit makes a human spirit for you at the moment of salvation -- the +R and the EL reside there. This act is called "regeneration". (See Tit3:5 and all of John 3, 1Cor2, and 1John in this connection. OT folks were also regenerated upon faith in Him, but the terminology used to communicate regeneration varies: Gen15:6, "book of life", "Redeemer" and all the Levitical Sacrifices verses are but a few of them.)

Now you are "a new creation" (2Cor5:17), a spiritual being, permanently. Now you know why the Gospel is needed, why it alone works to make you able to live in Heaven with God, why it's not "arbitrary and capricious" to require the Gospel as the standard. We are all born spiritually dead (Part II provides the details.) So, if you "believe in Christ", you are saying "yes", I want to know God. So, these three things (the +R imputation, the +EL imputation, and a human spirit) GIVE YOU A SPIRITUAL LIFE so you can both come to know God, and live with Him forever. That's called being "born again", and it's a real birth, a spiritual birth, as the Greek of John3:16, Titus 3:5, and 2Cor5:17 make clear. Only As A Spiritual Being Can You Process Spiritual Information. Which, the Holy Spirit enables.

Ok, but being "born again", you're a spiritual baby, not spiritually-mature. You know nothing more than before you were saved, and indeed couldn't know, because until you were saved, you had NO spiritual life. Sure, you'll be in heaven forever, but -- as what? A spiritual baby? God wants Mature Spiritual beings, not just any ol' spiritual beings. So -- what must you get? The Son's Thinking -- 1Cor2:16+Romans 12:2-3 -- which grows you up spiritually, so you become "mature, thoroughly equipped for all good-of-intrinsic-value achievements" (corrected translation of 2Tim3:17). See? You have to grow up before you are competent to 'do' what GOD wants. And what is the 'do'? Learn My Son, Think Like My Son (Parts III-IV will explain this in much more detail). Compatibility, that's what God wants. The 'work' is to BECOME something, not to do something. Love is a BEING, not a doing. So, obviously, God's Script eschews Cain's vegetables.

    Satan likes your vegetables. He doesn't want you to grow up, because then you prove the fault is his own spiritual arrest. If he can make you arrest before you reach maturity, he's happy. Remember, he wants revenge -- it's not merely about the Trial. If he can stop you from growing up in Christ, that buttresses his ego.

    Because, Satan wants to replace the Most High. 'Not-love. That is Satan's script. We find ourselves wanting to replace the Most High's Thinking (Bible Doctrine) in favor of our own. That is Satan's script, too, the issue he himself faced oh so long ago. Satan's script looks a lot like God's script, because it references the same principles in the "middle", as we saw earlier. For, he incompletely developed, and wants very much for you to do the same. To use you, to bludgeon God with rejection. To use you, to pet his own ego. So Satan's eager to teach you his script -- which you can very easily mistake for God's own. That's the danger. Absent the 1Jn steps above, Satan's script will puff one up with the blitzkrieg fake-God 'knowledge'. Beware.

How much of God's script do we want? However much we choose, that is how much we will forever be close to Him, in eternity. And, the converse: however much of Satan's script we want, that's how much our closeness to Satan down here will limit our closeness to Him, eternally. If we had at least chosen to believe in Christ, the satanic closeness will be erased from us, upon death; but there will be no closeness-to-God to replace it. We will be like spiritual Epsilons in heaven -- to the extent absent learning Him down here. That too, is only fair, only loving, since all the "compatibility" with God we loved, we'd chosen, by the time of death. 'A little, or a lot. At least, faith in Christ, which after all is really a choice to BE with God forever. The Real God. Not Yucky Gertrude Cheese.

    Fake spirituality uses nice tones, flatters the ego, is 'nice'. Lots of Bible verses quoted, almost gluttonishly -- see 1Clement for a good sample of gluttonish quoting -- and oh, how the appeal is made to works and sin! For the immature believer, can't yet tell the difference between what sounds like Bible, and what IS Bible. Kinda like the way mom and apple pie and doing good for the poor are used by the political parties, the sounds of the words, entice. So the CONTENT of the words, goes unexamined. Thus 99.9% of the world is hooked on fake spirituality, Christian flavor or no.

    Detecting-the-Lie-Key => if man is stressed, it's a lie. Stuff about what you do, what others do, definitions which are body oriented, morality-stressed -- all lies. Knowing GOD is what Christ developed in, getting that Truth in Him. Then at the end, He went to the Cross. Bible doesn't record Him doing any good deeds when He was down here: He did miracles (which is God's Power, so not a human good deed) and He talked a lot. Yet Bible records Him excoriating those quintessential good-deeders, the Pharisees. Guess why.

It's how much one Wants To Know God which determines one's current and eternal future; not sin, not human works, John 16:9. [Nerd Note: People whose sin proclivities run in the self-righteous category hate hearing this fact. Sorry, I didn't invent John 16:9 which CHRIST said, nor His Cross which nailed away our sins. Sin damages the soul, so there is plenty of reason to not want to sin. Don't lie against the Word of God like most Christians do, making an issue of sin as if God didn't do anything about it 2000 years ago. Christ Himself says it's not an issue. Don't dispute Him?]

So how to tell whose side one's on, whose script is one using? We don't just sit still, do we? Of course not. Yet we know we are to go "neither to the right, nor to the left". Neither lascivious, nor ascetic. Neither needing nor demanding. Neither ignorant nor puffed up. In short, on-spot. That requires precise Knowledge. Oh, the world is a minefield, strewn with Satan's spiritual-substitute landmines. The 1Jn steps, above -- that's how we learn to see those landmines, and even profit from them. For in learning Him, we come to see Him. In seeing Him, we come to love Him. All along the way, we come to discern between "truth and error" (1Jn4:6), so we come to see Satan's good-deeds' landmines -- and the profit from avoiding them.


Royal Script, Royal Power, Royal "Bride"

Royalty. Ahhh, how many images such a term connotes. Pomp, wealth, respect, power. Distance, self-control, ruling over a kingdom. A prince. A princess. Fairy tales.

Fairy tales? Did you know the Royal Trinity Indwell you? Yes, you! "Unless you fail the test!" This "test", is a test of knowledge, a warning to know about Indwellings (i.e., John 14:20, Chaps14-17; Acts 1:5,8; 2Cor13:5; 1Cor3:16,6:19, 2Cor6:16, etc). Why? So we can know we have the most intimate relationship with the Godhead ever granted to mankind. Analogous to the Glory "indwelling" the OT Tent/Temples, so we also are Indwelt by Father, Son, Spirit. Why? Because Christ is our "Husband", and this intimacy with God is what His Humanity has always and will always have (see Jn14-17). Sex is a picture of this intimacy -- the idea of husband and wife being 'inside' each other, via the pleasured coupling (soul coalescence depicted by body coalescence). The Indwellings are even better than that: The Godhead CHOOSES to be "in" you. You don't feel it, because it is bigger than any feeling can hold. You instead can know it (knowing is always bigger than feeling). So, God (and Christ) are not distant! They are IN you, if you are a believer! Forever! "Christ in you, the confidence of glory"! (Col1:25-27). Check out all the "in" verses: "in Him", "in God", "in you", "in the Spirit" -- these are all answers to His John17 prayer that "they become one, even as We are One". Our Status in Him is breathtaking Grace. Breathtaking Love. What potential Satan rejected, becomes our FIRST benefit, at salvation. Forever.

Now, how do we learn to enjoy this intimacy? Ahh. We need Divine Power. The same Power Christ had during His First Advent: the Indwelling of the Spirit provides the base for the Filling of the Spirit (hence the constant need to use 1Jn1:9). Further, our exalted position puts us under maximum competing pressure from the satanic do-good power. So we need the Holy Spirit to Fill us to counteract that pressure. Thirdly, we need Divine Power to counteract our sin nature, which is insanely preoccupied with "me-be-good" (explained in Part II). Most of all, we need Divine Power, to become the spiritually-mature beings God wants for His Son, as Fit Bride -- analogous to how Christ Himself depended on it to grow to Fullness, even the Fullness of the Cross. How can we use this power, if we don't know God provides it? How can we use this power, if we don't know the (i.e., 1Jn) system God created to transmit it to us? How can we grow, if we don't know God's Script? Obviously, we can know, and get to know, and get the Power. So -- do we want it? Each moment?

God grants this Power to not only avoid the Satan's do-good lookalikes, but -- above all -- to enable us to have a 'married', intimate knowing relationship with the Most High. This Power was never before granted to fallen man; it is a Power first granted to Christ, which God the Father "put into operation" for us at the Session, per Eph 1. It proves that, post-Cross, we Christians have the potential to use a Power so vast, we can gain "infinitely more than we could ask or imagine" (Eph 3:20). Salvation is but a mere floor; the ceiling Now is the achievement of Christ ("agathos", English "good", meaning "good-of-intrinsic-value-achievement"; Eph1:15-23,Eph3:15-20), which we inherit per Eph1, "in the Beloved". [Theme of Hebrews is on this topic, too. Try just reading Hebrews like a book, even in the English, to 'get the gist' of what the author is driving at. Do the same for Ephesians, since the two books mesh perfectly together. I get the impression that Paul is stressing the mechanics of how to use our wealth, whereas the author of Hebrews stresses the structure and basis of our royalty. Well, both stress Royalty due to His Royalty, and the consequent structure, but it seems the writer of Hebrews is in a hurry to get folks in Jerusalem to 'get with the program' (viz., Heb2:1-2, Heb5:11-6:1-6, 12:1-15), whereas the audience for Paul is already growing, and needs more detail.]

Do we realize that as a result of His Victory on the Cross, the ceiling on how one can develop was royally raised? Wouldn't it have to be raised, in order for Christ to have a Fit Bride? Wouldn't we have to be able to come to think as He does, in order to go through all those four Love stages, Attraction => Compatibility => Rapport => Mature Love? So, wouldn't we have to come to be much bigger than we are, even while in this puny body, analogous to how Christ Himself grew, even in a human body? Of course, on all counts. What, will God give His Uniquely-Born Son an unworthy Gift? Guess again!

    Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone lower than you? It's doggone difficult to find something in common. Person A is all agog over the latest rap music, and here you are, busy analyzing Gibbon. Person B is all about what he ate for dinner, and C is working on string theory. What can two such persons, talk about? Moreover, if you try to tolerate the other person, you'll tense up, impatient -- and it will show. Likewise, the one lower will be most uncomfortable, sensing the smallness, so will need to ridicule your being of higher interest/intellect. It's not comfortable to either party. And no amount of good deeds, can bridge that nature (of interest, of intellect) gap. See the problem? It's what we are, not what we do, that has to be fixed!

    Look: here we are, puny humans, in this "body of humiliation" as Paul puts it. Here Satan was, the most beautiful creature ever to come from the hand of God, light-years superior to us in terms of ability. We are so very weak, so very dependent on food, elimination, on feeling, on shelter. We really are just a cut above being animals. 99% of our day is spent on maintenance, for crying out loud.

    We puny humans were punished by work due to the Fall. As Part II will explain, 'work' is thus in our mentality. So -- like Satan -- we project our depraved ideas onto God, as if what WE think matters is also what God thinks matters. But what did He say, in Isa55? "My Ways are not Your Ways, nor My thoughts Your thoughts". See, because we need things, because we have to work to earn a living, fulfill needs, we insanely project these needs onto God -- as if He needed them from us, like we need them from each other.

    God has no needs. God is perfectly happy. Needs get in the way of happiness, for if one has needs, one must spend time on satisfying those needs, before one can begin to BE happy. So, God wants us to transcend need. That is what Integrity provides: with integrity, one has no needs, even if one's body has needs. The 'shame' of having needs is disregarded, by Love. THAT is true happiness.

    Granted, growing always involves effort and even pain. It takes effort to exercise the body to strengthen it. So, one mistakenly feels one 'earned' the 'reward' of the body's better health. So, one projects the fact of effort to get a desired goal into the spiritual life, which cannot even be done in human power.

So such a limited nature, made worse because (due to Fall) depraved by an "earn" mentality, is it pleasing to God? Of course not. One can only have so much fellowship with an animal, or a child. Make it do tricks, pet it; kinda like playing with dolls. After awhile, one yearns for more-adult company. So isn't there more to life, to the relationship? Can't we grow out of this limited state?

Satan says we can't; after all, God is a liar, and made angels defective, so -- see, look at the puny humans He made. Never mind that we need to be puny so Satan can have a level playing field.

God Says We Can Indeed Grow Beyond Our Limited Natures:
All The Way Up To "Fit Bride", via Christ's Thinking, DDNA!
He Who Had No Descendants, bears spiritual progeny forever, Isa53:8-54:1!

Eph3:15-19 via Eph4:11-16 is how He builds that Fit Bride. As you read this webseries, look for tables with this background; they are used in the series to designate important Church Bridal Contract topics. [No Bible I can read ever properly translates Ephesians, especially the mission-critical passages on the meaning of the spiritual life; the Eph4 passage is so mangled, I had to retranslate it afresh for website readers. See Eph41216.htm for a long corrected translation with exegesis, or RightPT.htm for two shorter translations. Your entire spiritual life depends on you understanding that passage correctly. See the short-but-sweet GodSystem.htm if you've no time to go through the other two htms.]

In Royal Marriage, it's very important that the Bride be Fit Financially, Culturally, and in every other way. It was quite important for the Bride to be as High as Possible, lest the King be dishonored in marrying too 'low'. It was always a decision made on behalf of the Kingdom; attraction within the couple was desirable, but optional. Honor mattered the more. So in olden times, the Bride was betrothed while still a baby or young child, and then after the Contract was completed, she moved to her groom's household; so the pair grew up together, and then were married at the 'right' age. Eleanor of Acquitaine and Mary Queen of Scots (of France, first) are two more recent examples of this custom. So of course the King of Kings gets a Bride growing up in Father's Household, tutored by the Mentor (not "Comforter", for crying out loud) -- the Holy Spirit.

Royals are trained in Thinking. For that is Their Job. Not footmen, who after all are footmen because they cannot think. Royal Thinking governs a polity, so it must be long and arduously trained. For a Royal governs by Example, by Exhibiting the Standard: "deiknumi" clause in LXX of Isa53:11 (not viewable in translated Bibles). Four other infinitives also pertain, and are sweepingly listed in the LXX of Isa53:10-11 (again, not viewable in translated Bibles). Chained together, these five infinitives constitute what happened to the Progenitor, the Christ, both training Him for the Cross -- and, how our sins got paid for by His Thinking while ON the Cross. So they must happen to us, as well. These five chained infinitives are:

  1. "katharizw" (kath-ar-EEDZ-oh): to Purify/Sanctify/Make Holy, via imputing His Son's Humanity with all sin (function of Atonement, in Bible).
  2. "aphairew" (ah-fay-REH-oh): to Plunder His Son's Thinking (function of Propitiation, in Bible).
  3. "deiknumi" (dike-NOOM-ee): to Exhibit His Son's Thinking, the Light which is God's Own Glory (function of Reconciliation/Peace, in Bible).
  4. "plassw" (PLAH-ssoh): to SCULPT OUT FROM His Son's Thinking, Righteousness (function of Redemption, in Bible).
  5. "dikaiow" (dick-eye-OH-oh): to Justify/Make Righteous at God's Own Level (result of redemption -- salvation/sanctification, in Bible).

    Notice the going-down quality of the first two infinitives, the joining quality of the third (joining of opposites), and the going-up quality of the last two, which are the results of the third. Hence, a Divine 'circle', encapsulating creation without compromise. Man can't ever effectuate these results, but he can learn and consent to them.

    Notice further that this circling process is like if-then thinking. Protasis, "if"; apodosis, "then". If a temptation hits the soul, God's Apodosis is applied to it, and the temptation is resisted, for the Truth in 'reply' defines the conclusion to make about the protasis. So, when tempted to fear, you 'reply' with "what time I am afraid, then I will trust You" as David did; and the item feared reduces in its ability to tempt you, the next time. For, a new conclusion bonded with the temptation, RE-ENGINEERING its meaning. Repetition of God's Apodoses millions of times as you age, greatly reduces or eliminates the power of the temptation. That's how RNA-DNA interactions work in biology; that's how sins got paid for on the Cross. That's how you progress spiritually, living on the Bible you learn. Protasis plus proper Apodosis makes you complete in Him. There are no gimmicks, self-help or psychology or "counselling" which are effective: the world's prescriptions only cross-addict you, so you just switch what type of sin and evil you do, versus what you'd done before. Again, only Thinking paid for sins. So only Thinking His Thoughts pays, period: "true riches". [Romans 8 tells us that we never stop sinning altogether. Body can't obey, Rom8:10. So you will always be tempted, and you will still sin. But sin is not the issue, growing up in Christ is the issue: "concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me", John 16:9 has the post-salvation application of learning Him; because if you do believe in Him, you want to Learn Him. You always want to learn more about a person you believe in. So those not learning the Book have stopped believing in Him. Saved, but not growing up, and certainly not loving Him. Again, if you Love Someone you want to Learn that Person. So kiss all those songfests about how I love Jesus good-bye.]

    Hence all the NT plays on these five infinitives. When Bible references previous Divine Writ, it uses the keywords of that Writ, either outright, or thesauretically; either directly, or conceptually. When you read Bible, you must think like a thesaurus, or you will misconstrue its meanings. Which is fun, actually, because it's like a sport: connecting Bible meanings to everything in your life. Paul calls it by Olympian names: boxing, running, etc. Writer of Hebrews likens it to a marathon race, parallelling the Lord's, in Heb12:1-2's Greek (other writers use the same terms).

    Greek word for athletic training is agon. English "agony" comes from it. And that's how it often feels, too. The idea is fabulous, fun, interesting, and Bible is truly refreshing to know (sooo much better than what passes for intellectuality or conversation out there in the banal world). But: your sin nature hates this, so it will feel bad often -- then you're in agony. Push on, Phili3:14. You don't have to like it, and you won't like it, but that building of Word in you, the re-engineering, depends on REPETITION, since your body is dead battery. Your 'couch' and your 'body' are equally dead. Because we humans mistake body life for something truly alive, we get all upset when our bodies don't work as expected, or when people don't respond as we expect. That's like expecting your couch to do the dishes. Ain't gonna happen! Organic life is just as mindless as your couch!

    So the repetition is wearing: you are SCULPTING your live soul but dead body by means of it; since the body is dead but organic, it CAN be trained -- but takes a lot longer to get sculpted, than your soul. So only by repetition, will you win anything. No one makes it even in this world, without tons of wearying repetition. No diet works, no exercise works, no wealth-building works and no learning works, without millions of "reps". For the body is dead. So the soul must not be. Over and over and over. No instant fixes (heck, even Windows takes tons of time, to even work right once)!

    Each 'firing' of one of God's Apodoses (Bible you've learned and 'eaten', believed and thought over, internalized) is a Matt4:4-type occurrence. Which matters a lot, because God is Omniscient. Omniscience is One Big Now, even as Infinity is One Big Now, past present future an entirety, kinda like a Georges Seurat painting. So what you are thinking right now is forever in the View of Father, Son, Spirit. And will always be. Now: I bet you want to do something for Them. Well, this is it: fire Bible you know at whatever in your life, like a game. Hence the need to cultivate remembering to use 1Jn1:9 like breathing, even if you're not sure if you sinned. That way you're filled with the BrainPower of the Spirit, and can fire Bible all the time. Like, a game. For that's how Christ did it, Matt4:4.

"Salvation" is about much more than avoiding burning lakes. It's about growing beyond our puny humanities. We saw from the "Integrity Properties" section how God must grow us up in His OWN Nature, because it's 'hell to be finite'. Satan rejected this Offer, Isa14:13-14. Since Love will never coerce, How Much We Grow Up Is A Free Will Question, just as it was for Satan; sin was nailed away on the Cross first, Because It Benefitted Christ -- His Benefit is Always the Reason for Anything, main theme of Eph1. For Christ Grew All The Way Up To God's Level in His Humanity, thus becoming "The Way the Truth and the Life" -- never doing any works, and never relying on His Human Power, as you'll see later in Parts II and III. Christ died, not just to save us from eternal suffering, but to deliver us for further growth, John 17:17-21, John 4:23-24, Gal5:1-26. Greek verb "sozo" means "rescue, save, deliver": you were saved from hell that first nanosecond you believed in Christ; now, your soul can be saved from all that horrible, puny religious thinking which was the first Adam's legacy, bombarding you from within and without, since every human born but One, is infected with it. For both ascetism and lasciviousness are religiously tyrannical, harloty, always trying to seduce others to join them, maligning God as Sugar Daddy or Petty Judge. Just turn on the TV at any hour, see for yourself.

But as Paul soooo wittily quips in 1Tim2:15, the woman [Bride, get it] shall be delivered by delivery, bearing spiritual children. [As usual, God's head is chopped off in that verse too, so you think it's about her being a chaste and obedient wife, lol. Greek there is of anarthrous construction; means GOD-level Actor and Action, sheesh. Spiritual seed! It's wordplay. My pastor went ballistic over this verse: he said that it was stressing how the spiritual life was the same for the woman as the man -- duh -- since it is in the soul. So no, it wasn't a lower occupation or something to rear kids, that's not what the verse was about. Many layers of meaning in the verse, though. Idea of Isha being the 'mother' of Christ, Who then Goes to the Cross and Pays for her is but one of the pithy meanings. What Divine Wit!]

For God wills that we puny humans also become like the Most High: "into the 'destination' of life: the Pleroma Maturity-Fitness Capacity belonging to Christ Himself", Eph4:13 (corr trans) -- that's much, much greater than we are! [Again, see Eph41216.htm or at least meaning #1 in Thayer and Bauer Danker lexicons for katantanw, used in v.12, of which this "into" (eis preposition) is the destination katantanw references. My Bauer Danker lexicon in BibleWorks explains that this is a WALKING to your destination, and is used figuratively used to denote life's purpose, goal. Eis preposition is then used, and its own object denotes the DESTINATION. Paul chains eis prepositions in verses 12-16, to show what 'building' referenced in Eph3:15-19, does to the Body as a whole. In v.13, the shocking thing is that via the use of "measure", we know EACH of us can get as Highly Developed as Christ Himself. God of course does this in us. That level of internal development! is what Father laid up for us in eternity past, individually, as our Personal Dowry; which makes sense, given that Christ Ought To Have A Bride Made From His 'Rib'. If you're under my pastor, he spent a lot of time on exegesis here in the '85 Ephesians series: Chapter 4 exegesis starts in Lesson 772.]

Technical information backing up the NT usage of the infinitives, follows in brief. If your eyes glaze over, just skim or skip to the end of this pink table, and start reading again.

Ephesians is wholly about how this five-infinitived 'Divine circle' works; Paul goes so far as to baldly parallel a famous Greek play at the time, known as "Ion". The term means "venom", demon spawn, here by the 'god' Phoebus Apollo, which is how Satan was known (=MorningStar in Hebrew, Isa14:13-14), the one at the right hand of (to the Greeks) Zeus, delivering all his commands (Zeus=Son, in Greek mythology). So Paul parallels that to show the Real God-Father's Superior Begetting in Christ. Apollo raped a human named Creusa, and by the play's end he shows his penitence by making Ion his (half-god, half-human) son by that liason, the founder of the Greek Sea Peoples. Since Isaiah depicts the Cross as a rape-pregnancy in Isa53:10-11 (in both Heb and LXX, but some of the passage is only available in the LXX), Paul matches Isaiah to the play, and then weaves the Seed-in-you-birthing theme around it. Must have caused much smiling among all those who got the circular letter (Ephesus was just one of the audiences). No wonder Paul was so beloved!

You can track the infinitives being conceptually played on, in the order listed above.

  • Ephesians Chapter 1 uses all five, since it's the overview chapter, which ends with the very witty, nominally-euphemistic, "filling all in all" in v.23. The first 18 verses are all one sentence in the Greek, very dramatic Eternity-Past Funding/Endowering Decree.
  • Chapter 2 focuses on katharizw, bringing us 'near' because we are purified in Him. He begins weaving the plunder infinitive in 2:4 onward; he introduces the exhibit infinitive beginning in 2:7, the sculpt infinitive beginning in v.10 (using Ionic dative for epi, lol), and the "walk" in that same verse references the Justify. V.10 should say "God's Works", not "good works", because the Greek term "ergon" is anarthrous (God's Head is always chopped off in translations, you can set your watch by it). Then, Paul begins all over again, using the five infinitives for the balance of the Chapter, this time on a macro level to show the BUILDING nature and culmination of history, since Church is Body to co-Rule with Him forever (elaborating on 1:10 and 1:23).
  • Chapter 3 takes off with the Plunder and Exhibit infinitives, showing the 'building' that the sculpt and justify infinitives will 'construct' (again, referring back to Eph2:10, what are God's Works). Focus is on the individual, hence the prayer in Eph3:15-19, with the again-nominally-euphemistic "Fullness": pregnant with Word, bearing Word kids from your own soul like He did in Isa53:10-11! in v.19. Note how that's what glorifies God and completes history in this Most Important "Age over the Ages" (lexeme in v.21).

      Your Spiritual Bridal Life Key ==> It's about what you BECOME, not what you do; it's not about witnessing and works about the church. It's about TRANSMUTING into His Thinking. Male or female, rich or poor, handicapped or not, we are all Bride (see Galatians). Forget whatever you are humanly. You are to be DDNA'd, for you are a new spiritual species that first nanosecond you believed in Christ, 2Cor5:17's Greek!

  • Like Chapter 2 did micro then macro level, Chapter 4 'answers' Chapter 3 on a macro level, how this Plunder of His Thinking is Exhibited and therefore distributed, sculpted, etc. through a Divine System set up at the Ascension (4:1-10, ties back to 1:20), via local-church pastors (v.11-16); each pastor gets his own "metron" for the "meros" within the Body he will be gifted to teach; so he is the one whose capacity, they 'plunder' (4:16). Eph4 uses many keywords in Isa53:10-12, both directly and thesauretically, especially "measure" (Greek word "metron"), which ties to "merizw" (apportioning-of-booty) in Isa53:12's LXX. Christ was Plundered, so Inherits All. So we inherit His Thinking which is husbanded through pastors, kitting and knitting out the Body.

      Intimate marital terms are used in v.16, to denote the level of spiritual intimacy/rapport this kitting and knitting is intended to create; no wonder translators won't blush to translate them properly. Same kind of vocabulary is used in Isaiah, very graphic. Paul parallels both Isaiah and the play "Ion" to show how one 'rape' brings about a whole federation of kingdoms, just as explained in both Isaiah and "Ion". Plot, for Church: Rape, pregnancy, kids who grow up and themselves get 'raped' by this world's abuse because they won't play on Satan's Rev17 turf; and by so doing, bear kids they themselves will own as the "great ones" depicted in Isa53:12. [Nerd Note: Rev17 harlot imagery is OT; what Paul didn't know or didn't write about which was given to John, was that there would be a Fake Church, a satanic counterfeit passing itself off as 'Christian', which of course we all baldly see in history, and at anytime one turns on a 'Christian' station; but at the time, John, who wrote some 30+ years after Ephesians, uses Paul's "mystery" moniker in Rev17, tying back to Paul. But the harlot nature of religion is all over the OT, in every chapter after Genesis 2.]

      Hence "the many" believers who refuse God's System (4:1-16) will be the ruled, since they proved sterile seeds, Luke 8 -- "fruit" always and only means TEACHING you learn and believe, never anything else. These sterile seeds instead gave birth to the Fake Church, harloty Brother-Foot Churchinanity, so are only worthy of being Royal Footmen forever. Justice is precise. Remember the Warning Label (in ugly orange, near pagetop): you get what you want from God. Exactly. And if you don't get in God's System, what you want from God is low status and distance. So, that's what you'll get; saved, and that's all. No rewards: for all those works get burned up at the Bema, 1Cor3; just like human works get burned up at the Great White Throne Judgement for unbelievers, in Rev20:11-15, last half of 2Peter. God's Works, never man's works, Alone count.

  • Chapter 5 (which really starts in 4:17) then goes on with the marital-intimate analogy, showing how Word-in-you plays laterally towards people, and how it defeats Satan&Co. in the Trial. There shouldn't be a Chapter 6 division, because the topic stays the same. Philippians is on this same marital-and-progeny result, using the clever propagating term, megalunw as the theme (Phili1:20). So the result of all the plunder and apportioning in Isa53:12, is KIDS. Forever. See: rulership is parental. Forever.[College of Paris in (I think it was) the 1100's invented the chapter and verse system. It's not part of Divine Writ.]

    This is God's Works in you. This is the real level of works which accounts for your being down here, post-salvation. What you do with your body is adjunctive, peripheral. For to do work for GOD, must be something eternal, not temporal. Hence the lifetime of Royal Bride Training, which is the real purpose of the post-salvation life. Not, what you do with your body for mere people, thump thump.

In Eph4:13, the word "measure" means "capacity" -- literally, a MEASURING CUP of a particular size, used for apportionment. The size/capacity of that Cup here is Spiritual Maturity, "stature" being a bad translation (word first means a FIT-for-responsibility maturity level); "Pleroma" is a big, highest-maturity-level, Bible keyword: it's used with reference to its etymological origin, pregnant-with-god's-seed. Seed in Bible always references the Word Growing In You (i.e., Luke 8), so His Thinking is what's referenced in Eph4:11-16, and the Level of His Thinking, is Eph4:13. His Own Thinking Level! That's the spiritual life; and the goal of it, is to get that much of His Thinking in You, so that you think Just Like Him. Just like He Thinks; not like you do now; it takes time learning and living on Word to grow that far -- most of your lifetime, actually. For He paid for sins with His Thinking, keywords (Gk) suneisis and (Heb) da'ath (gotta use both Heb and Greek texts for Isa53:10-12 to get the complete text). So just imagine what such Thinking can eventually do to the temptations and plagues in your own life! Incoming temptation/sin meets Beautimous His Thinking in you -- "treasure in earthen vessels" as Paul puts it -- Matt4:4, always occurring! Whether you brush your teeth, or are dying of cancer; whether you just won the Lottery or the Nobel prize, or -- you just lost your job. Everything is different now, 2Cor5:17!

Now you know why "1 John's Outline of God's Script" is sooo vital to your spiritual life: it IS the spiritual life. Bible circulating in your head, 24/7 is a Priestly Thing. Analogized in Bible as, getting His Seed in you, just as our sins were in Him on the Cross. The ultimate conversion, God's 'DNA' BUILDING, in exchange for our puny (ergo sinful) thought 'DNA' in our souls! See how that conversion atones, propitiates, reconciles, redeems and justifies? For DNA is literally an "instruction set": in biology, it tells your souls how to BE in every respect; genetic illnesses occur when the instruction set has errors in it. Your thinking is the instruction set for your life, and your life is what your thoughts make it. So if you get HIS Thoughts, whoa -- He's the Happiest Person in the Universe. So Happy, even the Cross was a Joy to Him, Heb12:2. And His Thoughts are in Writing: Bible (OT as God, NT as God-man). So, "Divine DNA", really. And we know this DDNA works, since the writers of Bible are human. His Seed in their souls, exhaled out His Perfect Word. Which Word, replicates in us as we live in God's System, living on 1Jn's Outline of God's Script, which is Matt4:4! And what does Matt4:4 say? "not merely on bread, but every TAUGHT Word which comes from the Mouth of God." [Greek word "rema" means Word TAUGHT by a TEACHER. So the capped words should be in the published translation, but the translator isn't allowed to use more than a one-word replacement. That rule would get you fired from any diplomatic post, if you followed it; would have gotten you shot if you followed it, back in the days when kings held absolute power. Evil rule. Sheer evil. Most misinterpretation of Scripture comes from using translations, frankly.]

God isn't kidding around, in Eph4:13. It's probably the most shocking verse in all the NT. Point is, His Thinking Is The Plunder, which is why you have 1Jn explaining how to get that Thinking, which alone is True Spirituality. Same as Deuteronomy 6 and 30, but here at the Highest Level Ever Granted to Mankind. Isa53:12 anticipates it, calls it "booty" (people-booty), playing on the "booty" made out of Him, in Isa53:10. So it's a LOVE CIRCLE: all those "Love of God" or "Love of Christ" verses in Greek have what's called a "subjective" and "objective" genitive usage, which 1Jn4:19 baldly references. For He was lovesick for us (Hebrew heheli in Isa53:10), hence He agreed to be raped with our sins (im tasim asham, ibid, and anah-related verbs in the Chapter); which, the Holy Spirit made into more Divine 'DNA': spiritual re-engineering the sins out from Jesus' replies in Thinking: for you pay for soul sins -- and there is no other kind, body is just a mindless bucket of biology, a 'house' -- you pay for soul sins, with like kind -- The Soul's Beautimous Divine Thinking. Which is why at least 21 times in the original-language texts of Isa53 (52:13-54:1 in our translations), His Thinking Pouring out to Substitutionary Death is repeated: for that was the Contract, Isa53:10-11: "if you will give your Soul as a Substitute for Sin". [So: you have to be deaf dumb and blind to think that His Physical Death paid for sins. It's a juridical mismatch, and no body has a single thought, nor can a body sin: thought is immaterial. It's the thinking which defiles, as the Lord so often explained in the Gospels. But absent 1Jn1:9, no Christian can read the Bible, even when it bites him with 21 statements of how our sins were paid for, blow by blow. Sorry, there's no excuse for us not to know how Our Savior paid for us. We should be ashamed at our centuries-long horrible 'scholarship' on what should be the Most Important Question in every believer's mind. Grail.htm has more detail on this topic.]

Which defilement, Isa53:10-11 in the LXX, graphically explains. So as a result, now that Thinking is in a Soul (OT people didn't have that CopyBook), we can get His Thinking in our souls, which is the NT. So Paul is explaining how Isa53:10-11 get fulfilled in us, in Eph4:11-16, with this crescendo of 4:13 to show how we can become His Own Full 'DDNA' -- in our own souls! Simply by learning and living in Bible in God's System (see God's System and DDNA links at pagetop). So we doo-doo can be made into Divine Diamonds: God's Alchemy!


We believers rarely learn our Bibles to find out this Royal Raising in Christ to God's Own Level; instead, we prefer to side with Satan's huff-and-puff Sugar Daddy/Petty Judge substitute, not God: for we mouth all his arguments, playing footsie with him every chance we get. For example, it's astonishing, how we believers reject Christ via the pious claim that no one can know God, that God is "too high" to know, that anyone who claims to know Him is arrogant. What colossal gall! Is it how low 'you' are, or how HIGH God is? If it's how HIGH God is, then think: isn't it arrogance of the worst kind to spurn His Order That You Be Made By The Spirit, To Think Like His Son, 1Cor1:5, 10, 5:7-8, all of Romans 8, Phili2:5-10, 2Pet3:18, Eph4:23, Rom12:1-3 (which verses are of course are mangled in most Bible translations so you don't know the order)? Or, shall one be as egregiously arrogant as Ahaz was, in Isa7? As those UGLY! pious hypocrites in Deut 30:11ff! What, is the Blood of Christ worth nothing??? Blood is everywhere in Bible a metaphor signifying THINKING, which is why the animals in the Levitical sacrifices, all bled to death: "the soul is in the blood", dummy -- so your 'blood' is your thinking, because your thinking is the real you, 'circulating' 24/7! Did Christ pay so we could be footmen, for crying out loud? How much 'fellowship', rapport, commonality, would there be, between a King and a peasant? Get real!!

What, is God so weak, He must settle for Brave New World Epsilon morons -- what kind of companions would they be, for His Most Precious Son? LOL, even ol' Jabez in the OT had the good sense to know that God's promotion Glorified Him, so -- beware, spurning His Highest Gift, His Plan to make a Bride for His Son! What, is He so weak, He can't communicate Himself sufficiently to produce the requisite compatibility in us? What, if He does do so, is that any credit to the one who receives such Knowledge? Isn't it necessary to be trained, in order to be competent? LOL! But oh, one must carry his eyes at half-mast, and make politically-correct 'humility' hedges -- don't dare say you actually Know God, for it must be a lie? Don't dare say you know God, for it must then mean you are complimenting yourself, instead of Him? Oh no! It can only be arrogance, to know your Creator, Who after all, can't be loved until you do know Him? Guess again!

    Christ not only knew God, He also was (and still is) God. So, the foregoing paragraph's 'reasoning' was essentially used by the Pharisees to indict Him. They, like most Christians today, think "salvation" is the ultimate spiritual development possible -- y'know, like the 'i-can't-say-if-i'll-make-it-to-heaven' shellgame. Makes you want to vomit. Most Christians also think that (what they consider) 'avoiding sin' and 'doing works' is what makes one grow in Righteousness. Big lie, right from the very pit of hell. Most Christians seem to think that the eternal rewards Scripture mentions, are given out for their good deeds. Bigger lie. All three of these common ideas are Satan's gross, cheap substitutes for what the spiritual life really is. (cf Matt6,23.) Even in the Old Testament, the ceiling was way beyond salvation: "Friend of God" (a title for folks like Abraham and Moses, as Jas 2 notes). Even in the OT, it was believing, knowing God which mattered: never works. (Jas2 again, and look at Heb 11, Deut30, Deut6).

    The Mosaic Law didn't even have any works, as Part II will show. Come on, now: isn't it a big hint that one got disciplined for NOT resting (i.e., on the Sabbaths or the many other holidays)? Didn't Israel go into the Babylonian captivity because they didn't obey the Jubilee Years (whole years of NO working) -- so the "Land will have its sabbaths"? Hint, hint. And what were they supposed to "do" on those rest days? "Thou shalt do no work." Gee. Name even one 'work' in the Law. Just one. Bringing animals was no 'work'. Only God can make blemishless animals. Avoiding sin wasn't doing works: avoiding sin is merely avoiding sin. Avoiding harm, what credit should one get for that? Zero. Try to find even one true work in the Law. Don't let all the "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" phrases fool you. Look at the content of the so-called 'commands', and see how none of them are works, but BLESSINGS, money-in-the-bank. What 'work' is in the Law? Find one. 'Dare ya.

    What, is the God who made Abram righteous solely by means of faith (Gen15:6) suddenly changing to works? And Hope in Him, the integrity of one's ways? (Job4:6 -- some translations are awful.) So, what's with the idea that the Law was about works? The Mosaic Law, unique among all spiritual codes, had NO works: the desert God did everything. HE worked; people benefitted. That's what made "the Law" different, for crying out loud. The Book of Hebrews makes it clear that not only was the Law not works, but it was for REST. And what were they supposed to "do" on those REST days? Hmmm. How about Learning Him? Could Deut 6 and 30 be clearer? Could Heb4 be clearer? Making fun of works in Heb4:11 onward? And what is the 'work' there? Learning Bible Doctrine: Heb4:12! Just as in Deut 4-6,30. Check it out. Just because (what became) the Pharisaical branch of Judaism distorted the Law into works from its inception, doesn't mean the Law itself contained any works. Check it out. See for yourself. [There's no "labor" or "diligent" in Heb4:11. It's "spoudazo", "be eager" or "be enthusiastic", a favorite term of Peter's. Who didn't like grace, to translate it "be diligent", when REST is the object of the verb? Yet translate it "be eager" elsewhere in Scripture? Clearly the translator didn't like the fact that the writer of Hebrews is making fun of works when he uses spoudazo as a verb! What, does one work at resting, even? But hey, this is a command to 'do' rest! Lol! See how satanic do-goodism infiltrates believers?]

    Israel lost the Temple twice because the spiritual slobs took over and became popular, whether in Operation Golden Calf, or Operation Whited Sepulchre; and the sickening standard of the masses passed itself off as 'high' with all that hypocrisy. Same thing happened from the Jerusalem Church onward, which morphed into the Church Fathers, infecting minds ever since. The same mob rule is sickening on TV, and everywhere else. Pettiness. Childish pettiness, and more tyrannical than Hitler ever dreamed of being. No wonder the unbeliever is unimpressed and equates belief in Christ as stupid! Better to live on a desert island, than around a religious person.

    Look how slapstick, sample stuff religions of the world call holy: getting wet is holy/saves (misuse of Bible verses, Ganges version of Hinduism); running around some building until you trample people to death (Ka'aba, the hajj, the August pilgrimage for Ali); lighting candles/incense; chanting to achieve a certain stage of consciousness (trance); set prayers; doing mindless stuff for the poor so you can say you were a good person (wonder how much the poor would receive if people didn't get brownie points from God); rubbing beads (Catholicism and Islam, some branches of Buddhism and Hinduism) and chanting while you do that. The list goes on and on. And no lightbulbs turn on, why am I doing this stupid thing? What, is God a Mad Magazine character? Guess so, huh.

    Notice also, how important it is to dangle the carrot, so the religious person can never grab it: you are never sure you succeeded. You are never sure you are going to heaven. For there will always be some candle you didn't light fast enough, some bead you didn't rub hard enough, some pace around the building which didn't hurt enough, some wetness which wasn't thorough enough. Should it be hot water, since that might hurt? Should you be immersed until you can't breathe anymore? What about Detroit water -- that's not as good as Jerusalem water, right? After all, the Lord was IN Jerusalem, so Jerusalem water would make you more holy. And so it goes.

    Not a religion on this planet but dangles DOUBT in front of you. So of course, you keep on trying to find that pea under the walnut shell. And live a life of shallow definitions of God, torture, doubt. So in heaven, you have all that wood hay and stubble, but no learning of God, going with you. Ouch.

    The Mosaic Law was not like this. Ritual was designed to REMIND you of what you learned during all that rest time. It wasn't some kind of magic function which blessed you. It was a teaching aid. Oh well. Part II will cover the Law in much more detail.

God can promote anything, even doo-doo; since it's all His Work, and He's Omnipotent; He could 'do' the Cross, so He can 'do' doo-doo, since ON the Cross, all our soul DNA doo-doo, got converted into DDNA inside His Son's Soul: Who thus became the Living Payment, King-Priest kata Melchizedek (theme of book of Hebrews). So In Him we get a much higher, no-works spiritual-development ceiling than even "Friend" available to us: for we are Bride, Body of Christ, not merely an associate of Christ, as Part III will show. This higher spiritual life, versus the Old Testament, was "put into operation by means of Christ". [Eph 1:20a, corrected translation of energeo and dia -- in the Greek verses 1-18 are one sentence: it's a writing style to convey the endlessness of our inheritance.) Why? Because He prayed for it, in John 17, that we "become one" just as the Father and Son are one (cf. Eph1:10, KJV). Doesn't anyone get that? Paul sure did, making a big stink about becoming ONE in 1Cor6-7, 12, Eph5-6. Really, all of 1Cor, 2Cor and Ephesians are on Oneness; as Paul repeatedly notes, it's an analogy to the Marriage In The Garden, "Last Adam" title; so we have the designation, "Bride". Not merely "Friend".

    John is all about the same Oneness Topic, which is the reference format of his Gospel; that's why his Gospel begins as it does, that's why John Chaps 14-17 are all on the abiding Oneness which The Living Temple purchased for His Bride. Notice how, because John wrote his portion of Holy Writ in the 90's AD, no mention is made of the Matt24 Temple Destruction prophecy: after all, it was no longer prophetic when John wrote his Gospel. So instead -- as Part IVa will explain in excruciating detail -- we have Rev11:1ff, God's Satire on the Temple-rebuilt-against-God's-orders. That's why the Two Witnesses are there in sackcloth, warning people away from the Temple. For we are the Living Temple of the Living Temple, now. No more buildings will be authorized until the 2nd Advent, just as Ezekiel's long book explains, from Chapters 39 forward.

    Meanwhile, just as Daniel was told in Daniel 9:26, we have proof Messiah came and left in two of the biggest undisputed relics in the world: the Wailing Wall and the Abominating Dome of the Rock, which sits atop what used to be, the Holy of Holies. Could God make it more obvious?

Ergo, the ceiling on what we can have in Him is very much higher than the Old Testament folks even knew about. As Paul keeps reminding us, our "Church" marriage contract ("covenant", of which marital covenants are but one type) was a "mystery" to them. (Check out "mystery" verses.) John likes to reference the same marriage contract using homey words like "abide" (menw, the Greek word, has a be-at-home-with connotation, etymologically). Terms like "the beginning" are his way of tying our contract's purpose back to the Garden, my pastor frequently reminds us. And, of course, it was John who noted that until Christ completed His King-Priesthood in the flesh, this role could not be given (John 7:39). See, the first Adam got a bride, and flubbed it; but the Last Adam succeeded. And gets a Bride forever. Get it?

    Christ invented His Own Spiritual life, and invented Church. The Agreement basis was a separate contract for defeating Satan, Psalm 110. Book of Hebrews' main theme is to explain how that contract is NOT Israel, but a separate thing, and Our Church Covenant derives from that kata-Melchizedek contract which predates the one to Israel. (This you will see in Parts III and IV.) So that's why "Church" was a "mystery" prior, as it might have been Israel who'd have been the Bride. But she refused the Groom when He came here, as you'll see in Parts II-IV, especially Part IV (long story, thickly-threaded). Her rejection is the reason why there's a pre-Trib Rapture, since there would have been no Church, if Israel had accepted the Groom when He came.

    Hence, Israel's predicted Time Allotment running out (Daniel 9:24-26 -- covered in Part IVa), meant that to PRESERVE THE EARTH LIVING ANOTHER DAY, Christ had to invent a new Bride. Which He did, Matt16:18, ratified in John 17:20-21 as a Contract to be Fulfilled At Father's Discretion (all this is explained in detail, Part IV). That meant inventing billions of extra people who wouldn't otherwise exist (all of us!), and Christ is thus committing to pay for as many as Father CHOOSES to make -- in ADVANCE. So He upped the Bride Price when He made this Matt16:18 commitment. So Church's "time" is of unpredictable length, as it wasn't even supposed to exist -- and is made up of people who were at the time of the Cross, yet future. Only Our Mutual Dad knows who those people will be.

    Yet oh! What a mystery our real covenant is to Churchinanity, hiding in plain sight, in the Bible! What, do all denominations just thump their Bibles rather than study them? Does no one realize that we went all the way from 'taint' -- to saint? Does anyone ever bother to look up how hagnizw was used in the LXX, versus hagiazw, the verb repeatedly used for Church in the NT? The latter is light-years higher! We are saints -- the closest the OT got to that was a temporary set-apartness by living a dedicated life for a short period, at the end of which they shave their hair, for crying out loud (Numb6). During that time, they had to pay for very expensive sacrifices, every day. It was called a "Nazirite vow", and was (and remains) the most celebrated ritual in Judaism (now you know where payess comes from); one so beloved, it tripped up the apostle Paul, twice! (Acts 18:18 and Acts 21:24ff.)

    But "katharizw" is used for us right-off-the-bat, in 1Jn1:9 -- doesn't mean "cleanse", but PURIFY, the same promise word used in the LXX of Isa53:10-11, to which John is referring -- and it's the same word as used in the OT, for purifying the Temple! Who in the OT ever got that? They didn't: when they used Ps32:5, Ps66:18 and equivalents, they got only temporary cleansing, not purification: see Heb10. So for the OT people, purification (katharizw) was but a future promise, to be fulfilled on the Cross, Isa53:10-11 (LXX); they didn't have it while living on earth. But We are Bride, so we get it the very nanosecond we use 1Jn1:9; which is why we need to be breathing 1Jn1:9 as often as possible. Moreover, we Church get skenoo -- INDWELLINGS -- the Trinity indwell us. Who in the OT ever got that? Who in the OT was ever Filled with the Spirit? Greek verb "pimplemi" is a body-enhancing 'filling', used exclusively of the OT and Mill people -- it's not the full Comprehension "Filling" of "plerow", which we get (see pimplemi.htm). Where in the OT is it said that folks are permanently "sanctified" -- but we are (Heb10:12-14 is just one of many sample passages). Or why else do you think the writers of the NT address their audiences, "saints" at the beginning of the epistles? [Nerd Note: salvation is the same in any covenant, but the benefits post-salvation, are not. So the OT people couldn't get the full benefits until after death, for Christ hadn't yet finished the Cross, John 7:39. Part III's "Third Reason for Invisibility" link section will explain this differential in fuller detail. Part II will say more about it, as well.]

    Granted, one can't learn to connect Scripture verses overnight; but learning Scripture isn't rocket science either, in our Bible-on-CD age. 'Takes but daily plodding: the Holy Spirit enables learning via use of 1Jn1:9 and study under your right pastor, as noted above. So, take a 'test drive' of the spiritual life, to see how awesome has been man's blindness (absent the Holy Spirit, man must be blind): look up and trace the Greek words for yourself (skenoo ho own, hagnizw, hagios, katharizw, etc. -- the NT writers all use LXX keywords to show the upgrade). Our Church Role as Bride, not footman, is so glaringly obvious in Scripture. Unfortunately, one must cover Christendom's blindness to the Bible (frequently in tiny type explaining egregious mistranslations), to show just how effectively Satan&Co. beguile us -- so you can see this Trial is very real, very much playing everywhere you look, every day. The examples below are only a few among all of us. We are all dupes, k? Every denomination proves to be a demon nation, and surely doesn't mean to be so blinded:

    • the Calvinists and Covenantalists make Him out to be weak and tyrannical: oh, Sovereignty would be compromised if God's not Capricious (i.e., the lie that man lost his free will at the Fall of Adam necessarily means God would be capricious -- detail is in "TULIPS?" link on Home Page); can't dare upgrade the spiritual life to the fullness of Christ, Eph3:15-19 notwithstanding, so church must be israel (typical Covenantalist stance -- more on this passim through the webseries); can't dance, go to movies, or go with gals who do -- what folderol!

    • The Catholics (of all stripes, not merely RCC) would have you cleansing and eating bodies and running around with beads and rituals, praising bodily abstinence more than learning His Soul -- which of course castrates the work of the Cross (Heb5:11-6:6)-- as if What God the Holy Spirit Accomplished in Christ on the Cross was not enough???? Puleese.

    • The emotional crowd (some Evangelical, Pentecostal, etc.), would castrate God's Reason. Everything should be rosy glow, people telling you their visions/prophecies, gibberish passed off as angelic language, etc etc pop pop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is. Study is secondary, for the 'experience' is the reality -- wow, if you don't get the Ghost, brother, you're not saved! Paul categorically explained these gifts were temporary, and baldly so in the Isaiah28(:7-10) prophecy, to explain it was a 40-year judgement warning: 1Cor14:21ff, Chapters 12-14. Yet these are the very chapters such emotional groups use to justify their positions. Can they read at all?

    As you read through this webseries, you'll see ample evidence of the charges above. How is it that Christendom's brain-pistons have been misfiring for two millennia, as if popular Christendom all had dementia praecox or some other mad-cows-of-Bashan disease? For no one's noticed how the Bible excoriates their dogmas? What, too busy finding others' motes to read Scripture? Here we've had the Gospels all this time; Romans 2 has been around for 2000 years. Yet all the mainstream denominations make the same arguments as did the Pharisees who persecuted Christ; as the Judaizers who came behind Paul! Track it yourself. Compare what is taught today versus the same nonsense Christ condemned in the Gospels (NIV conveys some of the biting wit He used). Yeah, the same ol' same ol', never look in the Book to see self in the mirror!

    But God has better ideas: "new things have come" (2Cor5:17). When God calls us Bride and Body, that's definitive. His Power makes that happen. For, Son did not give Father an unworthy gift on the Cross. So we have nothing to add to what is Perfect. For, Father will never never never give Son an unworthy gift. So we have nothing to add to what is Perfect. So, let the tares keep growing in the same ol' tired field, saltless. After all, the Luke 8 wheat is growing just fine, just like the crop always has; hidden here and there, among all those popular tares who are tarrying for the Spirit, ferrying penance of the Son, carrying "2nd-Temptation" (TM!) caprice in the Father's Decree. Calling it all good. [Bible frequently makes analogies to apostate believers using terms for unbelievers. Hence the use of "tares" here for believers. The analogy is obvious, and of course is not at all to say that such folks aren't saved. All anyone has to do to be saved is to once believe in Christ. After that, whatever he does can't alter his status: "neither shall anyone pluck them out of My Hand" John 10:28. Part III's "First Reason for Royalty" will say more about eternal security. VERindex.htm has a handy list of verses in its "eternal security" entry.]

    Hence the universal blindness, despite bald Bible passages to expose it in every known human language -- this continuing blindness, continues via 'help' -- from Satan&Co. Man's not that good at deception, on his own. Heck, we can't even get lubricant right. So, then: the demon boys go to lots of trouble to blind the seminary boys; to hook them into the very same nonsense as trapped the Jews. Yeah, that's the only way to stop us from Knowing The Score, Getting Ready For The Wedding, because without our teachers, we're cooked. So pray for everyone who works in Bible. Doesn't matter if he's wrong. Without our prayer votes for him, he can't get better; and if he's good, without votes for him, he can't get support. Doesn't matter who's wrong. Does matter, that the wrongs get fixed. We are all One Body, and we all need each other. God bless anyone working in Bible should be our top prayer priority.

For God's Wedding Plan is to make a Bride for Royal Compatibility, happiness: not, 'works'. God wanted to create the highest beings, and would want them to develop, grow, to become higher still -- transcending needs, via Integrity. Which only God can make happen, as we saw in the "Core Trial Issues" Section, above. Satan was the 'next level down' from God, so to speak, in his initial perfection. We, unlike Satan, start out at the opposite end -- completely fettered by needs -- yet, because of the Cross, and God's Power granted to celebrate Christ's Victory -- we have the Position in Christ of being higher than angels (Heb1-2, Eph1-3); so, we get Divine Power to Grow Up in this "inheritance", should we exercise our God-given spiritual assets (per Eph1), thus implying levels of enjoyment and happiness we can't now even imagine (Eph3:20). Above all, we have the potential for a level of rapport (aka Love) with God which no set of human beings was ever granted, until Christ vested in His Inheritance at the Session (John 7:39, Rom5-11, Eph1-3, Heb7-10). So, this potential requires a much higher spiritual power. God has given us this much higher power "in the Beloved": as a wedding present to Christ. That is why 1Jn4:17 notes that God's Love is Completed (in association) with us, meaning Church ("perfected" there is teleiow, to complete).

Our Inheritance is Christ Himself. So we are to be made a 'copy' of Him in Thinking. For it's the soul, not the body, which is saved. For, until there was a Bridegroom, there could not be a Bride. Until there was a Seed, there could not be a crop. Until there was a Soul fully-compatible with God, there could not be "children" made from the Thinking of that Soul. (cf Heb2:9-10 in the Greek -- translations are pretty bad; see also Gal3:16 in context -- NAS version is pretty good; also, John 7:39.) In short, until Christ completed His First Advent Destiny (the Cross, and the exaltation resulting from it), there could not be a system to make Royally-mature spiritual beings while IN this puny body. The angels could have transcended their natures (Satan&Co. being the group of angels who rejected that offer), which was a type of maturity. "But to which of the angels", the author of Hebrews rhetorically asks, did the Father request payment for a universe of sins? Ahhh, so a Higher Maturity is needed. Royal, in fact.

    Israel was offered a royal spiritual maturity prospectively (through the future Seed -- see Gal3, Heb11, and beginning of Part III), but not enough of them accepted. But Christ accepted: all the way through the Cross and the Session, as Heb1 and 2 explain. So, Now, there really is a way to become Royally Mature, because there is a FirstFruits Soul who actually did that 'job', and He's our Precedence, Our "Head", Our Author/Captain/Originator (Gk: "archegos": cf Heb12:2). Hence, we are a gift to Christ, and that's why we are Royally endowered, unlike any other group of humans in all history. (Cf John7:39, Rom9-11, Gal3-5, all of Eph and Heb explain this topic. Colossian's theme is the Power, also.)

    Peter focuses on this topic in language so clear, even the English can't well hide it. See 1Peter 1-2. What's the "good", there? The testing of doctrine ("faith", in English Bibles, usually means doctrine) -- 1Pet1:7. What result does that "good" have? You become like the Cornerstone, Christ (lol, Peter is funny -- he's playing on his own name, chip-off-the-block!) The Greek is really fabulous. In verse 2:21, for example, Peter's playful (Chapter 2) repetition of words prefixed by "hupo" (idea of subordination, being "under") takes a cute turn: hupolimpano hupogrammos -- "leaving you an example" is really, "leaving you a COPYBOOK". We are to Copy Christ. Until there was a Christ, no copies could be made. Think of it as Him being "cloned" into our souls line on line, only within the 'corridor' our discrete consent, each time.

    This, too, Peter noted, in 1Peter1:10-13; the "revelation" in v.13 is the revelation of the Learning of Him, not the 2nd Advent: first meaning of apokalupsis is revealed information. So v.13 reads in corrected translation, "For this very reason be 'girding' your thinking for the journey, be of sound&mature thinking: Depend upon the Grace Carrying You By Means of the Revealed Instruction of Christ Jesus." Pretty different from what you have in translation, huh. (Peter uses apokalupsis the way Paul uses "mystery", and both are monikers for Bible Doctrine given to Church, His Thinking: for both terms mean something revealed only to the members of the group.) No doubt Who carries you, and what He uses to do it, huh.

    Of course, the a copy wasn't 'made' until the Original Got Completed. But the original was completed, notes Heb2:9-10 (and passim, Chapters 5-10; also in 1Peter). So also, the copy isn't 'made' until the copy itself 'completes'. Teleios, "complete", often rendered in English Bibles as "perfect". The verb "teleioo" means "to complete". English renders it "to perfect", which survives even today as a completion-type verb. Hence it means Mature. Not petty, not childish, not Brother Foot. Complete the Spiritual Growing Process, yet another mandate, and Peter's last words: 2Pet3:18.

    BRIDAL COMPATIBILITY KEY ==> One must complete something, to qualify, to VEST. The question is, how does this Royal Completion get Accomplished? The process of getting there is a filling, Greek verb "pleroo": being filled with the Spirit so to become filled with Doctrine. Paul plays with both words constantly (see Rom8). So also does the writer of Hebrews, who made both words (and their cognates, synonymal concepts) the outline for his epistle. Peter and Paul likewise stress the idea of full completion in practically every verse they wrote. John does too, but uses agapao and menw ("Divine Love" and "abide") to explain the same goal, that of VESTED Completion (1Jn4:17). The Lord constantly stressed it. Read John's Gospel, look for how He constructs the explanation of filling to completion. [Greek verb agapaw and cognate noun agape never mean any other kind of Love but God's Own Attribute of Love. But translations always cut God's head off, so snip out the Divine-Only meaning of these words. So in translation you think it's the human puny variety. Oh well.]

Satan and all religion counter that 'works' have the infusion-value, so doing works with a body-born-in-fallen-Adam nonetheless magically transforms the soul into compatibility with very God. Just as he told the woman that something she did with her body -- eating a piece of fruit, for crying out loud -- would make her like the Most High. Same game has been preyed on the human race, ever since. Yeah, that's the fruit we produce! [This same conclusion would 'make' evolution true, since evolution depends on magic also (inanimacy magically begets animacy, light magically can reason).]

But what does God say? Ho Logos Tou Staurou! ("The Word of the Cross"!) Word, not works. 1Jn's Script, not vegetables. Matt4:4, not Matt4:3. "Grow in Grace and in the KNOWLEDGE of Our Lord and Savior" -- copy Him by knowing HIM, not by knowing works. "height..come to know" (Eph3:15-19), not 'height..come to do'. After all, the First Commandment requires Knowing God in order to Love God, and Love is an Attitude. Any do's, are just so much ketchup. So, then: invest in Knowing, so to get Filled up. You, not your works. YOU are the work, so You have to be filled up, and filled up with God's SON, not works. In which, if you invest your time, so to speak, you will eventually complete being filled up -- and your God-Given money pot ("eaten" Bible Doctrine!) will become fully VESTED. IN, IN, IN -- you, you, you. Not, in your works.

    In the US private pension system, many corporations contribute funds toward their employees' retirements. Typically, these contributions require the employee to have enough hours-worked over a certain number of years, in order to "vest" (earn a nonforfeitable right) in Employer-provided funds. Similarly, in estate law, the testator (person granting assets to named others upon his death) has the right to impose conditions which the beneficiary must meet in order to actually receive the asset(s). The purpose of these conditions is to make it fair for the recipient to get the money, versus others who don't get it. Call it a way to reward loyalty, call it an idiosyncrasy on the part of the giver, call it stupid, great, wonderful, evil discrimination -- call it 'whatever', but that's how such laws work. And pretty much always have, throughout human history. And why not? For, the Giver gets to call the shots, because it's HIS MONEY.

    A beneficiary can't 'vest' from a "legal person" who doesn't exist. [The legal term, "legal person" means any human or entity which has a right under the law to make contracts, use the courts, etc. Essentially, a legal person is capable of being legally-obligable within the jurisdiction in question. For example, a corporation is a legal person; so is a pension trust. Only legal persons can sue or be sued, own property, make contracts, etc.] That's why corporate dissolution or death requires some kind of legal agreement ('testament') concerning the disposition of property AFTER that legal person 'dies'.

    So you'd be laughed out of court if you went there to claim an inheritance from a fake person. Just imagine: here all along you call 'God', "Yucky Gertrude Cheese". So, you die, and you go to court to claim the inheritance the Gertrude you slaved for, owes you. You walk in the courtroom. "I am here to get my inheritance, as Yucky Gertrude Cheese promised me." So, the Judge calls the proctor, the proctor calls the Recorder, and the Recorder calls for Yucky Gertrude Cheese to come forward, on pain of death. No one shows up. So, the Recorder calls for the police, and the police end up putting Yucky Gertrude Cheese on wanted posters as #1 enemy, for -- she's not showing up! Meanwhile, you spend your life running back and forth to the courtroom, living on stale doughnuts and bad coffee in worse styrofoam cups!

    "Clyde" makes the will, as "Clyde". Not as "Yucky Gertrude Cheese". Here, the Grantor is the Father -- not Allah, not Krishna, not Yucky Gertrude Cheese. Gotta get the Grantor's name right, to make a valid claim, to even get a hearing. Like it says in 2Chron 7:14. Else, you're expecting an inheritance from a fake person! Take a moment and enjoy Isa44:12ff. NIV seems to capture the sarcasm best, among the English translations I have. It's a scorcher!

    And, as chapter 44 concludes, it's the Father who calls the shots. In Ephesians 1, the first 18 verses are really one sentence, saying: "I give My Assets to the Bride.." followed by the conditions of receipt. (Legal contracts are very 'picky' about the placement of periods. So, to really lock in the meaning of a thing, you use very very long sentences, which go on and on and on so that no one can say that something outside the sentence is outside the scope of the verbal clause in the sentence: so it is more difficult for some disgruntled person to fight.) In the Greek of Ephesians 1, 1Pet1:4, Heb10:36, this Grantor Decree has all the characteristics of modern-day "escrow" agreements. Which means, Your Assets Can't Be Conveyed To Someone Else. Qualify to get them, or they remain "frozen" in escrow. God's way of qualifying, not my way or your way or Satan's way. The Father calls the shots. And what He calls for, is 1Jn's Script, Because Christ Qualified. Thus, We Become Eligible. Will we, like so many before us, also fail to "endure to the end", fail to qualify, vest, because we didn't take the time to learn His Word Enough To Get Filled Up By His Thinking? That's the "work". Nothing else.

    Because, the terms of the Isa53:10-12 contract were that His Thinking Pay for Sins: "if you give Your Soul as a Substitute for Sins." So if that's what pays for sin, that's the only Spiritual Legal Tender. Christ wasn't a sinner. So, analogously, post salvation we aren't, either (Rom5:8); so, we are to Think Like Him, since that's what His Contract was. Hence the need for 1Jn1:9, since we in fact do sin (souls sin, but the spiritual being does not, since the human spirit doesn't have volition in it, 1Jn5:18). So when we are using 1Jn1:9 of course we cannot sin (1Jn3:6). So then and only then are we thinking Like Him, since no one can avoid sin, else. Thinking is the life, and getting filled up with His Thinking muscles out sin, even as His Thinking on the Cross converted sin. Spiritual re-engineering of our in-Adam thoughts, from thought-DNA to DDNA. That's the spiritual life.

    If we failed to invest the time to learn His Son, it's our loss, and ours alone. God won't call a Congressional Hearing to blame some 'bad executive' (bad pastor) for our stupid choices to 'invest' based on his actions or advice! God never penalizes anyone else: His Justice is Absolute, down to the smallest speck of dust. So: use 1Jn's Script, and get the "promise", or fail, and live forever in heaven a baby, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World footman-Epsilons. Your assets, your choice.

So, that's the 'condition': get filled up with His Thinking. And, always, fulfillment of that condition requires the Holy Spirit to run the entire show. His Power to transform us is transmitted by getting and circulating Bible Doctrine, "the Mind of Christ", which the Holy Spirit runs in us. (1Cor2, John 14, 1Jn1-2, Eph5:18, Gal3:16, Rom15:13,16, and Acts1:8.) So it's the knowledge which produces the power, and the power produces the balanced actions (neither right nor left, but balanced); the actions are results like loving the brethren, which is evidence of God in the world. In short, works without doctrine (Jas2:18 "faith", in English bibles) is dead; so also doctrine unused, is dead. You can't use doctrine you didn't learn! So the works would be dead, because no 1Jn Script-learned doctrine is used. (1Jn3, 4:12-17; James 1:2-2:24; Rom4-6,8,12,15; Eph1:15-23, 3:15-21, Heb9:14, Heb5:11-6:6). Ergo 2Pet3:18's command to "grow in Grace and in the knowledge of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ", since Scripture is "the Mind of Christ" (1Cor2:16).

    We thus come to share in the very nature of Him, seeing Him constantly, even in this body of corruption: Peter calls it "partakers of the Divine Nature" in 2Peter1:4; Paul calls it "fullness of Christ" in Eph3:19; John calls it, "just as He is, so also we are, in this world" in 1Jn4:17.

Why do you think the Bible makes such a big stink about our rewards in escrow, denoted by keywords (rendered in English) such as "promise", "inheritance", "reward", "riches", "crown", "prize", "deposit", "winner", "hope", "every spiritual blessing", "the all things"? Because, He is Ruler. (Interestingly, our escrow is likened to Temple shewbread, in Eph1:11's Greek.) Rulers want like-minded folks around them. That's His character, and He wants us to have it, too. Not pets, not children, not marionettes, but like-natured beings: a Bride, not merely a Friend. God the Father, in Eph1, provided for us to be enabled, should we choose it, to spiritually develop into a fit Bride, for the benefit of His Son.

With that status comes a welter of tangible benefits, such as superior authority. Why? Blessing-By-Association, which is Love's Primary Goal. See, most people won't choose to use these fantastic spiritual assets, just as most people in the past did not use their own asset packages. How will they be cared for, then, in eternity? They have arrested their capacity for enjoyment, so for them to have the authority would make them miserable. Capacity and Responsibility need to be balance-mated, too. So, someone needs to rule them, so to bless them despite their resultant lower enjoyment levels. That is how we get what we get -- God is bigger, is He not? Doesn't He have the Greatest Authority? But how is that demeaning to us? Is it not rather a greater benefit, His Being Superior? Don't we get more enjoyment that way?

    See, this is the heart of what Satan incompletely learned: Love's "synergy". Blessing-by-association is what enables the inferior to benefit from the superior. So, the inferior one gets "more" than he could otherwise enjoy, in and of himself. BUT ALSO -- the Superior gets "more" than He could otherwise enjoy, in and of Himself. How? How can God "improve" on His Perfection? By having more independent beings. That gives Him more expressions of His Own Self. So, see -- God benefits, too. Again, it's synergistic.

    "Okay, okay," Satan would say, "I get that. In fact, you've just proven my point -- He claims to be so loving, when in fact He's the one who benefits from our subservience! He calls me a hypocrite, but look at how hypocritical He is!"

    Ahhh, but within the Godhead Themselves, look! Even though they are all equal -- what do They do? They Subordinate To Each Other. That's what Love does. It subordinates itself. That's why Love needs the "protection" of Righteousness and Justice, so that in its giving, its pouring-out, its loving-to-sacrifice -- it remains intact, happy. Love does not want to 'lord it over' anyone. Love wants to Love.

    It's pretty obvious They choose subordination: look at Their Self-Chosen Titles, all of which scream Subordination: "Father" -- parent, giving His Life for His Kids; "Spirit" -- a way of saying Mother (Hebrew rahaph in Gen1:2 depicts the Holy Spirit as a brooding Mother Hen); "Son" -- well, that's obvious.

    So, instead of romance, better than romance, the Godhead Subordinate To Each Other. Honor, Honor, Honor. The Son subordinates to the Father in everything. That's pretty easy to see. The Son made creation, for example, as a present to the Father. The Father, though, subordinates, in that He Gives Everything To The Son. Christ is the Seed, inheriting the very gift His Deity made for the Father -- from the Father. So, they end up enjoying that Gift together. Not divorced.

    The Spirit subordinates in a sort of 'motherly' way. The Spirit is the Restorer. Just as He restored the Earth (after Satan&Co. trashed it), so to prepare for man's occupation, in Genesis 1:2b and following, so also He restores man, when man believes in Christ (via regeneration, aka salvation). This is the Spirit's Gift. The Father participates in this also, by means of providing the spiritual assets (Eph1). And who becomes the Recipient? Christ -- but really, all of them. They Are Always Giving To Each Other, And We Are The beneficiaries. That's what 'Rule' means. Blessing. By Association. With Them. Never 'divorced'.

    In short, like a family. See, Satan, so bollixed up in his romantic notions, can't 'get' that Authority is no good without Love, and Love is no good without Authority. Top-down is all he 'gets'. The idea of throwing oneself away without reciprocation is unglamourous, unromantic, unless one can piously claim the self a martyr. So, to him -- not love. So, that's why God invented Marriage and family in mankind -- to teach this synergistic structure for happiness: Blessing By Association. Not by being alone. Not by lording it over someone else. Not by preening how good self is. Not by sterile do's and don'ts. And above all, not by martyred works.

For all this power, is about love, not about me-be-better-than-you. Power is the handmaiden to Love, not vice-versa. So, Christ is not ashamed to call us brothers, even though He is superior. He poured Himself out for the Church (Eph5), and those of us who grow enough to become Fit Bride will likewise spend eternity enjoying pouring ourselves out for those under our authority. And, best of all, we will see Him, "just as He is" (1Jn3). Now that is heaven. :)

    Yet no one, not even the worst-handicapped person on the planet, need be left out of this "FULLNESS", as Paul puts it (Eph3:19). As Galatians explains, neither social status, nor physical status, nor brain capacity, nor any other human factor, need be a hindrance, to becoming a fit Bride. Because God's power is alone what produces this result, "in the Beloved", via the Holy Spirit (cf. the above cites). Never before in history, and never again in history, will a group of humans be granted so much potential to be like the Most High, as the Bride. You are important, because God just flat wants to MAKE you important, and 2Cor5:17-21 is how He did it. That is the central message of God's Script for your life.

    See, God's Standard is Gorgeous. It's gorgeous to look at, gorgeous to know, gorgeous to worship, gorgeous to emulate. And, because only He can give us the growth, we don't have to be tied down by our puny-ness, by our inferiorities. We don't even have to bother looking at the self. Enjoyment of Him can be had at any level. A puny person can enjoy it. As he grows in God's Script, he stops being puny, so comes to enjoy it more. And more. That's why Christ chose to reside in the Spirit, rather than even use His Own Divinity -- because the Standard was so Gorgeous, to depend on the Father! Who the heck wants to turn stones into bread, when instead he can live on every word which proceeds from the very mouth of God! Who the heck wants to cut out a key phrase in Ps91 to justify some spectacular Divine Jumping Display, when he can stand still, and be tested in the Word! Who the heck wants to take over all the kingdoms of the world from Satan, when he can absorb all sin, as a Gift from the Beloved Father!

    So also, for us, that enjoyment reaches its highest level, when a Fit Bride. But is by no means unenjoyable, en route. For, it's not about low self is, versus God's Standard, it's about enjoying Him, which means enjoying His Standard. For, it's not about how impossible the Standard is, it's about enjoying it. Through His Spirit, anyone can get this enjoyment. However handicapped, however 'low'. Isa 55!

    Love begins in marriage. It takes a lifetime to develop. So the very nanosecond you 'did' John 3:16, God married you off to His Son. It will take a lifetime to learn to enjoy it, as any long-married couple, can tell you.


Satan's out to Stop the Wedding!

As you might have guessed already, since the angels were first, weren't they supposed to be the initial Bride? Since MorningStar (now Satan) was Closest to the Son, wouldn't he have been the Second-in-Line? Sure looks like it, right? Maybe so. Part II will consider this issue in more detail.

Certainly Satan wants to steal the inheritance, just as he stole rulership of the world from Adam (see Part II), by beguiling Adam's wife into sin via playing on her inferiority complex. Funny how what someone else spurns, that same someone won't let anyone else have, either. Just as he attacked Adam through the woman, he attacks Christ through the Church (and before us, his primary target was the Jew, since they too had been offered Brideship). These attacks take many forms -- whatever suits your pride, your emotions, that's what Satan&Co. will pick. 1Jn's Script is your only protection: see John 8:31-32 (which is the main theme of John's writings). Notice there how Abiding in His Word makes one a "disciple", not abiding in works. Notice how it's His Word, not someone else's. Notice how you have to know something, not do something. Notice how it's Knowing the Truth which sets you free, not works. In short, learn Bible Doctrine, or be enslaved. Guess by whom. Guess how he'll beguile you, hmmm? ["Aletheia", translated "truth", literally means "the unconcealed" (alpha-privative "a" plus "leithos", hidden/concealed). Eleutherow, translated "set free", is a sound-alike word. There are other Greek words for truth. The Lord maybe picked "Aletheia" for its sound: aletheia eleutherosei. It's thus a play-on-words. Of course, the English 'hides' this fact!]

    See, if you don't love the truth, whatever you do, is based on falsehood. Therefore, you enslave yourself to it, for, as we saw in the "Core Trial Issues", Love needs a mate of Righteousness and Justice -- and both of those Attributes depend entirely on truth, not falsehood.

    Moreover, how can you love what you don't know? What's the First Commandment? You must LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart (believing part of the soul, wherever the term is used in Scripture) and soul and mind. In short, the real you is what you think. And, "God is Truth." So: if you don't know the truth, you can't love God. So what value then are your works? Vegetables.

If Satan can get enough Christians to be cains, then there is too small a number of sufficiently-compatible believers in the Body to become Bride. No Bride, No Wedding. No Wedding, and the King has no Kingdom. It's all about REVENGE, in Satan's mind. The Bride first needs to be fit to rule, as her intended Husband is the Ruler of the Universe -- get it? Israel was to be that Bride, before us, and not enough Jews were positive enough. (Parts II-V cover this issue in detail.) Now, it's our turn: will we also buy Satan's do-good substitutes, his pet-the-ego 'love' plan, instead of God's Learn => Know => LOVE Plan? Hopefully you're beginning to get the idea that yes, it's real real real important to Learn His Son, rather than run around like so many footmen, offering vegetables.

    Sadly, most Christians will opt to be footman-cains, as indeed did most believers before them. As mentioned earlier, most people won't appropriate these Divine Assets and use them all the way to vested completion. In fact, over 99% of them won't do this: the "narrow gate" doesn't suit their fit-in-the-crowd mindset. Rather, it's the wide gate they prefer, for its comforting Bigness, popularity, hiding invisibly in the crowd (to avoid criticism). That's what they worshipped while in this body, and that's why the popular ideas of God always devolve down to Sugar Daddy/Petty Judge. They like the rituals, they like the seduction, they like the pretty, childish, splashy shallows. They want to see the water sparkle. They fear deep water.

    Ok, and why shouldn't they get what they like, rather than what frightens them? Aren't they, too, free to choose what they themselves want from God? They want to be of the masses. They want to SEE the king, not be the king. Nor do they want to be near the king for more than a few seconds; longer is intimidating, not enjoyable. They want to see the king high-off -- kinda like just a picture of him. They want to know other people who are nearer the king, for that makes them more important; but they themselves want the king himself, distant: that's all the 'king' they want in their lives. Even seeing His Glory in a cloud petrified the Exodus generation. [Cf. Ex24:17, 24:30, Deut5:5,5:24, Lev9:24, Heb12:18-21.] So, then: why shouldn't they get what they want? 'A distant relationship, with many interpreters (officials) between them and the king? What they want is the King's occasional smile, a handshake, a glance, emotional thrill. Not intimacy.

    Notice how the religious crowd is much more schooled and familiar/intimate with the Church Fathers or denominational vocabulary/history, or what some celebrated Th.d says, than with the Bible. They know all the buzzwords of all those religions and people, yet when it comes to the Bible itself, its own rhetorical style and keywords, well -- it's unfamiliar to them. That phenomenon tells you they want to be connected with people, not God; with the idea of holy, but not with the Real Holy One. From Him, they want distance. They want to be connected to people. So, that's what they'll get.

    So, then: those of us who do complete will need to be big enough to make the aggregate "Bride" synergistic, for those who complete can become those interpreters. Else, all those self-made masses wouldn't qualify to see Him at all. But Christ DIED for the Church! For you, for me! So, then: we get to learn how very much He loves even the so-called 'smallest' of us, by growing up, by 'finishing the course'. And they don't get left behind. After all, if we complete the course, didn't only the Holy Spirit enable it? So, then: the higher gladly sacrifice for the lower. So, then: the lower serve the higher, too (which gives them their coveted 'status'). So, then: Blessing by Association. 'With those who do complete. After all, the Head is no good without the Body. One is no good without the other. Married. Integrity. Docked in a hierarchy, so that all can synergistically, harmoniously, 'get'. Not Hebrew "get" (which means "divorce", "death"), but as Paul notes humourously throughout Romans 6 through 11, God's 'get': a joining, which occurs by divorcing meritorious rights.

Wait! Isn't God also offering goodies? 'doing the same thing as Satan? Isn't God also saying we must earn, to get? Doesn't what we do end up counting, just as Satan has said it should? Isn't God enticing, seducing, with this offer of salvation, with this offer of rapport with Him, with this offer of rewards before and after death?

Ahhh, but what was God's Script? To learn His Son. That's it. You and I can't possibly do that with any of our own abilities. Instead, we have to receive it from GOD. Meaning? We have to RECEIVE Love. Ergo, we first have to be saved, and only God can save us -- which is the first receipt of His Love (Rom5:8). What 'work' do we do to be saved? Merely believe in Christ, John 3:16; which now we know is a Trial issue as well. For God loves the world that much. But the world might prefer to reject God's Love.

Surely the world does reject His Love: nearly every "love" in Bible translations, only means GOD's Love in the original-language, inspired texts; because, special terms in Greek and Hebrew differentiate between Divine and human love. So God's Head gets cut off in translation, see. So if we pious Christians reject Him that much century after century despite having the original-language texts and knowing the difference -- how much more does the rest of the world reject His Love? Takes a lot of rejection to reject free salvation. You gotta hate God a lot to reject what normal human instinct, would accept. "Free" is one of the happiest words in any language: but oh no, when it comes to the Gospel, oh! It's unfair! Sheesh. Ok, but God doesn't rescind the Offer, does He.

For what work is believing? No work at all -- and that's the point.
Love doesn't want your works: Love wants YOU.

So, now: learning His Son, how can one work at that? No way. All we can do, as even for salvation, is Believe In His Word. Use of 1Jn1:9 and listening to your God-chosen pastor, turning over what you learn in your soul, to understand better -- do you really think human power can do this, when for two millennia, even the clergy of Christendom have largely been blind? Guess again! Only the Holy Spirit does it, in response to each "yes". He won't seduce you into doing it. He won't entice you into doing it. He will give you full disclosure about the pro's and con's, via Scripture -- but that's disclosure, not enticing. So not getting the Word is due to not wanting 1Jn's Script. No other cause. The "blind guides" of Matt15:14, 23:16, 23:24 still tarry around, intoning how verses are "inscrutable", so of course see no disclosure, can't look in the mirror of the Word. No wonder. Will we follow them like so many of our fallen fellow believers of these many centuries? Or shall we form new cohorts? Under the Spirit, transforming á la Rom12:2-3; rather than under pressure to be conforming, á la 2Tim2:26-3:7?

    I don't know: could James make this fact clearer in Jas 2:14, which is interpreted by 2:26? Believing doesn't save us, GOD saves us. The Word justifies Him doing so, because the Word is a promise to be heard and 'done' by BELIEVING, not by hearing and walking away from the Mirror of the Word! Like James said in 2:23, it's because Abram believed that he became justified. And how did Abraham 'do' the work of sacrificing Isaac? By Believing. "Thus Scripture was Fulfilled", James concludes. SCRIPTURE did it. The Word Works. Doctrine Works. (This is James' theme, and he expresses it scorchingly. Btw, Part II will say a lot more about Abraham.)

    Nor can we entice God. Our good deeds don't entice Him. Our sins don't entice Him. So we don't and can't get those rewards due to what 'we' can do. Instead, we do and can get those rewards -- heh -- due to what we can't do. Free. Because, "when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Cor12:7-10). See how God makes fun of works? He wants us weak -- which is exactly what we are -- not 'strong', puffed up with works that don't do a dang thing but aid Satan's plan. God flipped our weakness into His Strength. That's Love.

    In short, Love -- HIS -- does all the work. Which is Righteous: after all, should God tolerate a lower standard for 'works' than His Own Power? So, He ENABLES us to share in His Nature, via those Doctrinal deposits. "Guard the noble deposit", Paul said to Timothy. [1Tim6:20, corr trans: see also Jude 21 (no Eng. version I have translates it properly). Unfortunately most translators translate paratheke as a clause, usu. "what has been entrusted", so you miss the deposit/escrow connotation. Similar verses are 2Tim1:12,14. Paratithemi is the verb, to deposit -- and it's used in many passages. It is often translated "commend", "entrust", or "to give food" so you miss the "deposit" connotation. Another (and very frequent) "deposit" word is epangelian, an escrow-deposit, usu. translated "promise" in English Bibles.] How do we "guard" it? By loving it. How do we love it? Because He ENABLES us to "come to know the Love for Christ" (Eph3:19, corrected trans of ingressive aorist of "yinoskw"). Love is a knowing, not a romantic feeling. So what one knows, guards. Feelings can't guard; feelings can only react to knowledge. Fake knowledge, or true knowledge, feelings can't tell the difference. Love -- His -- guards us by enabling us to get those knowledge deposits (Romans 8:28+1Jn5:18,20 -- you gotta know Attic drama-greek to get the Rom8:28 meaning of sunergei). Then and only then is Love built in us, as 1Jn4 explains. Then and only then, as a product of HIS! work, never ours, do we come to love: "we love, because He first loved us" (1Jn4:19). So -- where is the seduction, from Him, or from us?

Also, consider: is Love valid, or desirable, if one must seduce to get it? How reliable is the love response, to seduction? Won't the seducer have to keep on seducing, to retain such a love response? That would be hell, would it not? God would forever have to tinker with our volition, and what we'd 'buy' of Him would never be the 'truth', but the seduction He had to use. So, we'd be forever enslaved to that seduction. "But we have the Mind of Christ" (1Cor2:16) -- the least-seduced Person, ever. Knowing this, knowing Him, makes seduction totally irrelevant. God doesn't need to do it -- and neither do we. See how Satan cheapens God, by making our deeds important? If deeds mattered -- then what is love? No love at all. What, do you want someone to love you because of what you do, or because of the fact you're you? So, then: why irrationally conclude God loves us only if we do good deeds, which are merely goodies? That's saying we ought to seduce God, a sheer blasphemy. That's saying our works ought to count, another sheer blasphemy. From which source do you think this irrational conclusion comes?

    "Irrational" is too kind a word. It's insane. Why? What can we give God? Think about it. If God doesn't do all the giving FIRST, how can we puny humans even be equipped to give back? One can never learn how to give, anyway, until one can first RECEIVE. Receiving 'authority', is to receive the gift of someone's superior ability spent on your behalf. That's what makes 'family' (ideally) so wonderful. So, receiving 'authority' means one gets to know more. So, one grows up. So, one is then and only then able to give-back. That's the idea here. God wants to first grow us up. Then and only then are we able to freely give back, competently give back.

    So, for us to think "oh, I'm a Christian, I must give God my works" -- is insane. Scripture never talks about works without preceding it with commands to "know". Why? Because we first have to grow up to be able to even 'do' the work competently. If we don't first grow up, what 'work' we do, is garbage. Wood, hay, stubble. Dead men's bones. Dead works. Counterfeit works. The Devil's works (cf 1Jn3). Debt (cf Rom4:5). It's like Paul said in Romans 13:14: until we "put on Christ", we're not even properly dressed, as it were, to go out to do any works. ("[P]ut on" is a verb for clothing self -- cf Phili2:5ff.) So, Christ must be "formed" in us (Gal4:19), then "at home" in us (Eph3:17, corrected translation of "dwell"); finally, He can -- only then! -- become glorified in our bodies (Phil. 1:20). That's the only work which counts: you can't love "in deed and truth" without The Truth Being In You (1Jn3:18-19 compared with 1Jn4:16). Again, like James noted in James 1-2:24, don't divorce works from doctrine. Satan, though constantly divorces deeds and truth. Why? So he can claim an independent "good". Beware, says the first half of 1John. Beware, said Our Lord, in the 'vine-and-branches' parable: "For, apart from Me, you can do nothing."

    In short, until we grow up spiritually, our thinking is in the same trap as Satan: our self-image is enslaved to the me-be-good depravity. So all the giving we do, is to salve our self-image. The 'me-be-good' tyrant needs to be obeyed! So, we're trying to appease it, and/or seduce the recipient. Whether we know it or not. God, of course, knows it. Since He loves us, He's created a way to buy our freedom from that tyrant. Satan rejected that way. Will we?

What shall we say, then -- if the giver gives to seduce, and you know that, isn't the gift tainted? Won't one want to throw it away in disgust? But if the Giver gives without strings, "just because", isn't any gift enjoyable -- due to that reason? So, God builds His Son's Mind in us, and gives us stuff we can choose to use to express our stringless! love for Him. But not before His Son's Mind is built in us. Because, after all, God has His Own Standards, His Own Tastes. And He 'hates' vegetables.

    Has someone ever given you a gift you didn't like? Sure, they meant well -- but oh, did you really need another necktie (sigh here)? What, didn't so-and-so bother to find out you'd plenty of 'ties already? Or, did you really need that ugly figurine? Those terrible chocolates? Didn't the person know you were allergic to chocolates? And, if you don't exclaim massive praises over the gift you received, what happens? The person feels offended, hurt. Why? Because it hurts his self-esteem, that he didn't choose the right gift for you. So -- see? giving is often from impure, uninformed motives -- and thus, garbage.

    How hard is it to choose an appropriate gift for someone you don't know very well? How many of us agonize over it -- and maybe give up, for fear we'll give the wrong gift. Why, then, don't we take the same common-sense approach to God? Why do we insanely conclude that, because something is hard to do, God must demand it of us? Why, oh why, do we conclude that God wants us to give our money away? From which source do you think this insane conclusion comes? See how the me-be-good propaganda urge creates garbage?

Okay, but what do we give to the God Who has everything? Vegetables? Hmmm. We know He 'hates' the Devil's vegetables, Cain's vegetables, the Pharisees' vegetables -- hmmm. Maybe we should first know Him intimately, before we try giving anything at all. Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe, since He wrote hundreds of commands to "know" in Scripture, the "gift" He WANTS -- is to learn Bible Doctrine? 1Jn's Script?

It would be nice, most of all, to be with the Giver, all the time. With or without 'goodies'. See how excited those angels are, (in Rev4:6-8) throwing down their crowns before Him? The crowns represent fantastic wealth -- and their gestures mean they want to spend all their wealth ON Him! They are so happy, they never want to spend a minute on anything but Loving Him! They are not automatons, but Free! It is not stupid or boring to love someone else that much! It is not weakness, to love that much! They aren't thinking of what 'they' do, they are thinking of Christ! And never want to think of anything else! They're happy to have all the goodies, so they can spend them ON HIM -- Ahhh, now that is Heaven.

    It's 'heaven' to be around someone whose thinking you share. It's 'heaven' to have enough of yourself, in yourself, to be able to express your enjoyment of that person. It's heaven, no matter what you or the other person does, because happiness is a beingness, not a doingness. It's 'heaven' to not have to feel intimidated, inferior, beholding, obligated. In short, what's 'heaven' is to have the BEST of both inequality -- and equality. That's the Heaven, in escrow for you, that God wants you to have. For the sake of His Son. To share with His Son. To Spend on His Son. Forever. For Love, loves. Forever.

    Just think: YOUR escrowed Eph1 inheritance is even bigger than those angels', because your escrow is for you to enjoy spending on your "Husband". 'Gifts you can give Him that He WANTS -- stored up in Heaven. 'Some of which you can get down here -- IF -- and this is the rarest, biggest "IF" -- you Learn down here. Once you've received enough Love-deposits (heh!), you are nourished enough to give back. For you will need lots and lots of His Mind in you, to competently give such priceless gifts to Him, Your True Love, the Reason you even want Heaven. See? It's not about 'sacrifice' at all! But a body He has prepared for you! To learn how to enjoy! ('Play on Heb10:5's wording.)

    What is Love, if not enjoyment? Ok. But how do we Learn Love? That takes training. While we are learning, it feels like suffering (Heb2:10-15,5:8-9). Once we've learned, like an athlete, we enjoy the benefit. It's not work, it's Gain. Philippians 1:21 -- "Living, Christ! Dying, Profit! (Corr. trans. no verbs in Greek means shouting.)

Satan feels God isn't a good-enough prize. He considers a verse like "the Lord is my portion" (Heb:cheleq, "inheritance", a quote from Jeremiah, Lam3:24), weakness. That's why Hell is really preferable to him, versus Heaven. Heaven means submission. Heaven is thus entirely unacceptable! How boring, how plebeian, to love someone else that much? That's slavery, not enjoyment. God is the ultimate seducer, then -- calling slavery, 'love'. Forget it.

    Yeah, Heaven is just a sham, a joke, a footlicking place. Everyone grovels. God sits on his high horse and feigns love, but deceives the worst of anyone. Love? Yeah, right. What love is it, to give creatures such stark alternatives? Is 'hell' intimidating, or what? Obey or die -- that doesn't sound like love at all. Creatures get all the mandates, and whatever they might wish to offer of themselves is unacceptable? It can only come one way? God's Way? Why give a choice, then? Nope, doesn't sound like love, at all. Sounds, rather, like a lie. Might as well lie, then. Lie with the mouth, lie with whomever. Mimic the seduction, warn everyone what a deceitful jerk the Most High is. Oh well: at least Hell is an honest lie.

    So, Satan argues, goodies should be used to entice us, since after all God made us defective, anyway. Knowing Jesus Christ personally, well -- whoopee. Christ lets people suffer. Is even a masochist, himself. What kind of love is that? What value is knowing him, anyway?

Ahhh. So human history, for Trial purposes, would have to display that value of knowing Him, huh. Is it worth more to know God, or not? Is the individual better for knowing God? Does he really become evil if he rejects the Bible? Should he be punished for that rejection? These questions require playing out every variation in Satan's plan, and God's plan. Human history is that play.

For example, since Satan contends that God's ability to create is faulty: fallen man's "Total Depravity" (Rom5:12) makes man defective -- so, can even defective man become better under God's Plan, or Satan's? So, can even defective man become happier under God's Plan, or Satan's?

Further, what happens if, as time passes, God's Plan becomes progressively more difficult to want and 'do', whereas Satan's plan becomes progressively easier to want and do? So it's as if God the Father said, "in the beginning":

    "Hmmmm. Let Us institute Our Plan in stages, to suit man as he progresses under Satan's Plan. Let Us make progressive "covenants", benefit packages, of knowledge-and-power levels -- to know God. Yes. Let Us make these covenants apply to given groups of men. Let Us 'see' how they each choose to use the knowledge-and-power level their particular covenant provides -- to know Us, and hence to Learn Love -- or to reject Us, and hence to learn hate. Let Us see how much they want Us, versus Satan and his 'covenants'." [Foregoing was 'inspired' by Heb1,6,9,1Jn3, Gen6, and Gen1's humorous "Let Us Create man in Our Own Image".]

    Satan nods. This is exactly what he wants. He says to his demon-cohorts: "Man won't want Elohim. Once man is fallen -- We'll win! We'll dominate Elohim forever! The universe shall be Ours, as is Our Right!"

So, here we are, on Stadium Earth, the gladiators in this greatest of dramas. Will it be a comedy, too? Will it be a tragedy, too? Do we want to know God, or not? And how much, versus other preferences? Do we want to know Christ, or not? And how much? Is God the prize of Heaven, or is Satan right? 'Our choice, every second of every day. Just as it always has been, since "the beginning", as Part II will explain.

Sisyphus