To go straight to the Spiritual Maturation videos on this page, CLICK HERE.

Intra-Part III Links in this table also serve to list webpage theses. Italic links are subtables. The Bride Cometh Your Priesthood + potential Crowning Synopsis, Our Royally-Invisible Spiritual Life: I. Kingship II. Bridal Thought DDNA, God's Apodoses III. Bema Inheritance 1st Spir. Life Trait, Invisibility: 1st Reason, 'Clone' Christ: God's Apodoses 5 Infinitives, katharizw aphairew deiknumi plassw dikaiow 4 Happinesses, Hefty Hearty His Husband Love Alphabet Abiding in His 7-Faceted 'House of Thinking': Function Desire Development Plunder Victory Intimacy Compatibility Spiritual Maturation Process, Overview: 1Cor13:13's Faith Hope Love I-VII Spiritual Growth Benchmarks S.Child Form Before Function S.Teen S.Adult S.Adult, II S. Maturity aka "Pleroma" 2-3-4-5 Evidence Tests: E.Test Alphabet E.Test Structure 2nd Reason, sign of Jonah 3rd Reason, Qorban fulfilled He Upgraded Divine Intimacy! 4th Reason, max tests Love for God CrossOver Law Evil, adikia or Kenosis, Marriage? Victory or Dungheap? 2nd Spir. Life Trait, Royalty: 1st Reason, Priestly Bride of Christ 2nd Reason, Royal Life Far Harder 3rd Reason, Qorban Thinking for Father: Aletheia Love You, in Me! Baptizw Building Communion Concert Dendrites for Dad! Royal Spiritual Multisphere Living 4th Reason, Royal Defeat of Satan&Co. Reasons' Sum: His Escutcheon! Your Soul Becomes a Polity Spiritual Heraldry, Life of Honor Conclusions: #1, He takes Precedence #2, His Word takes Precedence #3, Royalty Makes the Rules Corollary 3A, Authority (=You) Accountable for Divine Assets 3B, Bema Blessing (or Burning) 3C, Caring Charge 3D, Devoted Destiny (or Dung) Conclusions' Sum: Your Potential Escutcheon Where do we go from here? How to Maximize Your Spiritual Life How to Make Dung of your Spiritual Life And now, for that Blessing-by-Association Payoff

See, to pay for sins, you have to know How To Think At God's Own Level. Which is why the life itself, is one of unprecedented Intimacy with God Himself. Remember, though He is also God, He didn't use His Deity to live the spiritual life, but was taught it by the Holy Spirit, wholly. It really should have killed Him or driven Him mad, long long long before the Cross. Man can't take contact with Deity and survive. Even contact with demons drives a human crazy; how much more, contact with Very God?

Isaiah 52:13-54:1 graphically depicts, blow by blow, how He paid for our sins: with Divine Thinking the Holy Spirit deposited in His Human soul. That whole passage is so mistranslated, who can tell how He paid? So, see Isa53trans.htm, for a better translation than you can obtain in any published Bible I can find (online or off). Isaiah explains 21 times(!) that Divine Thinking paid for sins; THINKING in HIS SOUL, not His Body: after all, sin is thought, lacerating Him. So He pays with God's Thinking, since God is the one Wronged -- notice it's the same essential currency, THOUGHT. Only a dingbat would deem His Physical death -- body is mindless corpuscles -- as contributing a 'dime' to our salvation. If anything in the body could ever 'pay' for anything, then there would have been NO NEED for a Cross! Duh.

So that means total Intimacy with Very God in His Human Soul, while at the same time not using His Own Deity to do any of that paying. For God should not pay for sins, but rather the one who did the wrong. So He was made sin, that we become the Righteousness of God in Him that first nanosecond we believe in Him, 2Cor5:21 (in context). [In Greek, different words are also used for death: apothneskw, which has to do with the soul's function of separation from the body, cognate noun being thanatos. By contrast, a mere body death is nekrow, and nekros, from which we get the English term "nekrotic death". Body death. So it's real clear in the original-language texts of Bible, that He suffered Substitutionary Spiritual Death and hence Soul Payment for sins, not a physical death. Unfortunately English Bibles translate both Greek terms and their cognates with the fuzzy word "death", so Christians have long -- and without excuse -- deemed His Physical Death as the payment for sins. No: His Physical Death is part of His Victory, Ps31:5 being His Dying words to attest to that fact (Luke 23:46), which Paul plays on in the last half of 1Cor15. See godnotmag.htm's four "Trichotomy" tables, and Grail.htm's first section for details.]

This Requirement of learning total intimacy with Deity yet not using His Own Deity or Humanity to 'help', even -- should have driven Him utterly mad. After all, notice how wacko everyone gets when they have some contact with God. More about this will be said in the "Third Reason for Invisibility" link section, but for now, reflect: do you think Adam would have been tempted, if he wasn't wigged out by those daily visits from the Lord in the Garden? It wasn't a picnic to live in the Garden. Surely the woman was wigged out enough she even was willing to talk to Satan, who she knew was controlling the pet's vocal chords. You don't talk to the opposition unless you are very upset, right? Every believer from Adam forward wigs out when he gets some kind of contact from God directly. Psychological behaviors vary: Cain gets psychotic, Abram falls asleep, Moses makes excuses, Gideon keeps putting out fleece. When the psyche can't take the shock of a thing, it engages in defense-mechanisms of varying kinds. And Bible shows all of these. Deity is Shocking. Hence we deny the Truth about God. Anything to gain a bit of precious distance from Him. So for Christ to go to maximum intimacy, whoa. Should have killed Him. Truly.

Atop that unfathomable shock, everything was a sudden-death round: absent the Cross, He'd not fulfill the Jewish covenants. He'd not vest as King-Priest kata ("according to the order of") Melchizedek, if He didn't perfectly complete the Cross. It shouldn't have been possible to succeed. Truly. For the kind of life He had to learn, was entirely alone (He was too far advanced for anyone to be comfortable around Him); yet He was always on the operating table, as it were: doing nothing. For the more advanced you become, the less you do; the more powerful you are, the softer and more skilled and more strategic must be each move you make. For you have too much power, relative to the capacity of others to receive it.

Above all, He should have never lived past childhood, since He is in Himself, two natures: God and human. How does a human child resist the temptation to use the Godness? Even harder, as He grows? Every day He lived, 24/7, He must resist the temptation to use His Deity. And to make it more difficult -- a fact my pastor often stresses -- He had to use His Deity to keep holding the universe together (Heb 1:3, "by the Word of His Power"). But not, for His Own Spiritual Growth? But not, to do stuff for Father? No. It's easier to not use something you have if you never use it; very much harder, if you must constantly use it for only some purposes, but never for others. So His whole life down here was light-years beyond what the Mosaic Law could even address. So the Word He lived on from the Holy Spirit, crafted out from the Old Testament, was a spiritual lifestyle light-years bigger than anything which had ever been granted to anyone. And we inherit that lifestyle. We, the Church.

Everything goes through the Son, so Now He is the Everything, NT Greek moniker "ta panta", usu. translated "the all things": Everything is IN Him, beginning Now, at the Session, Eph1 (esp. 1:15-23). Everything means everything: nothing happens 'outside' Him, for He is the King-Priest to FATHER, before Whose Eyes Now Everything Must Reflect His Son, just as promised back in Isa52:13, 53:12, 54:1. Everything was separated due to spiritual death, last half of Romans 5, and all of Hebrews. But He paid the "opportunity cost" of all creation on the Cross, as we saw in Part II's "opportunity cost" table. So much of the NT is devoted to explaining what happens Now that cost has been replaced -- by Him. The cost was, sin. The cost is now, Him. Vastly higher cost, so vastly higher responsibility and privilege, obtains for us Church.

As a consequence, our spiritual lives are harder and higher than all other covenanted groups. Romans 8 explains the battle between flesh and Spirit giving rise to a pregnancy which births eternity in Him, ending with the triumphant "nothing shall separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus!" Book of Hebrews explains how this Builder of the House (Heb3) is now the Living Temple (threaded theme) and He Himself is the Holy of Holies (last half Chap 6, all of Chap 9). Revelation, of course, shows how it all turns out, beginning with Him taking the Title Deed of Earth and slowly opening it, Rev4: culminating in Operation Footstool, 2nd Advent Millennial Reign. And then, Reigning for all Eternity.

Because, for Father to see what Pleases Him, Son must be the Everything -- and we are His Body. So whatever facts, people, events -- they Now must and do, reflect only Him. For with everything being In Him, everything is sanctified, theme of Heb10. Everything past, everything future, hence what we see of ourselves and the world down here is not what life means, Rom8:18-39. Shout for joy, you barren one, Isa54:1! Everything Now Descends from Him Who Had No Descendants (Isa53:8)!

So He is King-Priest kata Melchizedek, to Father. And all the universes, past present future -- are in Him. Nothing existed apart from Him as God; and now nothing existed or exists or will exist apart from Him in His Humanity, either: Heb1:2-4, Col 1:15-20, Eph1:15-23, Rom 11:36, 1Cor8:6, Greek. [Mistranslation here is really bad and insulting. For example, the word "world" in Heb1:2 is completely wrong: aiown in the plural really signifies the covenantal Ages of All Time; meaning all TIME is constructed for and to and in and by Him. Greek preposition dia is causative, conduit, parental. The construction is anarthrous. Verses 3 and 4 are worse in translation (i.e., 1:3 uses the moniker Hupostasis to signify God-Man, but is not transliterated), and would require too much explanation right now.]

So everything which exists at the time of, or comes into existence after, the Session, is a "how" and "where" Inside His Seated Status. How is a thing, person, event in Him. Where is a thing, person, event in Him. Him Seated. Him Victorious. For He beat Satan, and Now it's time for The Everything to get everything put under His Feet. Beginning, Now. So the replacing Truth, is Him. Look for the "in Him" value in everything, to find the True Value. For that's what Father sees, and must see, to even allow an existence. Everything serves a Priestly Purpose to Father, Now. Now, and forever.

So like it or lump it -- everything you do, think, are, is IN Him. For Him. Through Him. By Him. Because of Him. All prepositions, Him. When you see your life and your world, to you it has certain meanings. But actually, your life is being orchestrated, yet never gerrymandered, so you are truly free. Both God's Meaning and your own, play in your life. You only see God's orchestrated meaning for your life as you spiritually mature. You can see He orchestrated the lives of Bible people. So what, are they the only ones? Nope. Every life, believer or no, was paid for BY Him, so every life, believer or no, has a to-Father meaning which plays. Even though, we are each free and therefore freely craft our own lives. THAT's the "hupostasis" of being of ourselves, yet in Him. We believers are in Him, saved. The unbeliever is in Him at the Cross, potentially saved. Either 'flavor' is a type of hupostasis, union, union-of-opposites, no longer separated, so God's Meaning for Everything is achieved.

So look: greater comfort, security, absolution from your flaws and failures, you couldn't have! You are not your own, but His. As is, everyone and everything else. For everything is, Him REFLECTED. So everything and everyone is In Him. Forever. The old things, the old meanings, the stupid worldly ideas we have, all truly, passed away. So all these temporary worldly ideas are just tales told by a lot of idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying outhen. Nothing. They were all replaced -- by Him.

It was ever thus, since Father would never have even Decreed Creation, had He not forever known that all would be in Him, from the get-go. What passes for our values in life are all but tools to paint the Grand Painting Father wants to see forever. We only see horizontal meanings in life. But the Truth is, everything rather is Vertical in Meaning. All prepositions, Him. The horizontals we see are actually expressions, reflections of Him. So what we think the horizontals mean, is entirely wrong. Ephesians 1 sets the record straight. The shemah in Deut 6:4 set the record straight. Sin is defined as rejecting Him, Gen3. So any horizontals are superfluous, if their meanings are assigned apart from Him, since nothing is nor ever shall be apart from Him, John 15. Worst sin you can commit is to put anything in the place of God in the First Commandment. And it's a sin, only because it never works. Whatever pleasure you think it will bring, it won't. Whatever meaning you want it to have, it won't. You'll just be fantasizing the meaning. Because, it's only about Him. Period. Father wouldn't have it, any other way. So you are only breathing, because your life represents Him. Whether you ever believe in Him or not, whether you ever grow up into your post-salvation inheritance or not. And no one in Heaven, angels or people, cares a flip about anything or anyone else but Him. Like it or lump it.

As you cruise through Bible, you'll see how the horizontal meaning of an event, had quite a different Vertical Meaning; and it's Only the Vertical Meaning, which lasts forever. Joseph explained that to his brothers when he said (Gen 50:20), you meant it for evil, but God meant it for Good. This duality is all over Bible. Quintessentially, it's expressed in Isa53, beginning at 52:13 to show how Christ's Exaltation is realized by Him being tortured so badly, He doesn't even look human, 52:14. So the horizontal is the torture, but the Vertical, is Promotion above everything else. So too, in your own life. What you think a thing means is due to your horizontal view of it. But the Vertical Meaning for you, is instead the truth -- and that meaning will blow you away, once you learn it. Again, only as you mature spiritually will you ever come to understand this Vertical Meaning, for spirituality is not detectable by soul or body. Live in God's System, keep on doing it; gradually, you will learn God's Vertical Meaning for your life -- because, you are commanded to learn His Will in order to LIVE ON that Meaning. [The term "God's System" is a Greek Bible word, "henotes"; it means the Divine Order of Things, God's System for maturing you in His Thinking. Term is used in Eph4:5, for example. Sadly, God's Head is almost always cut off in translation, so the translation "unity" makes it look like men living harmoniously with each other. No, the idea is to be in harmony with GOD, and if you purview Greek literature, that's how Greek henotes is used; idea that once you are in harmony with God, you are in harmony with everything else. So that's why Paul picked "henotes" in Eph4:5. See the Exegetical Synopsis link in RightPT.htm for the longer Biblical definition of "henotes".]

After typing that paragraph, I lost concentration so went to clean my balcony which my apartment complex had newly painted, unbeknownst to me. The painters had broken some of the furniture, and left old scraps of old paint strewn all over, such that you had to pick up the individual pieces. I didn't notice all this until cleaning. So immediately -- after using 1Jn1:9, for I was ticked off -- the John 14:26 recall hit my mind: apply the VERTICAL meaning to this situation! It was a struggle, but as time passed it was easier to do. Now, that cleaning is a pleasant memory. Past. Forever past, and forever pleasant. So notice: even the mundane irritations of life, have Vertical Meaning. Which, once you know them, make you glad the spit hits the fan! How much more Glad, then, is Christ Who Paid for cleaning us, Heb12:2!

So what was the Vertical Meaning? Col 1:24-27, for as you use Bible in any situation, God matures you faster, particularly under pressure! That's the theme of this webpage, what God does to you as a consequence of your being saved. Vertical, baby, is the way to live!

Here's the flipside of this Hupostasis, everything-in-Him: man refuses the Vertical Meaning, in favor of the horizontal. Man insists that the horizontal meanings he sees, should instead be his gods to worship, to satisfy man's penchant for self-glorification. We Christians are no better. Look: WE deem the First Commandment met if we do things for mere people, for crying out loud. But "people" is nowhere in the First Commandment, which is that you Love GOD With All Your Heart and Soul and Mind. So none of 'you' is left over, for people. But oh, man wants his horizontal works to count, just like Cain did.

So all human history is the battle between the Abels who vote Vertically, and the Cains who vote horizontally; between those wanting God, and those hating Him. It was ever thus, back before Adam was even made, for 1/3rd of the angels became cains, starting with Haylel Ben Shachar (now called "Satan", a title). Eyes on one's own abilities given by God, replacing God Himself in one's own estimation. It's a subtle thing, or a gross thing, but it's always the battle of choice.

Here's God's Choice: the Godhead throw Themselves down before Truth and before Each Other due to Love (Ps138:2b, 89:14-15, their Self-Chosen Titles demonstrating Their Mutual Love for Each Other). DueDisclosure.htm ("Kingship" link at pagetop) has more info on Their Voluntary Submission, in its "Hupostasis in Trinity" link.

So what else would be happiness, if this is God's Own Happiness, His Sovereignly-Chosen Vertical Meaning of throwing Self Down Before Truth? That's the same option every souled creature gets, yet another Vertical Meaning for this Hupostasis in Him. Sure, we humans choose to make self god, just like Satan did. But that choice can be reversed, and now the reversal has the most importance and value in all history. Because, all really is in Him, Now playing to completion. Positionally it was ever thus, and will forever be. But Now, the Victory Strategically Won, we Church get to be the agent for the Tactical Victory which Lasts Forever. That's God's Vertical Meaning for each of us. So it's our choice as individuals, how much we want to go under the 'knife' of Heb4:12 and Vertically Share in His Plunder, as "great ones" of Isa53:12 (wa et atsumim yehalleq shalal clause, see Isa53trans.htm for the corrected translation).

So, the expansion of Israel's profit to include a sibling kingdom, the Church, benefits Israel even as it benefits the Son's Humanity (cf. Hebrews 7-10, and 11:39-40). Our Now is the preparatory phase of "Footstool". So, when we come back to rule, we will be the "footstool nations", in that we guarantee Israel's supremacy. As Bride to Our Husband who Rules Israel, it's the wifely thing to do. All nations will be blessed thereby. Beginning Now. [Reminder: just as anyone post-Abraham became a "Jew" by faith in Him, viz the rule in Gen15:6, so also any Jew becomes part of the Bride of Christ in exactly the same way: Gal3, John 3:16, Acts 16:31, and NT "priest", "holy nation" verses. So, reminder: God keeps His Eternal Promises to all Jews who believe Now, just as He always has, and always will, to those Jews of other covenantal periods in history who believed/will believe. Beware: Anti-Semites would cut the Jew out of God's Blessing, and many among them are 'Christian'. So, á la the promise in Hosea 4, and Isa63, God will torturously cut out the anti-semite slowly. I've actually seen people suffer due to their anti-semitism. Better to have no eyes!]

Since He had to intimately know Father and Spirit in order to be developed sufficiently to become the Living Payment for our sins, and because we are intimately related to Him (not distant) as Body and Bride -- the blessing by association to go through us is vast. So too, the cursing, when we ourselves are negative. The unbeliever is never to blame for Divinely-authorized bad stuff in the world. Man is born apart from God, so not under God's Jurisdiction, since Satan owns the world. So any bad stuff God Judges are due to the bad believers on it, Lev26. Same, for the good stuff. Only due to the good believers on it. You're a bad believer while you are absent from God's System (link at pagetop); you're a good believer, while you are in God's System. For everyone else is not under God's Authority, per the terms of the Trial. Even though, He owns everyone and everything, and everyone and everything is in Him. God respects Authority. (Part IV will cover this system of blessing in great detail. At present, the idea of you being the conduit for blessing or cursing, is being introduced. More about how that works will unfold as Part III progresses, especially in the "Summing up" link sections.)

Accordingly, think of yourself as part of a distribution system of blessing, just because you breathe and learn Him. Isn't something you do (reverse of Churchinanity, Satan's claims). It's a juridical matter, for the world rejects Him, but you don't. So for the world to be blessed, every jot and tittle of your life, utterly matters. Hence the need to get under and stay under the 'knife' of Heb4:12, on God's Script in God's System. For you are being TRANSFORMED (more on this follows in the sections below). Being transformed signifies it's being done TO you, not something you do. Even the secular world has long depended on what got done TO royalty, and millions died for that privilege: until after WWI (other than Americans), soldiers in battle died "for the king" or "for the queen" throughout history! Preserving Royalty is long the world's fascination, treasure, and dying satisfaction. Ever much higher is this truth, since you are Royal in Him. Humbling, in fact. You breathe, and your home nation is blessed Divinely. You'll see more why and how, here in Parts III and IV.

Preview of coming attractions: Christ's Payment on the Cross bought everything, so everything is in Him. That means anyone in Him who is saved, is used to DISTRIBUTE the plunder, main theme of Isa53. He got plundered by God, so now the Plunder is to be distributed -- all of the NT focuses on this purpose, especially Paul, constantly using keywords in the LXX of Isaiah 53, to reference it. So you are by mere breathing, a conduit for the betterment of the world -- or, for its cursing. If you can't wait to learn more about this, then click here to peruse the First Facet of Part IVb, then come back here. It's so important to see how VITAL is your learning and living Bible, aka God's Script, in God's System.

A greater work is not possible, than The Transformation God makes of the believer -- you, me, any other believer. He's so pleased with the transformation He makes, He 'reimburses' the world for its time in putting up with us: only His idea of 'reimbursement', is -- well, Infinite. Just as, Abram only wanted one son, but God wanted to make ALL sons through The Son from Abram's loins, so too His idea Now, is much bigger than we'd ever imagine, Eph3:20-21. So for you, look: your family is impacted, your locale is impacted, your home nation is impacted, and hence the world. This impact is multifaceted and it goes on forever. As you mature spiritually you will actually see this impact, for God means to train you in understanding it. It's humbling to the extreme. Nothing bad gets wasted -- but instead, is 'repaid'. This is literally true, but until you've matured enough, you can't detect it, since you need the Holy Spirit's Brains, to properly analyze the data. It's real. The primary impetus for writing this Thinking series about the Trial was to learn that impact, a doctrine my pastor has taught for over 50 years. Yeah, it's really true, shockingly so. Hence in this series I attempt to describe it.

• Christ INVENTED Church de novo
• to PREVENT TIME ENDING With His Crucifixion, due to Israel's rejection of Him. Else there would have been a Mistrial Verdict. [You can click here to download Ten Ways This Timeline Differs, a Word doc: it seeks to summarize the issues of Time Ending and Mistrial, to save the reader time deciding if he wants to slog through the hundreds of pages which comprise Part IV. The Word doc is only 29 pages: the Mistrial issue is on page 25; the other pages are devoted to explaining God's Construct for Time, so you can see how Time would have otherwise ended with the Crucifixion, due to Israel's rejection.]
• That meant He COMMITTED To Pay for Untold Extra Billions Of Sins -- ours -- in ADVANCE. So now the potential for Mistrial is whether all those paid-in-advance SOULS, come to exist as advertised. Else, it's like jerryrigging Evidence, and the Prosecution (God) would have to call a Mistrial -- and SATAN would win.
• Church as a FUTURE entity was to be BUILT UPON CHRIST HIMSELF
• at Father's discretion,
• CONTINGENT upon Christ's Successful Completion of the Cross,
• since that's how He would DEFEAT Satan in the Trial.
• See Matt16:18, ratified in John 17:20-21, theme of Hebrews 2. See also Acts 1, Heb1 and Eph1 on the Father's-Discretion criterion. Note carefully that Church was purposed in eternity past but wasn't put into operation until the Session, Eph1:4 compared to verses 19-20.

• Any carryover provisions were affirmed by Christ directly in the Gospels, or are stated in the epistles, usually via incorporation by reference, quotation, or exposition (i.e., Rom13-14 are an expositary which demonstrates OT principles which carry forward, 1Jn uses Greek term "entole" as an incorporation-by-reference in 1Jn2, to show OT stuff like the 10 commandments carry forward).
• Above all only CHRIST is in charge of administering any punishments or enforcements -- no 'theonomy', please: Acts 17:26.
• We further know that the covenant applicable now is in preparation for Footstool, Ps110.
• For during the Millennium, the Kings crafted down here, will then be ruling Gentile nations under Christ, per 2)'s Kingship provision, above.
• There is no 1) or 2) or 3) Kingship operating on earth Now, because the world (not just Israel) rejects Christ.
• Christ is Seated in Heaven, so all the rulership operates from Him (no political 'arm' of Him is allowed -- Rev17 harlot seeks to violate, usurp His Role throughout the Times of the Gentiles).
• As shown in Part II's "Covenant Properties" and "Governance" sections, The CHARACTER of "Bride" isn't the same as was offered Israel, for
  • that offer was pre-Cross,
  • was NOT of an unknown number of future believers to be decided at Father's Discretion by 29AD when He made the commitment in Matt16:18.
  • Above all, since His Payment FOR future people had to be Higher,
  • He Had To Develop Further Himself, to pay for them.
  • So our Bridal Covenant is light-years higher than could have been offered to Israel, BECAUSE CHRIST IS BIGGER than He otherwise would have had to be, to pay.
  Again, Part IVa focuses on these PRECEDENTING issues, as they together constitute the LEGAL reason why Rapture precedes the Trib; as they constitute the Trial Context for our battles in our spiritual lives and the incredible historical impact we INVISIBLY have, Here and Now -- on earth.
• We are to prepare for 2) and 3), and the preparation is to emulate His 3) from the time He was down here.

  That's the legal basis under which we are operating. "Kingship" link at pagetop (DueDisclosure.htm) is a longer monograph on the legal and hence diplomatic structure, derived from this precedence. Part IVa will cover that in more detail, in its "Bible remains a mystery to Church" link section. For we are on Trial, even as Christ was on Trial when He was down here, Heb11:1 (see Heb111.htm for corrected translation), 1Jn4:17.

  Much more about the macro-historical meaning of our being on Trial and the INVENTION of Church being de novo based on the 3) Kingship, is in Part IV (main theme of that Part). But here in Part III, the focus is on the parameters of the Royally Invisible Spiritual Life we individually inherit upon that first nanosecond of faith in Christ, John 3:16.

Notice the metaphorical parallel in the spiritual life: your 'soul DNA' is a set of instructions you've WILLED since birth. You tell your soul how to be, by taking what comes into your soul, and ruling on it. So the task is, to replace your own rulings with God's Rulings -- aka the Bible -- so you can become closer to Him, and hence become a King. For God is Ruler by nature, so you must become a ruler in order to be closer to Him. So it's just like DNA, except that it's Divine DNA, aka "DDNA" in my sites -- Christ's Thinking, replacing your 'soul DNA': line by line, precept by precept. When all those discrete learnings under your pastor have reached a critical mass (think of quantum mechanics), then your 'soul DNA' is ready to split and be spiritually re-engineered. It's a Cloning of Christ's Thinking. Each time, solely upon your discrete consent. Again, much more on this process is thoroughly explained in the DDNA webseries.

Bible nomenclature for this DDNA metaphor doesn't use our modern "DNA" terminology, but references like concepts: crops (i.e., Luke 8), seeds, children from the Seed (Gal3, 1Jn, Philippians, James1). The whole repeated idea of His Thinking replicating in you (i.e., Phili2:5-10) is easily as advanced as our modern DNA concepts, particularly with respect to brain DNA -- which require their own salt generators, isn't that ironic, since "salt" is a metaphor of the Word in the Word? Paul seems to refer to what we know as DNA concepts directly in 1Cor12 (Body and Head), and all of Philippians is built around a megalunw theme, which is magnification-by-childbearing. So all that reproducing terminology plays on Isaiah 53, especially verses 2-4, 8, 10-12, 54:1.

• Everything that comes into your soul, no matter from what internal or external source, is an "if" requiring you RULE on its meaning.
• Your ruling is a "then".
• In rhetoric, the "if" is called a "protasis";
• the "then" is called an "apodosis".
• So God's Apodoses are what you need to replace your own.
• That's what happened on the Cross: all sin is an apodosis, a conclusion based on some "if" temptation.
• If we were tempted to be jealous, we ruled YES on the temptation, and sin was born from that, James 1:14-15.
• So when that jealous sin came into Christ, it was an "if": but His "then" thought in reply, was God's Apodosis, rather than reacting to the jealousy.
• So in this example -- which illustrates what happened to each sin on the Cross -- the jealousy "apodosis" instead converted into DDNA (mixing metaphors is excellent Greek rhetoric).
• So all that 'soul DNA' of sin, got converted to DDNA on the Cross.
• And all this, was by eternity-past contract, recorded in Isa53:10-11; its key five infinitives (in LXX, never translated) were first enacted in and on and for and now through, Christ -- to us.

If you examine the 'flow' of NT Bible verses carefully, you'll realize this type of reasoning and thinking is going on in the mind of the writer. Always a premise, followed by a conclusion, with pilings of corollaries from it. You'll see the Lord do it in the Gospels, and you'll see each NT epistle after the Gospels and Acts, is similarly constructed. This is most easily seen in Romans and 1Jn, for both are quite methodical in crafting a premise then compiling conclusions, then taking from the conclusions new premises, etc. That's the 'flow' of thinking which is supposed to develop in each of us. It's natural for the brain to think that way, but it's completly SUPERnatural for you to conclude God's Apodoses. Need to be living in God's System, to train in that.

• become constantly more aware of God, thinking toward Him -- and knowing His reply, John 14:26 style -- while simultaneously
• monitoring your own thought for temptations like incoming enemy fire, parrying them with Bible principles or verses you know;
• monitoring your own thought for sins, using 1Jn1:9 when you detect them;
• analyzing BIBLICALLY every thought you have, idea which hits, prospective do -- even when watching television or brushing your teeth;
• losing attractions to sins you once favored, and gaining attractions to new sins you would never have imagined;
• hit by outside circumstances which are progressively more and more enticing or upsetting;
• knowing ever more about the future God has in mind for you, but above all
• seeing Christ.

The size of your soul determines the scope of your free thought, just like the strength/flexibility of your muscles determines the scope of your range of movement. God wants you to be KING-SIZED, and He can do that to you by training you how to think as He does: via His Book. But He won't coerce. So, your ability to think is determined by your choosing to live on God's Script in God's System.

We are thus in training to be kings, so there is no such thing as a 'mother church' or master denomination. Instead, we individually -- since we each are to be kings -- we individually learn how use the Book of His Thinking in God's System. We won't end up equal, though we started that way (Gal3:26), because we won't equally use God's Royal Provision. We will be negative to some parts, positive to others; we will accelerate growth in the parts we like and understand, and will not, in the parts we don't. But we will be graded on all parts, Col3:25, Phili3:18-19.

The grading occurs constantly down here, since we are in 'spiritual school', as it were. If 1Jn5:16 happens, the person FLUNKED the spiritual life. Still, 'graduation' occurs at death, and unlike secular graduation, where you can sigh with relief and get a diploma, well -- we get graded on our performance. Most will flunk. Saved, but no rewards, because the Holy Spirit's Mentorship was refused, God's System was refused. So those who refused, will be the people booty divided among those who did not refuse. The Lord does all the dividing at the Bema, Isa53:12 (and many NT verses).

Again, as in the Esther story which the Lord wryly and allusively uses in Matt22 -- the biggest "pass" criterion is that you Love the King. Obedience without love is sterile. Love without obedience is a lie. Trick is for BOTH to be running in tandem. Can't obey what you don't know, and can't love Someone you don't know. 99.9% of Christianity neither knows how to obey, nor knows God. Instead, magical idolizations about God are invented and worshipped: click here for God is Not a Magic Doll, godnotmag.htm. Gonna be a lot of crying at the Bema. Knowing all the Bible on the planet won't win you a crown. Being totally moral won't win you a crown. Being emotional won't win you a crown. Gotta be learning Bible to learn the KING for Himself. Only then will you come to know and thus love Him. And then, your obedience will have precious meaning to you, and to Him. And then, you will be crowned.

So if we refuse to learn, what must happen? God has to change us into His DDNA apart from our volition, so we retain free will yet never sin again, post-death. That means He'll not change us except to a de minimis level, since our free will didn't choose to be much changed. So either we agree to learn down here, or we agree for Him to force whatever are the needed changes down here, such that we will freely never sin in eternity. You know what that means, right? Lots of spankings, Heb12:5ff. So that also means your scope of free thought will be limited to the scope of your thinking down here. So if your scope of thought down here is all works-based and people-based, you've programmed the parameters of what God can justifiably 'upgrade' to a very small level, compared to His Plan for you: which is exclusively CHRIST-based thinking ("in the Beloved" clause in 1Cor13:12 +Col 1:27 +2Cor3:18 +Eph1:6 +Eph3:15-19 +Eph4:13, see context). A peasant is free, and can have integrity; a king is free, and can have integrity; but the scope of a peasant's integrity is very much smaller than that of a king, because the ability to process thought in a peasant, is lower. If you don't learn to think like Christ, you opt for a peasant's level of thinking -- forever.

Notice how it is possible to be a Royal Peasant forever. Look around you: people have different jobs, and the jobs are generally matched to their thinking skills. Your boss will likely promote you if he sees your thinking skills are too high for the job you have, because he needs those skills elsewhere; he can easily replace the lower skills. Because, people are lazy. You know how it was common to ridicule those learning, in high school: well, it's 99.9% 'common', to denigrate learning God, in this life's 'school'. Peasants always defame learning to justify their own disinterest. Hence the believer so doing, gets a peasant's job -- forever. No matter how highborn. For his disinterest constitutes a dishonorable abdication. So it is, in the Millennium and Eternal State.

Your Royalty in the Priesthood 'harem' is a guarantee you will be cared for while down here and forever; down here, it's a guarantee you CAN get the requisite Royal Training -- if you want it. So long as you're still breathing, it's not to late to Vote Yes. But there's no guarantee, that you will rise in rank within the Royal Family, since that depends on whether you accept the Training, and how much: just as was true for the harem from which Esther came. Thus it is for even secular royalty: not all royals, rule. So how much more, among Christ's Own? Christ Himself comforted and warned the apostles about all this, in John 14:2ff. He's not talking about physical houses, but about royal rank, in the Greek. Sure, as a result of your rank, you will have finer (or baser) accoutrements to go with that rank, including a place to live. But "My Father's House" is in Greek, a royal house. So means a Royal Family, with its many rankings. Again, that's even true secularly: how much more, for Christ's Own?

The reason to want to be high -- the only reason it's worthwhile -- is to be closer to Him and to honor Him more. For He chose to be the Highest. So we must also. This fake humility business about "oh, I don't want a reward from God" spits on the Cross. 1st Reason for Royalty in Part IIIb will cover that hatred-masked-as-humility-statement. For now, just think: HE CHOSE TO BE #1 so to Honor Father Who Is #1. So should we. Aim high, train hard. Leave the grousers to their grousing, they're still in JUNIOR high school. Flunking it.

Since only the Holy Spirit can make you understand Bible, your own intelligence matters not at all. Funny, how an uneducated peasant in human terms, can learn so much about God simply because he's interested and WANTS to learn Bible. So he learns to read, so he can read Bible. So he learns 1Jn1:9, and reads it literally, thinking, "Oh, I should do that!" So, he does it. Then it dawns on him that he needs a teacher, so God leads him to one. So, he keeps on using 1Jn1:9, and learning from his teacher. Because he's interested in God AS God, he talks with God all the time, and it will naturally occur to him to keep using 1Jn1:9, so suddenly HIS prayers all count. So he grows. So he becomes more intelligent. So, he asks higher questions, gets higher answers, and before you know it, he's reached spiritual adulthood, even if he doesn't know he's living in God's System. If he keeps on growing -- which he will, so long as he keeps on wanting to know GOD better -- he'll mature (more on the stages of spiritual development follow in the next section). So here's this initially low-IQ person who just plain wants to know God. So, he will. And all those ecumenists who prided themselves on how smart and educated they were, won't. So, see: it is important to be a diligent scholar. But unless you want to know GOD, you'll go nowhere.

Most Christians, educated or no, don't really want to know God, they want to feel good about themselves and get goodies. So "God" becomes a vehicle for that, in their minds. Whether they take the erudite route to assuage ego, or the hate-academics route to assuage ego, it doesn't matter. It's not God they want, but instead, to assuage ego and get their material wants, gratified. So they live loveless lives, eventually become quite prickly and self-righteous, whether they adopt the ascetic mode of falsely-relating to God, or the lascivious (i.e., emotional) mode. If you don't want to know God, then just forget about it. All the huff and puff on the planet gains you nothing, 1Cor13:1-3.

When you don't want to learn God, if you persist in that attitude, your ability to process information will disintegrate. Your soul size will shrink as you age in this disintegration. At the end, your interests will be narrow, and self-focused. Everything will upset you. You will regard yourself as deserving more than you got from life, and you will be bitter. You will imagine that you hide all these attitudes from others, but the truth is, you're a walking advertisement of the misery which accompanies someone who doesn't want God. And others will indeed learn, not to make your mistake.

When you do want to learn God, if you persist in that attitude, your ability to process vast amonts of information in every academic discipline will be light-years faster than a scholar's. Still, you respect the discipline of a scholar, and you become able at it -- solely because you want to know God better. So you're always using 1Jn1:9 and monitoring your thought for Biblicity, and as you increase in soul size, you can process ever-wider amounts of both spiritual and secular information -- which you then can quickly categorize and link to the relevant Bible passages. So at the end, your interests will be all-encompassing, and God-focused. Everything will interest you. You will regard yourself as deserving far less than what you got from life, and you will feel overpaid, graced out, wanting to somehow reciprocate. Others will indeed see those attitudes in you, and will want to emulate.

So if you were to chart the topmost features of Our Royally Invisible, Marital Covenant in Him, the chart might look like this. The verses in the table are merely flagship verses. Other verses tying to them are in the thousands, and are selectively referenced passim, in this Part III. Ask God to show you verses which you will recognize, for it's hard to guess what you'll find useful.

TRANSMUTATION FEATURE	WHAT GOD DOES	WHAT YOU DO
Divine-Quality ROYALTY	DDNA manufacture by the Holy Spirit from Bible you learn and use, gradually TRANSFORMS your soul into Functioning Royalty, Isa53:10-12, Col 1:25-27, Rom12:1-3, Greek.	Daily Learn and use Bible in God's System, Eph4:12-16 (esp. v.16), Greek. (Click here if you're not already familiar with the definition of "God's System".)
Divine-Quality Bridal Invisible INTIMACY	DDNA manufacture by the Holy Spirit from Bible you learn and use, MATURES your soul so you can have a dynamic, intimate, 24/7 relationship with Christ Himself -- long before you die, Isa53:10-12, Eph3:15-19, 1Jn4:12-17, Phili1:21, 2Pet3:18.	Daily Learn and live on Bible in God's System, with emphasis on practicing God's Apodoses in 'reply' to every thought or proposed action, á la Ps35:28, Matt4:4, 2Cor10:5, 1Jn3:10+3:18 (Greek), Rev22:11.
Divine-Quality CROWNING at Bema	DDNA manufacture by the Holy Spirit from Bible you learn and use, MATURES your soul to become King-Sized: so you inherit a kingdom of believers who didn't mature like you did, Isa53:12, 2Tim4:7-8, Eph4:13.	KEEP learning and living on Bible in God's System; KEEP 'replying' with God's Apodases, Phili 3:14, even under pressure -- just as was true for Christ.

You will constantly fail and constantly succeed. Omniscience sees all-at-once, and all failure doesn't depress God. He converted all sins into DDNA at the Cross, so failure can exist side-by-side, as Truth would dictate. For failure is a truth, in that it is a fact of life. Any soldier of any war can tell you that fighting is 99% failure, 1% success. But it's the 1%, that makes good on the 99%. Much more true, in the spiritual life. So do what Paul does, Phili3:14. Keep on truckin'.

Ergo, Satan intends to prevent or disrupt this DDNA growth in God's Matt4:4 Apodoses, toward Oneness; principally, Satan inserts his own viral DNA and passes it off as godly, see godnotmag.htm. So it's no walk in the park, to learn and live on this Bridal covenant. It's a Battlefield Royalty we inherit, because you have to battle it out in your soul, day in and day out throughout your life. Your enemies are your own soul, everyone around you, and Satan&Co. False ideas of spirituality and God abound everywhere. It's even fashionable to say there is no God, so that must be battled, too. Your own life is filled with a million fragmenting details, making it difficult to think. Your own life is filled with sound in every direction, whether music or TV or people talking at you -- making it difficult to think. All these things will be used to obstruct spiritual growth, and the people thus used do not know they are being used. You are being used also. We're all in this battle together. So the rest of this Part III will cover the vicissitudes and parameters of this New Bridal Covenant we Church get, and Satan's many subtle attacks against it. Part IV will focus on the larger historical context of the Bridal Covenant and the Grand Strategy of both sides, plus the historical impact of it: for the Rapture is determined by when in aggregate, the Bride finally grows up. That, no one but God can know.

So let's now examine further, what this "Invisibility" means for each of us, our Invisible Spiritual Life. In Part IIIb, we'll turn our attention to what its "Royalty" means.

So Christ's Thinking was invisible to the world when He was down here. You only heard parts of what He thought, when He spoke. But God sees every thought. So, the First Characteristic of the Spiritual life is Invisible, because it is Thinking. That was always true, really. Now it is true solely, for Church. There are no rituals, anymore. Even the Eucharist, which seems like a ritual and is commanded, is a Thinking Thing: "do this -- in Remembrance of Me", 1Cor11:24-25. So Church spiritual life is solely a Thinking Thing, never magical nor rote. A Supernatural Thinking Thing: God's Thoughts, God's Script, in God's System, Matt4:4.

First Reason for Invisibility, His Invisible Spiritual Life during 1st Advent, is now to be replicated in us: Divine Thinking "in earthen vessels".

The first 30 years of the Lord's life are barely mentioned in Scripture. Obviously He spent that time learning Doctrine, for He used it constantly, as the Gospels depict: esp. Matt4, His debut. All His Thinking, was Bible Doctrine. It circulated constantly in His "heart" (a metaphor for the soul), even while He slept, lest, just as any other human, He lapse into sin during sleep. It was a constant source of joy to Him. When He paid for sins, the Payment -- His Thinking! -- was likewise invisible to man: the Cross was enshrouded in supernatural darkness on that fateful Wednesday, from 12pm - 3pm.

God is Pure Thought, and in a very precise array and hierarchy. Like math, if one 'dot' differed in the wrong way, ALL Truth would be different, because God is undivided in Nature. Moreover, since part of His Undivided Nature is Omnipotence, if one 'dot' of a thought varied from the Truth, Reality would thus vary. Hence Reality is what it is, and is stable, because God's Will Attitude is Love for the Truth. That is His Integrity, By Sovereign Choice. God's Attributes don't 'lock Him into' a particular attitude. The Attitude He Has, is Able to be enforced by His CHOICE, due to His Other Attributes which He keeps on CHOOSING to be stable. He could sin if He wanted to. He doesn't want to, isn't at all attracted by sin like we are. So by growing in His Thinking, we too come to regard sin as unattractive, and though temptation always hits, we learn to say 'no'. In eternity, we will not be attracted to sin in any form, and will never sin by CHOICE. We won't be even tempted, either. It's not magic, it's Learning Truth, which brings about this result.

So: that's why the Lord's Humanity in Matt4:3 immediately rebuffed the thought of some stone becoming bread to feed Him with Matt4:4. Had that thought not been met by God's Apodosis of "not by bread only -- but on every Word which proceeds from the Mouth of God" -- the stones WOULD have turned into bread. Because, He is also God, and God need merely THINK a thing -- and it is so. So how did His Humanity get such total control over even the body's innate hunger-imagination reflex (which occurs when you've fasted a long time)? Satan was trying to bypass volition, to use that body reflex of imagination, see. It didn't work. As you read below, you'll see why. [Right there, you know the idea God 'emptied' Himself and the idea that somehow Jesus wasn't God while down here, are flatly untrue. Can't be tempted to use Omnipotence, if not God. Satan's telling us more, too: that he couldn't defeat the Lord's Humanity, unless he bypassed His Human volition, taking advantage of the body's natural imagination reflexes (recalls of images of food due to extreme hunger). So that tells you how True the statement, that He is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life".]

In both the LXX and the Hebrew text, beginning in Isa52:13, are threaded key thinking terms and their conceptual synonyms: da'ath in Hebrew, and suneisis in Greek. These terms signify fluent mastery of Thinking Truth, and are climactically used to show Him Thinking Masterfully to pay for our sins in the original-language texts of Isa53:11: usu. mistranslated "By Knowledge" in English Bibles, it should at least say "by means of His Divine-Truth-Knowledge", because that's what b'da'tto in Isa53:11 really means. So you miss what is here stated as the very mechanic of your salvation and justification ON the Cross -- because the translation TRUNCATES meaning, rendering it fuzzy and obtuse! That's the most common translation error in Bible, truncation of meaning. No wonder we Christians are all so confused. It's hard enough, when you have the right meaning: thinking Truth is harder than any sport requiring dexterity, alertness, comprehension, etc. Hence these five infinitives could and did occur.

For what God Thinks, is Who He is. For what God Thinks, is what becomes Reality. For what Christ Thought, became the Reality of Payment for Sins. For What we Think, becomes our 'soul DNA' and is hence accounted BY our own free will, as 'reality' for us. So these five infinitives are needed to correct and expand -- in short, Transmute -- our 'soul DNA' into DDNA, God's Thinking. Christ is the First and Biggest Soul to go through this process, which happened all His Life and culminated on the Cross. So He is the "FirstBorn of all creation" as Paul puts it (Col 1:15 -- other NT writers use similar nomenclature). So what happened to Him -- the five infinitives -- is to happen to us. [Nerd Note: OT people couldn't get the spiritual life we do, primarily for this reason. His Own Soul wasn't built yet, so they had to make do with lower mediation/transmuting devices: hence the heavy emphasis on rituals and practices all day and all night long. The meanings were beautiful, but the practices themselves were very complicated; good news was, if you enjoyed the meanings then you enjoyed the practices, and since you were so focused on both, you didn't have much time to give into temptation. But that put a primacy on learning the meanings behind the motions, and the motions themselves; primacy, on USING the motions and the meanings all day and night. Which as we know, didn't happen except in a few individuals. It's always how you value a thing -- your apodosis ruling -- which determines the quality of your life. Their highest enjoyment level is for us, mere child's play, as my pastor continually reminds us. Hence their covenants are obsolete, and don't apply to us, as was explained earlier. More about this changeover follows in the Third Reason for Invisibility in this webpage.]

We inherit the same five-infinitive process: NT threads these five infinitives throughout its text, and nearly every verse 'looks back' at these infinitives through a legal writing method known even today as "incorporation by reference" (not merely "allusion"). That means the whole structure of the referenced passage is grafted into the meaning of whatever other passage, references it. (Bible uses incorporation by reference in nearly every verse after the Book of Genesis, by means of deft keywords or phrases from the passage referenced, into the 'current' verse.)

So these five infinitives explain how we can become what we are not, how we get God's DDNA, how we get God's Apodoses: for the purposes of Rapport, Shared Compatibility, with Him. Isa53.htm focuses on the exegesis and translation of these five infinitives; Isa53trans.htm integrates the whole chapter 53 to show the corrected-translation, context (52:13-54:1, Bible chapter-and-verse divisions being an invention of the 12th century).

Compatibility-of-Thinking is God's Goal: "sons". It's never about anything else. Togetherness, flat. Hence God's System to transmute you, line on line, precept on precept, spiritual dendrite on soul dendrite. Your physical brain's dendrites are all fixed at birth. By contrast, spiritual dendrites get built one by one, beginning at the new birth. The more dendrites you have, the more thought flows, the more compatible with God you become in your soul. So that's the purpose of being down here, once spiritually born ("from above", corr trans of John 3:3, 7). DDNA produces those dendrites as you live in God's System: the process begins slowly and sporadically, at first. In "spiritual adulthood" it then rapidly multiplies: this is true spiritual growth, as 1Jn4:12-16 explains.

God is Infinite. This process takes a lifetime. So just hunker down and decide if you're sufficiently interested in God, for Himself. Else you won't have the motive to stick to it. Think: it takes a good 13 years to train as a doctor. Four years college, four years medical school, at least two years of internship and at least three years as a junior physician in somebody else's medical practice, before you have any competence. How much more ought it to take, to become LIKE CHRIST -- especially, when it took HIM, 30 whopping years to train? So either learn and live on Bible because You Want To Know God -- or quit now. You already believed in Christ, heaven is secure for you.

"Lifetime" varies. So, therefore, does the speed of spiritual maturation. A VERY strong motive to learn God for Himself makes you mature faster. So yes, it's possible for a child to become spiritually mature, so there are children who've done that and died young. The 144,000 Jewish evangelists of the Tribulation -- 12,000 per tribe, Daniel left out, Joseph has double portion, all killed off by its mid-point -- they become mature in 3.5 years or less. So it depends on how much you want to know God, versus all the other stuff you want in life. Your call, how much that is.

Here's the biggest reason it takes so long: finity is NOT compatible with Infinity. Sin of course is utterly incompatible, but even worse -- Sin Divorces. So there is no chance to regain compatibility. Hence the Cross; hence 1Jn1:9 post-salvation, which legally invokes the Cross as the basis for regaining compatibility (hence no penance, works, etc. make up for sin -- that is being admitted, too). For, just as those five infinitives converted sin in Him, so too His Soul's Pattern of Thinking can be converted in us: by means of the same five infinitives playing on us. That's why Isaiah exults in Isa54:1 about the sterile, bearing kids: kids of the Seed, 'children' of His Thinking. Paul and the other NT writers make no end of reference to this exultant result, since the very purpose of the NT is to get His Head -- now in writing -- into your head (i.e., per 1Cor1:5,10, 1Cor13, Rom12:1-3 all in Greek, and all mistranslated). It fell to John, to sum up and finish the writing of His Head, so in the Greek of 1Jn (and Rev) you find the most concentrated incorporation-by-reference terms in all the Bible. Every verse elsewhere in Scripture is referenced in that one short epistle. Deftly. So now the compatibility gainable, is available to any believer who wants it. Every second, per his discrete consent, more Infinite Quality Thinking of Christ can be "deposited" by the Holy Spirit, so that these "true riches" can be cycling in the believer's soul: subjective and objective genitive, the Love of/for God. So the compatibility problem, is solved! Forever.

Satan's contention is that God could have just binged! us to have this compatibility, make the end product we would become, from the beginning -- so there's no need for anyone to go to hell, God is sadistic, unfair, or unable to 'do it right'. The Trial and your Transmutation into Christ, proves Satan's contentions wrong. Can't be more important, than to get in and stay in God's System.

For God's counter to Satan, is that Compatibility Transmutation Requires One WANT To Be Compatible, Hence Consent Is Always Required. God being Love, won't violate the corridor of your consent. So as much compatibility with Him as you want, you can get. It takes time, and it's against everything in your human nature, to transmute. So it often feels bad. You're going under "the knife" (machaira, in Heb4:12), to be operated on by the Holy Spirit the entire time you're down here. The more you transmute in your soul, the closer you will be to Him forever. Frankly, that's the real and only important meaning of salvation. Being in Him. All else isn't even worth discussing, but whatever else you prefer, you'll get that. Satan&Co. and all unbelievers, prefer as much distance between themselves and God as possible, thinking-wise. That's the only reason why there is a hell. With God, you always always always get exactly what you want. Forever.

However, even most believers do not want to be close to God. They want their own ideas, and to be their own gods. So most believers will be far away from Him, in Heaven and in the eternal state. Everyone will be fully happy and forever sinless, in heaven: but not, fully compatible. Perfection doesn't mean compatibility. It means everything is in its right place, and everyone is happy with that place. No coercion, fully desired, each size and shape different and UNequal. Numbers tell you that: no two numbers are equal, ever. So the 'compatibility' of $1 with $1,000,000 is pretty small: only $1's worth. But it's connected, not divorced. So it is, in heaven and in the eternal state -- but wholly by choices we make, down here.

Repeating, because you will often be discouraged by what you think is slow progress: To grow up in Christ takes a lifetime. Even took Him 30 years in isolation, to ready for His final two phases of growth, the pressure of fickle and addicted humans (all of us, effect of sin nature); and then that final unique pressure, the Cross. So if that's what happened to Him, what must happen to us? "Love is the Integrity of God!" my pastor shouted during one Bible class, totally stunned over the plethora of Scriptural proof about it being true. So we know that Love being Integrity, means it doesn't coerce, and is never wimpy or maudlin. You don't want the Gift, you don't get it. And to not want the Gift of God can only mean the spurner -- hates. Granted, given the many false ideas out there, it takes a long time just to know God's System even exists and is the right 'path'. But everyone individually gets enough time. Bristlers who don't like the path can bristle down here and even in hell if they want. Love will not be less for them; Love will also never compromise. Doesn't ever have to compromise. So what we choose, is what we get. Freely.

Bigger Answer: God generates this DDNA Transmutation in you to create Abiding Togetherness aka Communion with Him. Each "Him", 2Cor13:14. For the OT folks got "You, with me!", Psalm 23:4b. But we get, "You, in Me!" It's all about Togetherness, Relationship. Period. Now God is Diamond-Quality, and we live in transparent houses, before heaven. So this House, is the Diamond of His Thinking. Again, it's good Greek rhetoric to mix metaphors. Your House is the Hardest Kind Of Stone, Diamond. But you need to learn its facets, explore it, live in it, to see its splendor and strength...

1. Abiding FUNCTION. Greek verb usu. translated "abide" is menw (pronounced MEN-oh). Its cognate noun is used mostly as a suffix, mone (MOH-nay). The Lord uses the term in wordplay in John 14:2, very witty way to announce His Legacy (monai means dwellings, it's soundplay). It gets even more witty as He thesauretically branches into the parameters in the following verses -- for the next three chapters! Consequently, the NT's MAIN THEME is to explain how you learn to menw: meaning, to live in Him. Basically, the NT elaborates on what the Lord Himself explained in detail during the Last Supper, which we have recorded in John Chaps 14-17; and that discourse, was to show how the five sweeping contractural infinitives of Isa53:10-11 (in LXX), get DDNA-accomplished into Church.
   • Abiding: gotta pause now and go back to that last Passover, so you can see the context in which "abide" was presented as the Legacy for Church. Put yourself in 30AD, the year of that Last Supper. He knew He was going to be crucified four days later to fulfill the Passover Law, since He's the Lamb of God. Moreover, everyone at that Last Supper knew the Isaiah 53 passage, for it's the Grand Central Station of the Old Testament: it provides a rather gruesome and shameful, blow-by-blow depiction of Messiah being rejected by the Jews, and paying for sins. The language is graphic, and depicts Him being 'raped', really. So our sins would soon "abide" in Him -- and then Father would judge those sins IN Him, as well. He would be intimately 'together' with us via our sins.

     So we are in Him then, Romans 6. So He is in us -- Now, Romans 5-8. So Now you can think Bible 24/7, WWJT -- What Word Jesus Thought, Matt4:4. Any second you breathe, you draw analogy to your life that minute, to something in Bible. You solve problems with it, you eat with it, sleep with it, constantly using it like breathing in everything you think and do. That's what Christ did, as He Himself says in Matt4:4. That's what Moses told the people to do with it, in Deuteronomy 6 and 9 (represented by the tfellin, strips you bound on your head depicting Bible in your head, and on your arms, depicting Bible in your daily use of your body). It's a Lifestyle, living on Bible in God's System, and has no religious connotation whatsoever. Everyone lives according to some beliefs: these, are yours. Standards, ideas, goals, stuff you want to keep on touching, knowing, seeing: Him. So, His Thinking is codified in writing, so we can LIVE in it, walk in it, BE in it 24/7. So you practice living on Bible, and you'll be failing all the time; but also, succeeding all the time. Failure and success are always constant companions, wherever you live. So Live In Bible in God's System, 'abide' there in your thinking. And God will make that lifestyle, grow in you. That's the spiritual life!

     Here's how I do it, so you get an idea of the 'layout' of "abide". You should design your own 'layout' before the Lord, that's your Privilege as a Royal Priest Yourself. So here's the one I use, generically presented:

     • I get up. My first thoughts are toward Father, motivation for getting up, so I can get more DDNA as early as possible, that day.
     • I analyze my own to-do's, and see how Bible applies to them, to decide how to accomplish them. That's a type of Bible class, kinda like an exam. It's interesting, always something new learned in Bible itself.
     • During the day, there are many irritations and frustrations, so many temptations. So I'm always playing racquetball with them, using 1Jn1:9 a lot.
     • All day is like a conversation with Our Mutual Dad, asking questions, often "What should I be thinking now?" reasoning out answers to issues in my life toward Him, enjoying restful moments, remembering verses, thinking about doctrines I've learned. Many reminders throughout the day: true back-and-forth of dialogue, John 14:26 style.
     • If watching TV or doing menial stuff, I look for Bible themes in the activity/story. Again, more Bible class.
     • Then there's the 'formal' Bible class of the day, the formal lessons to learn now and live on the next day, under one's pastor.
     • Before bed, quiet time, talking with Him aka prayer, learning still, living on Bible still. Wine of His Thinking; for me, Remembrance -- that's the heart of communion. To be with GOD, not necessarily with people.

     Notice how it's about Life with Him via the BIBLE -- doesn't matter what denomination you are. If you think one denomination more 'spiritual' than another, well -- stay in the denomination but keep living on Bible, in case God wants to upgrade or correct what you think right before Him. It IS an issue what you think right before God: so if your own conscience is hurt by not being in a denomination you think 'right', don't violate your conscience, see what Paul says in Romans 14. Notice how that Chapter shows we can have incorrect understandings, deem things holy which are not, and vice versa; so we shouldn't stand pat on our beliefs, but keep on asking God for upgrades and corrections.

     Just be sure to stay in God's System so that any needed upgrades or corrections will occur. Else you'll slip into a fake spiritual life, even if you have the 'right answers'. For one big problem with all denominations, is that they pride themselves on having the right answers. Then the life becomes a matter of being right, rather than being with God, and your spiritual life tanks -- you'd be abiding in how right the answers are, not in God. The denomination or church ends up replacing God, even though surely that's not intended. You can tell when this happens: the person who's replacing God with his denomination or church will bristle if there's any criticism of it, will be legalistic about it, will be fixated on how right his denomination or church is, and talk about it all the time -- rather than, talking about God Himself. So such a person's not occupied with God, but with his own rightness. False abiding, therefore -- passing oneself off as holy. Notice how it doesn't matter if he's right, he's still wrong, because the wrong 'god' is being worshipped.

   • Birthed And Being Together In Him: the Lord wanted the apostles to know this in-ness would be His Legacy "out from" (birthed from) that horror, which would begin later that same evening; an evening they all knew was the true 10th of Nisan, not the nominal 14 Nisan used by the Sanhedrin who'd not yet intercalated the year. For the Lamb is set aside on the 10th of Nisan. Slain on the true 14th. So here they all are, morose; because they are eating Passover lamb on the wrong day, awaiting the Lamb of God to be captured on the right day -- THAT day. To next be slain on the nominal 18th, which that year would be the true 14th, just as the Law commands. They needed cheering up. So they got the discourse of John 14-17. [Passover corrected timeline (and related Mosaic Law to prove it) is in PassPlot.htm.]

     And what He told them was, He'd be STAYING in them. Yes, He'd be tortured, crucified, and would rise again and then leave to go to the Father. But He would Indwell them, meaning -- abide. Be in communion. But it's a two-sided thing, rapport. So the very Isa53:10-11 LXX infinitives which were and would be done to Him all the way through the Cross, they'd get as well -- after He was Seated. Hence the Vine and Branches command. A command of Togetherness. Which togetherness, is a rapport; which rapport, means like-mindedness; which like-mindedness, the Holy Spirit would produce via Scripture recall, John 14:26. Which Scripture, would be added to, the "hey kaine diatheke" as the writer of Hebrews puts it: the New Testament of His Thinking. (Heb8:10's fulfillment, illustrated as fulfilled in Heb9:15-17, then brilliantly bookended to show Church is the carrier and reciprocating, wifely-rescuer of Israel during our "Now", in Heb 10:16. Heb11:39-40 in Greek stresses our rescuer role. Part IV is dedicated to this topic, since it's the reason why Rapture kicks off the Tribulation, a contractural promise relating to how much time Israel had remaining, how her time gets rescued, due to her rejection of Messiah.)

     So He's explaining to the depressed apostles how He takes away the first (the Mosaic Law) to establish the second (His Thinking in us earthen vessels) so we can abide in Him -- forever. Oneness. Togetherness, flat. So the rest of the NT memorializes and expiates on, this Passover discourse. Because Our Lamb lives in us. So we can learn to live in Him.

     So that's another dimension of the Abiding Function, not just going through the motions of it, but Remembering What It Means. And what is that? "Christ is in me!" "You, in me!" "You, in Me!" The Third Reason for Royalty will explain this in more detail. For now, the point is this: He's REALLY IN YOU. You're not just going through the motions, all alone, on your own, it's only the world you can see and God is something like Harvey, the white invisible rabbit (movie "Harvey" starring James Stewart). It's not imaginary. Invisible yes -- God is too big to see with physical eyes. But Real, Royal, Royally Invisible. So when you think toward Father, Son and Spirit are there also. Indwelling you, just as promised the disciples. You'll come to know this well, as you mature. John 14:26 is how you get Divine Feedback or insight into your day. It's not voices and visions but a true Knowing you test with Bible -- but you won't realize that, unless you keep on keeping on in God's System. Your perceptions will be enhanced secularly, too. More about that will be said in the next section, on the growth stages. Point is, you will have understanding you will know came from God, and you can prove it's God and not the demon boys, a bad dinner, or your emotions, 'hallucinating'. But again, this growth takes time. So just keep on keeping on.

   • Compatibility With And In Christ: You 'live in' a person if you share the same thinking. If you don't share that thinking, you can be in the same room and yet be farther away than the moon. And miserable, to boot. Christianity is a relationship, an abiding. Not a religion. So the spiritual life is a spiritual growth process -- in His Thinking. The function here is to daily seek to see Him better, understand better what it is and was like, for Him to BE Him. If you want to grow fast, make this a daily habit. Just set aside a short amount of quiet time and ponder what He's like and what life for Him was like, being sure you use 1Jn1:9 as you do it. That's why Communion is a mandate, but unfortunately Christians abuse it into a social hour, and Christ is the LAST person they think about. Christ said, "Do This In Remembrance Of Me", Luke 22:19, 1Cor11:23-25 -- "Me", not other believers eyeing each other with all their fake piety. The Eucharist is designed to give you time to think about Him, only. So do that, with or without the trappings of a church function. You will grow very rapidly in the First Commandment -- the only one that fuels all other obedience, and makes obedience a happy thing, not a chore -- if you do this.

2. Abiding DESIRE. The root idea of "menw" is STAYING: lingering, tarrying, remaining. But more than mere position, you stay (etc.), because you WANT to do so. Reluctant to leave. This is the second "flank" of menw, the desire. It's not merely gritting a thing out, functioning like some robot or resentful, confused slave. Rather, "menw" emphasizes your State Of Thinking, your REASON for staying: your thoughts occupied/staying on someone or something, essentially. So your body stays, too. Hence the verb is used for where you live and remain; for marital faithfulness; for martial loyalty; for remaining truthful. All these, connote staying despite pressure, even -- because you want to stay so very much. Hence "menw" is a very homey, marital-intimate, shared rapport; very martial-honorable term. Its cousin hupomenw (lit., to stay under) is a favorite NT keyword, and is usually translated "be patient" or "endure". Those meanings don't convey in English the ardent desire to obey or endure which the Greek has built in it. That matters, since God's goal is to build us up in His Love -- main theme of 1Jn -- not legalism, which 1Jn warns ardently against (as does all the NT). So when you see "persevere", "endure" and other words which in English have this horrible, huff-and-puff-God-is-a-Tyrant translation, look to the Greek, which is probably menw or hupomenw or a synonym, being translated.

   Love is something you train in. It's not human love, as we saw in the previous section. Love has to be LEARNED, so of course your body and soul will have urges against it. Don't feel bad about that. Your body is allergic to the Divine, product of Adam's fall. Just use 1Jn1:9 as needed and keep on trying to learn and live on Bible in God's System because you want HIM, too. Battle of the Wants, theme of Romans 7 and 8 -- that's a daily combat you will face until you die. But the Desire to Know Him will keep on increasing, right alongside all those tares of the world's wants. Two crops are growing. God harvests them both at the end, and by then you'll be mostly Wheat, totally in Love with Him, Matt 13, Luke 8:5ff.

3. Abiding DEVELOPMENT. Note Our Archegos (Pattern, Progenitor) again: He didn't 'do' anything which made Him Our Savior. Rather, He BECAME something: The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Because He Became, and because He menw'd in the Spirit -- that Way (heh) sins could be plundered "out from the labor of His Soul" and converted into DDNA, as the prior section's five infinitives demonstrated. See, we aren't like God. We needn't feel ashamed of that. We need God to transform us, even as Christ though Perfect, also needed that. So, He voted for the Compatibility. So, we can, too. God could have just zapped Christ to make that compatibility; can just zap us to make us compatible. But Love doesn't want to do that. Love wants to stay within the corridor of choice in the love object. So, it's not at all about being good little boys and girls, about performance, but it is a struggle to change from what you are, to what you want to be. That's true even secularly. So it takes God's Power to transmute you to be like Him -- a power you Vote for Him to use, since He won't coerce. And you'd want to vote, not to be a good little boy or girl -- but because you want to know Him better. Because you want Him. Just Him. God will make that happen as you vote. As you'll see below, it's a gradual process which takes decades -- took Christ Himself 30 years -- not unlike physical or mental maturation in its timelines. So it's okay that it's hard. The thing is to keep on voting for it by living in God's System, Philippians 3:14!

   Notice how Abiding Function and Abiding Desire combine to produce Abiding Development. You can't vote without information. You can't vote FOR something you don't believe in. So from all that Abiding Function, you have information which the repetition makes easier to remember; and obviously your Abiding Desire has been building also, since to repeat the Function, you had to Desire that. So here, Development results, again gradually -- but you vote for more. That's why Phili 3:14's keep on keeping on is so important. The Greek is lumbering (note the accent marks for the plodding nature of the stress): katá skopón diókw, eis tó Brabéion, tes ánw klésews -- tou theóu! en Christoi Iésou! Sounds like a tramping soldier, right? Yep. True Spirituality is a plodding. Notice how the exclamation comes at the end. Spiritual profit is back-ended, long downtime, huge payoff. After all, when you buy a house, you don't get the profit on all those mortgage payments -- until you move OUT!

4. Abiding PLUNDER. So our Royally Invisible Spiritual Growth Pattern -- is His. So our spiritual growth structure parallels His Own. Those five infinitives we saw at the beginning of this First Main Characteristic of Invisibility, all act like a Circle Of Plunder:
   • the sins imputed and judged in Him being made plunder IN Him;
   • then Him being plundered to make us;
   • then Him being plundered for His Thinking On the Cross,
   • which became the NT, as Paul wittily notes in his threaded Head-and-Body book, 1Cor (English masks Paul's wordplay, cuts God's head off).
   • Then there are the financial take-offs from Isa53:12, which the NT incessantly repeats (covered over in translation, often): plunder booty deposit wealth riches glory gold silver precious stones hope love clothing housing food drink wine water. Well, every word which depicts something material man hankers after, is used as a metaphor signifying His Thinking. Yeah, and it's true!
   • Most remarkably, the share of teaching a pastor gets for his own congregation is also tied to the plundering in Isa53:12, using "metron.. merous" (meros means a part of a whole, and metron means an allotment, both are financial meanings). You'll see variations of that phrase used to incorporate Isa53:12 by reference in John 3:34, 7:39, Eph4:7, 16 and Rom12:3 and elsewhere (lexicons like Thayer's and Bauer, Danker, list the salient verses). The phrase specifically ties to "merizw" in the LXX of Isa53:12 -- an apportioning of PLUNDER. So when you see "every spiritual blessing.. in the Beloved" in Ephesians 1,
   • and Christ's Love-Thinking depicted as a HOUSE in both Eph3:15-19 and 1Jn4:12-16, well -- would you be surprised, anymore?

   Because the spiritual life is back-ended, the realization that you are plundering Riches of His Thinking -- which Plunder is your Inheritance in Him -- takes some time to recognize. You begin doing it from spiritual childhood forward, simply because you're living in God's System -- but that fact it doesn't register as valuable, it registers as a 'chore', a thing you are supposed to 'do'. Children do chores, not knowing why they are valuable. So it takes time to see how RICH you are becoming. However, if you use the five infinitives in the previous section to solve problems, analyse life's situations, you will begin to see the fifth one -- dikaiow, Perfecting Justification -- which completes this Circle of Plunder.

   As you practice using those infinitives in your life, you'll speed comprehension of the FACT of this wealth. Our God is a God of Wealth. Wealth means responsibility, which you want because you love spending everything on Him. Every other use of wealth ends up being disappointing. So your Abiding Function and Abiding Desire lead to an Abiding Development of an Abiding Plunder which you might not see happening, for some years. But again, if you practice asserting, analysing or problem-solving with the five infinitives, you'll see that Plunder much sooner. I need instant gratification, because it's stupid that God should have to see me be a human: remembering those five infinitives, is how I get it. He's DDNA-doing to me what pleases Father, and that's how I get through the next minute of any day. So it works, to use those infinitives and thus see the Abiding Plunder.

5. Abiding VICTORY. Whoa. Even though we are fallen, we get this so-ROYAL spiritual life? Yes. For that is the Trial Issue: can we fallen humans grow up in the same spiritual life as His, since not even the angels got it? We saw the nine-member Love Alphabet. This is a six-member Trial Alphabet, and both alphabets play in our lives, to see if we know our Spiritual ABC's. Notice the tug-of-war quality to the Trial Alphabet, in what follows. Due to that tugging, you begin to see the Abiding Plunder. Ironic, that it takes Combat to see what you've won already.
   • Absolute Unity: more than anything else -- even more than saving us, which consternated Satan to no end, in Matt4 -- Jesus the Christ wanted to be One with Father in His Humanity (also stated in John 17). Really, look at it from His View: He's already God, but His Humanity is limited. The very Hypostatic Union Nature of His would make this desire for Oneness the Absolute Driving Motive of His Human Life. Should have driven Him utterly mad, to be One Person with Both Natures, one of which was limited. So here, as you mature spiritually, it will get much harder to tolerate being human, living in this world. The fantasies about what life means down here will gradually fade away, and baby one day you wake up and see it's all a farce. That's a PLUNDER sign. For the world didn't change, YOU did. You got Bigger in your soul, closer to His 'size'. So the struggle for unity with Him becomes harder, yet your Abiding Function, Desire, Development and now Recognition of Plunder -- are stronger for it. You won't feel like a victor, you'll feel vanquished, but you will come to see the Plunder value of your now-bigger-soul, just the same.

   • Bridal Legacy: He wanted us to get that same Oneness He has with Father, John 17. Thus via God's Script in God's System, we get to be DDNA-transformed, just as He was. But the purpose isn't performance: it's Love. Togetherness, flat. No barriers, as Paul notes at the end of Romans 8. Oneness is the reason, not works. This too, is a PLUNDER sign, on the Victory side. For the longest time, the Christian thinks that his relationship with God (and therefore people) should be and is based on "performance". It's not. We constantly fret over our performance, hence looks and possessions, in an effort to be 'approved', 'loved'. But real love even of the human kind, isn't based on anything but one soul to another soul. You either 'connect' or do not, and all the 'goodies' are just excuses -- or ways to mask incompatibility. So here your motive for keeping on, and more -- your recognition of God's Love for you -- becomes distinctly intimate, just for its own sake. Just Him. This is where all that Abiding Function "C" for communtion remembrance, pays off. It changes how you think about Him, for now you actually know Him, and He's not the common claptrap character of Sugar Daddy or Petty Judge Churchinanity paints Him to be. So the Relationship grows much more intimate here. That is a Plundering. That is a Victory.

   • Conflict And Competition: so we can toss out all the competing religious nonsense pandered by the human race, right now: that garbage only transforms us into the character of its author, Satan (see Part II's "the Fall" link section). Nothing more evil than religion. Nothing more evil than anything which aims to be on par or substitute for knowledge of God, 2Cor10:4-6, a passage vilely mistranslated to show you the evil of religion. The subject of the three verses is the WEAPONS (Greek word "hoplan") of the Word, verse 4, a plural -- you know, Swords of the Word, machaira and romphaia, OT metaphors which the Lord Himself uses often in the Gospels and in Revelation? So Paul is not the subject of the verses. Verses 5-6 are thus egregiously mistranslated, making it look like Paul is an avenger, when instead he's describing the Power of the Word Weapons in Your Soul's Many Conflicts, finally defeating all the disobedient thoughts in You. There are no "we" verbs in those verses, the Greek text plainly shows The Weapons Do The Work! That's why Paul switches to dramatic participles, an Attic Greek drama rhetorical style which graphically depicts the defeats 'received' by the objects The Weapons are used on! Oh well, God's Head gets chopped off yet again in translation, and man just has to put his head where God's was. That's religion for ya.
     This is a Plunder sign, too, and you are indeed aware of it. Here, you get a great deal of satisfaction putting down your old hangups about God and the nature of the Relationship. So the Victory here becomes really obvious. Of course, those around you who still buy those false ideas, well -- you'll be tempted to battle them, as well. Not good. God will spank you for that. Battle your own demons while living in God's System: leave God to handle the other people Himself.

   • Demonic Opposition: of course, Satan doesn't want us to know how powerful menw'ing in the Word is. As noted earlier, Satan doesn't believe we puny believers will ever "finish the [marathon race] course" of Royally Invisible, Spiritual Growth to Pleroma Maturity, Eph4:13's finish line. Satan thinks the Lord's being Perfect somehow 'rigged the deck' and made Him win. So, Father is out to show otherwise. By showing off His First-Born Son, by DDNA replicating His Mind in us. One (agreed) 'love-deposit' at a time! No intelligence or other handicap of any kind matters. Not at all. For Christ didn't use His Humanity to 'assist'. The Holy Spirit ran the Whole Thing. So if His Humanity didn't factor in the success but was rather just as advertised, a mere shell, a Lamb -- then it does not matter that we have old sin natures, limited intelligence, et cetera ad nauseam. The humanity was never used, and is never used -- then, or now. So Satan will do all he can to mask what constitutes the Real Nature of this Invisible Spiritual Life, which is life in God's System, learning and living on Bible -- especially, by sponsoring as much demon influence to mistranslate and misteach Bible, as he can muster. So we are all targets; all of us will sometimes or even often mistake Bible's meaning, because we are all under attack from time to time. No need to be embarrassed or put down the other guy. For any of us can become casualties, overnight.
     The Plunder sign here is almost immediate, but as in the Plunder of Absolute Unity, you don't recognize it for what it is. Closest analogy is to high school: people made fun of students who actually learned something in the classes, calling them "nerds" and other not-nice names. That, because it was only "cool" to want whatever bugged your parents -- here, NOT learning. It's not until long after graduation -- say, at a reunion 10 years later -- that you see the nerds with the money and prestige, and the mockers, twice-divorced or some other misery. Much more true in the spiritual life, you won't see how SUPERIOR it is, until you come across other Christians who maybe mocked you or others, for persisting in it. Temptation will be to get cocky or try to 'help' them. Talk to God a lot during this discovery-of-your-Plunder phase, for it's a nettlesome fact, in adulthood. That's when you begin to see how rich you are. That's when Demon Opposition rises, too. Satan&Co. have no time for children. But they will FIND time for you -- then.

   • Enabling By Spirit, Ejects The Opposition: so notice, being Filled with the Spirit is the most important -- and only enabling -- function you can have. Worst sin, is to refuse to use 1Jn1:9. Worst sin, is to do something on your own. Because then you are becoming like Satan. It's always and only Satan's power or God's. No middle ground "then" in the Garden with the two trees; and no middle ground in the Trial "Now". Still the same two trees, really: the world's, or -- the Cross. The Plunder sign here is that you begin to realize the Power of the Spirit, for as you age in Christ, The Bible begins to make more sense, than the world does. If you keep on living in God's System, you'll see better and better as you age. And for awhile, you'll not recognize it's the Spirit doing that to you, rather than your own smarts. When you become a spiritual adult, Abiding Plunder here will keep you growing. The cockiness of finally SEEING will tempt you to crusade, etc. on your own. Big mistake. So the earlier you try to spot this Plunder sign of HIM doing it TO you, the better prepared you'll be when the cockiness sets in.

   • Fake Piety And False Doctrine Expose Real Hatred: the weirdest thing about folks' reaction to the Gospel is that they are insulted. They view the Gospel as some kind of slur against them, as if the proper criterion for getting into heaven ought to be how good a person you are. They don't recognize that our puny nature is utterly detestable (even to us, lol) -- and it's a medical problem, due to sin, since we reject God. Love won't override rejection. They also don't recognize that if you turn down what is free by the One Who Made Your Soul, well -- how good can you be? Shouldn't someone who gave you the gift of life and freely supports your life -- after all, God can zap you any second, and you'd not exist! -- shouldn't that Someone get paid something? And can you, a mere object of creation, pay anything? Nor are you expected to, since the Gospel is that Christ Paid. So just believe in Him and be forever saved. Now, think: how evil does a person have to be, to reject that information? Would you be a good person if you rejected a no-strings prize of a million bucks? Isn't being forever in heaven worth more than a million bucks, since you will never have to work -- forever? So what's this weird reaction of insult? Where's the slur in the Gospel? I see Love there, John 3:16, Rom5:8, many other passages. So if someone sees 'hate' there -- who is doing the hating? Not God.

     Your average 'Christian' idea of spirituality is just as hateful, always cutting God's head off in 'translating' either the Word or the life. Work work work WE WE WE WE WE do -- never what GOD does. Sickening. Click here to review just how sickening, just how successful Satan has been in replacing God with his own idols, in "God is Not a Magic Doll", godnotmag.htm.

     So the world, hates. So whose idea is better -- the hating world's, with its unending hypocrisy of masked hatred, preening over its good deeds and then stabbing the good-deeders in the back (read up on Belsarius and Stilicho in the Roman Empire) -- or God's Loving Gospel and subsequent Heb4:12 surgery?

     Ok, what was the point of the above digression? Oh, huge: the Biggest Plunder Sign is that you have come to Love GOD, the hallmark characteristic of spiritual adulthood. So all the above fake piety will trap you, because you'll think you need to 'do something for God' to express your Love -- and you'll think you don't love God, if you don't do that stuff. That's a reciprocity motive, which is also endemic in the hating world. The world demands reciprocity its own way, and the demand stems from hatred, not love. But you now beginning to Love, so will be attracted to the world's demands, because to you, they mean Love. But they don't mean love. You can tangle yourself up in knots here. So that's your Plunder sign, that you ARE so attracted, due TO wanting God. So now you have yet another Plunder Index of your spiritual advance. But resist the urge to 'do something' other than keeping on in God's System. Talk to God constantly about any reciprocity motive you have, lest you cave into the world's alleged 'reciprocity' which is in fact evil, substituting for learning God with one's works. Remember Matt4? Satan tempted Christ with good deeds -- because, the Lover of Us All wanted so BADLY to help us. So guess what will happen to you, who are now a 'dividend' of Him? The same dang thing. Plunder index, baby -- when you are tempted to do good deeds because you need an outlet to express Love for God, then you've arrived. Very messy. The pressure is intense from that point, forward. Hurry up and wait, sit still, study Him -- that's the spiritual life.

     So these six members of the Trial Alphabet, designed to derail your spiritual life, only serve to act as eyeglasses so you can see the Plunder. After all, the objective of the Trial is to plunder you, rather than allow you to plunder the riches of Your Archegos, and grow BrideWorthy. Hence these Plunder signs all constitute a kind of Victory index you can use to see that hey -- I'm growing! So you keep on doing what you did to get you to this place. If Abiding in Function, Desire, Development, Plunder got you to be Abiding in Victory, keep on doing what you were doing. Then all of these Abidings will grow further. Again, it won't necessarily feel good. But you can know it's true, and that is satisfying, whatever your other feelings. Always the wheat and the tares. Fields growing wheat also have weeds, bugs, smells, and lots of nasty stuff. And the wheat needs all that nasty stuff, to grow. So do you.

6. Abiding INTIMACY. So, we all get His Same Life, because growing up in That Life makes us 'Fit Bride': which FATHER wants for His Beloved SON. So we can be Intimately Together with Him forever. Now you know why there are literally hundreds of "in Him" verses in the New Testatment. That's clever Bible shorthand to (inter alia) incorporate by reference, the Vine and Branches explanation of John 15 (which obviously was known before John penned that chapter). Having gone through Abiding in Victory, you become much more aware of what it was like for Christ when He was down here. So your intimate understanding and hence rapport with Him, grows. This is the ultimate goal of the Christian life, to See Through His Eyes. This becomes a kind of constant understanding, the more you age spiritually. You seek to make parallels, 'rehearse' what He'd think in your own circumstances, to identify better with Him. At first this seeking is intermittent, but it becomes more an issue and a question mark in your mind, developing in strength over time. It becomes an all-consuming focus ON Him in maturity, Phili 1:21.

7. Abiding COMPATIBILITY. Your new spiritual nature is therefore the opposite of the OT folks', who were stuck with seeing Him 'at a distance', Num24:17, Matt13:17, Luke 10:24, 2Cor3:1-18, 1Pet1:10-12. So your spiritual life is not based on the OT, as we saw in the "Synopsis" section. You don't even get the same "race" of human spirit as other believers "Then" or "Later". "Now" believers get a uniquely-coalescing human spirit, akin to how the woman was exactly matched to Adam. In short: we're all spiritually-designed to exactly fit the Christ. So, like Him, we are Indwelt by the Trinity, Filled (until we sin, ergo 1Jn1:9's importance), etc.

   As shown in Part II and even more in this Part III's Third Reason for Invisibility, the Mosaic Law wasn't 'big enough' to develop Him, because the Cross was His Task. So His Human Spirit from the get-go had to be bigger than the Mosaic Law's system of spirituality, could develop. So our human spirits at salvation, must be tailored to fit His Own. And, they are: Paul exults about this in 2Cor5:17, with the Greek words "kaine ktsis". Those words mean "new-in-species creation!" as my pastor likes to translate them. Not just new in time. He is a Unique Spiritual Species, and we are of that same species. And from it, we are to Grow Into Fit Bride: an Esther, corporately.

   Birds can fly, but horses cannot. Horses can pull huge loads, but birds cannot. Each species has special abilities which make it unique, so obviously the species are not equal. Nor are individuals within a species equal, though they have the same 'building blocks' by nature. By contrast, we start equal to each other in spiritual nature, since we all have the potential destiny of King (a main theme in Galatians, 2Cor5). So our like-kind spiritual nature, requires special spiritual food to grow up the way God intended: His Thinking. However, we won't equally grow up in His Thinking, because we won't equally choose to grow up in it. So we won't be equal down here, nor in eternity, either. But while down here, any decision made, can be reversed. So the only reason we don't remain equal spiritually, is due to differentials our free choices: how much and how often do we choose God's DDNA Apodoses, in lieu of our own? How often do we keep living on God's Script in God's System? You are what you choose, in God's Plan. Period.

   Again, "Compatibility-of-Thinking is God's Goal: 'sons'. It's never about anything else." That's why we get the same five infinitives happening to us, as happened to Christ. That Circle of Plunder results in Compatibility. But, we can choose how much Eternal Compatibility we want, even as down here we can choose to become or not become, compatible with people around us. So: if the sons don't end up being of equal compatibility, they end up being ranked, John 14:1-2. That's inequality. But the only thing bad about inequality is its incompatibility with your own nature. In heaven, everyone is suited to what they are, and especially because they chose to be what they became. God provided all the tools and the power: we chose unequally to use what He provided. So the results are unequal. Bristle about that all you like, down here. But up there, you'll see the justice and happiness of such a structure. And if you grow up to become a King as is your God-provided destiny to refuse, you will love throwing yourself down for your kingdom. No preening, in heaven: preening is boring, 1Cor1:31, 2Cor10:17, 12:9. So all the preening down here, is laughable -- up there. No one 'up there' enjoys lording it over someone else, because Our Lord Threw Down His Life for us. That's everyone's idea of maximum enjoyment, to throw self down -- up there (i.e., in Rev4:10-11). Just the opposite of life down here.

   So what was the point of that digression? To explain what you'll face vis á vis people you know and see in the world, versus your own growing compatibility level with Him. It becomes extremely painful to see loved ones and others elect incompatibility. Husbands and wives who don't equally love to learn God, grow apart. Same, for other members of the family or friends, i.e., Luke 12:53 (context begins in v.49). You will eventually have to choose between keeping peace with those near you, or growing up further in Christ. Compatibility is always a decision, in God's Plan. The world largely refuses to give up its claimed moralities of being compatible with people, in favor of being compatible with God. So abiding or not abiding here, will be the true test of your life. Bible is full of data on this subject: turn almost anywhere in the Gospels, you'll see the Lord talking about it. It's no exaggeration to say that maturity arrests for most people, over the compatibility issue, for you CAN'T serve both God and "mammon" (meaning the world's ideas of good, not merely money). James 4:4 throws down the gauntlet, Romans 8 and Galatians 5 explain why that enmity, and there's no way around it. You will be most tested on this VII of Abiding. It hurts. Only Love for Christ which you Developed from Abiding Function and Abiding Desire, while staying under the Spirit (1Jn1:9 used), will be sufficient power to carry you.

This is the ENTIRE POINT of being alive. To grow up in Christ. Nothing you are in human eyes, not even your own eyes, matters. Living really is Christ, far better than anything else you'd ever dream of being. But you won't learn and enjoy that fact, unless you mature spiritually. Most Christians, do not.

Helpful TIP: Click on book icon Guide description per video, with links to my related webpages.

Only my pastor has taught the stages of spiritual maturation, and alone has taught the Pleroma stage, so far as I know; one can't find material like this on the internet. The material on the House, DDNA, the five infinitives, 4 Happinesses and God's Love Alphabet did not derive from my pastor directly. However, what follows below on the spiritual maturation stages themselves, is synthesized from what he taught over a period of 18 years in his 1985 Ephesians and 1992 Spiritual Dynamics series; so I must use his terminology. Thus you can audit his own material for Biblicity, as suits your inclination. [I try to avoid using his terminology because his material should be heard for itself, and I do not wish to sound like a parrot. That same respect should be accorded any pastor. However, there are occasions where a pastor's terminology is best used, i.e., so you can audit it yourself; and above all, if there seem to be no other pastors who teach the same subject matter. It just so happens in this case that the pastor in question, is my own. Hence his terminology will be stated as his, but with my description, and of course you'd thus be cautioned not to take my statements as accurately representing what he says, but would verify them yourself. These websites are for brainstorming purposes only. Teaching Bible is a very different discipline, and is not my gift; I am but a Word student without portfolio.]

Okay, now that we've seen Our Abiding-in-Him 'House of His Thinking', it's time to look at the vicissitudes of Our Royally Invisible Spiritual Growth. Life "in Him" is a progressive Spiritual Maturation which God does to you as you vote to keep on keeping on God's Script in God's System. The structure for this maturation which we've seen thus far:

• Your House of His Thinking has these seven 'rooms': Abiding Function, Desire, Development, Plunder, Victory, Intimacy, and Compatibility.
• Within the House, you receive Divinely-verbal processing upon your soul, to manufacture DDNA multiplication and God's Apodoses' usage: katharizw (purification), aphairew (plunder), deiknumi (publishing), plassw (produce by sculpting), dikaiow (perfecting/justifying).
• Think of these verbs as the 'electrical structure' of the House; as you learn and use Bible in God's System, you're using the 'electricity' of them. So they both BUILD the electrical structure ever further, and they provide the actual power, the meanwhile. 1Jn1:9 uses katharizw to tell you the power's not on, if you're not using it. So you'd be in the dark.
• Again, the Holy Spirit runs the entire House. You just live in it, Eph2:10.
• The Spirit causes these verbs to also create all the House 'furniture, food, clothing, money', etc. -- since Word is likened to every material thing man needs, in Bible.
• So, these five infinitives also create a growing four-sided contentment within the House, which means you progressively Enjoy Living in the House. This contentment is progressively Hefty, like His; Hearty, thought-based (not emotional); His Own Kind of Happiness, which is Absolute in character, independent of circumstances; and Husband-Intimate, a contentment progressively related directly and exclusively to, with and in, Him -- because as you mature, you see come to see Him IN that House and live with Him in it, Eph3:15-19.
• So the House, the verbs, and the growing happinesses of dwelling in it, all result in a nine-member coalition of spiritual maturation in God's Love Alphabet. As you mature, these members link up to form a cohesive whole sentence, no longer disparate letters: "Archegos' Bride Conducting a Developing Eternal Fulfillment Growth of Glory in His Highness' Impossibly Integrated, Integrity-Love".

  Complex, huh. So now you know another reason why only God can mature you and make you like His Son. Consequently, from salvation forward it's only about growing up in God's Love within His House, just like Paul says in Eph3:15-19, like John says (parallelling Paul in reverse order) in 1Jn4:12-17. So if you turn out the lights (sin), then use 1Jn1:9 to switch them on. Note well: works, ritual, and all that stuff which passes for Christianity, are all outside the House. For the House is Immaterial, housing your soul: we are behind the veil with Christ, theme of Hebrews 6 (last half), 9, 13:10; anything outside That House will not go with you to heaven. So only what's inside the house, will go with you when you die. Now you know why the Lord called learning and living on Bible, "true riches", Luke 16:11. (My pastor likes to call it "The Edification Complex of the Soul", a description which sometimes portrays this House differently, because his metaphorical structure is different. But you can see even from the above Bible verses and John Chapters 14-17, that there IS a house in which you must mature spiritually.)

So obviously it takes decades to mature spiritually. The meanwhile, the experiential end of this weaning-off-the-world and weaning-into-His-Thinking, plays amazingly like its psychological counterpart, with a lot of the same behaviors and motivations, i.e,
• Christians drooling "I love Jesus" and singing their many songs, having their petty fights -- are just like toddlers cooing and crying.
• Christians bludgeoning each other with Bible verses and telling others how to live, stressing good deeds -- are just like teenagers, with the same ego need to fit in.
• Yet here's the big exception: you can be physically age 80, but age 5, spiritually.
• There is NO connection between physical age and spiritual age, because the latter process is SUPERnatural, not natural.
• Only living on God's Script in God's System will mature you spiritually.

Yet if the spiritual maturation process doesn't proceed in tandem with your psychological maturation, eventually your spiritual IMmaturity will erode whatever psychological maturity you once had. This, because we truly lost our brains at salvation. It's the reverse of what happened to Adam: he died spiritually, so lost his connection to God, so couldn't use the information he had, prior. So too, being born spiritually, we can't use our prior life's ideas to mature in Christ. That's why we need a DDNA transformation: there is much to UNlearn. So the spiritual birth and its life, is a real change which in many ways acts like yet is antithetical to, human secular maturation; but since the spiritual life is Royally Invisible, we don't know all that until we've matured in His House. So, just as Adam tried to access his pre-Fall information and insanely concluded figleaves, fear, and accusation from it all, so we too will keep on reaching back to secular information, and draw wrong conclusions. We are indeed all brainouts, at salvation -- so if we don't get in the habit of living on the Holy Spirit's Brains, we will become retards, even psychologically.

By contrast, genetic retardation is mere biology, and unless too severe, it's no hindrance to spiritual maturation; brain-damaged people in my own congregation learned Bible as well as I did; and my pastor now has Alzheiemer's, which wrecks the brain -- apparently he can't even read now, so obviously can't study the Bible which he used to read in Hebrew and Greek, teaching it all to us that way -- but you know what? My pastor can still think spiritually. I myself have been in situations where I am barely conscious, yet 1Jn1:9 (which I even remember when dreaming), Scriptural recall and use is no problemo, gringo. That, Because the Power Source is Not Human. So God Provides The Power, That House Is Real And Lasting, just as Christ promised it would be (Matt7:24, Luke 6:48) -- and It Works. Even if the rest of you, can't. In fact, anyone who learns Bible in God's System becomes noticeably (and unevenly) smarter secularly, as well -- I've seen that happen, too. It goes with the territory, you need some secular upgrading to accompany the real purpose, spiritual maturation. If you need a higher IQ, you'll get that (gradually); if memory, you'll get that (John 14:26 stresses the memory faculty); if some talent, you'll get that. I can testify to that, too: a foreign language I'd learned or stuff I'd forgotten 20 years prior said in Bible class suddenly comes to mind, right when I need to remember -- but don't ask me what I had for breakfast! Point is, The House Works. Just as advertised, in the Bible.

Accordingly, Spiritual Maturation impacts soul and body maturation positively if it is happening, but negatively, if it is not. Again, there is no natural connection between the two, but when you are saved, the spiritual impacts the secular for better and for worse.

Important Caveat: if you started spiritual growth in physical adulthood, you will have adult expectations of what is really a child's stage; you will either fancy yourself spiritually older than you are, because you have an adult's vocabulary and viewpoint in other ways; or you will become frustrated with yourself when you don't see the 'progress' you would expect from an adult. Additionally, we are all 'mature', 'adolescent', and 'childish' on any given doctrine, so our maturation is uneven. So a physical adult who sees himself not learning or growing as fast as he expects, will be prone to guilt, etc. This is unnecessary, but it will happen anyway. Helps a lot to realize that the two types of growth, spiritual and natural-human, are similar in characteristics, but totally divorced, else; since the Holy Spirit alone accomplishes spiritual growth, the physical adult can relax over his own yet-childish, spiritual needs. It's okay! What a great day that is, when you know it's really OK to be of so divergent a spiritual age! The only thing that's NOT "okay", is to quit using 1Jn1:9 or be under your own God-appointed pastor. If you like self-torture, do one of those two, and you'll get the spanking of your life.

Second Important Caveat: If your learning Bible and your Abiding Desire to Learn God for Himself don't keep up with each other, your spiritual life is toast. My pastor called this "mutual flanks" in his year 2000 Bible classes (also in 1988). Idea comes from parallel lines of troops, such as in the summer of 1944, when the parallel lines formed after D-Day didn't stay close enough, so the Germans escaped through the breach and the war lasted a year longer. The Bible you learn is one "line" and your Desire to Know God, is the other. It's real easy to focus on either Bible learning OR the Desire, and thus miss the other. DDNA2.htm covers this problem. Point is, Christians get so puffed up about learning Bible that it ceases to be about learning God, and instead becomes a matter of ego-patting. At that point, your spiritual life is toast. Learning Bible is to Develop Love for God, Roman 5:5. If that's not happening, don't even bother studying. Conversely, the Feel-God crowd effectively spurn learning Bible, in favor of their emotions, so they thump Bible or blubber Bible verses, learning nothing. Their spiritual lives are toast, too. Always monitor your motive for learning Bible and don't dismiss the need to be a serious student. Bible study requires the discipline of the highest academic honor, without the pompousness. [Man prides himself on what he knows. Don't know why that would be something to preen over -- it's the knowledge that's worthy, never the knower of it -- but Pompousness Masked is a problem in all the sciences, and especially in the hallowed halls of Bible 'learning'.]

Bible itself subdivides spiritual maturation into childhood, adulthood, and maturity (i.e., in 1Jn); but also, by characteristic thinking patterns, as in 1Cor13:13.
• The Spiritual Child's Thinking, is characterised by "faith". [In the immediate passage context, it's also a moniker for the lower OT style of spiritual living, since Paul is trying to show that the visible gifts won't compare to His Head Completed in Writing (Jer31:31-34 referenced, still-future, since Canon wasn't yet completed in Paul's day).]
• The Spiritual Adult's Thinking, is characterized by "hope": Greek "elpis" has a very different meaning from English, so elpis would be better rendered "confidence" or "confident expectation" throughout Bible.
• Spiritual Maturity has its own special Bible vocabulary, "teleios" and "pleroma" -- these are usually fuzzily-translated "end" and "filled", respectively, but sometimes a translator recognizes their perfecting-contract and "filled-as-in-fully-pregnant" meanings which the Greek includes. More about those terms will be explained in the Spiritual Maturity section, below.
• In 1Cor13:13, Spiritual Maturity Thinking is denoted by the term "Love": Greek word "agape" always and only denotes GOD's Love (always truncated to mere "love" in translations, thus cutting God's Head off and confusing millions of people). [In the immediate passage context, it referred to the completion of Canon, since Paul made a cute reference to the Head using huperbole in 1Cor12:31. Idea was that the gifts were temporary, pending completion of the Head in Writing.]

  So in 1Cor13:13, you see the Maturation Process, how God means to grow you: by abiding in His Son, menw'ing in His Love Complex, His Diamond House; which is to say, learning and then living on His Thinking in God's System. Notice how it has zippo to do with works, denominations, how right or 'scriptural' you or someone else is; has nothing to do with crusading, potlucks, church attendance, giving out the Gospel or all the other substitutes for learning Him which Satan's Churchinanity panders. [Fake Church in Rev17 seeks to look like God's Book, so uses God's Provision -- to kill God's people. Very effective. When learning Word is given short shrift, when man is stressed, when the typical Bible translations are taught instead of the Inspired Word -- you're looking at fake Christianity. Matt7, by the teaching fruits you know who are Satan's people. That's 99% of Christians in every generation. Israel before her had the same problem. So we are all in this trap together. Hence the need for God's System, and living in it -- especially, living on 1Jn1:9, thinking toward God as much as possible, and getting under your own God-appointed right pastor, to avoid the many landmines.]

  As you Royally and Invisibly Grow Spiritually, your Viewpoint and Focus can be distinguished, thusly:

• Spiritual Childhood: marked by growing in "Faith" -- Bible Doctrine, and your belief in it. This is a gushy stage, and very charming to witness. Most any 'Christian' chat channel is full of spiritual children. Of course, Christians who have been too long in this stage are not so charming, yet they're present, too.
• Spiritual Adulthood, which begins by your having "Hope": Confidence in Word. That initially too-cocky confidence gets spanked; it finally settles down and grows into Absolute Certainty; the meanwhile, Your Focus Shifts to God Himself; so then follows
• Spiritual Maturity, which is hallmarked by "Love" -- God's Own Attribute of Love, which began developing from the growing "hope". This takes awhile, as Divine Love is alien to the human race. It is multidimensioned; in some ways, you become a child all over again, much like a person newly in love. You do truly "fall in love" with God here, so it's a problemmatic stage. All the 'tares' of human love must mature first, so you can grow past them; human ideas about "love" must be replaced with God's Apodoses about what Real Love is; so you might 'plateau' for awhile. Just keep on keeping on in God's System. As that Love for God grows, it gradually coalesces into Occupation with Christ, so
• Pleroma begins sometime in Spiritual Maturity: Focus on Christ. At this point you are entered into the Trial as Witness for the Prosecution, God. Divine Love is a FOCUS, not an emotion. So "Love for Christ" is a Focus, an Absoluteness; never a feeling, though your body will react with a gamut of feelings due to your soul's reactions. Love=Focus on Him functionally means that you define everything in terms of Him as a habitual way of thinking, almost without effort; born of long practice, it's a reflex, an instinctive way of thinking, not an emotion. Again, "Pleroma" means "fullness" in the sense of pregnancy, i.e., in Eph3:19 and 4:13 (the latter tying back to Isa53:11, how He became pregnant with our sins and thus birthed our salvation). So that's why you enter the Trial Witness Docket. You go into 'labor', it's a test of whether your FOCUS can be broken. Sin doesn't mean you broke focus. Quitting the spiritual life (i.e., opting for a substitute Rev17 idea or ceasing to use 1Jn1:9 and study) -- quitting, that's a Break. But use 1Jn1:9, to get back in. You might have lost some maturity during the time you quit, but just get back in the House and keep living in it. Again, this Part III will cover this and the above stages in more detail, below. Part IVd focuses exclusively on the Trial Witness Evidence Testing.
• Pleroma, once completed, means you've finished the maturation "course" in God's Love Alphabet, and you'll be Crowned as a King Under Him -- forever. So usually (but not always), you die victorious soon afterwards: 2Tim4:7-8.

  Romans 5:5 ties in, to show the mechanic God uses: He grows you in His Script, and Eph4:11-16 shows you He has a System (Greek word "henotes") for growing you up in His Script -- hence the term "God's System" in 'my' webpages. Consequently, you go from "Faith" to "Confidence" to "Love", by growing in God's Script in God's System. That's the maturation process. Whatever denomination or other quasi-cultural behavior you also engage in the meanwhile is adjunctive, and hopefully helpful. Some people remember and use Bible better if they are engaged in rituals, others are too put off by the robotics, so instead they sin. Some people like formal churches, others find the hypocrisy too much -- and thus sin, instead of learning. But you are to determine all that, privately before the Lord. The System, is His House -- it's not optional. Anything you add to it, well -- that's a private Priestly Matter between Him and you, and is optional: see Romans 14.

This is page 2 of SMP.doc. Notice how the colored-in blocks are few, and baby-pinkish. That denotes a zero to tiny maturation in the spiritual life. Most Christians you meet will be spiritual children, 99% of the population on any given day. Now you know why Christianity is so childish. With that many children in adult bodies, childishness is deemed 'holy', given the titanic size of the group. Man forever mistakes huge numbers, for truth. But God uses almost imperceptible and even ignominous means to show His Truth. For example, much of the NT is seemingly repetitive, with only a small phrase or word changed. That style tells you the enormous impact of the "small, still Voice" of the Holy Spirit Who you can't see or feel. So in the bullets which follow, the bold text will be repeated in each maturation section, for tracking purposes, emulating the NT writing style -- but within each future section, be careful not to gloss over the text around what's repeated, and thus miss the very small changes in text which depict GIGANTIC maturation in the spiritual life for that stage. [This is especially important in 1Jn, Ephesians, Colossians and Hebrews. 1Jn makes deft changes in repeated text to show you the enormous meaning of such a change. The smallness of the text change versus the enormity of the meaning, thus stands out. Sometimes it's only a case change or a preposition change which he makes. James does the same thing with the insertion or removal of the article -- oh, John does that too in order to tweak the Jewish calendar being four days too fast, in John 19. My pastor warned us many times to track these types of changes. If Christianity had done that, it would not be in the dark about when Christ was born and died!]

In short, spiritual maturation is a process of first learning, then using, God's Apodoses. As you grow via this constantly-repeated process -- much like learning a language -- God matures you in the Apodoses, themselves. Here in Spiritual Childhood, the only Apodosis you think you know, is "salvation". But you've barely learned how to spell it.

1. Notice how, of the five contractural action infinitives which happened to Christ on the Cross per Isa53:10-11 LXX text -- only two of them (colored, pinkish-flesh tone) are largely operative upon you, katharizw and aphairew.
2. Parts of the other three verbs, are happening also.
3. For at salvation you come into your new house with a lot of 'baggage' from your old life; so there is a lot of soul debris to throw out.
4. Accordingly, the first thing God does, is to purify (katharizw) and take away (aphairew) old ideas, replacing them with His Apodoses: just as He took away Adam's and Isha's figleafy loin aprons, and replaced them with animal skins (depicting His future Coming to pay for sins), Gen3:21.
5. So the bi-directional pointer indicates action done to the maturation blocks below it by the infinitives;
6. but also, the Holy Spirit causes the blocks to feed back to the infinitives, for the process is circular and its 'sphere' increases depending on that feedback;
7. thus each infinitival action, enlarges. So you grow exponentially.
8. Pointer placement tells you the goal of the stage: here, it's the clearing away, aphairew.
9. For there is one infinitive "on point", through which all the others, "run".
10. So here in Spiritual Childhood, taking away false ideas is the major goal of the stage.
11. Your new Love Alphabet can't begin growing in you, until the old alphabet you've been living on (world's ideas) gets cleaned out.
12. So this happens (as it were) one 'letter' at a time. Precept upon precept, easily and slowly.
13. So now you're learning the beginning of that Alphabet: "A" is for Archegos, Leader, Pioneer, Originator, 'Father'. Time to learn Who is your New Parent. (Heb12:2 and Isa9:6, which doesn't directly refer to God the Father, but rather to the fathering-of-eternity action on the Cross, pointing forward to Isa53:5, play on ab'di, My Slave; our salvation being birthed in Christ back then. Abi'ad, My Father of forever-future and ab'di, My Slave (the "i" means "my") both have the same Hebrew letters, very witty. Isaiah loves to embed the Trinity doctrine whenever he can.)

Retardation in animal life (therefore including human biological life) is caused by many possible factors. One of them, is poor nutrition. This is maximally true for the spiritual life. When one abides outside His House aka God's System for too long, one retards spiritually. It's a nightmare. However, cure is possible by a determined, sustained return to God's System, so it's always worth returning. Problem is, as one retards spiritually, one becomes a petulant child, very stubborn and i-am-god oriented, so one thinks of self as spiritual, already mature. A sweet personality often masks this prickly, retarded nature, which compounds the problem. So one doesn't regard self as being retarded, but as a spiritual giant. But others notice the rapidly spoiling, hypersensitive child beneath all that masking -- so God gets maligned (God is always blamed along with the 'bad' Christian, count on it). And no matter what someone might say to the spiritual retard -- and one shouldn't say anything, but it blurts out in exasperation! -- the spiritual retard, won't hear. The actual psychological ability to hear disintegrates, so that what you say to the person is not at all what they think you said, no matter how clearly you try to express yourself. All kinds of imagined meanings are attributed to what others say. It's weird. People hallucinate when they are starving. Much more true, for the spiritually-starving.

The Exodus generation are the consummate illustration of spiritual retardation among a mass of people, Numbers 11:6. Next illustration are the many retards in the Book of Acts (Peter for awhile, end Acts 1 and Gal2:11ff; Paul, for a while, Acts 18, 21; the Judaizers all the time, and the Jerusalem church all the time, and anyone emulating them today). In short, spiritual retardation is more the norm, and we all experience some like-stuckness, during our spiritual life.

So usually at some point disaster must hit to wake the person up to questionning his apodoses. Since 90% of Christians don't grow beyond childhood, they end up retards. When enough people are spiritual retards, God must judge the nation or locality per Lev26 and Deut 28. For we are Royal Priests, and the world's weal depends on our growing up in God's System. We're always treated as adults, even while we are children. So we are responsible, no excuses. Now why is it, we fail so routinely? Oh, because we're droolingly reading Bible; imagining that now we're saved, we're instant experts! Yeah, and it takes some 13 years for a doctor to even finish school: how much more, the Christian of the Infallible Christ?

FORMATION PRECEDES FUNCTION Principle: in all life, Formation precedes Function. Until the Formation completes, there is NO life. Just as we saw in Part II's "sine qua non of Perfection: BALANCE" link, there must be balance between structure and function. Thus, Structure Creates Function; until the STRUCTURE has passed a threshold-of-completeness, there is no ability to function. You can't use a car until a) it has been BUILT, b) you've LEARNED the RULES of driving, and c) you've become COMPETENT at driving. So: Until a check clears your bank, your deposit is not yours, your bill paid is not paid, etc. No fetus breathes in a womb, so it's not alive; Formation of Christ preceded the Cross. Formation of Christ, preceded his functioning at a Filled-up-with-Truth level so high, He called the Cross, a joy (Heb12:2). ["Joy" in Greek means true happiness, not some emotional thing. Way bigger than emotion, is God.] Formation of Church, precedes the Rapture. So formation of the believer, precedes his successful spiritual function, and he is formed by means of Truth deposits under the Spirit -- that's the main theme of Romans 8. As is usual for OT writers of Scripture and Paul, this explanation is made via marriage and pregnancy analogies. So, no believer without Bible Doctrine can do any 'work' whatsoever to please God, 1Jn1:8, 10. Even with 1Jn1:9 used, you have to be trained in that function before you can operate in it. So until you have the Doctrine, you aren't trained (i.e., few can give the Gospel properly). Doctrinal Standards must first be BUILT. Then, you have to learn how to USE what you learned, breathing 1Jn1:9 as you do. There is no "Good" absent the Holy Spirit 'in' it. [Greek word "agathos" only means Divine Good: but as usual, translations cut God's Head off, so you only see "good" in translation and don't know this.] So, there is no production except wood, hay, stubble, unless Circulating Doctrine is running the soul of the Spirit-filled believer at the time of the activity. (See 1Cor3, compared with Heb5:11-6:6, 9:14, 11:6; and Jas1:1-2:23. James, especially, screams this fact.) ["[F]aith", as a noun in the Bible, most often means believed doctrine. Idea that the doctrine is in the soul, and one believes it. That turns the Doctrine "on" (well, the HS does it really), and then non-manmade precious gold/gems are manufactured. James2:14 repeats this point via a bracketed analogy to how man's believing in Christ doesn't make him regenerate -- HS has to do that -- 2:26 is the other bracket, and interprets the one in 2:14. That's why v2:14 is there; it explains that man alone accomplishes nothing, but rather, Work of God. Bible Doctrine is the Work of God, always. So, parallel to the "Lord, Lord" verse, Deut 30:11ff, Romans 10:9-10. Can't just mouth a faith, have to actually believe the Doctrine.] Hence the requisite STRUCTURAL LEVEL of 'eaten' Doctrine in the soul determines one's spiritual-developmental stage. Next, one functions in that stage by 'eating' yet more Doctrine, so to get to the next-highest structural level, etc. One always needs to 'eat' Bible Doctrine; one never outgrows that need. Heh (cry all the way to the bank, baby). To 'eat' Bible is a Bible metaphor for learning and believing and living on it, idea that you need food to survive, and Bible is spiritual food, i.e. Jeremiah (15:16) says, "I found your words and I did eat them" when he found Bible 'lost' inside the Temple. Hence the most dangerous people on earth, are Christians who FOR TOO LONG don't know and therefore misuse their Bible. They are all satanfodder.

So here are the seven benchmarks of Spiritual Childhood. Again, to the extent these benchmarks characterize ANY individual doctrinal understanding or belief you have (i.e., what "love" means, what "God" means, etc.), you will be stuck here. You must eventually mature in all seven benchmarks, because they all are interdependent. So each of us is relatively 'childish' with respect to at least some aspects of our Bible understanding and belief. That's what holds us back from spiritual progress. Find out where that 'childishness' is, or it will fell you. God will spank you many times, to help you diagnose it.

1. CONSUMING BIBLE. So, just like Christ when He was a spiritual (and physical) baby, we too need Bible doctrine: it feeds us, just as it fed Him. When you start out, it's really critical to get into God's System. Learning Bible Doctrine under whomever is your right pastor is the most important thing you can do. You thus acquire Truth Standards in your soul, which help alleviate the tension. That, because 1Jn's Script causes those perfect "deposits" we saw in Part II: the Depositor, the Holy Spirit, is perfect. The "deposit", the amount of Bible Doctrine we believe on learning it, is likewise perfect. So, Biblical Standards come to replace any depraved "good and evil" in our souls. We thus learn God's definition of "right and wrong". The learning here is both sporadic and rudimentary, especially since the average spiritual child thinks himself more spiritual if he does things, versus 'only' studying. The peer pressure is intense, just as it was when you were a physical child. When you were young, everyone focused on little do's. Big mistake to do that, for the spiritual life. Bad habits begin early, and all the typical Churchinanity emphasis on do's make you a doo-dooing Christian -- potentially, for life. We know physical children need to go to school for some years, before we expect them to hold down a job. So why is it, we so DISrespect the Word that we think we're supposed to hustle, shake the tamborine, sing in the choir, knock on doors -- right after we're saved? Christ didn't do any of that; He spent a lot of time alone, learning -- look how He talks when He's only 12 (Luke 2:49)? So should we.

   Spiritual children who raise children often impose on them a horrible idea of what life with God means. The legalism of the spiritual child is just like that bully in the playground who considered himself 'adult' only if he could beat up everyone else. So here, the spiritual child will go one of two routes: he will think works are "it", and beat his kids up to think the same way; or he will turn learning Bible into a "work", thus poisoning its meaning to the child he raises. I've seen a lot of both categories, and none of us escape physical childhood unscathed from the religious legalism of our parents. After all, most of us are born when our parents are in their early 20's, so they aren't exactly spiritually mature. Accordingly, there's a lingering taint in our minds which the parents did not mean to impose. And it gets passed down, generation after generation. Hence many among us find learning Bible unpleasant because it's been SOLD as being unpleasant. That's a handicap which is overcome only if you want to learn Bible, because it tells you about GOD. But it's a rocky road, to be sure. Between the God-is-unpleasant salesmanship for CENTURIES, and the snoozily boring translations of Bible, it's a wonder any of us grow up at all.

2. SPIRITUAL SKILLS. Here in Spiritual Childhood you use 1Jn1:9 fitfully, so get purified from your Adikia (usu. translated "wrongdoing", but it's technical for being in a state of sin); you are Beginning to be sporadically filled with the Spirit; when Filled, you are living on Basics, like Claiming Bible promises you find, learning basic doctrines under your right pastor, playing with basic salvation and Essence-of-God concepts. A spiritual child who just wants to know Bible and starts studying it, will 'do' these skills instinctively. Although Bible translations are snoozy and boring, when you're new to it, everything about it is interesting. Your thinking is fuzzy, anyway. So you'll read and read and memorize and speak and spout and you love it all with the love of a child. So you'll read about 1Jn1:9, interpret it literally as you should, and do it. So you'll read in Bible about teachers, and it will naturally occur to you that you should have one. I went through that, so does everyone else. I daydreamed in Italian class about finding a teacher -- the book still bears the daydreaming scrawl, "Te Desidero Imparare" -- not knowing that my college roommate's teacher was the guy who'd end up being my pastor. But God knew. And I was a really stupid spiritual child: everything you see criticised in my pages, well -- I did them, too! It's normal. Just don't stay in the stage too long. But there's hope, however long one stays childish. So here, if you want to know Bible, God will cause you to know about these skills, and you'll regard them as an enjoyment, not a chore. The rebellion comes later, heh.

   In spiritual childhood these thinking skills are disparate and halting. Repetition makes them become instinctual. So the hallmark signature of spiritual childhood is that these skills have not yet MERGED into a sense of "Grace" and "Doctrinal Orientation" (terms are my pastor's). So the spiritual child who remains too long in that childhood becomes graceless, legalistic; doesn't see the overall doctrines Bible verses signify, but rather just parrots the verses, or parrots the teacher's teachings, not really understanding what he says. There's no coordination between the pieces of information. "God" is a set of parrotted soundbyte-y platitudes, and when queried about what the words mean, the child can only respond with more parrotting. Children, parrot. That's all they yet know how to do. But that's okay: the practice will stand them in good stead, later on when enough pieces of Bible information are 'eaten' (learned and believed).

3. THOUGHT PATTERN. So the chief Thought Pattern Characteristic, would be called "faith". Which means, the development of a habitual learning and believing Word. It's fun, in this stage. All the Word you learn here is a jumble, but it feels good. Makes you feel like you're touching God. And, you are. So your "faith" viewpoint is an attitude which habitually continues and gets stronger, sporadically: you are living on God Lives, because what you're learning doesn't seem to make sense on its own, just yet. The words sound good, and you believe them, but you really don't understand anything. It naturally occurs to you to talk to God a lot. Read the Christian emails that circulate about what kids say on their Sunday School essays or tests. You can see God is real to them. Pity we lose that faith, as we grow older.

   Again, the older you are physically when in spiritual childhood, the more you will think you understand something, because you expect your spiritual age to match your chronological age. It doesn't. Stubborness is a real problem for the chronological adult who's a spiritual child, which is most Christians today. Hence the need for this description, so the "childhood" nature which is totally supernatural can be seen, appreciated, and not fretted over. Doesn't matter how old you are, does matter whether you are growing. No shame in it. Who said there was no such thing as a second childhood? Here it is!

   The first meaning of "faith" is WHAT you believe, not so much the act of believing itself, whether it's in the Hebrew or Greek. Second meaning is the act of believing, itself. For you first must have an OBJECT, to believe in. Then, you believe. That's how you got saved, and that's always the priority, the OBJECT -- "what think ye of Christ". In this stage, "Christ" is magical to you. That's fine! Again, the only thing wrong with spiritual childhood is the same thing that's wrong with physical childhood: there comes a time when one must grow up. And human maturation, even more spiritual maturation, will not progress until you are willing to leave childish ideas behind, 1Cor13:10-13.

4. RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. Your idea of "Relationship with God" in this stage is childish, so it's emotional, feely, touchy, lots of do's. God is like this new toy to play with. A new person to know, but you see Him with a child's eyes. So when you do something Bible says you should do (as you then understand it) you are childishly happy and a tad boastful. Judgemental, too, the way children are when they see some other child mess up. So it's all about whether you took a shower, Daddy, but your brother didn't. Folks who sound smarter than you will either look like spiritual giants to you, or will make you feel threatened. Lots of accusations about 'heresy' and 'unscriptural' here. Most of those accusations are wrong, since Bible is progressively understood, and a later sophisticated understanding is not 'heretical' compared to the familiar words one heard in Bible class. But the kid doesn't know all that, yet. So what you construct is a kind of loudish belief in God loving you. It's very touching to watch. Very much childlike trust. Very easily deposed, since you are a child. So: very attractive to satanic predators, too. 'Deflowering innocence' is a real attraction to anyone loving evil. Spiritual molestation is the worst and most prevalent kind in the world today, Eph4:14. But Matt18, God 'visits' the predators -- count on it.

5. LOVE GROWTH. As children, the closest thing we know as "love", is an emotional, childish trust. It's largely passive, responsive. We obey, because we trust. We don't really understand anything. We parrot. We believe. We are children, so that's all we can do. We get a lot of Divine Discipline (Heb12:5ff) at this stage to correct our childish, whiny ideas: of God, of the spiritual life, of our status. It's pretty painful, so Satan is keen to "help" by offering as much false doctrine as he can: like Brother-Foot Churchinanity. Even so, children are given do's secularly, so they will eat up the do's and think of God anyway. That's what you were supposed to do with the do's, under the Mosaic Law. In fact, all do's are doo-doo's if you're not thinking about God when you do them. So unless the child is beaten up over the do's, he'll get through this emphasis on action with little harm.

   Sooner or later you'll question the relevance of the do's, and that questioning occurs early in childhood. That's good. The earlier the questions begin, the better. A sign of impending or entrenched spiritual retardation is that the questioning stops. That means the spiritual child has either been beaten down so has lost his natural curiosity -- or, has turned the do's into a system of feeling good about himself, in which case it becomes a threat to his ego, to question. Bad news. That child will grow up to be a tyrant with the thickest blinders he can buy. It's a very common, sad story. Overemphasis on works and ritual pass as holy, so that feeling one gets from them coddles people into not asking questions. Bad news. Then one day disaster hits and now God is thrown out with the baby's bathwater, in disillusionment with the works and ritual. Very common biography of the average "I used to be a Christian".

   "Used to be" any religion, really. Children readily notice hypocrisy; it equals "you lie to me", and that's a very serious threat to a child, whose fledgling trust is so easily lost, anyway. Religion is nothing, if not hypocritical and shallow. So many a 'former Christian' is 'former' due to religion, but so too many others of non-Christian faiths. Afraid to be open in the disavowal, the child will settle for fitting-in. As an adult, that becomes his god. Love for God then will not develop, because God=hypocrisy was ingrained, early on. Takes a long time to recognize that God is not people, not religion. Usually something abnormal must happen, for the equating God=bad, to even be questioned. I hated and dreaded church when I was a child, and went to many different kinds, so it wasn't a particular denomination or church that I hated. All of them were horrible, except when empty -- but God, he wasn't like people. So the trick was to tune out the people, and just think about Him. Many others I've talked with over the years, tell a similar story. It's common.

6. TRIAL STATUS. Notice how this Stage is marked by IGNORANCE. So, Part I's #3 Trial argument, wanting God based on what one doesn't know, is demonstrated. It's demonstrated, in that even a spiritual child knows more than the wisest unbeliever, that GOD ought to be paid for sin: else there can be no relationship. Every unbeliever religion bangs the drum in one way or another about how you'll be punished for the wrongs you do -- but notice how cagily they all avoid saying how God gets paid for those wrongs. Always the excuse: He doesn't need to be paid, He can't be paid, God has no partners, God is Love: yeah, and if He's Love, doesn't He love Himself? If He doesn't love Himself, how the heck can He love YOU? For even a spiritual child knows God is Holy. The child doesn't understand what "Holy" really means, and he's very emotional and obnoxious: but for all that, he's light years smarter than the wisest unbeliever, about how "holy" requires payment in order for Relationship To Be Just (i.e., to go to heaven). The widespread 'evangelical' movement, for example, for all their goofy misuse of Bible, can get it right that you only have to believe in Christ to get to heaven, John 3:16: because Someone had to pay God for our sins.

   Yeah, out from the mouths of babes, Thou hast perfected salvation, á la Ps8:2!

   The unbeliever, the all-religions-are-ok crowd, are all UNjust. First, they maintain that their ceremonies, their washings and taboos, the givings they like, God should accept. Which means they dictate to God: just like Cain was trying to do with his vegetables (Gen4:4-5). That's unjust. God isn't a dog, but they essentially claim He is or should be. Moreover, if all religions are okay, then God doesn't get paid what HE deserves: so that's unjust. Moreover, all religions conflict with each other. Not all of them can be right, therefore. So to say they are, is to say God Himself is Unjust; and instead, God's just a doormat, truth is a lie (lies conflict); hence justice should not exist -- at least, not for God. Instead, God's just supposed to accept everyone and they tell HIM what to do, 1Cor2:15. So all that, is 'wisdom', see. It's only wise, to be unjust!

   The poor child is thus assailed by those dippy arguments, since he yet lacks enough Truth, to refute them. Which arguments, always publically polarize around Bible, but not around any other faith (hint hint).

   So notice the impressive testimony here: the world is blind to its fixation, thus advertises that He is the Christ, just like the Dumb Dome and the Wailing Wall do (subtheme in Part IVa); but the child keeps believing in Him, though he feels threatened. That belief-despite-ignorance overcomes the world, theme in 1Jn. God loves His Children, and He vindicates them utterly.

7. WEAKNESS GROWTH. The Core Trial Issue of WEAKNESS begins developing here. Satan accused God of making creation 'defective', as was explained in Part I. So the goal of the spiritual life is to -- get this -- perfect (complete, legal contract verb) you by Maturing You in Weakness, 1Cor4:9, 2Cor12:5-9. The seeming 'weakness' of faith is where that development begins. Christ didn't play macho man, He picked weakness. Hebrew word "he-heli" in Isa53:10 means "lovesick", there and in other passages (usu. translated "grief"). Love is so strong, it renders all else, weak. So it 'feels' weak to trust, to respect, to obey, to have faith. But those are strengths. Christ wanted weakness to express the strength of His Love for Father. For us. So, God the Holy Spirit maximally matured His Son's Humanity in Weakness. Not macho-man. That's the gameplan for us, too. Probably the biggest mistake theologians and Christians make about the spiritual life is that they expect to be shining heroes like in the movies, if they are 'right' with God. Nope. It's about Relationship, only. Not performance. So as you mature, your performance by human standards goes down, not up. Like Isaiah depicts with his rising and carrying words in Isa52:13-54:1, it's really a circle: you grow up up up up up -- and then are cut down down down down. And in those downs, love's strength is really shining. But it won't look that way, feel that way, to humans. It will look shameful, ugly, worthless, instead. Isa53trans.htm retranslated the foregoing passage, with a focus on this circular nature of true love. You can't get those nuances in any Bible translation I know.

   So the progressive Trial Evidence to be given in a believer's life, is how his progressive weakness doesn't motivate him to quit the spiritual life. In 99.9% of the cases thus far quitting occurs, or the Rapture would have happened centuries ago, as you'll see in Part IVb. So those who progress through Pleroma are extremely few. But it all starts here in childhood, with that beautiful, innocent, ignorant wanting to believe in God. Just because.

   Since the spiritual child can't really understand why Christ did what He did, he feels weak, to believe; and of course he's made fun of, by the foolish world which deems its rabid penchant for beating up God, 'wise'. So the world dumbly broadcasts its insanity in movies, documentaries, songs sung at fund-raisers for hurricane victims, newscasts, you name it -- all managing nicely to malign the Bible's John 3:16 Grace statement that there is only One Way to God (see also Acts 4:12). Weird thing is, this broadcasting was just as prevalent 2000 years ago, as today. Almost in the same words! Take a gander at how Christians were burlesqued in the 90's AD when Revelation was penned, then compare to what's said today.

   The most remarkable trend of history throughout history, is the world's fixation for-or-against Jews and Christians. It just continues generation after generation, like the Energizer Bunny. More reliable than your next bowel movement. Part IV and the Appendix will spend a lot of time on this phenomenon, so more need not be said here.

   So just for the moment, reflect: how is it, no unbeliever intellectual who knows history, catches on to all this fixation? Or even the simpler obvious thing: if Jesus the Christ is always the target, just who do you think the Real God must be? Could Satan make it more obvious? You realise it's Satan who's advertising that Christ is God, right? By always pointing Him out, just as Mark showed the demons behaving in his Gospel? It's a picture-refrain in Mark: The Lord does a miracle, the demons make a stink of Him being the True God, then all the people hate Him for that, even more. The more miracles the Lord does, the more He has to hush up the demons, and the more the people hate Him. So who's the really dumb pawn, huh? Not the spiritual child! The child is constantly vindicated by that same God the world loves to hate! So the weakness of the child's "faith" is stronger than all the world. No wonder 1Jn (e.g., 5:4) reads as it does, for Every Generation of God's Children.

   Of course, the spiritual child doesn't know any of this vindication. From his low level, from his weakness, all he sees is worry and threat and fear. The kid slaps the tambourine, drools his works everywhere, goes on street corners proclaiming Christ, makes a fool of himself in a bizillion anti-Biblical ways, always tempest-tossed per Eph4:14. But he keeps on believing, whaddya know. And you can bet from all his drooling, many other droolers got saved. Because even a child can understand and repeat, that quintessential power-of-God-to-save verse, John 3:16! Greater power than all the world, that. Coming from the mouth of a child, Ps8:2!

This is page 3 of SMP.doc. Notice how the new colored-in blocks have grown in scope and are goldenrod, versus the 'pinkishness' of Spiritual Childhood. That growth in color and scope, denotes a further maturation in the spiritual life.

1. Notice how, of the five contractural action infinitives which happened to Christ on the Cross per Isa53:10-11 LXX text -- you've progressed to the enlightening one, "deiknumi".
2. Parts of the other two verbs are happening also.
3. For now you're beginning to enjoy your new house, and a good bit of the 'baggage' from your old life, has been replaced with God's Apodoses.
4. Accordingly, God now focuses on enlightening you (deiknumi), while still purifying and taking away (katharizw, aphairew) remaining old ideas, still replacing them with even more of His Apodoses.
5. Here the bi-directional pointer indicates Coalescing Understanding within the maturation blocks below it, by means of the infinitives. Because, you've learned a significant amount of Bible, but as yet can't put it all together to ORIENT you to the 'big picture' of Grace and Doctrine, which are the operative spiritual life, Jn1:14, 17, 2Pet3:18.
   • Grace is operative, because God is Love and that means Freedom to grow or not. Doctrine is operative, because what you grow on and in, is Truth. So you need orientation to these twin pistons of your spiritual life, and the doctrine you've learned, gets knit together so you can see and use them, daily: the "GODO" team. For they act on each other.
   • As a child, you needed to learn right and wrong, so got legalistic about how good you were and how bad others were. As an adult, you need to learn Love, so you need to learn tolerance -- especially, of yourself. For here you begin to notice you don't conform to the standards, either.
6. Again, the Holy Spirit causes the blocks to feed back to the infinitives, for the process is circular and its 'sphere' increases depending on that feedback.
7. Thus each infinitival action, enlarges. So you grow exponentially. Growth here is so rapid it's traumatic, analogous to human maturation in adolescence. For the big goal is that that you become more independent of the world but more dependent on God, Luke 2:49. [In Hebrew culture then and now, you are an adult at age 12, when sexually mature: that's why you have a bar or bat mitzvah, at that age. The Lord was more mature than a mere spiritual adult by that age. So He's reminding them of His future role when He says that verse. They had forgotten it, and are treating Him as if he were still a child. You know this, because they not only left, but went on a whole day prior to even looking for Him. They temporarily failed to be good parents -- understandable, given the pressure of being parents to their own Savior!]
8. Pointer placement tells you the goal of the stage: here, it's a coalesced, orientational enlightening, deiknumi.
9. For there is one infinitive "on point", through which all the others, "run".
10. So here in Spiritual Adolescence, orienting you to God's Big Picture of your spiritual life, is the major goal of the stage.
11. Your new Love Alphabet's A-for-Archegos, wants a "B", Bride. The new "B" can't begin growing in you until the old, false "B" you've been living on -- for "bad", body-stuff passing itself off as spiritual -- gets cleaned out. For God's definition of "Body", is the Body of His Son's Thinking, 1Cor12:31 (Greek huperbole), Col2:19, Eph4:16.
12. So this happens now in groups of letters, coalescing. Precept upon precept, knitting into whole paragraphs all that disparate Bible you've been learning. Traumatically, quickly.
13. So now you're learning the next letter of God's Love Alphabet: "A" is for Archegos, Leader, Pioneer, Originator, 'Father': but "B" is for His "Bride", aka Body, the Church. Time you learn to Whom THE Father, will marry you off. (Isa9:6 also ties to Isa53:12's wa-et atsumim yehalleq shalal "great ones" clause, which means there are rulers under Him Who is made the fathering-of-eternity.)

So, learning Him causes one to relax, become happier. Thus is woven the foundation for adulthood: like Christ, we start to disregard non-God knowledge in favor of regarding God. Naturally. Easily. Enjoyably. As a by-product of our increasing enjoyment in knowing Him better, we come to respect our own existence, our own motives. Our lives come to have a value of their own. We start to lose dependence on others' opinions of us, as the arbiters of how "good" we are, so we worry less. In short, we start to lose dependence on "being good". God has replaced that depraved focus, with Himself. Temptations become less interesting. God becomes ever more interesting. Because we respect God more, we come to respect everything else more, too. Including our own selves. See how Love is beginning to bloom?

True esteem, like true love, means the flaws don't matter. A human being is alive. Your parents don't have to be perfect, and neither do you, to justify your existence. False self-esteem is really based on the opposite premise: that you are Good Enough, and thus you deserve to exist. You hear false self-esteem touted everywhere, from weight-loss contests to all manner of self-help programs. You deserve you deserve you deserve -- if you do something worthy. That sets up a hamster's treadmill and you just end up exhausted. Great satanic ploy, those figleaves of Gen3. True self-esteem is not like that: true self-esteem recognizes Grace. It's not even based on good, because it's based on GOD. God didn't make Himself, so "deserving" is ludicrous. So guess what? You live! God lives, and so do you! All these flaws exist! Grace, that they can! Grace and Doctrine team up in Spiritual Adolescence, to propel you toward Spiritual Adulthood. Like mental adolescence, it's a rocky time, because there's a Merging Of Understanding going on. The kiddies are still wrestling with right and wrong, and their idea of "grace" has yet to be mated to Bible-in-head. But the Spiritual Adolescent, is going through that mating process. So he becomes independent of others' opinions -- and more dependent, on God's Opinion.

The biggest behavioral change in this stage, is a QUESTIONING. No longer content to be a child, one begins to wonder why about everything, to have independent and provable knowledge about it, for oneself. That's not rebellion. One wants more than just soundbyte answers. It's a salient characteristic of maturation. Of course, the rebelling, retarding child will mimic that questioning to defend his ignorance, constantly demanding answers which fit the answers he wants. But you can tell the difference between true versus false questioning in children, and you can tell the difference in spiritual children, too.

Religion dissuades questioning, since then its satanic nature is exposed. So if the growing Spiritual Adolescent is still trapped by religion or religious people, he will experience much more trauma than is normal for the stage. Many people peel off here. Since Christianity is incompetently and childishly taught, yet rigidly imposed, so those who want real answers are frustrated; if they don't have sufficient interest in studying God for Himself, they will painfully separate from religion, yet still ascribe its satanic ideas as truth, so will claim God doesn't exist, the Bible is bunk, etc. Very common feature of daily life is to hear the disgruntled believer, complain how he lost his faith. Yeah, he found out that he wasn't believing in the truth -- yet doesn't desire the real truth, as his questioning is false -- he's not seeking God, but rather enjoys his anger at the falsehood. Such a believer will not grow up if he persists in such iconoclasm. Our parents aren't perfect. Neither are we. If we lambast the feet of clay we find, we'll never get new feet, and go anywhere fruitful. That's the fate of many who 'walk' into Spiritual Adolescence, but it doesn't have to be your fate.

So here are the seven benchmarks:

1. CONSUMING BIBLE. You are beginning to see the big picture: all those pieces of Bible-class data you learned under your right pastor are beginning to have a coherence about them. So you start to think on a higher plane than formerly. So you aren't merely claiming promises, but also the reasoning behind them. You are extrapolating from what you are learning to form new amalgamated conclusions, and you are beginning to live on those conclusions. Bible is easier to read than it used to be, and sometimes you find yourself using it like math -- all by yourself! You don't need to be spanked as much by God as when you were a spiritual kid, and you begin to see how all that right-wrong debate among the (overwhelming majority of) Christian children, is graceless. So it bugs you, but you use the Grace you are learning to live with it, sporadically. More often you debate, as rebelling begins to bloom. That's the dark side of a growing independence.

2. SPIRITUAL SKILLS. Here in Spiritual Adolescence, you use 1Jn1:9 regularly, so you are regularly filled with the Spirit; when Filled, you are still living on basics, like finding Bible promises and claiming them, learning basic doctrine under your right pastor, playing with basic salvation and Essence-of-God concepts. But it's almost second nature to you, now. Additionally, you are living on what my pastor likes to call "Grace Orientation" and "Doctrinal Orientation", with "Orientation" being descriptive of your merging thought pattern.

   The hallmark signature of graduation from spiritual childhood is that these thinking skills MERGE into a sense of "Grace" and "Doctrinal Orientation" (terms are my pastor's), rather than remain disparate, halting activities. These skills all combine to become a higher base of spiritual living, a kind of 'team', so you're using them all at once. Just as it takes several different types of movements to bring up a rifle to your shoulder, steady it, ready it, fire it accurately in one motion, it takes several types of thinking skills to coordinate so you can accurately 'fire' Doctrine at a target. And as any sharpshooter can tell you, the ability to swiftly, smoothly, and competently do all those motions with instinctual calm, is a life-saver. So much more true, in the Royally-Invisible Spiritual Life!

   Or, perhaps you prefer a ballerina analogy. All that practicing of 1st-5th positions, the plié and jeteé -- is disparate, like Spiritual Childhood. But being able to put them into an actual routine during which you don't keel over as you dance -- is Spiritual Adolescence. Or, a piano analogy: all that practicing of scales over and over and over, the positioning of your hands and fingers (gently high, please), the disparate learnings of the differences between notes and their names, the length of time between a quarter note and a 1/16th; the difference between "bass" but it's not a fish, and "clef" -- endless Italian names to learn, tempos and chords and a clicking metronome which drives you nuts -- that's Spiritual Childhood. But being able to consistently play several short tunes by Satie or even Debussy -- perhaps without flair, but at least without eyeing the music, only a few errors -- that's Spiritual Adolescence.

3. THOUGHT PATTERN. This Orientation teams up into a GODO of 1Cor13:13's elpis, aka "Confidence". It's incipient, here. You become impatient, and the on-fire quality of spiritual adulthood begins kindling in your spiritual 'belly'. So it seems like you are instead Waiting for Godot, and you can't understand why others aren't as excited about Bible as you are. For now your GODO is fitting together and you actually begin to see for yourself, stuff your pastor long taught as true, which heretofore you just blindly accepted. So you also begin to emulate the confidence you now begin to see Paul and the NT writers exhibit in their epistles. You start understanding that confidence and their thought patterns, and you start understanding their whys. That does a whole lot to increase your confidence in Bible: nothing like understanding the whys, to audit and thus prove, validity. So your confidence in God, alike increases; you still don't know how to argue against the world, and with this new burgeoning confidence, you will try, lol. But that's okay. You get combative. That's normal. For now all those former mere 'words' which you'd heard in Bible class after Bible class, are becoming whole concepts you can see as it were aerially, and oh boy you want to practice flying! Which, you should. That will bug your periphery no end, too. Through Darkest Adolescence, a 1960's book by comic writer Richard Armour (book is only available used, at Amazon) will help you get a grip on what Christian adolescence is also like. Same basic characteristics.

   So the chief Thought Pattern trait, would be called "Orientational Confidence". Getting the big picture, now -- and knowing it, too. And wanting more. An enlarging habitual learning and believing in Word -- because YOU want to do it, not solely because it's 'right'. All the Word you learn here begins to coalesce, and as it does, the focus becomes increasingly -- God Himself. The words still sound good, and you believe them, but now you really begin to understand what God is about. So what you do is gain the faculty of independent Bible thinking. It's this changeover from learning Bible just because you want to; this changeover of thinking about it independently without someone telling you how it fits, is how you cross over into spiritual adulthood. As a spiritual child, you were supposed to think what you were told, do what you were told; so you were a bad boy or girl, if you did anything on your own; you were a good boy or girl, if you didn't question, if you just believed everything your teacher taught you, as if that teacher were God Himself. Now all those childhood training wheels are falling off your spiritual bicycle. And with only a little regret, you begin to leave it behind.

4. RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. Your idea of "Relationship with God" in this stage is still emotional, feely, touchy, lots of do's; but there's a 'weight' to the thinking, and it's beginning to take over your childish ideas. You ask heavier questions when you talk with God, and you start talking with Him more often; you start spending much more time analyzing. You still live in two separate worlds; generally when you are doing something in the world you don't think about Him during that time. Like the spiritual child, He's only on your mind sporadically, but the intervals when you forget Him are much shorter, as you've more to ponder. You begin to wonder what His Plan is for your life. Most of all, you begin to wonder what it's like for Him to be Him.

5. LOVE GROWTH. Love becomes glitchy, here, because you're newly able to do it, and your emotions are wacko. A war begins between your Orientational Confidence, and those around you who aren't as advanced; plus, your confidence in yourself is still vulnerable. The GODO team is new, and it's your moderator, but you've only begun putting it all together. So you become testy, even churlish, but if the interest in knowing God better persists, you'll grow past it. Still the childish trust lingers; still emotion is associated with "Love" in Bible; but you're learning to be more tolerant -- at times.

6. TRIAL STATUS. You're at the crossover point between Part I's Core Trial Issue #3's "ignorance", and its #2, where you Start To Know Something. You stay on the fence for awhile, back-and-forth. You'll cross over to #2 if you make the decision that you "must get serious about learning Bible." And then you actually do get serious. Every Christian I know who crossed over tells that same story. "I just needed to get serious about Bible Doctrine." It's really funny how they all use that phrase, no matter what church or national background they might have. I've heard people in chat channels say that from distant countries, other churches, not at all related to my own. It's also a common expression among people in my church, too. We all go through this same recognition that Bible ought to be more -- well, dominant in one's life. The traditional 'Christianity' answers and prescriptions, no longer satisfy. And we begin to understand here, that those answers and prescriptions aren't in tune with Bible, either.

   So kinda like John the Baptist yet not so starkly, the Spiritual Adolescent sporadically begins to seek a kind of self-imposed isolation, which at that spiritual age, goes against his nature. For Adolescence is all about, fitting-in. The isolation is maybe of short duration, but it sets a tone and the study begins in earnest. Sometimes there's a question, "should I be a pastor" or other 'offical' church career job, revealing the desire to dedicate oneself, not just go to church like everyone else -- and not to assuage ego or get human approval, either. Idea is, this pursuit of learning God is not something you do because it's expected. It's rather an interest of its own and you want to allot a good deal of time to it, and you genuinely want more time -- because you have bigger questions.

   You're vulnerable to satanic attack here. Chiefly, you're vulnerable to the satanic ploy which seeks to siphon off your desire to dedicate yourself, into some fake works program so to occupy your time so much, the study you wanted, you've no TIME to do. Then you'll atrophy, dying on the Vine, as it were. So the Abiding Desire 'room' of the House becomes all-important, here. If the Desire to learn is strong enough, the fake-y substitutes sent your way won't much grab your attention, or will be soon discarded. If the Desire is not strong enough, you'll get hooked. Most Christians who reach this Stage, don't go beyond it: Revelation 17 politicized religion, grabs their growing interest and traps it.

   For here you start to separate from people in your thinking and start to separate yourself in thinking unto GOD. That's the beginning of Real Love: His Own. It's a dangerous time.

7. WEAKNESS GROWTH. Again, Trial Application: Weakness is growing. You become more dependent on God's Opinion, which is Love and therefore Grace; so you become gradually more INdependent of all else. Which paradoxically, makes you think of yourself as weak. And it's true. But you are actually stronger Spiritually, and that is More True. Hence the loss of self-preoccupation, because Grace justifies your existence rather than "good", theme of Rom4-5. God is Good, so nothing else need be. And God's Good, is just there: uncreated. So no other good need be. It's a gradual awareness of how Truth=Grace, so you become weak -- because you are learning to Love that Truth.

   It's really true that the world hates truth, grace, love. Litmus is the constant complaint that God should accept what we say is "good", just like Cain had done. So the Spiritual Adolescent is awkward for another reason: he's not yet matured in God's Script, but he's developed enough where he sees he must separate from the world. Yeah, and when you grow up enough, you leave your mom and dad. The world was our womb, so we were born dead to God. Now it's time to grow up and leave the thinking of our 'father and mother', theme of Rom6-7. There, Paul explains the conflicting feelings of disloyalty to the 'old man', human viewpoint. Divorce must come, sometime: He paid for it, on the Cross.

This is page 4 of SMP.doc. Notice the enormous maturation which has occurred; so many new and grass-green sections, far greater than Spiritual Adolescence. That growth from goldenrod seeds to a crop of grass, denotes a huge advance in the spiritual life. Indeed, this stage represents what my pastor calls a "Tactical Victory" in the spiritual life. Hence the stage has two subparts, so page 4 of SMP.doc covers the first one. Historically speaking, only about 1% of Christians ever get this far, and they won't ever be popular on earth which Satan controls -- but they are famous, in heaven. So it's a dangerous phase.

1. Notice how, of the five contractural action infinitives which happened to Christ on the Cross per Isa53:10-11 LXX text -- you've progressed to the birthing one, "plassw". Greek OT employs this verb to translate Hebrew yatsar, used to denote the formation of body parts, mountains, etc. Idea is, you're born now, just as Adam was created an adult, Gen 2:7. Paul plays on that meaning in Gal4:19 with reference to the Last Adam, covered below. Again, the Spiritual Adult is now capable of reproduction, analogous to sexual maturity, time for marriage. So that's the major theme of this stage of spiritual maturation, marrying your mind to Christ's. It's a long phase, typically from one to three decades, during Church.
2. So note the other two verbs: plassw not being complete until the stage completes, it and dikaiow's blocks aren't yet fully green. The verbs work as a team. Verb dikaiow does mean to make righteous, but its first idea is to JUSTIFY, to Legally Perfect (Complete) something: and the result of that, is the righteousness.
3. For now you greatly enjoy your new House, and most of the 'baggage' from your old life got replaced with God's Apodoses. In fact, God's ideas are more familiar than the old ideas, though the old stuff still assails you, dynamic theme of Romans 6 and 7.
4. Accordingly, God now focuses on sculpting FUNCTION (plassw), while still purifying, taking away, enlightening you (katharizw, aphairew, deiknumi), still replacing the old with even more of His Apodoses.

5. Here the bi-directional pointer indicates Coalescing Action within the maturation blocks below it, by means of the infinitives. Because, you've learned the Big Picture of the operative spiritual life, but as yet can't translate it into the RELATIONSHIP which is the purpose of the spiritual life, Col 1:27, Eph3:15-19, 4:13.
   • "Personal Sense of Destiny" is purpose of your own life;
   • "Personal Love for Father" is purpose, because living for Him makes life worth living -- that's Christ's Own Testimony.
   • "Impersonal Love for all mankind" is a far higher love, honor rather than attraction-based; and it's purpose also, because then life with humans not like you, becomes fulfilling; for God is Love and that means FREEDOM to grow or not, which you learned back during Grace Orientation -- which is the 'root' of Divine Love. God didn't make Himself Good; neither do you.
   • +H is purpose, because what you grow on and in, is Truth about Him. Each Him, Father, Son, Spirit. So you find contentment in just Knowing Them; the doctrine you've learned gets knit together so you can see Them daily, 2Cor13:14.
   • As a Spiritual Adolescent, you needed to learn tolerance; so now as a Spiritual Adult, you need to learn Love -- especially, for yourself. For here you begin to Love Father, and you will find your own shortfall, intolerable. Hence the need for a Personal Sense of Destiny, in which you orient to yourself as GOD has planned the crafting of 'you'. You start to see yourself in "third person", objectively. [Psychology is dead wrong when it accounts habitual speech about the self in third person, as a symptom of mental illness. That can be true -- when the individual can't confront himself -- but in fact true maturation means the self regards the self as an entity. No king or President or business owner can successfully 'rule' until he regards himself as dispensible. Your lose your personal life to whatever you have charge over, and you'd better be willing to do that, if you want to rule well. Notice that the Lord usually talks about Himself in third person in the Gospels, i.e., calling Himself by titles like "the Son of Man" -- that means He's viewing Himself as an Office, ignoring His personal feelings. The other NT writers also do it.]

6. Again, the Holy Spirit causes the blocks to feed back to the infinitives, for the process is circular and its 'sphere' WIDENS depending on that feedback. For now you're advancing along a very broad front, as the greening depicts.
7. Thus each infinitival action, enlarges in a widening fashion. So you grow exponentially wider in scope of understanding. Growth here is quite traumatic, analogous to falling in love; whether you detect that trauma or not, varies by underlying personality.
   • For the big goal is to fall in love with God, Rom 5:5, 2Cor13:14, 1Jn2:5, 4:7-8,19. Notice how you have to know God to love God.
   • So wanting to know God is the major tactical strategy of this stage in spiritual maturation. A lack of wanting will result in spiritual retardation, so Bible becomes a dry preening of how well you know it. Sad fate of many former Spiritual Adults who spun out during this phase. The "Abiding Desire" room of His House was rejected. So all the other rooms, go dark. Lots of casualties, here.

8. Pointer placement tells you the goal of the stage: here, it's a sculpting of Love Function, plassw+dikaiow.
9. For there is one infinitive "on point", through which all the others "run". But these two act together as one, with emphasis on the formation side, plassw.
10. So here in Spiritual Adulthood, developing your Love for God is the major goal of the stage, Rom5:5. Notice how justifying-of-hope is emphasized in that verse, pointing to the dikaiow purpose, goal.

11. Your Love Alphabet's A-for-Archegos, gets a "B", Bride. Your Personal Sense of Destiny Developing, Your Personal Love for God and honor for all mankind Developing, your Divine Happiness Developing, all make you realize how Bridal you are becoming. So you are Becoming to Him. So you are made Conductive, Developing. That's the spousal thing to do, Eph3:15-19.
12. So this happens now in groups of sentences, coalescing. Precept upon precept, knitting into whole pages of all that disparate Bible you've been learning. Traumatically, quickly. You've asked question after question, and it seemed as though you'd never start to learn the answers. But now, you do. That burgeons your hope just as Paul said it would, in Romans 5:5. You become content. Even, too content, cocky, as you'll see in the paragraphs below.
13. So now you're functioning in the first four letters of God's Love Alphabet: "A" for Archegos, "B" for His "Bride" -- now your cognizant Destiny. So, you're being Conducted to be Conductive, Developing. Time you prepare for your marriage, by meeting the Groom. (Paul ties Isa53:12's wa-et atsumim yehalleq shalal "great ones" clause, to learning Him via Bible, in Eph4:12-16, especially verse 16; also, Romans 12:1-3, 1Cor Chaps 12 and 13 -- that's the main theme of 1Cor -- and also, Col 1:12. For there are to be rulers under Him Who is made the fathering-of-eternity, and that's Church. This idea of sharing in Divine plunder, riches was a main theme of the Lord's when He was down here, i.e., the parable of the stingy servant, Matt25:14ff. Paul stresses it too.)

1. CONSUMING BIBLE. For what distinguishes this phase is that the Basic Structure of Christ's Own Thinking has formed in you. It's a comprehensiveness, though at basic levels. It's also habitual. So your Focus and your Viewpoint have merged. God just isn't on your mind during Bible class or prayer, anymore. You begin to see Him as a Person. So when you study Bible now, you study it to see Him better -- and you do. This is a monumental shift in your reason for Consuming Bible. When you were younger you had many motives for doing it: to be good, to think well of yourself, to justify believing, for the attacks against Bible worried you. But you've instead become so curious about how GOD is -- His Personality, why He wants to do things -- that the other motives, kinda fade away. The world and its wants still intrude a lot, but this newly-emergent focus on learning Bible to learn God Himself, shifted you into the "birth" that is spiritual adulthood. For Christ is all about, looking at Father. So now, you too begin to look at Father. By the end of this stage, you will look at Father as an instinctual habit, for you will come to want to live on His View of anything, even brushing your teeth. At the beginning of this stage, though, the idea of looking at Him as a habit, is newly born.

   See, as we grow spiritually, we age. As we age, we can see others more maturely. A child is utterly threatened by change, and really can't see his parents as persons. So they aren't allowed to fail, and any thing which looks like a threat is frightening. But as you age, since you are older, you can see older people -- as people. So God, the Ultimate Person, stops being a cartoon character, and you begin to see Him as a Person. For Himself. And you love seeing Him. It stops being an issue so much of right and wrong, but just flat wanting to know Him. And of course, what's really happening, is that you are becoming more like Him -- which is why you can see Him better.

2. SPIRITUAL SKILLS. These are instinctive at this point, but still glitchy: use of 1Jn1:9 is remembered more often throughout your day, so you are more often filled with the Spirit -- in large measure, the remembrance is prompted by you wanting to just think about GOD. So when you do want to think about Him, you remember to use 1Jn1:9. You begin, therefore, to question more broadly the 'big picture' of your salvation, why did God do it, how could it benefit Him. So you try to add up many types of doctrines in an effort to learn something about Him; you now find yourself doing it in free moments, while waiting on the telephone, or even in the bathroom; not merely when you are in Bible class. Verses start coming to your mind when you need them, slowly at first. Again, the structure of Christ's Thinking has now formed, been born: so it begins functioning as a whole, having a life of its own. So the effort to remember, diminishes greatly. Or, increases greatly because now you are "getting serious" about Bible. When a person "gets serious" in a relationship, marriage is not far off. Even more true, here.

   The hallmark signature of graduation from spiritual adolescence is that these thinking skills MERGE into a "Personal Sense of Destiny", as my pastor likes to put it. That becomes your base, built atop the previous thought patterns which were using 1Jn1:9, being filled with the Spirit, claiming the promises of God and rudimentary Bible reasoning; to those spiritual-childhood Bible Thinking Skills were added Grace Orientation and Doctrinal Orientation, during spiritual adolescence. It took some time for GODO to integrate with the earlier skills and for them all to team up and coordinate; but that's happened now. So by analogy, if you were able to raise and fire a rifle in one motion, now you can do it in your sleep. If you were able to do a simple ballet routine without falling down all the time, now it's too simple for you and you start eyeing something in the "Nutcracker". If you were able to play "Goliwog's Cake Walk" by Debussy without banging the piano, now you are up to a subtle Chopin nocturne. In short, a wholistic view of the spiritual life has taken hold in you. For you are born, independent, and can function. You still screw up. You're just reborn for the third time -- to adulthood.

   The Personal Sense of Destiny is entirely due to a new Love for God the Father. You begin to see yourself through His Eyes, which makes you become more objective. It's glitchy, for what you come to see is often disturbing, so you are impatient with yourself, the world, etc. At the same time, a growing contentment at having the answers, mediates the upset. So you'll zigzag between these two poles of contentment and upset. So your spiritual skills will often focus on this mediation, to keep you on an even keel. Paul describes this stage poignantly in Romans 6-7. Battle really begins here.

   To say you have a "Personal Sense of Destiny" doesn't mean that you know your future death date, who you should work for (or marry, if you are yet unmarried). Rather, it's a growing awareness that this Bible you've been learning is real, God is real, your future is real and will really be with Him. There's a 'body' of understanding about it, which in turn means you have a 'palpable' grasp. "God" is no longer a two dimensional, candy-cane idea.

3. THOUGHT PATTERN. "Hope", Greek elpis, which Bible uses as a shorthand moniker for Confidence in Word, characterizes your attitude during Spiritual Adulthood. What is spiritual adulthood like? Two chief soul traits of this stage are: cognitive recognition that His Thinking should govern, and thought-fluency concerning the content of His Independent Standard. There's no roteness about true fluency. It isn't the child's parroting, like spouting Bible verses, creeds, etc. Instead, it's the ability to Think Doctrinally, to analyze an issue and determine God's general position on it. 'With doctrinal reasoning to support the analysis and conclusion. There's a distinct confidence in one's ability to do this, because there's a distinct cognitive Confidence in the Standard. A less-salutary characteristic of this stage is a temptation to cockiness, due to the fact one begins to know he knows more than his contemporaries.

   My pastor uses terms like "cognitive self-confidence", and "spiritual self-esteem" to explain this stage. The "esteem" comes from the Confidence in the Standard, but since the Standard is in the self, it translates into a certain self-confidence, as well. The characteristic doesn't mean one is yet competently obeying; a new spiritual adult's obedience function due to the structure must first coalesce. There's much more to learn, but the Holy Spirit has interlinked the Doctrinal Database with the soul's norms-and-standards 'compartment'. As a result, the soul has found and accepted its 'place' with respect to Him, so a kind of confidence and contentment mark the inner life: it's a kind of Structural Rest. Before this point, as is true in regular adolescence, a huge struggle about "whats" had gone on. Now, enough of those whats are resolved, so a kind of restful attitude ensues. So, at this point the spiritual adult also begins to recognize where he is in God's Personal Plan for his life down here -- and, in eternity. My pastor calls this turning point "a personal sense of destiny": God's Personal Agenda for your own life becomes known.

   This "spiritual adulthood" stage is the first tactical objective God has for the believer's life. It's a Tactical Objective, as my pastor likes to explain, because you can't grow up in Love until and unless you first become an adult. For our spiritual mortality rate is extremely high; most believers don't want to know God, they want the goodies and status of being Christians, so they opt for Satan's Rev 17 substitute Churchinanity, over the centuries. The Church Fathers, for example, were demonstrably spiritual children, given their weird and legalistic writing. Bible wasn't at all clear to them: you don't need to convene councils to decide whether Christ is also God, whether Trinity is Biblical, if you READ the Bible. It's not debatable, Matt4:3 and 2Cor13:14 ARE VIVIDLY CLEAR. So, those people couldn't read the Bible, because they didn't use 1Jn1:9 to get the Holy Spirit's brains. And, it shows in their extremely legalistic, anthropopathic slants, persecutions and weird ideas, turning body stuff into magical spirituality, blaspheming the Word thereby -- for CHRIST did none of the things these dolts account 'spiritual'. Yet these folks are regarded as spiritual giants? Well, even today Christians laud them, not noticing how Different Christ Is from all of them. So children laud other children, and no one grows. It's the tragedy of 18 centuries, and it still continues. Therefore the Spiritual Adult is utterly rare, and it's a Major Victory in the Trial if you even get this far. The second bookended Tactical Objective is Spiritual Maturity, explained later below.

   This stage is a Coalescing Of Everything You've Learned, and you become Doctrinally Competent. Since an underlying structure got formed, you're now moving into function. It plays like discovery-after-discovery as all that got knitted in you, actually starts working. You'll easily mistake yourself for a genius. For you are: but 'Mom' (the Holy Spirit) is running the show. Yet you don't recognize that, often trying to 'help' by providing answers people don't want, and by impatience at others' disinterest or ignorance. So you get spanked. Then you begin to recognize it's the Holy Spirit, not you, Who's the Genius Behind Your New Thinking. Additionally, if you had a sin nature which favored lasciviousness, it now shifts over to the other side, legalism. If you were legalistic, you'll shift into lasciviousness during this stage. Your life is being freed up from the old patterns, so (lol!) you also switch sin patterns, too. Paradox: the bigger you get, the more you sin bigger sins which are subtle. Big people make bigger mistakes because they are big, see.

   Again, as in Spiritual Adolescence, the 1Cor13:13 moniker for this Stage is "hope". This "hope" is also the beginning of Love, Rom5:5; the latter starts growing per the four dimensions of Eph3:15-19 and 1Jn4:12-16 (parallel passage) from this point forward. So we now obey for an additional motive: to express gratitude to God. Life has become very enjoyable, even when being disciplined. We've come to know Father pretty well, now. We enjoy thinking of Him so much, we look for ways to thank Him. He's on our mind, most of the time. We often find ourselves asking, "What does God think of this?" -- and the answer is often instantaneous.

4. RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. This is the biggest behavioral change: Knowing God Becomes A Burning Issue. You have a bizillion questions about Him personally. Why why why why what does He get what does He want. The pronoun has changed from "me" to He". It can be very traumatic, because here the Focus Shifts. Hence your idea of "Relationship with God" in this stage is a stable and urgent recognition of Him, so you do think of Him often during a day; but it's still somewhat emotional, you're preoccupied with your obedience, maybe; overall, you spend more time just thinking out how He is. So you are alone more -- and want to be. You've distanced yourself from your earlier Christian friends, if you had any, so you can spend more time alone to think about what you're learning, to talk with God, etc. So, at this point, "Christ formed in you" means the necessary Rapport Base with God has been built. You can't use it well, but it's there. The rapport function is stable, but basic; the Maturing Merge of the world you live in and the God you think about, is only beginning. See, the focus shifted to God, so now all your other foci must shift, too.

   Unfortunately, a side effect of this shift is that others in your periphery notice it, even if you do not. Some will be resentful and jealous; often the believer in this phase becomes obnoxious, because he comes to resent the disinterest in God which he's newly able to see. So whether it's his fault or that of others around him, marriages, families and friendships break up here, Luke 12:49-53. You'll have to choose. Most people when faced with a choice like this opt for the people, so do not grow up. Lots of casualties in this Spiritual Adulthood phase, for that reason.

5. LOVE GROWTH. In short, due to that hope, you begin to Love God. Starting with, Love for Father. Love is still somewhat childish but its pace escalates, now. So, the aggressive facet of Love begins to develop, as gratitude needs an outlet. As 1Jn repeatedly notes, this Love-for-the-Father-outlet causes the 'overflow' of loving the brethren. You start to view people more objectively. That provokes a kind of overflow love to people: it's Divine Love beginning, which has no strings. It isn't based on attraction, but on God. So it doesn't feel good, and it 'plays' as a kind of respect (true love manifests as respect or honor).

   True marker of love is that your thoughts are occupied by the love object. And, secondly -- you respond honorably. Not necessarily competent at it, but that standard of honorable response has become more important than whether the love object is honorable toward you. Being right for its own sake is being replaced by a desire to rightly love. So we can initiate love, at this point. And we do: toward the Father. See, rapport begets the ability to be happily intimate, not the other way around. [FYI: this is the main reason why sex before/outside of marriage is so disastrous to the soul. Body can't take intimacy until soul has rapport, and body's design can't handle sexual rapport, outside of marriage: if "it" was "good", you think you are in love; if "it" was "bad", you think you are not. Soul's free will is thus significantly impaired by non-marital sex, because then the body dictates to the soul, with the result that soul satisfaction becomes progressively cut off. Other sins of course are very destructive, as well; however, sexual and criminal sins more quickly destroy the cohesiveness of society, owing to the dysfunctional effect on the relationship between soul and body that these sins engender. For, these types of sins separate body urges from soul dominance. That's why, for example, repeated sins of these types cause successively-higher need to repeat them, leading eventually to impotence: unfulfillable urge, no matter how often repetition occurs. Same pathology as for any type of addiction, needing ever-bigger doses to get the same high; eventually, no dose of any magnitude can give the addict a high. All he's left with, is overweening need.]

   Again, Hope produces Love, Rom5:5. This happens because the fundamental need all humans have, is to have a relationship with God. You realize you have that. Again, there's a distinct shift in all your Viewpoints from here on out. You need people and things less; you're not only newly secure, you're even cocky. You know God, and you know you know God, and wow! So you begin to ask new questions, re-prioritize your life, shed old hobbies and loves so to make room for more time to just learn Him. For you are confident in your knowledge, and it's a constant satisfaction to you. So you begin to simplify your life and isolate yourself. You might not even notice that fact. But others, will. Again, many won't like it. A 'wall' seems to be forming between you and them. That's true, too.

   Love increases when it isolates. That's a surprise. Live and let live. The frenetic pace of childhood and spiritual adolescence, with its crying need to tell everyone about Jesus, shifts -- you begin to realize that's not how God wants it done, and you decide you need to "get serious" about Scripture. For yourself. So you begin to isolate yourself. This will bug some of those close to you. So you will get some flak for this. But now your desire to know Him for Himself is independent of that pressure. Still hits you, you still fall down -- but now you keep on getting up again. Paradoxically, this shows more love for the brethren, since you are now doing the one thing God can use to bless those who are not doing what you are doing. For you, are doing the Word -- by learning Him. Just study, does all that. World couldn't even begin to do what God does to bless, click here and scan Part IVb's First Facet. No human works can buy the world time, good weather, competence, good crops, freedom from enemies. But God says HE will, Lev26. And if you scan that chapter, you notice that the contract is about Abiding in Word. Oh! Abiding in The Abiding House of His Abiding Thinking, bottom row in the SMP.doc charts?! Yeppers.

   For awhile, life after entry into Spiritual Adulthood will suddenly calm, because you're now getting an Abiding Contentment from Abiding in His House, huge deposits of His Four-Sided Happiness. 'Calm before the storm of Trial Testing. Rest up and enjoy, for you need this "R&R"!

6. TRIAL STATUS. Romans 8:28 begins to apply at this point. You've moved out of Part I's Core Trial Argument #3, which was Ignorance; and you've moved into #2 Core Trial Argument, do you choose God based on What You Know. This is much harder. So, the spiritual life intensifies, for there is no burden greater than the burden of so much knowledge in such puny, fallen bodies. Yet there is no greater enjoyment either, since the knowledge, is of God!

   True wealth, "true riches" verses in Bible, all mean knowing God. Wealth is a shocker. If you don't have it, you imagine it to relieve you of certain burdens, and to afford you leisure, etc. What you never expect, is that the responsibility going with it, is far bigger than whatever problems it solved. New and bigger problems replace whatever the old ones were. So you can get cocky or resentful or burdened -- it takes awhile to sink in. Knowledge of God is the greatest form of wealth, so is exponentially bigger in 'weight'. You don't own yourself, especially when you know God, so it's a real shakeup to your self-image. Exhilarating and enervating (you feel so small). So again, Weakness is Growing, and you are innately tested at all times to just keep on keeping on God's Script in God's System -- or, to peel off. You are very vulnerable here.

   KNOWLEDGE KEY==> This burden of knowledge begins the deliberate parallel to the burden of knowledge Christ had in His Humanity. No greater test, no greater burden, existed for Him. Every second He had the burden of knowing Who He was, and What He was to do. Important: as mentioned at the end of Part II, what made bearing our sins so awful, was Knowing them Intimately. [2Cor5:21 makes this point: "For He [Father] made Him-Not-Knowing-sin, Sin! as a Substitute for us, so that we become Righteousness-of-God in Him." Verse has word-play which English doesn't show. I translate it here to depict that word play. Paul uses the accusative for "Him" (the first Greek word, for max-emphasis), and "Sin!" So, Paul shouts the equating of "Him" and "Sin!": meaning, ALL sin was imputed to Him. We know Paul shouts, since there's no verb between both 'sin' words. Next, Greek prep. 'huper' stresses substitution: alludes to OT animal sin-sacrifices. Next, "become" is subjunctive of both purpose and result, with 'hina' ("so that"). There's zero doubt. The parallel verb structure yells final Justice by Exchange (His Righteousness for our sins). ("[B]ecome" is also the left-out verb.) There's no "the" before "Righteousness": so Infinite quality is thus shouted. So again, Paul stresses totality-of-salvation. Finally, the "He" pairing Scripture so fondly uses denotes equating: here, saying Christ was good-enough-for-the-Father, i.e., equal. So, we get that, too: Father thus made us Infinitely Righteous, "in Him". This verse yells that judicial fact. So there is no way to claim salvation 1) needs our 'help', or 2) can be 'lost'. (Selfnote:L1320 says more on verse not listed here.)]

   The Pain of the Cross was a Knowing Pain, because that was the "cost" of the sins, to Divine Righteousness. So: it's Knowing which is the greatest burden -- and the greatest Joy. Satan had had a smaller version of this burden, so of course we have to go through a parallel: due to Satan's failure, due to Christ's Success.

   As will be explained further in the "Third Reason for Invisibility", finity can't handle knowledge of God. Intimate knowledge of God is supposed to drive one crazy. Were it not for how God reveals Himself (delicately, carefully, lovingly) -- we'd all be dead. Man cannot take too strong a dose of knowledge. It's like overeating food. You can die from overeating knowledge, just as you can die from overeating food, and obsessive accumulation of either is bad for your health in every way. The bigger you get spiritually, the harder it becomes to live with this burgeoning knowledge of God. Life down here becomes smaller, since life down here is innately unsatisfying. So the "stretch" between the beauty of knowing Him and the horror of puny life down here, becomes excruciating. So now think how it was for Him Who had Perfect Knowledge, to then go to the Cross, where all our puny thinking, lacerated Him?

   So, during the calm, our understanding of His Greatness coalesces; as a result, our awareness of Him intensifies, and that Knowledge creates new and traumatic pressures. On the one hand, we become shocked, because we know so much more about the differential between God's greatness, and our smallness. It's not that our confidence is shaken, but rather, our desire to live has undergone a dramatic change: we are living for the Father now. We thus are constantly tempted to despair, since what we want to do for Him is so much higher than what we are yet able to do. Due to the new "Rightly Love" motive, we revalue everything in our thinking. So as you might guess, we become weaker, not stronger. Because, the Love has become stronger.

7. WEAKNESS GROWTH. Consequently, this stage is very traumatic: we've fallen in love with Him. When you truly fall in love, the Love Object is more important to you than you are to you. Another Person literally occupies the central space where your thoughts of self had been. It's hard to admit true love for Him, partly because the sin nature can't handle that admission, and partly because true love always wants to do 'more': you feel you don't qualify, for whatever you 'do' for Him is always too small. False "falling in love", by contrast, is loud: gushy, emotional, me-praise-me garbage.

   Additionally, a second major class of new traumas hit: we are sooo much more aware of what's wrong in the world! It's like getting eyeglasses for the first time: oh, how clear everything is, now! So, a kind of double-whammy ensues: falling-in-love with the Father, coupled with falling-out-of-love with the world. One is literally torn apart, internally. This tearing-apart also occurs because enough Doctrine has been built in the soul to make it functionally incompatible with the dead world of one's dead body: Romans 6&7. So, a new spiritual compatibility must be forged, in order to live in this dead body, this dead world, but unto the Lord! Every past thought-structure needs to be replaced or redone! (Romans 8.) Moreover, for awhile, this change-in-loves' trauma will not be recognized for what it is.

   Remember it was said back at the beginning of this First Reason for Invisibility, that Christ converted all sins into "DDNA" on the Cross? That's spiritual re-engineering. DNA doesn't split until there are enough compatible pieces made by the ribosomes, to complete the new strands. Well, here you've had so many Doctrinal pieces made by your human spirit's 'ribosome' factory (done by the Holy Spirit), that now you're ready for splitting and DDNA replication, all over the place! Well -- splitting means a fragmenting process, preparatory to a bigger integration process. So it feels like you're going nutso. Really, you're being knitted together. In God's Way of Doing Things, the loud meaning is always the opposite meaning. So when it feels loudly bad, it's quietly better. [Nerd Note: don't go by feeling; go by Bible Doctrine. As you do, you will notice that bad stuff has better value, regularly. That's a Justice valuation: gotta get a bigger rate-of-return (ROI) on the bad stuff, than on what's already working well.]

   DDNA Integrity Key==> Remember how psychiatry says mental health is based on an integrated personality? Well, that's the issue in your spiritual life, too. Integrating the Ever-Increasing Knowledge of God into Your Life. Into your daily routine. Into pressures of adversity and prosperity. Into, in short, your body. So you can become able to express Love. So that you can become able to do for Him what you want to do. In short, God wants to give you the ability to have what you want -- and what you want, from this stage forward -- is to Show Love for Him. Only, you're not able! Body's weak! You need to grow, make the body the 'footstool' of your own feet! Through constant living on 1Jn's Script! Look: if the desire doesn't run out in front, you can't get the motive to learn integrated strength over your body.

   So, that "integration" is to progress, from here onward. See, 'sacrifice' is not the issue. Love is the issue. Integration 'seals' Integrity, thus insures Love, so you can become free, forever -- to Love. No matter what.

   This desire-exceeds-ability stage is thus awkward, because 'true love' has hit you. Doctrine-body coordination goes awry. On the one hand, the sin nature will be screaming with defense-mechanism urges like sublimation, denial, etc. On the other hand, the hugely-increased desire to Thank Him isn't matched by the body's obedience. Instead, you find yourself giving into temptations you used to habitually spurn! Again, if you were lascivious, you'll become legalistic; or, vice versa! So, you'll feel like a spiritual failure, but the opposite is true. Hang in there! So, you will have arresting urges, and will be constantly tempted to be 'anal', going overboard in one direction or another; for sitting still, resting, is exactly what you need to 'do'. So, the sin nature will resist 'rest', big time: because, as we saw in Adam's Fall, its 'good' concepts are all doo-doo's!

   So in this temporarily-weak state, one also gets hit with many outward enticements: "competing loves", "suitors", as it were, to "kidnap" your love away from God. Prosperities with people, things will be introduced. Also, adversities. Satan needs a level playing field on us, and we need exercise. So, the function of the spiritual life refines: doctrinal usage shifts into subtlety. Life intensifies, so is at once much more enjoyable, and much more problemmatic. All the while, Love for the Father causes progressive focus on Christ Himself. Think of it as the Bride, not-yet-officially-married, but growing up in her Father-in-law's Royal House, as was once custom. As she grows, she comes to understand her Groom-to-be, better. So, love for the Groom develops, too. As this growth happens, competing suitors try to snatch her away, before the wedding.

   The snatching-away temptations will be extreme, and extremely subtle. You'll fail most of them, and fail most of the time. This, because the doo-doo genetics developed a tit-for-tat valuation of life: i do for you, you do for me, and that is supposed to be 'love'. But it's not love, it's fig-leaves craziness. Churchinanity. Or, rebelling against Churchinanity. Both are sin-nature functions, and neither is God's Thinking. Be, not "do". For, Love just is. Under bad circumstances, good circumstances, no circumstances, any circumstances, "the all things" (Big Bible keyword), all circumstances. You need to be weaned off the earthly, preoccupied idea that doing is supposed to be some kind of 'evidence' of love. Love just is, in God. In you, at this stage, that fact has only been born. It's real, it's in your soul, and like a baby, you don't know what to 'do' with it!! But you are to 'do' nothing, for the do's in the Christian life are all back-ended, after you are grown enough. Christ didn't go to the Cross until the end: after He learned to Completely Rest. That is Kenosis. So, you'll be jumpy all the time -- and through this jumpiness will come a lot of failures. Then, through the failures (!) you will learn what unconditional love means: God's, for you. Then you learn to rest, for then you learn that Love just is: No Barriers, no works, no conditions!

   Morality=spirituality is the way most Christians and non-Christians value the spiritual life. They are all wacko. They get wacko, because a) there is a genuine recognition that morality is "good", and b) it's attractive to be nice, to follow rules for harmonious interaction. It's also very difficult to be moral, just as Paul quips in Romans 7: until there was a law saying don't covet, he didn't covet. Like he also says in Corinthians, the power of sin is in the Law. It's "in" the Law, even though the Law is good, because sin is a derivative (separatist) power, deriving its power from the power of good (sin has no power of its own, so caroms off true good, to derive power).

   So, when people aim at morality, the counterurge is fueled, because the sin nature hears 'good' in morality, and tries to appropriate it to make-self-god (which is the quintessence of the sin's nature). So, to resist the counterurge, one either rebels outright (becoming lascivious), or one becomes religious in observing moral laws. This latter becomes ever-harder and nastier: oh, I didn't light that candle in 4 steps, but in only 3, so I am a bad person, 'cheating'. So, the eyes gradually get off God, and on what obedience one does (or doesn't do); on, what obedience others do (or don't).

   This is the cruelest and most subtle of snatching-away divorces, happening 'below radar', so to speak; and that's why Morality is the main objective of Satan's MEGA plan (explained in Part IVc). To Divorce You from God in God's Name. 2Tim2:26-3:7 explains the many sad forms of this divorcing. So, having been all this time surrounded by morality-touted ideas of spirituality but nonetheless having become independent of them enough to actually begin to love God -- every enticement in your body and on this planet and even off this planet will come against you. For, if you make it past this stage, you will likely stick with the spiritual life through the end. That, Satan can't afford, as you'll see in Part IV.

   It's a truly marvelous stage, but it often feels awful! See, being an adult doesn't mean you know how to think and act like one. It takes practice, and "practice" includes distractions you find both unpleasant, and pleasant. So you're tested:
   • Do you revert to childish dependencies (like defending yourself or seeking support), or do you become more self-sufficient, depending only on His Thinking?
   • Does the admiration (or antagonism) of others, who recognize your (spiritual) competence, trap you in 'helping' (or 'refuting') them?
   • Do you get tied up in earthly things, like politics and Brother-Foot Churchinanity? That's a big temptation here, for you'll ache to 'provide' the Doctrinal answer(s)!
   • Does your desire for Him remain (or return quickly) under the pressure of distraction, or do you peel off, chasing Satan's worldly windmills?
   In short, the Trial is in full swing: do you want God, or not? After sufficient practice in the above tests which largely center on morality's 'competition' to be your god instead of God, your adulthood function stabilizes.

This is page 5 of SMP.doc. Notice how the 'grass' of the spiritual life deepens in color, and there's more of it, due to aging spiritually. Here, you have successfully weathered the first hurdle of comfort due to becoming a spiritual adult and having certainty about Bible. Lots of people thereafter lose interest in the spiritual life, and become complacent -- at which point, they arrest. But for a few among the new spiritual adults, getting all these answers only fuels a greater interest in God. So what happens next, is a divorcing. For if you want to know God, there's only so much time in a day, and you have to split that time between knowing Him better -- or knowing the world better. So you enter Spiritual Adulthood II, if God 'wins out' in importance. So this is a divorcing substage. Notice the enormous maturation which has occurred; the divorcing results in near completion of most blocks, and the plassw structure has completed. Historically speaking, you've just entered the same spiritual territory as Paul and the apostles in their later life. This is the Divine Design for all of us, but most of us don't want to know God, so don't grow in the Design. So it's a more dangerous time.

1. Notice how, of the five contractural action infinitives which happened to Christ on the Cross per Isa53:10-11 LXX text -- you've progressed to the justifying one, "dikaiow". Greek OT employs this verb to translate Hebrew verb tsadeq, used to denote the justification which results in righteousness (both justification and righteousness, never are the two divorced). Here, the development task is to Justify ENTERING you as Evidence for the Prosecution in the Trial, aka "qualifying the witness" in modern legal trial parlance. For if you complete this substage, that's what happens to you, pattern of Job 1:8. Can't be entered in Evidence until the defense (Satan&Co.) gets to depose you. So here in Spiritual Adulthood II, you are being deposed. Ergo you get what my pastor calls "momentum testing", four (to seven) categories of tests in the areas of your own thinking (Bible vs. sin nature apodoses, essentially); systems (in the world, i.e., injustice happening to you); people (obnoxious and nice, eyes-on-people problem); prosperity and disaster (eyes-on-circumstances problem). The tests can be subtle (like germs or a mosquito), or gross (like an elephant or a bomb), usually both. They seem to be serial, notching up in strength with each repetition you 'pass', until an overall threshold is "passed". That threshold, is Occupation with Christ as the Apodosis you live on, to get through the pressure. Some of these tests will carry forward in Spiritual Maturity, depending on the content of your deposition.

2. So note the remaining verb: dikaiow is not complete until the stage completes, so its block isn't yet fully green. You finish this stage when it fully greens and matures into Combat Olive, as you'll see in Spiritual Maturity's diagram on page 6 of SMP.doc.
3. Here in Spiritual Adulthood II, you become totally at home in His House, and in fact are uncomfortable anywhere else. The 'baggage' from your old life is still outside in the world, and you don't want to be around it, for nearly everything in your thinking is replaced with God's Apodoses. You will thus keep seeking the same old enjoyments, by habit; but will always be quickly disappointed in them, not knowing it's YOU who changed. For God's ideas alone make sense. The old stuff still assails you, dynamic theme of Romans 6 and 7. By the end of the stage you find out all this, and you'll generally quit trying to derive enjoyment from what has for you, "passed away".

4. Accordingly, God now focuses on justifying you (dikaiow), while still purifying, taking away, enlightening, sculpting you (katharizw, aphairew, deiknumi, plassw), still replacing the old -- with Christ Himself. For if you complete this phase, you will become Spiritually Mature, and that means Christ becomes your life. You will see Him in everything, and don't want to be seeing, anything or anyone else. That's a kind of Justification -- your reason for wanting to live, to see Him. You won't be competent at getting rid of the competition, yet. That comes during the Pleroma phase of Spiritual Maturity. But here, the true fruit of Abiding Desire to see Only Him -- begins. For you discover during this substage, that only God makes you happy (the +H block in the page 5 SMP.doc chart). True fruit-bearing is an attitude of wanting to see only Him, and everything else is a "so, what?" in your mind. That was the Trial testimony from Adam forward, demonstrated by Abraham's willingness to sacrifice even his own son, because he saw Him; by Moses leaving Egypt. Hebrews 11 explains that attitude, not works, is true Trial Testimony which glorifies God.
   • Christians are worldly. Like the world, they think their works demonstrate faith or love. James shoots down that false definition in James 2:18-26, showing that it's Bible In Your Head You Believe which does the work, his theme since James 1:1.
   • If you learn God for Himself, the first thing to die in your mind is the cockamamie idea that works count for anything, Rom4, Gal3, Heb 6:1, 9:14.
   • The world values works, but Christ didn't do any works, instead He hung on a Cross, doing nothing. God the Holy Spirit did everything TO Him to sustain Him.
   • Christ went out of His way to not use His Own Abilities, Power. For then the RELATIONSHIP would have a 'god' between Him and God, which would be the 'works'.
   • Hence the Christian who prizes works of any kind, never matures, but remains body-oriented, just like the unbeliever.
   • So it's a rare thing, to have matured this far in the Trial, and the pressure to "do" something is enormous, since as a human being you too naturally feel an urge to reciprocate, which in human terms is a performance question.
   • Hebrews 11 demonstrates that all those heroes shunned performance, looking for "better things" -- a key rhetorical device in the Book, Attic "kreittwn".
   • So in this substage, you have the same attitude, and thus are justified for entry into Spiritual Maturity, when your testimony will be Eternal, demonstrating the Fulfillment of "Christ in you, the Confidence of Glory". All that is yet future, in this substage, but that's the goal of it.

5. Here the bi-directional pointer indicates Coalescing Happiness within the maturation blocks below it, by means of the infinitives. Because, you've learned the RELATIONSHIP which is the purpose of the spiritual life, Col 1:27, Eph3:15-19, 4:13. So now it's time to finish off your Attitude, so that you come to see Your Groom.
   • "Personal Sense of Destiny" is purpose of your own life; at this point that purpose and sense is coalescing into seeing Christ Himself. Living, Christ, Phili1:21. It's not operational, but is a goal you now begin to want ardently. The fact that you begin to want to see Him only, demonstrates the Happiness is independent of the world and all its ideas.
   • "Personal Love for Father" is purpose, because living for Him makes life worth living -- that's Christ's Own Testimony. Now it's yours, as well.
   • "Impersonal Love for all mankind" is purpose also, and has become fulfilling, even when glitchy; Divine Love for people is a growing habit at this point. Problem is that you'll be naive and assign to people a greater nobility than they have. This naiveté will get knocked out either in this substage or during Maturity, depending on how much of a hangup it is.
   • +H is purpose, and you've found a lot of contentment in just Knowing Them; the doctrine you've learned is knit together and you see Them daily, 2Cor13:14. More development accrues during this substage to put all the Focus and Viewpoint onto Christ Himself. Think of it as Father preparing to move you into the Groom's House, which House you've been living in all this time, but without having "intimate relations" with the Groom. In Maturity, those intimate relations begin, so this substage is preparatory to it.

   • As a Spiritual Adult, you've learned Love for others -- but not so much, for yourself. For here you Love Father, and you find your own shortfall, utterly intolerable. Hence the need to ramp up your Personal Sense of Destiny, in which you see yourself more often in "third person", objectively. The need to be better than you evaluate yourself to be, interferes with that objectivity. For it's not about 'performance', but human love claims 'performance' as the sole index of 'love'. So that final human-idea impediment, needs to be knocked out during this substage. Depending on how anal you become about your performance, this impediment might linger on and get knocked out only during the final phase of Pleroma. (Hangups which are deep will carry over into the Maturity phase, my pastor often explained. We all have hangups.)

6. Again, the Holy Spirit causes the maturation blocks to feed back to the infinitives, for the process is circular. Here, its 'sphere' DEEPENS depending on that feedback. For now you're to deepen in the Relationship to Christ, as the greening is wide, and you need more stability. This is a very unstable substage, lots of zigzagging. For since the objective is to Justify you to Stand Trial, you will be severely tested before you are Qualified to be a Witness for the Prosecution (God).

7. Thus each infinitival action, enlarges in a deepening fashion. So you grow exponentially deeper in coalesced understanding -- of Him. Growth here is most traumatic, analogous to staying in love despite pressure; you know trauma in this substage.
   • For again, the Trial is about God's Love -- it's His Love which is On Trial, and so do you still love God when the spit hits the fan? That will be the test in the final phase, so to set up for it, you need the deepening. "Deepening" in associating every experience, bad or good, with Christ. So you get a broad-spectrum set of tests to provoke that kind of association, which my pastor classifies as "momentum testing".
   • So wanting to know Christ is the major tactical strategy of this stage in spiritual maturation. A lack of wanting will result in spiritual retardation, so Bible becomes a dry preening of how well you know it. Sad fate of many former Spiritual Adults who spun out during this phase. The "Abiding Intimacy" room of His House was rejected. So all the other rooms, go dark. Lots of casualties, here. For it's one thing to Desire to know someone. But once you DO come to know That Person, what you learn might kill your Desire to Become More Intimate. Relationship is measured by "for better and for worse", and here you come to understand the "for worse" side. So again, it's real easy to peel off, here.

8. Pointer placement tells you the goal of the stage: here, it's a sculpting of Love Function, plassw+dikaiow. This time, Love for Christ Himself, subjective and then objective genitival meanings, Eph3:15-19. Love circle.
9. For there is one infinitive "on point", through which all the others "run". But these two act together as one, with emphasis now on the Justification side, dikaiow. Particularly, Justification for Living becoming Him. Just Him.
10. So here in Spiritual Adulthood II, developing your Love for Christ is the major goal of the stage, Eph 3:19. Notice how justifying is emphasized in that verse, pointing to the plassw purpose, a building goal, emphasizing His House and how you want to live in it, surpassing all else (i.e., worldly knowledge).

11. Your Love Alphabet's A-for-Archegos, got a "B", Bride. Your Personal Sense of Destiny Developed, Your Personal Love for God and honor for all mankind Developed, your Divine Happiness Developed, all make you realize how you are Becoming Him. So you are ready for the actual marriage, Conductive, Developed. That's the spousal thing to do, Eph3:19.
12. So all this happens now in groups of paragraphs, coalescing. Precept upon precept, knitting together whole chapters of all that disparate Bible you've been learning. Traumatically, quickly. You've asked question after question about what it's like to know Christ intimately, and it seemed as though you'd never start to learn the answers. But now, you do. That burgeons your hope just as Paul said it would, in Romans 5:5. You become content, but lose the cockiness. You'll indeed be lame, weakened. For when you are weak, then you are strong, 2Cor12:10.
13. So now you're functioning in the first six letters of God's Love Alphabet: "A" for Archegos, "B" for His "Bride" -- now your cognizant Destiny. So, you're being Conducted to be Conductive, Developing. As a result, you derive momentum for living due to awareness of the Eternal Fulfillment which awaits, since now you've met the Groom and are Happy, so want to become Intimate with Him. (Paul ties Isa53:12's wa-et atsumim yehalleq shalal "great ones" clause, to Eph3:19, Eph4:13 and Phili 1:20-21, to denote the childbearing fruit from Intimately knowing Him via Bible. Also, Col 1:27 and all of 1Cor Chap 13 -- that's the main theme of 1Cor. For there are to be progeny under the Church rulers under Him Who is made the fathering-of-eternity. This idea of sharing in Divine booty, riches was a main theme of the Lord's when He was down here, i.e., the parable of the stingy servant, Matt25:14ff. Paul stresses it too. Childbearing is the main theme of Philippians, Greek verb megalunw in Phili 1:20.)

So, from this substage forward, God's Agenda for your life becomes an issue: you want to know and learn to stay on, His Agenda. And you'll be able to prove it doctrinally, too. That's another parallel to how Christ Knew His Role. And had to know. So, also, do you: In advance. For, that is the Core Trial Issue #2 Test: do you keep on with God's Plan, despite what you know?

The Big Focus Change here is the recognition that God has an Agenda: my pastor's term for this is "a Personal Sense of Destiny", using the "hope" meaning in Greek as a "door" in 1Cor13:13. That began back when you first became a spiritual adult. Personal Sense of Destiny grows ON you. For God's Love never coerces. You become gradually aware that you want more out of the relationship with Him, and the focus is steadily on what He wants. So in this segment of adulthood, the scope of that question morphs into what He wants for the rest of your entire life. It begins to matter that you are doing a lot of deciding about your life -- and what if God has other ideas? You begin to want a "de novo review", if you know that legal term.

In the larger sense, your enlarged understanding of God's Script has produced the faculty of measuring your life in light of eternity, and you've a fair idea at this point what "eternity" will be like. So now you begin to wonder how what you're deciding 'today' fits in. You can't know, so -- what does God want? So as you can see, your idea of "Relationship with God" has begun to be -- Total. 100% Him, and zero everything else. You won't recognize that for a long time, and may even project onto Him some demand you obey. You become anal about it -- that's your Love being demanding of you. Not God demanding of you. But it takes maybe years to catch onto that fact.

You get another nice R&R period, here, to learn what His Agenda is. Once you know it, your R&R might end, for you always get tested on something you've learned. In any event, what could be called Paul's "thorn" eventually occurs. It's personally tailored to you, and usually starts out toned-down, escalating as time passes. The "thorn" keeps us stable -- or, allows Satan to spin us out into his system permanently. In order to get the 'thorns', this "at home" substage is a prerequisite, so 'thorns' contain vital G-2 info about vulnerabilities within the Divine Standards' structure in your soul: you are also 'told' where in the spiritual growth spectrum you have stabilized. One is not yet fully mature, but one is no longer in his spiritual 20's, either. Therefore, one will be "childish" on some doctrinal topics, for example. In other words, the "thorn" is designed to catch you up, so to speak, so that you are mature on all doctrines, all applications (how you use "eaten" doctrine).

Caution: most Christians peel off, here, assuming they even get this far. You can't even imagine how desolating, how horrible is the resulting Divine Discipline. So hang in there! Or, if you fall out, get back! 1Jn1:9 aggressively! For, the "thorn" test is not just one test. It is a progressive thing, in more than one area, and the tests become successively more intense. You might pass an adversity version, only to be undone by the seductive-prosperity version. Again, the only way to survive is to live on Doctrine. 'Which, paradoxically, is the glory of continuing!

For these "thorns" mean God is essentially saying, "You don't need them removed! I've grown you to such an extent, you don't need relief! Instead, I'll use the thorn to flip the frustration into fulfillment! Pleromai!" So these 'thorns' are designed to make us happy -- if we keep on with Doctrine. Here's why. Going through the 'thorns' strengthens your coordination. That's why you need their progressive intensity. You'll think you're failing all the time, but instead you're gaining skill at an accelerated pace, not merely learning more doctrinal principles. Thus, you gain more Doctrine-to-body independence from externals. The body is learning to obey Doctrine MORE THAN the other stimuli which hit it. As a result, your body is 'taught' independence from externals. That's why God doesn't remove the thorns: they're your best friends!

As the word "thorn" implies, it's personally tailored to you: so, the problem continues (with rest periods), it's bothersome, and it really 'gets' to you. Don't mistake "thorn" as solely being painful, and don't adjudge others' 'thorns' as somehow better or worse than yours -- for, just as Christ is Unique, so each of us are. Prosperity brings its own kind of "thorn", and it's prosperity, not adversity, which is the harder "thorn" to tolerate. Adversities are generally for spiritual 'youngsters'. You're getting older now, at this stage; thus, like Christ, the "thorn" of what you CAN do, is the harder to live with. Further, as 2Cor12:7-10 explains, the purpose is to grow past the bothersomeness. Past the weakness. Past your cockiness, too, at being so spiritually grown, versus your contemporaries. Past all the obstacles which separate you from full rapport with your Husband. So, the tests you fail will get repeated, as is usual in God's Plan. 'To grow you up enough to pass them!

GLORY Key ==> The glory of the spiritual life is to not need anything but Him: not need sleep, not need reciprocation from others, not need your wants -- and above all, to learn your own "kenosis": to not need your own "can-do". Unlike Satan, you learn to not need your own abilities, your own righteousness. All you need is Him. "Fourth Reason for Invisibility" covers "kenosis" in more detail.

It is a truly fabulous way to 'get married' to the Lord, Who at this point is becoming the Center of your thoughts, 'taking up quarters', as Paul puts it (2Cor12:9, corrected trans of "dwell" -- it's a military term, which few lexicons even recognize). Doctrine is so unimaginably powerful, His Thinking! -- it brings you to this glorious independence, living beyond the limitations of one's own humanity, living on the power of His Thinking. 'With Him, even while hurting, humanly powerless. 'With Him, even when prosperous, humanly powerful. You're learning "how to be abased", and "how to abound". All this spiritual exercise escalates your confidence. For, you finally come to realize He just plain loves you! You finally come to realize you just plain love Him! 'Just because'!

Well, you won't realize all this until you are in Spiritual Maturity (next stage, below). But it actually begins happening, here. When you later look back, you'll see it. While you are in it, you only see that you are between and betwixt. Doctrine is your glasses, you fly on instruments.

If you are under my pastor, in his '85 Ephesians series he classified seven types of "Momentum Tests" which you undergo during this stage. Later, he condensed the classifications to four: people testing, system testing, thought testing, disaster testing. As these names imply, the "agent" affects you, and you will be tempted to respond in kind. But test passage requires you learn to say "So, What" instead, since you are so busy looking at God, not the agent. Obviously the agents have no clue of being so used. In thought testing, you are both agent and target. That category gets harder and harder to handle, requiring more and more monitoring of your thought (i.e., to catch a sin and use 1Jn1:9, to catch a temptation and fire Bible at it á la Matt4:4).

Think of the Hurricane Katrina victims who lost everything they had. They were totally disoriented, then became angry, then became withdrawn or resentful or resigned. In this stage, all that will occur. But something else happens which is even more devastating: you don't care anymore. It's an active motive, a reversal of former interests and values. If you used to be a photo buff, you'll suddenly lose interest in all that stuff you acquired. It plays like depression, but isn't. Very easy to mistake. It plays like iconoclasm, but isn't. Very easy to be tipped over (Matt4's 2nd Temptation) into depression or iconoclasm. Very easy to mistake: for the truth is, your values have changed because God is SO much more important, everything else is rapidly becoming that "So, What?" Evidence.

Given the zig-zag conflicts which characterize this stage, it seems like other issues are really playing (like whether you are obeying Him or not), but there's only this one, about preferring Him -- you are nearing Occupation with Christ, the hallmark of Spiritual Maturity. So the other apparent issues are surface; just decoys, or of much lower relevance. For if Satan&Co. can't steal you away, you'll end up marrying Him in your thinking, and it will be almost impossible to win you back. Again, it's never been about sin, because Christ paid for sin. It's only therefore about Love, since it's God's Love which is On Trial. And now, so are you: because here, you come to Love Him. Or, you'll divorce Him in your mind and run after the tinsel Satan&Co. sell. Most, do the latter. Can't lose salvation: can lose the promise of a lifetime -- total rapport with Christ.

You'll notice I'm merely sketching vicissitudes. Specific thoughts, specific ways to live on Bible, all these are of your own crafting, before the Lord: He is the Precedence, and He invented the spiritual life out from what was the Law. So Now His Law is individualized. You have a Script, a Teacher, and a System. What you do with it, is up to you. You are unique. How someone else handles the same pressures or circumstances or temptations is utterly irrelevant. God chose you from before the foundation of the world. You. It's as if there were no one else on the planet. As you near Occupation with Christ you will come to know this, and it will shock you. For God is Infinite, which is truly a hupostasis, a dot-like Infinite Quality. As my pastor sometimes reads to us (quoting someone else), the 'whole' of God is in every dot. Well, you are a dot. Uniquely. Other dots don't matter: frankly, they get the same relationship you do, and in each one, it's as if they were the only person on the planet, since the 'whole' of God is in every 'dot'. Because, Infinity is not diminished by a plurality of objects. (A fact which the Westminster Creed, Catholic Unicity and Koranic definitions of 'oneness' fail to comprehend.) So it's only God, and only you in the relationship. Each relationship.

So the spiritual goal is, to get to the point where you are in HIM in your own thinking, the way HE is Infinitely In You, Col 1:27.

So we all should have been cut off, unsaved. But by cutting out and then grafting in, Christ Himself saves everyone.

See, It's based in HIM. Here, your Foundational Viewpoints are Switching Over, and you are doing the same cutting out and grafting in. God is no longer on the outside of your life, anymore. You are switching bases from your former world-based thinking to solely Christ-based thinking. Cutting out the world from your preferences, and grafting in Him in Whom you were grafted on the Cross, theme of Rom6 and 11. So now you come full circle, and what happened to Him on the Cross before you were even born, is now happening to you "in Him". God likes circles: subjective and objective genitive, plenary!

This earthquake-like divorcing has already been going on since you first entered the spiritual life, and it ramped up markedly when you hit spiritual adulthood. But now it is coalescing via first separating, just like DNA does when it's ready to replicate like rabbits. First, the DNA 'staircase' splits. That's what's happening to you. Latin quip "non possum vivere tecum nec sine te" (I can't live with you, nor without you) is pretty apt, here.

Key to success here: keep on thinking toward Him as a 'conversation'. Toward Father. It's supposed to be communion 24/7, eventually. So you won't survive this phase unless that 'conversation' keeps going. But if it does keep going, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. (Aka prayer, but in the broader sense like David and Christ and Moses used it.)

This is page 6 of SMP.doc. Notice how all the blocks get filled up and go from grass green, to Combat Olive -- which becomes Peace Olive, if you complete the maturation "course", aka "endure to the end". See 2Tim4:7-8, Matt10:22, 24:13, James 1:12 (see also 5:11 for definition), Heb10:36 (in context of 4:1, 11:1). It isn't salvation that can be lost, but delivery of your kingdom. There are many "saves" after salvation to complete. At this point, you've been brought through all but the last one, the saving of your soul from thinking about anything or anyone but Him. This stage can take a decade or more, to complete. You usually die soon afterwards.

The biggest salvation atop the salvation which places you in heaven forever -- is to be saved from having a human viewpoint of life, and thus miss out on seeing Christ while in this puny body. Only seeing Christ will make you happy, both now and forever. It's a big lie that being a good person, matters. So what if you are a good person? Christ is PERFECT, and what did He do with that? Spend it on FATHER! In short, rather than waste His Time preening over how good He is, He can choose what's more enjoyable, and spend His Time looking at Our Mutual Dad. Which is more enjoyable, to stare at self in the mirror, whoopee -- or look at God? No contest! So: can't you spend being any kind of person on Father? God will make good on you, so you don't have to worry about it. Thus go the rationales of the Spiritually Mature Person God has made you become, at this stage. It's a happiness and freedom from the unbelievable waste-of-time sin nature, which forever focuses on itself, in a dungeon of hallucinated merit. Focus on self is a waste of your time. You could be looking at God, instead!

You'll learn that fact the hard way by flunking the spiritual life, or the easy way by growing up to this stage. For you will see Him if you make it this far, just as Paul testifies in Eph3:15-19. Your maturation in Christ completes here -- via combat. For if you complete this stage, you will indeed be "one" with Him in your thinking. That's the goal of the spiritual life. At the beginning of Maturity, you have successfully weathered the two hurdles of comfort due to becoming a spiritual adult and having certainty about Bible; of the pre-Maturity Trial Witness Justification. Lots of people before you flunked. You are now in the rarest group of humans in history, and are famous for even getting here, in the record books of heaven. But the fat lady hasn't sung yet. So what happens next, is a childbearing test, essentially. Do you, as Christ did, 'birth' the same kind of thinking While In Labor, Isa53:11? For your job as King forever under THE King, will be to bear children who think like Him, among your own allotment of believers who flunked the spiritual life. So you complete the Pleroma substage, if Christ 'wins out' in importance -- under maximum pressure, your own series of 'crosses'. So this consummates the marriage to Christ, in your head.

So the truth is, sin isn't the issue, happiness is the issue. Being good or bad, sinning or not, anything OTHER THAN seeing Him is unattractive, a waste of your time. But you don't know all that, until you have completed Spiritual Adulthood II or nearly -- because you didn't have enough Bible in your head functioning, to realize what it all meant. "Christ in you, the Confidence of Glory" is a real statement of happiness, in Col 1:27. Sure, that verse is in context of winning in the Trial, but the larger meaning is the Glory of seeing Him, itself. Nothing compares to it. So of course along the way, you shed sin habits and false ideas about human good, etc. But the real story is seeing Him instead of everything else. Because everything else, is anticlimactic, a waste of your time. Here in Spiritual Maturity, you've come to that happy place, Heb12:2. Worth it!

Notice the enormous maturation which has occurred; the divorcing results from Spiritual Adulthood have filled up with Him as the Replacing Apodosis in all things, in your mind. That's the goal of our Royally-Invisible Spiritual Life, for then Like-Mindness is Total. Without Like-Mindedness, 'performance' is irrelevant. And God alone can make this Like-Mindedness, so God Alone can make it 'perform'! Hence testing this Replacement Intimacy with Your King has yet to complete, for all prior testing was to see if you'd choose Him. But you did. So the plassw structure completed, and now its tandem dikaiow structure has completed, but not the dikaiow FUNCTION. For until you chose Your Husband, you couldn't exactly have "intimate relations" with Him and thus GO into labor. Historically speaking, you've just entered the same rare stratosphere as Paul and the apostles in their last stage of life. Again, this is the Divine Design for all of us, but over 99.9% of us don't want to know God, so don't grow in the Design. When push came to shove, the Christian only chooses to mouth "Jesus", and wants the form of marriage, its status -- but not, its intimacy. So now you're in the Spiritual Olympics, as Paul likes to put it. Everyone else you likely know, was disqualified. So you feel quite alone, and are one of the weirdest birds on this planet. Phili 2:5-10 will be important to remember, in this stage.

1. Notice how, of the five contractural action infinitives which happened to Christ on the Cross per Isa53:10-11 LXX text -- you're solidly in the justifying one, "dikaiow": it's now cross-hatched to show it's functioning on all cylinders. Here, the Justification is to exhibit why you are Just Evidence for the Prosecution in the Trial. For if you complete this stage you get crowned, pattern of 2Tim4:7-8, James 1:12, Rev1:6, 5:10. Tests are personalized based on your own ideas of worst nightmares, and dreams come true which you had to forego, prior -- here you get them all, at once and in successively-bigger 'doses'.

   Abram's big stumbling point in maturation was that he wanted a son. Moses', that he wanted to avoid confrontation. So here's the Test: Abraham finally gets that son after he's been sexually dead -- and then, 20+ years later, must kill him. Moses, who actually had the power to free Israel as the next Pharaoh, is supposed to throw that away, in favor of isolation; then, after he's learned to love isolation, he's ordered to go back and do what he hates most: confront the new Pharaoh. Worse, he's now to free Israel, something he had to refuse, 40 years prior. Worse, he now gets the most confrontational group of nitwits ever to grace this planet, the Exodus generation -- and when he finally loves that confrontation, God retires him.

   See the irony God constantly employs? Embrace what you don't want, but eschew what you do want, and when you finally do that, the thing you learned to eschew, you get -- the thing you learned to embrace, is taken from you. True Twilight Zone. All the while, the person is voting that God's ideas alone make sense. Even when they don't make sense. That's a Love Testimony. Accordingly, Matt4's temptations are all based on God's Ideas Making No Sense: not feeding the poor, not being flashy, not defeating Satan. But the Lord preferred Father's ideas, just the same. So will you.

2. So note there's no other verb: dikaiow is complete, so its block is cross-hatched, functioning to complete all the other (cross-hatched) blocks on page 6. It's a demonstration of completeness which already occurred before you got here. The demonstration is extremely intense, so again the fat lady hasn't sung yet. You can't afford to be complacent or cocky, even though you are in this class, the rarest of individuals in all human history. Alexander the Great is nothing, compared to you. But knowing how high you are, is really of no consequence -- that's Trial Evidence -- what matters to you, is knowing Christ, and like Paul said, the fellowship of His Sufferings, Phili 3:10.
3. For now you want Him to be glorified in your body, Phili 1:20, bearing Him children in His House. The 'baggage' from your old life means nothing to you, but once upon a time it mattered -- so all that 'baggage' comes back into your life, in a successive series of ironic Testings: this, to show everything in your thinking is replaced with God's Apodoses. Also, to demonstrate Operation Footstool, your complete reversal from how you thought as a spiritual child. Also, to show how everything you used to want, God wanted to give you more -- but you had to be grown up, first.

   Again, Abraham only wanted one son. Was that too much to ask? No, it was too little. God wanted a universe of sons. So after Abraham passes the Test of being willing to kill the one son he longed for -- solely because God said so, even though it made no sense, morally -- now Abraham is mature enough to withstand the prosperity of being a kind of father of our salvation, blood-wise. For THE Son would be coming from his loins. Paul makes no end of witty parallels with this, throughout his letters (i.e., Romans 4). Same kind of no-sense-obedience is demonstrated in all the Bible greats, especially Christ. So for you, here all the old desires which got conquered BY Christ in your heart and soul and mind, get fulfilled. For now they are 'under' Him in value, and that will be demonstrated during the Pleroma phase, just as it was demonstrated with Job, Abraham, David, Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel -- and most of all, with Christ Himself.

   As a consequence, the Testing here plays in two ways: i) you get all those erstwhile-desired things, and ii) they all are later taken away. That test pattern is the same, since Adam. But here in Church, it's a 100% exclusivity-of-Christ exhibition: that He alone matters with or without, anything else. A King must be Trained In Having. So therefore, must you.

4. Accordingly, God now focuses on justifying your function (dikaiow), while still purifying, taking away, enlightening, sculpting and structurally-perfecting you (katharizw, aphairew, deiknumi, plassw, dikaiow), still replacing the old -- this time, with Christ Himself. It's not that you stop sinning. It's that your thinking is the same level as Christ's, the Eph4:13 level. For Christ became your life, and you think like Him from here on out. Same playing field, not the same scope; same kinds of motives and thoughts as He had, you will have. You see Him in everything, and don't want to be seeing, anything or anyone else: that is your dream come true, and it comes true, here. Your reason for wanting to live, to see Him -- so you do. Your reciprocation motive is to emulate Him -- so you do. God makes you competent at getting rid of the competition. Again, you don't stop sinning, you stop wanting anything but Him, even when normal human deprivations assail you. The true fruit of Abiding Desire to see Only Him -- completes. True fruit-bearing is an attitude of wanting to see only Him, and everything else is a "so, what?" in your mind. That was the Trial testimony from Adam forward, demonstrated by Abraham's willingness to sacrifice even his own son, because he saw Him; by Moses leaving Egypt. Hebrews 11 explains that attitude, not works, is true Trial Testimony which glorifies God. And now it's your live testimony, too. You won't recognize this perhaps for awhile. (Not everyone in Evidence Testing knows it until sometime after being in the Pleroma end of Maturity.)
   • Christians are worldly. Like the world, they think their works demonstrate faith or love. You prove how false is that definition in your own body, for what gets tested, are the values Christendom holds dear. Bible In Your Head You Believe, Replicates What He thought, WWJT: so you don't crusade, you withdraw.
   • For you learned God for Himself, and the cockamamie idea that works count for anything, died. If He doesn't do it in you, it's not worth doing. Bible in original languages constantly says that God achieves HIS works in man, but you can't see that in any translation. So the Bible's ironic and insistent portrayal from Genesis through Revelation, of you becoming great SOLELY due to what HE does to you, is always missed by Christians. It's not an outward thing, it's an inward transformation. So here, you demonstrate that fact via your thinking as God puts you through His Paces.

   • The world values works, but Christ didn't do any works, instead He hung on a Cross, doing nothing. God the Holy Spirit did everything TO Him to sustain Him. That's now happening to you, too. You pass the test if your motive is higher than morality. The 1st Commandment is higher than morality. Father is higher than people. So good deeds were the subject of testing in Matt4 and the rest of Christ's ministry on earth. He didn't do what Satan thought was right; He didn't cure everyone, feed everyone, flash His Divinity to prove He was God. He didn't put down immorality or Satan, even. He just walked and talked. So do you.
   • Christ went out of His way to not use His Own Abilities, Power. For then the Relationship would have a 'god' between Him and God, which would be the 'works'. You now think the same way.
   • Hence you emulate that Do-Nothing Waste, here.
   • So the pressure to "do" something is enormous, just as it must have been, for Him Who Loves More than Anyone.
   • Hebrews 11 demonstrates that all those heroes shunned performance, looking for "better things" -- a key rhetorical device in the Book, Attic "kreittwn". So do you.
   • So in this stage, you have the same testimony, and are added to the Hebrews 11 roster in the Pleroma Docket (so to speak) of Heaven, where your testimony will be Eternal, demonstrating the Fulfillment of "Christ in you, the Confidence of Glory". All that comes to pass now, in this stage. Happening one moment at a time, "Evidence Unseen!" as Hebrews 11:1 puts it (see Heb111.htm if you've not seen its corrected translation already).

5. Here the bi-directional pointer indicates Coalescing Occupation with Christ, a Love Focus energizing all the maturation blocks, by means of the infinitives. Because, you've learned the RELATIONSHIP which is the purpose of the spiritual life, Col 1:27, Eph3:19, 4:13. So now it's time to show off your Viewpoint, your Attitude, and Focus: Love Rapport with Your Groom. God does this showing off: to you, to Satan&Co. At your end, you're constantly thinking you don't love Him enough. But look how your thinking gets upgraded:
   • "Occupation with Christ" is your Destiny in life, per Eph4:13. Seeing Christ Himself. Living, Christ, Phili1:21. It's operational. Happiness is Him, period. Completely, utterly independent of the world and all its ideas -- all of them are anticlimactic to you in this stage. So like Christ, you come to think all the kingdoms of the world are worth squat compared to the RELATIONSHIP.
   • "Occupation with Christ" is Loving Father, because Father Decreed to see His Son everywhere He looks, Isa52:13, 53:12. That's Christ's Own Testimony. Now it's yours, as well.
   • "Occupation with Christ" is true love for all mankind, same as His. All the phony ideas of what's good for man are rejected, in favor of Him. So Father rewards the world with blessing only God is capable of doing. Because, God honors His Son, and now you do also, hence the world can be hugely blessed because you please Father by fully reflecting His Son. This blessing is so gigantic it takes most of Part IV to explain. Satan gets defeated in the Trial by the Pleroma Witness. That begets a lot of Justified Blessing for the world which only God can do, and Satan can't argue against it, due to your testimony.
   • "Occupation with Christ" is True Happiness: your contentment is knit together in Him Who You See Daily, 2Cor13:14. Father moved you into the Groom's House, you have "intimate relations" with Him. And you are fruitful, constantly bearing His Thinking in your heart and soul and mind. That's Divine Currency, and the criterion for awarding you a kingdom in which perhaps millions of people who didn't learn to think like you did, need to get it from you. Forever. You'll see more about this criterion in the Reasons for Royalty in Part IIIb and IIIc, and in Part IV. Royalty means Royal Thinking. We all like emulating Royalty. So there has to BE a Royalty forever, to emulate. Christ is that Royalty, and we are Rulers to the extent we think as He does. So that's why it's true happiness and love for mankind, to grow up in His Thinking. Happiness, for you want to be fruitful FOR Him, as any loving spouse would desire.

   • As a Spiritual Adult, you've learned Impersonal (attraction-INdependent) Love for others -- but now in Spiritual Maturity, you love yourself. For here you see yourself in "third person", objectively. Depending on how anal you've been about performance, this demonstration might linger during the final phase of Pleroma. Deep hangups carry over into the Maturity phase, my pastor often explained, i.e., that you don't love Him enough. The idea is to demonstrate their defeat to you, that you don't have them anymore. Abraham didn't really know God was #1 to him, until he actually tried to kill Isaac. For if you deeply love Someone, you'll always make excuses in your soul about how insufficient, your reciprocity. So it has to be shown, how much you do love -- to you. So you become grateful and relieved, to see what God has accomplished in you, and thus view yourself in third-person terms. This is nothing like what the world calls "loving youself", which is a kind of silly preening "I'm a good person." Being a good person is irrelevant. Seeing Him is alone relevant, and as a result you want to reciprocate, but the Love for Him means you will never consider any reciprocation sufficient. So you are relieved and grateful to see God demonstrate that sufficiency, which after all HE created in you. Whew.

6. Again, the Holy Spirit causes the maturation blocks to feed back to the infinitives, for the process is circular. Here, its 'sphere' deepens and widens to the Fullness of Pleroma. You seem unstable, lots of zigzagging, but actually you're being punched all the time, 2Cor 4:7-10, 12:7-10 -- it's really a demonstration that the much-higher tests don't knock down your Occupation with Christ. You experience deprivations which go against normal, God-given human desires.
   • It was normal for Abraham not to want to kill his son, even moral. But he had to go against it. Yet why didn't Abraham turn against God?
   • It was normal for Job to want his children to live, to want to be healthy. Yet God made him go against that.
   • It was normal even laudable, for Moses to instead become Pharaoh and legally free the Jews. But God said "nope", and instead had Moses do it in a spectacular way, 40 years later. After that, they wandered around for yet another 40 years, though travel to The Promised Land from Egypt, took maybe a month (a week or two, if travelling light as their scouts did).
   • It was normal for Paul to be paid for the missionary work he did; it was normal for Paul to teach. But what did God do? Oh, Paul worked for a living (tentmaker) and was chained in Rome for the years he wrote the best books in the Bible. Moreover, his eyesight failed, so someone else had to write for him, which means he dictated all that Divine Writ off the top of his head -- getting it right, the first time. This, while chained between praetorian guards?
   • Doesn't make moral sense, that God would treat His heroes this way.
   • But then, going to the Cross makes no sense, either.

   Yet notice the circularity and depth: the Love is so total, even what makes no sense, even what deprives, doesn't stop the love for God, end Romans 8.

7. Thus each infinitival action, enlarges in a completing fashion. So you grow exponentially Complete in coalesced intimate understanding -- of Him. Growth here is beyond traumatic, analogous to staying in love despite Your Loved One, slaying you. It's a true dying to everything else in life.
   • For again, God's Love is On Trial. So do you still love God when the spit hits the fan, and even normal human moral needs go unmet? That's the test in this phase, essentially. Christ had to reject literally everything but whatever Father wanted, no matter how odd it might seem. For again, if there's anything else 'between' God and you, then that something between, is the real 'god' of the relationship. Marriage is for Better and for Worse, no go-betweens.

     This fact shows up starkly in Matthew 4. All Satan's temptations are MORAL, and on moral grounds. Think over the following bullets carefully, using 1 John 1:9 as you do it.

     • It was MORAL that the Lord convert stones into bread and feed both Himself and the world.
     • It was MORAL that the Lord jump from the Temple to demonstrate He's God to the world, so they would believe in Him.
     • It was MORAL to do fake obeisance to Satan, take over the kingdoms of the world, and then zap him into hell where he belongs.
     • It was IMmoral not to feed the world when all He has to do is command the bread, "Be!" just as in Genesis 1:1, 3.
     • It was IMmoral not to jump from the Temple, thus making people have to WORK at whether He's God or not, causing them pain.
     • It was IMmoral not to fake obeisance to Satan, take over, then zap him into hell where he belongs -- again, for that means the human race must undergo so much more pain.

       But notice:

     • It's MORE MORAL to serve God, than to serve man. For Who is the First Person in the First Commandment? There are no "people" in the First Commandment, and even the "love your neighbor" comes second, as 1 John stridently notes throughout his letter. You do NOT love people if you don't love God: main theme of 1 John.

       TEST PASSING KEY: You have to choose as Christ did in Matthew 4, here in the Pleroma stage. In a way, that's always been the test since spiritual childhood:

     • Choosing to study Bible and 'do nothing', rather than all those doo-doo works which Satan's world wants (1st Temptation);
     • Choosing to keep learning God rather than flashy emotional activity (2nd Temptation);
     • And then once a competent spiritual adult, Choosing to be WEAK and let God do it TO you, rather than you doing it yourself (3rd Temptation). For what He'll progressively do to you, is DEPRIVE you, so that you become spiritually INDEPENDENT of all human needs. And, you want that. Because, if it's not HIS Will, you don't want it.

       All these tests have been going on in your life, and you didn't know that's what they were. You thought you were bad, you WERE bad, and yeah you got spanked. But the larger purpose was for this goal, here in Pleroma. To choose God -- specifically, Christ -- over all else in life. Even, over all other MORAL things in life. Even, when God seems to be treating you IMmorally. Just as, in preparation for the Cross.

   • So Occupation with Christ to know Christ is the major Strategic Victory of this stage in spiritual maturation, Phili 3:7-10. A lack of Occupation will result in misery you can't even imagine: for in this stage, He is Your Life, and anything else is hell by comparison. The hardest part of being in this stage is that you come to yearn for crosses you are yet unable to bear, for you need that Love Outlet. The "Abiding Intimacy" room of His House is THE room you live in: all the others now have doors which lead off from it.
   • 'Mom' the Holy Spirit has indeed developed you -- even as, He developed Christ Himself. It goes against sane human nature to want to suffer, Romans 5:6-8. So the Completion of His Eph2:10 Developing Work in making you not only near but Intimate with Christ -- is made complete by means suffering, pattern of Heb2:9-10, 5:8-9. Which suffering relieves you when you receive it, Luke 12:50, 22:15, Heb 12:2, Phili3:10, 2Cor4:10, 12:10.
   • Notice too: you get NO sense of victory from this. You are WEAK, there's only failure; any success you'll deem too little, for There Is No Price Too High; whatever suffering is too small, in your own estimation: Philippians 1:29. Isaiah 53:2: Lo toar lo, wa lo hadar, wa nirehu. Wa lo mareh, wa nechmadehu.
     The Incarnation? Not him!
     No glamor,
     Will we see;
     No Worthy Sight
     Will we esteem of him.

8. Pointer placement tells you the goal of the stage: here, it's a sculpting of Love Function, dikaiow. This time, Love for Christ Himself, JUSTIFIES ANYTHING so far as you are concerned, the "emoi" keyword in Phili1:21. Subjective and then objective genitival meanings in "Love of/for God", Eph3:15-19. Love circle. Demonstrated as Complete, Inviolate. We are here to be completed in God's Love, which also completes the Trial, 1Jn4:17. "Love" is a moniker for His Thinking both there and in Rom5:5, throughout 1Cor13. Idea that when Canon got completed, so God's Love Demonstration in the Trial would be completed in Church. And at this stage, you are Witness to that Completion, which occurs in you.

9. For there is one infinitive "on point", through which all the others "run". So here emphasis now is on the Justification-of-Love Completion side, dikaiow. Justification for Living being Him. Just Him. How that's better than Satan's, the world's, and all other alternatives even God Himself could design. You go through ever-higher testing cycles during Pleroma. Each one demonstrates it's Just Him, a beyond-human Love: God's Own.

10. So here in Spiritual Maturity, Fulfilling and Glorifying your Love for Christ in your body is the major goal of the stage, Phili1:20-21, Eph 3:19. Notice how justifying is emphasized in those verses, pointing to the dikaiow purpose, a birthing goal, emphasizing His House is Fruitful in you and you in Him, surpassing all else in your life. Clearly all the works in history, however noble can't even begin to produce one dot toward that goal. It's wholly Divine, produced solely by the Holy Spirit in you, fulfilling Eph2:10. So you are now, Fit Bride. Demonstrably.

11. So your Love Alphabet's A-for-Archegos, got a "B", Bride. And you married Him. And you became Conductive, Developed. And now, Progeny-Fruitful, Fulfilled. That's the spousal thing to be, Col 1:27. Be, not do. Brides get done-to, and the 'job' of a Bride is to be something, not do something. Be -- compatible, companion. Again, all the works on the planet from the Fall until eternity can't add one dot toward that goal. It's a transformation, not a toil.
12. So all this happens now in your head, coalescing leaping growth in groups of whopping chapters. Precept upon precept, knitting together whole books of all that disparate Bible you'd been learning. Traumatically, slowly; traumatically, quickly. You question within this new-found intimacy with Him, and you know His answers in mammoth detail, almost immediately. Like a pregnant woman, you are flattened by this knowledge growth within you, even crushed by it, 2Cor12:7-10; and you wait for your deliverance, pattern of Psalm 22 -- which He shouted on the Cross, Matt27:46.
13. So now you're functioning in the all the letters of God's Love Alphabet: "A" for Archegos, "B" for His "Bride" -- now your vested Destiny, when the stage ends WITH that deliverance. So, you're Conductive, Developed. As a result, you derive Eternal Fulfillment Growth in Glory for your Happy Husband, as you now Intimately have His Impossibly Integrated, Integrity-Love. You are now one of the "great ones" in Isa 53:12's wa-et atsumim yehalleq shalal. For you yourself are the fruit, the booty now capable of bearing fruit just like you, your children for eternity, a whole kingdom of them -- all due to what you became in Him, never from what you did yourself. Sheep are not work animals or mere beasts of burden. Neither are you.

• 1Jn uses the term "fathers" to denote their spiritual reproductivity. So notice how Occupation with Christ characterizes those "fathers" in 1Jn2:13a, 14a.
• Peter had written similarly, sometimes using "elders" in the maturity sense, not as the teachers.
• The doxaxzw verse in 1Pet1:8 tells you their attitude, succinctly. My pastor spent a lot of time on the etymology of that verb.
• Philippians 1:21's "living, Christ! Dying, profit!"
• Catchphrase is often "love of Christ" and similar terms in the Bible.
• NT Bible Keywords for this stage and its victory are many, but the most common are: pleroma and its verb plerow, teleios or telos and its verb teleiow,, artios, nikaw , etc. If you wish to understand Pauline writings and the book of Hebrews, track these Greek words, especially derivatives of plerow and teleiow. Else you'll miss their NT meaning.
• The Lord used these terms often, especially in John 14-17; many synonymal meanings made of them.
• These terms are all incorporations by reference of Isaiah 53, explaining it; especially, explaining how Daniel 9:24 and Isa53:10-12, are accomplished in Church.
• Pleroma is perhaps the most important Greek keyword, since it's the standard for the Rapture, Eph4:13 -- Rapture is determined by the date when we Church in aggregate, "arrive at the destination" of maturity at Christ's Own Level. So, Bible uses it to denote the final stage of spiritual growth, i.e., in Eph4:13 and earlier in Eph3:19.
• Even the OT uses Pleroma in a lower but a final sense, like the fullness of a good old age.
• It's a cornerstone word in the NT and there are innumerable wordplays on it, so I'm really surprised that nothing I can find in the history of Christendom (except in gnosticism, which is the wrong meaning), references this stage. Even the Koran tweaks the Greek meaning of Pleroma, in its At-Tariq sura: you'd have to know the Greek etymology of Pleroma (Bride Fruitful) to get the 'houri' satire of that Sura.

• you are childbearing; specifically, you bear the seed of the gods -- that's the Greek-culture origin of the term.
• Bible plays on that original meaning with extreme wit, especially in Ephesians. For Paul crafts the letter as 'plot' of the Real God doing Real Begetting, playing on his readers' common knowledge of Euripides' play "Ion", about how the Greek peoples came from a god who impregnated a woman. Ephesians is thus one of the most witty letters in the Bible. You can't see any of this in English, and of course you'd have to know the play. Paul uses the same analogy throughout Philippians, since its theme is about Reproduction (Greek verb megalunw in Phili 1:20, Magnify by Reproduction, same as Mary used in the Magnificat, Luke 1:46, very witty). [I don't recall if my pastor ever noted the parallel to that play, when talking about Ephesians. But I discovered the parallel due to something else he said. When covering Revelation's "frogs" reference, he said John was making a reference to Aristophanes' play "the Frogs", so I had to read the play to know what John meant. Very apt allusion, since the frogs in the play were manipulating Dionysus. In thumbing through the book which had other Greek plays, I ran across Ion at that time. I was exegeting Eph2:10 to better understand my pastor's teaching on it -- see "Fit Bride" table in Part IVb -- and then discovered the parallel while writing out what I learned. So as far as I'm concerned, my pastor's the cause God used, to result in my finding out this very bald parallel between Ephesisans and "Ion". The parallel will blow you away, if you study it. If ever you doubted that the Word is from God, those doubts will be banished, after you see the parallels.]
• So in all his letters, you'll find Pauline themes of marriage and begetting; all of them seem to reference that play and "pleroma", to show that the Seed in You=Word in You "bears fruit" to Father.
• As a result, your Royal Priesthood Kingship is thus fulfilled, as a king is the seed bearer for his kingdom.

• The Authority "Seed" of Christ -- Bible Thinking -- and
• Your Bridal Motives to 'make love' by means of having That Seed rule you,
• All Coalesce, Merge At Eph4:13, Christ's Own Level.
• The degree and plane of one's Viewpoint, Focus, Thinking Pattern and motivation, come to fully reflect and thus 'display' Him, during this stage.
• This echoing edifice of His Thinking is structural at the beginning of Spiritual Maturity; it becomes functional by one's successful end.
• Its full functionality is proved by the Testing, and is the criterion for awarding Kingship.
• Again, the 'glitch' of sin still occurs, but recovery from it produces big spiritual gains: Abraham, Moses, David, Paul experienced huge failures during their senior phase of spiritual growth. Big failure seems to typify the stage, and recovery either propels one into huge gains or success, or solidifies the gains. Losing the battle, but winning the war as a result.
• So it's not the absence or level of sin which characterizes Spiritual Maturity; rather, the individual's 'heart' circulates at the Eph4:13 level.
• That is to say, both your internal motives and fluent Bible information cycling in your thinking, are independently cohesive -- at Christ's Own Level.
• So what justifications motivated Jesus the Christ, now motivate you. His reasoning is yours, too.
  As you'll see more below within the benchmark descriptions, the believer's entire operating system of thinking has upgraded. When we were spiritual children, our ideas of Bible, God, salvation -- and our motives for obedience -- were of this world, childlike, material, do's based, and selfish. What we get, what we do, what we think, how we compare to others. The words in Bible sound nice, but we've no clue what they mean. Instead of studying Bible to learn its own definitions, we childishly superimpose on Bible, our own baby ideas of the Word's meaning. However, if one undergoes extensive study of Bible for itself, it will gradually disabuse the student of these false and worldly ideas, supplanting them with God's Own, as Bible defines itself. Hence, maturity progresses; and as it does, one grows past these narrow and puerile ideas, coming instead to see God Himself. One thus comes to prefer to look at God, eventually to the exclusion of all else in one's life. That Exclusivity Viewpoint is the hallmark attitudinal characteristic of the believer in the Pleroma stage of Spiritual Maturity, Phili 1:21.

  A virtuous king thinks big. His own person is redefined as the office he holds; his status is but the means to carry out what's best for his kingdom. By contrast, a peasant thinks small. All his concerns are about himself, his status, his looks, his promotions in the eyes of others -- the larger issues of world welfare do not concern him, and he rather belittles as 'pretentious', anyone who doesn't share his own petty prejudices and ignorance. Same analogy as the difference between a parent, and a child. Christ thinks Big. That's His Job. Yours too, if you'll intimately grow up in Him.

• This kingly thinking is not humanly possible in a sin-nature being -- additionally, we were not on earth when He was, the Bible is an enigma to the immature or disbelieving world, everyone disputing its meaning -- so how can we have HIS same thinking, so Biblically accurate? Clearly, then, such thinking can only be of Divine Origin and Power. For only God would know what His Son Thought, what He meant in His Book.
• Moreover, Satan doesn't believe we can learn, live, and eventually love like Christ Who Never Sinned. But by now of course, he's seen that we can. It rankles him.
• Not surprisingly, very few humans actually mature and thus finish the Pleroma "course" -- likely under 335 people, since the Crucifixion (search on "335" in Part IVb to see the derivation methodology).
• Historically, perhaps ten thousand people at least entered this stage of maturation, because the continuation of a client nation to God depends on it; since history continues, we have to assume that number or one near it, obtained; at the same time, most don't complete Pleroma, or the Rapture would have happened centuries prior. Part IV will cover the Rapture and its criteria. [Again, to derive this mathematical conclusion, Bible ratios in Part IVb's "GAAP Balancing" link are used. The valuation can be derived in varying ways; the ratio of those entering Pleroma and thus preserving their respective nations would be much greater than the ratio of the number needed for Church to complete. No matter what Bible ratio you use, no matter how you adjust it, the resulting number has to be very small.]
• In short, it's tough to "finish the course", but not impossible. Divine Omnipotence makes it possible, despite all human (and demonic) obstacles.
• For with God, if you vote "yes" He enables your "yes" preference to have perfecting effect. ("Perfecting" as in "completing", legal sense of the verb. One never stops sinning.) So just keep on voting, persevere, Heb10:36, James 1:1-4,12. If you fall down, use 1Jn1:9, and vote "yes" again.
• DO NOT QUIT. For those who didn't complete this phase, all quit the spiritual life. They made excuses, blaming their teachers, the Bible, even God -- same thing Adam did after the Fall, in Gen 3. Or they hid their blaming, picking something silly as a substitute spirituality. Now you know why the historical roster of Pleroma folks (in "m." and "n." above), is so small. Neither you nor I need to be among the quitters: God sustained Christ all the way through the Cross, so He can surely sustain us in our smaller 'crosses' of this Stage. Just get up again using 1Jn1:9, and you're not quitting.

• The believer has completed the Divine Tactical Objectives for the spiritual life, which are
  • Spiritual Adulthood manifested as a "Personal Sense of Destiny", and
  • Spiritual Maturity, itself.
• Spiritual Maturity is thus a watershed; it also constitutes entry into the bookended Strategic Objectives of mature "Occupation with Christ" and "Pleroma". There may be some delay or hiatus between the commencement of Spiritual Maturity, and entry into mature Occupation with Christ, owing to leftover issues from Spiritual Adulthood II. Often there is an overlap, with the latter stage ending and the new Spiritual Maturity stage separately beginning, i.e., "momentum testing" results are successful in some ways but retarded, in others. [It's really hard to generalize this hiatus. Basically, the individual's focus must coalesce into mature Occupation with Christ, to cross the threshold of Spiritual Maturity. As each of us is different and the issues we face vary, one might mature to that level quickly when faced with (say) disaster testing, but yet not so advance from prosperity testing. If the progress therefore in some areas is very advanced but in some areas not, the "momentum testing" in the retarded areas will continue, and thus characterize the beginning of the Spiritual Maturity phase. Think of it like a student who is not held back a grade due to overall progress, and his remedial correction in a few subjects is carried on during the next grade.]
  • The first of these bookends is mature Occupation with Christ. ("Occupation" is my pastor's term, but it's been used by pastors before him also, Watchman Nee being one of them I could find. While I'm not sure how other pastors use the term, mine uses it to describe what's going on in the soul: one's thoughts are constantly 'occupied' with Him. Note: Occupied, not preoccupied. The latter is discernible by its childish content, i.e., trying to prove Jesus existed, insistently characterizing Him in two-dimensional parrotting terms, emotional fixation of many kinds. A common tactic of Satan&Co. is to foster loud PREoccupation with Christ as if that were 'holy', to prevent mature learning of Him. Same 'advertising' tactic as they followed when He was down here, as Mark's Gospel repeatedly shows. So what passes for focus on Christ in mainstream Christianity is generally preoccupation, not Occupation.)
  • The 2nd Strategic Objective of completion and also operation, is "Pleroma". Again, the Greek word originally meant to be made pregnant by a god, so it's that kind of English "filled up". Since the term originally meant a filled-up pregancy to the point of giving birth, it came to have the general meaning of fruition, completion, i.e., of maturation in operation, attainment, finishing, that kind of "end"; so the term generally stresses the process.

  • Hence this Spiritual Maturity Stage has the same "Pleroma" name to stress its Bible purpose, giving birth to His FULL Thinking. So it begins at mature Occupation with Christ, which itself graduated the believer from Spiritual Adulthood II, into Spiritual Maturity; it culminates in yet another Bible keyword listed above, teleios. That Greek term stresses the result of Pleroma. Greek "teleios" is famously used in Daniel 9:24 with the Divine "sun" prefix, idea of God working everything together to finish His Goals. So, Bible often uses both terms (and their synonyms and cognates), to reference and explain the ultimate strategic goal God has for the believer. (If you track them in Greek, you get a very clear picture of what God calls the spiritual life, versus works.)

  • In short, Pleroma is the result of Occupation with Christ. That focus on Him really begins in Spiritual Adulthood, but it doesn't mature until one enters Spiritual Maturity or shortly thereafter. You get out of Spiritual Adulthood II by focusing on God, and your happiness in knowing Him naturally propels you to thinking more about Christ Himself. As you go through "momentum testing", this maturation in Focus occurs, as your motive to continue under the testing, requires it. Again, the development of a mature Focus on Him is but a structural result, for structure must precede function, as we saw in the Spiritual Childhood subsection. So Occupation with Christ matures in function, during Spiritual Maturity.

    Structural maturation in focus, occurs to the extent that "He" replaces "me" as the meaning for living, the Object in one's thinking. It's analogous to how even human psychological maturation (i.e., the ability to love) occurs to the extent that the individual stops being self-focused, and starts being other-focused in his values. A person who perpetually defines everything in terms of himself never grows up, since self-focus is the essence of childhood. Example: a child will learn something and pride himself on being a good person for having learned it; he really doesn't understand the content, but has basically memorized it, can parrot it. By contrast, a mature adult will learn something and be focused on the content of what he learned, admiring it, rather than himself. Since Christianity largely prides itself on how much Bible it claims to know, its Bible grasp is almost nil, since it deems the value of learning, to make the self 'good'. That's how a child reasons, so that's all a child understands. That's why Christian theology has remained ignorant and childish, all these centuries. [That we don't know His Birth and Death dates despite Luke 1:26 and John 19, that we still call His Crucifixion "Good Friday" despite John 19 and Matt12:40-41+Matt28:1, shows our incredibly puerile theological retardation. For humans make a stink about their birth and death dates -- but we have zero respect for what the Bible says, about His. Pathetic. PassPlot.htm has details about these dates. It's awesomely embarrassing, how easy they are to prove.]

    Of course, to become God-focused requires God's power, and no amount of human maturation can accomplish it. For human maturation, is in human things. But spiritual maturation is in spiritual things, theme of Gal 5 and Romans 8. So one must obtain the spiritual thinking of God Who is Spirit (ibid +John 4:23-24, 1Cor2). Moreover, that means spiritual information about God must have coalesced to the point that the individual can focus ON God, because he has come to know God via Bible in God's System. Absent a progressive and replacing focus on God, the believer will not progress to Spiritual Adulthood; and his ideas of Bible, God and the spiritual life will remain trapped in human concepts of works, ritual, feeling and magic -- all of which intensify self-focus, rather than maturation.

    For this reason, interest in God becomes the propellant for spiritual growth, even though that interest of itself, is impotent. Love never coerces. If the individual is interested in knowing God, God will provide the ability to understand Bible via the Spirit in His System. It takes years of study, but to the individual interested in God, study is a desirable thing, not a preening device or a chore. Hence the spiritual growth to Occupation with Christ is likewise desired, not a status to be obtained in order to call oneself good. Better things have come: seeing Him, forget all about whether one is good -- one's goodness, after all, was purchased ON the Cross 2000 years ago, 2Cor5:21. So the development of Occupation with Christ, is a maturation in Divine Love solely by means of Divine Power.

• These Strategic Objectives fulfill God's Answer in the Trial, as we saw in Part I's "Integrity Properties" section: God's Love will build your structural and functional integrity to God's Own Level. But Love will never coerce. God being Omnipotent, He can of course bing! us to be any way He likes, without any interim 'process' component. But He won't do that, because our freedom to CHOOSE that outcome would thus be overridden. Satan thinks God ought to sweeten the process, and God's essential reply is that any 'sweetening' shaves freedom to be something less than total. So any achievements and results, would be a sham, dependent on the 'shaving', and not truly free. So the results would be also lies, since the results would therefore depend on the 'shaving', so any 'love' results would not really be love at all. So here in Pleroma, the free result of a believer choosing to know God despite the burden of the Full Thinking of Christ demonstrates the superior nature of God's choice, versus Satan's. More importantly, the believer thus freely developed is truly happy and uncoerced.

• Hence the eternal rewards a Pleroma graduate receives, all of which maximally Glorify God, are "beyond all we can ask or imagine", for these rewards are based on Christ (Eph3:20, in context from "Pleroma" used in 3:19). It's beyond imagination to Intimately know Him and love Him with God's Own Attribute of Love. It's beyond imagination, to actually become like Him as a consequence of knowing Him, which results from learning and then "abiding" in His House of Thinking, theme of 1Jn2:1-3:2 (which play on John Chaps 14-17). [I'm still translating 1Jn directly from the Greek, not yet finished, 1JnTransandExegNotes.doc. So you won't be able to see this meaning from the English. If you're under my pastor, get his exegesis of 1Jn, which is verse by verse. I'm not using that exegesis yet in my own translation, but will test myself by it, later.]

  Nothing is impossible for God Who Wants To See His Son Everywhere He Looks. So you have to be made into a reflection of Him. You could call it a kind of cloning of His Thinking. That's God's objective for the believer's life. Any "Christlike" 'performance' God Wants, can only come from The Same Thinking Being There, First. You can't do like Christ, until you THINK like Christ. Which Thinking you can't even know until Bible is as natural to your soul, as breathing. Which, only the Holy Spirit can deposit in you, Romans 5:5.

So people will unexpectedly tell you that doggone it, you see everything in terms of Bible. For you do; it's so natural for you to do that, you don't even think about how others might hear the parallels you draw. Christ thinks that way -- everything expresses Scripture -- so you see Him talk that way all the time in the Gospels; so too Paul, Moses, David. It's now innate for you to think that way, as well. The world view you once had, is gone. To hear others have the former view, sounds alien. Total reverse, from spiritual childhood. So of course you also sound alien, to them. They will mistake your focus for religosity or even pushiness to make them believe. So you learn not to talk, to guard your words. You are as boring to them, as the proverbial wife who only and forever talks about how great is her husband. For He is yours, and male or female, your attitude toward Him is like that wife's. Everything fascinates you now, because it all depicts Him, and if you don't guard your words you'll gush or bore them. Not good.

1. CONSUMING BIBLE. You consume Bible now to know Him better, and you're doing it 24/7, whether in Bible class or not. Bible is always on your mind, because it is His Thinking, and you can't get enough. Everything you've ever learned and now learn about Him burgeons, coalesces, melds, merges, and the resulting communion in Him is truly beyond description. Paul isn't kidding in Eph3:19-21 -- those verses literally come true and you experience them, 24/7. True communion is a constant knowing, not a feeling; it's a status quo in all circumstances, bad or good, kinda like breathing. Togetherness, flat. Feeling long since became recognized for what it is: puny body reaction to stimuli. Not even worth your time. Getting control over the knowing and the feeling reaction is a major problem, given the vastness of the increase in knowing God. Dream come true. Body can't deal with it. True riches, have arrived. My pastor likes to describe this as you receiving the "spiritual blessing" portion of your "portfolio of invisible assets" in a "down payment".

   Paradoxically, it's so big that all other pressures you will ever face are no longer effective -- except because they are sooo low by comparison. Instead, it's the Knowing in the context of the other pressures, not the pressures themselves, which makes life difficult. So that's why Pleroma is a longish phase -- gotta learn how to have these true riches of knowing Him in such abundance. For everything else is dead, slow, low, by comparison. It's like the rest of the world lives in slow motion, a tape recorded at 1 7/8ths which is played at half-speed. Like having to live in close quarters with a willfully-stupid person. Very hard to live in the world which is too small, too slow -- compared to knowing and seeing Him spiritually. So you keep consuming Bible, redefining all your earthly experience in Bible terms -- just to get through it.

   How Christ survived being so high among us puny humans, is almost impossible to understand. Imagine being a genius living among small-minded folk. Imagine being a devotee of Gibbon, or physics -- but your companions with whom you must live and work, are only interested in what they ate for dinner or who they dated. Imagine being a clean modern person, suddenly thrust into the bathe-once-a-year, slobber-over-your-food, Middle Ages. It's intolerable! But you come to understand what it was like for Him, because now the same incompatibility-with-the-world, happens to you. You have to live on Bible, to survive the day.

   So, God gives it all to you, in unending scope and depth. Anything you want to know about God you can know, and both the vastness and speed of comprehension, is overwhelming. That's the pressure, and of course that's #2 in the Trial Core Issues, do you want God despite what you KNOW. Christ had to know sin -- despite being sinless, so the knowledge He got was total and horrible beyond description -- so the test was, would He still want God? Same (smaller-scale version) idea, here.

2. SPIRITUAL SKILLS. These are now fused; you live on all the 10 Thinking Skills (second row of boxes in SMP.doc, p.6). As a child you had been confused, easily conned by the world's many chippie substitutes for spirituality. But now the "con" of this world has left you; so with and in Him you are FUSED, instead. One-in-thinking. So 1Jn1:9 is always online and handy, as instinctive as your next breath. So you are almost constantly filled with the Spirit. Doctrine is all-comprehensive, firing all the time, and it's truly abnormal if you have a thought which isn't related to Bible. It's actually disconcerting to think in any other terms. Again, this stage is the opposite of spiritual childhood. Back then, remembering 1Jn1:9 was something you only did if you got spanked, or your pastor reminded you to do it prior to beginning Bible class that night. Back then, you could barely spell "salvation", let alone know what it means. Back then, you were full of the world in your eyes, and everything about being saved had this distinctly material definition of having no more pain, being finally comfortable, having loved ones around you, etc. But here in Spiritual Maturity, the world is the last thing on your mind. For you are in all the Rooms of HIS House, Abiding Function is almost Total, and that Abiding Desire, consumes you. The Abiding Development, while yet to experience its teleios completion, can. The Abiding Plunder is vast, you're receiving all the on-earth portion now, it's overwhelming, the riches of knowing Him. The Abiding Victory you've yet to taste, but you see Him -- it will happen, in good time. Most of all, you live in the "rooms" of Abiding Intimacy and Compatibility. You moved into them as your primary rooms sometime soon after you left Spiritual Adulthood behind. And you really don't want to be, anywhere else. For when you were a child, your new house was both small and empty, equipped only with a table, some chairs, and a cot. Now you live in a sumptuous mansion, greater than any you can find in the travel movies or international for-sale listings. All those vaunted castles and chateaus mean nothing to you. You have a better domicile: His.

   The hallmark signature of graduation from Spiritual Adulthood is that these thinking skills MERGE into "Occupation with Christ", as my pastor likes to put it. He becomes your base, built atop 1Jn1:9, being filled with the Spirit, basic promises and Bible reasoning; then came the GODO team, who coalesced all your understanding into a relaxation which gave rise to Spiritual Adulthood's characteristic Personal Sense of Destiny. Back then, your PSDestiny became a burning desire to know God for Himself, so you progressed into a motive and function of seeing Bible in terms of Love for Father, and all the earlier thinking skills ended up serving the Love-for-Father purpose. From there, you became happy from seeing God, and your need to derive happiness from circumstances, diminished and dwindled to almost nothing, despite the successive "momentum testing" (my pastor's term) which characterized your graduation from Spiritual Adulthood -- to where you are now, here in Spiritual Maturity.

   But that's all a base now. In fact, your base is now Occupation with Christ, and every thinking skill groups 'under' Him in some way. Indeed, every thought you think relates to Him consciously and directly in some way. "Unto the Lord" is no longer a nice Bible refrain people mouth but never understand. For you, that's your every waking moment, and even now in your dreams. So now all the thinking skills have merged into Just Him. So by analogy, if you were able to fire a rifle in your sleep, now you can deploy a whole army, complete with Kyle und Kessel. For it never happens anymore that only one set of doctrines or verses come to mind: oh no. Now, battalions of them do. You're giving up ballet and the piano in favor of combat, because of His Combat. In short, the Focus of Christ Himself has taken hold in you. Everything else, so what? You still screw up. You're just reborn for the Fourth time -- to Pleroma. For here, you're Growing Up In The Marriage.

   My pastor likes to say you grow up three times in life: physically, mentally, and in the intimate partnership of marriage. Well here, it's similar: you're first born spiritually, then born into adulthood, and now born into Intimacy with Your Eternal Husband, be you male or female. So it's the Fourth Growing Up, if you lumped all your pre-salvation growing up as the first one. So your spiritual skills have morphed to become intimate-marital and martially-oriented in content, focus, and nature. For that's what Greek verb "menw" means: marital intimacy homey-ness, and martially-adept honor.

3. THOUGHT PATTERN. 1Cor13:13's "Love" is your thinking. Growing in scope and competence. All directed, toward Him. So far as you're concerned, you've already died and gone to heaven, even while still in this body. Analogous to, how He as God Came Down and took on a Human Body. And the last place you wanna be, is down here. Once this place seemed fascinating. Now, it's past. Not present. Something you have to keep wearing, like old clothes. So this place is alien, a post you're in, and happy to get whatever He wants to send you. Your body, of course, is deaf to the spiritual life, as indeed it always was. So as a spiritual child, you took your feelings seriously, as if they represented some truth. Now, you laugh. You know better. So the body keeps on its doo-dooing urges, and you've learned how to live with that -- kinda like living with a disease that will never kill you, but will always goad you. Been there, done that, move on, Phili3:14.

   So living on knowing Him is alone how you function; everything else is anticlimatic, now. So it no longer matters what circumstances you get: the good ones are too boring, and the bad ones are too annoying. Actually, the bad ones are better. And you'll get them the most, here (usually, piled up in cycles, with enough prosperity to keep you disoriented).

   You are one weird bird in this stage. Normal human motives are to get good. Normal humanity needs things to be good, and everything in human nature is about improving what you got, to get better. But you, oh! You are "he-heli", lovesick, Hebrew term in Isa53:10. You need it bad. You need bad, not good. Christ needed the Cross as an Outlet for His "he-heli" Love. Now, so do you. Antithesis of what a normal human should want; antithesis of what a normal human should be able to take, antithesis of life as we know it. Seems masochistic. But Love is sooo Big now, it desperately needs a SuperHuman outlet. Christ said He longed for the Cross, in Luke 22:15. That "longing", well -- um, you better look up meaning #2 in Bauer, Danker lexicon for epithumew, as it takes the accusative in that verse. So you need it bad, and you need it to be bad. Smitten but smart about it, that's you in your thought pattern.

4. RELATIONSHIP TO GOD. This Focus on Him is a totality, a constant, a new base of operations (not really new, but perhaps newly-recognized for what it is). Him. Personally. Intimately. No goofball stuff. Rather, Honor is the closest word which can be used. Utter, total, Honor. And oh, your body can't take that! It's an Absolute Attitude but is inside a body which survives only on limits, so the divergence between your puny body and the Absolute Standard of Love, is intolerable. Love is not emotion: emotions are in the body, and they are all wacko, and you just learn to ignore them. Same, with circumstances. Love is not a rah-rah, strumming-harps thing. If anything feely can be said about this stage, the feeling is "trauma". For you are ever traumatized by the fact you can't meet this Standard, and everything else doesn't, either. For the trauma is the gigantic differential between the Word Whom you know, and anything else. In short, "Relationship to God" is total. You're not competent to deal with it, but it's an Absolute Attitude in you, just the same. Every thought you think references the Relationship. You might become anal about whether "God wants" you to eat fruit or Cheetos, here. For 2Cor10:5 is your all-consuming passion. Religion long since "left the building", so the motive here is love, not me-be-good garbage. What He wants is the Total Arbiter of your decisionmaking, so you want to know What He Thinks about even the most menial topics, like what you eat or wear. So you pick what's both tasty and most nutritious, since that's the most like Bible. So you pick what's most attractive and Royally-honorable in light of who will see your clothing (so as not to embarrass or impress them) -- since that's the most like Bible. See how SMARTLY besotted one becomes?!

5. LOVE GROWTH. The Trial is about Love, which by nature is a Unity, since God's Undivided: so Love is Righteousness is Truth is Justice is Omniscience is Omnipotence, etc. God's Love is on Trial, so you are therefore simultaneously growing very strong in His Love; yet, weak and needing Him more than ever. Doesn't matter anymore what your circumstances are. You've lost pretty much all attraction to this world. Your human nature is adrift, since even it can't maintain the attachments. So you are sometimes very disoriented. Your attitudes are pretty much the reverse of spiritual childhood. God used to be a mystery to you; now you know Him better than you know yourself; people used to be a mystery or a snare to you; now, you don't need them. Bible used to be a collection of words in a book which put you to sleep; now, it's your living thought pattern. The world used to be an exciting place, and how you looked or acted and what status you had was important; politics and world affairs and its actors seemed to be the movement and shaking of history; now, well -- what do I have to pay attention to? Above all, the former nervousness and naive attitude which hallmarks spiritual childhood, is way past gone. You instead think like Paul does, in Philippians, viewing your life down here or in heaven in terms of stages of being in Him.

   Seriously: He alone matters. Philippians 1:21 is really your life, in this stage. Everything else is too small, makes no sense -- even though you know those old rationales. They hit you and maybe you fall down even a lot -- but the focus shifts away from Him, not at all.

6. TRIAL STATUS. A believer's attainment of Spiritual Maturity is a major setback for Satan, as Part IV will show. Consequently, Spiritual Maturity is the most dangerous time in our spiritual lives, for the very few of us who even make it this far. Here, Doing Nothing is all-important. See, at this point it's inconceivable to you to get off Doctrine. See, at this point Love and Honor for Him galvanize your every thought; though you don't know it yet (for whatever you want to do for Him, it's never enough, in your view), your Love and Honor toward Him are structurally invincible, because the Doctrine in your soul has reached a structural level of Invincibility. But oh, how intense the Love-for-Christ. It's as though you'd hit spiritual adulthood all over again, and you'll be tempted to think you're a failure. So, a new trauma, too. Time to go from Structure, to Function. After all, the fat lady hasn't sung yet!

   Mature adults get mature and subtle circumstances in which to function. So, internal (and varying external) prosperity and adversity will cascade into the life at this stage: here we receive part of our escrow blessings, because Christ is First in our lives. That prosperity can kill maturity, because it is sooo wonderful. So the only way to keep going is to fight against prosperity: combat. Paradoxically, that's all one wants to do, too, if he keeps on keeping on! For you have HIM, now: what more can you need?

   But oh, the pressure to 'just rest a little' is huge, and the joy of the prosperity one has is Divine! See the parallel to what the Lord faced? He could have used His Divinity. He has always 'had the prosperity' of being God, but had to keep aggressively choosing not to use His Divinity to benefit Himself (Phili2:5ff) for that Task. So too we, at this stage, 'can' avoid combat. We too need to 'kenotically' avoid our can-do! Because oh, if we permanently peel off here -- and very few make it past this stage -- we will be the most miserable, most punished, believers on earth. For having grown so high, to peel off, is a mighty big fall. One had grown 'bigger', but now 'leaves' Him. As with King Saul, "nothing" will fill the void He once Occupied. Any Divine Discipline is a blessing, compared to such utterly frightening emptiness. Trouble is, as a mature adult, you don't get outside spanking, until it's almost too late to recover! Moses almost lost it for his smaller OT top-class, "Jeshurun". Paul almost lost it. The risk of loss has never been higher, than at this point in the spiritual life.

   So we need to "keep concentrating on Jesus" as the Greek of Heb12:2 begins, to survive. In a way, it's easy to do, since by this stage He is our life. We see Him every second, in every circumstance, in every speck of dust -- even when we sleep, He's our focus. The shock of Occupation with Him settles, and matures into Honor. This stage of Love manifests as an ongoing, professional and truly royal attitude: romanticism has long since departed. The desire and ability to "obey" is so honor-driven, folks in the periphery may mistake the Love for Him even as "cold", because they can't understand a Love which is above emotion. See, Love is now "without price", as Isaiah noted.

   So now the Core Trial #2 Issue of Knowing reaches its peak phase: this Spiritual Maturity is the beginning of the "Pleroma" stage Paul describes in Eph3:19. As my pastor puts it, you have "reached the high ground." Yeah, and you couldn't feel more like a helpless baby, either. For you've matured in your understanding that you are weak: God is everything, you are nothing, and like Paul in 2Cor12:9, all you want to do is boast in your weaknesses. So now you are truly strong: in Him. Holy Spirit runs the entire show, and you're on the operating table from here on out.

   The "2-3-4-5 Evidence Testing" table below and all of Part IVd focus on what you go through as Trial Evidence, so more won't be said here in this VI.

7. WEAKNESS GROWTH. In many ways, when you enter this stage, you begin all over again. The surprise in Spiritual Maturity is that you are Weak, not strong. The goal of the spiritual life is to mature you in Weakness, not your own strength. Love's development makes you weak, as anyone in love demonstrates. But this is Divine Love in which you are developed, and your human nature simply cannot handle it. Christ opted for this; we of course had no power to begin with. God was and remains Omnipotent to start with. God was and remains able to bing! you with power to start with. So what God 'hankers for', so to speak, is Weakness. He's already Omnipotent Strength. We started out at the opposite end, and craved strength to alleviate our many weaknesses. We learned instead, to just trust Him; then we learned to Wait; then we learned to Love; at which point, it no longer mattered whether we were strong. Total reversal from childhood. So now what you crave -- big evidence test, this -- is what God 'craves'. Going down, tapeinow, Phili2:8's motive. Going down, just to have a cost. Because you are weak with love for Him and for mankind, Hebrew word "heheli" in Isa53:10. It's an Absolute, despite your puny nature. Which that nature demonstrably can't handle. You are living almost solely and almost all the time, on His Thinking. Nothing else can sustain you, and nothing else motivates you, either.

   Christ was Made Sin As A Substitute For Us, 2Cor5:21's Greek. So the closest a believer can come to knowing that experience, is here. That's why you are on the operating table. Prosperity or adversity, are the same. It's a simultaneity, a communion, and you are utterly helpless, no matter how well or badly your body seems to be operating. No matter how nice or horrible, are your circumstances. The divergence between the high spiritual life and the dead body life, is exponentially increasing. Feel good, feel bad, your soul is torn apart, either way. A "cross" isn't defined by how it feels. It's defined by the divergence. So you get both kinds, feel good and feel bad. And hence, you are helpless. And you want to be helpless: it's the culmination of all you ever wanted, Just Christ, Phili1:21.

   Here's why. Omniscience is TOTAL. So all the bad, all the good, all-at-once, occurring. To be close to God, you have to become like God, which is why you got His Righteousness that first nanosecond you believed in Christ, 2Cor5:21. Post-salvation, the goal is to get you to finish being filled up with DDNA, His Thinking, per Rom8:4's Greek. Per Rom12:1-3, that's a Transmutation process, which results in a 'building' per Eph3:15-19. And where you are on the spiritual map at this point, is Eph3:19 itself. At the beginning of it; and you'll stay there, until you die completed in it; or, you spin out in favor of Satan's plan. Zig zags and sin are still normal; it's Whether You Divorce (a permanent rejection), not the ups and downs of being totally in love with Him. Absolutely so.

   Here, then, what you have been learning all along, comes up-front-close: Two knowings are co-existing. The bad -- which at this point is anything other than His Thinking -- and the Good -- the Agathos, Divine Good (always mistranslated), which is His Thinking. It's like two circles of awareness, one heavenly and the other hellish. Even were you sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean during a beautiful day. Nothing compares to His Thinking. So you are getting trained in the all-at-once quality of God's Omniscience, on a smaller scale. It's the simultaneity which is being developed. For the Cross is a Simultaneity: the sins hitting Him and all that Divine DNA going on -- all-at-once, side-by-side. For that's how it really is, in Omniscience. One big Unity, a System of Truth. Playing live. Never ends, never changes, all-at-once all-time-at-once. And you gotta 'taste' that in larger doses, from here on out. It 'merges' you, to go through this.

   It's this Simultaneity which completed Christ on the Cross, Heb5:8-9, Heb12:2. It's two circles, and they are in a kind of tandem, and they also cycle ever bigger until a fusion (for lack of a better word) occurs. Then, completed, you (usually) die not long afterwards. Again, parallel to His Ps31:5 dying words. It's very rough, and you couldn't want any other experience, more. [Phase takes a long time for the believer, sounds like. My pastor tried to guesstimate the time for Paul, who made it (2Tim4:7-8): I'm not sure he ever settled on a number of years. Assuming 30AD was when Paul was hit in Damascus, since he died in 68AD it took 38 years to finish, but who knows how reliable a period that is for other believers (Paul was also the worst sinner in history, as well as the most-developed believer).]

   It's Total God-Dependence, On Trial. For after all, only God is Good, and only God can create Integrity in you. At this stage, Love means you don't find acceptable anything you can do on your own, and you're given can-do's to REFUSE, just as Job, Moses, David -- and especially, Christ. What you can do is not acceptable, for what you want is what God Can Do, instead. Thus you seem to be extraordinarily passive, and to your human nature, it's surreal: Why aren't I DOING something to relieve this pressure? will keep hitting the brain. But the fact is, just as you might have become anal about what to even eat or wear, you just plain want God's Decision to govern even the most traumatic big things. Like, whether you will live or not. You're not sitting on a park bench waiting for a million dollars to drop on you. You're waiting for His Decision on a thing to be known; or, if known, you're waiting like Abraham did, for it to be enacted. This is the absolute antithesis of what you thought spirituality was, when you were a child. The absolute opposite of what the doo-dooing world, considers "good", "strong", "right". Just as Satan thinks in Matt4, so also does the world. And you are dead opposite, all of them. Reflecting your Lord the Lamb Who Did Nothing, Dying to Everything.

   For it's a paradox of Royal Rule, that you just sit there. Learning that poise is extremely difficult, and while the outer mien is passive, the inner mind is extremely active. So you're very selective about what you do, pending sufficient information from God. Which, at this stage, you often get quickly; and if you do not, you know you're being tested for patience. It's anything but passive, but will look that way on the outside. Just like, a sitting Ruler would look.

So that's how you think of Him during this last and greatest phase of the spiritual life. So you lucky devil -- now you go On Trial to test how true that attitude is. Yikes.

To maximally demonstrate the value of #2 and #3 in the Trial, at this point we are successively hit with the same strategic pattern of tests as Satan applied against Christ in Matt 4: all the things we ever wanted AT ONCE; but, overlapping, we are also cascaded with all the things we never wanted, too. So, being "occupied with Christ" is what sustains us during these last, most-intensive tests ever faced: what my pastor calls the (usually-invisible) "Evidence Tests" (in Part IVd). [If you analyze the Matt4 temptations over some days or months, seeking each day to see yet another layer of meaning Satan aimed within each temptation; if you spend time thinking about what Christ Himself wanted and didn't want, you'll see how those three seemingly-simple temptations were utterly devastating. 'Operating on innumerable levels: subtle, quick, so-easy-to-screw-up!]

God's '2-3-4-5' Evidence Testing Alphabet and Structure FREEDOM, LOVE and JUSTICE 'Unity' Key, TESTED ==> Remember Part II's first table, "Freedom, Love and Justice 'Unity' Key" link? Why the Trinity and Why the Hypostatic Union? Remember Part II's last table? How the Trinity Evidence-Tested itself ON the Cross, "God's Evidence Test of Himself" link? So, then: we know exactly the Evidence Test Answer from Son and Spirit: that Father is the Be-All and End-All of life, "ta panta". And Father? He has the Same Attitude toward Son and Spirit! Since Son and Spirit are Co-Equal but instead Choose To Subordinate to Father, what other answer can there be, for such choice? For the Son, that means creation reflects His desire for lateral cost, so to maximally express His Love for Father. For Spirit, that means growing the created rational beings to have that same attitude: fixing our tohu wa bohu even as He restored the trashed-by-Satan&Co. planet, in Gen1:2. [See "Creationism" entry in VERindex.htm for the other "tohu" verses to show that Moses is making that analogy to restoring us, too, when writing Gen1:2. If you are under my pastor, get his Genesis '75 tapes.] And of course, Father throws Himself down in Love, in that He must do what He least desires -- to Judge His Own Sinless Son for our sins which He also imputes to Him. So for Each of them, the dream-come-true, IS the worst nightmare! Parallel to Son, we get the consummate privilege of having His Same Throw-Down-the-Self, Love Attitude; it functionally demonstrates via constantly living on Christ's Own Thinking. Rapport. Relationship with God is the Reason for living, so expressing laterally this Reason is the grounds for any lateral relationships in life. For us, that means we want to use everything we have, bad or good (and especially bad) to also maximally express Love for Him (see last half of Romans 8). And the way you throw yourself down, is to DO NOTHING. God does everything TO you, instead. Just like the Cross. God's Evidence Testing Alphabet God's Evidence Testing Alphabet is a subset of His Love Alphabet. Absolute, Autonomous God need merely Assume a thing, think a thing -- and it is exactly so. Because He Assumes All Power and Responsibility, not merely is Power and Responsibility, Isa45:7. Agathos, even. So as Basileus of All He could just therefore Bing! everything to be nice and perfect, but then nothing has a free and independent character. But God is Free, so doesn't want Bondage; but rather, Benefit. Bigger Benefit than if it were always nice and perfect. So, He could instead bing! everything to have a free and independent Character, and then bing! each thing to have the Cost He wants Crowning that thing, never waiving its own autonomy to be what it is. And then, Compensating that Cost. Simultaneity, hupostasis. Verbal Plenary Inspiration. And so He Decreed that Cost, that Crowning, that Character, Isa52:13-14. As a result, He Enables us free, souled creation to have His Same Autonomous Assumption Privilege, so to train us in His Own Omniscience and Omnipotence -- just as He trained the Humanity of His Own Son, Who is First God Himself. Thus born with Total Divine Power. Yet, Eschewing it -- in favor of the Enabling of the Holy Spirit. Ergo we Christians have that Same Full Power, John 3:34 and 7:39 -- but not God's Smarts to go with it. So the Christian life is about Getting, Growing, and being Governed in and by His Thinking; which Thinking, is how He chooses to use Himself and His Powers. Consequently, whether we are ignorant of Him or well-versed, our own soul's motives 'Head' and hence govern the character of the experience; both meaning and effect will indeed be as we rule in our own Hearts, Matt 7:2, Prov 23:7. Which character, should be Honor. For He is Our Honor. So instead of a good or bad thing just being a good or bad thing, it also becomes whatever meaning we Impute to it. So if you impute a bad meaning to brushing your teeth, the next time you brush, it will have bad meaning. If you impute too low a meaning to brushing your teeth, then the next time you brush it will have that low meaning. If you Impute too low a meaning to God or the spiritual life, then the next time "God" or "spiritual" occurs to your mind, the meaning will be too low. He is Our INTEGRITY, so aiming high is the name of the game. By contrast, if while we are living in God's System we vote for God's Own Justice Rule to govern: and then He does. So too, if we want that good or bad thing to have the Kingly character God wants it to have, in His System we vote that, and -- it is so. Hence Kenosis occurs, as His Kingship governs, instead of our own. It's just like prayer, when you are Living in God's System at the time you pray. Prayer is a Legally-Binding Vote for a thing to be or not be. And so, it is Law. And so, it is Love. Therefore whatever your Motive, whatever your (legal) Motion voted while Living in God's System, that's how it is: for you are a believer in Christ. Hence while living in God's System, you can 'Nominate' your experience, your self, anything -- to glorify Christ. And it is so. Thus the Nature you are Nominating, is the Nature which is growing in you. When Love is so deep that all the nicenesses are no longer enough to express Love, bad stuff becomes the needed Outlet. So we can Opt for the bad thing to benefit God.. and it is so. Thus Omnipotence plays within our own being, towards the Oneness Goal Christ prayed for in John 17. For Truth poured into our hearts, pours out as Love for God, Romans 5:5. That Romans 5:5 Plenary Genitive Process thus results in the self being grateful, relieved, amazed, Pleased to have the Painful or Petty stuff. Like, a cross. Propitiation, even. Purification, even. Prosperity, even, Hebrews 12:2+Isa52:13+Isa53:12. Alongside this incredible gratitude, the qvetching cacaphony of human objections constantly clamors in the soul. It doesn't 'play' pretty: it plays like Twilight Zone. But it's Qorban, wholly-dedicated-to-God in meaning. Just as Christ is Qadosh. The gratitude Remains and grows; the cacaphony Remains and grows. So, you'll be constantly struck by thoughts of hate/ fear/ guilt/ whatever-most-gets-you about what pressures you face. Yet often each thought is met by an exact matching (often punning) Reigning counterthought of its Real Bible meaning. And, it is so! Royally. His Thinking in you Stays the pressure; His Thinking gradually Supercedes and becomes Stronger and more fluent under ever-greater Stress of ever-greater Spheres, as the Testing persists. Horror and heaven, side-by-side. For that's how it is for Omnipotent, Omnis