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Thinking Out Loud: the Lord vs. Satan webseries, Introduction

For a Text-to-Speech rendition of this webpage, see the audio player below:

If your mind often asks 'tough' spiritual questions, and you like reading a lot of material about such questions, this series might be right up your alley. The series is very long; all my websites (except "Tulips?") derive from it. The series is probably the best-written, most interesting, and most interactive of all my sites; but since it spans eternity past through eternity future, its resulting 'plot' is very thick with subthemes; threads run throughout all Parts. Hence you gotta go through it in ORDER, and that means plowing through a good 1500 printed pages' worth of material. The writing is dense, too, so you can't gloss over paragraphs. It will be easy to get lost. Intra-page links atop each page (just below the topmost layer) will help you navigate between sections. If that's too daunting a challenge, try reading the above "Paradox" page, instead: it's only about 65 printed pages. It summarizes Trial issues, and spans the same period of time. Another helpful page for personal orientation in light of the Trial, is DueDisclosure.htm.

They say Herodotus spent his life making his History better, constantly rewriting it. Well, we believers are to be constantly written ON by the Holy Spirit (main and very witty theme in Peter's letters); so this writing has been on my mind since 1986, and the ideas have been undergoing auditing revision since that time. For, I didn't understand WHY God did all this. Enquiring mind wanted to know. My pastor always says that you can't account for the spiritual life in undefinable terms. Meaning, always audit your beliefs. Well, accounting is part of what I do for a secular living. So that's the goal, here: a good spiritual audit.

    This auditing was obviously private, for decades. But as a webseries, it was born in April 2000 under weird circumstances. A janitor named Jesus -- I kid you not -- found a Windows computer in the trash. For his own reasons, he decided to save it for me, hoping he'd run into me downstairs in the building garage, so he could give it to me. Two weeks passed, and we didn't run into each other. I of course had no idea this was happening; and he had no idea what that computer could do. He also didn't know that I wrote webpages ("Tulips?" existed then, and a few minor pages). For, I was using webtv (I hate Windows, love DOS instead). And where I lived, the phone bill was astronomical (you have to compose online, with webtv). So I was going to stop writing.

    Hence when I did run into him, I was completely surprised, and I refused the computer: it was finder's keepers, the previous owner having disposed of it -- so 'Jesus' should have it, right? Oh no: he insisted I take it. I didn't know his own reasons, nor did I explain how wry a thing, this insisted offer was: but clearly God's reasons were evident. So I took it, found what software it had, learned about its mIRC and web connections, and went to Office Depot to make that computer 'honest'. Can't get a gift from God and then cheat the software people, huh...

    So you could say this webseries was 'meant' to be.

Can't audit, without a history; can't audit, without an underlying conceptual framework to track back to. Hence the historical framework underlying the series, is Angelic Divorce Appeal Trial, filed by Satan, which is the proximate cause for Adam's creation. Which means we first have to account for God's Own Choices. So the series necessarily has a drama-epic quality. Running sotto voce, the series operates as an audit trail, particularly with reference to WHY the Church post-salvation spiritual life is so much higher, compared to all the other groups'. Along with his teaching about the Trial itself, that claim about the nature of our spiritual life, is my pastor's, and he proves it well. So much of the writeup is to test my comprehension, test the validity, and coalesce what what I've learned. Quick caution: don't assume that the series' content accurately reflects his teaching. Obviously I think it does, but that's internal to my own understanding; doesn't mean you should take 'my' word for it, k? Each of us must execute his own due diligence, which means accessing source material, not relying on hearsay. Hearsay can expose you to connections and ideas, but that's about it.

    The "DDNA" series (link at pagetop) is the micro-complement to the "Thinking" series, and is also long. Whereas the "Thinking" series focuses on the legalities and accountings for the nature of the spiritual life throughout history, DDNA focuses on what the Holy Spirit does to the believer's soul, during Church. Trial emphasis in DDNA is also present, but from the spiritual-biological end, what YOU become. DDNA thus functions as a kind of appendix to Parts III and IV of the "Thinking" series, so you can better understand what happens to you as you go 'under the knife' of God's Word in God's System.

    "God's System" (link at pagetop) is a short and vital webpage on how you live the spiritual life. It's not a denominational thing, so threatens no denomination. Same basic five Elements are in every covenant from Adam through the Millenium; so the relevant covenant governs particulars within itself: but the overall process, is always the same. So if you're not in God's System, you're spiritually comatose. God's System is the most important of all webpages, therefore. And after you follow it for a few weeks, you should be able to see the results in your own spiritual life, so you won't need anyone to prove it to you, since you'll have proof in your own soul. PRIVATELY. For the spiritual life is between GOD and YOU, no one else!

Hence BIBLE Doctrinal fit is the purpose of all due-diligence, spiritual auditing; that auditing must be ongoing, as part of God's System Element Five in your spiritual life. Goal of all hermeneutics: Perfect Word means perfect doctrine; so if the doctrine you think you see isn't fitting, the interpretation is wrong somewhere, so to that extent is not Biblical. So, you go back to the drawing board. If translators could do this audit tracking (and maybe they are not allowed, who knows), we'd not have errors like in James 4:5, Isa45:7 and 53:12, Gen3:11, etc. -- all of which translations' errors, make God look 'bad'. Same could be said for many denominational tenets. We don't audit our interpretations, but we should. This is the Word of God. Our mistakes can be corrected; He died on the Cross, so we needn't feel bad about error. What we should feel bad about is stubbornness. Christians are notoriously stubborn, not wanting to be confused with the facts.

    The worst Christians born are those who dismiss Bible, who cling to their beliefs in the name of God but really owing to people. Vile and common thing, that. What your parents or friends or admired-person believes, rather than what the Word says. Which Word, people don't bother to learn. Spits on God, that. So being wrong is fine: it's WHY one PERSISTS in not learning the correction, that's truly wrong, Heb12:5ff. And we are all guilty of that, from time to time. So welcome to the human race...

So, then: you haven't really tested an interpretation of Bible until you've tested it at the big-picture level. Same is true of secular auditing, or balancing asset portfolios. WHY is first, and at the uppermost level of analysis, HOW GOD IS, and WHY GOD WANTS a thing. Else, the interpretation isn't tracked to source, and therefore becomes suspect. So, then: the first why, is our origin, which is due to this Trial. The fact of the Trial itself is unevenly acknowledged in Christendom, so much of series' webspace has to be spent demonstrating how you yourself can see the Angelic Trial issues, reflected in daily life. They will surprise you.

    It will take longer to see how Bible talks about the Trial, because translations don't translate Trial legal language really IN Bible (wish they did). God starts out right away in Gen1:2, telling us about this Trial, but you won't know, from the translations. [See "Paradox" link at pagetop, for more detail on Genesis, which begins as soon as you load that page.] For example, words like "Satan" (means "opposing attorney"), "case", "Testimony", "Witness", etc. are Angelic Trial words. It's not a hidden doctrine in Bible -- only hidden, in translation.

    Abram's witness, for example, was not to mankind, but in the Angelic Trial. The Christ on the Cross defeated Satan in the Trial -- major subtheme of Hebrews (Heb11:1 flatly says in Greek that the Angelic Trial Iissue is your thinking His Word); also, Ephesians, Jude, 1Jn, Peter -- so if you don't know all this, the Rapture makes no sense. So you'd be inclined to dismiss Rapture is even a Bible doctrine; so would not be able to spot its hundreds of references in the NT. The fact no one saw Abraham nearly sacrifice Isaac, and no one saw Christ receive our sins (too dark!), should tip people off to the idea that some larger Trial is going on, and this "witness" is not to people. So too, the Book of Job. After all, it's not as if God needed to see proof.. so then To Whom is all this Invisible Evidentiary Witness ("elechos ou Blepomenwn", in Heb11:1), going? Oh well.

So, because Christendom doesn't evenly recognize the Trial, and because it's the grand canvas: to do all this auditing properly, the whole of God's Design must be sketched and tracked out. For obviously, as important as He makes us, we are but a part of that whole, and need to orient to the whole in order to orient to our 'part'. Webseries "Parts" are described below. After that follow some important notes on the series' deliberately-entertaining writing style, auditing assumptions, and the Biblical extrapolative deduction method.

These Parts are divided chronologically. No Part is less than 60 printed pages (Part IV itself runs 400 pages+), so it's not a good idea to print.

  • Part I: This is an overview page, so starts with where we are NOW, basic description of Trial Issues. Essential for understanding the 'flow' of the later Parts. Easiest to read. Start here if you're not sure you want to read much.
  • Part II: Eternity Past, Raison d'etre for creation, through the Cross: aka, "Then". Important foundational material about God's nature and purpose, sin nature, Mosaic Law nature, Trial issues then, how Cross affected the Trial. Trial issues due to sin take up most of the page, and will require thinking over.
  • Part III: NOW, the Church 'Age' (Pauline term, Eph1 and Eph3:21's lexeme): structure and issues of the spiritual life for us. Page is very informative, fast-paced, and exhausting. Frankly this page is critical to vetting what the spiritual life IS, and should be, from both Scripture and logic. If you read nothing else, scan through this page.
  • Part IV: Now versus Later, why Church ends with Rapture, and Why Rapture kicks off the Trib. Load the page and note its own four-webpage subseries, to see how it is categorized. Very difficult to go through. Most technical Part in the series. You're making a big time commitment if you start Part IV. It took four years of rewriting to get Part IV's voluminous parameters, described and explained. Very engrossing, hard to put down, and a killer to read, mostly because so many false ideas of Rapture exist, the explanation of the correct idea, had to be much longer. Bring aspirin.
  • Part V: Later, Trib-Eternal State, with postscript on nature of Hell. Has subpages in it, as well, which you'll see when loading. If you survive Part IV, then Part V will be easy!
  • Appendix: Satan's Strategy and Tactics. Lots of detail and examples. Very rough going, to read this page, but all of it is empirically testable, once you know what to look for. Page shows with many examples, what PATTERNS to seek in detection and testing. Most of its contents arose from seeing the patterns first, empirically, then backing into what Bible corroborated of them. Pretty shocking, really, since it IS so provable in even everyday stuff. Once you know what to look for, you'll find corroboration almost constant.

You needn't agree with the audit-trail conclusions to benefit from them. Rather, you learn how to DO an audit-trail by seeing one. In fact, the trail of presentation is extremely useful. Way back in Paul's day, audit trails were practiced by means of something called "Greek Debater's technique": meaning, you picked a premise (didn't matter whether you agreed with it or not), and then tracked it through to the conclusion. Modern forensic debate in US high school and college uses the same 'argument' method of auditing. So, of course, such a pattern sounds dogmatic, to make it easier to follow the train of thought, the audit path. So, of course, such 'speech' is persuasive. The neophyte who mistakes the declarative method of exposition for some sales pitch, misses out on the profit of reading/listening to such discourse. The ancient Greeks practiced it all the time: it was called "rhetoric", and if you wanted to be upper-class, you learned it. That's what Plato's (and later, Aristotle's) school taught; for, "rhetoric" was primarily intended as an analytical tool to seek and diagnose truth. So the style always sounds aggressive and 'pushy', like someone's selling something. Or, like a lawyer, arguing.

Oh, but audit trails and even debates are interminably boring to read! So Scripture isn't written that way, but rather with lots of drama words, color, humor (often sexual) and even deliberate offense. God is not shy. You won't see hardly any of that Divine Color in Bible translations. So, writing style in this series seeks to imitate those original-language writing styles in Scripture, though in somewhat diluted form. Even if it makes me blench, to do so. It's real important to learn the writing style of Scripture, because much of the Truth about a doctrine, is conveyed by the style. Translations bland out Bible, so the reader's grasp of its truth, is often lost. For example, if you weren't alert to the fact Paul often uses sanctified sarcasm in Romans, you'd think he was praising or pleading with his audience, in Rom12:1. He's not. So verses 2 and 3, seem to come from nowhere, in the translation. Same is true for Hebrews 5:11-6:13, and parts of Heb10, which are scathing. (It doesn't help that the imperative of prohibition is always mistranslated in Bible, so you get the wimpy translations like "do not be angry", instead of "stop being angry!" in Ephesians.)

Thus the series often reads more like an epic narrative, with lots of sarcasm (a Big Biblical style!); with allusive and direct Bible keywords, references, and citations. Not at all the style of a scholarly tome, though the information is technical enough. Real Bible isn't boring, so the writing style shouldn't be boring, either. Warning to the tenderhearted: style in Bible is often caustic, so the writing style here will be also (makes me wince to do it, though). Christ is no wimp, was not a long-haired hippie, and never shied away from the sarcastic or offensive remark when it was appropriate. His Wit -- all Bible! -- is totally astonishing. Even the later translations of the Gospels now show more His 'color' which the original-language texts, blatantly display. Wish they'd show more of that same color, in the OT and NT epistles: then no one would claim that only the "red-letter text", was really His Words!

Oh: during the telling of this epic, the audience (you) frequently participates. Because, the audience (you) happens to be the principal character in this saga! For, we are on stage, all of us: before God, before angels, and to a much lesser extent, before our fellow humans. The 'play', then, is about how we got here, why we are on stage, what is our "Script", and what happens if the Script is -- or, is not -- learnt. It's a pretty dramatic tale, alright.

Oh, but before the curtain opens with your clicking on "Part I" at pagetop, the pince-nez accountant must make 'due diligence' disclosures.

1. Series AUDIT assumptions regarding the nature/knowledge of Angels, Adam and the Woman pre-Fall, and whether people can get out of Hell: CLICK HERE to read.

2. This webseries EXTRAPOLATES advanced doctrines I've learned, so to see the "grand scheme" of God's Plan. So, (where noted) I'm sometimes less certain that what's written is true. So, I write to examine doctrinal coherence. So, I use Biblical keywords, to see their interrelationships, as Scripture writers do, imitating the thought-flow style they teach us by their writing.

  • Why is it okay to extrapolate? Well, just as in mathematics, you take the building blocks to learn postulates, corollaries, and theorems, so also with Divine Thinking, one derives from the KEYWORDS or KEYPHRASES, the relationships among the verses. One doesn't just memorize or take soundbyte meanings from math -- how much more, should one THINK OUT the meanings of interrelated verses? Especially, since they all interrelate on literally hundreds of levels (depicting the Coherence and Perfection of Divine Thinking)?

  • But isn't extrapolation like eisegesis, reading into Scripture what's not there? It can be. Then again, we're mandated to extrapolate (see Deut Chaps 4-6, Romans 12, Hebrews 4). So, using 1Jn1:9 consistently while turning over the aerial-view of the verses protects one from hallucinating meaning. Of course, we shouldn't do this only once, heh. Rigorous repetition and constant self-examination are required.

  • Oddly enough, the reverse of eisegesis is just as bad: shaving off what IS in Scripture. That is the norm, too. The worst thing one can do is stand pat on some doctrine (i.e., the way denominations do), frozen in time and understanding. Traditionally, both with respect to translation, and with respect to interpretation, both mainstream Judaism and Christianity chop off meanings which really ARE in Scripture: you can't pass their seminary courses if you don't accept their chopped meanings. So, they advocate taking a mindless, rote memorization approach. Kinda like the way some pray at the Wailing Wall. Extrapolation helps prevent such mindlessness, such stuckness.

  • Yet extrapolation is also long a tradition in Judaism, and its history reveals both the bad and good usage of extrapolation. The Mishnah is a collection of witty extrapolations. It aims to imitate the dense, word-play weaving style of the OT writers. Of course, you'll see perfect uses of extrapolation throughout the OT. ('Isaiah, Moses' conversations with God and Deut writings, in Jeremiah, Psalms, etc.)

The biggest reason why we are mandated to extrapolate: God wants us to think like His Son, not like Bible-quoting automatons. The commands to think, know, reason are prominent in Scripture. And why not? How can one obey the First Commandment, until one first comes to know God? How can one obey God until thoroughly versed in His Thinking?

Thinking is a process; we are to add one key concept or verse to the next (precept upon precept), one thought to the next, in a certain kind of "flow". That flow, that reasoning process, is taught us over and over again by means of the way verses of the Bible are written. In the OT, the flow is illustrated by the way God reveals certain facts; by what God omits saying, as well. In the NT, the thought-flow is presented as principles (the Gospels being a deliberate hybrid of the OT and NT methods). Thus, one can see how the doctrines, the principles, interrelate. Thus, one can learn to think like the Son: "for we have the Mind of Christ" (1Cor2:16). Far beyond "works", this: our first job is to think like Christ. Any works flow from that, just as James explained, when he said "be ye doers of the Word" -- ending the point with the example of Abraham, whose thinking culminated in him LOVING God so much he wanted to sacrifice his own son, if God demanded.

So God wants us to use the extrapolation-logic Paul, John, Peter and James demonstrate in their epistles: take the known facts, and from them deduce further, hitherto-unknown facts (known as "a fortiori" in Latin, and "Chrysippus'  logic" in Greek).  In short, we are commanded to think-out, to extrapolate.

For way more on the basics of detecting and extrapolating Scriptural patterns, look at NTKeys.htm. Or, just pick a verse and track its main nouns and verbs/participles in the Greek, to ALL other verses where those SAME words occur: so you get the basic idea Bible deliberately references other verses by this technique. That's how you learn to extrapolate, for that's what Bible itself, does. You can't do this tracking with translations; they don't properly translate or uniformly translate Bible keywords (which are in every sentence, usually the nouns, especially the participles, and often the main verbs).

So, I try to imitate Scripture's succinctly-dense, grammar/word-playing, weaving and keyword tracking style, so to better learn and practice the mandate that we think like Him (Phil2:5, 2Pet3:18, Rom12:2-3, Eph1:15-23, Eph3:15-19, "doers of the Word, and not hearers only", etc).

So, what can you do with this extrapolation? You can use it to play off your own, in the privacy of your mind, free before the Lord. May the Holy Spirit use any thoughts here to further stimulate and profit your own! For we are both part of His Body.. forever! Phili1:20-21!


Thinking Out Loud: the Lord vs. Satan webseries Audit Assumptions

Certain assumptions are made for the sake of auditing ease and clarity. Many of these are minor and obvious, for the sake of displaying how multilevel and punning Scripture is. For example, Scripture's Revelation Millenial description of Jerusalem is worded in terms of gems, precious stones, but clearly means a people under the Christ: no doubt, though, the city itself will be constructed as described, to depict that people under the Christ. So in Part I of the webseries, the OT term "stones of fire", is rendered as tall, literal gems which act as wall-plates for the Son's massive, assembly-sized Throne Room, even though the Scripture term is clearly metaphorical: the angels, whose bodies are composed of light, are as beautiful as boulder-sized gems. However, there are two other major assumptions which the reader must know in advance, for these assumptions impact audit-trail tracking. These two assumptions are covered in the brown paragraphs below.

One of the hermeneutical problems folks have with Scripture concerns passages where the writer is obviously so familiar with the topic he covers, he just references, rather than explains. Clearly the audience was likewise familiar. Human language and speech follow the same save-time-explaining pattern; thus the linguistic terms are many: "ellipsis", "ellision", "contraction", "abbreviation", etc. That is, something is left out because everyone knows what is missing. 'Which is missing, because it's so obvious, you'd lose the hearer's attention, to not omit. So, the person today who studies Scripture must be alert for writer familiarity: 'a big ROADSIGN pointing to foundational truths. Moreover, Scripture's original languages use every linguistic nuance of that time, every style of speech/writing from the extreme elegance of Isaiah's Hebrew and Hebrews' Greek, to the coarse epithets of Biblical characters and the apostle Paul's, to Peter's (probably deliberate) colloquialisms. Every verse is so keenly crafted, even the syntax and sound convey volumes of information; even what nuances are omitted orchestrate yet more critical data. In short, it's the plethora of small, deft characteristics like these which Scripture uses to stress meaning via extrapolation.

So, then: historically, there has been a lot of confusion about what Scripture means by its descriptions of angelic properties, and parallels between God and angels, angels and man. So, by inferring connections, assumptions are made; that inference is commanded by God is clear, since a) the books of what we call "the Bible" have always said (somewhere in the text, and provable, from the text) they are from God; and b) Scripture writers themselves explain things by metaphor, analogy, and thus by inference (particularly Paul). Inferences can always be tested, and should be audited. That's how you learn the most important stuff, how you learn how God Himself thinks, how you yourself come to think like He does, over time (assuming 1Jn1:9 is kept handy and used).

So, in this webseries, assumptions of magnitude are often in brown/maroon font. It's important to make assumptions for the sake of the webseries flow, because we ourselves are part of the Angelic Conflict: we know from verses like 1Cor4:9, 1Pet1:12 (and the like) that THEY watch us to learn. Thus it is obviously important to describe our own spiritual lives' purpose also in the context of the Angelic Conflict. So, assumptions are made concerning the parallels in our spiritual lives to those of the angels (from Adam through the Eternal State), solely to present a cohesive, audit-trail picture. The premise chosen makes reader tracking of all constituent variables easy, despite webseries length, because the premise is modular: premise components are thus obvious. What's the premise? That angels, like we, sinned and could be saved; that the Lord's Humanity paid for angelic sins, as well as for all human ones. As the webseries unfolds, you'll not only see this premise portrayed, but you'll also gradually learn why it makes sense to so assume. Moreover, this premise is easy to later fix, to patch in a better accounting, yet keep the tracking flow intact: kinda like changing clothes.

For, there's more than one set of could-they-be-saved assumptions which could account for the angelic side in the series; in fact, one could even assume fallen angels can't be saved, yet fully account for how we have what we receive from Our Lord without contradiction. In short, the assumptions about the angels don't need to be correctly stated now, to properly portray what IS known as correct: our own spiritual life and purpose in this most epic of dramas, of Truth. The assumptions about the angels will be revised and corrected (where need be), later. More about this topic is covered in Part II's "What if Angels DIDN'T get Salvation" table.

Another assumption regarded what knowledge was given to the angels at their simultaneous creation; what knowledge was given to Adam and the woman at their individual creations. The assumption turns on the definition of what "Perfect" must mean. We know that "Perfect" doesn't solely mean Infinite, for Adam and the woman were initially perfect, that angels initially were also. Ok, but how much knowledge is included in the term "perfect", and of what kinds would it have to be comprised? The assumption for angels was that at least Satan knew everything, including the plan to make man, the plan for the Son to take on Humanity. The other angels probably knew this too. There's some reason to conclude that both Adam and the woman knew there was a salvation package for them, also, even before they sinned, though the webseries takes the position that they did not know. Again, all these assumptions can be revised and corrected as needed -- later.

    There is an interaction between knowledge and volition. Too much knowledge, and volition is 'influenced'. Too little, and it is also 'influenced'. So a BALANCE of the RIGHT amount of knowledge so volition remains fully FREE, is what "perfect" means. God is The Ultimate Free Person, so is Omniscient. But we are finite. To know more than some perfect "x" amount at creation would require volition CHOOSING to know, in order to not violate free will. That's really the underpinning issue: Do you want to know Me better? God keeps on asking. For Love will never coerce. So the angels didn't know at God's Level, but they knew all that could be known without it affecting their free will. Thereafter, they could know more, depending on their choices. Hence for Adam and the woman, the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" was SATAN's knowledge as a result of his sin -- and they had to be offered that knowledge, but it couldn't be forced on them. Eating from whatever fruit the tree had, was a CHOICE to GET that knowledge. Which, they both knew.

    The Original Sin was from the woman's side, choosing to get something ON HER OWN versus what she could get from God. Same sin, as Satan's in Isa14:13-14. Adam's sin -- which we inherit directly in our DNA -- was to GET THE WOMAN versus God fixing her (or some other alternative). So both of them sinned MORALLY -- a religious sin. Satan is the author of religion. So choosing people over God is the WORST and most evil tendency in the human race. That's what the couple did. That's been going on ever since. We disregard the First Commandment and pay oodles of attention to #2-#10, and have the nerve to call ourselves faithful to God. It's disgusting. More importantly, it's SATANIC. Same ploy, as back in the Garden, getting the couple to look at each other, but not at God. No wonder we humans are so unhappy.

    God is undentably happy. So our rejection is no threat to Him, ever. Hence free will thus remains an issue in the human race, and one is constantly choosing to know what God wants to give you to know.. or what Satan&Co. want to give you to know. Well, we keep on choosing to know good and evil. Note that well: it's NOT ABOUT SIN, but about "good" and "evil", rather than God, John 16:8-11. The Cross nailed away sin: we are left with choices regarding God, versus Satan's good-and-evil knowledge (term is hyphenated grammatically, in the Hebrew).

    Sin exists, but it was paid for so is NOT a Trial issue. Every time Satan brings up sins we commit, God throws that accusation out of court. So Satan stresses rather that we don't want God. You can see this all over the OT, but it's not easy to spot in translation, since the legal courtroom words are blanded out. But even the translations can't completely mask the beginning of Job1 and Job2, nor Zech 3, nor "accuser" verses, nor Genesis 6. It would help if they bothered to translate rather than transliterate, folks' names -- Methusaleh, for example, means that when he dies, the Flood begins -- so mankind had 1000 years' advance notice on the Verdict of the Flood. Stuff like that, makes it easy to track the fact that sin isn't the issue, but WHO are you voting for.

    Forget sin, Paul counsels in Phili3:13-14; use 1Jn1:9 as needed, live in God's System, since only the Word can heal you from sins. You can't heal yourself, it's evil to try, and all the temptation you'll ever get is to "do it yourself." So if you try to do it yourself, you are voting for Satan. For it's EVIL, to do a thing on your own: that was the original temptation to which Adam and the woman succumbed; that is the temptation matrix in Matt4; that is the temptation to which Christians especially succumb every hour. It's do you vote for God to remake you, or.. do you do it your way? Period.

Finally, the "Thinking" series contains a running CONCLUSION that unbelievers/fallen angels CAN get out of Hell. I now somewhat believe that they'd never go there in the first place if they didn't first totally and knowingly reject God for so long, they'd never ever change. If there were even a .0000000000000001% chance they would change their minds, God would keep them alive/out of Hell. However, since explaining that point is way too hard for the likely reader, I opt instead for a position I once believed true: that even in Hell, one can technically get out (because Christ paid for all sin, a fact we can explicitly prove from Scripture, beyond doubt). Maybe it really IS true, but my pastor doesn't think so; I'll defer to him on that. The webseries assumes they CAN get out. Part V's last link section explains why this conclusion is more in line with God's Character and Bible than the other conclusions proposed in Christendom. Its parameters might not be accurate somehow -- but the essence of it best ties to Bible, versus the other ideas I know about.

    Again, translations are NO GOOD. Just because God is depicted as PUTTING people there, tells you nothing about whether He's got a plan to still RESCUE them. Bible's original-language texts are much more precise. Hence I see no support for the common idea that a) God forces you to STAY in hell (yes, puts you in there, but no verses say you can't believe in Christ and get out); or b) everyone eventually gets out. Middle answer seems most Biblical: yeah, you can believe to get out, but you WON'T WANT TO, because you love your self-righteousness so much. Guy in Luke 16:20ff is so stuck on his self-image as a martyr, he barely seems to feel the flames! That's no parable. Parables don't have that kind of specificity or syntax. So it's a real story told by the One Who God sent (rather than Lazarus) to inform the 'brothers'.

    So, God is 'locked out' by negative volition. So, 'at the last minute' (see 2Pet3:9), He finally accedes; and Himself also shuts the door, though in the webseries the reader is left with the impression that God forever keeps the door open (ibid). That seems the most comprehenisively-logical conclusion. Agree or not, as you choose. I don't even agree with myself during a day, so I could care less if anyone else ever agrees with me, lol.

    Important Corollary: two THINKING SYSTEMS go on forever. Heaven, and hell (for lack of better words). In financial parlance, a "present value" is a capital base from which all investment earnings, 'flow'. So you have two present-value thinking systems: 1) the "true riches" Bible always talks about, sourced in Christ's Thinking; and 2) all that ongoing sinning in 'hell'. The latter is OFFSET by the Former, with the result that the latter actually BENEFITS the Former. It's like an ongoing Cross. For the Payor, is Living, and the Payment is in His Head. To now get into, our heads. To last forever.

      The Cross is a JOY to Christ: Heb12:2 isn't kidding around. So, it never stops. And indeed it cannot, for we puny are forever FINITE, so are forever SHORT of the Glory of God, Rom3:23's second prong. The solution to this forever problem is to have His Thinking CYCLING in us, and Isa53:10-11 shows how that gets done: the five key infinitives are in the LXX. Unfortunately, scholars think God should restrict Himself to kindergarten usages of the dative and accusative of autos, so they refuse to translate those verses from the LXX into Bibles; even though, it's KNOWN that portions of those verses are missing from the Hebrew (in the Isaiah scroll, for example, there's this big deliberate gap to signify the verses are missing, and scholars know that). This problem is handled in Isa53.htm; I had to translate in amalgamated form, both BHS and LXX of Isa53:10-12 to show the reader what's missing. This is what a pastor should do, so check with your pastor, first. Last screen of Isa53.htm has the amalgamated text; text prior to that last screen justifies the translation made. A larger translation of the entire chapter (which starts at what we call Isa52:13) is in Isa53trans.htm.

      A shorter examination of this Infinity-finity dichotomy is in ArchiDes.htm, as it's the central thesis running through all websites. Took me 34 years to understand, and I'd have not understood it so clearly, were it not for the Isaiah passage. So this passage is important. It functions as the Grand Central Station of Scripture, which you can prove because of its nature (it depicts the mechanics of the Cross ON the Cross), and because nearly every NT verse uses or references the LXX keywords in Isa53:10-12.

      The DDNA webseries was born from that passage, when 'mixed' with something my pastor was teaching back in 2000, which I heard in Feb 2005. God orchestrates what you learn under your pastor: Eph4:11-16 explains why (RightPT.htm and Eph41216.htm) -- which passage, uses keywords from the Isaiah passage. Heh.

      Every second I'm breathing and awake, I literally live on what I know now about DDNA. Can't get through a day without it, for DDNA proves what GOD GETS from our existence. We truly have nothing to ever be ashamed about, and human opinion matters not at all. No suffering but gets converted into DDNA. It's just a question of how much, and whether you refuse it. If you refuse it, the DDNA still occurs.. but not in you. True riches parable, Matt25:14-29. Well, I want it to occur in me; but I'm glad if it re-routes, for God shouldn't lose yield! And of course, He never will. So only I can lose. Same truth applies to anyone. We all can be saved, we all can get to "Pleroma" (Eph3:19, "fullness", see also Eph4:13).

    Hence, whether or not people can get out of 'hell', the PAYMENT for their bad thinking, is forever ongoing. That helps the reader grasp how in three short hours all the sins of mankind could be paid for. Father built a DDNA CAPITAL BASE in Christ of sufficient 'present value' to keep on compensating for all sin forever. Which sin, stops for us who believe; but never stops, for those who remain in 'hell'. Third Aspect of DDNA covers this in more detail (DDNA3.htm). I spent 20 years trying to figure out how-did-forever-sinning-get-paid-for; now I 'get it'. Hope it doesn't take you that long! See also Romans 6's stress on Christ as LIVING (passim theme throughout OT and NT). That's why the Living Word is the central promise of Bible from Gen3:15 to Revelation, and why HIS THINKING is the mechanism depicted as the payment for sins in Isa53:10-11 (in LXX, never translated). [Well, it's in the BHS also, but the deft use of "da'ath", which begins back in 52:13, is threaded. So it's not easy to see in translation, even though in the Hebrew which is translated. "By His Knowledge" is usually how "da'ath" is translated, which is a truncated -- and hence fuzzy, misleading -- meaning of the Hebrew term.]

Summing up, webseries assumptions made help one audit better, don't require the reader agree with them even partly; and, nevertheless, don't invalidate the information about our spiritual life, nor the methods one uses to track and prove what constitutes that life before the Lord. This method of correct conclusions despite possible incorrect interpretations is called, in the corporate appraisal business, "arms-length valuation" (named after an Internal Revenue Service standard). That is, you value a business based on between two to five different (and often, antithetical) methods, but if you end up with the same (or nearly the same) monetary worth of the business, you've got a likely accurate value.

So too, and especially, in the spiritual appraisal business!

Sisyphus