Part IVc, The Lord vs. Satan: SupCtHeaven;

KNOW YOUR ENEMY. That's one of the cardinal rules of military science. Satan knows us quite well. We don't know him at all. Yet it's not as though Bible didn't provide a full disclosure. God tells you what you need to know in a zip file format. So you use 1Jn1:9 as needed, study under your pastor, and keep asking for the extrapolation to 'unzip' as you keep on learning and living on Word. So, plodding in the Word each day, after a decade or two you do come to know the whole story, and in extreme detail. Hence even in these webpages, we've seen enough of God's Plan and Satan's objections to it, to know how both think. So now, think like Satan does: If you were Satan, wouldn't you see the vulnerability, here? Puny believers cause history?!! Wow, that's better than the advantage he had during the Incarnation!

1. Israel was designed to be His Bride first, as we saw at the beginning of Part III and Part IVa. Thus, during the Lord's First Advent, Israel had an open-ended option to accept the Christ. So we've seen the Precedence Structure we derive as a result of Israel's rejection.
2. But what's the impact of that fact in the Angelic Trial? History's continuance depended on Israel's response; and now, on Church's response. So, as we saw at the end of Part II and the beginning of Part III, Israel elongated history by rejecting Christ, for the first-intended 'Bride' said No. Thus, a new 'Bride' would have to be 'called'. So Satan got a "continuance" on his own sentence, too. Suddenly, he has a chance to win after all, if he defeats "Church". This fact cannot be overstressed. [A "continuance" is a legal term for a delay in Trial proceedings. Basically, everything goes on hold until the contingency which gave rise to the continuance, elapses in some fixed-time period a judge may set -- or is met, with respect to other conditions.]
3. In short, both Christ's completion of the Cross, and Israel's acceptance of Him were contingencies. So now Church's acceptance of Him, is likewise a contingency. Granted, the ultimate outcomes of both Israel and Her Messiah were both prophesied, but not the "when": deadlines alone, were given in Daniel 9. The "ultimate outcome" of Christ, was the Cross. Daniel predicted this as the Messiah being "cut off". The "ultimate outcome" of Israel was "the Age of the Gentiles", via the tongues prophecy -- but not whether Israel would have in sufficient numbers accepted or rejected the Messiah at his First Advent.

4. We were never designed to replace Israel; but to rescue her, though Bride in her stead. A reverse yet prophetic, paradigm of the Book of Esther. "Vashti" (Israel) refused her husband, when He wanted Her presented (First Advent). So "Esther" (Church) is selected from all the people. As a result, "Esther" saves the Jews due to her closeness to The King. So, here it happens again. In the Book of Esther, the Jews were in the Diaspora. Now, they are again. Protected from that wicked Haman, the satanic anti-semitic plan. But, by an Adopted, Successor Bride. Not antagonistic. Sibling, instead. Anxious, even, to restore the former One to recognition for all the Millennium. Just as the Rejected Husband had promised, so many times in the Old Testament.

5. SATAN'S STRATEGY KEY→ Satan thus took advantage, both during Esther's time, during the First Advent, and Now: for to Satan, God's silence on Israel's 1st Advent acceptance of Christ was a 'red flag' that Satan might win, even as he almost won at what became Purim, without which Jerusalem couldn't be Rebuilt on Time, as required under Daniel 9's terms. As we saw at the end of Part II, Satan managed to pull victory from defeat, by getting Israel to spurn Messiah during His First Advent. So, Christ had what initially seemed a Phyrric Victory: A King, but no kingdom to match.

   Legally, this strategy has another meaning: Motion for MISTRIAL. A "mistrial" is the greatest victory a defense attorney can get; it looks like the attorneys for O.J. Simpson were angling for that, when they kept on impugning the evidence of the prosecution. [How right who was on each side, I don't know. I only saw snippets of the proceedings, and what I'm typing now came from that viewing. It's not relevant who was right. The paradigm, that's the point.] The key in "mistrial" is that you can't be tried again. So if you can prove sufficient misconduct in the evidence -- or, better still -- in the Trial Basis, then the defendant is freed. Doesn't matter if he's guilty. So Satan&Co. get off scot-free if they can prove a Mistrial.

   A Marriage Contract Requires Joint Consent. Satan thus takes a back-door approach into a Mistrial Motion, in a very clever way. However superior You Are, Most High -- if a) Your own people don't want to 'marry' You, but instead want to 'marry' me, then b) You can't justify keeping Your past Promises to those who DID want to 'marry' You, and YOU are the one Divorcing, by your Own Terms. So you can't justify trying me and my 'people', either.

   Remember our Trial Basis: voting. Since marriage requires consent, that's a voting issue. In the Trial, this voting is not a majority-vote question, but a superior performance question. That is, what are the Results of the Votes for each side? So if everyone but 8 persons voted for Satan&Co., as happened in Gen6, the RESULTS were destruction: not the Flood itself, but the destruction BY the people (half-angel, or not) of themselves. They had passed the point of no return in their souls; so, those still alive on earth, wouldn't benefit from living longer. So the Flood only happened, like Gen1:2ff only happened, to clean up the mess. Of course, Noah and his family, were preserved. Notice how they did no works to get that: instead, they merely believed.

   So you can see that the results of the votes have to do with the quality of life which gets produced, inside the soul. Not works. Inner Happiness, versus misery. Outer stuff is not determinative of your life's quality: rather, what you think. After all, if you are miserable inside, the nice weather outside won't make you feel better.

6. God, of course, knew long before angels existed, that He was setting Himself up, so to speak: see Eph1. Note, then, how Perfect His Plan, because He doesn't have to protect Himself from anything. Not even, a Cross. So, we know that because God insures free will, no prophecy overrides free will, not even Satan's. Notice how in all events, Father's Design is fulfilled, as explained in Part IVb: Church Causes History, not prophecy. Church is the cause, not the European Union or other political events. Church is the cause, not anyone or anything else, because Church is BODY OF CHRIST. Christ Caused Church -- Matt16:18 -- to Rescue Israel, as we saw in Part IVa. So now Church is the Cause, even as Christ is THE Cause, as an extension of Him, 1Jn4:17. No one else is the cause. For better or for worse, the Bride is the cause, just as explained in Part IVb.

7. RAPTURE HAS TWO CAUSES KEY → Because free will is never overridden, the Rapture is caused by Free Will Choices, not by prophecy. Church is the cause in both cases: because sufficient Numbers Of Individual Believers Were Positive, Holy Spirit grew them up to Pleroma. Conversely, because so many Numbers Of Individual Believers Were Negative, Satan could demand the "diplomatic recall" of Church. It's a Convergence of Both Causes, that culminates in the Rapture.

8. So now all Conflict is designed by Satan to make the Negative Cause of Church, its adherence to
   • FAKE heralds (i.e., popes, bad teachers),
   • FAKE messiahs (charismatic leaders/whitewashing the world),
   • FAKE Church (i.e., ecumenical religion), and
   • FAKE Temple (false doctrine related to the Jews), to thus
   TRIUMPH over the Positive Cause, the number of developing Pleroma people being sufficient. Same paradigm as he used back during the First Advent. So he wants the Rapture, too -- but on his own timing, not God's. Here, the issue is just like the Flood: declining numbers of positive folks, as time passes, because Satan's strategy has been so successful. INDIVIDUALS being developed, notice. Not a national body, as Israel was. That's the difference, for an Individual -- Christ -- paid for all mankind. So Individuals -- believers in Church -- are being developed, as He was. So to stop all this Individual Development, Satan has to foster a Counterfeit 'Christian', the Rev17 harlot. Which he began to do, right after the Crucifixion, Acts 15. Hence the need for a Paul. Then when that gambit didn't work well enough, Paul's ministry being too successful among individuals -- Satan had to go 'institutional', Rev17 married to a polity. Hence Constantine (eventually). For by obfuscating the Individual Development Goal itself, Satan brings about a Mass Defection within the very Body of Christ. So can demand a "diplomatic recall" of all believers.

   "Diplomatic recall" is what a home country does inside a host country, just before declaring war. The Ambassador is recalled, and all the people of the embassy, LEAVE. Alternately, "diplomatic recall" occurs when the Ambassador (or someone lesser) has so shamed the home country, in order to preserve good relations with the host country, that individual(s) must be recalled. Both types of meaning are represented by the Rapture. For Church is the cause. Not politics, not the unbeliever, not even Satan. Again, Christ is the Precedence, He is the Individual, and when Enough (very few!) individuals are grown up in Him per the Eph3:15-19 standard, We Go Home En Masse. To our glory, to our shame. It's that shocking, that simple.

9. So we know that "predestination" is insurance, not tyranny. And, when God suddenly doesn't predict a thing -- which full disclosure rules in the Trial demand -- it's a "red flag". It means that Satan can so materially affect the outcome, God won't predict anything, lest He interfere with Satan's free will. Or, believers of such a time are so influential, prediction is avoided -- for the same protection reason. So Church's completion is only predicted as an OUTCOME, just as Christ's completion was only predicted as an outcome. Christ had to be completed by a deadline. Israel had a deadline given her, because she had rejected God as King back in 1050BC. That deadline given, was the 1000th anniversary of David's death, used as the boundary in Daniel 9, the reason WHY the seven years of Daniel 9:27, is separated and reserved. For the 1000th anniversary of David's death, intervened. We saw all this accounting, in Part IVa and Mirroring.htm. Hence there is no time to GIVE Church for a deadline. Deadline is already UP. Hence if Church doesn't complete, it's a MISTRIAL and history ends. That's why the Rapture has two causes, not one, why it's a red flag that we have no set time, why Satan can win, and why CHURCH determines history, not prophecy.

10. To protect the OT folks' free will, the Church was not predicted, either. After all, there might not have been a "Church", had Israel accepted Christ as Messiah. Even so, the fact they would one day become so apostate that the "Age of the Gentiles" would begin, was foretold (the "tsaw latsaw" tongues prophecy in Isaiah28:10, far-fulfillment meaning). Pentecost was the "sign". It was to last for 40 years, the traditional period in the Jewish Age, for earthly Warnings. Just as in all Warnings, the 40 years is provided as a grace period for folks to wake up. In this case, the "wake up", as Isaiah had prophesied, was to alert Jews to the fact that their nation's favored spiritual status was ending. Thus they were to know that Messiah had come, gone, and would return, as many prophets had long foretold.

    As we saw in Part IV a and its Mirroring.htm inset, Hebrews has these facts firmly in mind, throughout: "the Church" might have lasted only until 87AD, as initially-scheduled since David's death. Everyone expected Jerusalem to be invaded and overrun per the old schedule; the Temple to be destroyed by 70AD -- an easy thing to expect, since the siege of Jerusalem began back in 64AD. So, would enough folks grow up before that date -- and "redeem" Israel? For, it was known that the 7 years would follow. Again, the original schedule had gone like this: had Israel accepted its Savior, He'd Pay and Ascend by 37AD; then would follow an insertion of 50 years; after that, the Trib would begin. So the long-foretold Millennium would commence 94AD, which in their reckoning was year 4200 from Adam's Fall, when a new 1050-year period had to begin anyway -- this one, which Christ the Last David had purchased in the very year the first David's 1000-year kingship retirement time grant, expired. That happened in 30AD, seven years prior to the latest of David's grants, because Israel rejected Messiah: that changed the schedule in the 'middle', so to speak. There would be a 40-year warning period housing the additional 'seven' due to Christ dying 7 years early, the traditional time to warn of Israel's end as client nation; so it would be the "times of the Gentiles", and Church could still complete by the same initially-scheduled 87AD when the Trib would begin. [Nerd note: "times" means two or more Dispensations, "Ages" (latter is the Biblical term, as well as "time" or "times", plural. Part V has an extensive list of verses related to "times of the Gentiles".] [Another Nerd note: no client nations exist during the Official Tribulation. For, it is a time of "lawlessness", meaning so little positive volition, the numbers are too few for a nation to become a client nation. That is yet another big flag telling you Church is not in the Tribulation; for, like during the time for Israel, the "client" of God is one or more nations. So, since there are no client nations during the Trib, No Church Is On Earth. Don't mix up what men call polities, compared to what God calls them: Israel doesn't become a client nation again until the Millennium (which is part of what Peter explains to the crowd in Acts 2). So: Although the Trib belongs to the Age of Israel, the People Israel are not a client nation during that period; so the Trib is also a "time" of the Gentiles. You'd have to compare Luke 21:24 with the "man of lawlessness" passage in Thessalonians, plus some other hallmark passages in (I think) Zech 12 (about the maalouf, Jewish generals), Rev (i.e., the Rev13&17 beast and harlot), to get the duality. This "times of the Gentiles" is a huge prophecy in the OT, running baldly in at least 100 verses I could find.]

    So the 40 years began the "times of the Gentiles" at Pentecost. Peter also ties in Joel 2 in Acts 2 to explain it; the actual mechanics of appearing "tongues of fire" likewise made it plain ("fire" metaphor in OT has a Judgement-for-purification connotation). So, both covenantal periods overlap for the first 40 years. So, then: would the Church complete by the end of the 40 years, thus also ending a "time" of the Gentiles"? That they did not know, for the criterion for completion, was a Number-of-People Criterion (Rom11:25). They knew that the Trib would begin at the end of Church, for the Trib period was based on Israel, not Gentiles; but they didn't know The Start Date; so, looks like the writer of Hebrews is guessing it might begin with the overrunning of the Temple. Remember, Revelation hadn't yet been written. So they didn't know of all that added detail. All they knew were the OT prophecies. [The writer of Hebrews writes as if the destruction of Jerusalem is imminent; it's hard to otherwise interpret the haste at the beginning of Chapter 2 and the end of Chapter 10, 11, the urgency and fait accompli tone of 12. So, the book was written after Paul was executed, because Hebrews 13:23 notes Timothy, Paul's protogé, was released from custody, and Paul's last letter was a request for both Timothy and Mark to come to Paul, see end of 2Tim.]

11. Reason For Continuing History KEY → as Paul stresses Ephesians and Romans; as the Lord stressed in Luke 8 (and elsewhere), history post-Cross is solely for the purpose of FARMING a sufficient crop of Pleroma believers. As required under the Terms of the Trial, which we've seen since Part IVa: it's a MISTRIAL if these people are not 'produced', since they were introduced in Evidence -- paid for on the Cross -- in ADVANCE. So history continues only because the Church continues; the Church continues only because the need to harvest more Pleroma "Progenitor" believers continues. [My pastor has been stridently teaching this fact since 1997, when he discovered it. If you are interested, you can get his tapes on "Jeshurun", which is part of "92 Spiritual Dynamics", series #376. What I say in this site about why this fact is true is only partly derived directly from his teaching; for, he's only had time to outline the major variables, since he teaches a large congregation and consequently must simplify and limit what he says. So, I'm trying to 'read between the lines'. So, much of what I write in this Part IV is designed to help me independently validate what he's taught, and learn any corollaries. Whether or not he'd agree with what's written here as the validation, I don't know.]

12. So Satan's got to get in the farming business, too. Hence every generation will look like the Rapture generation, from the shallow standpoint of some developing European hegemony, etc., the trends outlined in:
    • Revelation 6, the four horsemen;
    • Revelation 11, Fake Temple;
    • Revelation 12, persecution of Israel;
    • Revelation 13, world government;
    • Revelation 17, Fake Church.
    For these trends are Satan's strategy, since he doesn't know when Church will be completed, EITHER. Satan's constantly trying to SET UP the ideal conditions and beat God to the Rapture 'punch'. Obviously, only God can foreknow volition; as we saw above, God won't gerrymander the results so Satan has a free hand. So, has a free strategy. This strategy will be our focus, from here on. To start, we're looking at the basis and parameters for his strategy. The layout of the terrain and deployment issues which he faces, so to speak.

13. Therefore: will enough of us grow up and be harvested as Pleroma Believers during 'this' generation? Clearly, the requisite number of "progenitors" has not been reached, for by now the 'masses' are indeed many. For, these 'masses' rejected the spiritual life -- which is why they became..um, Royal peasants. Not God's Will, but theirs. So, analogous to Israel's rejection of Messiah at First Advent, so also we Church, although really a Kingdom, although forever saved -- we too are yet unbalanced, because we too have mostly rejected our post-salvation Eph1 reserved/escrow inheritance.

    So Satan&Co. are busy farming the human race to produce the crops they prefer, under a kind of "Sword of Damocles", the "last trump", the retreat order for Church, which God the Father can mandate at any time. As we saw in Part IVb's "Daniel Deadline BRIDGING Precedence", Church is here to trump Satan by Church's own-and-separate last trump; so Satan wants to trump all seven trumpets before they even blow in the Tribulation.

14. We individually affect all humanity by our own attitudes toward Him. It's no longer some separate-from-us Mosaic Law which confers the blessing. Instead, "Christ in you..the confidence of glory" (Col 1:25-27) applies. Individually. 'Since we are in training to become kings. So, our Royal Blessing-By-Association Causes History To Improve, Continue. So, our Royal Cursing-By-Association Causes History To Degenerate, End. So man's existence can be wiped out, not by nuclear weapons or pollution, but by spiritual fallout: apostacy. We do it to ourselves. Thus, the few positive are a blessing-by-association to the many negative -- and all mankind can justifiably remain alive. As goes the Christian, so goes human history, as my pastor so often reminded us.

    There are only "winners" and losers, in the Royal Family. Either you reach the "fullness of Christ", and thus inherit your "crown", your "promise", your "reward" saved up for you by the Father in your personal spiritual escrow -- or you do not.

    It's pass/fail, which Scripture depicts as a marathon race which one either completes, or quits en train. Quitters die from permanent carnality: the "sin face-to-face with death" (1Jn5:16, literal trans), which is God's version of corporal capital punishment. That's the historical, blessing-by-association reason why 1Jn1:9 and learning Bible Doctrine, is so important. The pass/fail quality parallels the situation both Satan, and more, the Lord's Humanity faced. Satan "broke" at some point well into his (pristine) spiritual life -- as Part I explained, he became so disillusioned, he permanently rebelled. The Lord, of course, had a much more unfair situation -- but, unlike Satan, did not even sin once.

    We, as Bride, have the next-most unfair situation: will we permanently quit, as Satan did? Or will we keep on getting up and "finish the course"? Well, that makes us "winners", if we do. When enough folks reach "winner" status, God's Rebuttal ends, because the Bride is complete. [Look up "teleiow", "teleios", "teleiotes", and "Pleroo", "Pleroma" in Gk NT, viz., Eph3:19, especially compared to Eph 1:18ff on "Body". Re the winning, see Paul's phrase in 2Tim4:7. Some tie-ins: Eph6:13's "having done all, to stand"; "endure to the end" verses, Hebrews' "hold fast..confession" phrases, and Heb12:1-2's marathon-footrace Greek. John uses the term "abide", menw, which is used by other writers too (i.e., translated "remain" in 1Cor3:11, of the gold/silver/precious stones). Gospels and Paul also use the term "remain" (often, "menw"). Rev uses the term "hold fast", which means really, "rule" (e.g., kratei ho echeis, Rev 3:11). James and Peter like to use "hupomone" for this same concept. Example: James 1:3-4, but remember "faith" means "believed doctrine". James is saying Let Doctrine Have Its Completing Work. See the Greek yourself: almost any lexicon will be helpful. Peter's use of hupomone and huparchein will be covered later on in this page. The relationship between these very important keywords in this small-font note is covered in more depth in the "We are Evidence. On Trial" in PartIVd.]

15. Bride's Completion also means a dark converse, as it does any time the knowledge-and-power "covenant"/ "Dispensation" must change: apostacy has set in against it. For, just as we saw in Part II, the world progressively hardens, and the spiritual standard reposes in a narrower and narrower group. That prediction is repeated very often in Scripture, usually (in English) under the rubric of "the latter [post-Cross] days" (or synonymal terms), one flavor of which is our NOW. (See also Phili3:16ff, 2&3 John, 1Tim4, 2Tim4, 1&2Peter, Heb2:1-3,4:1-7, 10:39, 12:15ff. Gospels, too.) Eventually, kinda like before the Flood (see 2Peter), there will be only "one": the last Pleroma believer of the Church. When that person is "ripe", he goes (or dies). Then, every other remaining believer gets raptured up (maybe with him). Apparently, publicly, in the sense that there will be a sudden disappearance (of many or few, I don't know). However, people won't see us moving up in the sky. God does it this way to parallel the Lord's Ascension, but His Ascension was only visible to believers with Him at the time. Rank has its privileges: pearls will not be thrown before swine (common OT metaphor for unbelievers, given Jewish law and pagan rituals involving pigs). So, since ALL believers are going up, there's no audience to see us rise. We'll just suddenly not-be-here.

    The Rapture might be the biggest Judgement sign ever shown on the earth, to (its) date, since it will be worldwide; since people will just disappear. BECAUSE it happens, people draw conclusions. So, again, needs no preceding warning sign. The warning is the Rapture. Conversely, maybe the apostacy is so bad, only a few believers are LEFT on the earth at the time the Rapture occurs. So, again, no preceding warning sign, because too few believers 'disappear' for folks to notice, anyway.

    Really Really Really Get This Point Loud And Clear → God doesn't need to cater to arrogance. If you don't want Him, He'll not plead with you or sell you some 'sign' to get your belief. Christ wouldn't do it in Matt4, He wouldn't do it while ON the Cross, so He won't do it now. The only time He gives a visible sign, is to indicate JUDGEMENT.

    Even every Gospel miracle told TWO messages: 1) Wake up! I'm God-on-earth! and 2) Beware of Not Believing. For, "an evil generation seeks a sign", remember. So if you think you saw Him or His Mother or an angel in a tortilla or other 'vision', forget it. He is The Word, so He only speaks through His Word, and even that, only via the Holy Spirit teaching you via your right pastor-teacher. If you don't like that, tough nougies. Pearls go to those who appreciate them, and if you don't believe the Word is the "pearl without price", go snout elsewhere. That's the message those "left behind" will get; for, after all, they want God to wallow for them as a condition of their belief. Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For Him To Cater To That 'Condition'!

    There's nothing anywhere in Bible which says the Rapture will be disruptive. The idea is based on human supposition that many Christians will be alive at the time. Well, since we so routinely mangle the Gospel, how many real Christians are there? Satan's plan often hinges on subversion of the Gospel (Rev17), and he largely accomplishes that task, historically, by naming a thing Christian, which is NOT. So a person will call himself a Christian, but will not be one, and won't even know that he isn't.

    For Satan starts his counterfeit Christianity, with the Gospel itself. Catholicism totally mangled it. After that, some breakouts prior to and in the Reformation reminded folks of the real Gospel, but not for long. Statism replaced Catholicism in many nations, but still works were added on to 'save' you: baptism, saying a particular prayer, and any number of truly goofy stuff. So how many believers, have there really been? Ask any 100 "Christians" what "the Gospel" is, and you will get 99 wrong answers. It's John 3:16, BELIEVE, confirmed by John 16:9, would anyone ever read The Book. No repentance, no naming sins, no "accept", no "make Christ Lord" no OTHER verbs. So there are VERY FEW believers among "Christians", unless by mistake or something they happened to merely BELIEVE, and then forgot about it. (Count on the Holy Spirit orchestrating just that happenstance!)

    So, even if you listen to a famous evangelist, ask: what is the Gospel Presentation? Sheer drivel. Or, ask any Christian you know what he thinks the Gospel is. I can't find but one out of maybe 1,000 (and none, on TV) who actually understand it's John 3:16 and nothing else. Also, for awhile I regularly visited Christian chat channels, and only a few among the Calvinists, understood that it was Only Faith in Christ. Everyone else, hedged. And even many among the Calvinists, came up with some goofy idea that if you backslid (however one defines that!), you were never really saved in the first place. Garbage!

    So, think: how many Christians will there really be? And can't God choose to Rapture them up at times when it will not be disruptive? Does it have to be disruptive? Based on what? Sure, it makes sense to argue that it could be disruptive, but if those left behind are too negative anyway, why should God cater to their arrogance? Don't bet on it.

16. Thus, the only "preceding" warning is written in Scripture -- not an event. That is why Revelation begins with written warnings to the pastors of churches (John, exiled on Patmos by Domitian, was still an apostle). [Greek "aggelos" first means "messenger". See Matt11:10, Mark1:2, Jas2:25 -- why does the English get it right in those places, but not in Revelation? Does any man write to an angel? John was commanded to write to...duh!] Thus, as noted in Part IVa, we have a standing warning, interjected, to convey the flavor of suddenness, in the NT: TACHÚ. That's the only warning needed. [Class Note: 92 SD L1455-56 has a neat summary list of "riches of His Glory" and taxzis-timeline groups' verses.]

    Reminder About TACHÚ → as covered in Part IVa, "tachu" and "tachos" are often mistranslated by the English "soon". The term instead connotes surprise: next-in-sequence, but without warning. That's why you will always find the phrases "I come suddenly" "like a thief" in NT interjected, because an "interjection" is a sudden, without prior warning, rhetorical device. Therefore, Rapture is "suddenly, next -- but without prior warning", tachú.

    In the many lexicons I have, it's very difficult to tell "next-in-sequence, without prior warning" meaning. Why? Rarely is military terminology translated idiomatically in English Bibles or referenced in lexicons. You'd have to read the cites they give, to know. Like "girdle" in Revelation (KJV) is really "baldric" (see the one the Queen of England wears at certain ceremonies); the "pebble" in Revelation is really an Engraved Citation Stone (very easy way for Romans to have voting passes and other privileges they had to carry as proof).

    So, lexicographers give the soundbyte-common meaning of TAXOS and TAXUS as 'quickly, swiftly': but many of the passages they use to cite the occurrence of the word are military usages. Surprise and next-ness are what the military usage means, for two of the cardinal (9, in US) principles of successful military offensive action from time immemorial are SURPRISE and SPEED-OF-ATTACK. A real good Biblical example of this is how Moses rescued Lot et alia: that's why MelcheTZADOK (Melchizedek) praised him so. Principle: Whether it takes a long or short time to logistically ready for that offensive, if its implementation isn't done at an unexpected time, or if, while being done, it is done too slowly, the enemy has a chance to regroup. This surprise-and-swiftness-of-deployment is well illustrated (both success and failure) in Hitler's going through the Ardennes to capture France and the Low countries; in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's campaign to conquer Russia. So: since tachu/tachos in Biblical usage is likewise is a military thing, the Rapture -- obviously the lexicographers should have paid attention to that in their soundbyte-renderings.

17. Moreover, the "Rapture" doctrine is but one expression of a far bigger one, usu. denoted in theology as "the doctrine of the remnant" ("remnant", which is rarely translated properly in English, is a major Bible keyword): the believer is preserved, and is removed from a locale which God is about to judge harshly. This "good figs", "remnant" doctrine is really a very common, in Bible: you see it first in the Flood: "Methu+selah" in Hebrew means "when he dies, destruction comes". And that was his birth name given him by his dad Enoch. So the world had 969 years' advance notice (more likely 1000, else why would Enoch even name his kid like that). Next, you see it in the calling out of Abram. [Just after he left, Ur was invaded.] Next, in the Sodom-and-Gomorrah judgement, where Lot&Co. are pulled out. You see it in the Exodus story, itself. You see it in Leviticus 26 and Deut28, which outline the reasons for such action. You see it in detail, in Jeremiah Chapters 25-29, where the Lord explains to Jeremiah that He will pull out the "good figs" and safely deposit them in Chaldea for 70 years, using Nebuchadnezzar; you see it in the Diaspora prophecies, including those the Lord explains in the Gospels. You see it in the Greek of the Book of Hebrews, last few verses of Chapters 10 and 11, a subtheme started in Heb2:1 -- Jerusalem is about to be destroyed, get ready!

    Notice the pattern, here: No World-Wide Disaster of Tribulational Scale Happens While Believers Are Still Present. Long before it occurs, Believers Are Pulled Out In A Spectacular Way, but the others all choose to stay behind, because they don't believe what their eyes already see. Because, the pullout of the believers is not spectacular -- to those disbelieving. And, it's not spectacular, in the sense of chaos -- for No Chaos Can Begin Until The Believers Are Pulled Out. Historically you can see this phenomenon often, especially just before wars begin, i.e., the savvy who got out of Germany before or just upon Hitler's becoming Chancellor.

    It's a Doctrinal Principle to watch history and make wise decisions in advance: the Lord chided the Jews for knowing the redness of the sky indicating weather, but didn't know the signs of the times (i.e., Matt16:3). Writer of Hebrews was insistent on the imminent Temple Destruction; everyone knew the Daniel prophecy. Yet, read Josephus! Most Jews DIDN'T believe. Those who did, got out. Their exit was individually spectacular, and they gave away what they had to those not leaving. Kinda like those Jews who left Hitler's Germany before or just after KrystalNacht (sp), some believed they should leave, others didn't. So for those leaving, it was a spectacular thing, but for those not believing, though seeing others leave, well... So, again: why should the Rapture itself be spectacular? Seems like a lot of wishful thinking among bored Christians who don't catch on that the real spiritual life is the most exciting thing, ever

    As noted earlier in Part IVa's "Idou, 2Cor5:17" table, remnant in Hebrew or Greek always has two connotations: a) "leftovers" (sense of cast off, crumbs), and b) remainder after disaster. Study the etymology of she'erit in Heb, and leimma in Greek. Awesome meaning, here. There are many synonyms for these two keywords, each one conveying more about the meaning. More awesome! Hence, God takes what no one else wants, and removes them to preserve them.

    Root idea: since the evil in the land is so great, the 'righteous' need to be pulled out, so that the necessary wake-up call (punishment) can be most-profitably delivered. Whether the 'righteous' are believers only, or.. only those believers who stick with the spiritual life. For, as always, God's Judgement is designed to rescue, bless, save, deliver. Even, the most evil. For, so long as believers or positive believers are in a locale needing SO much punishment, the blessing-by-association to them, prohibits the needed punishment. Which 'locale', by the time of our Rapture, is the entire world: if all believers aren't pulled out, the world won't get what it needs to Positively Respond to God. For, sometimes massive surgery, is what saves!

    Thus we see another major JUDICIAL reason why the Rapture must be Pre-Trib, and cannot have a preceding warning sign, which ties back to #E's "Elongating Exit Resurrection Precedence" at the beginning of Part IVb. The other changes in epochs had warning signs, because there were BELIEVERS who needed the signs. The Rapture, unlike all other events, has no preceding warning-sign because it REMOVES ALL BELIEVERS from the earth. The Rapture means God's Divine Benefit Plan closes His Blessing window on the world. After this current benefit window closes, the world can only be blessed due to the beyond-window benefits Church Age Pleroma Believers were granted during this current window period. That is why Tribulation people need us to grow up Now! We saw something of God's Divine Benefit Plan in Part IVa. Here in Part IVc, the Appendix on "God is the Perfect Actuary" provides much more detail on God's Divine Benefit Plan.

18. So when the Church Age "completes", the next "covenant" reverts back to a version of the Mosaic Law, but without a so-called "client" nation. 'Because, for the first time in history, there are no believers on the earth. Note that well: people will be SO negative, there's no 'upgrade' in God's Covenant, unlike all prior times. Rather, a truncated Old Covenant returns: to forewarn that Christ Returns. More specifically, believers then will practice the Law the way Daniel and his comrades did as exiles -- no sacrifices, lots of prayer -- because there is no Nation Israel. The secular State of Israel is not at all the Bible's definition: "Israel" in the Bible is what God creates. Doesn't mean that God has abandoned Israel or the Jews, and anyone trying to use Israel's covenant-in-abrogation status to hurt her, well -- God will clobber everyone who tries. But technically, No Temple means No Covenant, as we saw in Part IVa. So there still is no God-Authorized Temple in the Tribulation, but instead a FAKE Temple. So any nation Israel then existing, will be protected as a people, but the NATIONAL contract won't be renewed until the 2nd Advent, viz., Isa63, Eze39, etc.

    This fact can't be overstressed: just because a political entity of Israel exists, doesn't mean God's covenant with the nation, is operating. With the people, yes, because the People Covenant predates the nation, and is based on Abram (see Gen12). As explained in the "Dan9:26c" section of PartIVa, NO TEMPLE means NO COVENANT. So Satan will get the Temple rebuilt in Israel, sometime during our Now, in order to fake the idea Messiah is returned; so to gather the Jews, so to kill them better. For, Satan doesn't know when the Rapture will occur, either. (More about this strategy will be said in this PartIVc's "military objectives" section.)

    Memorize This: it's Satan's objective to confuse what is "Christian" now, to confuse what is "Jewish", THEN. That's always what he does, is confuse by counterfeit look-alikes, What Is God's. Oh, we are all such cannonfodder, for his wiles!

    Since 144,000 Jews will be believers and evangelists (Rev7), and the Two Witnesses (Rev11) will be telling everyone what the Lord said in Matt24 (stay away), Satan's got to counter that message with a counterfeit law. Hence he will cause the Temple to be rebuilt. Could begin tomorrow, 1000 years from now, who knows. But it's rebuilt by the beginning of the Trib (Dan9:27, Rev11). As a snare.

    Remember: the biggest prophecy in the OT, which almost any Jew or even unbeliever in Timbuctu can tell you, is the Coming of Messiah. As Part II explained, the OT rituals etc. were physical, because the Emmanuel (lit., "God with us"), Messiah would come in a Body. That fact is so well known in the world, apostacy or no, the very reversion back to even a truncated version of the Mosaic Law is itself the most blatant of advertisements of Christ's Return. Even if no one believes in Him. (See God's Grace? Using a well-known faith to Advertise, Warn, Protect?)

    See? God has already put the warnings in writing. Like the guy in Luke16:20ff, mankind isn't satisfied with the Word, but wants a Lazarus to come back. Well, the Lord Came Down to tell the Luke16 audience about that guy in Hades.. much better than ol' Lazarus being resurrected, that He Who, when resuscitating a different Lazarus to show He is the "The Resurrection and the Life" -- much better for That One to tell the audience of Luke 16. [Nerd note: the "Lazarus" in Luke 16 is not the same person as Christ resuscitated. The fact should be obvious, from the Gospel timeline, duh.] So, then: much better the statement by angels flying in heaven (Rev14) to say the Lord is coming back, since man won't look at the Word which long ago told him the same thing. So why do people need a spectacular Rapture, when the Two Witnesses do their spectacular stuff in the first half of the Tribulation (Rev11), and these angels start flying daily, in the last half?

• Remember how the a) and b) of "Israel's Voting" table of Part IVa are constructed?
• Well, we have our own a) and b): a) Vote, and b) Grow To Pleroma.
• The two are interdependent: we won't get to b), if we don't do a).
• Satan will thus do all he can to prevent b), just as he did with Israel, just so he can get a Mistrial Verdict.
• Since a) the Rapture as the beginning of Israel's Tribulation period is so clearly proven in Bible;
• since b) the open-ended "mystery" Church means Satan can leverage victory from defeat;
• the best way to do that, is to MESS UP the understanding of "a)",
• to victoriously MANIPULATE "b)". Kinda like romancing the King's daughter in order to 'deflower' her.

Look at Satan's success: it's been 2000 years, and still the Body of Christ is not complete. Why? Well, think: if enough Pleroma believers could have been 'grown' from even Paul's generation, then the number of Pleroma believers needed has since increased. Why? Because the number of believers has since increased. Believers, that is, who did not reach Pleroma, who instead jettisoned 1Jn's Script. Reading Church history, it's not too hard to see what a colossal failure Christians have largely been, ever since the Ascension. So, as explained in Part IVb's "Church Makes History" table, since the number of "progeny" has increased, there's an Imbalance: so, more Pleroma "progenitors" are needed.

And why is that? Well, Because we have the hardest spiritual life, and the most options to sin, of any group of humans in any period of history. (You should have realized by the end of Part III that God's Plan for Church is infinitely higher than it is for other groups of believers; if not, by the end of this webpage, you will likely realize it.) On top of that, Satan's got this unique opportunity to leverage believers' Divine Benefits to suit his own goals. Ergo Satan -- as a last resort, to be sure -- will even promote Faith-In-Christ, to increase the number of apostate believers, in order to buy himself time for maneuver. Why else do you think he so promoted Christianity politically, beginning about 100AD? (See Gibbon, Mommsen and Carey histories of Rome.)

Interpreting History Key → An INCREASE in young or apostate believers, especially if publicly promoted, means an increase in Pleroma folk is being OFFSET. Let's be frank: people 'buy' what is sold. They do it, because sales is a kind of public thing, and whatever is PUBLIC, is granted a certain legitimacy. So, if your mom or best friend believes in Christ, and tries to persuade YOU to do so, you probably will. For, whatever is public, motivates the human reciprocity reflex to "fit in with the crowd". Publicness conveys a crowd-ness. So, if the Gospel is sold publicly, lots of folks will buy it. And thus Satan focuses on selling the False Gospel publicly, i.e., all those TV-and-website-touted added verbs which cancel the only valid Believe verb of John 3:16. Which is kinda risky, considering even a five-year-old can read John 3:16 and be immediately saved BY it. So, Satan will periodically sponsor 'revivals', to cause/perpetuate Imbalance, one of his four cardinal "D-I-O-S" Grand Strategies to make The Real God, 'foreign' ("strange", in English Bibles) to us. ('Covered in more detail via Appendix link at either end of this webpage.)

Interpreting Publicity Key → Always consider any publicizing of faith as a setup for a 'crucifixion' later on, and as a demonstration that the Body is going apostate, imbalanced, too few rulers developing. Don't seek publicity, don't want publicity, don't value publicity, but instead avoid it. As was noted in Part III's "God's 2-3-4-5 Evidence Test Structure" table, and as will be noted again in the combat-green table of the "We are Evidence. On Trial" in Part IVd, some believers have a middle-Evidence-Test phase of PUBLICITY. In such a case, it's an imposed setup, to humiliate and denigrate them, their faith, Christ. Satire of what actually happened TO Christ, when He was down here. Frankly, the entire public lifestyle is the worst of ongoing 'crosses', because everyone and his brother thinks he owns you the minute you are on public display. Whatever you say, is deemed some kind of sales pitch, so if someone agrees with you, you are expected to be grateful. You get wheedled for money, for agreement with various causes; if your hair is out of place or your dressing is not liked, the comments are thick and critical; or, even worse, nosey and gushing. [I'll never forget when someone told me about people reacted to Monica Lewinsky's interview -- wanting to know what kind of lipstick she wore, for crying out loud!]

Of course, you'll never see privacy again. People will imagine all sorts of things about you; will be groupies; will hate you because your eyes are green or you wear a toupeé. Worst of all, people are so arrogant and vacuous, thinking they impress you with their big words or 'dignified' tones, committee meetings, endless irritating protocols. All of which, of course, you are supposed to admire profusely. You are drained all the time, you are griefstricken over folks' thinking, you ache to help them.. but cannot. Just as, the Lord could only speak in kindergarten-phrased parables. To empty, grasping, titillated minds there for a 'Carnivale' of miracles. Weird. True Twilight Zone, and no one in his right mind would seek such a life. See? Satan promotes public-ness in order to spread his lie that more-makes-right, fit-in, 'respectable'='public favor'. So that any valid message is suborned to Status. The Christian who seeks publicity, like all of Christian activism today, is utter Satan-fodder; I wouldn't wish the resulting bitterness on my worst enemy!

So when CHRISTIANITY is publicized, it's to distort what Bible says. It's to put down Bible. So any seeming promotion -- and lol, we Christians are sooo hungry for publicity -- any seeming promotion will be used to apostatize us further. Pastors and laity fall for it routinely. See how big our church is. Boasting about members, showy services, stress on how some one goes all over the world, name-dropping, politicking, thinking one is doing good for the Lord because of all the NUMBERS at a revival rally, etc. -- all the satanic ploys are used, and we buy them avidly. We flunk Matt4 so fast, it's breathtaking. Every thing the Lord REFUSED to do in Matt4, we just can't do swiftly enough. We fall all over ourselves seeking, what HE rejected!

Remember the blessing-by-association provisions in Parts III and II? Analogous to the fig tree parable for Israel, a believer needs time to grow up in Christ. A believer gets benefitted during that time, in case he will use it to grow up. So, the more young or apostate believers, the more God will allow time for them to grow; the more time, then, Satan&Co. get to finagle their own goals.

Publicity HOMOGENIZES whatever is publicized. It's a HERDING of Opinion. Politicians, lawyers, and advertisers well know the importance of repeating a message, making it public, so that you feel you must conform to whatever is 'the message'. If someone famous suddenly started to don underwear as a hat, count on it -- within several weeks, most of the world would do the same. Content doesn't matter. Publicity matters. Makes a person feel 'in' if he conforms to what's sold as publicly-acceptable. Thus Satan &Co. can isolate those who believe correctly, from those who don't care. Saves the demons time, allows them to focus on the truly-dangerous folks (dangerous to their goals).

So keep this satanic publicizing strategy in mind as you read the rest of the webpage, for it greatly explains the hows and whats of mankind's history, Right Now. If you know anything about viruses, barnacles, bees&pollination, or piggybacking in legislation and corporate management -- the practice of adding something marginally acceptable to something bigger which will be accepted -- then you have a keener idea of how "publicness" is used, by Satan&Co.

• Satan's really in a Defensive Position, and his goal is to flip it into an Offense which still beats God.
• So, due to the Part IVb Seven Facets of Blessing-By-Association from Christ and past mature believers, Satan has managed to 'spin' the world's unprecedented prosperity to suit his goals in all fields: technological, intellectual, physical.
• Witness: everywhere in the world, we are hooked up, hooked on, and hooked in.
• Our standards of living, overall, have never been higher.
• Even the poor of America are richer than many ancient kings were. What ancient king had a freezer compartment? A washing machine? Even our lowest-paid folks have slaves of their own: machines.

• Other nations likewise are benefitting, as (i.e., American) jobs move out from our too-regulated "developed" society, and into less-industrialized ones.
• The "Asian miracle", the unprecedented advance of Mexico -- these advances are marked by serious social imbalances, as always happens when a society changes from a labor- to capital-intensive economy.
• It is noteworthy that these societies are becoming lukewarm to their traditional religions, in the process ('religion' and 'culture' being synonyms, since religion is anti-God in all its forms).
• In short, the world is PUBLICLY homogenizing.

So, it's not surprising that the exact same Revelation 6 "four horsemen" still ride, just like last century. Last century we finally learned to despise both 'traditional' monarchy and democracy, though we still pay lip service to both: what 'new' institutions we'll develop in the 21st century to replace them, one can only shudder to imagine.

Notice that the US culture was largely used to achieve this widespread sense of humiliation. Our power and wealth basically rushed into a political vacuum in WWI and WWII; and since we don't really know how to use ourselves, we are rather clumsy. (More about this problem follows in "Witness: US", an essay link in Part IVd's "We are Evidence. On Trial" about post-WWII America's disinterest in Bible causing its problems.) So, people want what we have, but don't want to admit it. So, feel humiliated. Kinda like it was, back in the 2nd century, AD.

Notice next that US culture has become very much more like the ancient Greco-Roman cultures, especially since Christian activism and interdenominational 'competition' first became popular here (late 1960's). This developmental pattern is exactly the same as happened in the Roman empire from about 180AD onward. We just happen to be the actor used, at present. (More about the underlined sentence is in the "Divine Blessing History" table below (link near pagetop).)

When any nation has a lot of positive believers in it -- and the US still 'leads the pack' on that count -- God promotes it. Then Satan jumps on the bandwagon, hoping to stuff the promotion down everyone's throat, kinda like all those demons kept on advertising Christ (a major, biting theme in Mark's Gospel). So if Satan can manipulate God's promotion of (currently) the US into another Greco-Roman mindset, he feels quite rewarded. Always nice to make Christians ape Genesis 6. Religion is a type of fornication, in any form it takes.

By promoting Greece and Rome, Satan promoted WAR. To get to that goal, he must first homogenize by glorifying the entity of choice. That makes everyone else, jealous. Meanwhile, gradually infest the polity everyone else envies, with Greco-Roman machismo and jadedness, so that the entity itself becomes proud, cocky. So now you've married "nationalism" -- a loyalty, a groupness -- with Greco-Roman ideas. Wow. Bible then collects even more dust, and those ignoring it can safely call themselves "Christian", since so many of them are in the same entity! See Satan's genius? That's how he converted Christianity into a polity, Rome. That's what he's doing to the US, as you read this page. Been going on now for two generations, and we've just entered a third. Fourth generation would be the last, if we don't wake up and smell the coffee.

The coup de grace comes next. Having built up the entity, having built up the hostility around it, the entity must then FAIL in some important way. This promotes debunking ALL authority in all nations, because for all the hostility, those around the promoted entity ADMIRE it (secretly, of course). So it is a kind of betrayal of trust, to see that entity go DOWN. Chaos ensues. Dark Ages. It's a phenomenon you observe many times in history, both on a macro and a micro level (look how we all reacted to Enron's demise). People love to use the ill bad authority seems to or does make, to wreck ALL authority. So when Russia came down in 1917, did the revolutionaries carefully package all the furniture and other expensive property, to sell it abroad for the sake of the poor? NO! They trashed it or hoarded it. Same story in China. So Homogenization is used to make us proud, and hence war, and hence wreck authority in the name of a 'holy' revolution or cause. Same ol', same ol', since the Garden.

So, if you're wondering what the 21st century will look like, review the 20th: in the 21st century, though, "world war" will largely be fought by economic means, with any military expressions being reserved for little countries no one much likes. For, just as in the 20th century, Satan's objective for the 21st is to logistically and financially bleed dry countries with strong pockets of positive Christians, i.e., the US. Bleeding-dry increases dependence on other nations; increased dependence on other nations, polarizes the people in the country being bled (well, and other nations' attitudes toward that country, too). Polarization motivates finding a scapegoat. This, of course, brings with it not only an internal series of persecutions/pogroms, but war itself. Just review Rome from 100AD-300AD, if you want to see the paradigm of Satan's historical plan.

God, of course, has His Own Plan. We'll see more of how His Plan works, in the next section. For now, remember this: breakups of families, neighborhoods, regions, polities, etc. are used to free people from groupness oppressions. Sometimes it takes drastic action, to do this. The theme is frequent in Scripture that God removes people from an area they want to be in, and transplants them elsewhere, viz., the Jews in Jer25ff. Those 'left behind' are left behind, to be judged. Those so judged also may become positive as a result of the disaster, war, etc. On a smaller scale, folks may be removed because they are positive to God in some way: under the Trial, they have to be removed to get the answers they seek or finally ask the right questions; maybe the method of removal needs to be traumatic, even torturous. Suffering brings with it a sense of isolation, so you are free from group oppressions, so are free to think. For example, a lot of folks involved in that horrible Rape of Nanking became believers (click here if you didn't already read the link at the end of the Genocidus table). It was a terrible way for those individuals to wake up, but they are all in heaven now, happy with the Lord forever. Always View History With Long 'Eyes', not short ones.

So the 20th century pattern will repeat, but via 'butter' weapons, not guns; with new faces, country names, and a scintillating change-of-costume for the perennial messianic promise of war (which in Western military history debuts during the first quarter). [Using The Encyclopedia of Military History by the DuPuy brothers, one finds an amazing clockwork precision in the rise of one or many messiahlike causes during each first quarter of a European century. During the 1600-1700's, there were so many messiahs, it's hard to separate them!]

Here in 2007, catering-to-the-mob is the norm; so the next step history usually 'takes', is to 'discover' some demagogue who will capture the world's imagination. [All the current stress on 'alternative' this-or-that, be it in medicine, business, education, forms of government, faith, religion, etc. bespeaks a worldwide ennui of mammoth proportions. Everyone is busy rejecting his past, in order to get more 'butter', which is the economist's term for consumer goods. That's the big war of the 21st century. Of course, to the casual observer, this breaking-up-of-authorities/past looks like a healthful trend of anti-monopoly. However, as lately revealed by the insane accusations against both Arthur Andersen (at one end of the spectrum), and against the US Administration's policy on Iraq, we prove to be at the beginning of anti-authority chaos, and thus world war. Of course, such beginnings are many in history, and have been forestalled. Still, the mindset is rampant now. A good diagnostic book to read on this mindset's role in destabilizing history, is William Shirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic: its purpose seems to be to show the mental roots of France's capitulation to Germany in 1940. From J'Accuse through Marshall Petain's administration, you'll see how rampant accusation due to cynical iconoclasm permeated the country; this, coupled with head-in-sand hedonism, is a deadly mix inviting war (study Isa28 in this connection, the pre-invasion mindset of Samaria). Likewise, if you look at any dozen or more years preceding any big war, you'll find this same popular iconoclastic attitude with the same alternative-seeking. For, man has tired of his institutions, finds them wanting, so wants a change: enfin, violently.]

If a military conflagration results, the only likely catalyst will be via hidden alliances over the volatile countries of the Middle East; for that geographical nexus of three continents will always be the most likely catalyst for military war. If that happens, the US will probably lose -- unless we Christians get with the spiritual life in sufficient numbers. If God was willing to wipe out Samaria (and later) Judah, bet that He'll have no compunction in wiping out an apostate America (first by means of 'spheres of influence' driving a new civil war, given the pattern of past client nations of God who finally 'went under'). [Careful study of Israel's history will show that a particular kind of civil war, which effects a polity-splitting, preceded foreign takeover. God does this to preserve the more-positive part, from the negative: as noted previously to explain the underlying doctrine for the Rapture, this "good figs", 'remnant' principle likewise explains how God preserves His Believers. You can also see the same pattern occur historically in the first Gentile client nation, SPQR. The pattern repeats with respect to Germany and France (whose origins derive from the Holy Roman Empire splitting in two), and Great Britain (US split off); note how those nations all retained sovereignty, but were much reduced in size compared to their heydays. The same phenomenon might hold true for Portugal (Brazil split off), China during the 1940's, and Korea during the 1950's, but I'd need more data about the extent of Christianity then in those places, to be sure.] Some other nation who is more spiritually-loyal to Him can easily take our place. Maybe the next God-favored nation will be.. China?

Okay, we've seen enough of the macro picture and its strategies, to realize we humans are being 'played' on a grand scale, pawns in this Trial between the Lord and Satan. But how does this Satan vs. God WarTrial play in 'my' life? How are we individually used by Satan -- by God? And that's the question you should be asking. For read this loud and clear: it's an individual fight, not a group fight. Politics don't matter at all. What groups of people, nations, business, whatever do, don't matter at all. You matter; not your nation, not your friends, not your family, nor any works whatsoever. It's just God and you, analogous to how it was for Christ Himself, when He was here. It's pretty shocking, so buckle up!

Royalty is essentially STRATEGIC in nature. Every decision it makes affects all STRUCTURES, so any Royal Decision must be strategically-motivated. That's why we need to TRAIN in this Our Royal Legacy from Him. For He Strategically Defeated Satan at the Cross, theme of Heb1. So Psalm 110 goes into action, because of that. Strategy governs the PLAN of achieving a goal. Tactics, by contrast, are how that goal is to be implemented, carried out. So the peasants and other ruled in a kingdom are to implement, be the tactical arm, the army of the general, who is the King. That's why a King's Job is THINKING, on which everyone else depends. Notice how this Ruler Status is at the same time, a Chief Slave role. Head without Body, useless. Body without Head, useless. So God ordained it. Our inequality is not demeaning. He is not insulted by the fact we are inferior, and could at any time make us higher. In fact that is His Goal, to make us gods, John 10:34 as we saw at the beginning of Part IVa -- but, with our consent. Not, by imposition. Make us gods via the Son of God Who Voluntarily humbled Himself so that this could be done, precept upon precept.

Being Royal, therefore, means Rank has Its Privileges and Responsibilities. Being STRATEGIC, these Privileges and Responsibilities are INVISIBLE. We've seen something of this Our Royal Role, in Part III. In Part IV we've been examining the 'play' of our Royal Role on history, with a major subtheme of why the Rapture is thus a valid doctrine, and is pre-Trib. So here, notice: your thinking is STRATEGICALLY USED by God to bless the world, solely due to your training in His Son's Thinking. So this strategic usage of you won't be detectable to the world, nor would you want it to be. Royalty is largely invisible, distant from those ruled. So are you. This Royal Spiritual Lifestyle you grow up in is not detected, even if you are constantly among people all day. Nor should it be detectable, since publicity is the last thing you would want. Satan publicizes. Royalty is to be quiet, unassuming, not self-promoting. As is, Our Dread Lord.

Invisible, yet real enough. In Part IVb's "Facets" links, Part III's Corollary 3C and the end of Part III we saw the underlying justificational structure, blessing, and function of "Payoff": God blesses one's periphery in progressively bigger ways, to express His Pleasure in one who's learning His Son's Mind. Such Divine blessing cannot even remotely be accomplished by any human activity. Thus, even brushing your teeth can help the poor more than all the money given to charity. Why? God is Infinite. People, money, are not.

Remember from Part II, history has always been predicated on whether there was a basis for blessing-by-association. God created Seven Divine Blessing Freedoms which bless anyone, believer or unbeliever, who follow them. Above these, the Blessing by Association with believers is the reason why Time continued up through the Cross, and thus history continues after it. This is how the the "wicked" can survive -- even prosper. That is Grace, so that they can have sufficient time to change their minds about the Gospel, the spiritual life. That is Grace, so that those whose spiritual and secular weal "depend" in some way on the welfare of those same "wicked", can have sufficient benefit, sufficient time. Remember how Pharaoh was used? That's an example of this principle.

So, you and I are literally alive today only because Christ paid for all mankind; because some believers, going before us, actually grew enough to justify post-mortem blessing-by-association to us. 'Just as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's spiritual lives were so pleasing to GOD that the Jewish bloodline could be guaranteed forever.

Note the 'substitutionary' quality of these by-association rules. It's by association with our sins that Christ was justified in paying for our sins. It's by association with Christ in His Deaths (see Rom 6) that we can receive salvation. It's by association with Christ in His Life (see Rom6, Heb7-10) that we have permanent salvation. Substitution and association are at the very heart of how man lives..or, dies. Why? because Love substitutes. [2Cor5:14-15's Greek makes quite a play on substitutionary prepositions huper and peri, plus the proleptic idea that, since He substituted for us, we don't live for ourselves, but instead 'substitute' as living-for-Him. A real gem of a verse-pair.) Sacrifice, for example, is a substitution: one foregoes thing "A" in favor of (due to love/preference for) thing "B". So, as in Romans 5:8 "God demonstrates His Love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died AS A SUBSTITUTE for us." (Greek preposition "huper" means 'as a substitute for'. Greek students are required, in order to pass their Greek course, to chop out all but the 'for', when they translate to English. This chopping-out requirement applies to all prepositions and many other Greek words -- even though it is known that such a chopping rule changes the meaning, too. Cf. Mounce and Wallace's books on Biblical Greek, esp. Mounce appendices.)

So as we saw in the Facets link sections of Part IVb, as Bride we who are growing up in Christ are made "substitutes", too: the "sweet savor" of our learning Him 'propitiates' the Father, as it were, for all the me-be-god thinking He constantly hears. 'Analogous to how the Son's Own Thinking on the Cross propitiated Father for all the sins He saw. Think of us as 'dividends' of His Payment. So, those other folks who are not growing up in Him, can live. So also we, who are only here because past Christian soldiers died victorious.

• This Part IVc's Appendix Side Trip on God's Divine Benefit Plan to bless mankind in history, analogized in detail to actuarial valuations for defined-benefit plans (aka "old-age pension" or "Social Security").
• IVa's Re-Routing of Divine Blessing was the Introduction to God's Divine Benefit Plan, its juridical basis. Church and Rapture are but currently used reroutes; but God has cut out and grafted in, since Cain. So God re-routed THE Conduit of world blessing, from Israel to Church, as Romans 11 explains. The Divine Benefit Plan still blesses Israel (ibid since Rom9).
• Not to mention, how Part IVa showed Church is used to RESCUE ISRAEL and her Time, without which Time would end. That was also the main demonstration in TenWaysThisTimelineDiffers.doc", a brief summarizing the content of the larger Mirroring.htm, aka "Daniel Timeline", and Part IVa itself. Um, that's a pretty big deal, to "redeem the time", KJV of Col4:5 and Eph5:16.
• Then there's our being made the SOLE CONDUITS of Blessing to a world which otherwise couldn't get anything but cursing from God, in Part IVb's 1st Facet.
• Everyone around you gets directly blessed due to you, as shown in Part IVb's 2nd Facet.
• You yourself are the blessing, when you think PERFECT THOUGHTS as a Royal Priest, as shown in Part IVb's 3rd Facet. He blesses your periphery and nation, to train you further in that perfect thinking.
• Hence you defeat Satan in the Trial that way, as explained in Part IVb's 5th Facet. Lots of blessing comes from that!
• Not to mention, your fellow believers are thus blessed FOREVER, as explained in Part IVb's Sixth Facet.
• Then when you die, the Divine Benefit Plan 'window' remains open for those you left behind, as outlined in Part IVb's 7th Facet.
• Of course, all these were Facets of the Corollaries of Blessing as first explained in Corollary 3A, which covered your Divine Assets and thus Accountability;
• to be parlayed into Corollary 3B, Bema Blessing -- which means you inherit forever.
• So while still down here, you are treated as crowned already, so Corollary 3C, Caring Charge, is the reason why the world and your periphery are blessed due to your training in Son's Thinking.
• Hence your Devoted Destiny, Corollary 3D.
• In the year 1988 and 2000 Bible classes, my pastor called it "magnetism". As in, Earth's outer core. No spinning magma (believers learning Doctrine), then no world. As in, the magnetic field (blessing by association from believers) which protects us from outer space entering our space, and flat toasting the planet. The latter is held in place by the former's spinning, as explained in the recent movie "The Core" (starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci, good film). My pastor also called us believers "spiritual Atlases". How apt. Never underestimate what GOD can do TO you. You are not your own. As we saw in "h." of the Third Facet of Part IVb, God likes lingering, takes His Time to accomplish the Results He Wants. He didn't choose to just bing! everything into an end product, doesn't want to do it that way, as Satan contends He should have done. For God wants freely-consenting beings, not automatons or Stepford wives. No matter how much that hurts. ["Magnetism" is a keyword in my pastor's Ephesians series, a kind of running synonym for the invisible hero God develops to the Eph4:13 level. So, for example, when exegeting Eph4:13 in T436 s2 (should equate to Lesson 872, in Aug '88) of 85 Eph, my pastor stops to again explain the magnetism of such a believer. So the topic comes up passim in both 85 Ephesians and the later 92 Spiritual Dynamics, but in the latter it doesn't become a regular feature until about the year 2000.]
• Only God is Righteous, Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19 therefore John 10:28 and 2Cor5:21. So only God can accomplish Righteousness. So if you want to be holy (aka "practice righteousness" in 1Jn3:10), believe in Christ to get saved and then keep using 1Jn1:9 and learning His Word; so He will be doing TO you, 24/7. Whatever you do is made into Diamonds that way, and no other. And apart from Him, "you can do nothing", John 15 Vine analogy. So, brambles and thistles, aka doo-doo, is the alternative.

Company welfare and retirement plans "terminate", too. That is, the company cannot or will not pay more benefits than are funded already: the plan disburses whatever money is in it, and closes down. Usually, onerous government regulation causes the problem (true in the US, anyway, since 1975). When that happens, those in the plan currently usually divvy up the funds in the plan among those in it; the result can be a significant windfall to those remaining at that time, in effect winning many times what they otherwise would have had. Or.. very little, if funds aren't sufficient. In either case, the plan ends.

God will terminate His Divine Benefit Plan for a group:

• when all is fulfilled (ties back to Daniel 9:24);
• when the positive folk have completed spiritual development (Eph4:13); and
• too many people are negative to His Provision (Matt24:37). [The analogy to Noah is multi-event. It references the Rapture's suddenness, like the way a thief would surprise you. 2Pet uses Noah this same way. But the Matt24 passsage covers parallels between Rapture and 2nd Advent, so also shows how the 2nd Advent is like the Flood, with the Baptism of Fire showing after that in verses 40ff. Of course, many interpret those verses as Rapture verses, not recognizing the Flood context in v.38. Point is, dual-entendre events.]
• God fully funded everything in eternity past and it cannot be lost (theme of Ephesians 1). My pastor harped on this fact so often, he spent a good seven years of daily Bible classes on Ephesians exegeting the verses over and over again, taking the congregation all over the Bible in the process.
• Then, as we saw in Part II, another "covenant" replaces the one prior. (Post-Church, reversion to the Mosaic Law, as we saw in #18, above.)
• Then, the unused blessing for the previous group stays in "trust" (escrow), which means those in that group get extra portions. (See w'et-atsumim yehalleq shalal clause in Isa53:12. NT often keys into this clause by using Greek verb merizw and noun meros.)
• Blessing by Association, however, continues to the new group, but only from the ones who fully 'collected' within the PREVIOUS window period. As you might know, "window period" means a set amount of time during which one must exercise his option to take the benefit (i.e., your lifetime is the 'window' period for believing in Christ for salvation).
• Of course, those believers who die without enough "Yes" votes to spiritual growth within the window period, don't grow up spiritually; so they leave no Seventh Facet blessing behind for their loved ones.
• Exception: we all receive ongoing benefits due to the Cross, so there is always a logistical support benefit, even for the unbeliever (i.e., so he'll have enough time to respond to the Gospel).
• As with ALL Blessings from God, these benefits too are always personally tailored. Some people need a Bugatti for transport, whereas others only need a bicycle. God knows what hits your soul best to maximize your learning Him.

• Consequently, Satan exploits God's re-routing to increase negativity to God, then accuses our negativity, so argues God should terminate His Plan.
• Failing at that, Satan tries to get us to quit and thus forfeit full receipt of our benefits before our 'window' ends, i.e., the 'window' of one's lifetime, or some lesser disciplinary period relative to the believer in question. These two types of window periods also apply in aggregate, Rapture being a window which closes on Church when the contingency is met, as we saw in Part IVb.
• For after the window closes, CURSING-By-Association then applies.
• For as explained in Part I, people can choose instead to mature in anti-God, anti-integrity. The entire Trial is about whether you choose to do to/for yourself, or choose for GOD to do to you (kenosis), as explained in Part III's Fourth Reason for Invisibility.
  Here's how Satan&Co. cultivate mature anti-integrity in humans:
  1. AUTHOR a mediocre product; here, a substitute spiritual life which is distinctly non-satisfying, that needs propping up by works to buttress ego, or ritual to make emotions pass for truth (i.e., feeling 'spiritual' because emotionally moved). When ego or emotion don't get 'paid back' for their trouble, hatred and anger thus reign: that's the goal. Hatred and anger have their own version of holding together despite pressure, literally an instead-integrity, an anti-integrity.
  2. Hence it's necessary to BOND the mediocre product to both ego and emotion -- i.e., BOX it up in pretty words -- for a mediocre product eventually motivates apathy since it really isn't satisfactory.
  3. So next CLANG, publicize, advertise the product; as a result, people will herd to CLUTCH the product, beCAUSE it's public. I saw it on TV! My friend likes it! My family does it! It's "tradition"! Everyone does it! It's 'respectable'!  Notice how at this point it doesn't matter whether the product is any good; no one investigates the quality of the product (i.e., whether a claimed religious tenet is valid, sensible, or even in the Bible). The public acCLAIM drowns out all objectivity; after all, if everyone buys it, it must be good.
  4. Then, as the product proves a curse instead of a blessing, DAMN someone else for the problem --
  5. and especially, claim not enough was EXPENDED, whether money, commitment.. or faith.
  6. Thus people keep on FAWNING, never wising up to the fact that the product is FALSE, bad, a FAILURE, etc.
  7. Thus GUILT is used to motivate continued purchase: you're only a GOOD person, if you buy it. The mediocrity itself becomes a loyalty test. You GOT to buy it, now -- precisely because it is mediocre. Else you're a selfish bad person, shame on you.

• So Cursing-By-Association happens when too many believers prefer their mediocre ideas of the spiritual life; not only must the Divine Benefits reduce because of negative volition, but the naturally-bad effects of all that negativity must also occur. God will never gerrymander Truth. So, "cursing by association" is the name for this phenomenon (my pastor's term). It is likewise a type of "capital", "leverage", "salt", but in the negative direction. So, God adds punishment to it (cf. Col3:25). Bible, as noted earlier, calls this negative leverage, "leaven", e.g., "a little leaven leavens the whole lump". Spiritual leprosy. (See how Miriam got leprosy as discipline from God to match her leprous jealousy over Moses marrying the Ethopian woman.) The Law had a lot of procedures with regard to quarantining diseases like leprosy, and "cursing-by-association"'s real purpose is just that: Quarantine. We saw some of this concept in Part II's discussion regarding the four-generation-curse. (As noted back in the "Third Reason for Invisibility", the Law remains a paradigm, and of course Christ fulfilled the Law, so it continues under Him; so of course many of the paradigms in the law remain operative for the human race, and "for our instruction" as a result, Rom15:4, 1Cor10:11.)
  "Leprosy" in the Law doesn't mean solely the disease we call "leprosy" today. The term also had a generic connotation of contagion. So, when "leprosy" was in an article, the priest was to isolate the article (or person), to test whether the damage spreads. Thus, in the Law, the entire article would be burned, if after successive testing and cleaning measures, the damage still spreads. This, because the damage can't be contained or cured. [Lesson 1450 of 92SD, covering 1Cor3:11 (to explain Gal3:21), calls "wood, hay, and stubble" the three (successive) Divine Discipline levels of the believer who goes out under 1Jn5:16, analogous to the three arrogance skills: self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. That's real interesting, because it would mean that all production evaluated at the Bema, even 'bad', comes solely from Heaven: i.e., did God 'reply' to believer volition by building gold/silver/precious stones, or did He have to 'reply' by Discipline? This "interesting" point was not covered, but the idea just occurred to me, when rewriting this section on 7/26/2002. Also, I can't think of a single wood-metaphor in the Bible where it's not depicting a curse-fit-only-for-burning: even the acacia wood of the Ark depicted the Humanity of Christ, Who would be cursed so we could be healed. Finally, the production IN the believer, not the believer himself, is burnt. So much for the false idea that the phrase "as though through fire" is an allusion to some kind of below-earth Purgatory. Whatever Discipline 'burning' we get, we get before death.]

  So it is, with Cursing-By-Association. The "Invisibility.. Flowthrough" section below will explain the "contagion" aspect in more detail. Here, the point is to focus on the need to execute Christians who are too-long-negative to the spiritual life. The negative Christian will be 'treated', so to speak, á la the priestly treatments in the Law: successively-severe discipline will accrue to the negative Christian. These treatments are designed to wake him up, so he'll use 1Jn1:9 and get with 1Jn's Script. If, however, he persists in becoming ever-more leprous, God must put him to "sleep" -- for the sake of those who are not so damaged. Just as the priest had to burn a leprous article. So, then: Satan, knowing this, is out to get as many Christians as possible to be negative, so he can go before the Supreme Court of Heaven and justly say, "You should order their deaths." Satan's not stupid. God Honors His Word, and Satan counts on it -- to get us wiped out. Again, as noted in #7+8 toward the beginning of this Part IVc, Rapture has two causes -- here, the negative one of cursing-by-association demanding our diplomatic recall.

• Hence our Ephesians 6 thinking "war" is the most intense in fallen human history, the "fullness of times" as Paul puts it (synonym for our Now, e.g., in Eph1:10).
• It's the most intense, precisely because the Rapture is unpredictable. Any war which is unpredictable and hence drawn out, is the hardest type of war to fight.
  The fact can't be stressed enough. You should be able to confirm historically that the hardest wars are those which drag on. WWI and Vietnam are classic examples of two different types of wars whose outcomes were materially determined by their dragging on. Hitler lost in Operation Barbarossa (invasion of Russia) as Napoleon did before him, because Russia used its vastness to literally exhaust the enemy. So too, here: Christianity, like Judaism before her, got TIRED of waiting for Messiah to come, main threaded historical theme of Part IVa. Rapture is TIRING, an emergency always 'on'; you dull to it, if you wait too long.

  Strategically, Rapture causes Satan problems, too: due to predictability in the OT prophecies, Satan could reliably target certain groups or activities; and, leave others alone. Thus Satan could concentrate his efforts. Upon the Session, all that predictability was removed. The only "signs" are the historical trends disclosed in Daniel 9:26 and its elaborator, Revelation.

  Worse, Satan now has to target every Christian. Satan must foster APATHY, to do that. Hence Satan employs his own 'dialectic', using prosperity to promote apostacy and then destruction. Why? He's now got a two-front war: he's got to wipe us out, as well as all Jews. That's the only way he can stop fulfillment of the covenants. (Jews who believe in Christ during "Now" are part of "us", just as Gentiles became part of them due to faith in the Age of Israel; just as Gentiles become part of them in the Millennium, when the Age-of-Israel covenants are all fulfilled.) Satan is the best of generals. Yet, he doesn't see the Son's grace here. Instead of reading the strategic "sign" that two-front wars inevitably fail, he's intensified his bid to beat Him.

  So we are truly in the worst persecution phase of history. The mass Revelation 6, 11, 12, 13, 17 strategies must be employed to prepare for a Rapture Satan can't predict; that's a logistical question, and no war is ever won if the logistics aren't carefully attended. Herding like the frogs do in Aristophanes' play "The Frogs" is vital (John alludes to that play in Revelation 16:13, my pastor noted). Additionally, the herding of all five chapters makes it easier to target those independent believers who DO NOT go with the groupness propaganda. That too is a logistical question, of supply line. It's not easy to stay within the confines of human volition, constantly tempting it to reject God in one subtle way or another, i.e., the very public stress on "do-it-yourself" is an evil twist on God's morality, as you'll see if you keep reading.

• How do you fight such a war? By persecution. Ironically, the most effective way to persecute, is to promote apathy. Homogenization promotes apathy and hence persecution of anyone who doesn't fit in, since apathy is touted as a kind of "toughness" virtue. Jaded, cynical, unswayed, macho. Believing, is for sissies. How Satan specifically accomplishes the promotion of Apathy will be covered more in the "STOP OMEGA" table below. For the moment, look at why he must make such a choice: he can't be in all places at once; his demons can't be everywhere at once. So they have to use ideas to herd people, so they can get control. And the idea they need to use the most, is APATHY. For that makes a populace, docile. So they have to promote, material prosperity. For that makes a populace, dependent. Adversity helps manufacture INdependence; prosperity manufactures DEpendence. Hence, apathy, for everything's okay in 'my' world, and that's all I care about.

  Apathy is a kind of deadness-of-interest. Small interest. Like a child's. If you spend time with children, you spend most of your time listening to their me-nesses: I learned my ABC's! Oh, Johnny gave me this! Oh, I can fingerpaint! It's very touching to watch them learn, to become enthusiastic. But their interests are unavoidably narrow, self-centered. So a little cut on a finger makes them cry. So a little Valentine makes them happy. Smallness. Apathy in adults is not so cute: what in a child is an 'age of discovery' becomes in an adult, pettiness. What in school was 'cool', getting "C" grades (wasn't 'cool' to be academically interested, because adults wanted that), becomes in adulthood, mediocrity. Just do enough to 'get by'. Try to 'get away' with stuff. Try to 'pull one over' on someone. Get and use a coupon. Small change, for small minds. Society needs "C-level people" (a friend's term) as its bulk, for stability: whoever else would be willing to do the normal mundanities of life? But in God's Plan, no one has to be stuck with mediocrity. However, one does have to be Vitally Interested In God to transcend mediocrity.

  So, Satan's out to stop that transcendence, and he does it, by making disinterest, 'cool', 'hip', 'what everyone's doing'. Fit in with people, not God, that's what's 'cool'.

• So now you can see how Satan's Attack Plan contra Church and the Homo Genocidus tables, plus the above, all inter-connect to make for apathetic stultification. The following also fits nicely into the Dungheap Table of Part II, man's mindset after Adam's Fall.
  • APATHY means not important, no hurry, no worry, it's far off, never mind, just get by. Hence AUTHOR mediocre products, i.e., unsatisfying definitions of spirituality. Notice how it's an ABUSE to author mediocre products. So APATHY must be ADVERTISED in order to succeed. Can't make it on merit. AVERAGE has to become the sublime herding virtue, else mediocrity has no emotional hook.
  • So next, BYPASS truth of the product's being mediocre, by BROADCASTING it, to make it popular. You do this by BONDING ego and emotion to the product, thus packaging all three into a pretty BOX of feely BENEFITS,
  • or into a CROSS you bear to avoid guilt. Loudly CLANGING how noble you are for bearing it, of course.
  • Hence the mediocre product DAMS up resentment, since you buy it to preen, fit in, or alleviate guilt. So you progressively live on DAMNING others. So you are DEAF to any suggestion that something's inherently wrong with the product you're buying. So you become DEAD to DISCERNMENT. (Hint: this is why we don't give up "Good Friday", however patently wrong it is.)
  • This damning in turn, promotes EVADING the EXPENSE of your 'cross'. Especially, the Expense of EXAMINATION for ERROR in the product itself. Notice how evasion, expense and God become EQUATING synonyms in the mind, thus ENABLING further evasion aka procrastination: which in turn results in an ENERVATING guilt reaction, so you get stuck in a reasoning 'circle' back to Bypass, thus preserving and deepening apathy's authorship. Thus EGO and EMOTION are protected, preserved!

  • Hence a FAKE God, like a FAKE Christianity, and before (and after) her, a FAKE Judaism -- all these are easy to promulgate, since FANTASY makes all that nice evasion, continue. Hence the FAWNING despite the constant FAILURE of the FAKE to live up to the FAITH you put into it. So you willingly FORFEIT blessings from the Divine Benefit Plan, from this point forward. That results in cursing, thus reinforcing the steps A-F, internally. In the soul.
  • Hence you GROVEL. Truth is now morphed into GROSS falsehoods for the sake of the Fit-In GROUP goal. So the group becomes your 'GOD', and you're only GOOD if you belong to the group; GUILTY, if you do not. So it doesn't matter how GOOFY are the tenets, like you have to light a candle for the dead, avoid or wear certain clothes, food, days, etc. ad nauseum.
  • Hence HOMOGENIZED, for now God is replaced with HUMANS! In His Own Name, no less! And you're not HOLY, unless you are HYPOCRITICAL! That's the mediocre spiritual life! Homocidus, because the fastest death is to kill yourself trying to get man's approval! Of course, then you are the tragic HERO! Persecution, aka HARRASSMENT, is an easy HALLOWED step, now. You are HERDED and everyone else should be, too.
  • "INCLUSIVENESS" thus becomes a smiley mask for Apathy: all religions are okay, we're all human, everyone should love everyone else, global village. Of course that translates as INFIDELITY to all the gods promulgated, since they are all different, so loyalty to them all is loyalty to none. But hey: INVERSION is the key to apathy, anyway. Form, not substance, INSINCERE, hypocritical. In a word, INDIFFERENT.
  • Meanwhile, JESUS got cut out of the picture, in name of the (genuine) morality of eschewing prejudice, which is lower JUSTICE issue. Satan always stresses lower moralities and justices in order to JETTISON the Higher One.
  • Note what is called 'prejudice': KURIOS, God. Deity can't be all the definitions various religions tout, for the definitions conflict with each other. God can't be only one Definition to apathy, since so many people would be KICKED out! So the Kurios must Himself be Kicked out. Any definition. The Koran and every other fake holy book claim there's no Cross, hence kick God out of any right to payment. So "God" doesn't get paid. But Bible claims God is due payment which man can't make. So the Real God must be kicked out, and one is prejudiced to believe in Him. That's what Rome thought, echoed down the centuries even today.
  • Ergo, a LOYALTY test: Belief in God is somehow prejudicial, if it doesn't blend into everyone else's beliefs, yet you are loyal to your own idea of 'god'. That's an innate LIE: you can't fornicate with other husbands and be true to your own. Classic Roman mindset: the real 'god' is LOYALTY to PEOPLE! Satanic signature par excellence, a LOWER morality, giving LIPSERVICE.
  • So, apathy is MORAL; it's promoted as virtue of toughness and tolerance. MEDIOCRITY is now the MASTER. MAN thus becomes his own god, and a MESSIAH MARTYR.
  • Therefore you must buy apathy, to be deemed NICE, NOBLE. And "nice" means amenable to everyone else's view. Else you are NAUGHTY, NASTY, NEGLECTFUL.
  • OPEN-MINDEDNESS therefore is defined as not believing too much, hence apathy. So OBEDIENCE is restricted to forms, is shallow, and due plenty of reciprocation (i.e., all those honorable mentions and sponsorships). Hence the content of the belief itself, is OBFUSCATED by OPPRESSIVE OBSERVANCES, all of which nicely make God look like an OGRE for making you do them. STOP OMEGA table in the next section, will cover this genius tactical strategy, in more detail.

    Try to think of even one movie or documentary which didn't present church attendance as either boring or emotional. You are only presented those two alternative views, as if there were no other definition of 'spiritual'. Clever, huh. Kinda hard to want God if you're bored. Kinda hard to want God for Himself, if spirituality requires an emotional high: then as Paul says, emotion is your god instead, Phili3:18-19. Most people just opt out in the middle, nodding to God, ignoring the boredom and the emotionality. In a word, most people are apathetic.

  • PROSPERITY becomes a great killer, leads most quickly to A-O jadedness and disinterest, as gratification is immediate or little-delayed. Surviving prosperity requires more Independent Virtue -- but HERDING snaps off the road to Independence. Herding is a kind of comfort in numbers. So the gratification is constant. Thus one's not motivated to do much, since satisfied. So apathy is likewise best promoted by means of prolonged peace due to its leisure. If you know the Rapture is pre-Trib and unpredictable, you have no sense of leisure. So it's vital to lull a believer into disbelieving or forgetting about the Rapture, by distracting him with peace and prosperity. Or, by warring over issues in this world. For if you are all hot and bothered over THIS world, the next one isn't in view, as we saw in the first table on Satan's Attack Plan against Church. So harrassment of those who don't agree, becomes easy.

    PERSECUTION thus proceeds most stably, when PROSPERITY is promulgated. People don't realize that prosperity claims far more victims than war ever could. So they think the Tribulation is harder. Guess again. Just try lazing around in your body, rather than "warring" with it via exercise, if you don't understand how "peace" kills more souls than war. That's what Satan seeks to do to us: kill us with the little nicenesses, with peace. It's hypnotic, like sleep. Like muscle atrophy. Like "drugs". See, the nice thing about adversity is that it imposes a structure; so children benefit from it, since they don't have enough INdependence of standards in their souls, to rightly forego gratification. Simplifies choices. Sure, it feels bad, but -- it's easier to go in the right direction. All that ease disappears, when you can do anything. The child is destroyed from inside if he can just have whatever he wants. So Satan&Co. belittle what is high and noble, to serve the childish appetites of the populace. Which, are apathetic to virtue, but interested in status. So the wrong timing of prosperity on souls too small to enjoy it, destroys those souls -- just as it would destroy a child. That's why, as noted in the "Second Reason for Royalty" in Part III, royal children were often subjected to rigors of training no peasant could have endured. Thus, to develop virtue not to dissolve under prosperity. Just look at The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, to see what damage extended prosperity can do. So, absent an enemy one can see, get aroused over, and nobly fight, man's pretty prone to "a little folding of the hands to rest", as Isaiah warns. Ease means more leisure; more leisure means more time to pay attention to the things which have bugged you, or things which you've longed to have. So, more preoccupation with "earthly things". So, more pettiness. So, God diminishes in importance. After all, with prosperity comes no-need. So, there's no threat to give structure to the thought-life, no structure to motivate thinking beyond self.

    God can do anything. But He routinely FOREGOES. It's a choice, and demands total Integrity. Everything finite literally depends on Him, and if He willed it in the next nanosecond, we'd all be gone. No one can force God to honor anything. That He commits, is due to His CHOOSING. Notice how He chooses to go slow, rather than just have His Standards met. We saw in the Fifth Facet of Part IVb how miffed Satan is about that fact. For Satan, like you or I, would just make everything BE what he wanted, thinking that's the best happiness. Not so. For God doesn't do it that way, though He always can. God truly loves Righteousness itself, that's why it's a pleasure for Him to remake us, to judge His Own Son. And His Son loved paying: Isaiah 53 isn't there to make us feel guilty, but to demonstrate how much HE LOVED paying, Roman 5:8. Again, if you love Righteousness for itself, you WANT to spend time and effort on it, just because. So, God lingers. God doesn't sin, because He actually loves Righteousness. If it were a sin to eat sprouts but you only liked steak anyway, the 'threat' of sprouts would be no threat at all. You're not attracted to them, in the first place. You're too busy enjoying the steak!

    So absent sufficient Integrity, the needed love for Righteousness is absent. Instead, there is a love of self being right, which is another form of hating righteousness. If Righteousness is only good for salving ego, then it has no value of its own. Hence prosperity is the worst thing that can happen to a soul which hasn't learned to love Righteousness as God does. For then he pursues Righteousness to buttress ego, which means he must persecute anyone who doesn't agree with him. That's how Satan thinks. Prosperity then is a killer of one's own independence, and becomes the persecution-promulgator. Again, if you have a nice life, you think you're holy before God.

    So it becomes, Persecution by Prosperity. The worst thing you can have, is prosperity BEFORE Love For Righteousness has matured. Christ faced the very worst of this type of persecution. He had maximum prosperity: He could do anything! The Hypostatic Union of His Two Natures in One Person made it innately persecuting to BE that way. His Humanity could at any time choose to peek at Omniscience, use any Divine Attribute, at will. Satan's tempting Him to do just that, in Matt4: the three good-deeds, are PROSPERITY TESTS. Kenosis means He chose NOT to use His Innate Prosperity of Being, in that manner. Gotta Love Someone else far more, to be so motivated to forego. Positive offensive reason, loving Father, was what held Him together. Defensive reasons are important, but they don't win wars. So the inherent persecution of not using one's abilities, and instead choosing for God to do it TO you, is the harder test to endure.

    He also had to choose to ignore His Abilities, in favor of what was most repugnant to Him. Further, He had to do this amidst a culture of machismo which Rome at that time had infused into her subjects: only stupid people were actually interested in anything; the sophisticated Roman was supposed to be blasé. Tough. Stong. Doing and bearing all himself. Judaism, likewise, was shot through with its own version of ennui: Talmud overflows with it, as if that were wisdom. So, absent Bible Doctrine in His Soul, run by the Holy Spirit, He wouldn't be able to want the Cross. It's not humanly possible, else, for the extreme differential between the deadness around Him and the High Virtue He had, should have been unbearable. Worst of all, He couldn't talk to them about it; instead He had to constantly resort to parables or snippets or.. even a miracle or two. Their interest in the Truth was that deadened, apathetic. So, too, ours. He wasn't a martyr, but a Lover. Only hatred makes an issue of what it 'gives up'. Christ accounted the suffering a gain, Heb5:8-9, Heb12:2. Paul echoed this in Phil3:8. When you love something enough, you don't even think about what it costs you; or, you're GRATEFUL to have a cost.

    By contrast, the world wants goodies, so constantly accounts what it 'gives up' as a kind of 'price' to GET goodies. Children are like that. So we wanted Him to cater to our childish ideas of right and wrong. When He didn't, we persecuted and then crucified Him. Had He come down to earth at any time, we'd have done the same thing, and in fact crucify Him every day we shout "how I love Jesus!" but never Study His Word. Or, distort His Word claiming to study it. So it's a 'cross' and never popular, to actually Learn His Word. Counterfeit students abound, of course. Satan's not stupid. The mediocrity of Brother-Foot Churchinanity is peedled by Satan&Co. to spit on the Cross, bypass the Truth of the Word. Crucifying Him afresh, every day. For the children only want the goodies, not the Groom. As went Israel, so goes Church.

    So as Bride, we face the most-like-Him problem. It's the Royal Training Program, to make us have the Life of the Most High, as we saw in Part III. Can't learn Him without having His Life and Circumstances. Hence, He gave us His Spiritual Life as His Legacy, to nonetheless persevere toward our own maximum repugnances, our own "cross". And what is more repugnant than sitting still, studying, when the world needs so much "help"? See the parallel to what Christ -- who could have fixed it all! -- faced? Will we resist the urge to stop growing, and instead persevere in the "cross" of the 1st Commandment, to "fullness"? The whole world is blessed, if we do; cursed, if we do not. 'Analogous to how the world depended on Him. Our prosperity from God is awesome. We are the closest thing to Hypostatic Union, to Godness right now, in these puny bodies. Witness John 14:14: "if ye ask anything in My Name, I shall do it." That's a BLANK CHECK. All Christ had to do was SPEAK a thing, and it would exist, Matt4:3. So now all we have to do is speak a prayer (following the simple protocol, see God's System #5), and it's a yes! All Scripture is from God. So, you take it seriously. If you asked God for a million dollars to appear on your carpet, and you understood why that was right to ask, you'd followed the protocol and you believed it, you'd get that money. I've asked God for some really huge historical prayers and seen them play true. Makes one very chary about what one is willing to ask. Just like, if you had all the power and money -- what now? What do you do with it? Take off for the Riviera? That novelty would wear off fast. Own a fleet of sports cars, or mink coats? Boring, in a few days. Having money and power creates problems. Just like poverty does. Prayer is wealth, unlimited. So too is Bible in your head, 24/7. What ails the world, doesn't ail you. You don't need human approbation. You don't need worldly success. Don't you know, people pant after money to be RELIEVED of need? But here you are, Bible in your head surpassing all needs, even while they remain. That's a prosperity the world's goods and efforts simply cannot buy. So what do you do now? It's a killer, prosperity. Far harder than adversity to tolerate, and remain intact.

  • Thus Satan QUARANTINES the Truth away from detection; and quarantines us, via our childish, legalistic preoccupation with the world's goodies. That prevents us from growing up in God's Script, for we are thus choosing an alternate 'god', ourselves. So that justifies our removal under the cursing-by-association rule. If Satan plays his cards right, he can so poison Christians, that enough of us "go out" under ultimate Divine Discipline (1Jn5:16) before God's numbers-requirement is met. Then, Satan wins his goal of a Mistrial Verdict, for then Rapture must occur at the Wrong Time.

    A perfect example of this quarantining away from truth, is in the cable series "Fallen", which ironically is sponsored by the ABC "Family" channel. That this would be "family" content, a glorification of the Genesis 6 struggle immortalized in Greek and Kabbala myths, is most telling. Jesus is wholly suborned into a "Redeemer" half-angel creature -- complete reversal of what Genesis 6 explains. The evil, the mediocrity sold in this series, is incredible to witness. And you just know the creators of the program do NOT intend to be evil nor to sell it. Thus we are quarantined from the truth, thinking we are on God's side, telling a nice family story about angels which of course God should reward and we should bid our children to learn. Incredible, how God, angels, demons, Bible, are derided by that series. The fine acting and good editing in it prove that those making the series do not intend derision. If you know your Bible you can actually learn much of demonic strategy from the series -- so I'd recommend watching it -- which strategy, the writers of the series also patently don't know they reveal. Yeah, well Satan&Co. like to portray themselves and everyone else derisively. Here you see quickly how well they succeed. Quarantined, our ability to discern!

    So is it any surprise, Bible movies and pulpit discussions of Matt4 never show any understanding of that Chapter? All anyone grasps: Satan is bad, and he's tempting the Lord, so the Lord doesn't give in. He doesn't give in, because FATHER'S CHOICE is the only morality, the only Good, and by the way we all got saved because He refused to make stones into bread -- a good deed, feeding Himself and the world; because He refused to jump off the Temple and prove He's God by landing safely -- another good deed, justifying our belief in Him; because He refused to simply zap Satan for insulting Him with an offer of kingdoms of the world which after all Satan got from God. God already owns all the kingdoms of the world. But taking them over would be a good deed, defeating Satan who hurts us.. right? Ruling the kingdoms of the world is a good thing, then one can impose the right standards.. right? But Christ refused all that. You just try to find a pulpit or Bible movie which 'gets it' about why Christ refused. [My own pastor's discourse on this begins about lesson 800 in the 1992 Spiritual Dynamics tapes, and of course is covered in Matthew tapes in more summary format, 40 years prior to the 92SD series. So maybe, because he 'got it', other pastors also do, but I can't find any others. Nor can I find even one Bible movie which demonstrates the real issues in Matt4. They are all syrupy and shallow.]

    But we Christians are forever panting after and doing what Satan says should be done. We routinely seek to turn stones into bread, jump off the Temple, grab all the kingdoms of the world as a kind of triumph over him -- so we fantasize. See how we help the world! See how nice we are! See how large our church! See how our march on Washington changed policy! Christ refused all those things, but we claim ourselves holy for doing them? Satan laughs his head off. For Christ WAITED on God. We don't. So God must quarantine us, after HE waits to give us enough Grace Time to grow out of our panting after Satan's wiles. We don't grow out, so cursing comes, and then we wonder why. For we don't want God, we want the goodies, and we gauge our holiness in terms of the goodies we have.

    Prosperity persecutes. Satan uses it for that purpose. And we lambs to the slaughter, hating God, are easily herded to our own destruction, and easily use our herded values to persecute others who don't fit them. Using, Matt4.

Strategy requires complementary tactics in order for the strategy to succeed. Most wars, battles, campaigns are lost due to bad strategy; on the other hand, poor tactics (i.e., if disjunctively-coordinated) can lose many a battle, and even a war. Good thinking is thus God's major tactical goal, as well as the rewardable basis for blessing, Heb11:6. Sweet savor of His Son's Thinking is True Happiness -- the major Rebuttal Argument in the Trial -- and it is the Entire End Goal of His Grand Strategy to Build Us Up in His Son. Accordingly, Satan&Co. thus give their all to implement Bad Thinking, as you'll see in this section.

• Thinking is contagious. If you doubt it, just try to ignore someone close who's insulting you, and see how difficult a time you have. The insult is a contagion -- that is why you are tempted to respond in kind. By contrast, just try not to be pleased when someone compliments you. The compliment is contagious; it tempts you to think more favorably of the complimenter. It tempts you to reply in kind.

• This contagion motivates reciprocity. Our manners laud reciprocity. Our natures are geared for it. Who can say reciprocity is ipse evil? Moreover, the reciprocity tends to multiply. Someone who responds retains some of that attitude after the event ends; so, someone else in his periphery gets some of that carryover attitude. Like, after a rough day in traffic. Or, when the telephone rings shortly after one's been in a bad argument. You get the idea. Even if we control our words, the attitude somehow shows. So, the other person "catches" it. Like a fresh breeze -- or, like a virus.

• Bad thinking "begets" further bad thinking, not only in the person who's thinking badly, but in those who hear him. Why? Because falsehood attracts. So does truth. As Euripides puts it in his play, "The Suppliants" (v.880 or thereabouts):
  "From this account then wonder not, Theseus, that they dared to die before the towers; for noble nurture carries honour with it, and every man, when once he hath practised virtue, scorns the name of villain. Courage may be learnt, for even a babe doth learn to speak and hear things it cannot comprehend; and whatso'er a child hath learnt, this it is his wont to treasure up till he is old. So train up your children in a virtuous way." [At the end of that play, there's a allusion to Deut33:22, calling certain Argosian Danaids, "lion's whelp".]

• Satan knows this circle-of-contagious-begetting rather well: for example, he used a reciprocity-reflex in each of the Matt4 temptations to Christ. His skill here also explains why a centralization of communications has long been his strategy (Tower of Babel, world government..now the Internet). If he can get everyone to communicate in shared language, he can spread his "gospel" of do-goodism more effectively. Humans become better evangelists, when they can understand each other. As we saw earlier, centralization enhances reciprocity reflexes, and hence homogenization. So Satan wants groupness, centralization, homogenization. God does not.

• The Success of the Cross is that Christ Did Not Reciprocate -- instead, He obeyed the Royal law to the ultimate. (Cf Lev19:18, Matt22:36ff, Rom5:8-11, 12:14-15, 13:8, 2Cor5:21, Gal5:14, Philli2:5-10, Jas2:8 Heb2, 1Pet3:18, all of 1Jn, and like passages.)

• Like attracts like. When one is thinking truth, one is expressing that truth in some visible way. Others "pick up" on that expression. The Holy Spirit points to any truth expressed, so the hearer is getting confirming testimony from the Holy Spirit. (Note: what follows works internally, too, since you "hear" your own thoughts cycling.) The Spirit confirms truth by means of doctrinal recall, instead of "voices" or other obsolete (e.g., OT) methods. You hear something. It strikes you as true. You remember some doctrinal principle which you've previously recognized as true. It confirms the thing you heard as being true. That's how the Holy Spirit "testifies" to you: via recall, or recall-inspired insight. So the thing you hear always can be tested by doctrine, and thus its validity can be proven. Again, assuming you are positive to the truth.

• Over our lifetimes, then, we who are learning Bible Doctrine grow in Christ. This changes our thinking to become more and more infused with Truth. Others who "hear" us will likewise become more and more positive to truth, assuming any attraction to it in the first place. Now you know another reason why the Divine Benefit history (green) table in the previous section, shows a quick spread of material blessing to the periphery when many people are positive to Christ: unbelievers who are attracted to truth they hear in others, come to want it for themselves. They will change their standards, even if they don't become believers. Civil War and WWII periods are classic cases in point. See how awesome is our role? We are not an island to ourselves. We are not our own. Because, what really does good for people, is learning truth. We Are The Living Repositories Of That Truth, the "treasure in earthen vessels" -- used by the same Holy Spirit toward others, to help them out of their poverty -- just as He has done for us. Even if we never "officially" talk Bible doctrine to them, they will 'hear' something of Divine Standards and be variantly attracted to them. Royals always have that impact on history, even secularly; how much more, when Divine Royalty is being built in us?

• See the pattern, here? Whole nations have risen (or fallen!) based on RESPONSE or REACTION to the 'contagion' of truth. Who wants to steal, if loving truth? Who wants to sin, if loving truth? Don't all of our problems come from sin, which is rejection of, and consequently ignorance of, the truth, God? Isn't sin but an attempt to relieve a perceived need? So, then: how much poverty, how much suffering would be reduced if people learned the Truth? And thus, avoided the bad decisions which create suffering? See how God wants their souls fed, much more than their bellies? Which solution is the more beneficial to their bellies, even? The temporary bread, or the Real Bread of Life? Don't we first have to be rich in this Real Bread, to be used to feed them?

• So to transmit the Divine Benefit Plan's benefits to our periphery, God deploys us. The tactical 'arm' of that deployment is that our learning Him and consequent thinking, both affect those in our periphery. That is how He controls history. Satan knows this quite well, so is out to accuse us for NOT LEARNING, and thus arguing that blessing should be cursing, instead. Our deployment by God is based on His Own Plan for our lives and those around us, not only 'right now', but with respect to all the future, too. For every decision has everlasting consequences, Col 3:25; since Omniscience always will see every thought, past present future. Satan thus tries to leverage cursing from the deployment, due to our thinking. Due to the reaction or response of those around us. Magnets-in-training, us. For Better and For Worse.
  You and I are in large measure the product of the thinking of others. You hear or read someone's thinking, and you pick among the thoughts constantly, accepting some, rejecting others. At that point, you are telling your soul to program itself in light of the choices you made. We are around others all the time, and so this choosing and programming is repeated thousands of times, each day. You watch TV, listen to radio or music, scan the internet, sit at dinner, at work, all the time TALKING of some kind is going on in your head, whether it comes from someone else, or from your own soul. That programs you. That programs everyone around you. You infect them, they infect you, there's no way around it. So if you are one of God's children, your impact is magnified to the level of Christ's Own. Because, you ARE Christ's Own, John 10:28. So cursing or blessing flow through you. You inherited that role the nanosecond you first believed in Christ. That's the role of Royalty. No getting around it. It's invisible, magnetic. No getting around it.

• So a most important usage of Bible Doctrine is here: control your thoughts, 2Cor10:5. Not 'only' is the whole Trinity listening to you, and within you, to boot! Not 'only' are you a witness-in-training for the Trial, so angels and demons are listening (probably via some Divinely-enabled access system). People are listening, too, whether they realize it or not. People can be "polluted" by what you are thinking. That's what the Heb12:15 "root of bitterness" verse says. (Greek "mianw" has the root sense of dumping excrement on passersby below your balcony.) So, they -- and you -- are contagious. Just as much as with any flu germs. Using Bible doctrine to ward off bad thinking, or to keep up good thinking, is a far more important "work" you can do for others, than any physical act. Moreover, people and money can't diagnose the poverty of the soul, much less help heal it. But God can.

• God's Goal is to make us happy. So to give us His Happy Thinking, is His Development Goal. Being Love, He does this within the corridor of our CONSENT, rather than just putting His Thinking in us as a fiat. For Happiness is a volitional thing, an internal thing, totally independent of outer circumstances, status, and even one's own nature. Happiness is knowing God, even AMONG the Godhead. So toward us, God Now doesn't use visible means or goodies, to benevolently rule. Instead, he uses the "still, small voice" of the Holy Spirit. This makes it easier for people to accept more Truth, because nothing visible is standing in the way -- the vividness of which was a frequent obstacle, pre-Canon's completion. Invisibility gives the recipient "space", freedom to accept or reject without pressure. So, we aren't to be "stumbling blocks". If the person is wrong, he can privately come to see that, with nary a word from us. More importantly -- since the hallmark of Royal Living is Grace -- the person graced out receives a royal gift. Most importantly: the person can know it comes from God. We all have had such times, where we "just knew" some thing was from God, right? Tell me: what amount of legislation on earth is so powerful, so glorious?

• By contrast, Satan&Co. still use palpable or visible methods, as they are anti-God, so anti-Truth, anti-individualism, anti-freedom. LIES must be ADVERTISED, and loudly. After all, it's still Satan's world. Normal-seeming communication methods like politics, religion, centralizing the world, homogenizing whole regions -- these are the main satanic weapons for transmitting contagions. Notice how all those weapons piggyback upon God-authored FREEDOM STRUCTURES, so it's not like you can or should avoid them. The piggybacking onto whatever God does is a hallmark satanic tactic, so the believer's only defense is Bible. For the unbeliever, his own positive attitude toward those seven freedom structures (as shown in Part II) help forestall him being infected. But so long as he refuses the Gospel, the evil sold via the piggybacking, will continue to progress. That's why so many unbelievers are MORAL. Morality is Satan's gem for transmitting evil, as you'll soon see below.

• Hence Satan&Co. constantly engage in Direct Thought Transference, a term of my pastor's. It means they routinely send thoughts to influence human volition. They also make deft usage of dreams, visions, 'miracles' etc., to emotionally beguile people. God doesn't use these methods. So if you think you got a message from God via a dream or vision, etc., know instead that you got it from Satan&Co. God does many miracles, alright, and daily: but He does them in a manner that requires you KNOW BIBLE, to detect them. God uses John 14:26, which is recall, not thought transference. You therefore come to know His Will in detail as you learn and live on Bible. Also, when God does a miracle, the Word's Meaning will be the most important thing about it. Miracles by God are ALWAYS designed to teach something. The spectacularity is native to His Own Nature, so it's always present -- but played down. Psalm 138:2b will always be the characteristic, Truth Above His Name. By this you can distinguish between something supernatural which comes from God, versus the other side in the Trial. ALWAYS TEST WITH BIBLE any seeming supernaturality, and do NOT be emotionally hooked into it. Learn a lesson from it, don't drool. Thus you will save a lot of wear and tear in your spiritual life.

• Macro-scale, propagandic HERDING is Satan&Co.'s premier method of influencing the human race. Direct Thought Transference is synchronized with it. As a result, thought's natural contagion nature, is coordinated among masses of humans. They make selected individuals more 'contagious' than others via fame or other attraction mechanism; then, pour direct-thought transference, into them. Obviously the individual knows nothing about this. Thus many people are infected with the least amount of demonic effort. Like the terror bombings recently in New York, Madrid, London, Baghdad, Beirut and Cairo -- notice how those are but a few places, but they get WORLDWIDE PUBLICITY, hence worldwide reaction. This function is called "concentration of force" in military parlance. The essence of strategy, is to pick the most effective lines of attack, and then concentrate on those lines, no matter what obstacles intervene. So notice how the world's mindset has been under siege, since 9/11 (really, since the 1980's, with the hijackings). So the bulk was leveraged by strategically-selected 'hits', which have a propaganda value. Selling an idea, then using spectacular violence, to deepen the idea. From this, a victory is gained.
  World War II was lost by Germany only due to a mindset. Mindset in Germany, is well-documented. Mindset in the world, less so. Propaganda, what-to-believe, galvanizes a mindset, or herds it into the direction of the propaganda, even while the volition, disagrees. The repetition of an idea, even if a lie, ends up being accepted. For the body has no discernment of truth, hence no defense against repetition, is trained by whatever repetition it gets, and is God-designed, to reciprocate in kind. So you must have a combination of regular repetition, with spectacular reinforcements that linger on in the mind afterward, and repeatedly. This is how learning works, and here the 'lesson' is a mindset being promulgated on a people.

  While it is true that humans conspire and know about the value of propaganda, satanic propaganda cannot be promulgated by humans. They are willing pawns based on their appetites, not generally based on them knowingly being in contact with the demonic. So here the 'conspiracy' is strictly of the demonic kind. The humans involved in using terrorism are deliberately trying to propagandize via their selected terrorist acts, but truth to tell, a lot of it is not coordinated from some central human source. Osama Bin Laden is not that powerful. There are many competing terrorist groups, and all of them are acting now. They have divergent goals, and yes they intend to propagandize, but Satan&Co. pull the strings of Islam. No human being, or group of human beings, is that competent. Feel sorry for the Muslims, Jews, and most Christians. They are the most targeted, and the most duped.

• Hence the bulk of demonic herding activity is propagandic in nature. Then Direct Thought Transference and occasionally visibly-spectacular supernaturality, are used to tactically support the propaganda. So let's first look at the mass herding tactical propaganda goals, in the following STOP OMEGA table. After the table, we'll examine some real-life examples of Direct Thought Transference coordinated with the table's mass herding goals, which you can test for yourself.

Now let's examine how Satan&Co. routinely use Direct Thought Transference to support the above four rebellion categories. Again, Direct Thought Transference is my pastor's term for the angelic faculty of what can be called a kind of telepathy: demons send you thoughts or feelings, usually both. Most of the time, they mask their involvement like Satan semi-masked himself via that serpent in the Garden, because for Trial purposes it has to be man's choosing, not their overriding man's will; so they stay just one jot short of 'override'. They also like the challenge of gaining consent, so mask themselves to get extra fun out of the game. Sometimes they like to dazzle, to speed along man's engrossing interest, and hence advertise themselves. (Demons like to portray themselves as fools, in order to make fools of us. Watch how they behave in the Gospels; track what they do, etc. throughout Scripture.)

When Direct Thought Transference operates on massive scale, it operates in essentially two flavors, designed to support the above table's four anti-integrity development goals. First, it operates acutely, a kind of spike. Second flavor, it operates chronically, to maintain certain prejudices that support the four rebellion categories in the STOP OMEGA table. The two flavors are coordinated, too, with the first being designed to help promulgate the second. In either flavor, the mass usage of Direct Thought Transferance is easy to spot. Here's the overall pattern of either flavor:

• Masses of people become unaccountably mesmerized/ obsessed by an event or person.
• This obsession will be totally disproportionate to the content of the event or person.
• There will be something obviously irrational about the content itself.
• The content will always be anti-Bible, and not subtle, either.
• The target being used to generate this obsession, is but a pawn.
• Otherwise-respectable (i.e., 'educated', 'normal') people will also be obsessed.
• Validity of content will decrease with repetitions of like issues or people; thus disproportionality increases with each repetition.
• So the obsession, becomes more and more disconnected from common sense. Thus you see the publicness ALONE, drives the obsession.
• In the acute spiking version, the fixation will turn on or off like a lightswitch, instantaneously among masses of people. Thus it is distinguished from crowd 'mob' psychology and individual mental illness, neither of which can be turned on and off en masse, so quickly.

• Hence this Definition of MASS Direct Thought Transference: a derisive satanic message which is obviously false, characterized by an inordinate and consuming Focus by so many on something senseless, whether the individuals are high in society, or low; whether they are of widely-divergent cultures, or no. Such inordinate focus is a prime characteristic of mental illness in an individual, but so many people at once obsessing like the mentally ill, is not humanly possible. That's not the way mental illness works, for the person who's mentally ill lacks the internal means of turning OFF his obsessions. Moreover, it's not humanly possible for an obsession to be turned on or off in so many humans all at once, like a lightswitch. Quick examples: Hitler, 'prolife', the OJ Trial, the Monika Lewinsky scandal, Enron, Bush-baiting, etc. These all display a turn-on-turn-off quality in otherwise-normal people. Hitler's been dead for over 50 years; the 'prolife' movement makes zero sense Biblically or otherwise; obsessing over what affair a President might have had to the extent that it was forever in the news, made no sense; and we all remember the WORLDWIDE eerie fixation over the OJ Simpson Trial. More and longer examples follow below, so you can see this weird phenomenon happens often at a MASS level in our lives.

• To advertise its satanic origin, this obsessiveness is always a haha, slapstick. Slapstick (like Benny Hill or the Three Stooges) is Hallmark Satanic Signature Characteristic #3 in the list of seven, given in the Appendix. You can click here to read that section now. When trying to distinguish between satanically-sponsored silliness and regular human inanity, you look for the Satanic Signature, which always has Seven Content Elements. #3, the slapstick quality, makes correct identification much easier, as it's a deliberate "hey see us, we're Satan&Co. doing this!"

Here's just a quick, off-the-cuff list of acute, spiking items to show the satanic slapstick 'message', taken at random from the news over the past few years. No doubt once you see the pattern, you'll think of many other examples.
• Childhood-Trauma Slapstick: Obsession with alleged pederasts, accusations coming from nowhere, some of them several DECADES old! All over the world! On for awhile, then disappears, unresolved, and only the accusation remains. Notice now also how these inane accusations are made with impunity. You'd think the populations of some American towns were entirely made up of RCC priests, ALL of whom are pederasts! Note the satanic message: priests are bad. Most of the world is too ignorant of Bible to realize that the Roman Catholic Church is not Christianity, but has only arrogated to itself that claim over many centuries. So when the average ignorant person sees Catholic priests accused, he thinks Christianity is bad. Therefore God is not the God of the Bible. Clever, huh. Same kind of tactic is used with non-catholic clergy, especially if the accusation is sexual or monetary. Same goal: badmouth God, since to the ignorant these people all represent God. It's unfair to these people too, of course. Very few people in religion are guilty of lasciviousness. Religion just doesn't appeal to the lascivious type.

• Didn't-Quite-Sin Slapstick: Martha Stewart was convicted for ALMOST doing something wrong, for thinking about doing something that might have been wrong! Almost-lied is a virtue, not a vice. But, Martha Stewart went to prison over it, and very few voices were raised in her defense. You can't compare almost-lied with massive corporate fraud, even as an accusation. But, it was given lots of media attention, right? So notice how the anger and accusations against her for a MUCH SMALLER alleged wrong, were nonetheless receiving just as much press as Enron got. See? No discernment. Publicity, that's all it takes. Note the satanic message: business people are bad. Thus free enterprise is undermined.

• Government Poking Business Slapstick: (7/2004), there's an investigation into how Comcast NUMBERS its subscribers? Is this what you pay your Congressman for? Numbering one's subscribers is not a material thing, and everyone knows it's just a snapshot, a small datum amidst a lot of other data. So why does this warrant investigation? Oh, because anything can be used to justify an investigation, now! This is the legacy of Watergate, a people who blame everyone. Same thing is being done in other countries, and we have this sickness worldwide, now. So notice that our greed, envy, or hatred are used to make us fools in an obviously slapstick manner, yet we imagine ourselves intellectual. So why should you be surprised that now a micro-business issue about Comcast, one which has no relevance and is rather arcane, is being 'investigated'? Note the satanic message: business people are bad. Thus free enterprise is undermined.

• Grace Slapstick: only one of many in history, the 2005 obsession over the alleged 'appearance' of the Virgin Mary plastered on a girder of a Chicago freeway underpass brought literally hundreds of people bearing pictures of her, candles, flowers. So much so, that Dateline had to cover it. This happened just after Pope Paul died, and it was an instantaneous assemblage of people. Have you ever LOOKED at an underpass? It's very difficult to go down the slope to that girder. No freeway underpass has bathrooms, parking, or anything remotely comfortable. It's slippery and dangerous in the best of times. Nothing to recommend going there, let alone staying there or having a vigil. And a flowing salt stain? How could that look like the Virgin Mary, and WHY would 'she' "appear" there? See the derision? To say 'she' would appear there is to say 'she' is an idiot, in the first place; that God would allegedly allow her to 'appear' in so undignified and dangerous a place, speaks ill of Him; and of course He doesn't have anyone appear anywhere at anytime like that -- so a false message about God's policy in general, is sold. Note the satanic message: believing in Christ is something only silly people do. Doesn't matter that Bible doesn't ever teach this kind of 'appearing' at any time in history, but rather makes fun of idolatry, viz., in the beautiful sarcasm of Isaiah 44. People equate "Virgin Mary" with God and the Bible, so now both are tainted by this 'appearing' which is clearly false.

• Greed Slapstick: witness the brief worldwide obsession with Enron and Arthur Anderson. SEC didn't really have the jurisdiction, nor did the Justice Department. World went wild over that. But have you read the story? What happened was the way they misrepresented their debt, and Enron would still be operating today if the bankers hadn't called it all in AT ONCE. Not one large American company would survive if banks treated it the same way. What triggered the Depression in the 1930's was an AT ONCE calling in of debt by banks, after the stock market crash. No one remembers that, huh. But ask yourself if you're not just a little bit more prone to believe all big companies are bad, given the publicity over a few. Note the satanic message: business people are bad. Thus free enterprise is undermined. The slapstick has a sophisticated goal of debunking God's Seven Freedoms: here, free commerce.

• Media Slapstick: Who should care if there was a pasty shown at a SuperBowl? It was in the media for what.. two years? Who should care about these pettinesses, when people are dying in Africa, Iraq, and elsewhere? Note the satanic message: Christians are petty. It was a bunch of Christians who made a stink over the Superbowl thingy. So Romans 2, the Bible is maligned because of us.

• Protection-of-Privacy Slapstick: who should care who Mr. Wilson's wife even is, and why should the venerable Charlie Rose and Washington Post spend even five seconds on the topic? 'Totally oblivious to the expense, the loss of productivity, the mental pollution thus generated. Notice also that we allege to care about leaking private information only when we can blame the government. False message sold: doesn't matter that someone in the media (Robert Novak) disclosed the name of Mr. Wilson's wife -- oh no, gotta blame anyone in government who might have written a PRIVATE email? And then spend a whopping two years of media efforts condemning the government rather than the reporter? Sane people don't do this. No discernment, by the best and brightest in our media? That's demonic herding. Our brains are off, we get puppetted. Note the satanic message: government officials are bad, but the media is good. Yeah, Satan&Co. use publicity, so the publicizers, need to look like heroes! Yet one of their own did the real damage.. and we don't notice or care? So not all the blame can be laid at Satan's door. WE LOVE HATING. Here it shows so well.

The second-flavor chronic examples of satanic slapstick are also very common. What follows are three instances. No doubt you'll think of many more.

"Evolution" is one of the most irrational hypotheses ever invented, when you think it over carefully. Even the stupidest math student knows that all number sets come from number sets which are greater-than, so it is ALWAYS impossible for the greater to come from the lesser. So while one can empathize with Satan's pathetic desire that he as a created being can become greater than His Creator; although one can empathize that he'd try to sell that snake oil to the human race in a 'science' mask, math itself proves incontrovertibly that evolution is just not possible: "no set can contain itself".

Look: the "ape" number/genetic/dataset is an inferior and therefore smaller "set". So the "man" set cannot have come from the "ape" set. Consequently, the "man" set in fact derives from a larger, not smaller, attribute-set than itself. Consequently, any similarity between the "ape" set and the "man" set might give science clues as to what "greater" set accounts for both "ape" and "man", but it's always impossible that the "man" set be a 'child' of the "ape" set. Unless, of course, you want to toss out all mathematic law, and just substitute a fairy story. So all the evolutionists are just as stupid as all the Christian activists: all of them, stuck in aboriginal 'Dreamtime.' [Christian activists think they can achieve something via their activism. So why didn't Christ, Who IS greater, do such things? Do you notice that people didn't even understand Him when He spoke? So, now: suddenly we mere Christians can get the point across? So, now: suddenly what HE didn't do, we can magically do? Gimme a break!]

Look: the LOGICAL answer is that man is a child of someone BIGGER than him in attributes. That doesn't have to be "god". From time immemorial there has been a rich history of explanations by many cultures that someone BEYOND our nature, 'birthed' us. Today, we can call them extraterrestrial beings if we want to. Of course, the true answer is The Real God Creates Us at Birth, but hey -- science needn't say that. It's patently illogical and mathematically impossible for man to be begotten by someone INFERIOR in nature to himself. So, scientists like wondering if more advanced life is on other planets. Fine, then posit that's the cause of man, since math and genetics only support that kind of superior-begetting conclusion -- not, that man came from an ape. But we still cling to the ape thingy? That's not scientific. That's satanic.

Even Animism makes more sense. Animism is a fundamental, depersonalizing mutation of God's Attribute of Omnipresence/Infinity, to cut the Real God out of life, demoting Him to a bundle of attributes, a mere elohim: just like Satan told the woman in Genesis 2's Hebrew. [In the Hebrew, "Jehovah Elohim" is the first-and-last name of God. The first name stresses personalness, and usually refers to the Son (but not always). The last name stresses the Identicality of Attributes Each of Them IS. In Gen 2, Satan cuts out the 'Jehovah', and just uses 'Elohim', which is extremely rude -- it's like someone calling Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Great Britain, "Queenie", in order to insult.]

Oh, yes: Animism, gnosticism's 'root', source of all metempsychosic faiths. Fundamental creed among the primitive for eons, worldwide, in variant forms; that rocks and trees and squirrels have magical powers, are themselves little gods; so, can 'transform' themselves. Worshipping the sun. Thinking the planets were the gods (popular, even in Aristotle's day). That 'god' is in everything, a type of life force. That anyone and anything can 'progress' depending on how he made friends with, or used that god or force. Sophisticated form, the Greek pantheon. Ahhh, so evolution just takes the word 'god' out, but believes the same thing! So, oh! because two life forms have the same surface structure, one must have transformed into the other! Magic! Yeah, magic, that wonderful, beguiling tool Satan&Co. manifestly have used on mankind from the beginning, to get 'fellowship' with man.

Truth Mutation-To-Lie Key → Notice how God's Plan for mankind to be grown up to have fellowship with God via the Cross and then learning Christ -- is derided, satirized, and denigrated; all SUBSTITUTED with a magical, feely, frenzied, self-aggrandizing life.

In those old days, when men didn't feel stupid for believing in the supernatural -- demons would play god, and would author any number of cults to celebrate their status. Usually, the cults involved lots of free sex and drugs (for enhanced vision, contact with the 'god', see). Usually, the cults involved a lot of human sacrifice; or, well, that was special, and usually a goat or pig would 'do'. Thus, people could, if sufficiently favored, get 'transformed' by the 'god' into valiant warriors, superhumans capable of great feats. The 'gods' could have sex with humans, and the progeny would be half-god, see. So the 'gods' favor was cultivated. Conversely, if the 'god' got mad at you, he could transform you into a squirrel. Of course, it was also popular worldwide that you were capable of transforming into a god yourself, over very long periods of time. You'd have to live a noble life over x lifetimes. Then, either as a reward from the 'gods' or as a magical power latent in you, you were 'transformed' into a god.

Want proof? See Julian Jaynes' ..Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind book. Its starting point, main thesis, and his dearly-cherished belief is that man was nuts to believe in God; due to evolution, the nuttiness decreased over time. The book seeks to trace how it was that man gradually lost his nutty dependence on God and became sanely self-'conscious'. (Jaynes was a well-known professor at Harvard. Most people have trouble reading his works because he's so brilliant, by human standards.) You should try to read his book, for it instead (unintentionally!) chronicles, at least in broad terms, man's progressive self-absorption: Bible calls this "hardness of heart", "darkened", "split-souled" (James, lit. trans), crazy (shigaion, term coined by Moses). So too, according to the secular discipline of psychiatry, self-absorption the very source of non-organic mental illness!

Yet many educators, psychiatrists, scientists (etc.) hold to versions of Jaynes' thesis! Do you realize what this means? Love is deemed a congenital threat to self-esteem, for the definition Jaynes and others follow, is: If God, then I must lose myself, for "God" can only be tyrannical, bad. So love is Abject, Shameful Surrender, not happiness or fulfillment. Therefore, "love" is only self-abnegation, and can't possibly have any positive value. That true love is self-freeing, self-blooming, is denied. Just as Satan denies. Of course, "denial" is the grandaddy of defense mechanisms, and the main reason why mankind is so very blind to his genetic negativity-to-God; the main impetus for dissociation. 'The reason why man is Dissociatively blind to his anti-love goal, too!

Let's look closer: a mentally-ill person becomes that way either due to some organic problem (i.e., allergy to some substance, or malfunction in brain), or due to decisions he makes to deny something he finds too painful. He puts what's too painful into his subconscious. From there, the subconscious keeps on trying to resolve the problem by means of various defense mechanisms. The items put in the subconscious are to be protected from the conscious mind's awareness at all costs, yet the subconscious must override the conscious mind in its attempt to resolve the painful items. So, eventually, a person disintegrates, for it is a threat to him to recall and recognize whatever is in the subconscious. He disintegrates, for the subconscious mind must exert ever-greater and more frequent action to take over the conscious mind, in order to resolve the hidden items. So, mental illness won't 'let go'. So, the person becomes ever more self-absorbed, and his personality, fragments. At the end, he's just a bundle of urges, lacking in awareness, irrational.

So the person who deems it nutso to believe in God will consider any pro-God or pro-love ideas a threat to survival. However he got that way, he came to regard any idea of God or love as 'hostile'; that's the defense mechanism of projection, for since he is hostile to any idea of God, "God" must be hostile. So, such a person is a sop for whatever anti-God and anti-love ideas circulate. So, over time, he can be easily led around by whoever taps into his ego and flatters him. So, over time, however smart he is, even the insanity of a claim that inanimacy can beget animacy, goes unnoticed. So, like mold, his self-flattering insanities gradually infect all other areas of his life. Sure, he'll seem rational, for true insanity builds its own castles-of-defense -- all founded upon me-god. But just touch his increasingly-fragile ego enough, and those castles come tumbling down. What's left is a blubbering, angry, frightened soul. Empty.

For, it was never love, but tyrannical need for self-esteem, which drove all that respectable and even brilliant, self-sacrificing, behavior. True self-esteem, ironically, doesn't need to esteem the self, but is rather free to prefer esteeming others. For, self no longer needs defending, to self. But to the one seized by a tyrannical need for self-esteem, that quest is almighty: gods must be sacrificing, see. Castles of imagination ("strongholds", 2Cor10:4), protecting from one's awareness the tyrannical me-god, stand well -- until the day when either self or the objects (people!) don't 'deliver' the expected kudos or power. Then, via either iconoclasm or self-loathing, the person shows his uncastled, real soul. Empty. And still blind, of course.

For, sometime long ago, the individual came to regard anyone having a power over him as evil, a threat so horrible that denial of any superior became necessary. So, anyone who wants power over him need merely give him the illusion that he still retains power, and no matter how obvious are the contradicting circumstances, he will still believe he is 'on top'. So, when such a person hears of the Christian God, the only part he hears, is the power over; and the "Believe or burn" Gospel is all burn, baby. "Burn" to believe, for then one is surrendering! Not acceptable! "Burn" to burn, of course, since no superior power can be benevolent, anyway. In short, long ago, the individual bound up with his idea of survival, a need to be first. So, he never has any true relationships in life; whatever 'love' he seems to have, is first self-pleasing; for no one else can ever become superior to him, in his own mind. A fact to which, he is still blind, of course. So such a one will often seem the most loving, because the inner tyrant demands protection!

Guilt is the child of denial & projection, and of course children must be protected by their parents. So, they substitute for guilt. So, 'evidence' of God will not be seen by such a soul. So, because guilt, there will be protestations of wanting to see God, but look -- there's no proof! Of course, 'proof' is demanded via mechanisms which can't prove, so look -- there's no proof! Like, using science, which can only measure the material, to 'prove' what is beyond its ability to prove. Heh: the castle still stands.

Science is abused. It is used to justify the idea that there's nothing bigger than "me". Notice how science PRINCIPLES, which are not persons, so no one 'over me' -- how science principles are lauded as superior. So when those principles MAKE NO SENSE, the obvious conclusion is that "me" is wrong for believing in them. That must be denied. So the cycle continues, castle still stands. It's no different than false doctrine. Same exact motive for adopting any falsehood, me-be-god, runs the show. Satan&Co. tap this, and derisively. So now the pseudo-intellectual castle is EXACTLY the same as those primitive animists in the jungle: with the intellectuals, thinking themselves all so holy.

So why do the demons herd people to 'buy' the magic of evolution? To drive them crazy with self-absorption, and to denigrate Christ! After all, if 'you' are the top of the food chain, you have to save yourself! In order to reinforce and enhance this deft man-makes-self-god goal, they manipulate Christians: which, as we already saw in Part III's "Fourth Reason for Invisibility", is part of Satan's "Dunheap Visibility Trap". Christians largely also view God as 'hostile', since they are hostile to God. So they promote the notion OF a hostile God, using His Name to bludgeon others; and thus infect those who are already using the same projection defense. [If you ask most avowed atheists why they are atheists, sooner or later in a long or repeated discussion, you'll hear, Those Damn Christians Are So Nasty! Thus you know our misuse, our ignorance of God infects people, even more. Thank God for Divine Discipline: without which, neither atheist nor Christian has any hope of escaping his self-imposed lies!] So of course, mainstream Christianity, which is in the doctrinal third grade of grammar school, is just as inane as the evolutionists in reply: trying to ban the teaching of evolution in the schools, thus ennobling it to martyrdom, just like the Scopes Trial did; trying to invent so-called theo-scientific rebuttal, which is neither Biblical nor scientific, proving so thoroughly that they are ignorant of both Bible and science, even the popular internet spoofer, "The Onion", notices (i.e., "Christians Repeal Third Law of Thermodynamics"). Does no one understand that with all this science vs. Bible debating, both disciplines suffer, because both thus ossify? Yeah, that's Satan's plan in a nutshell: harden until you become brittle and then the slightest tap can turn you to dust. De-volve, baby. Volverse. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Saddest of all, no one bothers to even read Genesis 1-4. You know this, because even in translation, it takes but a few hours to notice, hey, Adam was a Biology Taxonomist, and first thing Cain did was farm and then build a city. No hunter-gatherers, no meat-eaters, capisce? Once you do notice that fact, you realize a de novo review of what the Bible even says is required, before you can speculate on whether it contradicts science. Science is guesstimation. Scripture is interpretation. Both require one first know what each SAYS before one can evaluate the content. But no one examines the content of either, yet everyone spends millions of dollars in pseudo-intellectual pursuits which are totally unrelated to either the content of science, or Scripture.

See how Satan blinds both sides in the debate? Oh, these super-smart folks believe in what amounts to ...magic! And call that "scientific"! Oh, the Christians give those idiots creedence by fighting them, and on their own turf, to boot! And no one questions the sanity of both sides' arguments? So who's the more duped? The Christians, of course! See why demons roll over laughing, just as much as they did while they satirically tormented those folks in the Gospels and Genesis 6?

Although everyone's easily convinced those who attacked the Twin Towers had to be demon-possessed, here's what's gone unnoticed. You wouldn't expect the aftermath of 9/11 to be Americans, eating each other. But we are! Leviticus 26, playing in the "siege" cycle, live! Relatives of those blown up in those four planes sued the airlines whose own planes were destroyed; New Yorkers sued New York for the tragedy; people got all weepy at the candlelighted raise-money campaign our Hollywood movie stars quickly put together, but hey -- let's declare compensation for all victims of attack all the way back to Oklahoma City! With what for money? Do we not realize that fighting terrorism is both vitally necessary for our survival, and expensive, especially since it's a trial-and-error process to figure out how to fight such an enemy? Who pays for it? The private sector. But we are already killing our private sector with all our witch-hunts; inane audit laws, Federal interference with state's rights in virtually every category -- these cost money but add no value. Jobs fly down the tube, or to other countries, for America is suddenly too suit-happy to be a safe investment. And our since-the-1960's shrinking capital base alerts no one?

'Guess Not! For, instead(!) both government and the media everywhere and at every level had a feeding frenzy when the WorldCom, Enron, and Arthur Andersen stuff came up. Frenzy for attention to themselves, rather than sober judgement. Get in on the fame frenzy, rather than -- hey, let's not kill whole companies for the flaws in a few individuals, shall we? And -- um, this is a nation under law -- so let's not be too hasty to call people guilty. So, it's not surprising that bankruptcy among some of the oldest and largest firms in every sector of industry have been more frequent after all our frenzy, than ever before it.

Do you know, as this new paragraph is typed on 7/2004, no one in these financial accusations has yet been convicted? Some did plea-bargaining (much cheaper, fee-wise), but indictment has only just now been made official! Indictment is not conviction. Yet, where did all the jobs go? To the trashheap. Whole companies downed by accusation? Are we crazy, or is someone else non-human, pulling our greedy strings? You decide. God makes it clear in Leviticus that the demons get to mess with you when you reject Him.

This widespread evidence of decline goes way beyond the weirdness individuals are known to exhibit. It's nationwide, mainstream, and -- most amazing of all -- no one seems to find it wrong; instead, we just fall into line like those in Germany must have done when Hitler got in power in 1933. The 9/11 lawsuits are but the tip of the iceberg, proving a TOTAL DISCONNECT from reason. Until 9/11, there was at least a passing resemblance between something someone did wrong, and the ensuing witchhunt afterwards. But with 9/11, suing the VICTIMS -- the airlines and New York itself -- proves that we want an EXCUSE to blame the other guy. That the Government would grant compensation shows they are afraid. Do you know how many tragedies have occurred? As my best friend remarked, "Shall we pay compensation on ALL of them? If so, we'll go broke!" Worse, people ABUSE their alleged victim status to get money and fame, never mind how specious the argument we use to get it. A whole nation of such self-righteous thieves, cannot long survive.

So of course we later we trashed Enron and Arthur Andersen based on allegations, no actual proof in court of law -- thousands of jobs were lost due to allegations? And everyone thought oh, let's go after the rich guys; oh, even if a Tyco exec forgot to pay sales tax on something personal he bought, the ENTIRE company should suffer? Martha Stewart gets advice on Imclone, but oh, that's "insider trading"? By what definition? And, without any due process, wow, all her shows get cancelled, simply because she was accused? Thousands of jobs more, lost! Does this reaction make sense? Or, we trash Wall Street for the stocks losing money, assuming that since they knew these companies, we must have been fleeced; so what came out of that? 1.4 Billion in fines that no investor gets! See? We get mad, sue, and then end up paying the bill ourselves: for how else do corporations get the money to pay these outrageously unfair fines? Through products/services they sell to us! What, did someone put a gun to your head to make you buy the stock? What, are you never responsible for your own decisions? So we pay, both ways. Figures. [Source: Fortune, 5/26/03, p.182, Stanley Bing's article.]

And what do the stockholders of these companies do? Oh, they inundate the Boards of Directors with dippy and expensive proposals to impose how-to-care-for-chicken standards, even in other sovereign nations! Or, to make a guidebook on harassment say God doesn't like homosexuals! Are no brains working? The cost of sending out the annual reports and proxies on these inanities cost jobs! Isn't a human job more important than a chicken? What ever happened to recognition of other nations' rights of sovereignty? What ever happened to separation of business and religion? What the heck ever happened to US! Were we like this back in the 1950's, probably the greatest growth period of prosperity in world history? Shouldn't we look back to see which of our values were good, then? Oh no. Can't get on TV with that. Only old reruns survive.

And so it goes. We sue gun manufactures because guns kill (and what else are they for); car manufacturers get sued because people have accidents (oh, and it can't be the driver?); tobacco companies get sued because smokers get sick (then the self-righteous states squander the money, so who is the bigger cancer -- see William Baldwin Forbes p.24, 5/26/03)? What a fantasy world we live in, now: oh, with all that devastating, economic loss, we'll spend money on two lights going up in the sky where the Twin Towers were located? Did someone spike our water supply with silliness? Is this what a non-demonized group of brains rightly concludes?

Worse, we are sooo greedy we forget that companies are but aggregates of people, and most of the revenue companies make pays salaries, of which the 'top brass' maybe get a measly 1%. Companies make products; products do things we need them to do. So when we crusade and sue, we burn money which could pay for making those products/services, pay for those salaries. In short, we no longer recognize that an economy needs value-added production to be healthy. Instead, we are all insanely chasing after someone else's money, and on the slimmest of accusations or charges we threaten or do sue. So big fines reduce a company's real value, but oh, the fines keep the circulation of money going! So we don't catch on to the fact that we are floating on that circulation, like a whole nation check-kiting -- rather than on real wealth.

We don't want to catch on, either, because it's soooo fun to tell Granpa you were on TV! Sooo fun to shake the fist at your priest, your stockbroker, some exec! And then, when the suit settlement comes, your share is $1.40, but since YOU end up paying the settlement through what you buy, it costs you a bundle! All for that good ol' feeling of fame-and-blame. Note the GLEE in people when someone's accused, or when they talk about someone who's accused. Note the tsk tsk fizz fizz oh what a relief it is -- even in college-educated folk. Yeah, just like at the Nuremberg rallies of Hitler's day. Ecstasy, baby.

So, we're a nation that has a death-wish: all these obsessions together are the Exact Undoing Needed for our nation: we couldn't have planned it, better. Do we see that fact? Oh no. Just like Israel in Isa28 and in Josephus' account of the seige of Jerusalem in 70AD. Only, we're not even under real attack! Just like Lev26 promises to a people who don't wake up and smell the coffee. We make ourselves a laughingstock. Or, are demon-influenced to do so. With nary a thought that hey, our national behavior is insane. Despite all our vaunted technology and intelligence. It's a wonder this nation is still alive. Maybe the terrorists would be doing us a favor if they succeeded? For we are all the MORE, terrorizing our own selves.

Sometime in the 1960's, foreign ownership of US firms began to climb. We hardly own ourselves, anymore. Thank God for those foreigners, for we ourselves are obviously too dumb to live, now! We'd not even be a country, now, were we not so owned by outsiders. Kinda like Rome when the barbarians came in, we live on due to THEIR money, THEIR willingness to take risk, and frankly, THEIR belief in US. We have many quiet friends. Because, "America" is at heart an idea, ever since its founding: of God, Freedom-to-learn-Him, and individuality. Writ large.

On 9/11, someone I know was in Paris. She tells the story of how completely distraught the French were to hear that the Americans were attacked! How suddenly, every Frenchman was on his cellphone, calling to find out what happened, screaming in pain over how horrible a thing was done to the Americans: a sea of cellphones, people hugging each other and crying. Suddenly too, all the garbage cans and garbage openings were covered -- for France experiences terrorism, too. Every NorthAmerican, she said, was suddenly besieged by total French strangers wanting to comfort them, thinking them USians. This is what really happened that day in France. Notre Dame Cathedral held special services, and prayer was intense. Let no one say, then, that we have no friends. Whatever the politics of the leaders.

Do you ever notice, especially when watching BBC news, how no matter where in the world the story plays, American-style clothing and habits are displayed? Do we yet realize the impact on history of this "America" idea? Freedom. Freedom to worship. Freedom to speak one's mind. Right to equal treatment in a rule-of-law, not culture, polity. Frenchmen can still be French; Estonians, still Estonians (toting their wives in a race, even!); Indonesians, still Indonesian. Freedom to be what you are: that's why the "America" idea is so captivating to so many, personally. It was an idea back in 1620; in 1776; and remains an idea today. Just so happens this idea rooted on some soil which has adopted the idea for going on 400 years. Ideas, travel.

Now, look at the Third Example, to see why 9/11 became a cannibalistic frenzy.

This category of demon-influenced thought is best illustrated by a (post-college educated!) taxicab driver who took me somewhere. It was a long ride, and he was a talker. He went on and on about a particular airline being rich and thus OF COURSE cheating its employees, so OF COURSE the employees were RIGHT to strike. Now, I happened to know that the airline in question had all of its stock in a pension plan, so the employees OWNED the airline. So I finally said, "um, do you know that so-and-so is owned entirely by the employees, via its ESOP? So, if the employees strike, their stock will go down in their plan? So, they hurt themselves?" Oh, no -- that won't happen, he was so sure -- because it was the rich fleecing the poor! Well, that company is in bankruptcy now. Wanna guess the value of its stock? Wanna guess what will happen to those folks' retirements? GONE! But of course the employees won't "get it" that striking when the travel industry's hurting, as everyone FEARS flying due to 9/11 -- that maybe their striking caused the retirement plan's losses? See? It made him feel good to blame; so good, in fact, that despite a clear fact he even knew, that EMPLOYEES OWNED the airline via that retirement plan -- oh no, it still was the fault of the 'rich'! Now, ask yourself -- what makes an otherwise-normal person that obsessed? How could such obvious evidence be refused by a human brain? And on so vast a scale, for this guy represents the attitude of millions of people!

If you're interested, there are many other illustrations like those above. Here are a few more from the belief category, so you can test the similarity-of-pattern to the foregoing examples.

• The prolife movement. Note the satanic message: God is a sadist. For to say there's soul life in the womb, would mean the fetus is AWARE of all that physical change. It would therefore be nine months of unendurable TRAPPED PAIN. Bible says you're not human until born, strident point of David's in Ps139:16-17, see NoWombLife.htm's "Don't Abort My Word" table for a corrected translation. Of course, it's self-promoting to say soul life is in the womb: as if all we were, was biological mass just as Feuerbach contended (mass in motion, without a soul). So the soul is just a lump, too. Hitler must have loved Feuerbach: for if man is biological mass only, then those of superior physical properties were a superior RACE. Handy way to justify homo genocidus, huh -- all in the name of preserving 'babies' which aren't babies, but soulless biological mass. And the Christian right don't NOTICE all this reversal, joke's on them? Neither "Christian" nor "right", but Hitlerian? Gotterdammerung?

• The craze over the Da Vinci Code, which you can prove goes on every generation since the Crucifixion; Grail.htm deals with that. Note the satanic message: supernaturality is stupid, mystical, and Christ's Death on the Cross is a farce, a physical thing. Christians have for centuries mistaken how sins were paid for on the Cross, never mind the clear wording in Isa53. Look: the importance of Him Paying For Sins as His Purpose, is completely reversed out in favor of yet another royal bloodline with claimed mystical powers. Very derisive. And yet Christians are among those most enthralled with what Dan Brown demonstrated on the very first page of his book, was a complete fabrication? By claiming the material true when any dolt could prove what he wrote as a fiction, was obviously the author's way of showing you he didn't believe in that stuff, either. But it's very entertaining to read, just like any story of intrigue. Holy Blood, Holy Grail had been proved to be a hoax set up by some guy passing himself off as a surviving Merovingian (mystical kings of circa 400AD et seq.), as the authors of that book admitted, nearly 20 years prior to Dan Brown's book. So what's all the brouhaha about? Oh, we love to believe whatever denigrates Christ!

• The hunt for relics, especially if a connection to Bible is claimed. Note the satanic message: supernaturality is evidenced by dead things. So supernaturality is dead. Or worse: it's demonstrated by relics? Is THAT how "God" should show Himself? Unbelievable, the derision. And we don't notice. See, it doesn't matter if you really found the cloth that covered Christ (which you didn't, He didn't have long hair nor was He emaciated, so the Shroud of Turin isn't His Picture, and God already left a Picture of His Soul, the BIBLE). Proving someone existed or not proves nothing regarding the claims ABOUT that person. Of course, it's so far back in time, you can't say anything definitive about any relic, that's merely forensic evidence and inconclusive, unimportant. You can't convict anyone of a crime based on such evidence, so you can't prove the Bible 'innocent' based on it, either. But folks LOVE to go after such stuff! So Satan&Co. kindly 'help' to keep that flame burning, generation after generation of obsessed, irrational people.

• Islam itself; Note the satanic message: no Cross. The Koran and Book of Mormon are, imo, two of the best demon satires you can ever read. Even the classical Greek plays aren't as good in their witty derision. True genius. If you know your Bible well, take a highlighter and read a copy of the Koran, highlighting every reversal of Bible in it. Your hand will be sore after only 50 pages. Nearly every line in the Koran satirizes Bible, especially with respect to what the original-language texts say. Book of Mormon mocks the KJV more often, which of course was the dominant translation at the time; but the original-language text mocking is doggone good, too. No human is THAT smart. You couldn't even get an original-language text of Bible in Mohammed's day; in Joseph Smith's time, Bible had just been recovered, and those original-language texts were being collated, circulated by scholars like Tischendorf and Tregelles. Great timing, then, to make a mocking substitute-bible, huh.

  We saw in Part IVa how Satan times his deployment of Islam to God's 490-year Blessing Accounting System: Satan prefers to benchmark to 490 years from Temple's Destruction (first or second), but will devise other timing ploys. So you can expect he's trying to pull off something by the year 2030, which is the 4th 490 from the 70AD destruction, and also the 2nd contiguous 1000 year anniversary from Christ's death. (Don't do anything about that, just keep living in God's System, God rules history.) The Islamic religion itself, is an exact satire of the OT and NT, an anti-type of the Exodus and OT rules, right down to the peregrinations. Sheer DIOS genius. Mormonism is a bit more sophisticated, focusing more on mocking the NT and our Royal Role as Body of Christ, though Koran's At-Tariq sura gives Mormonism a run for its money on that topic. Hard to say which of the two is really the better satire. Both are covered at length in the Appendix (link at pagetop).

• Religion itself, in any flavor. Yet another of 'my' webpages, godnotmag.htm, is something of a bulleted satire on religion. It aims to generically offend all religion, Christian or no, to show Satan invented religion. To also show how we humans hungrily make "god-dolls" to worship, and thus insult the Real God. Every definition of "god" in every religion treats him as a magical being, and our relationship to him as both shallow and magical, not unlike Jack and the Beanstalk. God does pet tricks and we do, too. That's supposed to be what "love" and "holy" mean? Sheesh. Every generation, we manufacture weird practices and weirder stories, about "god" and our relationship with him. Note the satanic message: supernaturality is stupid. Lighting candles or incense, saying magic prayers or wearing special clothing, visiting shrines or holy places, all these silly practices YELL how much we hate the Real God. They are completely insulting to Divinity. And we don't notice, but instead fancy ourselves holy for doing them. Satan&Co. laugh their heads off. Note well:
  • the Mosaic Law was designed to TEACH, not insult.
  • By obeying it you were supposed to LEARN something.
  • The blessing was part of what you learned.
  • But if you hate God, you treat the many rituals as something you must DO to get something FROM God,
  • which means it's not God you want, but the goodies.
  • Couldn't be more hateful, than to be religious.

• The distinct satanic-reversing pattern of Bible, in translation and teaching. That's a running subdemonstration in all 'my sites', for it's important to see the errors are not human in origin. Note the satanic message in every mistranslation and misteaching: God is painful, silly, huff-and-puff, emotional, wanting humans to do pet tricks for him -- just like any pagan religion's prescription.
• There's also an interesting anti-type category, where something we all believe in the Bible, ISN'T there -- for centuries. Two really big examples of this category are the allegation that "Good Friday" is valid, contradicting Matt12:40-41; PassPlot.htm, a subpage to Part IVa, covers that silliness. In Part IVa itself, we saw the false claim of a Star of Bethlehem, contradicting Matt2, the only chapter in the NT to talk about a star, but 'star' is a nickname for angels in the OT. Note the satanic message: Bible doesn't matter, don't do your homework in it. So theologians and pastors and joe average ignorants all still claim false things as being in Bible, with no sense and less homework. Who cares? This is the "Apathy" gem in Satan's MEGA crowning tactical plan against us, showing off its finery.

• Demons promote very silly concepts of supernatural creatures, especially of themselves. Note the satanic message: supernaturality is stupid, for look -- even demons are stupid. Thus people will become silly, get addicted to the lie about demons, i.e., the casting-out-demons crowd, psychics, etc -- or, will be even more inclined to disbelieve. That makes belief in God stupid, for God by definition is Supernatural. This is a second-flavor (chronic) category most of the time, viz., all the many weird Bible documentaries, movies, cable and television series on demons, angels, etc. However, acute instances occur, like the "Mothman" episode in Ohio in 1967 (covered in the Appendix, aka SatStrat.htm), lurid stories like Under the Banner of Heaven or the earlier Charles Manson story, etc. Many examples here. People obsess over these stories. The initially-targeted group getting the alleged 'supernatural' experience is not relevant, but rather the REACTION to them. This reaction keeps repeating the same obsession despite the elapse of time between the event, and the reader. It's an inordinate amount of interest that persists which marks it as demonic; versus, the natural human curiosity about what's 'beyond' this life. We humans just don't have enough of an interest in anything, ourselves. Our interests are generally fickle and wane quickly. So a mass inordinate amount of interest that persists can't be written off as mental illness or curiosity, since too many people who are otherwise normal, have it.

So now we've seen a sampling of how Demon Thought Transference -- always hallmarked by Supernatural Slapstick -- spans both the chronic and the acute categories. Notice how clever: real demonic nature and contact methods remain undetected. In short, just as in religion, in secular areas Satan&Co. sponsor both ends, the goofy and the respectable, with the latter being by far the most pervasive, and the most low-key. At either end, their activity nonetheless displays a HERDING quality; plus, the humans involved are unaware, so can't be orchestrating the obsessions. You have to use 1Jn1:9 and the Bible to see their gambits, because it takes Divine thinking to penetrate beneath the noise. Thus we prove willfully blind, disinterested, in love our prejudices, so are pawns for Satan&Co. games. It's our fault. Consequently the slapstick nature of their games is bald, advertising how we don't care about the truth. [Don't try to fight them, but rather, be bored. Only Doctrine is interesting. You have to know something so you won't get trapped; so you can 'read between the lines', akin to Central Intelligence Training with respect to Russian newspapers, back during the Cold War. Else, demon activity is really tawdry stuff, cheap titillation tactics, but worth learning so you can see God better.]

The foregoing examples also illustrate how Satan&Co. use feeling as a favorite SUBSTITUTE for Truth: any feeling which will hook the recipient, from ooooh-aaah to righteous indignation, to i-am-scientific, to i-am-so-tired. Thus they addict the recipient to that feeling; because, we all learn early that our body feelings are supposed to indicate something real (i.e., pain reflex is important to body health). Thus substituted, the content of a claim doesn't have to make sense anymore: you only need to feel a certain feeling to 'know' it's true. Of course, the culture has always been big on emphasizing feeling rather than thinking as a criterion of alleged truths like "love", "divine manifestation", etc. So, for example, no one ever questions, "Hey: since God is Infinite, He'd not use feeling to communicate, right? Didn't He give us brains?" Duh. After all, it feels so good to think God is 'communing', with that wonderful glow you have! Should Infinite God want to use emotion rather than thinking, words? Feelings, which can just as easily be manipulated by the right combination of chemicals? If feeling is used to make pronouncements or decisions, then Truth is being rejected, and the rejector is rightly a target.

God permits all this demonic stuff, too -- because, if the person is negative to God, he's rightly due Divine Discipline -- allowed to be "punished" by some demon. If, on the other hand, the person is positive, he'll learn how to ignore such spectacular displays, even though he knows they are coming from demons. Why? 'Because the Word of God is too important to him, to be bothered with what he knows are demonic, kaleidoscopic, trivia. 'Even if they reveal truths, which is their favored ploy. (Since God communicates via doctrine, demons like to do so, too -- but with emotional "hooks".) So, either way, the believer can benefit. So, either way, God is fair to allow it. So, either way, we who know of any recipients should not judge them -- since God allows it, 'either way'.

So a miracle is happening, alright: just not the kind you think it is, nor the kind you want. The miracle of a DEMON JOKE is being played upon you. And you won't know that, unless you have Bible in your head in God's System. In which case, you will know, and then you learn to ignore it. Demons kept on bugging and dogging all of God's people, in the OT. So you won't be exempt, either. Just learn to ignore it, and keep on learning Him.

So, too, when the ingastramuthos demon inhabits some psychic who speaks to the gullible widow in her husband's voice; or, just a bored demon, who of course knows everything about her husband, sends the medium a fact only the widow would know. Ok, but do any brains turn on, wondering just who is behind this? Noooo they all like how it feels! So it must be real! Ohhhhh, supernatural! Thrill!

Next, how many people claim to have had voices, dreams or visions? Are these all merely mental illness? or a bad dinner? Of course not. In fact, Satan&Co. use such stuff to drive people nuts; or, to motivate some response they want --in the name of God, of course. And who questions some supernatural manifestation as maybe coming from the 'other' side in the Trial? Or, when (get this) a demon is 'cast out' and then has his 'subject' make these really goofy statements, seemingly 'saved', now -- the stupid exorcist Christian thinks he's really special with God! Yeah? And this is what the First Commandment says? Oh, if it's supernatural, it must be coming from God, so it's okay? Get a life! Tell me: how much sense does it make for Infinite Intelligence to want to communicate with rational creatures using any of these goofy things. Or, some 'sign'? Is that how a relationship should work?

The recent movie, "Signs" (starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix) shows how we view God, always blaming, always claiming He's far away, always looking for signs, never seeking Him unless we're in trouble; oh, and crediting the most insane occurrences as His Doing! Oh, and how tyrannically we expect Him to do our will. Yet, on the opposite side (last outside scene of movie), we occasionally catch on to the "still, small Voice" Who is never in the wind, because He doesn't need flash; Who gerrymandered nothing, yet orchestrated everything. So, then: it's not as if we don't recognize how God really works. Why, then, the lust for (often, very silly) signs? Do we want God, or .. a genie? What did the Lord say in Matt12-13 and John 6-7?

• the nation becomes internally childish and grasping en masse,
• all within a short window of history (usually in a particular generation);
• there's some wholesale 'movement' which grabs everyone's imagination, despite its obvious stupidity (remember the Children's Crusade or the OJ Simpson trial).
• And, lemminglike, we just march on in it.
• Until, disaster.
• Which, afterwards no one understands, everyone writes books about, and .. no one ever learns from.
Same phenomenon, over and over. Granted, the last 100 years are a period of unprecedented psychological and technological advance in the history of mankind, and we've not even absorbed yet, its import. Even so: AT WHAT POINT does a recurring phenomenon in any environment, predictable like gravity, get recognized as something rather above the humans in it, especially since in every case we are blind to it?

In sum, Satan&Co. balance the mundane with the spectactular, in order to trap everyone they can. On the one hand, the intellectualized goofinesses are herded as virtue or sanity, so that people think themselves smart to believe in evolution, trash or sue someone. In this same class, is most (incredibly-incompetent) Biblical 'scholarship', everyone preening over his degrees, hallowed tones and halting speech (those long pauses are supposed to impress you). On the other hand, Satan&Co. also sponsor silly supernaturality, i.e., supernatural-themed shows, ghost-medium-miracle 'performances', Bible Codes, Kabbalah, and other mystical stuff in Christianity and Judaism. The media isn't to blame. You index demonic activity by how the media responds, for it must respond to 'market'. It's the 'market' for such silliness which helps you gauge demonic activity. Also, it's a matter of content, how certain types of supernaturality are 'sold'. Hence in all the media programs of any type or time, notice how God is always portrayed as an enigmatic Petty Judge or Sugar Daddy. Those who believe in Him are always silly or wimpy. That 'advertising', works. We believe those lies, as they are public, therefore must be true! We don't even know we are being used. Joke's on us!

In all events, you can't escape this blanketed propaganda unless you live in a cave. As noted earlier, we are all plugged in, tuned in, turned on, in our now-global, 'village'. Yeah, a village of small-thinking, pettiness. Plague of Russia, China, Europe and now the US. We used to think bigger, higher, better. Now it's all peasant stuff, baby. Which we fancy, adult. Because, we are children. And even if fighting to grow up, we are smothered by childish ideas. Only the Real Bible from the Real God, is our defense. And it too, is available, as never before in history. Thus is the conflict, the contagion, the correction available. And thus, the Combat of Growing Up to Pleroma. Our individual choice, how much of that Fight for Spiritual Independence, we are willing to receive from the One Who Beat it all, while ON the Cross!

How important it might be to analyze demonic activity, depends on where you live, and God's plan for your life. Often it's not important to monitor, except for the general purpose of understanding Bible better, i.e., like a "lab" where you try to use the doctrine you've been learning.

Conversely, if we don't get with 1Jn's Script, how can we escape being deployed by Satan&Co.?

Thus we've seen in outline, how a believer who is growing in Christ is immediately used by both God and Satan, every moment he breathes. For blessing, or cursing, to his periphery. In short, they are all constantly communicating to us: thoughts occurring to us aren't merely our own. But how we respond to those thoughts -- causes history.

So: our every thought, word, breath, impacts those around us. So, at any moment, we are being caused to make history: either for better, as the Bride-upgrade on "salt of the earth", or worse: royally-saltless.

Thus, if enough Christians are growing in Christ, they will have a terrific positive and material impact on their nation. If, by contrast, enough Christians are becoming apostate, they will have a terrific negative and material impact on their nation. This same principle applies to secular truths, but absent the Christian's growth, secular truths are likewise rejected. Such is the story of the US today. See how you are so much more influential, "just by learning" Bible Doctrine, than if you were out crusading the streets, in the name of some benevolent cause?

So, in which of the two directions, positive or negative, do we want our home nation to go? For, as goes the Christian, so goes his nation -- and, in the aggregate of nations -- the world. Right Now. Not in some distant, prophetic future. Now.

As before in post-Cross history, Christians today are apostate, like the Exodus generation. We are Royal and becoming en masse, more bane than boon to mankind. At some point, no one will want the Royal Spiritual Life; to keep mankind going, God will have to remove the Royal Family. Prosperity will eventually kill our desire for God even among believers, as Paul tearingly predicts in Philippians 3:16-19. So we end with a removal from the world. 'More like a mass execution, than a blessing. Satan will be very pleased indeed, to have succeeded in our mass judgement. It's his life's ambition.

Which ambition, is met by him touting 'Christianity' as a peasant activity, rather than the Royal Thinking Training That God Authored Via His Son, Isa53:11. So we never grow up in our Royal Role, hence humanity doesn't learn Royal Thinking, hence humanity stays childish. And Satan&Co., delay their Matt25:41 sentence. But we become cannonfodder, en route.

Kinda daunting, isn't it, to have soo much riding on whether you "just study"? Kinda interesting, isn't it, how obeying the 1st Commandment has been denigrated as "just study"? In favor of that stupid cup of water in the Lord's Name? Are you beginning to see how cleverly Satan has brainwashed mainstream Christianity?

Cheating? How easy is it to believe in God,

• When the first day of the Tribulation is the noisy (or eerily quiet), maybe traumatic (or no trauma, eerie), definitely-unexplainable disappearance of people, perhaps in the billions? Or, perhaps few, but they all were Christians? All over the world, on the same day, suddenly missing from disparate parts of the earth?
• When (first half of Trib) you see the Resuscitation of the Two Witnesses on satellite, every day teaching in the suddenly-rebuilt Temple (though right now the Islamic Dome of the Rock sits there)? You know, of course, that 24/7 there is a camera on the Wailing Wall, even as I type...
• When one or two Hades compartments (Abyss/Tigris/Tartarus) will then release a torturing horde of gorgeous demons, 200 million strong?
• Which horde torture and then murder at will about 25% of the negative folks?
• When one of that horde, guy named Abbadon, kills the Two Witnesses on TV at the Trib midpoint?
• Followed by a sudden 'miracle' of a Western leader who unites Europe under a religion, as well as politically, and
• his statue is set up in Jerusalem by the Jewish leader, and
• that statue speaks daily, replacing the Two Witnesses in the Temple?
• When you daily, at noon in your own timezone, see three angels flying mid-heaven, one after another, shouting the Gospel, and "woes": God's Judgement for not believing in His Son (see Rev 14, last half of Trib)?
• Followed by the (at that point, 3) huge demon assault armies fostering counter alliances with humans so to bring the biggest world war, ever: Gotterdamerung, especially in the plain of Esdraelon, in order to completely annihilate the regathered Jews? [Again, the 200 million are demons, not humans, not from China. Someone should do his homework on Revelation 9. Translations are even clear, SATAN RELEASES DEMONS from the Abyss. The Tartarus compartment is opened later and is not the same, seems like.]
• When, throughout, there will be natural disasters and personal plagues deliberately patterned like the Exodus miracles, yet much more horrible, and all over the world? Who doesn't know of them from the movie, "The Ten Commandments"?
• So to see all this play out exactly as Bible says, not in a movie this time.. um, how much more proof of God could you want?

Come on, now: wouldn't it be easier to believe then, versus Now? Isn't the primary complaint both believers and unbelievers have now -- "I can't see Him, how do I really know God exists"? How amazing. Here we are, in the Invisible Now, yearning for miracles, healings -- the 'good old days'. Yet, in the same breath, we deem God to be wrong to take us out and reinstitute those good-old-days. In spades. From which source does our irrationality derive?

And what's more important: to suffer, or to be saved? Isn't being saved more important? Satan sure thinks so. All along, his policy was self-enjoyment, rather than God-enjoyment. How did he tempt the woman? You will be like the Most-High, knowing as much as He does -- remember? Satan can't win us over with pain, but with pleasure. Seduce and destroy..just like he did with her. It's easier for the totally-depraved human to win a war, than for him to win the peace. War is something he better understands. Peace, who ever understood it, except as a goal?

Satan's an angel of light -- his "darkness" is too bright to see -- not even he can see it. So, he wants mankind to consider himself justified-by-works: pain belies that claim. So, the Tribulation will be easier, not harder, than the situation we have now.

Further still, won't it be easier to practice a miniature version of the Mosaic Law then, since the spiritual life reverts back to it? Back to paint-by-numbers? After all, the Scripture is now in writing, and all that folks will then see with their own eyes, is written out, blow by blow? As confirmation they aren't hallucinating? Again, the suffering is terrible, but far better to suffer, than to be drugged by prosperity's pleasure, all the way into hell.

Most importantly, the purpose of the Rapture is judgement, not blessing, to everyone. You should fear it, not yearn for it. Sure, the Rapture means the Bride is to be "prepared" for the 2nd Advent. But "preparation" is the "Bema" -- judgement/Evaluation -- for how well we learned Christ while down here. (Part V will explain the Bema in more detail.) Any "dead works" are burned: wood, hay, stubble. We shall be naked, escaping "as if through fire", if we were quitters, down here. Moreover those alive at the Rapture, who don't physically die before receiving their resurrection bodies, will likely be apostate -- so "Rapture" is not good news for them.

As Part V will explain in more detail, the Bema judges those who quit, and evaluates favorably those who "finished the course". The latter group will be VERY FEW, as they are to be the Rulers, the "progenitors", as we saw in Part IVb. So these Pleroma people will be co-rulers with Christ. The rest, 99.99% of the Body of Christ -- will be ashamed. 'As Paul writes in Phillipians 3:18ff: their "glory" (down here) will be their "shame" (at the Bema). Luke 5:8-9 will be our attitude then. So shockingly aware He's God, Please send me away, I'm not good enough for you. Really, predictive of us all. The word "shame" doesn't even begin to communicate the grief. Because up there, the ONLY interesting topic of conversation, is HIM.

Ergo all the many oblique and direct Scripture warnings to "keep the faith", "until the end". "Blotting-out" of rewards, titles ("name"), honors: that's what Bride believers can lose. Not salvation, but rewards. These rewards are so vast, losing them is beyond bearing, for they determine how close one is to Christ! As we saw in Part III's Corollary 3B ("You WILL Inherit") subsection, how believers 'judged' God to be in the body is how they themselves will be judged! So, those who held notions of Him which were distant, works-based, shallow -- they themselves will have small inheritances, far away from Him! In Heaven, but oh so far away! 'Maybe see Him only at a distance during the convocations (á la beginning Job 1, Luke 2, convocations of the angels)!

See, the rewards are due to how close one grew to Him while in this Body. Those rewards are permanent. So also, the loss. One of the portions of the rewards is blessing-by-association to the Tribulation people. As Hebrews 9:15ff notes, unless one dies, the will's property can't be conveyed to the heirs. So it's vitally necessary, for the sake of the Tribulation people, that the Church 'die' via the Rapture, so that the Tribulation folks and 2nd Advent folks can inherit blessing by association. 'From the Church, who got its "second" covenant from the Anchor, Christ. We are made pivotal not only to the Tribulation people, but to all the OT folks as well, and are used to implement the "second" covenant which our Testator "established". [Cf. Hebrews 9:15ff and 11:39-40 (well, really, 9:15 through end 10; 11 is a parenthesis up through verse 38). Class Note: 92 SD L1455-56 has a neat summary list of "riches of His Glory" and taxzis-timeline groups' verses.]

Rev2 and 3 partly cover that fact that we can lose these rewards: "blot ..name" should say "blot..TITLE", since "onoma" means "title" in those verses. We know the blessings are in escrow, on deposit, from Eph1's "every spiritual blessing" and NT keywords, such as "promise", "inheritance", "treasure" and "deposit". Like any inheritance with conditions, we have to grow up to a certain spiritual age, as it were, to receive these rewards. After all, no ruler's children should actually inherit the rulership, if insufficiently qualified to rule. That would not be fair, nor be love.

1. Primary Offensive Objective: If he can get enough of us to "neglect this so-great salvation", he can maybe blot out enough titles to prevent God completing His Promises. With luck, if Satan can pull off his sweetness-and-light (Homo Genius table) world order before the Body of Christ is complete, he can make God a liar. Hence he needs to make the Rapture look false, far-off, works-based (Satanic Attack Plan table). If we think there's no Rapture; if we think it's far away or prophecy-dependent; if we think we bring it about by means of our works, well.. then we'll not learn the Book, and God's Script will be mouthed, but not believed; spoken, but not understood. Hearing, we will never hear what the Spirit says to the Churches. For we will be busy LIVING the Stop Omega plan of Satan, voting for him to be 'god', instead of the Real One.

   Thus the Body of Christ cannot complete, the Tribulation cannot occur, so the Age of Israel cannot complete, so the Covenants to Israel cannot be delivered, and it's a Mistrial. For God delivers via CONSENT. If that Consent isn't being given, then as it was during the First Advent, God cannot juridically justify fulfilling any of the long-promised benefits which to date, even the greats in Hebrews 11 never received -- "for apart from us, they will not be completed." (Again, Heb 11:40: "made perfect" is our friend "teleiow", meaning "to complete". "To perfect", in English, is a legal Contractural Completion verb. 'Meaning, until our Covenant/Contract is fulfilled, theirs cannot be. So, "made perfect" would also be a legally correct translation.)

   As you'll recall, the "Satanic Attack Plan Against Church" table explained that his chief strategic goal is to get believers to reject Christ's Return (Rapture, for Church) the same way First Advent Jews reacted to Christ's Presence. This, so he can get a Mistrial Verdict. With respect to mankind, his first priority is to a) mangle the Gospel (very successful), or if failing a), b) divert those who believe into false systems of spirituality. This latter has the added benefit of obscuring the Gospel all the more, so that even Church doubts what it is (Matt24:24, Mark 13:22). Satan's been very successful at this, too (ibid, plus a main theme in all John's letters, 2nd half of 2Peter, Jude, and Revelation). The historical record is embarrassing in the extreme.

   Hence every little victory is significant to Satan; whether the raiding of Divine Benefit Plan Blessing, or his MEGA Plan's successes, even if he can't STOP the Body from being completed. See, wars are often won or lost on the most trivial of things; like in WWII Hitler wanted some extra sleep, so the Allies got away at Dunkirk; like, in 1944, Hitler's last offensive, tanks ran out of gas at a critical moment, and our troops were thus spared. These two circumstances did more to help us win the war than many a well-executed maneuver. So also, in the spiritual war. Sure, we know God will win, and the Body will be completed: but that doesn't mean the Tribulation people will get the same amount of blessing-by-association! Every little bit matters for them, as well. Satan sure knows that. But we don't.

   Remember: the only reason people are alive the moment after the Rapture is because they rejected God, or -- worse! because they are little children, yet too young to even understand the Gospel. [There is some evidence God takes children that young home en masse, and of course being too young to say 'no', they are automatically saved. Still, who knows if it will be just to do that at the Rapture? If not, then He won't do it.]

   So there is no Divine Volactuarial Criterion for added benefit to them which can be used. If it doesn't come from us, it doesn't come. God will never gerrymander Truth. He didn't do it on the Cross, so He doesn't ever do it, period. So, then: every little extra bit of blessing-by-association gained -- or, lost -- will have a BIG impact on how the Tribulation plays for our fellow humans. Do you want that fact on your conscience, if you refuse to get into and stick with the spiritual life? I sure don't.

2. Secondary Offensive Objective: Satan can't make the official Tribulation work to his own advantage unless he can fool people then into thinking that the Church is in the official Tribulation. This, because he has to FAKE the 2nd Advent at that time. He then needs a base of operations so he can conduct massive pogroms, because then his only option is to quickly kill a sufficient number of Jews and believers; he needs a way to gather them so he can kill them easily. The fastest way to gather them is round a religious banner, like -- Christ's return. (God will allow it, too. Since the Church is not in the Trib, anyone believing otherwise must first reject huge chunks of Scripture.) Consequently, Satan must constantly debunk/distort the Rapture Now: so to provide a 'paper trail' of scholars claiming Church-is-in-the-Trib. Just as we want to feel the Church fathers were right, since they were soo much closer to the 1st Advent, future believers will favorably look back on what we 'learned', to help them decide their own interpretations. Isn't Satan clever? Click Here for more info.

   It's amazing how this secondary offensive objective is soo corroborated by history. First, one of the most obvious "shub" ("The Return") prophecies in Bible, is that Christ is to regather the Jews, not the Jews regather themselves: every prophet explains it, and Ezekiel devotes Chapters 37 onward, to the topic. That's a lot of prophecy to ignore. So, God gives them history, as well. Told them in advance, if they would be Read The Book.

   For, they are blind to the meaning of NO TEMPLE, they are blind to their entire Tanakh (their name for "Bible"). So, they prove They Can't Read Any Prophecy. So, they are suckers to any regathering ploy anyone makes. So their history has always been a plea to "gather" in enclaves, neighborhoods, ghettoes -- anything to be together. Accordingly, Satan uses anti-Semitism in large part, simply to motivate them to congregate. So they can be easier to kill. The Lord warned against this in Matt24. No Jew in his right mind should want to gather: he becomes a sitting target. History's many unbelievably-horrible pogroms, more than amply prove that.

   We Christians are between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place, when it comes to helping the Jews, because it's impossible not to be empathetic to their yearning to regather. It's as old as the Exodus, and since we derive our own salvation from them, we want to help out. Also, of course we are supposed to and typically want to, align with and protect the Jews at all costs. But to gather Jews in the name of shub (return to the Land), means Satan can kill them better. Witness the history, which virtually all OT prophecy on their Diaspora, depicts (i.e., wherever they go, the sword will follow them, i.e., Deut28:22, Eze11:8):

   • Remember that Gen12 applies to all Abraham's sons, not just Isaac, but in different ways for those not from Isaac. That is the heart of the dispute between Abraham's many blood progeny: Jacob's sons were to get the land grant and the other promises; the other sons were to get protection from God in very specific other ways (i.e., the promise made to Hagar). [That's also why, for another example, Moab and Edom got special protection rules, and special judgements, too.] So it's no accident that the Arabs have oil, on land which is part of the land covenant to Abraham, which by rights belongs to Jacob's sons!

   • So, then: the whole Islamic movement was orchestrated by Satan&Co. to motivate gatherings of Arabs, as well as Jews, because all of them are under some form of Divine Protection. Even Sir John Glubb, an Arabophile, writing in his Short History of the Arab Peoples, noted in his introduction the odd timing of Islam's rise, just when the two Romes had exhausted themselves fighting each other. A vacuum of power. Of course, both Romes had delighted in persecuting the Jews, so like all Israel's enemies, killed themselves. Now, in their ashes. So now, a new instrument arises which promises again to extend the hand of friendship TO the Jews (a central recurring theme in the Koran, is an appeal for Jews and Arabs and Christians to UNITE). Oh, so they buy it!.. only to later be pogromized whenever the mood struck, after Islam became an empire. Notice how the Christians were also dragged in, via the Crusades. So more Jews could killed, even more Scripture MSS destroyed. Nice tactical touch!

   • So too, all gatherings of Jews since, whether by setting up enclaves, or what-have-you.
   • Note the co-habitation of Jews and Arabs in places like Spain, Arab countries, etc. They tend to live together.
   • The urge among Jews to gather is extreme, because it's the Promise of Messiah (Eze39ff, for example).
   • So if you carefully look at the timing of the Zionism movement, which started at the beginning of the 20th century;
   • then, how when it fizzled, WWII did so much to buttress it (again, due to the gatherings Satan previously manipulated in Germany, France, Russia, etc.), culminating in the State of Israel;
   • Then, note the rapid independence of the Arab States (Arabs hate the Jews due to Isaac, not Islam) --
   • Then, the incessant wars since, which annoy the entire rest of the world.
   • What a recipe for mass killing of Jews at any time in history.
   For, who among us Christians, won't defend the Jews? Our Lord Is Jewish! Satan's not stupid: he boxes believers into a corner, for we all love the Jews (except for the nutcases), and God orders us to protect and befriend them (viz., Gen12). As a result, those who befriend them are likewise 'enemies', so he can get more Jews and more believers killed off! For, he doesn't know when the Rapture will occur either, so has to keep getting the right 'killing fields' set up.

   So, he manipulated us all due to right motives (yikes!) to gather them back in Ha Eretz. Now, all he has to do, is screw up Islam, so that the Temple can be rebuilt over where the Dome sits, now. That the Temple is not to be rebuilt until Christ Returns (Dan9:26, Eze Chaps39-end of book) evades recognition by not only Jews, but by most Christians. As a result: millions of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, will mistake any Temple Rebuilding for the SHUB (Return) of Messiah/Christ. Just what Christ warned against, in Matt24. Don't you notice, Islam is being discredited in the minds of Moslems, due to 9/11 and our being in Iraq? That's why the militants are reacting so much! They fear losing mass attraction! It's a tinderbox for setting up the Temple to be rebuilt.

   The Administration's policy on Iraq is the most brilliant thing to hit America's foreign policy history.. but look how it plays right into Satan's hands, and we cannot justify changing the policy, since it protects America in the best possible way. President Bush is completely right when he says that he means to bring the war to the terrorists. We cannot defend our own borders. So we have to encourage the enemy to attack on their own home ground. That helps free those there to stop wanting the terrorists. For, man never learns a lesson, except the hard way, but once he does learn.. the lesson is well learned. More lives, theirs and ours, are thus saved. Plus, we are nearer Israel so can defend her better. Which, of course, upsets the Arabs no end.

   The freedom of the world depends on us being in Iraq. It is right to be there, never mind that Satan&Co. can and will use it for their own ends. Jews there in Israel get time to wake UP to the situation. People all over the world get time to ask questions about the three faiths, and ponder. Not one soldier, not one civilian who dies there is dying in vain. Rather, now "world war" is fought in moments, much like ancient wars were one-on-one. Attrition is the most deadly form of war, just like crime. Cockroaches all in hiding, and you can never kill them all. Thus it becomes easier to stop being so naive about Satan&Co., potentially. For the past 50 years, God has essentially been advertised to the whole world, and as we homogenize the more, we can see better Who He is. For those Two Silent Stone Witnesses are famous, now; the role they play, as Part IVa dramatised, is thus evangelizing, for anyone curious enough to want to know more about God.

   So yeah, Satan&Co. mean the herding of Israel for evil; but God will make good Out From it. Birthing, salvation to many. Birthing, spiritual growth to many. Because whatever Satan&Co. do, can only glorify God.

   When Satan&Co. are ready, they will withdraw sponsorship of the terrorists, and foster a peace plan to unite the "People of the Book". Which then will be used to kill those people. But the meanwhile, God will harvest the Pleroma, and many people who heretofore did not see the vileness of Islam, will see it. So will themselves, become believers. 99.9% of course, will then careen off into apathy. But every soul, counts. So every Pleroma believer who gets developed now -- an era which is 2000 years in the making, a unique return to the conditions of the first century AD -- every Pleroma believer being developed now will have far greater impact. What a time to be alive.

   But no wonder, the Revelation and Isa63/Eze39 2nd-Advent bloodbath forecasts will be so unspeakable! [The Gog and MeGog revolution at the end of the Millennium is a second time the same group of folks rebel; Armaggedon campaign will be a prior occasion. See the "seven months" clause in Eze39, compare to Revelation.] And we can't do anything to stop it, except as Individuals, to a) Grow Up In Christ! and b) Don't Go Back There To Live. We'll have to defend Israel at all costs, and God of course will continue to protect her under Gen12. But oh! the deaths which will occur! Grow up! Tachú!

3. Primary Defensive Objective: If the Primary Offensive Goal is not met, Satan can still buy time, which is what 'defensive maneuver' is designed to do. So long as he can distract us Christians from the true spiritual life, there aren't enough believers growing to Vested Ruler status. Thus the Rapture must be delayed. So his sentence must also be delayed. Morever, he can use the delay to best prepare for the very-short "offensive" he'll need during the official Tribulation, as noted above. That too, is one of the 9 principles of warfare: use the defensive to make for a better future offensive.

4. Revenge Objective: Satan thinks his revenge-fueled Gotterdamerung Fantasy is still met, both Now and later. Now, he can 'enjoy' our being so stupid, how small we are, how we don't get our on-earth escrow conveyances. Later, even if he doesn't succeed at either Primary Offensive or Defensive Goals, he thinks he would reduce the pleasure of Christ by saddling Him with as many spiritually-retarded believers as possible. So, as he burns, he can fantasize his revenge -- that God didn't get what He wanted, either.

Do you now see Satan's strategic goals, and thus how you are under the worst attack? Does your spiritual life seem rather more important and harder, now, than what you thought was the life in the Trib? Do you see how your life not only can impact people around you Now, but also forever in the future? How you, by "just" learning, can be used to benefit even those poor people yet to be born -- in the Tribulation?

Do you see how God the Father has designed you to help "the poor" on a far greater, Royal Level than mere money, volunteerism? Help the poor? Heck, we're in a position to bless the whole world, for generations to come! No amount of money or volunteerism can do what the Christian is called upon to do! Or what do you think "redeeming the time" means? So, to what conclusion are we forced? Should we learn, as Romans 8 puts it, "the things of the Spirit", on which the world's weal depends, or should we be peasant-fleshly, fantasizing for ourselves heroism if we live during the lesser Tribulation? (Romans 8:28ff, obliquely says this very thing; the passage is expressed in military-style language in the Greek: the thinking of a great soldier, not a "civvy".)

Does the subtlety of what we Christians face today, with the beguilements of prosperity and technology, reveal just how much worse life today is, versus the future? Does the threat of not growing up in Christ, ever-present for all of us, not involve far more significant losses than one had thought? Wouldn't it be better to go to Hell, than to realize for all eternity that one's escrow blessings stay frozen, because one remained a spiritual baby, earning instead of learning?

After all, look at the "Chief Witness", Christ, His Testimony: He learned through what He suffered (Heb5:8-9) -- not "earned", but "learned"! Better to learn from the suffering down here, than to "earn" all the kudos people (really, Satan&Co.) can give you for the fantasy of being some flashy martyr, i.e., in the lesser Trib.! Christ got the WORST "hell" on the Cross, honey: never ever forget that. So what do we thus get, if, as Hebrews 2:1 so tearfully warns, we neglect our so-great salvation? 'Earning, instead of learning?

Oh, we "earned", allright: we left out the "L" for "Lord", so "earned", instead of "learned". So who replaced the "L", huh? Why, Satan & Co.! What we "learned" by "earning" was Satan's plan! Satan's Thinking! Which we obligingly transmitted to our periphery! And what is Satan's future? Burning. So what is the future of all our "earning"? "Wood, hay and stubble"! 1Cor3! And, while still down here, we'll be burning all our lives: burning with ambition, burning with never-fulfilled fantasy, burning in whatever destruction we brought on ourselves at our "end". Compare Phili 3:15-19, Heb5:11-6:6, Heb10:38ff: review these passages in context, to see that the writers are drawing parallels between the ultimate suffering of the unbeliever and the vast loss of the believer who doesn't grow up in Christ. Mainstream Christian denominations historically (and today) chop out that context, dilute it into Brother-Foot nonsense, in order to do Satan's job: make you hustle 'for Christ'.

For, Satan's plan leverages the mass, too: he doesn't want us to be Sitting, like our Lord is! He wants us hustling, moving! 'Into Morality, into Emotionality, into Gross sin, targeting the Apathetic mass: to make them indifferent, uninterested toward Learning Christ. Yeah, baby, replace that L with another "L": Lukewarm! Lousy! Looky-loos! Little! Limping! Lacking! So, of course those who glorify in these replacements will be lacking..forever. 'Getting a so-small! salvation. Forever. The way they measure the spiritual life gets "measured back" to them (Matt7:2, as we saw in Part III). Forever.

Remember what was said earlier about Satan's MEGA plan? It works so well, because 1) the awesomeness of our future is too big for the human mind to contemplate, so it naturally goes into denial; and 2) the hardest thing to do if you really understand Scripture, is to Sit Still. Our job down here is to train for Our Eternal Role, not be involved in this world's frenetic stuff. We are to live in our bodies with whatever the Lord gives us, but our inner use of that stuff is the TRAINING purpose. There is no -- repeat, no -- outer stuff for us to do. "Consequently the sons are exempt": Matt17:24-27 aptly summarizes what should be our entire outlook.

Satan's doing all he can to stop our being prepared. His best strategy is to make us "dull" (Heb5:11ff). The Rapture-is-cheating excuse is but one of many which believers use to bad-rap the Rapture. Most Christians don't believe in the Rapture or the Tribulation today. Granted, it's been spun so badly, one feels goofy to accept it -- but Christ, not man, is the reason for it. And Satan, not man, is another reason for it. Satan needs his rebuttal, his last chance to prove that he can beat the Son. The Tribulation is it; so he needs Now to prepare, to make every minute of that 7 years count.

So do we. 'Which is why it's so critical to properly understand the nature of the Rapture -- for application Now, not then. That is our future. So, like Peter says, what sort of persons must we Now become, in a dedicated-to-God lifestyle? That's how to use the Rapture. Not donning white sheets, not bidding friends and neighbors good-bye -- but rather, Learn His Son.

Satan doesn't want folks to believe properly, either, lest they forget about whitewashing his world, which is Satan's anti-Rapture doctrine. He spins the me-be-god yarn well: that by political activism and do-goodism, Christians thus "help" Christ to return. So, his tactic is to make all who believe in the Rapture appear goofy. 'Which is not too difficult to do! Many baby Christians view the Rapture as some kind of aspirin, or trip to Disneyland. So, Satan's easily successful at making the Rapture look false: his tactic dovetails nicely with his goal of me-be-god-intellectualism.

Satan&Co. have always spent a great deal of time in disinformation, here. The NT epistles are loaded with believer-confusion. Why do Satan&Co want so much to bad-rap the future? Let's reason it out.

It's ironic that a doctrine like the Rapture, which is a lesser doctrine (isn't it?), can be so great a diagnostic tool in spiritual pathology. I can't think of another doctrine which will more quickly "disclose" a believer's core spiritual ill-health. Maybe examining the results will reveal why Satan&Co. so stridently seek to debunk the Rapture et. seq. These spiritual pathologies have hallmark defense-mechanism characteristics. Four of them are illustrated, below. Note how all four groups 'just happen' to parallel Satan's Operation MEGA groups (yeah, right)...

1. Morality->Denial. Folks who dismiss the Rapture through the Millennium (i.e., amillennial), tend to be legalistic in direct correlation to their intensity of dismissal: 'treating Rev and prophecy as "fulfilled", "allegorical", in secret code due to persecution -- or wow -- noncanonical, lol! Ahhh. Makes them feel so superior, so rational.
   • Never mind that metaphorical depiction is the height of good literature, and John's Revelation is the most concentrated metaphorical language in the most concise military format, ever.
   • Never mind that every metaphor in Revelation is well-documented in the OT ("rainbow", for example, is the metaphor for God's integrity, His promise to Noah).
   • Never mind that the Book marches chronologically forward, using ALL of the Classical Greek drama/comedy/satire ("satyr") structures which Rome aped, at the very time Christian faith was burlesqued in low-class Roman theatres under Domitian, who exiled John to Patmos (Nero-Domitian p.221 Encyclopedia Britannica(1984), vol.18, "Mimic Traditions").
   • Never mind the equally-famous Hebraic OT structures, so NO one can miss that Reality is being displayed in excruciating detail, with an exact dovetailing to OT prophecy (Zech 12, Dan 7&11, Isa63, etc)!
   • Reality which exposes man's need for a Savior, Reality which is confirmed on any given day in any media!
   • Reality which tells you in advance what's going to happen next!
   • And it does, beginning two (Equites) and scarcely 4 years later (the harlot)! Is that why folks in this category don't like Revelation?
   • Because it warned in advance of the 'harlot', ecumenical religion, religious politics, holy hierarchies messin' with kings? Hmmm?
   • Right down to the colors (scarlet and purple)?
   • Why, within 100 years the harlot became so popular, even the Bible's Greek was barely readable, anymore. (See M. Cary, History of Rome, ChapXLIII, Sect.5.)

   Ahhhh. Discount all that, yet ignore how irrational it is to discount it, and call that irrationality, 'scientific'! 'Reason'! Ahhh. So, the believer is glorified: he's "arrived" in the golden age, and naturally will want to work hard in it, for he brings back Christ! Aha! Instead of God working, it's the believer! Just like Jewish unbelievers ignore the First Advent, but only regard the Second, so the believer ignores the result of the successful completion of First Advent: the preparation phase of Operation Footstool, which God And God Alone accomplishes. Ahhh, can't accept that: Believer then is impotent, see. Gotta hustle to buttress the me-be-god ego, see. Gotta do Satan's work in God's name, see. Babylon the religion, Babylon the political power, Babylon the worker. Several major Christian denominations are in this category of arrogant dismissal. Funny how so many of them tend toward anti-semitism, in their long histories, too.

2. Emotionality->Sublimation. By contrast, those who enthusiastically accept all or portions of Revelation prophecy -- i.e., some version of pre-Mill -- tend to be extremely young in Christ, or extremely emotional. I've heard some tragic stories of people who upped and left families, going to some location where Christ was to come down; my pastor frequently recounts how, in the 1930's, a group of folks donned white sheets and clabbered up to Mulholland Drive (famous lovers' spot in Los Angeles), waiting for Christ to return. My pastor was only newly-a-believer, then; he was with a friend, and asked these spectres why they were thus clad. They of course told him in hallowed tones! Oh, and they'd sold everything they had! LO! The next day, the Lord had still not arrived?! Gee, wonder why. Someone sent me 88 Reasons the Rapture will occur in 1988, etc. Ad nauseam. Then there was the Late Great Planet Earth craze (more, in "4. Apathy.." below). In short, people get downright goofy. So Christianity looks goofy. So even God looks goofy. So the atheist can buy goofy "evolution", in the name of not being like the goofy Christians.

   Usually such folks have no clue what the Rapture and Trib are really about. Ahhh: feel-good, escape one's life down here. So, even if their understanding is correct, they don't really know it is correct, nor why it is correct..they just feel good about it. So any old media preacher can soak them dry of funds. So any old event in a newspaper is the end times, brother. Yeah, they thought that when Genghis Khan and Napoleon were running around, too.

3. Gross Sin->Rationalization. This is a surprisingly-large group of folks, lately. They are antagonistic or hostile to portions, but not all, of Rapture through Millennium doctrines, i.e., mid-Tribbers or post-Tribbers. The 'scholarship' is appallingly, grossly, bad. Many of these folks obviously don't know enough about the original languages of Scripture to see that the official Trib is only post-Rapture. Since Scripture is so plain about it, the problem is easily-correctible: just study for a year. However, they won't study Scripture that way. Why? Like those who dismiss Trib-Mill entirely, folks 'holding' to mid-Trib and post-Trib interpretations also want to be 'involved' in the 'golden age': they just date that age differently.

   It's heartbreaking: if you talk to them enough, you find out they feel bad about that future; they want to be a part of it, to share in the pain. To them, God wouldn't be fair if He raptured the Church as the kickoff for the official Tribulation. To them, the gross spectacularity is important. Just as, to them, gross sins are important.

4. Apathy->Guilt. Indifference, in the name of "It's not that important", is another clever mask, for shame. 'Believing something which is known to be regarded by others as goofy, and trying to hide it. Or, not believing something known to be regarded by others as right, and trying to hide it. Or, not wanting to think about something suspected as true, and trying to hide it. Or...well, you get the point -- hiding. Shame. Fit in! Yeah, fit in with people, rather than fit in with God!

   I myself used to be in this group. What was my arrogant pseudo-reason for indifference? To be honest, I didn't like Christianity for a very long time. What I knew of it, was the goofy-Pre-Trib group's version. Fortunately, I did know the Bible was from God, so I didn't stay aloof from the spiritual life. Just the same, my early exposure after I remember believing in Him at age 18, was with the goofy crowd. Here I was, a new believer; though I had since freshman year ('71) gotten under the pastor via tapes, I was dilettantish about study. So, when in '81 I got a wake-up call (Divine Discipline, let's not be coy), I finally went to the church. Still, the only part I didn't like about the Bible was eschatology! Why? Because relationship with God shouldn't be based on emotion! Ahhh, that reasoning was correct, but -- do we throw out a book of the Bible, too? Throw out the baby with the bathwater? And guess what my pastor was teaching back in 1981 when I finally got serious about Doctrine? REVELATION! Verse by verse, exegesis. Day in and day out.

   So, then: did I pick up on that 'coincidence', my pastor's long daily teaching of Revelation? Oh, no. I still felt bad about all those goofy pre-Trib Christians I knew! I wasn't like them, oh no! Not fit in! (See how reaction is as bad, as much a fit-in, because the eyes are still on people, not God?) So, I glazed over the Trib. stuff, didn't really listen carefully to what he taught. Oh, but I fooled myself! I took copious notes! I learned how to write in Greek that way! Knowing God, those portions of his teaching I wanted and ate avidly, too! I'd spend hours a day (and have, ever since) on the nature of God, My Lord, the Cross, the differences between OT and NT spiritual-covenants/"dispensations". 'Awake, and asleep (dreaming about it, which the subconscience does, to solidify learning): making notes, writing out stuff (kinda like this webpage) to analyse what I was learning, talking to the Father about it (aka "prayer"). Constantly. I couldn't get enough. By contrast, knowing all about the Trib et.seq., well -- I believed what he said, but I didn't have much interest. I never much "turned over" (pondered) the meaning of what he was teaching, re the Rapture et alia. (BIG mistake!! Don't even ask how big was/is my Divine Discipline for having glazed over these topics! Thank God for Heb12:6-11ff!)

   So, I ended up believing in the Trib and Mill correctly, and knew the data was correct, but I really didn't grasp the significance -- what it revealed about Him. Knowledge of those passages made Him more real to me, true -- but it was only an increased palpability, for lack of a better word. So, what's the clue, here, to my former disinterest? Ahhh: associative-shame. I too was a Christian. Just like those goofy people.

By contrast to these four groups' puffing-up, a correct grasp of the Tribulation, which the Rapture begins, makes a believer aware of the need to grow up. It underscores vividly the nature of personal responsibility. If He can return at any time to evaluate you, then soldier..look sharp! Grow up! This, of course, is a military command to be alert in the bush, as it were: "I will come suddenly!" is just such a command.

First-century believers had the same four puffing-up problems. Rapture verses in the NT are many, partly for that reason. Thus the references are often chiding and hence indirect, as knowledge of the Rapture was foundational. If you know the alphabet well, and so do your readers, you DON'T keep repeating what it is, but rather ADD INFORMATION surrounding its meaning. Most of Scripture therefore is written that way: the audience was already familiar with the underpinnings. So in English, the direct Rapture references appear to be few. Yet note the chiding character of the following:

• The Lord talked about it, in the parable of the virgins without lamp oil. In those days, the betrothal was the big deal. There followed an unpredictable interval during which the FINANCIAL AGREEMENT was to be fulfilled. Obviously, it took time for the payment from bride's family to groom's family (the dowry) and from the groom to the bride's family (brideprice) to be paid. Wasn't predictable, depending on the payments required. Perfect analogy to the Rapture.

  The wedding itself was a kind of torchlight procession in which the Groom would go to the Bride's house and pick her up. It was custom for the Groom to arrive at an unspecified time, i.e., after what we'd call his 'bachelor party' -- SUDDENLY to pick up the Bride, Matt25:6. Perfect analogy to the Rapture. So, the Groom will Come Back, you see -- they all knew that, but they did not know when. Of course "suddenly" is not used in that verse -- you'd have to know the custom of the time. "Suddenly!" and "..like a thief" are frequent phrases in the NT, both via direct statement and by indirect reference. This passage is probably one of the proofs of how the Precedence for Church's Rapture comes from Israel, because the Groom First Came For Israel, But She Said No (depicted as not being ready, same idea; if you aren't really that interested, you won't be ready).

  Matt16:18 is the Betrothal, John 17 is the marriage contract, 17:20-21 is the Brideprice Agreement, paid on the Cross, Rom6 (which uses the marital analogy); and now Father is making the Dowry pay off, Eph1. That's all language of this custom, so the Rapture is foundational to it, as it's likened to the Groom Picking Up the Bride and the previous financial arrangements, being of an unpredictable length. Couldn't be balder. Every one of Paul's letters uses marital and wedding and pregnancy terms. Paul's wordplay is phenomenal. So this is THE major theme of the NT.

• The Lord used many metaphorical analogies to denote imminency. "Visitation" keyword means The Official Is Here Inspecting; the king-gone-away parable; the "days of Noah" catchphrase (i.e., Luke21:24 being a blatant example of what He meant); the parable about going to settle with your creditor before he sues you; the one about how you should at least be crafty in the use of mammon, so that when you die, they (in hell) will welcome you -- so, how much more, if you learn the true riches, see. Lots of ways to say the same thing; these few were listed as fast as I could type!

• That's why Paul got so testy with the Thessalonians in 2Thess2:1-7, and that's why we can be sure that the Rapture precedes (episunegoges, in v.1, means departure from DIFFERENT locations, to "gather" at ONE location): they kept forgetting that the Holy Spirit must first be removed (v.6 nun to katechon, means Who, not 'what': the Holy Spirit Restrains, looks like an accusative absolute, the strongest emphasis; goes with 'restrain' meaning, too), else the Tribulation couldn't occur! Because the man of "lawlessness" is supposed to be revealed in "his OWN TIME" (end v.6; English Bibles mangle it). Until then, only the 'mystery' version "is at work". So v.7, the Holy Spirit leaves with the Church at the Rapture: that's a declaration of war. See also 1Thess4:13ff, which is parallel. [BTW: "mystery" is an NT keyword for Church, as distinguished from "mystery of God", which is an OT term; Paul is playing off the OT term by using simple "mystery" for Church; its time period he also calls the "fullness of times", "Age of the Ages", etc Eph1:10, 3:21; 1Thess5:1,etc. Greek Bible keywords for "Age" are usually kairos and aiwv, but there are others which link the time to covenantal structure, like oikodomia, oikonomia. There are several ways to use these words, but "Age" or "Dispensation" meaning will be much clearer in the Greek context. In particular, the English translations always mess up Greek words for "age", "epoch", "time-period", "dispensation", "economy"; and for some weird reason sometimes translate Greek 'Age' words with "world"! KJV is about the only version which even recognizes "Age", yet it often forgets its own consistency rule and substitutes "world" or "worlds". Then, the other English versions instead follow the KJV's misuse, rather than go back to the Greek. Weird. For example, Hebrews 1:2 should end, "through Whom He designed the Ages/Dispensations", not "worlds"! LOL. So if you don't know to what covenantal period a thing belongs, you will misinterpret the Rapture. So if you don't know what the original languages are, you can't tell to what covenantal period the Bible SAYS a thing belongs. I'm afraid a lot of the confusion is just that easy to fix: get the original languages.] [File note: exeg used for the 2 Thess passage in p.885 of Rev Notebook H, and lexicons confirm.]

• Thus 1Jn2:28 and 3:2 say "if He should appear". It's not "when" but "if" in the Greek, a third-class condition with the subjunctive. So it's NOT the 2nd Advent, which is a when, not an if. So these verses are mistranslated, maybe because some well-intentioned translator thought God would be maligned if they said "if". ("Whenever" would be a better translation, in that case.) No wonder people think the Rapture isn't in the Bible, lol. Next point: John essentially walls off those who won't learn the First Commandment throughout his letter: his rhetorical style contrasts true firsts with those who fantasize they are first. So that's a snubbing form of chiding. [1Jn is entirely about how to live the spiritual life in light of the imminency of the Rapture, but you can't tell from translation. You have to cross-reference almost every word in 1Jn with the rest of the NT, given his deft Greek phrasing. Revelation is a bit easier, but still requires one study it in the original languages. You can never get a proper interpretation from translation.]

• Paul writes of his own possibility of being in the Rapture, in Phil3:11. Of course, he wrote of it a lot in 1Cor15, and Thessalonians. Both of these two groups of believers were kinda dotty over the imminency of the Rapture. (Kinda like today.) You find the chiding in close proximity (i.e., Phili 3:18-19 is about the Bema coming after the Rapture, how believers will be ashamed).

• Peter is so focused on the imminency of the Rapture, he spends the 3rd chapter analogizing it to the future post-Millennium end of the universe. Given the beginning of the chapter, some skeptics in his group doubted the Rapture would occur; ergo Peter's dramatic way of saying 'YES, it's coming'. As an Epilogue -- for Peter loved Greek drama as well -- he rhetorically asks in 2Pet3:11, "..what sort [of persons] must [you] NOW BE in a dedicated-to-God lifestyle.."? My pastor translates this as "..what sort of persons MUST you become, in a dedicated-to-God lifestyle?" (Reminder: Greek can designate subjects by means of suffixes or other devices, so doesn't always need nouns.)

  See? We are to be self-ruled, in order to become Rulers, and there's an URGENCY about it. For, Peter uses, instead of "yinomai" ("to become"), "huparchein", which is a very pregnant word having connotations of control, mastery, BEING AND POSSESSING in/under a given state. Not works, but State-Of-Ruling! The word's root is a compound from "hupo", meaning "under", and "archo" meaning "to rule", and it's coupled with "dei", meaning "must" (impersonal verb of obligation). It's a kind of conceptual palindrome: the One Ruling is the One Most Ruled. By Bible Doctrine, Our Employer's Thinking. [The use of "en" in 2Pet3:10 is the clue to how one knows Peter is setting up an analogy between the Rapture and the upcoming end-of-the-universe. That preposition has many uses: shallow Greek students easily misconstrue the usage to misdate the Rapture, or conclude it doesn't happen, because they don't know enough about how the preposition is really used. Also, in verse 11, "eusebeia", often translated "godliness", is a lifestyle, the spiritual life. My pastor read from one of the German lexicographers (if memory serves it's Bultmann, and the reference is in Kittle's (full) Theological Dictionary) to show why he considers the "dedicated-to-God lifestyle" the best translation of the "eusebeia" clause. The rest of the translation here is literally-rendered, because I wanted to show Peter's style. The "now" emphasis is in the "dei huparchein" clause, partly because Peter's constantly using "hup" prefixes to stress now-ness, in his epistle: be 'under', be ruled, obey, wait. His response to every problem is 'learn', 'hold', 'persevere'. Peter's use of Greek has long been characterized as inferior. I no longer buy that idea, because Peter's Greek is too keen on word-play, and even uses hexameter verse. Moreover, Peter seems to use 'bad' Greek on purpose. Even back in ancient times, deliberately-bad-grammar was a writing style.]

• The writer of Hebrews was also battling skeptics, and frankly his Rapture references are the foundation for his letter: he expected the destruction of the Temple to be the kickoff for the Rapture. Hence he focuses repeatedly and urgently on the possibility of the Rapture, throughout. The overall structure of the book is a constant comparison between then-and-now: pre-Cross versus post-Cross, prophecy versus Now. Why? Because his audience was reverting to the Mosaic Law, and didn't 'get' the fact that everything had irrevocably changed due to the Huge Victory of the Ascension, depicted by the Father's reply: the Session. [Rewrite note: get the Ascension references and put them here.] See Hebrews 2, 4, 9(last half), and 10, 11 (end of each chapter). Hebrews' author, too, uses the Rapture to scare dawdlers into a wakeup call that they needed to grow (viz., Chapter 2 and 5:11-6:6, 10:36-39, 11:39-40).

A proper understanding of the Rapture et seq. motivates preparedness, and avoids the stuckness of the four defense-mechanism groups above. So long as one is reacting to the doctrines, rather than adjusting to the reality of them, one's spiritual life is stunted. So Satan buys time, by pinning them down under the fire of false-doctrine and emotional bullets. They remain frozen, and hopefully will not recover. Now I understand why my own reticence to admit the validity of the Rapture lasted so long. I let myself get pinned down.

It's hard not to react. The greatest benefit to knowing prophecy is also its greatest hurdle: the vividness. On the one hand, it deepens the awareness that yes, this is real! ..and that same realization makes one want to recoil. Clever. Maybe that's partly why, in the Old Testament, so many of Abraham's descendants rejected the Messiah. Maybe that's partly why so many were hostile to Christ Himself when He was here: He WAS here, in one's face. Vividness. See, the Energizer Bunny, our sin nature in Adam, can't take the closeness of God (see Romans 8, esp vv8-10). So, we deny, sublimate, rationalize, feel guilty -- whatever it takes, to move AWAY from that closeness. The Imminency Of The Rapture Makes Man Uncomfortable.

Satan wants to do us all a "favor" then, just as he did for those in the Lord's day, and lessen the vividness, thus relieving our poor, weak, little-human natures. Just give us a few excuses to look away from Revelation: it's allegorical, it's feel-good, it's heroic, it's shameful.

See, even if you do believe in the Rapture as Pre-Trib, if you obsess over historical events, your 'response' is passive, not active -- as if you're just waiting around for something else to happen, rather than get with the life. So you will be a virgin without lamp oil, so to speak. Satan's really captured a lot of believers here. And oh so many other very sincere folks who write their books and give their newscasts about what prophecy is illustrated by something happening in the bleeping European Union!

Meanwhile, idou! The greatest importance any believer can ever have in history is available to each of us, no matter whether axe-murderer or Mother Theresa -- and we just SIT on this Bible? Looking out the window at man's activities? No greater waste. "My people perish for lack of Knowledge of God", moaned Hosea (Chap4). Ouai ouai ouai! Church Alone is the Cause of the Rapture, not the prophecies. Church causes the Rapture in a negative way due to Fake Church being too popular (including all those prophecy-culling people); and in a positive way, due to enough Pleroma believers being completed.

Folks who are preterists and partial-preterists don't believe in a Rapture, yet deem the 2nd Advent "imminent". That's denial. Some try to date it based on arcane numbers in Old and New Testaments; others don't. That's sublimation. The feel-good people are also sublimating, but with emotion rather than bogus research. The mid- and post-Tribbers rationalize being involved in a heroic struggle. The shame people use guilt as their defense.

Clever. Whenever a person keeps using a defense mechanism, he adds another thread to a growing "rope" of proclivity to mental illness. Meanwhile, he becomes progressively more able to use that same mechanism with respect to other doctrines which bother him. 'Usually, of the same "family" (here, visibleness, supernaturality, or both).

So the preterist will have a hard time with the Filling of the Spirit and other current supernatural aspects of the spiritual life, even if he realizes they are not visible or felt. So if Satan can make an inroad on debunking prophecy, then he can later make an inroad on using 1Jn1:9. Once Satan can get the believer to stop (or never start) habitually using 1Jn1:9, the believer's spiritual life ends. Whatever doctrine he thinks he learns is not in the Spirit, and is thus bogus-doctrine, helping Satan. Clever.

Like (hopefully) the folks who believe in the Rapture, preterism claims the Book of Revelation depicts current trends. That, it does. However, the eschatology (as always, in both OT and NT) is dual: Revelation, for example, explains not merely post-Cross trends due to Satan's strategy, but also the eventual success he has. So, folks who don't grasp the dual nature of the prophecy, mistake the Rapture for the 2nd Advent. Or, misalign the Rapture (i.e., mid-Trib or post-Trib schools).

The emotionality people will, deeming the Rapture as Disneyland, mistake the Filling as an emotional thing, too; will get involved in the obsolete spiritual gifts like visions, alleged-prophetic utterances, tongues, 'casting out demons' (so they think, and the demons love playing with such folks). So they too will stop using 1Jn1:9, because they will "feel spiritual". So they will join the many in mental hospitals, who travelled down that same road.

The 'heroic' antagonists will, due to their rationalized-misdating of Church, miscast the way to live the spiritual life as well; since to them it must be spectacular and visible, to be spiritual. So of course, 1Jn1:9 will be irrelevant to them, if they never wake up.

Of course, the apathetic will be apathetic with respect to the spiritual life in all its forms. Fitting-in is their god, as we saw in Satan's Tactical Offensive: Operation MEGA table. So 1Jn1:9 will be bypassed, as indeed the whole life is bypassed, in favor of the little things which make other PEOPLE praise self.

Having tasted the Divine Discipline myself for not being more careful to study eschatology, I can only say I wouldn't wish the attendant discipline on anyone. But, of course, I can only write the warning. Each person must decide for himself, before the Lord. Sadly, I can 'prophesy' (study Scripture, and you know) that most will die shrunken shells. And not know why, until that moment when the Lord comes to take them out of their bodies, home: for in dying, one learns one's performance, all at once!

So, then: to see only the literal meaning "b)", or merely the "a)" trends, removes or skews one's sense of immediacy. So that skewed reading lulls believers Now into apostacy, working-to-bring-Christ-back. So Now, Satan and the demons laugh at our skewing; the Holy Spirit and heaven, groan. Those busy being skewed over the a) meaning, dismiss the idea that real events are depicted. Those busy being skewed over the b) meaning, mistake the prophecies collectively for something they can discern Now. No wonder the Lord told everyone in Matt24 to not listen to anyone talking about Christ's appearing. It was an old chestnut, even in Jesus' day, that 'Elijah' would precede the arrival of Messiah. Which, of course, was then true! For that 'Elijah', was John the Baptist. Christ has no heralds before His NEXT Return; the last Elijah was already beheaded by Herod (i.e., Matt11:14, Matt17:12-13).

So, believer misunderstanding of the Rapture's imminency keeps those believing only the "b)" signs -- drooling.

• Historical trends are always the same. Don't look at the similarity to events in Revelation, because they will ALWAYS be similar. Why? That's Satan's strategy, and it is always the same, so he always has some success in achieving his goals, in every generation.

• So, don't go looking for heralds, either. The only prophetic 'herald' left is a FAKE one, get it? Fake Church, Rev17; fake Temple, Rev11; fake messiah with fake herald, Rev13ff. All neatly laid out for any pair of eyes to see. So of course, no one sees them: the heraldic function of the Bible Itself goes unheard. So of course, no one reads the Silent Stone Sentinels of Dome and Wailing Wall, which now testify to all eyes the fulfillment of Daniel 9:26c, hence Matt24, hence the future Rev11:1 -- right this very second. After all, the Middle East hasn't been out of the news since 1096AD. Not even Satan wants the Middle East to be out of the news, as we saw in Part IVa's text about post-Temple history: it's Satan&Co. who kept putting that area in the news, when apathetic mankind kept losing interest. More importantly, God is faithful. We however prefer the fake, the small, the titillating. Anything, but the truth. You know the world is in deep doo-doo, when even the enemy advertises God to the world.

  The Two Witnesses aren't heralds; these Two warn everyone to stay AWAY from the Temple. That's not a heraldic function. Nowhere does Bible say the the Rev11 heralds are past believers sent back to earth. They are instead stated to be resuscitated after they are killed IN Revelation 11. [Zech4:14 in Hebrew looks more like "sons of the Anointed One" than anointed sons; same, for LXX but the genitive singular is feminine. Also, Rev11:4, which refs the Zech passage, talks of two lampstands, not one. But the lampstand in Zech, is Zerubby; meaning, a believer. Means they are filled with the Spirit (meaning of the oil, olive tree=Spirit, see Zech2, Gal5:21ff). So these two Witnesses are characterized by the metaphors, that's all. So simple. Note also Rev1:4 which references Isa11:2. So simple to understand.] Why don't those trying to find out their names which God does not provide, neglect to see their warning-away role, which God sarcastically stresses? See, we don't think.

  The angels in the last half of the Trib also warn everyone that to follow the beast, is harmful. They warn, they don't herald. Last herald, was John the Baptist. A herald was someone who walked in front of the king, announcing the king's arrival, and it was Good news. These beings are first warning, with implicit announcement of Arrival being not-good-news, if man won't wake up and believe in Him.

  Then again, the warners are representatives of the King, going before. Then again, when you have declared war on someone you have emissaries always nearby, in case the other party wants to sue for peace. So maybe war heralds -- but notice, they are sent DURING the Tribulation, not Now. So we have and need no heralds.

  See? No heralds. We don't need heralds. The Word is our Herald, Now in Writing. When the Messiah left, when the Temple left, when the last apostle left, so did the prophets. "Leaving Behind", a Bible. For now, everything comes through the Son (Heb1). And during that period when Canon was being completed, the temporary gifts of tongues, healing, miracles, and even apostleship, died with those who had them. Hence as obvious as the fact that NO Temple means NO Covenant to Nation Israel is operating, even so obvious is the fact that Only The Word is our 'prophet', now. Pastor-teachers, evangelists (Eph4:11-12), and The Word. If those witnesses aren't heard, then resuscitating any others, well.. Luke 16:31.

If you're busy working, you're Voting for Works, and not Word. So you're on Satan's side, not God's. So you will still be in heaven -- if you ever ONCE simply believed in Christ -- adding nothing! But, even then, you will be Without Reward. For it's only the Word that works (main theme in James 1-2, if anyone would read it carefully in the Greek). Oh, how it shows: we can't get the Gospel right, we can't get prophecy right, we can't get the spiritual life right.. and our mistakes are baldly stupid! but we see nothing. Seeing, we don't see; hearing, we don't hear what the Spirit says to the churches (plural, not one denomination, duh -- and not after Rev4:1, duh).

Notice how heartbreaking this is. Learning Bible is no easy thing. Living on it, harder still. Eventually, one's sense of inadequacy becomes so heightened that he yearns for a way to 'do something' to assuage it. So who can't identify with either the droolers or the workers, who here are drooling or working their way to NO REWARD at the Bema? Yet, you can't tell them that's their situation, they will think you are trying to win self-approval by 'converting' them. Solution? GROW. Whatever can be done to wake them up, God is already doing. But they won't have the spiritual growth, so you get yours, and then you can gratefully spend it ON them in eternity, for surely they will be in your kingdom then, if they are in your periphery Now. That's a comfort: I call it "For Father, Under Him [Son]" to remind me of this future. Because none of us deserve anything but hell, ourselves. wa tsahalí, lo' h'ála! "and neigh, you never-writhed!" cries Isaiah in 54:1. Yeah, we are all sterile, really. So it's a joy to spend whatever we get on those our comrades who fell in this, the war of wars...

Now we see that Satan doesn't want folks to believe in God except on Satan's terms, which are

• fake herald,
• fake messiah,
• fake Church, and
• fake Temple.

Are you surprised that he actually wants us to believe in God? Oh, yeah! 'Because then Satan&Co. can pass themselves off as God, and fool us! They can't delay the Rapture, otherwise! They can't pull off the Tribulation, otherwise! Thus we see yet more indirections, found out. For their Number One Goal is to Harvest Rejection, as we saw in the "military objectives" section, earlier (link at pagetop). That's a MISTRIAL VERDICT, and it requires believers be used, to pull it off. Heh: so much for all that prophecy-television nonsense bidding you look at world politics. Sheesh: all these fakes are the cause for the Rapture, because they represent Christian rejection of God! But no one sees that, who's busy selling the fake stuff on television, huh...

More: so long as you don't ever get to know the Real God, you're Satan-fodder, and better use than the real unbeliever! If Satan&Co. wouldn't be spread too thin logistically due to so many believers, in THIS stage of the Trial/Conflict, they'd want as many stupid Christians as they can get! For as shown in "God is the Perfect Actuary", God has to BLESS the believer, give him enough time to grow up (a logistical support Justice Issue): Satan&Co. USE that blessing to further their own goals. Remember from Part IVb's "Balance in Numbers Makes Church Ripe for Rapture": if the progeny increase too much, history must continue, so that sufficient progenitors will be developed to get that balance-in-numbers Perfection in the Church. So, sometimes Satan&Co. promote faith in Christ, to buy themselves time.

So, then: since each believer, being Royal, positionally justifies the existence of millions, as we saw in the "Church Makes History, not Prophecies" table in PartIVb, what's the flipside of that fact? 'That apostatization of each believer has a huge negative leverage. It's "Concentration-of-force", in military parlance. So, Satan&Co. will indeed want people to believe in Christ -- if such persons can be used to further satanic goals. It's like the difference between using a foot soldier (unbeliever), and carpet-bombing. To them, the leverage they might get from an apostate believer is worth the "loss" of a soul they never wanted, anyway. We are toys to them, as demonstrated by their throw-in-fire, gash-with-stones possessions, in the Gospels. Or, as demonstrated today by their creation of flitty mass senseless obsessions, as noted above in the "..Your Thinking" section. Remember how obviously-destructive our behavior since "9/11" has been? That's just a version of gashing-self-with-stones. Trying desperately, to turn them into bread: Fame On TV. Wow.

As Believers, We Are Even Better Toys. Royally-Better. Surely all the insanity in Christendom throughout history should be ample evidence of this fact. Moreover, you'll see repeated instances in the Gospels and Acts where they loudly proclaim the Christ, or Paul, correctly: each time, you'll notice that the Lord or Paul hush them. Some of the miracles the Lord did, He afterwards warned the recipient to tell no one, like the guy He cured of leprosy. Why do Satan&Co. advertise? If you want to persecute someone big-time, the first step in accomplishing that goal is to promote the person. Same, with some doctrine they want to sleight-of-hand change: like "baptism", for example. So the promoted person, or the promoted doctrine, will "stick out". This enables all manner of soundbyte-chopping. Because, we humans don't like to think too much. So Satan&Co. take pity on us, and give us something 'easy' to believe. Never mind that it's a lie. Trumpet it! Do what the Lord refused to do in the 2nd Temptation of Matt4! Easy.

So, Satan wanted Moses' body, after Moses died (Jude 9). He wanted to sift Peter "like wheat", the Lord told Peter. Satan&Co. have promoted, and then made total derision out of both Peter and Mary, through popism and mariolatry, in certain denominations. In fact, they've done that with all of the apostles, using them to craft one kind of apostate sect or another, in history. All by means of 2nd-Temptation-style 'praise', cutting out a key truth-phrase, thus totally reversing the doctrine! Just like they wrecked Israel, as we saw in Part II: Turning The Grace Promise Of The Sacrifice Into 'Works'. Turning rest into (arrogance+rest) arrest.

For, as they promote one of these folks, they distort their lives, and distort the Bible. But, these were real people, with true faith -- so not to buy the 'spin' on their lives is to be disloyal, right? So, folks buy the 'spin', too: yeah, the married Peter who hated private interpretation gets distorted into a bachelor who speaks ex cathedra! Yeah, and priests/nuns should be unmarried, celibate! As if only abstention from sex makes one holy! This, despite the fact that two wildly-profligate groups of believers, those at Corinth and Galatia, were called "saints" by the only virgin apostle, Paul! Paul, who was the ONLY apostle who God MADE the head of the Roman church. So Satan just can't select Paul for his RCC version. Instead, he has to pick Peter who was only appointed an apostle to the Jews, never to the Gentiles until Paul died. All this is bald in Bible, even in translation. Do we see it? NO!

Yeah, and the humblest woman on the planet, who was the Only Eligible Royal Member Left In The Davidic Line, would never sin by refusing her husband, children. That would wipe out the Royal bloodline! But hey: let's graft in the entirely Gnostic idea of calling her a 'perpetual virgin', anyway! As if that were better than her faith! And make her husband an adulterer, saying Joseph's other kids came from different woman! In a religion which considers it a sin not to bear children! In a religion which admits that this teaching about Mary is not Bible Doctrine in the very books its own laity are obliged to buy and read!

I kid you not. I write this section on 3/8/02: I just read what a close family member (who was raised Catholic) gave me last month (thus I add these indented paragraphs, plus the ..Not Bible..sentence, above). 'Library of Catholic Devotion (mine's in a fancy red-and-gold box, lavishly illustrated, expensively bound); published by The Catholic Press, Chicago, IL, 8/1/53. It has the "imprimatur" of Archbiship (of Chicago) Samuel Cardinal Stritch, and has no ISBN because you have to get it through the Roman Catholic Church. Check out the first of its three volumes, Life of Christ, appendix beginning after page 304. (I didn't realize the RCC itself admitted that mariolatry wasn't biblical, before.)

The appendix is titled simply, "The Life of Mary": lots of mini-reprints of famous paintings, interspersed with text. I'll violate copyright to quote it at length -- so you'll have to find one of these volumes, yourself. (Ask a Catholic to lend it to you; I don't want to be accused of misquoting the text.) The text is astounding in its bluntness. It justifies its teaching about Mary from "anecdotes", which "crystallized" into the "Apochrypha", which this book plainly admits has "fanciful" material in it! Oh, and from "legends". Oh, and 'immaculate' status of Mary, from the Koran! 'A book which, as even any Muslim will tell you, teaches that a Human Savior is a complete insult to Divine Holiness, for God admits of no "partners"!

Don't believe me? Here's the video of the very book which I was obliged to make to prove I had it, on 6/20/08. If you click on the Youtube icon, it will take you to Youtube and from the video description (upper-right gray section), you can access/download my video JPGs from scans of the book, prove it to yourself:

Gee, why then is the Bible so "silent" about all this, as this appendix admits in its first paragraphs? Gossip is better than Bible? So much so, that Popes (according to this book) have thus decreed her "Immaculate" due to non-biblical "anecdotes" of her perpetual virginity even after Christ was born? So they consider gossip as "a more reliable witness", than the Bible (which says Mary did have kids by Joseph, but some Catholics twist the verses to claim those kids were actually Joseph's by means of fornication)! That's what Peter warned them not to do, in 2Pet1-2! Don't believe in cleverly-designed fables, because it's the Bible which is the "more reliable witness"! Okay, so who wins the Award for the Most Gullible People on Earth?

So also, for any version of 'God'. Look: once you believe in 'God', then the entire supernatural apparati Satan&Co. employ can be used on you, directly. They can jettison some of the 'baggage' of (2nd-Temptation-style) rationalized intellectualism. It gets boring, using the same ol' pseudo-sophisticated 'scientific' arguments. Better to hook folks in the supernatural! For then, things don't HAVE TO make sense anymore. So, you can get 'signs', 'miracles', 'healing', 'tongues', 'exorcism', voices, visions, disclosures, past-lives, psychic stuff, even 'popes' allegedly speaking ex cathedra ..and thus be told what to do. You won't need to question the 'order' for whether it makes sense anymore, see -- for you have this 'sign'! For, you'll think you're special, blessed..and others will think you're nuts. Or, will believe you. Either way, Satan&Co. get gigantic leverage out of you believing, much more than if you don't. Oh, how slapstick-funny, too! So much more fun to use thought-transference and make people hallucinate the sun turning around backwards seven times, or that God's Mother would appear in a cooking tortilla ('Texas, few years ago). As if God would display His Omnipotence in such a silly way. See? It doesn't have to make sense, anymore. It's a lot easier on Satan&Co. to shower those who prefer 'signs' to sense, with silliness. Why, it's even a play on words! Physical sensing replaces logical sensing! Just as in Genesis 6. They like it better, too: more fun, for them.

Thus they promote belief, today -- for all this supernatural stuff is really on the rise. As man has become increasingly bored with his own moralities, as the rules choke him, he's beginning to think about 'god', again. 'Looking for some kind of rest, some kind of hope. Heh: and Satan's got 'just the thing', boy oh boy. Yeah, baby: have a channeller session at a branch of the United Nations, of all places. Universalism, united religions!

Thus we know there is a Huge Crop Of Positive Volition To God Coming Up In The World. That's why those planes flew into the Trade Center. no other reason. See, Satan needs to make pre-emptive strikes to deflect this surge of interest in God so he can manipulate it to suit his never-ending revenge goal. Satan's thus out to promote SKEWED thinking about God, because right now there's a strong V+ (positive volition) undercurrent toward the Real God -- and Satan needs to herd it away from discovering the true life with God. So, Satan uses public means to herd folks, to get the undercurrent on-stage, so to speak.

Look: if the message is blared out, then to the hearer, it becomes dull, and finally -- is un-hearable. We tune out TV commercials, internet spam and popups -- why? because they are insistently repeated, apart from our wanting them. Worse, the "messenger" of the message becomes so stressed in the blaring-out, that the message itself is by that means obscured. Note how everyone talks about Christ, but almost no one really understands His Thinking. Ask 100 people how He paid for our sins, and nearly everyone will respond, "He died" -- but almost no one understands what "died" means! Almost no one asks, "Wait! How could a Physical Death pay for soul sins?" It's a mismatch, but no one thinks about the illogic, because "He died" is an answer. Blared out. So, no need to think. And, of course, zero desire to know His Own Thinking, what it is/was like for Him to BE Him. Aha. Deaf. Blind. No interest. All by means of blanketed, loud publicity about Him.

Which publicity, nonetheless causes us to be receptive to the lie. For your body survives on repetition, and has no discernment. This, every advertising firm in America, well knows. If you are blanketed with a message, even if you hate it, you will be receptive to it. Brand X becomes 'familiar', and the body is all about, familiarity. Associates that with comfort. So if a LIE about God is blared out, it will become familiar, even if hated -- so the body is programmed for acceptance of that very lie. Even while it imagines itself to be resisting.

Satan's choice tactic is to blare out a message so you can't hear it anymore: hearing, you won't hear; seeing, you won't see. That's Satan's problem, and he wants you to get it, too. Satan's other choice tactic is to so stress the Name that you don't think about the PERSON. Stress loudly the outer, so to blank out the inner (interest, understanding, yearning to really know Him "just because"). All by means of PUBLIC-- PUBLIC -- FAME. See?

Once you can't hear it anymore, once you tune out, your brain has disengaged, so your body can be more intensively programmed. So if you previously believed the lie, well -- you're already too far gone. If you didn't, well.. now that you've tuned out, your body is being programmed without interference from your mind. Only if you absent yourself from the repetition, will you have protection. But we are all plugged in, now.. who can absent himself? Well -- if you are busy studying the Word, you're absent from the bombardment, hint hint...

But Christians the world over are sops for publicity, as is every other "person of faith". We stupidly think God needs our help, to "get the message out". Or, that we should publicize Him to demonstrate our faith, our loyalty. All such thoughts are pure satanic propaganda. God doesn't need publicity. Neither does the person hungry to know God. God sets the conditions. Wait On Him. He prefers the "still, small Voice". Not the loud, flashy spam. For, spam is tyranny, for it promotes negativity and deafness.

Don't fall into the trap of publicity. Don't make the mistake Hezekiah's advisors did, don't use man's methods to allegedly do God's job (theme of Jer17, too). That's the trap Hezekiah's advisers fell into (cf. Isa 28:14, ff) -- they allied themselves with Egypt (Isa30 and 31 interpret 28). God replied to them that they were refusing Him, His provisions; that they were scoffing at Doctrine. See, "publicity" is alliance with something man can do -- using man's efforts to promote God is just as evil as alliance with Egypt "without consulting Me" (cf Isa 30:1-3, 31:1-3). We don't need the leeks and garlics of Egypt. Neither does God. Neither does anyone V+ to God.

For, any public pronouncments sell MAN, never God. Oh, how subtle the sale is: stressing morality, stressing something man must do -- why, that drowns out anything about God! Just leaves His Name. See, the sale of the action focuses attention on what "we" must do. The more intrinsically-valuable the action, the more God Himself is sidelined. So, the worst lie is the one which overstresses some mere portion of the truth. See? Everything in His Name, but WE do the work. What a refuge of lies, to make works allied with God! Our works. So He's blotted out! Publicity, fitting in with other humans, becomes one's alliance. Just like with Tirhaka's Nubian uncle (then Pharaoh of Egypt).

Beware (Isa28:16-17) of not "getting the point", that it's Study Him via 1Jn's Script (Part I) -- else, you too will be toyed with, abused, and will spin right out of history via publicity: works/emotionality/ roteness/ ritual. 'The mess of pottage which Satan spins as the spiritual life.

So it should not surprise anyone that the Satan of Rev. 12-17 is the same one who is very keen on everyone believing in some version of 'God'! He needs that, in order to pull off his sweetness-and-light world order! Satan's "god", though. That's the deal.

His terms, then, for what's "God" can easily trick us, if we are sufficiently "dull". We know from the "Lord, Lord" verse that folks who call His Name don't believe in Him. 'Even if they are Christians. So, God will say, "this people worships Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me" and "Go away, for I never knew you." Of course, unbelievers never knew Him, because they never believed in Him. So He never 'knew' them, either.

And their protestations that they worshipped God? What God did they worship? A strange god. Wonder who. Do you think it is an accident that nearly every religion born since Revelation was penned, even through today's New-Agers and Scientologists -- claims Christ as part of it? See, then you'd be believing in 'him', and even saying, "Lord!" Oh! Bar Kochkba! Hermes (and all those dippy gnostic texts)! Oh, He's an Avatar! A Bodhisattiva! Lord Matreiya to come! Herald of Mohamet! Moroni's Lord! New Age Revealer! A thetan! And on and on and on: religions fall all over each other in competition over who gets to call Him one of their own -- what other 'holy man' gets sooo many groupies? Wonder who is playing His role, eh? Didn't the Lord warn folks that there would be a lot of claims He was on earth, but don't listen to them?

So, too, the believer often spends his life on a "strange god". Such a "Lord, Lord" believer fails in his Trial witness. Christ 'never knew' that person, because the person never knew Christ, despite salvation. He never came to know Christ, never did what 1Jn said should be done, never did what James 1 commanded, nor Paul, in Eph, nor Peter. He's still saved..but for all intents and purposes, a stranger-wife, aka an estranged wife, living all his life here as if in "get" (Hebrew word symbolizing divorce): dead to God. See, the Bride kinda needs to "know" Her Husband, in order to conceive...

But the "Lord, Lord" believer never consummated the marriage; was instead cold, frigid, spending his time on the idols of "works". He fashioned them from his own hands, and then worshipped them, fornicated with them, "knew" them -- but never God. So, upon his death/resurrection, he still is permanently saved -- but remains forever farther apart. Why? He didn't build up his soul, while down here. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." However much God wanted him, the believer did not want God, except to the de minimis level of believing for salvation. Not having grown up down here, such a believer has too small a soul in eternity, to be close to God. He will be a lot closer than down here, because of that de minimis, but..compared to others in eternity, he will be farther away. Such is the so-small "retirement package" of the "Lord, Lord" believer. Forever.

Do we find that future unfair? Remember the 3 basic categories of human-level Trial arguments in Part I? God revealed Himself, but some reject Him despite knowledge; others don't "know" Him, and thus reject for that reason. The believer here is the Heb6:1-6 huffer-and-puffer. He wanted ritual, works, approbation..but not God. So, he "knows" ritual, works, approbation..but not God. If the unbeliever goes to Hell for rejecting Christ, "how shall we escape, if we neglect our so-great salvation?" (Heb2:1) We don't escape. We are in Heaven, but..not close to Him. Being too close to all our wood, hay, stubble -- we burned away the lifetime-sized chance we had to inherit "more than we could ever ask or imagine" (Eph3:20).

If we can't see that love requires mutual rapport, so consider a faraway status as unfair, then what about rights? Who wants a close relationship with someone who's hated you his whole life? Should not God have rights to be closest to those who most wanted to be closest to Him? 'Especially if He pulled out all the stops, as it were, to provide us with this unique spiritual life? And we rejected Him?

If we complete that Evidence Test..oh, IF! Then the blessing-by-association is Royally Exponential -- Forever. For, such completion means we have successfully become "Pleroma", the "fullness of Christ", and have glorified God in our own bodies (cf. Phil1:20). Thus, we will have "h[e]ld to the confession"/"endured" "to the end" (keyphrases for getting to Pleroma status in NT), we will have "finished the course" (Paul), we will have "done all, to stand" (Eph6). So, the blessing-by-association "stands" forever. Insured by the Grantor of Our Inheritance in Christ, God the Father. Himself.

Not everyone is familiar with the cultures of Greece and Rome. So here are some shorter examples, most of which are in our current generation's memory, easily researched:

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang uses that eastern holocaust to explore and explain the deeper psychology behind the Japanese atrocities in WWII. Footnote #32 in her Penguin 1998 edition, p.235, reads as follows (emphasis/bolding and bullet marks I supplied):

"32. the intensity of the training in Japan:106/5485, February 1928 report, p.136, Papers of the British War Office in the Public Record Office, Kew, London. An OSS report on Japanese army training summarizes the process of indoctrination:
'The smallest infraction or error in regulations brings instant and severe punishment.
• Act tough -- shout, don't talk -- scowl, don't look pleasant --
• be tough -- have no desires --
• forget your family at home --
• never show emotionalism --
• do everything the hard way --
• don't let yourself be comfortable --
• train and discipline your desires for comfort, food, and water --
• suffer pain and hardship in silence --
• you are a son of Heaven'
; report no. 8974-B, dissemination no. A-17403, distributed December 28, 1943, Research and Analysis Branch Divisions, Intelligence Reports "Regular" Series, 1941-1945, box 621, entry 16, record group 226, National Archives."

The Rape of Nanking was merely a usage of the time-honored military policy of terrorism to balance against the superior numbers, a doctrine older than even Abram; the application of it by Japanese military to China, being to ape Mongol hordes, China's biggest fear and cause of the Great Wall of China; Hitler had the same goal, maybe even copied it from the Japanese (one wonders). Arab terrorism has operated on this principle for millennia.

But the real author of this policy is Satan himself; and he plays it on us all, all the time:

• Success In The Training, Determines The Size Of The Atrocity.
• So train people in their holy calling, until all the humans kill each other! See Rev6-17, esp. Rev16:13-16.
• This holy calling is easy to obey, if it makes you a son of Heaven.
• That it goes against all humanness in you, only proves what a great believer you are.
• That it is Group-Enforced, by culture, law, or religion, makes it COMPELLING.
• God never compels. Paul tweaks the notion of God compelling, in 2Cor5, esp. v.14's "Love of Christ", the "of" being subjective and objective double-entendre use of the genitive plus sunecho, =to hold together, keep one from falling apart, keep you going. Idea being, Christ was motivated to die for us, so we individually are motivated, to die for Him. Individually. NOT a group.
• So by contrast, GOD'S Holy Calling, results in an Individual Love toward Him, needing no group 'help'. Love is the subject of the verb sunecho: HOLDING the believer loving, together; strongly, as a BOND. [So of course the translator has to spin it with the coercive term, "compels", in English Bibles. Satan never misses a chance to malign God! This verse was famously abused in the movie "Exorcist", when the elder priest uses it to cast out the demon. While he shakes holy water onto the demon-possessed girl, he keeps on chanting, "The Love of Christ compels you". What a farce. At least the demon didn't leave, too...]

Nor are homogenous cultures alone: look how everyone in the US treated Martha Stewart, who almost! lied? And she went to prison for that, and everyone falls all over himself to make jokes about her? Even very famous prolifer pastors and politicians blissfully and publicly call abortions, "holocausts": they are soooo SATISFIED with themselves for saying this! What, are they omniscient, that they can count back through all those eons of time, comparing the number of deaths in all the holocausts of history to the numbers of abortions? Oh, and worse: they thus accuse GOD HIMSELF of genocide, since spontaneous abortions occur every day. Never mind, Bible repeatedly explains that God Personally creates a soul at BIRTH, To Create An Independent Individual To Have A Life With Him, viz. Ps139:16-17! [White table in NoWombLife.htm exegetes Ps139's relevant verses.] See? We display the same bestial mindset as any German citizen under Hitler, any soldier skewering babies in 1937 Nanking. The only difference between us and them, is opportunity.

What the Japanese did in Nanking, Mao Tse-Tung did millions of times more, just after taking power. At least 30 million Chinese died in his starving of the peasants, after he began collectivization, modernization. Just like Stalyin, Mao used an 'enemies of the people' approach to terrorize, get everyone herded. Only maybe 1% of that number, were brutalized in Nanking. Mao's atrocities were much more fun, too: sons turning on fathers, mothers turning on daughters, public shame and DaDz posters, confiscation of every description...

See? There's more than one way to rape and murder. Particularly exquisite, to lobotomize the mind like Winston's: docile, afraid, cowering. 'By the hundreds of millions! By then, 'rape' was what all good Communists should do: no more marriage, no more family, everyone spying on everyone else to prove himself the tougher comrade! Kids were raised by the state almost as soon as they were weaned, if not earlier. So, everyone was encouraged to have sex all around, to inform on each other, to confiscate.. that's how you fit in. At least those free-sex, free-denouncings, free Hate Weeks gave ya feeling! Just as, during all prior phallic cults! You don't 'love' the god if you don't have sex with all strangers; sacrifice your enemy's kid to Molech, baby...

Watch this dividend: when everyone finds out how atrocious Nanking was, they go after Japan for not apologizing. Yet Communist China, the far worse villain, chimes in as if holy. Oh, how holy everyone becomes! Got our own son-of-Heaven crusade, now, tough it out! Band together! Never mind, that the Same Grouping Frenzy develops. Which, of course, is how both Japan and China got so imperialistic in the first place, traumatized as they both were by European superior weaponry. (Russia, same story. Arabs, same story.) Each polity in its own way vowed to never be humiliated again, and would defeat the waigworen at some future point, no matter how long it takes. [The West always underestimates the power of ancient homogenous culture south and east of itself. The more homogenous the culture, the more 'saving face', machismo-type concepts, ethnic pride, matter. The formation of the West came from a heterogenous culture, so -- ironically -- it's harder for the West to respect those not like itself. So they belittle us, and we belittle them, and Satan beats us all! By the way, "waigworén" means "foreigner" (epithet, originally), in Mandarin Chinese, Yale-in-China Dictionary's romanization. I forget the Wade-Giles spelling.]

Put your thinking cap on, for this concept is truly important to master. God is very punctiliar with His Justice: a Perfect Actuary. What's that? What's a "defined benefit plan"? Well, whatever country you are in, the 'old-age benefits' your country taxes both you and your employer on -- go to a big pot of money (which is usually raided by government, who promises to pay it back). That big pot is actually a "defined benefit plan", for the whole country. In the US, it's known as "Social Security".

Ok, let's start simply. Here you are, Joe Average Person. Say you have $100,000 saved up. What will it earn over time? What do you need to spend it on? What if you die or get sick? All of these factors can be organized into what's called a "financial plan" so you can determine what you can now buy, or must forego. Of course, a significant factor for you is your future earning power relative to your circumstances today. Also, those dependent on you, what are their needs, and their income-earning potential? You don't have enough money to stop working. In fact, you have to budget yourself in order to provide for current vs. future needs. How do you figure out all your financial needs, how do you decide how to invest or spend?

Well, you must estimate the future. That's what an "actuary" does. That's really what actuarial science is all about: statistically forecasting, based largely on health factors and interest rates, what amount of money is needed now versus later. Health factors, like interest rates, are based on past history, and if the databases are large enough and over a long enough time, it's a reasonably accurate way to predict future health and interest changes. Insurance companies, pension plans, your government's social security and other welfare programs -- all of these use actuarial science to try and achieve accurate forecasting of expenditure and funding now. These estimates use what are called "actuarial assumptions", which are neat mathematical formulae for deriving answers. For example, using one common set of assumptions, you need $131 on deposit for every dollar of monthly income for life, beginning at age 65.

So, let's come back to you. Your $100,000 saved up will not be enough! It will only give you $763/month, and that only at age 65! Uh-oh. Moreover, you only have so many hours in a day you can use to earn money. So, your capacity to earn is limited by time (along with a host of other factors). So, your capacity to get is likewise limited. You only have a certain time-window, so to speak, to achieve the necessary savings, and if you don't reach the goal within that window, you'll have less. So, having less, you must forego something. So, having less, you must become creative about what you allow to be foregone, and what you find essential. So, then: you have a Minimum Need, and thus a Minimum you must forego. So, then: you also have a Maximum limit, and thus a maximum you can get. Your Capacity To Forego Determines Your Capacity To Receive.
Funding Key → First, "define the benefit" you'll need, e.g., what amount of money payable how often, and when. Then, back into how much you need to forego, to get there. (Again, your capacity to forego now determines your capacity to receive later.) In short, you must create your own "defined benefit" plan. Then, execute that plan!

If you have a spreadsheet on your computer, look up its "Present Value" functions in Help. That will tell you how to calculate what you need to save. On second thought, don't look! It will be too much!

Glazed-Eyes Key, lol → Skip to the end of the following table as soon as your eyes glaze over: I'll 'dumb it down' and 'fix it up', later. The main point of the table is to explain the idea of God's criteria for blessing by association: to show how precise He is about it. I'll have to draw analogies between American welfare/pension funding plans/laws and God's "Divine Benefit Plan", so to speak, to do this (yikes). If you have a "Summary Plan Description" from your employer, some of the terms here will be defined in it. Or, if you've got a friend who knows about pensions, you can ask that person about quoted terms here, because they are real terms currently in use by pension actuaries and the IRS: you know, by folks who didn't find something better to do for a living!