ON THE NATURE OF REALITY chapter 16

REDEMPTION

     Love, faith, and hope are true combinations of simple true ideas in God’s Word. God’s love encompasses all types of love including the agape love of God for man. Love is also a simple true idea when one means a particular feeling such as "friendship" or "romance." Faith can also be a true simple idea when one means a particular kind of faith such as "confidence" or "repentance." Although it certainly seems impossible for one to have faith in God without at least a modicum of love for Him, God requires only faith for man’s salvation. Two of the simple true ideas in the system of faith are "confidence" and "reliance." Thus to have faith is to put one’s confidence in Christ; that is, one relies on Christ as having all power and ability to rescue one from the destructive effects of sin and death. Thus John 3:16 sums up the entire message of God’s Word to man.
     Redemption means "to buy back;" that is, to rescue from a fallen condition. Man’s fallen condition renders him far too weak and confused to effect his own salvation even in cooperation with God. The tremendous amount of labor and sacrifice needed to effect salvation is far too great for man even to attempt. Such hard work can be done by God alone. For these reasons, according to Romans 5:6 and II Corinthians 5:21, Christ literally took the sin and death that is the fallen condition of man upon Himself on the cross. All of the sin of man was laid on Him, and He suffered all of its destructive effects. Christ suffered the death of every man, but He is also the life of every believer. Colossians 3:1-4 clearly teaches that Christ is both the death and the life of the believer.
     Therefore, in accordance with Romans 3:21-27, any man who receives Christ by faith will be cleansed from sin, forgiven of sin, and rescued from an everlasting death. Only when God has thoroughly cleansed a believer by the blood of Jesus, will that believer be  qualified to receive the everlasting, resurrected, righteous life of Christ. Thus Christ is far more than the one who accomplished salvation. He is that very salvation itself. For these reasons, there can be no such thing as salvation by personal effort or by cooperation with God.
     Revelation 1:5 reveals that the sole agent that washes away the sins of man is the shed blood of Jesus. This is the first great mystery of the cross that no doubt no one will ever completely understand. Why the blood of Jesus? How could the blood of Jesus cleanse all of that sin? As the shed blood of Jesus flowed from the cross, somehow it carried all of man’s sins away into absolute nothingness as water and soap carries dirt down a drain. Because Jesus is God in human form, God’s pure blood is the cleansing agent. The blood of God, being directly connected to the infinite holiness of God, can be nothing but absolutely pure, and must remain so after washing away sin. This absolute polarization proves that infinite God can negate a finite power, in this case those false combinations called sins, without corrupting Himself.
     The second great mystery of the cross is that Christ, being God, died on it. How could the everlasting life of God ever die? Possibly, the answer lies in the fact that death never becomes annihilation. Absolute nothingness holds no power to negate a finite duality, much less an infinite one. Nevertheless, Satan wanted Christ dead, not because he thought that absolute nothingness could destroy Infinite Duality, but because Satan believed that when the Holy Spirit descended into hell, then God would be forever separated from Himself, and thus His powers would be forever negated. With God imprison in hell, Satan would then be free to fill absolute nothingness with whatever destructive pleasures that he desired.
     When the lifeless body of Jesus hung on the cross, and His Holy Spirit descended into hell, then God was truly dead as if He were a finite, sinful duality. Death is eternal separation from God, and God was separated from Himself. God’s death on the cross was absolutely necessary because God had to take the place of sinful man completely in order to destroy sin and death. This necessity explains Christ’s cry from the cross as recorded in Matthew 27:46. Yet, another cry from the cross as recorded in Luke 23:46, demonstrated Christ’s absolute faith that the Father would resurrect Him to victory because although He knew that His Spirit would descend into hell, He nevertheless commended His Spirit into the hands of the Father. Similarly, repentant sinners must realize that they deserve hell on the one hand, but that they can also cry out to God, in faith, for His mercy and grace on the other hand, and be certain that God will grant them salvation.
     The problem that developed for Satan and the other lords of absolute nothingness was that hell could not hold God. The holiness of God caused more anguish to Satan and his demons than they could endure. The prophecy of Genesis 3:15 had come true. The holiness of God  had become mixed with evil, but this condition caused much more pain and anguish to evil than it did to God. As the evil powers were preoccupied with their suffering, God began again to reassert the absolute polarization of good and evil. The Holy Spirit began to ascend from hell, bringing all the Old Testament saints in paradise and paradise itself with Him. The Holy Spirit ascended to revitalize the body of Jesus, changing it into a spiritual-body, which all believers will receive upon resurrection. Jesus ascended to heaven and God was reunited with Himself. In this way, Christ destroyed sin and death, and He provided everlasting life to all who will believe.
     Proverbs 8:35-36 clearly defines the difference between those who are alive and those who are dead. Those who refuse to repent and believe in Christ to everlasting life do so because they love their disconnection from God. They want their independence from God’s authority. In seeking to save their lives, they lose them, as Jesus made clear in Mark 8:34-36. Some of them may pay lip service to God, but secretly, they do not believe in Him. They may believe in some vague god, but they will not believe in the God of the Bible; the God of love but also of judgment.
     God rules as absolutely necessary that He forever separate unbelievers from His presence, because if He did not, they would forever exert a corrupting influence on His continuous efforts to eliminate absolute nothingness from His creations. Indeed, unbelievers themselves prefer such a separation because they truly hate God and all that is pure and holy.
     On the other hand, God has equally determined that He will forever include believers in His presence. Another of the simple true ideas contained within the true combination called "faith" is the one called "repentance." Repentance means to change one’s mind about one’s relationship to God. In contrition, the repentant sinner turns from his sin, comes to hate it, and cries out to Christ for salvation. He does not try to save or reform himself. He knows that that would be the sin of self-righteousness. He simply humbly begs God for mercy and grace, believing that Christ has already done all that he needs for his salvation. Therefore, repentance is a necessary part of faith. God has determined that believers will live with Him forever, as Psalms 34:18 and Isaiah 57:15 clearly teach.
     For a person to believe that he can add to God’s salvation is to commit the sin of unbelief in God’s Word, for Jesus has already said that self-salvation is impossible in Mark 10:26-27, and the Holy Spirit said the same in Romans 5:6. Those whom God saves are those who cry out to Him for grace, realizing their completely helpless condition, as Romans 10:8-13 declares. To do anything less than this is to commit the sins of pride and self-righteousness.
In John 3:3-8, Jesus teaches that to be "born again" or "born from above" is absolutely necessary for one to enter the kingdom of God. Being "born again" is wholly a creative, miraculous act of God which is directly connected to the sacrificial work of Chris, as Jesus made clear in verses 14-21.
     When one turns from one’s sins and calls out to God for grace, then the Holy Spirit takes control of that person. The person himself does not have to do anything. As I Corinthians 6:11 teaches, the Holy Spirit washes, sanctifies, and justifies the believer. Then in accordance with Ephesians 1:12-14, the Holy Spirit forever seals the believer to God, and in accordance with Galatians 6:8, the Spirit imparts to the believer the everlasting life of Christ. Galatians 5:22 states that the Holy Spirit even gives the faith that is needed. Not only that, Jesus taught in John 16:8-9 that the Spirit causes sinners to realize that they need God in the first place! Through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, given by the Holy Spirit, God reconnects the broken spiritual condition of unbelievers to Himself. To have one’s spirit reconnected to God’s infinite Spirit is to be "born again."
     Ephesians 1:12-13 clearly demonstrates that salvation from the Holy Spirit immediately follows faith. Also, Ephesians 2:1-13 describes the "born again" experience of salvation.
The Holy Spirit uses the accomplished work of Christ to restore the finite spirits of believers to a reconnection to the infinite Spirit of God. Yet, how do weak, finite minds ever come to realize that they need this "born again" reconnection? Again, God takes the initiative. In the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18:11-14, Jesus explains that He seeks and saves the lost sheep.
     The Spirit of Christ, who is also the Holy Spirit, uses the Word of God to cause the lost to realize that they are disconnected from God and that they need to call upon God for salvation. This is clearly taught in Romans 10, verses 8 and 17.
     Then Romans 10:9-13 describes exactly what follows from this realization of being lost. Anyone who calls upon God for grace, desiring to have faith, freely receives from God the salvation that Christ has provided for them.
     In John 16:7-11, Jesus describes the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to the world; that is, to the lost. The Holy Spirit causes those who hear God’s Word to realize that they are sinners; that is, that they are spiritually disconnected from the source of life, God, and that, therefore, they need to have faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit causes the lost to realize that Christ and His righteousness are real even though they have not seen His life, death, and resurrection. The lost are made to realize that the love of God demonstrated in the righteous work of Christ has already provided all they need for salvation. The lost are also made to realize that God will one day judge the world and destroy all evil, beginning with the prince of this world, the Devil. As surely as God will judge Satan, God will judge all unbelievers. Those who refused to believe in Christ will be destroyed. However, since unrepentant sinners actually love death more than God, strange as it may seem, their destruction will be exactly that which they want. Like the demons, unbelievers would suffer more in the presence of a Holy God than they will in the fires of hell.
     In I Corinthians 15:10, the Apostle Paul attributes all that he is, and ever will be, to the grace of God. He described the gospel he preached in verses 1-4. This gospel is the grace of God that was freely bestowed upon him by the Holy Spirit at the time that he was born again. Paul refers to his born again experience with Christ in verse 8.
     The born again experience starts the sanctification process. Sanctification means that God, by His grace, elects believers and recreates them to conform to the image of Christ, as recorded in II Corinthians 3:17-18 and II Corinthians 5:17.
     In the sanctification process, the Holy Spirit imparts certain gifts to believers. Those gifts that directly pertain to that which God has already done for man through Christ are immediately and irrevocably effective at the time that believers are born again. These gifts can not fail because God can not fail. God never fails to finish whatever He starts, as recorded in Philippians 1:6.
     God never fails to cleanse believers in the blood of Christ as recorded in Revelation 1:5. God never fails to take residence in the hearts of believers, forever sealing them with the unbreakable seal of the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Ephesians 1:13 and 4:30. God never fails to forgive sinners completely, as recorded in Ephesians 4:32. God can forever forgive believing sinners because Christ has forever cleansed them. God never fails to give everlasting life to believers because the infinite Christ is their life, as recorded in Colossians 3:4. God never fails to justify believers, as recorded in Romans 4:25 through Romans 5:1-2. Justification means that God declares believers to be "not guilty" because Christ has already suffered in their places as if He were the one who was guilty. God never fails to impart the righteousness of Christ to believers, as recorded in Romans 5:17-21. The only possible righteousness that believers can possess is the righteousness of Christ. Only through His righteousness can believing sinners become acceptable to God. God never fails to impart these gifts and more because these are directly connected to the perfect life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. These gifts can not fail because Christ did not fail. In other words, the believing sinner can rest in the finished work of Christ, as recorded in John 19:30 and Hebrews 10:9-18.
     Although the love of God and the work of Christ can not fail to save and to perfect believers, nevertheless, believers can and do fail God. The Holy Spirit imparts certain gifts to believers to which they are expected to try to conform their lives. Most of these gifts are outlined in Galatians 5:22-26. These gifts are also part of the sanctification process.
Although God can not fail to save believing sinners completely, this fact does not mean that God completely removes their freedom. Believers retain their freedom, and thus at least a part of their old Adamic natures. The Apostle Paul discussed the constant warfare between these two natures in Romans 7:15-25. He called his spiritual side the "law of God," and his carnal side the "law of sin."
     Some believers do a poor job of conforming their lives to the "law of God" within themselves. Too often they yield to the influence of the "law of sin" and thus fail God. However, this fact does not leave God powerless to help them. The Holy Spirit will always woo them and convict them in accordance with John 14:26. God will even punish them in accordance with Hebrews 12:5-7, but always because they are His children. In fact, in accordance with Hebrews 12:8, if a person commits sin and is not punished by God, this constitutes evidence that that person is not a child of God.
     God also uses fellow believers to correct a sinning brother or sister. God expects their attitudes toward their sinning brother or sister to conform to Galatians 6:1-2. Believers should always treat each other with compassion and humility. Believers should never feel that they are above failure. To have this kind of pride in one’s sanctification is itself a sin, being a form of self-righteousness.
     God never removes His Holy Spirit from believers even if they lose their faith as II Timothy 2:13 clearly teaches. Romans 8:5-8 teaches that those who are carnally minded; that is, the lost sinners, prefer death and spiritual separation from God over salvation. Romans 8:1-2 and verses 14-17 declare that those who have the Spirit of God are the children of God and are joint heirs with Christ. Particularly, verse 16 informs believers that God does not keep the knowledge of his salvation secret from His believers. Thus, God is the one who separates believers from unbelievers, and God guarantees the salvation of believers even if they cease to believe. Verse 16 clearly teaches that the children of God are joint heirs with Christ, which means that they can no more lose their inheritance than Christ can lose His.
     In Matthew 22:10, Jesus clearly explained that the guests at the marriage feast (which refers to the marriage of Christ with His church) are both good and bad. Romans 8:28-34 affirms that God absolutely predestines his children to be "conformed to the image of His son." God states in verse 30 that He alone predestines them, calls them, justifies them, and glorifies them; that is, He sanctifies them. God’s grace alone saves and sanctifies believers despite the inevitable failures that result from their retention of freedom. Believers are bound to fail because of the "law of sin" in their members which results from the weakness and confusion of their finite minds. God knows all of this better than humans. Yet, God saves repentant sinners anyway. When God reconnects a sinful mind to His infinite mind, He forms a bond that all of the powers of hell and humanity combined can never break. Jesus clearly stated this fact in John 10:27-30, and the Holy Spirit describes the believers’ security in Romans 8:35-39.
     Does this guarantee mean that God condones sin or winks at it? The answer is absolutely not. Jesus instructed His followers to obey God’s commands. In Romans 6:14-18, Romans 12:1-2, and II Corinthians 6:14-18, the Holy Spirit expects and commands believers to separate themselves from sin and conform their lives to the gift of righteousness which they have received from God.
     Although unbelievers possess a certain amount of freedom to do good or evil, nevertheless, they are never able to move beyond the bound of their separation from God. Jesus taught in John 8:34 that unrepentant sinners are the slaves of sin. Only the Son can liberate unbelievers from this slavery as verse 36 points out. Unbelievers retain a freedom that does not allow them to pass beyond the limits of their sin. Romans 5:6-11 teaches that unbelievers are completely helpless to save themselves. Christ alone can save them.
     Since, in God’s liberty, Christ chose to come to the world to save sinners; this work of salvation is God’s alone. Jesus taught in John 6:37-40 that God always saves believers with a salvation which the freedom of the believer can never revoke. As Jesus declares in John 8:32 and the Holy Spirit in II Corinthians 3:17, believers are moved into God’s liberty. God’s liberty is the constant opportunity to create that which is good and true. Unbelievers possess a destructive form of liberty, being subject to the effects of absolute nothingness. As children of God, believers enjoy the liberty of God treating their sins as errors to be corrected, and not as destructive. In God’s salvation and sanctification efforts, He treats the absolute nothingness inherent in believers as an open field in which His creative powers can operate to recreate the believer into someone beautiful, good, and true. God’s project leaves nothing for the believer to do but believe. Indeed, Jesus points out in John 6:29 that the only work of believers is to believe.
     Yet, within the sanctification process, God allows believers to retain their carnal freedom. This fact is clearly taught in Romans 7:15-25. Why does God allow this? Why does not God revoke believers’ carnal liberty so that they can not sin and thus become a perfect light of Christ to the sinful world?
     The answer can be found in Romans 5:20 and I John 1:7-10. The freedom of God is that He knows the infinite set of simple true ideas and that He always creates true combinations. Absolute nothingness is finite. God is infinite creativity. God’s desire is to prove that infinite creativity will always, and in every circumstance, overpower absolute nothingness. Should God revoke believers’ carnal freedom, He could charge Himself with failure to meet the challenge of sin on every occasion. God is certainly no coward. Again and again, God proves His powers of love, grace, sacrifice, and forgiveness in this great truth from Romans 5:20: "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."
     Does this mean that God grants believers a license to sin? The answer is absolutely not. The residence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers causes them to desire to conform their lives to God’s gift of righteousness. II Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 5: 13-16 teaches that believers are a new creation of God, and that their natural desire is changed to love goodness and to eschew evil.
     Nevertheless, the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, and the Apostle Paul’s discussion of the weakness of the flesh in Romans 7, clearly demonstrates that there are times when something goes terribly wrong in the lives of believers. The weaknesses inherent in man’s spirit and mind lead to the formations of false combinations. False combinations open the spirit to the influence of absolute nothingness which is always destructive.
     Still, the abundant grace of God never shrinks from meeting and overpowering sin on every occasion in which it may arise in believers. Every time that absolute nothingness does not appear behind false combinations, God is there to fill it in with His creative actions. For this reason, believers may stray, sometimes for many years, but eventually God always wins. Jesus will never lose a single one of His sheep as John 10:26-30 and Romans 8:28-30 make clear.
     Besides, when believers go astray, they certainly grieve the Holy Spirit in accordance with Ephesians 4:30, but their actions can never diminish God. In accordance with Galatians 6:7-8, a sinning believer really only hurts himself. God will make him feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and God will punish him to bring about his correction. God will allow him to reap the corruption and pain that sin always causes. Yet, God will always be there to help him. God will never leave him nor forsake him as He promised in Hebrews 13:5. Eventually, God will correct the sinning believer even if He has to kill him and bring him home to Himself in disgrace.
     Always, as soon as a sinning believer confesses and repents of his sin, God is willing to cleanse, to forgive, and to restore him to His fellowship. This truth is taught in I John 1:3-10 and 2:1-3.
     The Spirit of Christ is always with believers, and Christ also always sits at the right hand of the Father as the believers’ intercessor. This great truth is taught in Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25, and I John 2:1. Christ constantly watches over believes, talks to the Father on their behalf, and asks Him for patience and mercy. Because of their carnal freedom, believers constantly struggle with weakness and confusion. They do not know how to separate goodness from evil, but they do have confidence that Jesus knows how, and that despite their sins, He is always able to bring them out of sin. Believers can rest in faith that God has provided His Word for their guidance, and the advocacy of Christ for their weakness. Believers will lose battles, but be absolutely certain that they will win the war.
     As Colossians 1:12-14 indicates, God alone redeems and sanctifies. For this reason, unbelievers have no excuse for not believing. Since God promised to provide, and has provided, the salvation that everyone needs, and since God can be the only source of goodness and safety, then the unbelievers’ own pride and futile self-reliance must be that which causes their refusal to repent and leads to their self-destruction. Unbelievers need only repent and put their trust in the power and grace of Christ to find eternal salvation. This salvation becomes effective the moment the believer experiences a spiritual reconnection to God’s infinity.
     Salvation does not mean that believers attain instantaneous perfection. God allows them to retain their freedom. Repentance simply means that what unbelievers once loved; as believers, they now hate. Faith means that believers put their complete trust in Christ alone for their salvation and eventual perfection. For these reasons, believers should certainly strive mightily to avoid sin, but at the same time, believers should not become discouraged when they fall into sin because sin is inevitable for weak-minded dualities with freedom, but then so is forgiveness and perfection.
     It is true that when believers are "born again," an instantaneous and miraculous transformation takes place within them. God recreates them through the presence of His Holy Spirit. At once, they begin to hate sin and to shun it. They begin to love Christ. They cling to Him, and they desire to be like Him. Nevertheless, their retention of freedom and the weakness of their flesh make it inevitable that at some time in their future, they will fail and sin again. In fact, in accordance with I John 1:8 and 10, it is a sin for believers to claim that they have no sin. God knows all this better than believers do. God does not get discouraged in the face of sin, so why should believers. God, for the sake of Christ, never fails to correct and to perfect believers. Unbelievers truly have no excuse for not believing because as Philippians 1:6 and Ecclesiastes 3:14 clearly indicate, God always finishes whatever He starts. He has already provided for every contingency.
     Yet, what keeps unbelievers from repentance and faith? It is simply pride. Most people will cling to false combinations even when they strongly suspect that something is wrong. People simply hate to admit that they could be wrong. For this reason, Proverbs 8:36 is one of the most profound statements in the Bible. Unbelievers love their sin and death because they falsely believe that their individuality and ultimate freedom are defined and preserved in this way. In other words, in seeking to save themselves, they lose themselves. They should heed what Jesus said in Luke 9:23-26 and in Matthew 16:24-26.
     Being under deep conviction from the Holy Spirit, Judas Iscariot killed himself because he was afraid he would repent. The Apostle Peter also betrayed Jesus, but he needed only to repent in order to receive forgiveness and reconciliation.
     As Proverbs 6:16-19 teaches, God hates pride more than any other sin. Pride keeps more unbelievers from repenting than any other sin. Of all false combinations, pride lies closest to absolute nothingness. It is no accident that pride is also called vanity, which means "emptiness." This emptiness can only be filled by God. Unbelievers really have no excuse for not believing because God has assumed all responsibility for their salvation and eventual perfection. Unbelievers need only have faith, and God will even give them that if they would only humbly ask for it! No one should doubt that unbelievers love sin and death instead of God. Sometimes, an unbeliever will commit suicide knowing full well that he will go to hell when he does it.
     Absolute nothingness does have some powers. Yet, believers can be confident that these powers are finite. There can be but one infinite, and that undefined by "one;" that is, Infinite Duality. If absolute nothingness were not finite, then it would be infinite, in which case everything would be equal to it. Yet, because creativity, love, grace, and the infinite set of simple true ideas possess real existence, both in inner and outer duality, then one can be sure that Infinite Duality is real.
     The set of simple true ideas can not be finite because if they were finite, then there would have been a time when they did not exist. At such a time, everything would have been equal to absolute nothingness, making it all-powerful. In such a condition, neither consciousness nor objectivity would ever be able to raise themselves above their level with nothingness. The evolution of duality would be rendered impossible. Reality could never exist. Therefore, the set of true simple ideas must be infinite.
     Two questions remain. The first is: Why did God choose to deal with absolute nothingness in a history for the sake of freedom? Why did God deal with the totality of sin on the cross, and on a case by case basis in the sanctification process, while allowing freedom to operate as requiring a history? Then there is the opposite question long pondered by man: Why did not God simply eradicate all evil from this and all other universes when He created them? Such an action would have eliminated all pain and suffering caused by sin from the beginning. God could have made the whole universe a heaven. What is so special about freedom?
     One must remember that God is absolute freedom itself. The infinite set of true simple ideas were not created by God. In a real sense, they are God Himself. They are the uncreated Word of God; that is, the Logos. John 1:1-5 teaches that the Word is God, and that the Word created everything including life. Verse 14 teaches that the Word became flesh; that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. Being that necessary infinite set of simple true ideas, the Word defines the being and character of God. Being the objects of the inner duality of God, the Word is absolutely necessary to His real existence. All that the Word has created in material objective form; that is, our universe, is patterned on some of these true simple ideas.
     John 1:18 relates that no man can see God; that is, the invisible infinite consciousness who is the Father. Jesus also made this clear in John 5:37. However, men have seen the Logos, the incarnate Word of God. Jesus possesses absolute freedom to combine the true simple ideas into all true combinations. God can not misuse His freedom and remain God. The Word of God always chooses to create that which is true and good and holy.
     However, if God had created our universe as a heaven, having eliminated all possible evil from it, then our universe could be but absolutely determined; that is, no freedom whatsoever within it. Therefore, carnal freedom must precede spiritual freedom for finite dualities. Otherwise, spiritual freedom would be equal to mere determinism. Carnal freedom involves a real choice between good and evil. Thus spiritual freedom becomes a reality to finite dualities when they choose it.
     Spiritual freedom means that one should always desire to know the true simple ideas and how to put them into true combinations. This is the same as a desire to be like Jesus. Believers are those whom God has restored to this desire for spiritual freedom. If there were no carnal freedom, there could be no such desire, and the meaningfulness and value of the true simple ideas in finite duality would be greatly diminished, being the products of determinism.
     The value and meaning of the simple true ideas and their true combinations are made real when they are chosen. In other words, to choose to love and serve God is far more valuable than to be compelled to do so by determinism. This constitutes the truth and value of the simple idea called "freedom." For these reasons, freedom requires a history so that true choices can be made, and their values made real.
     The value of freedom over determinism subsists in the chosen desire to love and to serve God. This fact presupposes all of the opposite simple ideas. That is, good is the opposite of evil, love of hate, faith of fear, and so forth. These opposite true simple ideas have useful purposes if used in true combinations. For example, those who love God should hate evil. Those who have faith in God should also fear Him.
     If all creation were determined, the love, faith, truth, and all other good simple ideas would be real merely in a trivial sense. All of the true simple ideas would be so taken for granted that they would be reduced to mere formalities. Mere formality was one of the things that Jesus detested.
     Truth can not be real without its opposite; that is, falsehood. All opposites must exist for freedom to exist, and truth is the value of usefulness of the simple ideas and their true combinations. Truth must be chosen over falsity for truth to be real. Otherwise, truth becomes a mere necessity. For these reasons, John 8:32 is one of Jesus’ most profound statements.
     One final question remains: What then is the purpose of God’s grace and love and of all of the true simple ideas, and of all of the good creations which are patterned on them. The simple answer is revealed in Revelation 4:11 and in I Corinthians 1:26-31. God alone deserves glory and honor.
     If God chooses to prove the value of His love by always being able to turn wayward believers back to Himself by reproof or discipline, then that demonstrates His power and glory. If God chooses to save lost sinners through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, then that manifests the power of His love. God’s creations belong to Him. They were, and are, created for God’s pleasure and glory. For precisely these reasons, God’s grace can never fail.

GOD'S WORD AND HIS SOVEREIGNTY part 3

                                          Here read John 15:4-5

"I am the vine, ye are the branches." Jesus is the vine, and the individual Christian being one of the branches can only bear fruit when the sap is flowing, and can only bear the type of fruit that God has given it to bear. The sap is symbolic of the Holy Spirit working inside the believer. When a Christian tries to produce fruit when the sap is not flowing, or tries to bear fruit that God has not given that Christian to bear, then he or she is trying to do that which God has not empowered them to do. The result will always be failure and unnecessary guilt for that Christian. Jesus also said: "without me ye can do nothing."

For these reasons, each Christian should pray mightily that God would reveal to them when the sap is flowing, and what fruit they are to bear for His glory. In order to know when the sap is flowing, each Christian should pray every day that God will keep them out of sin, which breaks communication with Him, and that He will keep their hearts in a state of sensitivity to the commands of the Holy Spirit so that they will obey Him in whatever He may ask them to do. In order to know what fruit to bear, every Christian should pray that God will reveal to them what gift He has given them, and then faithfully practice that gift whether it be an evangelist or a janitor. When a Christian lives this way, he or she will be obeying God's command to "Pray without ceasing." Then, being sure that one is in God's will, each Christian can feel free to lead a joyful and guilt free life, and not feel bad when he or she sits next to someone on a bus or plane and feels no need to witness to them. That Christian can have confidence in God that at that moment the sap is simply not flowing. That Christian can also have confidence that if God wants he or she to witness to that person, then he or she will unmistakeably feel the sap beginning to flow and the power of the Holy Spirit to help that Christian to be obedient. Every Christian can also be sure that God will reward them according to their obedience, and according to their faithfulness in practicing the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given them.

GOD'S WORD AND HIS SOVEREIGNTY part2

During Jesus' ministry on earth, there were times when He specifically told some of those whom He had healed and saved not to be a witness for Him. Many believe that He did this because He had not yet been crucified, but that cannot be the reason because in Mark 1:40-45 Jesus commanded a leper whom He had healed to go through certain Jewish ceremonies as a witness for Him. Also, in Mark 5:19, Jesus commanded the former maniac of Gadara , whom He had healed and saved, to go home and tell his friends about Jesus' compassion for him. Therefore, each individual believer should conclude that he or she must be a witness in the manner in which they are instructed by the Holy Spirit, which is Christ within them. Part of having faith is to believe that God always has a good reason for everything He does, even when the believer does not know what He is doing or why.

Since salvation is a free gift from God and requires no good works, but faith only, to receive it; then God may require no witness at all from some believers except that they get baptized into a local church, receive communion, and lead a clean moral life. On the other hand, God may instruct some believers to be evangelists who preach to great crowds. Others fill some position between these two extremes. In any case, believers who fail to obey their instructions from the Holy Spirit cannot be Christians in the strictest sense, and they will receive no rewards in heaven, but they can never lose salvation because God never rescinds His grace. Here read Philippians 1:6.

Jesus' command which is called the "great commission" was given to the church as a whole, and not to individual Christians except as they fit into the local church. In the Apostles' epistles, the Holy Spirit provided the details for how the "great commission" should be carried out. In I Corinthians 12, Romans 12:3-8, and Ephesians 4:16 the Apostle Paul taught that the church operates as a team effort, with each individual Christian doing his or her part as gifted by the Holy Spirit. Paul also taught that the small roles are just as important to God as are the big ones. In the sight of God, all Christians are equal in value. The janitor in the local church who faithfully does his or her work is just as important to God as is the greatest evangelist. God rewards His servants according to their faithfulness, and not according to their rank in the church. Nowhere in any of the epistles does the Holy Spirit instruct any of the Apostles to teach that every Christian should witness to everyone they meet. Individual Christians should live joyfully as guided by the Holy Spirit; free from unnecessary guilt.

When America was fighting for its life and freedom in WWII, President Roosevelt gave a speech where he commanded our military and all of our people to pull together to win the war. He did not mean that every American should go to the front lines and fight. Had America taken it that way, America would have lost the war. Somebody had to manufacture the ammunition, tanks and planes. Somebody had to grow the food that the free world needed. Somebody had to drive the trucks and use the typewriters. America had to pull together in a team effort in order to win the war.

When Jesus, our great commander, gave His command: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature;" He meant it as a general command to the church as a whole with every Christian doing his or her part. He did not mean that every Christian should attempt to fight on the front lines as a missionary or evangelist. Some Christians have been called to pray. Some have been called to teach. Some have been called to clean the church. Every Christian who faithfully does his or her part in their local church as gifted by the Holy Spirit will be rewarded for carrying out the "great commission." Jesus left it to the Holy Spirit to flesh out the details in the epistles as to how the local church should carry out the "great commission."

GOD'S WORD AND HIS SOVEREIGNTY part1

Here read Proverbs 16:1 Proverbs 26:4-5 I Corinthians 12 Romans 12:3-8 Ephesians 4:16 Matthew 28:18-20 Mark 16:15-16 I Thessalonians 5:17

In Proverbs 26, the fourth verse seems to contradict the fifth verse. Does this mean that there is a contradiction in the Word of God?

By no means, because Proverbs 16:1 clearly teaches that if a man's heart has been prepared by the Holy Spirit, then his tongue will answer according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When a Christian hears someone say something foolish and sinful, and that Christian has "Pray(ed) without ceasing;" that is, he or she has kept their heart in a state of constant openness to the instructions of the Holy Spirit, then that Christian may rebuke that foolish person or ignore him as guided by the Holy Spirit.

The entire Word of God works this same way. Sometimes, preachers preach as if God were hidebound by His own Word. They preach as if God cannot do certain things in certain situations because His own Word wont let Him. They forget that God is sovereign, and that He can do whatever He pleases so long as it is something good.

This does not mean that God ever violates His own Word. He does not. However, God does not use His Word to restrict His own actions, but rather, He uses His Word like a mechanic uses different tools out of his tool box. Just as a mechanic uses different tools according to the problem at hand, God uses different passages from His Word to fix whatever particular problem that may arise.

One can see this type of application of God's Word in the life of Jesus on earth. At times, Jesus was loving and compassionate. At other times, He was angry and severely rebuked those who practiced injustice, but He never violated His own Word in any case. He used His Word in accordance with that which the situation demanded.

The ordinary Christian, who lives in tune with the Holy Spirit and who practices having the mind of Christ, can do the same. The only difference is that the ordinary Christian wont always get it right like Jesus did. For this reason, the ordinary Christian must try to comply with I Thessalonians 5:17 and all other verses about the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to practice everyday obedience. To "Pray without ceasing" means that every Christian should try to keep his or her heart in constant communication with the Holy Spirit so that they may obey God's will at any moment. This means that every Christian should resolve to read his or her Bible ( which is the 1611 KJV in English) and pray every day without fail for God's guidance for that day. If this constant communication with the Holy Spirit should become broken because of sin, the Christian should immediately repent and ask God to restore it.

This same guidance of the Holy Spirit extends not only to the individual Christian but to the church as a whole. The purposes of the local church are to preach the gospel to every creature, to teach believers to obey Christ, and to baptize them into the local church. This is the purpose of the church as a whole with each member doing his or her part as gifted and guided by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the local church operates as a team effort with each member doing his or her part faithfully. Jesus' commands to the local church were directed to the team as a whole.

Sometimes, preachers mistakenly preach that the commands of Christ ( called the "great commission" by the church) are meant for every individual Christian. They preach that every Christian should give a personal witness to anyone at any time. Some Christians may be gifted by the Holy Spirit to be a personal witness, but many are not. Those who have not been so gifted should not try to be a personal witness unless in a particular instance the Holy Spirit tells them to be a witness. In such a case, the Holy Spirit will empower them to be a witness. Certainly, every Christian should witness when asked about their faith because such occasions are always arranged by the Holy Spirit. But many a Christian, not so gifted, has tried to obey the preacher rather than the Holy Spirit and have become loaded with guilt because they often make a mess of it. God does not want His Christians to feel unnecessary guilt because they tried to witness when the Holy Spirit had not empowered them to do so. God wants His people to feel free of guilt and oppression, not to be weighed down by it. Some Christians are empowered by the Holy Spirit to be personal witnesses, and they are always quite successful at winning souls to Christ, but this happens because the Holy Spirit always arranges for them to witness to just the right person at just the right time.

However, each individual Christian should pray that God will reveal His gift to him or her and then faithfully practice that gift. The gift may be to be a prayer warrior, or to minister to the poor, or to preach the gospel, or to teach, or to be a doorkeeper; but whatever the gift, the individual Christian should faithfully practice his or her gift as a team member of their local church.

ON THE NATURE OF REALITY chapter 15

SIN

     Sin did not begin with the disobedience of man. Sin consists of a number of false combinations of simple true ideas that came into existence long before man was created.
     Isaiah 14:12-17 and Ezekiel 28:11-19 describes the fall of God’s most beautiful creation, the angel Lucifer. After his fall, he became Satan, the Prince of darkness and the power of evil in this world. Isaiah 14:12-17 is addressed to the king of Babylon and Ezekiel 28:11-19 to the king of Tyrus, but both passages are directed past these kings to the real power of evil that supports them, Satan.
     All of God’s creations are good. This means that all His creations are true and useful combinations. Their uses are beautiful and productive and redound to the glory of God.
     All seemingly negative simple true ideas, such as hatred or lying, have useful purposes in true combinations. As Ecclesiastes 3:8, Psalms 97:10, and Amos 5:15 reveal, God hates evil and He expects His people to hate evil also. Even God lies to His enemies, as I Kings 22:13-28 and Ezekiel 14:9 reveal. These facts do not mean that God’s people have a blank check to lie to God’s enemies at all times, or to hate them at all times. God alone possesses the required perfect wisdom that always knows how to use negative true simple ideas in true combinations. Humans must be extremely circumspect in their uses of God’s ideas in making judgments, as Jesus admonished in John 7:24.
     Sometimes, Jesus bent the law of the Sabbath as Matthew 12:1-8, for one example, records. However, Jesus, being God and Lord of the Sabbath as He said in verse 8, would know exactly when and under what circumstances to bend His own laws. Humans, having minds weakened by sin, are continually apt to make false judgments as to how and when to combine God’s ideas properly.
     As Ecclesiastes 3:3 and 3:8 make clear, even killing and war have useful purposes at certain times. In Genesis 9:6, God commands when capital punishment is useful. In Deuteronomy 31:3-6 and other places, God commands His people to make war against His enemies in order to cleanse the promised land of their evil influences. War against evil is justifiable under certain circumstances. Most good people would agree that World War II was a justifiable war. Nevertheless, people should never become so proud as to believe that they can learn how to use God’s true negative ideas on their own. God’s people must never use His negative true ideas except exactly in the manner that God commands.
     As Revelation 4:11 states, God created all things for His pleasure. Whatever pleases God is good for His creations because God is love and blessing. God continuously seeks to increase the love between Himself and His creations.
     For this purpose, God created freedom. The idea of freedom has always existed in the mind of God, but one day God added freedom to one of His creations.
     God first gave freedom to His most beautiful creation, the angel Lucifer. The name Lucifer means "day-star." God knew that the value of love would be greatly increased should His creatures freely decide to love and serve Him. In this process, more and more of God’s creative glory could be realized, blessing His creatures who, in turn, would love and praise Him even more, both God and His creations experiencing ever greater joy.
     God is responsible for His creations. He is responsible for His gifts of freedom, and for His creation of potential existence within chaos, which He is always in the creative process of overcoming.
     God is not responsible when His creatures use their gifts of freedom to rebel against Him. Of course, God risked that happening when He gave freedom to Lucifer, but no doubt God also had great confidence that Lucifer would make the right decisions. In addition, God was willing to take that risk because of the tremendous creative increase in the value of love that would have resulted from His creatures free decision to love and serve him. Without doubt, God is forever heartbroken because of Lucifer’s rebellion.
     At this point, some would argue that because of His omniscience, God must be responsible for Lucifer’s rebellion because God had to have known that Lucifer would rebel before God granted freedom to him. However, this assertion is not true precisely because God’s omniscience is far greater than humans can imagine. Not only does God know every possible event in any historical process, but He also knows that infinite potentialities that could be made real by the decisions of finite duality. Not only that, God knows every detail of every potential historical process that can be made real by the decisions of finite duality. Therefore, God can take risks. God can simply wait for His free creatures to make their decisions knowing the infinite potentialities and the resultant historical process whatever they may decide. Of course, God also has the right to influence that process in order to cause His creatures to choose reality over absolute nothingness. In this way, both God’s freedom and His determinism are true and real in God’s eternal time.
Because of pride, Lucifer decided that he wanted to be God. Lucifer literally fell in love with himself. Lucifer led one third of God’s angels in war against God. God cast him and his angels out of heaven to earth. Lucifer became Satan, the god of this world and the Prince of darkness. He resides at the boundary of chaotic nothingness, still vainly trying to create a new kind of order from nothingness. He is still vainly striving to do what only God can do. According to Proverbs 6:16-19, God still hates pride more than any other sin, and all sins have their roots in pride. It is no accident that pride is also called vanity.
     When God created man in His own image, He gave man a body, soul, and spirit. God breathed the soul and spirit into man. The soul is the individualistic mind and personality of each person. The spirit is a flowing connection between the finite mind of man and the infinite mind of God. Spirit constitutes both self-consciousness and consciousness of God.
     God gave to man a limited appreciation of many of His eternal, simple true ideas. God gave to man limited intelligence, innocence, freedom, and a joyful paradise.
     In Genesis 2:18-22, God created woman to be a help to man. This means that they were to be partners as husband and wife, working together in love to create and rear children in families.
     In Genesis 2:19-20, God gave intelligence to man. Man acquired the ability to create language in order to name every living creature. Language can not exist without ideas and feelings. Therefore, by implication, God gave sensory perception so that man could acquire such simple true idea as "soft" and "hard." The higher simple true ideas such as "love" and "beauty", God gave directly to the mind of man, but they do not become real until those potential dualities that are tuned to receive them are completed by experience. In other words, when one feels an object and notices that it is "soft", that softness is a quality of the object that is conveyed to the mind through sensory experience, but when one appreciates "beauty", that beauty is not in the object, but is part of the mind itself. Thus, in combination with those simple true ideas that make language possible, man can acquire a set of simple true ideas that grows with experience. Man can analyze his experience, compare ideas, invent true and false combinations, and communicate it all through language. Man possesses rationality as a gift from God.
     Genesis 2:25 relates that the man and woman lived in Eden in a state of innocence. Nudity, joy, and daily communication with God were all perfectly natural to them. They never considered their condition to be good because they had no opposite with which to compare it. Goodness can be known only by comparing it with the destructive effects of absolute nothingness. Adam and Eve had the idea of nothing in inner and outer duality, but this was a natural knowledge. They did not know that the idea of nothingness could substitute for non-existence; that is, absolute nothingness of which death is one form.
     God placed Adam and Eve in the beautiful Garden of Eden to tend it, but the work was simple and easy. They spent most of their time in the ecstasy of play, making love, and talking to God.
     However, God had also given them freedom. Since there can be no freedom without real choices, God created two trees that were opposites, as Genesis 2:8-9 relates. First, God placed the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and then the tree of the knowledge of good and evil beside it. Genesis 2:15-18 relates that God allowed man to eat freely of the fruit of any tree, including the tree of life. Yet, God commanded man not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and warned that if they did so, they would surely die.
     God is everlasting life, as Jesus made clear in John 14:6. God desired that Adam and Eve should choose to eat of the tree of life and thereby live in love and fellowship with Him forever. In their innocence, Adam and Eve had no choice but to love God. Loving God was so natural that they hardly noticed it. Should they choose to love God, then their love would become far more real, and thus far more valuable.
     Although Adam and Eve did not fully understand the purpose of the tree of life, they knew that God had given them life. Having been endowed with the gifts of certain higher simple true ideas, they had some idea of what "life" meant. The meaning was, at least, partly real to them.
     They also had some sense of "freedom" because they knew that God had placed the tree of life in the middle of the garden next to a tree of which he had commanded them not to eat. They also knew that God wanted them to eat of every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They should have surmised that there was something special about the tree of life. Yet, they never partook of the tree of life. Perhaps, even before they sinned, Adam and Eve had failed to use their minds properly, and, perhaps, this failure had later been partly responsible for their falling into sin.
     Satan, disguised as a serpent, beguiled Eve by presenting her with a subtle series of false combinations of simple true ideas. Genesis 3:1 states that the serpent was "subtle," which means that he was crafty. Satan is a master at inventing specious false combinations. Every idea that he used was a true one. The idea of God is a true combination when considered as Infinite Duality, but then He was a simple true idea when considered as a personal friend of Adam and Eve.
     Apparently, the serpent had been spying on Adam and Eve for some time. He noticed that there were two trees in the middle of the garden that Adam and Eve avoided. He then endeavored to find out why.
In Genesis 3:1, the serpent begins with a seemingly harmless question. He asks Eve if God has not allowed them to eat of every tree of the garden. Verses two and three relate that she fell into the trap. Innocently, she answers by indicating the very tree that God commanded them not to touch, and the reason being that they would die.
     The serpent, realizing that God had granted them freedom, immediately seized his opportunity to destroy part of God’s creation. In verse four, he created a false combination by using the idea of nothing to cause the appearance that the idea of death could be negated. In this way, Satan created the illusion that death is not possible. He told Eve that God had given them a false combination, and that his was the true combination. Eve could not have directly known about death; that is, absolute nothingness that hides behind the idea of nothingness called death. However, because even the faintest effects of simple true ideas impart some reality, she had to have known that God’s commandment meant that death was something bad to be avoided.
     In verse five, the serpent created even more subtle false combinations. He avowed that God had withheld valuable information from Adam and Eve. Satan created a false combination using such simple true ideas as: "God" (as a personal friend) "knows," "wiser," "eyes," "open," "similar," "good," and "evil." Using these ideas and others, some direct and others suggested, Satan created the illusion that God was holding out on them; that is, that God did not want them to become something greater than they had a right to become. Again, the serpent called God a liar. Satan persuaded Eve to believe in his false combinations so that the absolute nothingness inherent in them would begin to destroy her.
     Verse six relates that the serpent’s deception worked. Eve saw that the fruit seemed to look as good for food as any other fruit. So, desiring to be wiser and better, she took the fruit and ate it. There was probably nothing wrong with the fruit itself. The fruit merely symbolized the specious lies of Satan, and Eve’s eating of it symbolized her having already received those lies. It was not necessary for her to know exactly what "wiser" and "better" meant. She simple felt that somehow, there was something more for her. She certainly felt that she could become similar to God, as Satan had suggested.
     Thus the serpent created illusions in the way that they are always created. All false combinations contain absolute nothingness hidden behind the idea of nothingness. Satan used the idea of nothing in an attempt to negate another simple true idea. He made Eve believe that she would not die. True simple ideas can never be negated by the idea of nothingness. True simple ideas can be hidden in the idea of nothingness, but not negated. By creating the illusion that death can be negated, he seemed to eliminate the idea of nothingness altogether, and with it any implication of absolute nothingness, By creating a false positive, Satan implied that there was something "more" for Eve.
     After the lie succeeded, the serpent then used other simple true ideas in false combination to create a deeper illusion that there was "more" for Eve that she was missing. His tactics were similar to the way that simple true ideas such as "fish" and "female" are added to create the illusion called a "mermaid." A mermaid seems to be "more," but is, in actuality, simply the idea of nothingness hiding absolute nothingness.
     Satan deceived Eve with a false combination that promised "more," but really delivered absolute nothingness. This is the precise reason why all false combinations do not work, and why all systems that contain false combinations always fail to be effective to the same extent that they contain false combinations.
     Genesis 3:6 relates that Eve ate the fruit and gave it to Adam who also ate. Eve ate because she was deceived, but Adam ate because he was not deceived. Adam fully knew that he was disobeying God, and that the results would be bad. Adam ate because he felt a vast difference now existed between him and the woman, and he was afraid of losing her. His motives were both selfish and unselfish. In the former case, he was afraid of losing sexual relations, but in the latter case, he was afraid for her to lose his friendship and protection. He did not want her to be alone because she might need him, and he also needed her.
     Adam’s action was typical of those who deliberately embrace false combinations because they are afraid of losing whatever they already have. Many people, for example bureaucrats, will go along with systems that they know, or strongly suspect, contain many lies and hypocrisies. Yet, they play along simply because they are afraid of losing their positions. His motive caused Adam’s sin to be deeper than Eve’s because not only did he deliberately disobey God, but he proved a coward as well.
     In Genesis 3:7, Adam and Eve suddenly came to know that they were naked and they felt ashamed. They were not ashamed of the nakedness itself, but of their sudden knowledge of lust and greed. Becoming aware of their vulnerabilities, they desired to deceive each other and to gain sexual power over each other. In other words, they began to realize those feelings and ideas that hide a reduction toward absolute nothingness that had become a part of their beings. Their love caused them to cover themselves with fig leaves in an attempt to hide their new found reality which had brought such shame to them.
     In Genesis 3:8-11, God comes to converse with Adam and Eve again. Adam and Eve hid themselves from God because of their shame before His holiness. They now knew good and evil as polar opposites. The rest of their lives would be spent in putting together combinations of ideas that would be good if useful and beautiful, and evil if useless and destructive. They also knew that they had not become gods, and therefore, their intelligence would never be strong enough to keep good and evil at an absolute separation. In their future, all their striving would seldom be completely good or evil, but mostly a mixture of the two.
     They also knew that their relationship with God had drastically changed. They felt that their minds and spirits were no longer connected to God. They felt cut off from their innocent connection to God’s goodness and holiness. Being in spiritual isolation, they knew that they were not spiritually strong enough to handle this new reality. That which God had told them had come true. They were cut off from the source of life. They had become spiritually dead.
     God quickly discovered that which He already knew, that Adam and Eve had eaten of the prohibited tree. In Genesis 3:12, the man, true to his cowardice, blamed his disobedience on the woman. He also implied that God was to blame for giving him the woman. In Genesis 3:13, the woman, at least, told God the simple truth. She had been deceived by the serpent, but she had also disobeyed.
     In Genesis 3:14, God cursed the serpent because of his treachery. He condemned the serpent to be a legless creature that slithers on its belly through the dust, forever a symbol of loathsome sneakiness and deceit.
     In Genesis 3:15, God prophesies the serpent’s eventual doom. God sums up the basic history of the human race as one of constant enmity; that is, constant warfare between the woman and her seed, and the serpent and his seed. As Genesis 3:20 makes clear, the woman became the sole source of the physical life of the human race. As such, history has proven that women have always been the keepers of love, home, family, and, by extension, of civilization itself. Women tend to be far less violent or criminal than men are. Women rarely go to war or cause them. Although women are sinners, on the whole, history has proven that women are far less sinful than men are.
     Thus the real historical warfare has always been between those who practice love and nurture, and those who practice violence, deceit, and self-righteousness. Most of those who have practiced the latter have been men.
     Those who are the seed of the woman, throughout history, have been those, both men and women, who have humbled themselves to God; that is, the meek who have repented of their sins and who look to God for mercy and grace. Those who are the seed of the serpent are those, both men and women, who have unrepentantly practiced sin. Human history has proven God’s prophecy to be precisely correct; constant enmity between the meek and the proud; that is, between those who desire true combinations and those who desire false combinations. Those who desire true combinations love truth and life. Those who desire false combinations love deceit and death.
     The second half of Genesis 3:15 refers to a particular seed of the woman called "he." "He" must be a particular righteous individual who will personally bruise the serpent’s head; that is, He will destroy the serpent and all of his evil works. Those who are the seed of the serpent take part in Satan’s evil works, and are also thus destroyed.
     The last phrase of this verse prophesies that the serpent will bruise the heel of this righteous person. The serpent will succeed in causing great pain and suffering to this righteous person, but the serpent will not succeed in destroying Him. In fact, as future events from the time of Eden have revealed, the suffering of this righteous person has proven to be the very method by which the serpent and all his evil works have been destroyed. In addition, the suffering of this righteous person has proven to be the only means by which those who are the seed of the woman can be rescued from the destructive effects of sin and evil.
     In Genesis 3:16, God pronounced both a blessing and a curse upon the woman. The pain of childbirth will be greatly increased, but in that suffering, she will be the savior of the physical human race. Through women, human life will be preserved, but it will be a sinful life. Human life will still need to be rescued from physical death in a resurrection of a new kind of body. Moreover, man’s spiritual life will still need to be rescued from sin through a spiritual reconnection to God.
     Childbirth is itself a physical prophecy about the resolution of these needs. The agony of childbirth corresponds to the suffering of the righteous person who is the seed of the woman. The Bible has revealed that that person is Jesus Christ who suffered on the cross to take away man’s sin and to give him a new birth as Jesus taught in the third chapter of John. The joy of new life being born into the world corresponds to the joy of Christ’s resurrection and the new birth and resurrection of believers that His resurrection insures.
The last phrase of verse 16 does not grant husbands the right to dominate their wives. God simply prophesied that in the course of history, men would mostly assume the places of leadership in the families, communities, and nations. Men do this because of their deeper pride and selfishness. Women often assume the roles of humble servants, as Jesus did.
     In Genesis 3:17-19, God prophesies that men will need strict discipline. Because of Adam’s selfishness and cowardice, men will be sentenced to hard labor. Hard labor keeps men humble. Men are exceedingly sinful and wild if not controlled. Hard labor has proven to be a good method of control. Women have the best control because they constrain men to be civilized.
     This sentence of hard labor was also a physical prophecy. Men preserve the lives of their families through the pain of labor, and through the pain and hard labor of Christ on the cross, God preserves the eternal lives of those He adopts into His family. Those who trust in the shed blood of Christ are cleansed from sin, forgiven, and preserved forever by the hard labor of Christ on their behalf.
     Genesis 3:21 relates that God made coats of skin to clothe Adam and Eve. This entailed the killing of an animal and thus the shedding of its blood. This action constituted a prophecy as to the future method that God would use to cause a spiritual recreation and reconnection of man’s spirit to Himself. Adam and Eve, and their progeny, became spiritually disconnected from God. In time, they and their progeny become physically separated from God. Spiritual and physical separation means death, but not annihilation. A duality, once created, can never be completely destroyed by absolute nothingness. However, duality can forever sink into the idea of nothingness toward absolute nothingness. This eternal separation from God entails tremendous suffering because of the loss of the love and goodness of God. This condition is called Hell.
     Because of God’s great love and compassion for fallen man, He prophesied through the killing of the animal that someday He would come to earth Himself to suffer in man’s place. He would suffer the agony of separation from God and the descent into Hell in man’s place. Jesus would be the individual seed of the woman, taking man’s sin and death upon Himself on the cross. The blood He would shed in that suffering would, somehow, become the cleansing agent that can wash away man’s sins and make possible his reconciliation with God.
     In Genesis 3:22, God neither infers that man has become a god, nor does He hold out that possibility. God simply means that what God knows to an absolute degree, man now knows to a limited degree. God knows the absolute polarization of good and evil. He knows the infinite set of simple true ideas, all true combinations, and all potential true combinations. At the polar end, He knows that evil exists.
     Because of man’s limited mind and disconnected spirit, he often becomes confused by what is good and what is evil. He does not possess the ability to separate the two completely. Having a limited knowledge of the simple true ideas, man often creates combinations that he believes will be good, only to find later that they prove to be evil or unworkable. Man often clings with stubborn pride to systems that do not work well. He tries to fill the emptiness that surrounds his spirit with systems of ideas that promise pleasure, power, or self-righteousness, only to fail continually to fulfill himself. That which man really needs is to become reconnected to the infinite mind and holiness of God.
     In the last part of Genesis 3:22 and verses 23-24, God acts to prevent a great tragedy. If, in his desperation to correct his fallen condition, man were to partake of the tree of life, then the future would hold no possibility for his salvation. In body, soul, and spirit, man would become a paradox, a creature that is both alive and dead at the same time. Never able to die, man would sink into ever-greater corruption toward death. Life on earth would become a living, putrid Hell.
     It is not that God would not be able to save man from that condition, He would simply have no desire to do so. By attempting to possess both eternal life and sin, man would eventually become as corrupt and full of pride as the demons are. Demons are incredibly putrid creatures, wholly given to absolute nothingness. God has no desire to save the demons, and God would have no desire to save man should he become demonic.
God, in His mercy, drove man from paradise to prevent man from falling into this horrible condition.              Knowing that man was totally incapable of saving himself, God had plans to do all the work necessary to restore man in body, soul, and spirit to Himself. Man could never be restored to God in his sinful condition. God knew that man needed to be recreated. God determined that man needed a purified spiritual-body as He outlined in I Corinthians 15:51-57. Man needed a spiritual-body so completely fused together as to be interchangeable in body, soul, and spirit. The creation of this new kind of human being was a task that God set for Himself to accomplish through the work of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
     Genesis 3:24 relates that God separated the life of man from both hell and paradise. This act of God began the history of mankind. God created an historical process so that He could intervene in that process to effect the salvation of man. An historical process would allow God to come someday to earth as the Son of God. A life in paradise or hell could not be an historical process because the former is already salvation and the latter is a continuous plunge toward destruction. In an historical process, Jesus Christ would be able, in a supreme act of love and self-sacrifice, to take upon Himself, on the cross, the sin and death of mankind, thus expunging the penalty and presence of both for all those who will believe in His power to do so. Repentance is a necessary part of such a faith, for how can one believe that Christ can take away one’s sins if one is not willing to give up those sins. Thus, Christ provides the only way by which man can escape from the curse of sin, death, and hell; and become reconnected and reconciled to God in his body, soul, and spirit.

ON DIFFICULT PASSAGES

            Here read (KJV) Matthew 18: 7-9 Matthew 25:1-13 Nahum 2:1-13


There are many passages in scripture that simply cannot be fully understood. Sometimes, preachers preach sermons from these passages and attempt to explain them, but their explanations never seem to be quite adequate. Often, too many loose ends and unanswered questions remain after these sermons.

For instance, in Matthew 18:7-9, why does Jesus teach that a person can enter into life maimed when no one is maimed in God's afterlife? Perhaps Jesus was not speaking of the afterlife, but was symbolically teaching about the agony of repentance when a lost sinner feels the need to completely submit to God and become "born again" by God's grace. A believer does receive eternal life the very moment he or she becomes "born again." Then again, why did Jesus say nothing about faith and God's salvation in this parable?

The parable of the ten virgins is especially hard to understand. The fact that they are called virgins implies that they have by faith become the children of God. Yet, Jesus taught that five of them were foolish and had no oil. Throughout scripture, oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit is given to all who believe and they are sealed forever by the Holy Spirit, then the five foolish virgins could not have run out of oil even if they were living in a backslidden condition.

When the bridegroom comes, which must be symbolic of the coming of Jesus Himself, the five foolish virgins ask the five wise virgins for some of their oil. The five wise virgins refuse, and tell the five foolish virgins to go buy some oil for themselves. This seems to indicate that oil may not be symbolic of the Holy Spirit in this particular parable because the Holy Spirit cannot be bought. God always freely gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe. The symbolic meaning of oil in this parable does not seem to be clear.

Then, at the end of the parable, the bridegroom comes and receives the five wise virgins into the marriage feast but shuts the five foolish virgins out, telling them: "I know you not." How can this be since scripture teaches that the whole church will be included in the Rapture, and that Christ can never lose even one of His believers?

One possible explanation is that the five foolish virgins are not believers at all. In the parable of the tares and wheat in Matthew 13, Jesus prophesied that the entire scope of future Christianity would contain believers and non-believers alike, and that in the end God alone will separate them. Thus, the five foolish virgins are symbolic of future nominal Christians who think they are true Christians because of their clean, moral lives and good works. Yet, they are not true Christians because they have never humbled themselves to God, admitted to Him that they are lost sinners, and put their trust in Christ alone to save them through His blood that He shed for them on the cross. They have never received the free gift of the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the oil in the parable, to cleanse them of their sins by the blood of Jesus and to justify them and to give them eternal life through His resurrection.

When the five foolish virgins ask the five wise virgins for oil when the bridegroom comes, the wise virgins, in effect, tell the foolish virgins that it is too late for them, and that they might as well continue in that which they have been doing all along; that is, try to purchase salvation, or at least some favor with God, through their own self-righteous efforts.
When the bridegroom comes, He receives the five wise virgins because they have received the oil which symbolizes the Holy Spirit. He refuses the five foolish virgins because they have never received the oil as a free gift. The fact that the bridegroom tells them, "I know you not" would seem to indicate this interpretation.

The book of Nahum prophesies about God's destruction of Nineveh because they had turned back to idolatry 150 years after they had repented because of the preaching of Jonah. Most of the book relates how God visited destruction on Nineveh through war.
The second chapter of Nahum seems to be somewhat confusing. The first part of the chapter seems to be about war against Israel, not Nineveh. And who is this Huzzab who is led away captive? Then the second part of the chapter turns back to the war against Nineveh. One possible explanation for this is that Nineveh first attacks Israel and achieves partial success, and then Israel counterattacks Nineveh and destroys it.

Many such passages in scripture are difficult to understand even when guided by the Holy Spirit. Why has God done this? Perhaps God desires that His children strive and pray over His Word in order to test their love for Him and their desire to know Him better. God's testing always makes His children better. Perhaps God simply enjoys giving His children puzzles to solve in order to test how deeply they desire to understand His Word.

One certainty is this. Part of having faith is to believe that God always knows what He is doing, even when we do not understand it.

ON THE NATURE OF REALITY chapter 14

CREATION

     Subjective time measures objective time. Objective time in-itself; that is, time that is disconnected from duality, can be but equal to absolute nothingness. Such a time is no time at all.
     Two kinds of time are objects to duality. The first is dependent on the second. First, there is the time that is an object to outer duality. This objective time gears duality to regular motions in the universe; such as that of the earth and moon, certain frequencies of subatomic particles, and the speed of light. Because objective time can be measured by clocks and other devices, it has the same standards for everyone who moves at the same velocity.
     Second, there is subjective time that is geared to motions within inner duality. This time seems to pass swiftly when one concentrates on a task, and slowly when one is bored. When one concentrates on a task, then consciousness hides everything that is not essential to the work at hand within the idea of nothingness, including the passage of objective time. One who is bored actually concentrates on the idea of nothing. For this reason, those who are bored often stare into space. Time passes faster to those who concentrate on motion. To those who concentrate on nothing, or little motion, time passes slower.
     To one in a coma, time does not pass at all. He concentrates on neither motion nor nothingness. Except for a somatic consciousness of heartbeat and breathing, both  objective and subjective times become equal to absolute nothingness. Because there is no time in absolute nothingness, his duality skips over the passage of time from the moment he goes into the coma until the moment he awakens from it.
     Coma reveals a great deal about the relationship of duality to its universe. In a universe in which all dualities were in a permanent coma, objective time would mean absolutely nothing. There could be no difference between a trillion years and one second. If no passage of time exists, then there could certainly be no differences in motion or non-motion, up or down, inside or outside, heat or cold, or any other differences.
Of course, objective time would affect the bodies of those in a coma. However, such effects could only work to destroy their bodies, which tends to show that absolute nothingness prevails. Assuming that their bodies were permanently protected, then objective time, and even their own bodies, would constantly be equal to nonexistence, except for somatic heartbeat and breathing.
     Should one of these persons in coma suddenly awaken, he might conclude that he created all of the space, stars, earth, sun, and everything else that he suddenly observes.
     Such an erroneous conclusion serves to illustrate a particular point to be made. The point is not that nothing happens outside an unconscious mind. Many events may be happening outside unconsciousness, but the point is that whatever does happen is equal to its not happening. In other words, potential existence remains equal to absolute nothingness until such time as potential existence becomes experienced by duality. Any universe void of duality can be but a chaotic universe, which creates nothing.
     Even that which happens outside the experiential reach of a fully conscious duality is equal to absolute nothingness. For this reason, human duality can not obtain a clear picture of whatever is happening at the subatomic level. Evidently, whatever happens there lies at the boundary of the limits of human consciousness. Thus, the subatomic level can be but indirectly observed, just as consciousness can be but indirectly observed. As far as experiencing the subatomic level is concerned, the human mind subsists in a partial coma.
     The difference in that form of the idea of nothingness in inner duality called the subconscious mind, and absolute nothingness, is this. Those events that lie hidden in the idea of nothingness are, at all times, recoverable realities if one can remember them. If one can not remember them, they pass again into absolute nothingness, at least for that person. However, the subconscious can not hide events forever. Sooner or later, some events will be forced into conscious memory, even if in unhealthy ways. That which possesses the potential to be discovered, remembered, or experienced remains equal to absolute nothingness until such time as duality makes it real.
     Now, suppose the one who awakens should undertake an investigation of his new environment. He invents all of the scientific equipment he needs for his investigation. He discovers that his universe began with a big bang and that it is 15 billion years old. What would he conclude from this? First, he discovers that he did not create it when he awoke. Second, he realizes that while he was in the coma, his universe was equal to non-existence for him and he for it. Third, he realizes that his universe did possess potential existence because it was there for him to experience when he awoke. Fourth, he realizes that his universe did not create his duality because before he awoke to it, its equivalence to non-existence also caused it to be a chaotic universe. Fifth, he further realizes that his universe obtained the order and beauty that he observes only at the same instant that he awoke to observe it.
     Here, the materialists would argue that the fact that the awakened person discovered that his universe was 15 billion years old, would prove that it possessed real existence before he discovered it. However, the consciousness of the awakened person is that necessary and exclusive tool which makes that very distinction, as well as all other distinctions. If no one of those in coma awoke, it could never make one whit of difference whether this universe were 15 billion years old or zero seconds old. Nothing makes no difference, unless it makes a difference to duality.
     At this point, our awaker is left with but one possible conclusion. Since he did not create his universe and it did not create him, then it must have been created by someone else. Because of its vastness and complexity, he must conclude that his universe was created by some superior intelligence.
     A consciousless universe can never evolve life because distinctions never determine themselves to be real because of their constant equality to absolute nothingness. The making of distinctions is the necessary task of duality. What possible difference could it make to a consciousless universe whether a hydrogen atom has one electron and a carbon atom has six? Nothing makes the distinction, and therefore, no distinction is made. The actual difference between a hydrogen and a carbon atom can be made real by duality alone.
     Genesis 1:1-2 relates that the Spirit of God moved over a chaotic nothingness which was revealed to Him, but not created by Him except as a potential reality. Chaotic nothingness was, and still remains, that which is consciousless except as the idea of nothing. God created the potential reality within chaos, but not absolute nothingness itself. Absolute nothingness needs no creation because it is an noncreation that exists nowhere and at no time.
     Genesis 1:3-4 relates that when the Spirit moved into the chaos, God created an explosion of light for the purpose of separating Duality from nothingness. The big bang theory of the origin of the universe states that the universe began as a tremendous burst of electromagnetic energy. The Biblical term "water" refers to the density of energy both before and after the big bang. It is no accident that the Hebrew word for "light" means "made visible." When God’s duality entered in to the consciousless void, then reality was created.
     Genesis 1:5 relates that God named the light Day and the chaotic darkness Night. Day refers to the reality created by Infinite Duality, and Night refers to the chaos that remains within absolute nothingness. The term "morning" refers to the dawn of creative Duality overcoming nothingness. The term "evening" refers to the absolute nothingness that still remains to be overcome by creative Duality.
     In John 8:12 and John 9:5, Jesus refers to himself as being "the light of the world." Also in John 12:45-48, Jesus refers to himself as God who has come to earth to save mankind from darkness and to bring them into light. In John 9:4, Jesus refers to the day as a period of time in which God creates. In the same verse, He refers to darkness as that period in which creative work is not possible for man. Therefore, the term Day must refer to any period of time in which God does a creative work. The term Night must refer to any period of destructive nothingness in which men must remain, unless they come to the Light by faith.
     Colossians 1:12-22 refers to both the Father and Christ as the Creators. These verses also give a full description of the sacrificial work that Christ accomplished for the salvation of mankind during His day on earth.
     Thus Christ is one with the Father as He stated in John 10:30. Christ, being the contents of Infinite Duality, so fills the infinite consciousness of the Father as to be one with Him. The opposite is also true. The Father, being the infinite revelation of the infinite contents of His consciousness, is one with Christ. This must be true because true infinity can not limit itself, nor can there be multiple infinities. There can not even be one infinity. There can be but Infinite Duality.
     The Spirit is the creative unity of the Father and the Son. He is that third Person who dwells in the hearts of believers as Jesus explained in John 14:13-26. Thus Jesus calls the Spirit, the Comforter.
The Spirit is also God as Jesus made clear in John 4:24. In John 7:37-39, Jesus compares the Spirit to "living water." As verse 39 teaches, and as Jesus made clear to the woman at the well in John 4, whosoever believes in Him will receive this "living water" and will be "born again" in accordance with John 3:3-8. As John 1:12-13 clearly teaches, anyone who receives Christ receives a recreation as a child of God who has been saved from sin and destruction.
     In Psalms 139:7-18, the Spirit reveals Himself as the infinite presence of God in all places at all times. These verses refer to darkness which is the same as chaotic nothingness which is the same as nowhere. That which is nowhere can not limit infinity. Verses 11-12 relate the Infinite Spirit’s power to overcome any darkness. Therefore, God is the Almighty, the Infinite Power, and the Infinite Presence.
     In Psalms 90:4 and II Peter 3:8, the term "day" is described as being equal to a thousand years in God’s sight. If a "day" can be a thousand years to God, then why not a billion, or even a trillion. These verses actually compare God’s subjective time to His objective time and suggest that these times are interchangeable.
     God does not possess the same being as His universe. God created His universe in accordance with His infinite set of simple true ideas and their true combinations, but the universe remains completely separate from His inner duality. The being of God is in His inner duality, as it is with humans. The universe is objective to God, as it is to humans. Therefore, God must have created objective time from His subjective time. Without subjective time coming first, there can be no objective time.
     Thus, in Genesis 1:5, the term "Day," being equal to any duration of objective time, can only refer to God’s subjective time. So on the first day of creation, God divided subjective time, called Day, from chaotic nothingness, called Night. Since objective time had not yet been determined, this process could well have equaled billions of years.
     It is no accident that the last part of verse 5 refers to the "evening" and then the "morning" as the first day. The "evening" of chaotic nothingness, having been entered by the light of Infinite Duality, was partly overcome by the "morning" of God’s subjective time.
     In Genesis 1:6-8, God divided the energy, called "waters," creating Heaven with one part of it and creating the universe with another part of it. Again, this second day is denoted by use of the terms "evening" and then "morning." This process describes a further advance in God’s creation of a real universe separate from chaos. Again, this day of God’s subjective time could have equaled billions of years of objective time.
In Genesis 1:9-13, God created the earth and vegetable life. A further advance in the creation of reality is denoted by use of the terms "evening" before "morning."
     In Genesis 1:14-19, God caused the sun, moon and stars which He had previously created, to become visible from earth’s view. Again, the use of "evening" before "morning" denotes an advancement in His creation of reality.
     God’s creation of reality continues through the fifth and sixth days. On the sixth day, God created man in his own image. God created man as a three-in-one being, as He is. Man has a spirit, soul, and body as the Word states in I Thessalonians 5:23. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as Jesus taught in Matthew 28:19.
In Genesis 2:7, God describes His creation of man. God formed his body from the dust of the ground, breathed his soul into his body, which caused him to become alive. Man was created with a limited intelligence which is directly connected to God’s infinite intelligence. This fact accounts for the reasons that men possess some simple true idea, such as "infinite" and "nothing", for which he has an extremely limited understanding. Note that the Word relates that God’s breath flowed into man. The spirit of man was created as a flowing duality directly connected to an Infinite Duality.
     Man was created in innocence. Man possessed direct communication with God, and since there was no alternative, he considered this condition to be perfectly natural. Man did not need to know everything. Man could simple ask God about anything that he did not know.
     Six days of creation and on the seventh God rested. These days denote the subjective time of God’s duality. Since God is eternal, objective time is not that important to him. Objective time was created for man’s use. Of course, in the eternal sense, all of God’s creations were for His own pleasure as Revelation 4:11 points out.
     While God, in subjective time, concentrated on His Days of creation, billions of years of objective time passed. Thus, the universe is 15 billion years old from man’s point of view. From God’s point of view, the universe has passed through six Days of His subjective time.
     The sixth Day of Creation continues until now. God is still in the process of recreating man. God continues to recreate man from his fallen state through the work of Christ on man’s behalf. The seventh Day of rest for God and man has not yet arrived.
     Consider again the arguments of the evolutionists that life evolved in a consciousless universe. Their theory asserts that before life evolved, subjective time did not exist but objective time did. Consider one of the implications of their theory. By what standard was objective time measured?
     Some people have been cryogenic frozen in order to be resurrected at some time in the future. No doubt, at whatever time they are thawed and resurrected, they will report no awareness of any passage of time between their deaths and their resurrections. For them, that time would be a kind of "consciousless gap."
     Now consider again a consciousless universe. The entire time of existence of such a universe would consist of a "consciousless gap," even should it last for trillions of years. No matter how long it may exist, its "consciousless gap" would cause such a universe to go out of existence as soon as it came into existence. It would only be equal to a virtual particle. In other words, its existence would be equal to its nonexistence. Such is the same condition of all unknown objects. If there is an object in our universe which will never be known to exist, then it might just as well have never existed. For these reasons, all consciousless universes can be but completely irrelevant to the existence of life.
     Yet, evolutionists claim that our universe was a consciousless universe until life evolved. If they are right, then Linde’s theory of the chaotic inflation of our universe must be the correct one. Our universe had to have existed in a "consciousless gap" before life emerged. Our universe must have super-inflated in less that a moment until the exact moment that life emerged to begin to make it real.
     Linde’s theory seems to indicate that life could not have evolved slowly, but that it suddenly came into existence as if it were created. Otherwise, the "consciousless gap" is our universe would have caused its existence to be equal to its nonexistence, which allows no time for evolution.
    In addition, this theory asserts that this inflation occurred in 10 to minus 34 seconds. Does not his claim seem to accord with the Genesis account of instantaneous creation? This theory also avers that our universe inflated from an initial chaos. Does this assertion not accord with Genesis 1:2 which states: "And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," which constitutes a perfect description of chaos? It would seem as if even the best theories of scientists compel them to admit to an instantaneous creation of our universe which also, because of a "consciousless gap" must have also resulted in an instantaneous creation of life.