The Political History
The war between good and evil that lies within history reveals itself in every aspect of human life including politics. Satan constantly works through all political systems to try to crush goodness out of the world and thus overthrow the balance that God has maintained between good and evil which ensures that His Love will receive a fair test in history. God uses various methods to prevent Satan from gaining control over and using political systems for evil purposes.
From time to time, Satan has raised great empires bent on gaining control over the whole world, but also for the hidden purpose of getting control over God's people so that he can eventually convert them to evil or destroy them outright. The first such recorded empire was Babylon which conquered Judea around 600 B.C. and deported most of the wealthy and middle class Jews to Babylon. God allowed this to happen because much of Judea had given itself to idol worship which God must punish in order to correct. Idol worship and pride are the two most dangerous weapons that Satan uses to try to crush goodness completely. The Babylonians left the poorer classes in Judea because they thought their influence in the world was insignificant. Since many of God's people have always been among the poorer classes, God saved many of His people from slavery in this way. Some of God's people were deported, but God ensured their protection by gaining control over the mind of the king, Nebuchadnezzar. In Daniel, chapters one through four, the Bible records the methods which God used to gain control over the mind of Nebuchadnezzar which caused him to recognize the Jewish God as the only true God, and issue a decree that would ensure the protection of God's people. Satan had made his political move, but God countered with His own move which protected His people and preserved the balance between good and evil.
After Nebuchadnezzar, the fifth chapter of Daniel records that God continued His protection of His people by using a method that scared king Belshazzar out of his wits. God used the hand that wrote on the wall to proclaim the doom of Babylon to king Belshazzar. That very night, God punished Babylon by allowing the Medes and Persians to conquer it. The fear that God had instilled into Belshazzar no doubt spread to his followers and thus to his army and caused the downfall of Babylon.
Chapter six of Daniel records that king Darius was, for the most part, a fairminded man who only wanted to use the most talented men to rule over Babylon. Thus, king Darius selected Daniel because of his great intellect and leadership talents to be the head of his puppet government. In addition, Darius had no doubt learned the story of how God had instilled such great fear in Belshazzar and the part that Daniel had played in the downfall of Babylon. Yet, Satan influenced certain of the princes of the Persians to trick king Darius into issuing a decree that no one could petition any god or man but king Darius for thirty days and all who disobeyed should be cast into a den of lions. These princes knew that Daniel would disobey this decree and pray to God, and so they caught him so doing and delivered him to the king to be cast into the den of lions. King Darius could not get around the rule of law that the princes insisted on upholding, and so the king had Daniel cast into the den of lions. But Darius displayed his faith in Daniel's God by assuring him that God would protect him. God did indeed perform a great miracle and protected Daniel from the lions. King Darius then issued a decree to the whole empire that all men should fear the God of Daniel. The plot devised by the princes to destroy Daniel was meant to cause despair among God's people; a loss of faith that would eventually cause God's people to become absorbed into idol worship. Satan was behind this political plot to crush goodness out of God's world. God countered Satan's move by protecting Daniel from the lions, instilling faith in king Darius and thus maintaing His balance between good and evil.
The seventh chapter of Daniel returns to a prophecy that Daniel revealed to king Belshazzar about the four great empires that Satan would use in his attempts to crush all goodness completely out of the world, prevent God's trial of His Love, eliminate all of God's influence from the world, and bring all of mankind into enslavement. Throughout the rest of the book of Daniel, here and there he prophesied that these four empires would be destroyed, and that God would succeed in the future in bringing His suffering Messiah into the world to complete the trial of His Love, and that at some time in the far future this same Messiah will destroy Satan's beast who will be the leader of Satan's armies that will fight against God, and that this Messiah will then establish God's Kingdom in the world. The history of the world from the time of Daniel has certainly borne out his prophecies. Four great empires have arisen and fallen, and the suffering Messiah has come and completed the trial of God's Love, and His gospel has been preached to the world so that all who will believe will be saved. History down to the present day demonstrates God's awesome miracles; that mighty empires have failed to crush goodness out of the world, and that God has used a small and humble people to preserve His Word and to complete the trial of His Love which is the salvation of all who will believe. God has also succeeded in restoring His Jewish people to their own land just as His Word has prophesied even after being scattered over the whole world for two thousand years and terribly persecuted. Considering the further miracles of how God has preserved Israel through the 1948 war, and all of its other wars with a hoard of enemies striving mightily to destroy it, one wonders how anyone can doubt that the future prophecies of Daniel that the Messiah will come again to destroy Satan's evil armies, will not be fulfilled.
The book of Esther records a change in the Devil's tactics that he uses even now in his attempts to destroy the people of God. Satan invented a new false combination employing an unreasoned hatred for God's people simply for being the people of God. This was the beginning of all forms of ethnic, racial and religious bigotry. The history of the world does not seem to record any of this kind of hatred before this time.
King Ahasuerus promoted one of his princes named Haman, who was a very prideful man, to a higher position in his kingdom. But one of the king's advisors, a Jew named Mordecai, would not bow to him. This hurt the pride of Haman and engendered a great hatred in him for Modecai, and by extention, to all Jews. His hatred caused Haman to lie to king Ahasureus in that he accused the Jews of disobeying the laws of the land and of thus being in a state of rebellion against the king. Haman convinced the king that he should issue a decree that all of the Jews in the kingdom should be destroyed on a certain date. Satan had worked through Haman to intoduce a new horrible false combination into the world called genocide. But God was ahead of Satan and had already positioned a courageous Jewish lady named Esther, as one of the king's queens, to thwart the evil plans of Haman and bring about his destruction instead of her people's. Haman was the first of the Anti-Semites, who should more accurately be called the Anti-Judahites, who would plague the Jewish people throughout the rest of their history. Yet throughout history, God has proven to be more than able to counter Satan's evil plans to destroy God's people, both Jews and Christians.
Read Daniel 2: 21-22
Direct and indirect persecution of the Jews continued throughout the Greek and Roman empires. One of the Greek rulers of the Jews, Antiochus Epiphanes, sacrificed a sow on the altar of the Jewish temple. Satan inspired him to do this in order to cause despair among the Jews in that they would wonder why God would allow such an abomination to happen. Satan hoped that this despair would cause a complete loss of faith in God and prevent the coming of the Messiah and the test of God's Love. Satan's plan failed when the Jews simply cleansed the temple and renewed their worship of God.
The Roman persecution of the Jews culminated in their war against the Jewish rebellion in 70 A.D. The Romans went too far with their force and violence when they slaughtered most of the Jews, destroyed their temple, and forced the rest to be scattered over the whole world. God had prophesied in the Old Testament in several places that the Jews would be so scattered, but God had also prophesied that one day He would regather His earthly people and recreate their nation which His Word had even prophesied would be called Israel. Satan counted on the scattered Jews eventually losing their faith and thus making the future nation of Israel impossible. This would thwart the will of God and finally cause the world to belong entirely to Satan. But many of the Jews miraculously clung to their faith even through two thousand years of the Diaspora. Actually, God had protected the Jews by allowing them to be scattered over the world. Most of the Jews became good and productive citizens of whatever communities that they joined. This caused the good and fair-minded people of these communities to provide protection for the Jews against the Anti-Semites who sought to destroy them. Sometimes however this protection failed, and the Jews became the victims of pogroms and inquisitions inflicted upon them by the Anti-Semites who had infiltrated both the governments and religion. Despite all this, God miraculously fulfilled His prophecy and reestablished the nation of Israel in 1948.
In 1933, the Anti-Semites gained control over a whole country, Germany. These Nazis then proceeded to attempt to destroy the entire population of Jews living in Europe. They endeavored through waging war to gain control of the whole world and destroy all of the Jews everywhere. The Nazis waged war against most of the other European countries and wherever their armies found Jews, they killed them. But even under such horrible conditions, there were some good and fair-minded people in each of these countries, even in Germany itself, who tried to save small groups of Jews from destruction. The good and fair-minded free people of the world also united in a mighty force called the Allies who defeated the Nazi war machine and saved the Jews who were left in Europe. Because of the guilt felt by the good people of Europe and America that they had failed to stop the Nazis before they got started, Britain and America determined that they would ensure that the Jews would regain their ancient homeland in Palestine. God brought the Nazis to defeat, and He made sure, by bringing guilt on good people, that Israel would be reestablished as a nation in 1948.
God also proved, through Hitler's foolish actions, that evil always possesses the seeds of its own destruction. At that time, Germany had the very best scientists and engineers in the world. Given time, Germany could have produced greatly advanced weapons that would have ensured that Germany could have conquered the world fairly easily. Germany could have raced ahead of the naive Allies who only wanted peace at any cost, and produced all of these advanced weapons before the Allies could have even gotten started on them. All of this raises the question: Why did not Hitler simply wait until he had these weapons before he started the war? Had Hitler waited until he had these weapons, including atomic bombs and long-range missiles and airplanes to deliver them, he could have fairly quickly conquered the world and saved the lives of millions of his own soldiers in the process. Instead, he went to war far too soon and unnecessarily sacrificed the lives of his soldiers for limited gains. Hitler also made the great mistake of going to war with Russia before he had conquered Britain. During the war, Hitler made many egregious blunders including refusing to allow whole armies to retreat when they were surrounded and cut off from supplies, such as at Stalingrad. In fact, Russian leaders had plans to assassinate Hitler by using certain of their secret agents in Germany, but they decided not to do so because they rightly concluded that Hitler had more value to them alive than dead.
All of this evidence points to the fact that deep within the psyche of evil men, they know that they are evil. This deep knowledge of their own evil causes them to be obsessed with death and destruction, of themselves and everyone around them. Their inner ability to construct false combinations causes a sense of worthlessness and emptiness within themselves which acts out to cause cruelty and destruction. This shows that all men secretly know that false combinations only produce nothingness. Yet, instead of humbly turning to God to plead for a cure for their sin, evil men, like Lucifer, adopt a terrible pride which causes them to believe that they can rid themselves of God's Goodness. In a kind of vicious cycle, their sin feeds their pride, which in turn, feeds their sin. This condition constitutes the mystery of evil which not even God can understand.
Near the end of the war, Hitler ordered that the entire infrastructure of Germany should be destroyed. An obedience to such an order would have left Germany completely destitute, and the people had better sense than to obey it. Hitler's reason for this order was that since Germany had failed him, then Germany deserved only destruction. This order revealed only a terrible pride and a will for utter destruction. This evidence points to the fact that Hitler never really loved Germany. Hitler actually loved only horror and destruction, of himself and his people.
The history of WWII in many ways corresponds with the history in the Bible. Bible history records that God used many methods to combat evil and maintain the balance between good and evil. For instance, I Kings chapter 22 records that God caused one evil force to go to war with another evil force. This tactic not only destroyed evil, but also spared the lives of many good people who did not have to fight. In this same history, God used lies to persuade the evil forces to fight each other. God possesses the ability to use false combinations, such as war and lies, to combat other false combinations in order to create good combinations that produce a desired result which is the destruction of evil. God used these same tactics in WWII when He caused one evil force, the Nazis, to fight against another evil force, the Communists, in order to destroy evil in such a way as also to protect the lives of millions of good people. God also inspired the Allies to invent various ingenious lies that hastened the destruction of the evil forces. Because of His great Love, God holds the power to change false combinations into good combinations. Read Proverbs 10: 12.
All of this proves that God has used extraordinary measures throughout the political history of the world to protect goodness from being completely destroyed by evil. Had God not done so, evil would have long ago completely overwhelmed goodness because of the inherent innocence within limited goodness. Limited cleverness beats limited innocence every time. God wins over evil because He possesses an infinite and omnipotent Love and Innocence which cannot be overwhelmed. God possesses an absolute cleverness which gives Him the power to change evil to good. Nevertheless, God has allowed evil to remain in history in order to maintain a balance between good and evil so that those who freely choose to put their faith in God's Goodness as displayed in the cross of Christ will prove beyond all doubt that God's Love holds the greatest value that can ever possibly exist.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
THE GOOD versus THE EVIL chapter 4
The Record of the Test
Read: Proverbs 8: 36 II Timothy 3:16 Hebrews 11:6 (KJB)
God recorded the test of His Love and free will in His Word as inspired by the Holy Spirit. As such, this record has to be inerrant and infallible. In the English language, the King James Bible has proven itself to be the most accurate translation from the Masoretic Text, which is the original Word of God. All other English versions have been, to some extent, based on perversions, and therefore cannot be the inerrant Word of God. Even though many enemies of God have tried mightily through the ages to destroy the Word of God, God has preserved and protected His Word in English through His inspired translation of His Word into the King James Bible. All other versions of the English Bible are but additional attempts by the forces of evil to attempt to destroy the Word of God slowly over time.
God chose a particular race of people to write and to preserve His Word and to bring His Messiah into the world for the salvation of mankind. God did not directly explain either to Abraham or to Moses why He chose the Hebrew people to write and preserve His Word, and He did not explain to King David why He chose the tribe of Judah to bring His Messiah into the world. Moses did tell the Hebrews that God chose them because He loved them, but then God loves all people, and so this could be no special reason why God chose the Hebrews. The Hebrews do seem to be a people who are especially faithful to their traditions, and so many of them have diligently taught each generation the Word of God exactly as it was revealed to Moses and the prophets.
Several distinct and consistent themes run through the entire Word of God. The first and most important theme reveals that God promised to test His Love by sending a Messiah, a Savior who would be God in human form, and who would in Love sacrifice Himself to save humanity from being destroyed by original sin. Many examples of this theme occur directly and indirectly throughout the Old Testament. In Genesis 3:21, the Bible relates that God shed the blood of an animal and clothed Adam and Eve in its skin, demonstrating that God will protect humans by shedding blood and clothing them. Genesis 4:1-5 reveals that God commanded that a blood sacrifice must be offered in worship to God in order for a person to gain God's favor. In Genesis, chapter 22, God spared Isaac by substituting a ram for Abraham to sacrifice, which was an illustrative prophecy of the vicarious suffering of Christ. King David wrote about the sacrifice of the Messiah in Psalm 22, and the prophet Isaiah wrote about Him in Isaiah 53. Other examples could be given, but the consistent theme is that God Himself would come to earth and sacrifice Himself in man's place in order to save him from destruction by the sin within him. God would also rise from the dead to justify and to give eternal life to all who would believe in His Love and His Power to save them. Through the sacrifice of His Son, God would pass the test of His Love, and thereby dispell any possible doubt that might adhere to any of His future creations. In this way, God made any future possible rebellions impossible. All of God's future creations would know beyond all doubt that God's Love will do whatever is necessary to save His creations from all effects of false combinations connected to the destructive effects of absolute nothingness. God took the destructive effects of absolute nothingness upon Himself on a cruel cross and not only survived the sin and death, but actually conquered them. God's Love passed its greatest possible test.
Read Revelation 21:1-8
By passing its greatest possible test, God proved that Love can never be destroyed and that it always prevails and can never fail. Had God not so proved His Love, then a hint of doubt about His Power to prevail over evil would have infected all of His future creations. Evil can only be defined as false and uncreative combinations of God's Ideas, which in turn connects to absolute nothingness. All of God's intelligent creations possess access to limited copies of God's Infinite Ideas which also connects them to free will. Had God not proven the absolute Power of His Love, then a hint of uncertainty would have haunted all of His creations making them secretly wonder if God would eventually be destroyed by evil. Evil constitutes a kind of filthiness within God's creations. By passing the test of His Love, God accomplished the justification to recreate His universe and all of His creatures with a complete cleansing of all evil. God will completely purge all evil from all of His future creations, and will thoroughly destroy it by burning it forever in a lake of fire. All of this means that evil and absolute nothingness can never diminish God's Infinite Ideas in the least. God survived and conquered all of the worst effects of evil when He rose from the dead.
In order to ensure that His test would be fair, God determined to maintain a balance between good and evil throughout the history of mankind. God's Word reflects this balance. The Bible offers no proof of God's existence, but simply begins with an assumption of His existence. God could allow no religious, scientific or historical proof of His existence since any such proof would invalidate His test because it would give mankind no choice but to believe. A forced love always remains in doubt, but love freely given removes all doubt. Those who freely choose by faith to love God hold no doubt that God has all Power over evil. At times, they may sinfully doubt but in their faith they cannot doubt because their faith has been given to them by God. Just as God would never allow a proof of His existence, He also would never allow a proof of His nonexistence. Such a proof would cause despair among mankind. God has determined to maintain a balance between belief and unbelief in His fallen race. This balance would ensure that free will would be preserved, and that the great value of God's Love would be forever proved in its Almighty Power by the free choices of His believers to receive His grace through faith.
God's Word records that God used various methods to maintain this balance throughout history. For instance, whenever evil became so strong that it threatened to overwhelm the faithful and crush goodness out of the world, then God would act to destroy evil so completely that the balance would be restored. God sending the great flood and the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are two such examples. God would also sometimes allow foreign powers to gain control over His people when they were backslidden in order to discipline them and cause them to repent and return to living in accord with their faith. God allowed Babylon to defeat Judea and control the Jews for 70 years. Those who repented were mostly the same as those who returned to rebuild the temple and reestablish the nation. But God would not allow His people to be destroyed as the story of the defeat of Haman in the book of Esther records. God's Word indicates that God never had a problem dealing with sin in the lives of His believers. Two such examples involved His discipline of the backslidden Samson and king David which effectively caused their repentence and return to obedience to Him. God never removes faith from His believers, but He can and will correct their sinful ways. God's wrath was deeply stirred against idol worship among His people because this sin indicated that evil was causing widespread unbelief which threatened to crush goodness out of God's world. God often used very powerful methods to combat this sin. God's Word and history itself demonstrate that God has succeeded in preserving this balance between good and evil right down to the present day.
Satan, being the god of this world, is the evil force behind all attempts to overwhelm goodness and destroy God's people. Satan believes that if he can obliterate goodness from the world, he will cause God's love to fail and then the world will belong solely to him. But God has successfully countered every move of Satan to destroy goodness and eliminate God's Love from the world. God's balance between goodness and evil still holds to this day. While at times, evil seems to be on the verge of taking control of the world, and at other times, goodness seems to be holding evil at bay; nevertheless, the balance always returns. God maintains the balance because He has determined that His Love will have a fair test.
If God had not preserved the miracle of this balance, evil would have completely crushed goodness a long time ago. Good people tend to be innocent. Evil people tend to be very cunning and clever. Clever and cunning beats innocence every time. Without God's balance, evil would now control the world.
God also uses a psychological factor to maintain the balance between good and evil. Evil carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Evil adheres to false combinations connected to absolute nothingness. This means evil equals the idea of nothing since all false combinations reduce to nothing. But this use of the idea of nothing also indirectly indicates a deeper nothingness; that is, an absolute nothingness, a nonexistence. God can only know the Infinite Being of Infinite Ideas. God knows absolutely nothing about nonexistence. Yet, in some mysterious way that even God cannot understand, absolute nothingness seems to hold some strange magnetic power within itself to attract those toward it who learn about false combinations. When Lucifer invented false combinations, a terrible vanity, an emptiness, entered into him which caused an obsession within him to rebel against God even though he had to know deep within himself that this would result in his own destruction. Even in order to enhance this strange obsession, Lucifer invented other false combinations such as: "excessive pleasure" and "excessive excitement." He did this in order to cause a kind of fall through bliss toward self-destruction. Satan invented other false combinations to deceive those who might realize that they were being drawn to self-destruction. Satan invented such false combinations as "excessive self-righteousness" and "idols" to redirect man's worship away from God and toward false combinations that they falsely believe will save them from self-destruction. Satan also invented false political and scientific systems to mislead some away from faith and worship of God. Even so, deep within all who adhere to false combinations lies a subconscious awareness that they are being powerfully drawn toward self-destruction and absolute nothingness. This deep feeling is that which the existentialists call "angst" or "dread" or "nausea." They refuse to realize the truth because they are infected with that same terrible obsession and pride that caused the downfall of Lucifer. But God possesses the power to cause some to awaken from their hypnotic obsession and return to the Truth.
The only remedy for such pride and obsession is the grace of God displayed in the Love of Christ through His sacrifice, death and resurrection. Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross to wash away the sin of man with His own blood. In His death and burial, Jesus literally descended toward absolute nothingness in order to take man's sin away. Jesus rose from the dead to prove that His Love holds all power over sin and death; that is, over all false combinations and absolute nothingness. Christ can give His own eternal life to all who will abandon their obsession with self-destruction, and who will trust in Him as their only source of salvation.
Those obsessesd with self-destruction falsely believe that they can attain the nonexistence for which they so yearn. They can achieve self-destruction but not nonexistence. God's Infinite Ideas and all of His creations based on these Ideas can never disolve into absolute nothingness. Nonexistence can never diminish an Infinite Being in the least. Lucifer, in his self-deceptive pride, put his faith in the false power of false combinations to disolve at least some of God's Ideas into absolute nothingness. Lucifer falsely believed that if he could use false combinations to reduce some of God's Infinite Ideas, which is the Word of God which is God Himself, to absolute nothingness, then he could begin the destruction of God. God can only be Infinite. Should He ever become less than Infinite, He would cease to exist. Lucifer counted on reducing God's Infinite Being. This is what his temptation of Christ was all about. Lucifer could certainly achieve self-destruction, but not the nonexistence for which he subconsciously yearned. Satan has made himself into a false combination of God's Ideas. The false combination can be destroyed, but not God's Ideas. God can subject Satan, as a false combination, to a perpetual destruction in a lake of fire in order to nullify his ability to concoct false combinations. In this way, God can recreate a false combination and turn it into a good and useful combination that neutralizes sin in His universe. Also, God can never destroy Satan's consciousness which is based on one of God's Ideas, since to do so would mean that God would have to destroy a part of His Word which is Himself.
Read II Peter 3:13 Revelation 21:5
God will succeed in recreating a new heaven and earth, and a new mankind completely purged of all obsession with self-destruction and of all false combinations. God means to cleanse His universe of all of the filthiness of sin and "make all things new." God will use a form of destruction called "the lake of fire" in order to nullify all sin and obsession with self-destruction. God can nullify false combinations, but He can never nullify His own creations, all of which are based on His Infinite Ideas. God will recover all elements of His creations and use them in new useful creations, and all left-over false combinations, such as Satan, will be turned into good and useful combinations.
Romans 5: 12-21 Romans 7: 13-25
Since the garden of Eden, the mind of man has been divided into two wills; the will to live and the will to self-destruction. The will to live stems from the knowledge of the good, and the secret will to self-destruction stems from the knowledge of the evil. The knowledge of the good causes man to invent good systems that improve the quality of life. The knowledge of the evil causes man to engage in false systems already invented by Satan that tend to destroy life. One possible interpretation of the Word of God could call this helpless obsession with evil: "original sin."
Apparently, when man disobeyed God in the garden of Eden; a terrible emptiness which is an indirect awareness of absolute nothingness that hides behind the idea of nothing, entered the very being of man as it had Lucifer when he invented false combinations. At once, Adam and Eve realized that something had gone wrong within themselves, and so in shame for their marred condition, they tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves. The knowledge of false combinations carries with it an indirect awareness that the nothingness inherent in false combinations hides a nonexistence, or absolute nothingness, that one has never before encountered. This knowledge then becomes ineluctably fixed in the mind, and as such, a part of one's being. This knowledge, which no one can shake off, then causes a terrible feeling of shame and emptiness. One secretly feels that one has become worthless and worthy only of destruction. However, Satan makes this self-destruction more palatable by combining it with excessive pride and pleasure. Nevertheless, this feeling has become an obsession with self-destruction.
This obsession manifests itself in various ways in the history of mankind. Many people practice false combinations connected to self-destruction such as "excessive pleasure" and "excessive excitement." Those who are addicted to illicit sex, drugs, gambling, thievery, gossip or any other sin, fall into this category. Even people who try to be good occasionally fall into such sins. Because the will to live usually overpowers the desire to kill oneself outright, sinners use the slow method which provides them at least some excessive pleasure and excitement on their way to self-destruction. Some of these sinners do eventually kill themselves because, over time, they find that the pleasures and excitement become muted, and the feelings of emptiness and worthlessness become more pronounced. Most of the others die from ruined health. In any case, one can conclude that those who practice these lifestyles must know, deep within themselves, that they possess a secret will for self-destruction.
Read I Peter 3:18 John 16:7-11 I John 1:7
The only cure for sin and the will to self-destruction is the sacrifice of Christ; His death, burial and resurrection. God loves mankind and He does not want man to practice self-destruction. Jesus came to earth from heaven to save man from his sin and self-destruction. This is the gospel of God. When a person hears or reads the gospel, then the Holy Spirit visits that person and makes him or her keenly aware that sin has become a part of their being, and they cannot get rid of it on their own, and that it will eventually destroy them. They learn that Christ, in His compassion, has already taken their sin and self-destruction on Himself on the cross, that He has suffered in their place, and that He rose from the dead to justify them, to give them His own eternal life, and victory over self-destruction. They learn that Jesus' blood that He shed on the cross can wash away all of their sin, and that the Spirit of Christ can enter their cleansed hearts to justify them and give them eternal life. They learn that the only way that they can escape from sin and self-destruction is through the power of the salvation that Christ has already provided for them.
Read John 12:32 John 6:37 John 10:14 Revelation 22: 17
When a person hears or reads the gospel and comes under the conviction of the Holy Spirit that the Word is true, then that person can choose to repent of their sins and accept the gospel by faith, or they can reject it and remain in their sins. God has given them free will. God has provided His written gospel to be read, and God has sent His preachers to preach it to the people in order to separate the believers from the unbelievers. Christ is the good shepherd who knows His sheep. Because of God's foreknowledge, many unbelievers claim that God never gave them a free choice since He always knew the choice they would make. They are quite wrong to make this charge against God. God will bring every one who reads or hears the gospel to a moment of decision. Of their own free will they can accept or reject the gospel. If they sincerely repent and accept the gospel by faith, then their salvation has been absolutely guaranteed by the Word of God. Read John 6:37. The guarantee that God will accept them as one of His sheep is also the guarantee that they possessed the free will to accept it by faith. They cannot charge God with rejecting them by His foreknowledge because God has guaranted their acceptance if they only choose to believe. If they reject the gospel, they cannot object that they did so, and blame God for it because He knew from eternity who His sheep are. They cannot blame God because they had only to choose to accept Christ by faith and God has already guaranteed that He knew them as His sheep from all eternity. God has given everyone free will and those who choose to reject Christ can never charge God with rejecting them by His foreknowledge because God can always point to their moment of decision and indicate that had they only chosen to accept Christ by faith, then God would have been obligated to accept them from eternity because of the guarantee of His Word.
Read: Proverbs 8: 36 II Timothy 3:16 Hebrews 11:6 (KJB)
God recorded the test of His Love and free will in His Word as inspired by the Holy Spirit. As such, this record has to be inerrant and infallible. In the English language, the King James Bible has proven itself to be the most accurate translation from the Masoretic Text, which is the original Word of God. All other English versions have been, to some extent, based on perversions, and therefore cannot be the inerrant Word of God. Even though many enemies of God have tried mightily through the ages to destroy the Word of God, God has preserved and protected His Word in English through His inspired translation of His Word into the King James Bible. All other versions of the English Bible are but additional attempts by the forces of evil to attempt to destroy the Word of God slowly over time.
God chose a particular race of people to write and to preserve His Word and to bring His Messiah into the world for the salvation of mankind. God did not directly explain either to Abraham or to Moses why He chose the Hebrew people to write and preserve His Word, and He did not explain to King David why He chose the tribe of Judah to bring His Messiah into the world. Moses did tell the Hebrews that God chose them because He loved them, but then God loves all people, and so this could be no special reason why God chose the Hebrews. The Hebrews do seem to be a people who are especially faithful to their traditions, and so many of them have diligently taught each generation the Word of God exactly as it was revealed to Moses and the prophets.
Several distinct and consistent themes run through the entire Word of God. The first and most important theme reveals that God promised to test His Love by sending a Messiah, a Savior who would be God in human form, and who would in Love sacrifice Himself to save humanity from being destroyed by original sin. Many examples of this theme occur directly and indirectly throughout the Old Testament. In Genesis 3:21, the Bible relates that God shed the blood of an animal and clothed Adam and Eve in its skin, demonstrating that God will protect humans by shedding blood and clothing them. Genesis 4:1-5 reveals that God commanded that a blood sacrifice must be offered in worship to God in order for a person to gain God's favor. In Genesis, chapter 22, God spared Isaac by substituting a ram for Abraham to sacrifice, which was an illustrative prophecy of the vicarious suffering of Christ. King David wrote about the sacrifice of the Messiah in Psalm 22, and the prophet Isaiah wrote about Him in Isaiah 53. Other examples could be given, but the consistent theme is that God Himself would come to earth and sacrifice Himself in man's place in order to save him from destruction by the sin within him. God would also rise from the dead to justify and to give eternal life to all who would believe in His Love and His Power to save them. Through the sacrifice of His Son, God would pass the test of His Love, and thereby dispell any possible doubt that might adhere to any of His future creations. In this way, God made any future possible rebellions impossible. All of God's future creations would know beyond all doubt that God's Love will do whatever is necessary to save His creations from all effects of false combinations connected to the destructive effects of absolute nothingness. God took the destructive effects of absolute nothingness upon Himself on a cruel cross and not only survived the sin and death, but actually conquered them. God's Love passed its greatest possible test.
Read Revelation 21:1-8
By passing its greatest possible test, God proved that Love can never be destroyed and that it always prevails and can never fail. Had God not so proved His Love, then a hint of doubt about His Power to prevail over evil would have infected all of His future creations. Evil can only be defined as false and uncreative combinations of God's Ideas, which in turn connects to absolute nothingness. All of God's intelligent creations possess access to limited copies of God's Infinite Ideas which also connects them to free will. Had God not proven the absolute Power of His Love, then a hint of uncertainty would have haunted all of His creations making them secretly wonder if God would eventually be destroyed by evil. Evil constitutes a kind of filthiness within God's creations. By passing the test of His Love, God accomplished the justification to recreate His universe and all of His creatures with a complete cleansing of all evil. God will completely purge all evil from all of His future creations, and will thoroughly destroy it by burning it forever in a lake of fire. All of this means that evil and absolute nothingness can never diminish God's Infinite Ideas in the least. God survived and conquered all of the worst effects of evil when He rose from the dead.
In order to ensure that His test would be fair, God determined to maintain a balance between good and evil throughout the history of mankind. God's Word reflects this balance. The Bible offers no proof of God's existence, but simply begins with an assumption of His existence. God could allow no religious, scientific or historical proof of His existence since any such proof would invalidate His test because it would give mankind no choice but to believe. A forced love always remains in doubt, but love freely given removes all doubt. Those who freely choose by faith to love God hold no doubt that God has all Power over evil. At times, they may sinfully doubt but in their faith they cannot doubt because their faith has been given to them by God. Just as God would never allow a proof of His existence, He also would never allow a proof of His nonexistence. Such a proof would cause despair among mankind. God has determined to maintain a balance between belief and unbelief in His fallen race. This balance would ensure that free will would be preserved, and that the great value of God's Love would be forever proved in its Almighty Power by the free choices of His believers to receive His grace through faith.
God's Word records that God used various methods to maintain this balance throughout history. For instance, whenever evil became so strong that it threatened to overwhelm the faithful and crush goodness out of the world, then God would act to destroy evil so completely that the balance would be restored. God sending the great flood and the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are two such examples. God would also sometimes allow foreign powers to gain control over His people when they were backslidden in order to discipline them and cause them to repent and return to living in accord with their faith. God allowed Babylon to defeat Judea and control the Jews for 70 years. Those who repented were mostly the same as those who returned to rebuild the temple and reestablish the nation. But God would not allow His people to be destroyed as the story of the defeat of Haman in the book of Esther records. God's Word indicates that God never had a problem dealing with sin in the lives of His believers. Two such examples involved His discipline of the backslidden Samson and king David which effectively caused their repentence and return to obedience to Him. God never removes faith from His believers, but He can and will correct their sinful ways. God's wrath was deeply stirred against idol worship among His people because this sin indicated that evil was causing widespread unbelief which threatened to crush goodness out of God's world. God often used very powerful methods to combat this sin. God's Word and history itself demonstrate that God has succeeded in preserving this balance between good and evil right down to the present day.
Satan, being the god of this world, is the evil force behind all attempts to overwhelm goodness and destroy God's people. Satan believes that if he can obliterate goodness from the world, he will cause God's love to fail and then the world will belong solely to him. But God has successfully countered every move of Satan to destroy goodness and eliminate God's Love from the world. God's balance between goodness and evil still holds to this day. While at times, evil seems to be on the verge of taking control of the world, and at other times, goodness seems to be holding evil at bay; nevertheless, the balance always returns. God maintains the balance because He has determined that His Love will have a fair test.
If God had not preserved the miracle of this balance, evil would have completely crushed goodness a long time ago. Good people tend to be innocent. Evil people tend to be very cunning and clever. Clever and cunning beats innocence every time. Without God's balance, evil would now control the world.
God also uses a psychological factor to maintain the balance between good and evil. Evil carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Evil adheres to false combinations connected to absolute nothingness. This means evil equals the idea of nothing since all false combinations reduce to nothing. But this use of the idea of nothing also indirectly indicates a deeper nothingness; that is, an absolute nothingness, a nonexistence. God can only know the Infinite Being of Infinite Ideas. God knows absolutely nothing about nonexistence. Yet, in some mysterious way that even God cannot understand, absolute nothingness seems to hold some strange magnetic power within itself to attract those toward it who learn about false combinations. When Lucifer invented false combinations, a terrible vanity, an emptiness, entered into him which caused an obsession within him to rebel against God even though he had to know deep within himself that this would result in his own destruction. Even in order to enhance this strange obsession, Lucifer invented other false combinations such as: "excessive pleasure" and "excessive excitement." He did this in order to cause a kind of fall through bliss toward self-destruction. Satan invented other false combinations to deceive those who might realize that they were being drawn to self-destruction. Satan invented such false combinations as "excessive self-righteousness" and "idols" to redirect man's worship away from God and toward false combinations that they falsely believe will save them from self-destruction. Satan also invented false political and scientific systems to mislead some away from faith and worship of God. Even so, deep within all who adhere to false combinations lies a subconscious awareness that they are being powerfully drawn toward self-destruction and absolute nothingness. This deep feeling is that which the existentialists call "angst" or "dread" or "nausea." They refuse to realize the truth because they are infected with that same terrible obsession and pride that caused the downfall of Lucifer. But God possesses the power to cause some to awaken from their hypnotic obsession and return to the Truth.
The only remedy for such pride and obsession is the grace of God displayed in the Love of Christ through His sacrifice, death and resurrection. Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross to wash away the sin of man with His own blood. In His death and burial, Jesus literally descended toward absolute nothingness in order to take man's sin away. Jesus rose from the dead to prove that His Love holds all power over sin and death; that is, over all false combinations and absolute nothingness. Christ can give His own eternal life to all who will abandon their obsession with self-destruction, and who will trust in Him as their only source of salvation.
Those obsessesd with self-destruction falsely believe that they can attain the nonexistence for which they so yearn. They can achieve self-destruction but not nonexistence. God's Infinite Ideas and all of His creations based on these Ideas can never disolve into absolute nothingness. Nonexistence can never diminish an Infinite Being in the least. Lucifer, in his self-deceptive pride, put his faith in the false power of false combinations to disolve at least some of God's Ideas into absolute nothingness. Lucifer falsely believed that if he could use false combinations to reduce some of God's Infinite Ideas, which is the Word of God which is God Himself, to absolute nothingness, then he could begin the destruction of God. God can only be Infinite. Should He ever become less than Infinite, He would cease to exist. Lucifer counted on reducing God's Infinite Being. This is what his temptation of Christ was all about. Lucifer could certainly achieve self-destruction, but not the nonexistence for which he subconsciously yearned. Satan has made himself into a false combination of God's Ideas. The false combination can be destroyed, but not God's Ideas. God can subject Satan, as a false combination, to a perpetual destruction in a lake of fire in order to nullify his ability to concoct false combinations. In this way, God can recreate a false combination and turn it into a good and useful combination that neutralizes sin in His universe. Also, God can never destroy Satan's consciousness which is based on one of God's Ideas, since to do so would mean that God would have to destroy a part of His Word which is Himself.
Read II Peter 3:13 Revelation 21:5
God will succeed in recreating a new heaven and earth, and a new mankind completely purged of all obsession with self-destruction and of all false combinations. God means to cleanse His universe of all of the filthiness of sin and "make all things new." God will use a form of destruction called "the lake of fire" in order to nullify all sin and obsession with self-destruction. God can nullify false combinations, but He can never nullify His own creations, all of which are based on His Infinite Ideas. God will recover all elements of His creations and use them in new useful creations, and all left-over false combinations, such as Satan, will be turned into good and useful combinations.
Romans 5: 12-21 Romans 7: 13-25
Since the garden of Eden, the mind of man has been divided into two wills; the will to live and the will to self-destruction. The will to live stems from the knowledge of the good, and the secret will to self-destruction stems from the knowledge of the evil. The knowledge of the good causes man to invent good systems that improve the quality of life. The knowledge of the evil causes man to engage in false systems already invented by Satan that tend to destroy life. One possible interpretation of the Word of God could call this helpless obsession with evil: "original sin."
Apparently, when man disobeyed God in the garden of Eden; a terrible emptiness which is an indirect awareness of absolute nothingness that hides behind the idea of nothing, entered the very being of man as it had Lucifer when he invented false combinations. At once, Adam and Eve realized that something had gone wrong within themselves, and so in shame for their marred condition, they tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves. The knowledge of false combinations carries with it an indirect awareness that the nothingness inherent in false combinations hides a nonexistence, or absolute nothingness, that one has never before encountered. This knowledge then becomes ineluctably fixed in the mind, and as such, a part of one's being. This knowledge, which no one can shake off, then causes a terrible feeling of shame and emptiness. One secretly feels that one has become worthless and worthy only of destruction. However, Satan makes this self-destruction more palatable by combining it with excessive pride and pleasure. Nevertheless, this feeling has become an obsession with self-destruction.
This obsession manifests itself in various ways in the history of mankind. Many people practice false combinations connected to self-destruction such as "excessive pleasure" and "excessive excitement." Those who are addicted to illicit sex, drugs, gambling, thievery, gossip or any other sin, fall into this category. Even people who try to be good occasionally fall into such sins. Because the will to live usually overpowers the desire to kill oneself outright, sinners use the slow method which provides them at least some excessive pleasure and excitement on their way to self-destruction. Some of these sinners do eventually kill themselves because, over time, they find that the pleasures and excitement become muted, and the feelings of emptiness and worthlessness become more pronounced. Most of the others die from ruined health. In any case, one can conclude that those who practice these lifestyles must know, deep within themselves, that they possess a secret will for self-destruction.
Read I Peter 3:18 John 16:7-11 I John 1:7
The only cure for sin and the will to self-destruction is the sacrifice of Christ; His death, burial and resurrection. God loves mankind and He does not want man to practice self-destruction. Jesus came to earth from heaven to save man from his sin and self-destruction. This is the gospel of God. When a person hears or reads the gospel, then the Holy Spirit visits that person and makes him or her keenly aware that sin has become a part of their being, and they cannot get rid of it on their own, and that it will eventually destroy them. They learn that Christ, in His compassion, has already taken their sin and self-destruction on Himself on the cross, that He has suffered in their place, and that He rose from the dead to justify them, to give them His own eternal life, and victory over self-destruction. They learn that Jesus' blood that He shed on the cross can wash away all of their sin, and that the Spirit of Christ can enter their cleansed hearts to justify them and give them eternal life. They learn that the only way that they can escape from sin and self-destruction is through the power of the salvation that Christ has already provided for them.
Read John 12:32 John 6:37 John 10:14 Revelation 22: 17
When a person hears or reads the gospel and comes under the conviction of the Holy Spirit that the Word is true, then that person can choose to repent of their sins and accept the gospel by faith, or they can reject it and remain in their sins. God has given them free will. God has provided His written gospel to be read, and God has sent His preachers to preach it to the people in order to separate the believers from the unbelievers. Christ is the good shepherd who knows His sheep. Because of God's foreknowledge, many unbelievers claim that God never gave them a free choice since He always knew the choice they would make. They are quite wrong to make this charge against God. God will bring every one who reads or hears the gospel to a moment of decision. Of their own free will they can accept or reject the gospel. If they sincerely repent and accept the gospel by faith, then their salvation has been absolutely guaranteed by the Word of God. Read John 6:37. The guarantee that God will accept them as one of His sheep is also the guarantee that they possessed the free will to accept it by faith. They cannot charge God with rejecting them by His foreknowledge because God has guaranted their acceptance if they only choose to believe. If they reject the gospel, they cannot object that they did so, and blame God for it because He knew from eternity who His sheep are. They cannot blame God because they had only to choose to accept Christ by faith and God has already guaranteed that He knew them as His sheep from all eternity. God has given everyone free will and those who choose to reject Christ can never charge God with rejecting them by His foreknowledge because God can always point to their moment of decision and indicate that had they only chosen to accept Christ by faith, then God would have been obligated to accept them from eternity because of the guarantee of His Word.
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