The World and the Word

                                           The Wheat and the Chaff

God addressed most of the Old Testament to Israelites who faithfully practiced Moses' religion. God promised a lesser form of salvation to all who loved His law and tried to obey it. Some Old Testament characters God saved by His higher form of salvation called grace because they demonstrated some faith in a coming Messiah who would suffer for them. But their souls and spirits had to wait in Paradise for a New Testament revelation of Jesus who came to them and preached the gospel to them so that their salvation by grace could be completed, and they could be resurrected to rise to heaven with Jesus. Psalm 37:27-29; Psalm 50:23; I Peter 4:6; Psalm 1:1-6; Matthew 27:52-53.

In Psalm 1:1-3, God used a metaphor and a prophecy to describe the blessed, recreated life on His recreated earth of all those who love His law and try to practice it. In the end of the world when God resurrects and recreates the good lives of all humans still in their graves, He will provide a special, higher form of His lesser salvation for all Israelites who were faithful to Moses' religion. They will enjoy a special standing as citizens of the recreated nation of Israel with Jerusalem as the capitol of the world. The lowest form of salvation will be that of the recreated Gentiles who will live in the rest of the recreated earth. Isaiah 66:10-24; Revelation 21:1-5.

In Psalm 1:4-6, the word "ungodly" has to mean that which is totally evil. That which is not godly can have no goodness whatsoever within it because it has to be the exact opposite of goodness. Every human possesses a righteous part of their being and an ungodly part which is the same as spiritual death. God likens the spiritual death in humans to chaff which He will purge from the wheat which He likens to the righteous life of humans that He put into them. Nahum 1:10.

Psalm 1:5-6 constitutes a prophecy about the final Judgment when God will separate all of the righteous lives of all humans still in their graves for Him to recreate from all of their spiritual deaths for Him to cast into the lake of fire. Every individual human has both chaff and wheat in his being. Some may have more chaff than wheat and others more wheat than chaff, but God will separate and recover for recreation all of the wheat in all humans in the end of the world and purge them of all their chaff for Him to burn. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 22:11-12; Revelation 20:11-15; Zephaniah 3:8-20; Malachi 4:1; Exodus 29:14; Genesis 8:20-21; Psalm 21:8-11; Psalm 22:26-27; Psalm 37:9-11; Psalm 37:20-23; Psalm 50:23; Psalm 65:2-3; Psalm 68:18; Psalm 100:5; Psalm 90:3; Psalm 104:35; Psalm 115:16-17; Psalm 36:6; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 119:119; Psalm 138:8; Psalm 145:8-14; Psalm 150:6; Proverbs 10:12; Proverbs 15:24; Proverbs 16:4; Revelation 4:11; Romans 11:36; Proverbs 16:17; Proverbs 24:12; Revelation 22:11-12; Proverbs 28:18; Proverbs 21:21; Proverbs 24:20; Ecclesiastes 12:14; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Isaiah 5:24; Isaiah 6:6-7; Isaiah 22:14; Isaiah 26:12; Isaiah 30:27-28; Isaiah 45:21-24; Isaiah 40:12-31; Isaiah 66:15-24; Ezekiel 18:4-9; Ezekiel 21:25-29; Ezekiel 24:12-13; Ezekiel 45:15; Daniel 12:2; Daniel 7:9-10; Hosea 13:14; II Timothy 1:10; Joel 2:28-29; Nahum 1:10; I John 3:8; I Corinthians 15:22; I Timothy 4:10; John 12:47-48.

The World and the Word

                     The Wheat and the Chaff

God further illustrated the dual nature of every human in Moses' speech to the Israelites as recorded in Deuteronomy 30:11-20. Moses told the Israelites that God had come to them and had given them His law to make clear to their consciousnesses the exact righteousness that God required of them. But Moses also told them that they could only recognize God's righteousness by the "Word of God" that was already in their hearts. In other words, God gave them His written law in order to elicit a greater desire to obey Him that would come from their good and living souls and spirits that God had given them when He created them.

Moses set before them the life and goodness and the death and evil that already existed in the hearts of every one of them. They remained free to choose which side of their dual natures that they would adhere to.

Moses commanded them to obey God's law from the good desire of their living hearts that God had created in His image. Moses promised them that if they would obey God and practice the religion that He gave them, then God would bless them and give them the land that He had promised them. God will resurrect all Israelites who faithfully practiced Moses' religion and recreate them to inhabit the promised land and rule the earth forever. Genesis 1:27; Genesis 17:6-8; I Chronicles 28:8; Isaiah 66:15-24.

Moses also warned God's people that if they chose to adhere to the evil side of their natures, then God would not allow them to inherit the promised land when He resurrected them. Moses told them that if they chose evil, then they would "perish." Moses meant by this word that one day in a general resurrection God will dissolve their systems in order to separate and recover their living souls and spirits from their spiritual deaths. Moses further informed them that God would "prolong their days" on the earth but not in the promised land. In other words, God will resurrect their living souls and spirits and recreate them, but He will demote them to life among the resurrected Gentiles.

God created every human in His image, and that can only mean that every human has some of the life of God in him. Genesis 1:27. If any human existed who did not have this life of God in him, then he would be totally demonic and could do no good whatsoever. But since even the worst humans have done some good, then this fact demonstrates that even the most evil humans still possess a greatly diminished living soul and spirit given to them by God. Luke 20:38; Luke 17:21.

The World and the Word

                         The Wheat and the Chaff

The Bible (KJB) further illustrates the dual nature of man in the story related in Numbers 16:1-50. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with 250 other men, rebelled against Moses and Aaron in their attempts to become priests. They actually rebelled against God because He had established Aaron and his descendants to be the priests of the Israeli people.

These rebels represented the spiritual death that exists in the being of every human which can cause them to rebel against God. God gave Moses a test by fire to separate these evil men from God's people. This test by fire symbolized the burnt offerings by which God will separate the good nature of every human not saved by grace from their evil natures. I Corinthians 3:11-15.

God threatened to consume the entire congregation by fire, but in Numbers 16:22, Moses and Aaron reminded God that He had given a good spirit to every one in the congregation. God had inspired Moses and Aaron to pray this truth, so He was actually reminding Himself. God wanted Moses and Aaron to learn the truth that He had put into their prayer.

God then ordered Moses and Aaron to separate the congregation from the tents of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and the other 250 rebels. God consumed these rebels with fire and opened the earth to swallow them into Hell. God's fiery wrath in this event symbolizes the fact that in the end of the world He will separate the evil spiritual deaths of all humans within the regions of the dead from their good lives and cast their spiritual deaths into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:15; Revelation 20:5.

God then ordered Moses to tell Eleazar the priest to recover the brazen censers that had become hallowed to the Lord because they had put fire into them as God had commanded. Eleazer recovered these censers from the fire and used them to make plates for the altar of God. These censers symbolized God's use of His fiery wrath to separate the good spirits that He has put into every human within the regions of death from their spiritual deaths so that He can recreate these good humans to live on His recreated earth. God will recover and recreate even the diminished souls and spirits of all who rebel against Him. Revelation 21:1-5. When Jesus told the rebel Pharisees in Luke 17:21 that "the kingdom of God is within you," He referred to the small image of God within them that He would recover and recreate in the last judgment in the end of the world. II Timothy 4:1.

The next day, the whole congregation of Israel rebelled against Moses, Aaron, and God Himself. They blamed Moses for the deaths of the 250 rebels. This rebellion symbolized the fact that every human possesses an evil, spiritual death within them that can overcome their good souls and spirits and cause them to rebel against God.

God then appeared as a cloud over the tabernacle and told Moses and Aaron to get out of the way because He was going to consume the whole congregation with fire. But God directed His fiery wrath against the evil that had overcome the people, not against their living souls and spirits that He had put into them.

God demonstrated this fact when He inspired Moses to tell Aaron to take fire from the altar and burn incense in a censer and run among the people to make an atonement for them. God inspired Aaron to make a kind of burnt offering for the people to separate the living from the dead. The living and the dead subsists in every human who ever lived except Jesus who had no death within Him. God's living souls and spirits in all humans never permanently dies. Luke 20:38. God caused 14,700 of the congregation to die as a prophecy that He will separate the living from the dead in the end of the world. God will recover and recreate even the diminished souls and spirits of the 250 and the 14,700 rebels in His final Judgment in the end of the world. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5.

The World and the Word

                                                         The Wheat and the Chaff

God has created evil humans to possess diminished living souls and spirits which cannot repent while alive in the flesh. Romans 9:14-24. But even the worst humans do some good works which emerge from their small souls and spirits. Revelation 22:12. But even these small souls and spirits, with their small amounts of good works, will repent and believe in Christ while in the fires of Hell as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. When God recovers their small, living souls and spirits with all of their small amounts of good works for Him to recreate to live on His recreated earth, God will dissolve their systems so that they will lose their former identities and personalities which they wrongly considered to be their lives on the earth. John 12:25. The most evil person who ever lived was probably Judas Iscariot, but Jesus appealed to that small amount of goodness still left in him when Jesus called him "friend" in Matthew 26:50.

God's Word describes how He creates humans in Romans 9:14-24. God creates some humans with small souls and spirits with few good works to do in their lives. God creates other humans with strong souls and spirits who do a lot of good works in their lives. But He creates them all to do His will. II Peter 3:9. He also gives them all free will so that some who tend to adhere to evil will choose to repent and believe in Christ while still alive in the flesh. At the time they become saved by grace, God will give them the perfect righteousness of Christ Himself with additional good works for them to do. On the other hand, some whom God created with strong, living souls and spirits will never choose to accept Christ as their Savior while still alive in the flesh. Nevertheless, God will save every living soul and spirit that He created in His image, some by His grace and all others by the use of His consuming fire in the end of the world. John 5:24; I Corinthians 3:11-15; I Corinthians 15:22; John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 22:11-12; Ecclesiastes 3:14.

God must put His Love to the severest possible test. The Devil seeks to annul; that is, completely destroy at least one good soul and spirit that God created and loves. Job 1:8-12. God must allow Satan to persecute living humans to the fullest extent of his evil powers to prove that God can never lose any living human that He created in His image and whom He loves. I Corinthians 13:8; Ecclesiastes 3:14. Should God ever lose any of His good souls and spirits to the Devil, then all would be lost and humanity would become subject to a Ragnarok. God must put His Love to the severest test to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that His Love and creative powers can never fail.

Deliberate and willful sins of which a person never repents adheres to the spiritual death within the being of every human. Sins of the soul and spirit caused by a weakness in free will and the influence of evil will always repent and believe in God's power to cleanse and forgive based on the sacrifice, burial, and resurrection of His Son. God illustrated this fact in the story recorded in Numbers 15:22-26. When sin offerings and burnt offerings were made for the sins of "ignorance," which means weakness, then God forgave them. But God would "cut off" the person who willfully and deliberately sinned which meant God would send his living soul and spirit to one of the regions of the dead to await the judgment in the end of the world when God will use His fiery wrath to separate spiritual death from all living souls and spirits. Revelation 20:13. The man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath and refused to repent suffered this very sentence from God.

Adam and Eve sinned both in weakness and deliberately. Eve sinned in weakness when she ate the forbidden fruit, but she sinned deliberately when she gave the fruit to Adam because she selfishly desired to ruin him as well. Adam sinned in weakness when he ate the fruit so that he could fall to Eve's level to protect her, but he deliberately sinned when he ate the fruit so that he would not lose physical love with her. I Timothy 2:14. But God promised them a coming Savior, and when God made a sin offering for them by shedding the blood of an animal to make skins to cover them, Adam and Eve demonstrated their repentance and faith in the coming Savior by accepting God's sin offering for them. Genesis 3:15; Genesis 3:21. God saved Adam and Eve by His grace.

The Devil injected spiritual death, which is totally evil and foreign to humans, into Adam and Eve and all of their descendants when they sinned through weakness in their free will. Romans 5:12. The Devil seeks to use spiritual death to influence the soul and spirit of at least one human to sin to the extent that he annuls his spiritual life which God created and loves. But God will cause every living human to eventually repent and believe of their own free will through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, some through His grace and all others through the use of His consuming fire against evil. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14; I Corinthians 3:11-15. Once God has cleansed and forgiven the living souls and spirits of all humans of all their sins caused by the presence of foreign spiritual death within them, then He will be able to separate their living souls and spirits from their spiritual deaths which He will cast into the lake of fire forever. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Hebrews 2:9.

The World and the Word

                       The Wheat and the Chaff

The key to being cleansed of all sin and evil and being rescued from eternal spiritual death can only be repentance and faith that Christ has already done everything necessary to cleanse, forgive, and rescue one forever from the power of evil. Repentance is a part of faith because it means that one must turn away from one's sins and believe that only Christ can cleanse and forgive them. The good life of all humans saved by grace receives complete cleansing of all sin and evil by the shed blood of Christ and forgiveness the moment they repent and believe. They also receive daily cleansing and forgiveness of their fleshly sins by the water that Jesus shed on the cross as they repent every day. John 5:24; John 13:1-10. But God has also provided for a lesser form of salvation for all humans still in their graves when He returns them to the faith He put into their image of Him in them in a great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-15. No verse in the Bible (KJB) states that humans cannot be saved after physical death. In fact, Jesus taught that dead humans can be saved in John 11:25 and proved it by raising Lazarus from his grave. In the end of the world, Christ will raise all living humans from the regions of the dead. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; I Corinthians 15:22; Isaiah 22:14.

Humans cannot become totally evil because that is a state of absolute rebellion against God which can never repent or believe. If humans ever became totally evil, they would hate God and be totally demonic. The "blasphemy against the Holy Ghost" as recorded in Matthew 12:31-32 only bars one from salvation by grace, not from God's lesser form of salvation in the end of the world. Repentance and faith are good qualities that God puts into His image in every human. Romans 12:3.

When humans not saved by grace physically die, God must consign their good souls and spirits to one of the regions of death because filthy sins and evil still adhere to their goodness. Revelation 20:13; Hebrews 9:27. But God always directs His wrath as a fiery stream towards sin and evil itself, never toward living humans. I Corinthians 3:11-15. In the garden of Eden, God cursed Satan and evil itself, not the living souls and spirits of Adam and Eve or any of their living descendants. Genesis 3:14-21. All of the Old Testament burnt offering sacrifices symbolized Christ's descent into Hell where He left all of the sins and evil that He bore on the cross of all humans that He did not save by His grace behind there when He rose immaculate from the dead. Genesis 8:20-21. Based on Christ's descent into Hell to use His fiery wrath to separate all of the sins and evil from all living humans consigned there, God will cause all the living humans there to repent and believe of their own free will that only Christ can save them in a great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. God will resurrect all of these repentant, living humans as recorded in Revelation 20:5 for Him to recreate to live on His recreated earth. Revelation 21:1-5. God will forever consign their totally evil, spiritual deaths to the lake of fire which is His eternal wrath against evil. Revelation 20:15; Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:11-12.

God will recover and recreate all His living systems that have become soiled by sin caused by the presence of evil. Revelation 21:5; I Timothy 6:13; I Corinthians 15:22; Romans 8:18-23; Colossians 1:15-20; Romans 11:29; Romans 11:36; Ecclesiastes 3:14. All sin is evil but the difference between sins and evil is that God can cleanse and forgive sins upon repentance and faith, whereas God can never forgive evil because it never repents. All of God's salvation hinges on the goodness of repentance and faith. But God can also purge total evil, which is the same as spiritual death, from all living humans after He has cleansed and forgiven them of all their sins. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-15. God annuls the spiritual deaths of all humans saved by grace the moment they repent and believe. Galatians 2:19-20. God will purge the spiritual deaths from the lives of all humans within the regions of death after their repentance and faith by the use of His fiery wrath towards evil itself, never towards living humans whom He created and loves. Revelation 5:11-14; John 11:25; I Corinthians 3:11-15; II Peter 3:9; Hebrews 12:26-29; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:8; Isaiah 66:22-24.

Some people surrender their lives to the spiritual death within them and commit terrible acts of cruelty toward their fellow humans. Most of these evil humans never repent and believe to be saved by grace. But should one of these evil humans ever resort to the good qualities of repentance and faith that God has put into their diminished living souls and spirits, then their evil acts will become sins that Christ can cleanse and forgive. Repentance and faith turn evil into sin. This type of conversion happened to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. Acts 9:1-6.

The World and the Word

                                                         The Wheat and the Chaff

Every human has a dual nature. God created man in His own image; that is, with some of His attributes such as love and faith. Genesis 1:27; Romans 12:3. Whatever God creates lasts forever. He can never lose anything He has ever created. Ecclesiastes 3:14. God warned Adam and Eve that if they sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, they would become subject to spiritual death. Genesis 2:7. As soon as Adam and Eve disobeyed God, Satan took advantage of that weakness and injected spiritual death into the beings of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:7. To become aware of one's physical and spiritual nakedness before God is to become aware of one's physical and spiritual death. Since every human has inherited spiritual death from Adam and Eve, then every human possesses a dual nature; that is, a good life created in God's image which can never die and a spiritual death which is foreign to humans. Luke 20:38; Genesis 3:20; Romans 5:12.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God because He had given them free will which allowed them to choose whatever they desired. Satan desires to overthrow and murder God and take His place. Isaiah 14:12-14. Satan believed that God had made a huge mistake when He gave free will to Adam and Eve, and if God can make mistakes then He cannot be Almighty which caused Satan to believe that he could find a way to murder God. John 8:44. Satan believed that by injecting spiritual death into humans which causes them to sin, he could eventually annul the spiritual life of at least one human that God created and loves, and thereby prove that God's Love can fail. Satan believed that if God can fail, then Satan would eventually find a way to murder Him. Job 1:6-12; Job 2:1-10; I Corinthians 13:8.

Job represents the fate of all humans. Job had freely chosen to strictly adhere to the good life that God had put into him, and so God had judged him to be as perfect as a sinful person can be. Job 1:8. When Satan told God that he would cause Job "to curse God and die," Satan meant that he would annul Job's spiritual life and cause him to become as totally evil as Satan is. But God had put a faith in Job that could not fail, and God has put His faith in every human that cannot fail no matter how evil they may become. Romans 12:3. But human faith would have failed and God would have lost humans to evil and spiritual death forever if He had not come to earth Himself to suffer that evil and spiritual death in man's place. II Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 2:9. Job realized that his faith could not fail when God revealed to him that he had a Redeemer in Job 19:25-27.

God allowed Satan to attempt to directly murder Him when the sin and evil of mankind nailed Jesus to a cross in 31 A.D. I Corinthians 13:8. But Christ's Love proved to be triumphant over evil and spiritual death when He rose from the dead to rescue all humans from spiritual death. Hebrews 2:9-14; I Timothy 4:10; I Timothy 6:13; II Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:26; I Corinthians 15:22; Luke 20:38; John 11:25; John 12:47. God has to save all humans because He can never lose anything that He has ever created and loves. Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8.

Sin causes spiritual death which is totally evil, and spiritual death, in turn, causes sin. It is a vicious cycle. Romans 5:12. The evil part of human nature continuously influences the good image of God in human nature, and because of free will, causes it to sin. Humans possess no power whatsoever to cleanse themselves of the filthiness of this vicious cycle. This condition makes the good lives of humans subject to eternal spiritual death. But because of His Almighty Love, Christ possesses the power to rescue all humans from sin and spiritual death by suffering their sins and spiritual deaths in their place. Christ also gained complete victory over all sin and evil by His resurrection from the dead in order to liberate all humans from the sin that causes spiritual death and from the eternal spiritual death that causes sin. Hebrews 2:9; II Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:26; II Corinthians 5:21; I Corinthians 15:22; Revelation 20:14; Revelation 22:11-12.

The Illusion of Illusion

 Illusion cannot be a distortion or a diminution of reality because every abstract idea and every outer impression on consciousness always comprises real ideas and impressions. False ideas and impressions do not exist except as they result from false theories or systems. For example, ether in space does not exist because its idea resulted from a false theory. All systems, whether true or false, always comprise real ideas or impressions.

Consciousness can only be aware of immediate real ideas and impressions. False ideas can only come into consciousness from false systems. Immediate ideas and impressions are never false. But combinations of real ideas or impressions can be false.

All illusions derive from false systems which always comprise true ideas and impressions. People have illusions for the same reason that they make mistakes in arithmetic. For example, one can write 2+3=6. But the "2," the "+," the "3," the "equal sign," and the "6" are all real. The illusion cannot be in the immediate ideas in consciousness, but resides in an emptiness in the mind. Subtract all of the realities from this false system, and one is left with only nothing.

The same can be said of false systems such as optical illusions. For example, a straight spoon in a glass of water may appear bent. But all of the constituent impressions of this false system are real. "Spoon," "glass," "water," "light," and "bent" are all real. The way the light reflects off the water causes the straight spoon to appear bent. Yet, all aspects of this false system can only be real. The illusion cannot be in the real impressions, but in an emptiness in the mind. Subtract all of the real impressions from this false system, and one is left with only the idea of nothing.

But the idea of nothing itself cannot be equal to an illusion. The reason for this is that the idea of nothing happens to be as real to the mind as any other idea or impression. The idea of nothing has been proven to be as useful to consciousness as any other idea or impression. The idea of nothing separates something from nothing as space between objects or as ideas in the mind. The idea of nothing can be used to exclude any ideas that do not belong in any true system that one intends to create. One knows that ether does not exist because one equates this false idea with the idea of nothingness.

What then is illusion? If it cannot be found in reality, then where is it? The only possible answer is that illusion has to be less than nothing. Negative numbers somewhat indicate illusion. But no one knows what negative numbers are. They seem to indicate a realm of nonexistence that lies below the idea of nothing. The Bible informs about this realm of nonexistence in Isaiah 40:17.

God created only positive and real ideas and impressions to be used only to create real and useful systems. God created man in His image for this same purpose. Genesis 1:27. Nevertheless, in some strange and inexplicable way that positive consciousness cannot begin to understand, a negative consciousness from this realm of nonexistence became a part of every human's inner being to influence every human consciousness to invent false systems called sin which always comprise God's real and useful ideas. II Thessalonians 2:7. But some false systems are not sinful. People observe the effects of an optical illusion or make mistakes in arithmetic for the same reason that they experience excessive but destructive pleasures derived from invented, sinful systems. Illusion, mistakes, and sin derive from a negative consciousness injected into the inner being of every human by a negative consciousness called Satan. Genesis 2:17; Psalm 99:8,

One may object that the illusion in this optical illusion adheres to the fact that the straight spoon only appears to be bent. The "bent" itself is not real. But this conclusion amounts to another way of saying that the spoon is really not bent. In turn, this amounts to a conclusion that the "bent" in the spoon really equals nothing. But since the real and useful idea of nothing cannot be an illusion, then this idea must indicate an absolute nothingness in the mind. Since consciousness can never directly observe or experience this absolute nothingness in the mind, then consciousness must cover this absolute nothingness with a substituted, real idea such as a bent spoon which really equals nothing. Similarly, humans invent false systems called sin, which always comprise God's useful and real ideas, in order to be destructive instead of creative. Destruction always descends toward absolute nothingness. Consciousness always directly experiences the real and useful, but the absolute emptiness within its being influences it to invent false systems. Isaiah 40:17; Psalm 99:8.