Part IVb, The Lord vs. Satan: SupCtHeaven;

Now to Father's Other Reasons for the pre-Trib Rapture besides Precedence, and the Truths which these Reasons, display. It's a cardinal rule of hermeneutics that you "compare Scripture with Scripture." What matters is Doctrinal Fit. Rapture is a contested doctrine, by those who've not yet examined the Bible's proof of it. Proof would not be acceptable only from citing the many relevant verses -- which some think contestable -- but even more importantly, one must demonstrate the underlying Doctrinal Fit of pre-Trib Rapture, with respect to all the rest of Bible Doctrine. So accounting for the Doctrinal Fit of a pre-Trib Rapture becomes paramount, whether you believe in it or not. If you don't believe in it, then the Fit has to be explained away. If you do believe in it, you don't understand what you believe, absent seeing the Fit. More, if there is a Fit, then you can compare pan-Bible with many more verses, accounting for that Fit. After all, truth must be consistent with all other Truth. Accordingly, what Doctrinal Fit have we seen thus far? We observed how the CHARACTER of Precedence, forms the legal parameters of Church; and hence, the exigency of Rapture being pre-Trib. There are eight major types of Precedence, which here are mnemonically listed:

1. Archegos Association VOTING Precedence, especially with reference to Israel being the first-appointed Bride for Christ's other and earliest Kingship, 'kata-Melchizedek' -- which required VOTING for Him; that she also had to vote for Him as Son-of-David-Messiah was a separate issue, as Book of Hebrews painstakingly explains throughout. God likes dovetailing goals. She voted "no", but He voted "yes"; except He voted "yes" for Father to make a Replacement Bride for His kata-Melchizedek King-Priesthood; and through her, a kingdom for it. The Son-of-David title didn't require a Bride, as we saw in Part IVa, so Church is never Israel. So the Rapture's date is unpredictable, as it's impossible to foretell when Church VOTING ends. Moreover, just as Israel the first-appointed Bride and He the Groom had to vote "yes" or there could BE no Tribulation, Daniel 9:27 predicated on Dan9:26 completing: we as Bride must likewise finish voting "yes", or there can be no Tribulation. So Rapture must precede the Tribulation. Past is prologue, past is precedence, and future always depends on votes prior.

2. Bride-worthy Battle TESTIMONY Precedence too, due to the Archegos Association: battles His Body faced, must be Church Body's battles to become Bride, as well. Hence the Battlefield Royalty His Body won, defeating Satan, is to be inherited and shared out among His Body of Church. Idea of the Bride being fit, of sufficient dowry and station, to justify marriage. If Christ won His Royalty on the spiritual battlefield against Satan, then Church must be subject to the same terms and the same battle. Else she is not worthy for marriage. So the Rapture's date is unpredictable and must precede Tribulation, as it's impossible to guess when and even if Church's BATTLE TESTIMONY successfully ends. The Trib and all the OT heroes' resurrections would not 'play' if Satan wins, just as Heb11:40 explained: our testimony (Heb11:1, Greek) must complete, prior. Just as Rev4's ceremony demonstrates, He can open the Title Deed to Earth (signifying defeat of Satan), because Married: it's a wedding present, fulfilling Ps110. That's why we're that sea of glass in front of the throne when Rev4 opens. This is God's Side of the Angelic Trial, yet apart from it: God wants a FIT BRIDE for His Son, Trial or no Trial. So it's the NATURE of the Victory of His Son, which determines the NATURE of our being built into Fit Bride. The dowry and qualification are higher than for Israel, because we are Post-Cross. Again, all this was covered in Part III (on our characteristics and battling), and in the last half of Part IVa. We'll revisit the battling again in Parts IVc and d, the conflicts and destiny we face as we grow in Christ, how Satan tries to prevent the Wedding in Rev4.

3. Crown Crafting INVENTION Precedence. To accomplish His Victory, Christ Our Archegos first had to INVENT the Royal Spiritual Life; with it, He Battled and won His Crown, in His Own Body. So Father legated His Invention to us, which was His Own Betrothal Bride Price, paid on behalf of our Body battles as Church, to make us Bride-worthy. For recall from Hebrews 7-10, sketched out in Part II's #7, and Part III's twinned Third Reasons: Mosaic Law wasn't enough to save, so wasn't enough for Him to use and stay sinless on the Cross; so He invented a PERFECT THOUGHT LIFE out from Scripture, Matt4:4. New Testament is that Life, in writing, 1Cor2:16; we are mandated to learn and live it like He did, 2Pet3:18, Phili2:5-10, 2Cor2:14-15, 5:14-21, Heb4:12, 5:8-9,10:15-17,12:2. Learning and living on whole Bible in that Life, thus requires constant thought monitoring and thinking toward Father, just as it was for Him, 2Cor10:5 (see also Heb5:8-9's use of hupakoe). We saw the many unique Elements of this Life in Part III. It's light-years higher and harder than those under the Law could even imagine. They had nicely defined, cookie-cutter rules to follow, with which they habitually choked themselves. We have to INVENT our rules from His Thinking Principles and Reasonings, since we are Royal Priests in training to become RULERS, just as He was. Yikes. Sheep invent rules? Satan smacks his lips over this our situation, as you'll see in Part IVc. So the Rapture's date is unpredictable, as it's impossible to forecast when Church Crown Crafting INVENTION ends. As the Rulers must be fully developed and qualified else Christ cannot 'marry' us, Rapture also must precede the Tribulation, as we saw in the Archegos Association and Body Battle Precedences above. Notice how these Precedences are all causally-linked, interdependent. Just like a body.

4. Daniel Deadline BRIDGING Precedence. As we saw in Part IVa and in Mirroring.htm's elaborate explanation about how God Orchestrates Time: ever since Adam's Fall, time grants are contingent, so must be 'bridged' by an award to someone on earth whose spiritual development pleases God enough for Him to grant time. In Daniel 9, the award to the Temple was precedented and bounded by, David's spiritual growth awards. So the next person who had to become the Bridge to get the next (Millennial) grant, was Christ Himself: else Time would end. He got that grant, but due to her rejection of Him, Israel herself suddenly ran out of Allotted Time. So to save Time itself and Israel herself, Christ the Archegos had to invent a post-mortem 'Bride' He calls Church, then Battle to Pay for Her a much higher Bride Price, Eph5:25ff. Thus He could construct a Bridal Bridge back to Israel via Church (Vashti and Esther analogy). To this end, while still down here He had to Craft an even higher Royal Spiritual Life for a far Bigger Cross and hence Crown, than otherwise would have been 'due' as payment. Ergo: though His Victory was long predicted and in detail, only its deadline was provided in Daniel 9, and Church was not predicted at all. So there was no provision and hence no time, allotted it; its very EXISTENCE was a contingency which may never have come to pass. But Christ invoked it, Matt16:18, hence his Bride Price, Cross and Crown would all be higher. He won. So He successfully resurrected in a year not predicted, yet within that Daniel 9 deadline, in the week long predicted by Passover Law and exactly as the holiday portrayed. In retrospect, the year of His Death proved to be the convergence of all Time on David's 1000th anniversary of kingship retirement and the 1470th anniversary of the original Exodus, to the day: seven years in advance of the Daniel 9 deadline, which ended with the 1000th anniversary of David's death. So those other seven years short, played between 64-70AD.

   So Daniel 9:26c still characterizes all remaining history, just as God promised Daniel it would. But Now, Revelation elaborates on Daniel 9:26c and 9:27, so you know to interpret Revelation both paradigmally and then literally, for the actual Tribulation. An inserted elaboration, due to an inserted Church. Thus current historical events always 'advertise' Daniel 9:26c as our slot on the 'time map', to advertise Messiah both Came and LEFT The Building. So The BRIDGE Is Out. So Rapture is therefore tachú, next-in-sequence without prior warning, since Daniel 9:26c gives no warning for the Tribulation.

   So the Rapture's date is unpredictable and pre-Trib: we Church weren't 'in the cards', but were inserted into the game, Now being decked out for our wedding, thus constituting the Bridal BRIDGE back to Dan9:27, trumping Satan at our own last trumpet. [Our last trumpet is an ENDING trumpet ("last" as signalling an end, not "last" in the sense of its own sequence); it not the same type of trumpet nor blown by the same angel, as the allegedly-last trumpet in Revelation. Our trumpet is the Trumpet of God, commanded by and maybe also blown by an archangel, 1Thess4:16, 1Cor15:52. The allegedly-last trumpet in Revelation, is not even called the last trumpet, but rather a seventh angel blows one; it is blown by a lower-ranking angel, BEGINNING the last half of the Tribulation -- so that trumpet doesn't end anything, but begins something. So the trumpets are not the same at all. Rank has its privileges, and we are Royal Family of God; the angel blowing the seventh trumpet of judgement for the world is not an archangel, as the text will show (Rev 11:15, Greek). Different trumpets for different events and audiences, different endings for each, blown every time by a different angel, couldn't be plainer. Just as all verses with "save" aren't on the kind of "save" that saves you from hell, not all "trumpet" verses reference the same trumpet. Many kinds of saves, many kinds of doors, many kinds of trumpets.]

   Here we notice four imperative reasons for the Rapture to be pre-Trib and unpredictable:

   1. Israel ran out of time, so there's no time allotment to give Church.
   2. Israel and the world need a poster-boy advertisement that He came and left The Building. So The BRIDGE Is Out, come on board, get into the fortress before it's too late: and that bridging advertisement is Dan9:26c, attested by Dome and Wailing Wall.
   3. Israel and the world need the Tribulation to themselves, if they won't heed the milder advertisement, prior. God has to REMOVE believers in order to judge, principle of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, good and bad figs in Jeremiah. We have to be removed in order for the blessing of Judgement to 'play'. (The Seven Facets link sections of this Part IVb will demonstrate just how much blessing flows to the world because we are here.)
   4. God promised and Christ paid for, the yet-to-be-completed promise of Trib and Millennium. Just as previous Bible heroes -- most notably David -- were awarded Divine Time Blocs of 1050 years (1000+50 year voting period, as explained in Part IVa's Daniel timeline, Mirroring.htm), so also Christ purchased the Millennial time, with the 57-year initial 'bridge' remaining to the end of the 8th 490 from Adam +7 shortfall for His dying early, thus justifiably playing during Church. But that reserve ended when Church did not complete by 87 and then 94AD, as we saw in Part IVa. So both Trib and Millennium REMAIN reserved, pending Church's Bridge-Building conclusion. That time belongs to Israel, not Church. So the Rapture must be pre-Trib, no other time for it is possible.
   See, the Rapture is a warning, both to us and to them. It's not some drool-over Disneyland thing. You don't look forward to a hurricane, so you don't look forward to the Rapture, either. You respectfully fear it, and seek to grow up spiritually as fast as possible.

5. Elongating Exit RESURRECTION Precedence: Our Archegos Battled and won, so He came and left the Building, on Time; leaving to be Crowned, Luke 19; so leaving Church to be Banah'd (=built, used for Isha in Gen2:22), the Bridge to Time, with the same Battles and Crowning. The deadline? Not stated. For all future history depended on Christ RESURRECTING, since the Payment for Sins must be Living (theme of Romans 6): as God is Omniscient and forever sees those sins; as hell goes on forever; as we are forever short, and live forever. He's FirstFruits, the 'produce' of Day 7 of Passover, post-sundown, signifying renewal, setting up for Jubilee, depicted by Pentecost 50 days after that Passover ending. So the 57-day hiatus between Passover's beginning and Pentecost occurring -- and the added 57-day hiatus between Pentecost and 9 Ab, if Israel rejected -- signifies the outcome of RESURRECTION, the Ultimate Harvesting Renewal and Jubilee. That 50-year period always represented the "times of the Gentiles", the last 7 years being the Trib, see Luke 21:24 in context. Again, this is an advertisement the meanwhile, beginning most propitiously on Passover 70AD, the 40th anniversary of His Death; and ending, 9th Ab, with the destruction of the Temple -- because THE Temple, Messiah -- was RISEN. If you were truly a devout Jew you couldn't miss the numbers convergence, taught since the Exodus: because 57 years after the 1000th anniversary of David's death, the Millennium was originally scheduled to begin. They didn't know what year until David died, so they had 1000 years' advance notice on the originally-scheduled end of Time. We saw all that, in Part IVa.

   So Now what happened to Him, happens to Church, since we are His Body, a First Fruits Extension of Him in the world, James 1:18, Rom11:26, 1Cor15:20-23, 1Jn4:17. Our Exit is predicted, as was His. However, God will no longer predict when, since His Gracious 1000-year advance notice, was rejected; also, since His Own Death Year was provisioned, but not predicted, lest our free will be compromised. For it was His Own Life, to lay down. Consequently, the same issue applies to us. So the Rapture's date is unpredictable, as it's impossible to calculate when Church's Elongating Exit RESURRECTION should occur. "Exit Resurrection" is one of the Bible's terms for Rapture (Phili3:11), Greek word exanastasis. Another one is harpazw, 1Thess4:17, which in Latin uses the verb rapere ("rapiemur" in Vulgate), perfect tense rapto, Anglicized into "Rapture". So the Rapture must precede the Trib, for the same reason that the Harvest of First Fruits always did: again, see Luke21:24 in context, notice how Church is NOT mentioned, though obviously included. For Church is inserted, might not ever have existed: so the ORIGINAL Plan of Time, which didn't include any "Church", still holds. It's just Elongated, Extended. For Israel effectively Elongated Time by rejecting Him. Elongated, but didn't abrogate it or change its initial order. Christ fulfilled Time for all time, Heb10:14, hence as an Elongating Extension of Him, our Elongating Exit Resurrection effects the Original Goal of Our Archegos, completes the Bride-worthy Battle, Crowns us, meets the Daniel Deadline as Originally Intended. God sure likes dovetailing His Goals, huh.

   The Lord's Birth was a warning of the EXITING of Israel's favored status, as we saw in Part IVa: Isa7 prophecy and Daniel 9:26 tie together as a warning of the END. Israel had 1000 years' advance notice on that deadline. The larger doctrine underlying it is that believers must be removed prior to judgement, a precedent since Adam, covered in #17 of Part IVc. So Church must be REMOVED else the Tribulation cannot begin for that JUSTICE Reason, above all. Justice is CONSISTENT. Past is prologue, precedence, consistent. Time is thus elongated by Justice Judging, so that those undergoing the judgement can change their minds and BELIEVE. Judgement is always a blessing. It just hurts, that's all: we need it to hurt, in order to hear. So one "J", "Jesus", and the "J" of "Judgement" He received on behalf of our sins, leads to another "J", Justice Hurting so we get the Justice we need in order to Hear to have yet another "H", the "Heaven" of living with THE "H", "Him". Forever. God sure likes dovetailing His Alpha/Aleph +Beta/Beth Goals, huh.

6. Flipping Failure into FULFILLMENT Precedence. We've observed since Part II, that God doesn't number anyone's days until a failure has occurred. The angels had an indeterminate time in a wholly-harmonial state (whether or not all of them sinned, as explained in Part II). So did man. After each such harmonious period ended, days became numbered as an endpoint was required, suntelew/kalah fulfillment principle in Daniel 9:24. So, every failure of angels and mankind to 'obey' whatever covenant was granted, resulted in a new covenant being invented which threaded forward the 'unanswered' provisions rejected by the prior group. One-third of the angels rejected God, and their rulership passed on to those who did not reject Him. Man was created for yet another reason, to play out the rejection arguments. So man got a rulership, which covenant he broke, received a replacement covenant, broke that too, so kept on receiving ever-more-sophisticated and higher covenants. So it became harder and harder to live the spiritual life, but the benefits became more and more royal. Until, the Man, Christ -- Who had the worst spiritual task of all, and invented the highest spiritual life of all. Notice too, that during all these upgrades in covenants, the provisions of each succeeding covenant are OPPOSITE in key ways, to those which obtained prior. Man's failure, for example, resulted in him having to be born, rather than created as an adult; no knowledge at birth, rather than mature adult knowledge; no knowledge of God, having to work (versus a life of fruit-eating ease in Garden), etc.

   So Our Royal Spiritual Life is opposite Israel in nearly every respect, as we saw in Part II's "Covenant Properties" link section, and the "Bridal Contract" link section's pink table in Part IVa (LvS4aContinued.htm). Our Archegos had to invent a higher spiritual life than the Mosaic Law, to be Crowned. So as Bride, our Battle to be Crowned must have the same Characteristics, which is why we are Royally Invisible, disparate, Crafting Our Own Rules from His Thinking, the Bible. Hence, one of the oppositenesses, regards that Daniel Deadline: the Jews had 1000 years' advance notice on Messiah's Birth and Death deadline, framed by David's dates. So Church is opposite, has no notice, since we Elongate, Build the Bridge, as part of our Crafting job to be Bride-worthy and get Crowned. It's also sudden-death if we fail, just as it was for Christ; Time would have ended had He not succeeded; same is true for us, Heb11:40. So no time guarantee can be granted us, because HE got none. So the Rapture's date is unpredictable, as Church's FULFILLMENT has no time set: for God doesn't begin to number days and hence set time, until failure occurs. And for us, it's sudden death if failure occurs. So we might FAIL rather than FULFILL, just as He could have. Thus our covenant deliberately omits any Time Allotment, i.e., 1Jn2:28, 3:2, Phili 3:11. [Greek of those verses is clear, English is terrible. John uses ean+subjunctive, proving it's a contingency; Paul uses ei pws, ="if by whatever means", again showing contingency; see also Rom11:14, same contingency construction with same Greek; parallel to Rom11:14 is 1Cor9:22, which shows there is no doubt, but the WAY in which it happens is contingent. So Paul's not doubting his resurrection, either, in Phili3:11. Helps to do one's homework, huh. By contrast, the 2nd Advent has NO contingency element, it's long been predicted to come at the end of the Tribulation, viz., in Zech 14:1-7. By contrast, Rapture is contingent, could have come during John's or Paul's day, just as they show by using those Greek constructions.]

7. God's Grace GRAFTING Precedence: This precedence is the most important one. God is Love. God uses His Sovereignty to express Love. All other Attributes but Sovereignty are 'passive', and so He CHOOSES to Love, is never constrained or forced in any way to use His Attributes as He does. That He chooses to commit, to make covenants, doesn't impair or hamper Him, as He can always choose to abrogate them, destroy us all ab initio, and we'd never know to protest. So we exist only because He CHOOSES to Love. This is the primordial Precedence: God loves, because He wants to. That is a voting. Love is and obviously should be, always contingent on Sovereignty choosing to Love. So in effect, life always is dependent on His Choice. That Choice can always reverse, for God is Free. The common silly speculation about whether God would be God afterwards if He ever sinned -- trying to claim God cannot sin, thus unwittingly blaspheming His Omnipotence and Sovereignty -- is answered by the fact God never wants to sin. So paradoxically, the greatest guarantee a believer can have is to know God chooses him, and is never conditioned, forced or constrained to do so owing to any Attribute, promise or creature merit (or demerit). Hence the Rapture's date is unpredictable, because God flat wants it to be. Father DETERMINES the Body of Church -- and everyone else, for that matter -- per Love Contracts He Sovereignly chooses to enforce. So it's impossible to predict the Rapture's date, as His Choice about when to deliver on those contracts, John 17:20-21, is open-ended by Christ's and Father's CHOICE. The number of yet-future souls is unknowable. [Bible verses which seem to say God cannot do something are generally mistranslated. For example, James 1:13 doesn't say God cannot be tempted, but that temptation doesn't affect him. That's quite different, saying that the power of TEMPTATION is not enough (Greek adjective apeirastos); sadly, that meaning is reversed in translation, making God look something less than Omnipotent. Same for Heb6:18: to say it's impossible for God to lie is not quite what the Greek says. It's impossible that those two immutable things BE lies by God. The Greek doesn't denude God of His Power. Translations do.]

   God's Grace GRAFTING is the Precedent of Precedence. There would be no Archegos to Wed, absent His Vote to do so. No Vote to do so, if no Choice to do so. So no Bride to develop, whether Israel or us, absent His Grace Choice that it be so. No Battle to win, no Crown to receive, had He not Voted for it, Himself. The Daniel 9 Deadline came from GOD's (not a human king's) Decree in Jer25:11, which Daniel was reading in Daniel 9:2; that decree in turn was Graciously dated from 586BC and predicated on six time grants given David, three at 490 years, and three at 1000 years (see "David" links in Mirroring.htm for details). Without those Grants, there would have been no 2nd Temple, no rebuilt Jerusalem, and no Christ to become Archegos, to have a Battle, to have a Bride, to be Crowned, to have a Deadline, to Elongate Time, to Fulfill the Failure since Adam's Fall, thus making Him the Last Adam Who Never Fails. So He can make an open-ended contract with Father in His Humanity, even as the contract to BECOME Humanity, 1Tim2:5, was ratified by Him as Son of God, before even angels existed (no verb in 1Tim2:5, tells you that). So it's wholly consistent with HIS Choosing, that Choosing, Voting, Testimony, Invention, Bridging, Elongating Resurrection Fulfillment -- or Failure -- should determine outcomes. God chooses to Love. Hence we can too, 1Jn4:19. So the Rapture being unpredictable, based on Voting Testimony Invention Bridging Elongating Resurrection Fulfillment -- or Failure -- is determinative. By God's Gracious, Choosing-Love Decree, John 17:20-21, Eph1; James 5:7-9, 1Thess 4:17 and Phili3:11, Heb11:40, Jude 21&24, 2Pet3:4, 8-10, 1Jn2:28, 1Jn3:2. [Jude closely parallels 2Pet3, and may be much later than I supposed in PopeMyth.htm and Part IVa, given the mention of apostles in the past tense in Jude 17: wow, no apostolic succession, baby: just read and remember what they said -- this, said by the logical next head, the Lord's own brother. John's exile might have brought about the letter, Revelation not yet being penned? Ask God about this, research it more.]

   It's a BALANCING thing, this GRAFTING. Body balancing is the theme of this webpage. For a quick video review of the GRAFTING God does, play my Youtube video:

8. Heaven's Historical "Harpazw" MISTRIAL Precedence. The Angelic Appeal Trial is essentially founded on a Mistrial claim by Satan during his own rebellion Trial which predated mankind; you know of that prehistoric rebellion, from God's restatement of it in Isa14:13-14 and Ezekiel 28:12 (suddenly bypassing the human rulers and talking straight to Satan himself). Satan's accusing God of rape, Greek verb "harpazw" in 1Thess 4:17. Essentially, Satan claims God "snatched" (=harpazw) what didn't belong to Him, and claims Himself right to do so. Thus creation is raped by God, claims Satan, so God's not Loving. Latin for "rape" is rapere, perfect form "rapto", from which we get the English, "Rapture". See how apt the "Rapture" is? See how it's not a la-la thing?

   You know Satan's objection as a Mistrial claim, from many other Bible verses and especially from fake holy books, but you can see it plainly enough even in translation, in Job 1:9-11, 2:4-5. Satan accuses God of Bribing Job, a fatal misuse of Justice. That accusation remains, viz., Zech 3. So God's Grace GRAFTING Precedence is itself really on Trial, here. God Himself is accused of being a rapist, or at least being arbitrary in His Love; and of being therefore UnLoving, to punish anyone who freely chooses not to love Him in return. Thus God is argued to be less-than-advertised, a liar, manipulating the evidence to make Himself look right. Accordingly in this phase of the Trial, legally the Rapture must precede the Tribulation, as Church is NEW Evidence introduced DURING the Trial. Is God manipulating Evidence, since who but God could know what FUTURE souls were paid for on the Cross? For when Israel rejected Christ, that should have provoked a Mistrial Verdict -- meaning Satan would win -- if the Lord didn't invent Church. So Rapture signals the end of God's Presentation of Church in Evidence, hence concludes His Appeal Trial Rebuttal to Satan: that despite having the same covenanted spiritual life as given the Christ, fallen man is happier than under Satan's plan. Let's review why.

   • We saw in Part IVa that because time ran out with the Jewish rejection of Christ, He invented Church in Matt16:18.
   • He invoked His kata-Melchizedek King-Priesthood as the basis for founding Church, and then left it up to Father how to compose Church, in John 17:20-21.
   • It was an open-ended contract of NUMBERS. So the time was not set, but the Numbers of Believers, were. Souls were paid for on the Cross, so there is a known number of them. Isaiah 53 depicts the Cross as a raping, via "meholal" in Isaiah 53:5, soundplay on the dual meanings of "anah" in 53:7, and of course in Isaiah 53:11 (m'amal naph'sho, being in labor pains from the imputation of our sins).
   • All this, to be accomplished at Father's Sole Discretion.
   • Christ thus incurred upon Himself untold billions of additional sins at the Cross for the Bride Price, and you and I are only alive today, because He did.
   • Thus, He prevented a MISTRIAL VERDICT, as we also saw in Part IVa's "Bible remains a mystery to Church" section.
   • That section's A-N subpoints outlined the Trial Terms for Church, the idea being that we must get the spiritual life Christ Himself invented for Himself, and complete it.
   • So the Rebuttal surrounds this question: if our NUMBERS do not complete as already placed in Evidence at the Cross -- the NUMBER of people in Church He paid for 2000 years ago -- it's a MISTRIAL, and Satan wins. The Facets sections of this Part IVb show just how impossible it is for us to have and complete His Legated Spiritual Life, as Part III also demonstrated. So the Rapture can technically occur for TWO reasons, not one: either because it's a Mistrial, or because God has finished making us Fit Bride for His Son.

   Notice how, quite independently, this "H", Heaven's Historical "Harpazw" Mistrial Precedence, ACCOMPLISHES all the A-F goals of "G", God's Grace GRAFTING Precedence. For all the "H" reasons for Rapture to predate Trib, 'just happen' (yeah, right) to be the very conditions God Sovereignly wants and contracted with His Son -- before angels even existed, per Eph1 (especially verses 19-23). Satan has his own reasons for insisting that we get the same terms, battles, and hence spiritual life as Christ Himself -- it's IMPOSSIBLE to want and live that Life, evidenced by the fact we've been here a whopping 2000 years since the Crucifixion, yet the paltry number of Pleroma kings needed to warrant the Rapture, haven't been developed! (Possibly as low as 1000 top-tier for 100 billion souls, covered in "God's GAAP Balancing" link section of this Part IVb.) It should be obvious that Satan wants to put off the Tribulation and ideally prevent it altogether. For at that point he knows he's only got seven years' freedom left. So Church CANNOT be in the Tribulation for all the above reasons, plus this one: Satan doesn't want it, either. Satan therefore FAKES the Church, and will PRETEND it is there in the Tribulation, so to debunk the Rapture, so Trib believers won't recognize the time they live in; meanwhile, to fake out Church believers, so you think you're being godly, but instead are kowtowing to the god of this world -- all in God's name, of course! More about how Satan plays us, will be in Part IVc. Here, we're just focusing on the precedents giving birth to the parameters of Church and its pre-Trib required Exit.

So let's next catalog some of the balder Bible English verses and keywords, which show that the NUMBER of PEOPLE in Church is something FATHER will DETERMINE, so no one can predict when Rapture will occur. This rebuttal-phase "Church Age" will continue, until the number of PLEROMA are "complete" -- á la the criteria in

• Matt16:18, John 17:20-21, precedented in Isa53:12's eternity past, two people-booty clauses (b'rabbim in laken ahalleq-LO b'rabbim, and wa-et-atsumim yehalleq shalal). This is the Contract To Make Church; it's open-ended, based on Body Count.
• Rom11:5 (principle), and 11:25 (number, but is dual, including Trib's # -- see vv26-27, and Luke21:24).
• 1Cor10:11 (telos="completion").
• Romans 5-15:17. The Body Completion concept is a central macro theme, constructed in a series of rolling rhetorical crescendoes, of which Rom8:11-26 (in Greek, pregnancy metaphor throughout) and 15:5-6 parallel Eph4:5 and 4:11-16 -- take the time to trace out the rhetorical themes of Romans, even in English.
• More Body-completion criteria is in Eph1:15-23, 3:15-20, 4:13-16, coupled with Titus 2:13-14, which all translations mangle. Not mangled, yet not appreciated as a Body-completion criterion for Church, is 1 Corinthians 6 and 12. It should be obvious that a body must have all parts functioning and maturely, in order for the whole body to be complete. Paul makes that point throughout, starting with 1Cor12:7 about the Spirit doing it all, PARSING out the gifts and roles -- yet no Christian notices that this is a Rapture criterion? Oh well.

  [1Cor12:7 is slightly mistranslated; I exegeted the passage live onscreen, to refute King-James-Only garbage, starting here: click here to watch it. The other videos follow as responses, through '13/72' of that KJVOB series. Or, here are my raw notes on the corrected translation: "L 1604, 92 Spiritual Dynamics, series 376. Thieme's translation is VERY different: "Now to each one is given for the benefit (didomi+dat of advantage) of the team (sumpheron), the Doctrinal Teaching (phanerosis) OF (objective) the Spirit, for the purpose of being beneficial to the team." (pros to sumpheron, with pros as acc of PURPOSE and sumpheron, idiomatically: it's ATTIC GREEK prep phrase, concept of purpose of benefit to the organization). BibleWorks BDAG lexicon "y.subst.to" heading confirms this, and has cross-refs. Again, idea of public contribution -- so is it related to sunteleias in Matt28:20 (see VERindex.htm on that word)?

  Early in s.1 of tape is exeg. BDAG noted that sumphero has also a connotation of benefit-for-the-team (didn't use quite such words, but same meaning).

  Thieme STRESSED that one should regard phanerosis as a "noun of action", and that to Pneuma is OBJECTIVE genitive, but sounds like it functions like subj gen but he kept saying obj gen. Listen in later tapes to see if he changes to subj gen."]

• Eph1:10's "summing up of all things". That means the Trial is being summed up. Parallel verses are Hebrews 11:1 and 11:40, with the demonstration of the OT Trial roster, sandwiched in between, to explain why Rapture precedes the deliverance of the promised inheritance to the OT people. (Basic theme of Hebrews is how Church is the bridge to implementing the New Covenant for Israel, through the inserted King of Kings Battlefield Royal Patent which Christ won; but His first-intended Bride turned it down.)
• If you use KJV, and search on "fulness" (yes, that's how KJV spells the English trans of Pleroma), you'll see a lot about how the term ties to Christ Himself, viz., in Gal4:4, Col1:19, 2:9, Eph1:23, 4:13, 3:19 (all over the place, really). Frankly, if all you do is trace the KJV use of "fulness" and then backtrack to the Greek of these verses, it will be unmistakeable, what God is saying here (imo).
• Also, check out Eph3:21's lexeme: "Age over the Ages (meaning apex of all history, very blunt) is variantly used in many other passages, in slightly different form, and always near in context with either pleroo (to fill up, fulfill, complete, accomplish) or teleiow (to finish, accomplish, bring-to-completion, "end" or "perfect" in the sense of Fulfill Terms Of Contract).
• Hebrews Chap4 and Chap10:15-11:40. These stress Voting Precedence and that the same body-count issue continues. You'll want to look at #9 in TenWaysThisTimelineDiffers.doc to see how God keys time to the Voting Periods of history which He uses to 'intercalate' time since Adam. It's all about Voting, in God's Plan. Voting is all about numbers completing.
• Rev 6:11b (general principle). That's a Tribulation roster of Jewish believer-evangelists, but notice how the criterion is a Number To Be Fulfilled. Israel's Messiah-arrives timeline ended 30AD (originally, 37AD), but it was a numbers criterion even pre-Trib, i.e., Deut 32:8. There's an interesting parallel in Col 2:15 and 2Cor2:14, a one-on-one triumphal procession, implying that there is one person in Church for every demon incarcerated. Gotta study that more, though. [My pastor often speculated that was the numbers criterion for Church, but I'm not sure what verses he uses. Will have to dig into my notes.]

It's astonishing, how this numbers-fulfillment concept is so stressed in the NT's well-known metaphors. It's more astonishing, how we overlook them and then claim Rapture isn't in the Bible, lol:

• Christ is KING OF KINGS -- which means a Kingdom Must Be Developed, which means a NUMBER OF SUBJECTS Must Be Completed for the Kingdom to be Completed. Keyverb teleiow, perfection-of-contract-completion is used throughout the NT, with plerow as the internal fillup of spiritual growth, resulting in Pleroma, a childbearing-level of spiritual maturity. So think of teleiow as the 'horizontal' body-count completion, but plerow as the 'vertical' (internal spiritual development) criterion meeting Eph4:13's standards, which is the "destination" of the katantanw..eis clauses in Eph4:13 (for which we are being katartizw'd, kitted out, 4:12).

  The Standard for Completing Church is that in aggregate and individually, His Maturity is 'built' in us, Eph4:13. Greek verb "katantanw" (used in Eph4:13) means a journeying to a destination, and is often used in Greek to signify the "journey of life". You can find that in a Bauer, Danker lexicon or another one of like quality. It always takes the preposition eis to show the destination, His Maturity Level, Eph4:12-13. So Church's 'life' reaches its destination when that Maturity has been built into it. So Rapture is not based on historical events. Pattern of history is the same since the Crucifixion, as there are enough human bodies on earth in any generation, to become believers and complete Church. That gives you a sense of its size. More about the size criterion will be said later on in this page.

• WITNESSES in a Trial are of a particular NUMBER and All Must Finish Testifying To Complete The Testimony. Again, Heb11:40 is a bald Rapture verse, with the always mistranslated Heb11:1 telling you the Angelic Trial Testimony criterion for that completion. If you've not seen the correct translation of Heb11:1 already in Heb111.htm, here it is: "It's about Confidence in Word! Son's Thinking, On Trial! Evidence, Unseen!" The genitive plurals in that verse are Witness Actions, so are of a certain number to be fulfilled. In any trial, there is a roster of witnesses, which roster from the OT was illustrated in the balance of Hebrews 11, to show the idea: tested Confidence In Word, pistis elpizomenwn.
• Each believer is deemed a chip or littlestone like "petros", and is used to Build A Living Temple, viz., in Eph 2. So that means a certain NUMBER of 'stone' people, believers. Um, to finish a building, the number of building blocks needed would be known, and until all those blocks are built and fitted in, the building is not complete.
• "MANSIONS" in John 14 and "VINE" in John 15 are both talking of a spiritual 'bloodline' ranking, a royal house of God -- that means NUMBER of people (to live in the number of houses, and a number of grapes ON the Vine). So it's not a time criterion, not a prophecy-event criterion, but a Completion-of-Body Criterion. And it's not literal blood -- blood is used in the OT to signify thinking, believing-and-living-on-Word (heart being belief, depicted as the pump for thinking).
• "BODY" and "MEMBERS" in 1Cor12 and Eph4 and elsewhere in NT. Ok, this isn't too hard, is it? A body is made up of so many fitted-together parts. So when all those parts are completed and fitted together (Eph2, 4:16's sumbibazw and sunarmologew, two verbs of marital intimacy origin) -- then the Building is Complete.

• 1John Chapter 3 and 4:17, for example, assume it (4:17's context begins at v.12).
• Peter uses hupo-prefixed words and then big group verbs like epichoregew, to show the relationship of the littlestones (play on his name) to how they are getting built into a 'mosaic' of the Big One, Christ.
• Jude, like the writer of Hebrews, focuses almost solely on the Trial Witness Role, cautioning believers not to fall for the false teaching, and to get going in the spiritual life. Background of that is obvious: there are a finite number of witnesses in a testimony, and at some point, the Testimony Completes.
• Even more than Jude, Book of Hebrews is entirely about the Trial and its precedenting origin in Matt16:18, which in turn is precedented on the kata-Melchizedek eternity past contract which predated and is separate from, Israel. It's a panoramic book, designed to show God's Grand Design in history, elaborating on Ephesians. Paul was dead when Book of Hebrews was written (see Heb13:23, compare to the end of 2Timothy). Unfortunately, the Trial language isn't translated well; therefore Hebrews 11 seems to come from nowhere, in English Bibles. But in the Greek, you see the Trial language beginning in Chapter 1. Hebrews explains the same thing as Ephesians, but with a different metaphorical base (using Seed/ Sacrifice/ Priest metaphors). Both books, though, use the same keywords (and their synonyms/cognates), Plerow and teleiow (fill up and complete) as reader-tracking devices (Peter and John use them also).
• James references this body-count issue as a First Fruits 'crop' in James 1:18-21, 3:18, and 5:7-8, the imminency being stressed via the First Fruits analogy, which was always a Pre-Trib analogy in the OT. Plus, his use of engizw as a key in the epistle, most notably in 5:8, a parallel to the Lord's use of its cognate noun in Matt24:32. (Spelled eggizw in Greek, but pronounced as if ng.) For engus and engizw are often used as synonyms for tachú, in the NT (so also is Mark's euthus).

• Revelation takes a very Roman approach, which to modern eyes is quite offensive: you'll find its counterpart in Gospel verses like the "slay them before me" parable the Lord told; phrases like "I speak to them in parables"; and the famous, 'don't cast your pearls before swine'. In Revelation, get this loud and clear, check it out for yourself: The Lord doesn't talk to anyone but the Church (represented by John, on earth during Chapters 1-3, in Heaven from 4:1 forward). So He speaks to NO ONE on earth after Chapter 3 ends. The importance of this rhetorical style is to stress the importance of Church as the culmination of Father's purpose of history, which is the theme of Ephesians 1. This deliberately-harsh style is common in the OT also, which probably accounts for John using it in Revelation. The rhetoric emphasizes that all history after Church is but a postscript, a footnote not even worth the Lord speaking to it, stresses the For-Father Priesthood Purpose to the exclusion of all else.
  That's the Roman (well, and other cultures') custom of haughty distance: a 'proper' Roman patriarch would never deign to speak directly to anyone below his class, except the head slave. So, if he had words for a third party who was lower, that third party would either a) stand in front of the patrician, who would instead speak to another; that other then was to repeat the words to the third party, who was deemed too low to deserve direct discourse with the patrician. Or, b) the third party would get the information from a 'proper' person, in the absence of the patrician. Either way, this indirect method of communication yelled oh-how-high-the-godlike-patrician, oh-how-low-you-scum-are. That's why today we all find it so offensive if a person won't speak directly to us, or if he speaks to someone else in front of us, as if we weren't there. Root idea: only the privileged get to be near the King/patrician; only the privileged get to be spoken TO by the King/patrician. Of course, that very custom is widely practiced in this world, still: i.e., you gotta be Granted An Audience with Pope, Queen, President, etc., and you're thrilled to death if you are!

  Paul in Ephesians 2, passim in Romans and Corinthians (maybe Colossians also), plus the writer of Hebrews, also reference this custom of "far off" and "near", to explain our relationship with God in Christ. [The terms were also used in Greek worship rites: 'core philosophy of the phallicism. More will be said about them when "menw" is explained, in the beginning of Part IVd.] Of course, everyone remembers how no one during Moses could go close to Mt. Zion, on pain of death (see Heb12:18ff). The point, which we also saw in Part III's Corollary 3B: you will be as close to God as you Want, And God Will Be As Close To You As You Want; and if You Don't Want Bible Doctrine, You Don't Want To Be Close. So, you will be Far Away from Him, though saved -- Forever.

For you can prove that Paul wrote Ephesians in a metaphorical format which tweaks the then-very-famous Greek play, "Ion", by Euripides. You can get a copy of the play from Perseus: Click here. If you have trouble, wait awhile and come back (Tufts says it's upgrading its servers due to the popularity of the site, so there will be downtimes). "Ion" in Greek means "venom", and it is euphemistically used for semen. "Ion" is about a god, Phoebus Apollo [=BrightMorningStar=Haylel Ben Shachar, Satan's pre-Fall name], Founding/ Fathering the Greek peoples -- who of course are Paul's audience. ("Ephesians" is a filled-in-blank, so the letter we call "Ephesians" circulated to various Greek cities.) The audience ended up being the 'chosen peoples of the gods' in the play; so, they are Church, Body of Christ in the epistle! The wordplay is awesome: Paul weaves in Isa53's begetting themes, and deliberately tracks Ephesians to the plot of the play. A laugh-line threaded sotto voce: Here you Greeks thought you were founded by a snake, but instead you are Fathered by God; and will be no mere Temple-slaveson like your half-human (get it?) 'progenitor' Ion, but will rather be part of the Body of God-Man Himself! (More on this topic follows in the "Fit Bride" table below.)

Here's the FOUNDING OF BRIDE outline in Ephesians:

• Chapter 1, Father's Eternity-Past Purpose and thus our dowry; thus, completion of the Body of Christ, "filling all in all".
• Chapter 2, Body is a kind of corporate Temple, but Christ Unites All Believers In All Ages Using Church.
• Chapter 3, the Individual's Goal, and Completion of Body By Means Of Learning Him, "with reference to all generations in this Age over all the Ages" (English trans is horrible), a Greek lexeme (meaning highest, 3:21).
• Chapter 4, Church Corporate due to Chapter 3 happening in aggregate, analgous to marriage; and to answer Satan's attempted pre-historic 'ascension' and bid against Jesus' Ascension (many levels of wordplay, Eph4:8-9). Ergo
• Chapter 5, our marriage & family archetypal (subordinating-to-authority) role on earth, to answer Satan's divorcing arguments. Because
• Chapter 6, wifely-subordination by Church Defeats Satan&Co. in the Trial!

  (Chapter divisions in English are "off" versus the conceptual divisions in the writing, but you'll see that as you read. Someday I'll revise the above bullets to better fit the verse numbers of these themes: for example, the themes listed for Chapters 3 and 4 really focus in vv3:10 through 4:16. "As is", the association of a particular subtopic with a chapter was based on where that subtopic reaches a climax in the letter. Later I'll revise the bullets' descriptions.)

For the Rapture's Trigger Mechanism, is not merely due to Precedence of Bridal Contract. More fundamentally, it's due to the Nature of the Relationship: Desired Marital Closeness. Hence the Trigger is Volitional, and in Aggregate: How Many Who Become Close, Are "Enough" to WARRANT Rapture's occurrence?

Since the sine qua non of Perfection is BALANCE, as we saw in Part II, and since finite creatures exist, a question arises: what is the perfect number of them? [Pity the ancient philosophers: they argued this number thingy for eons, and got nowhere, because they kept starting with mere math, instead of with Absolute God!] Moreover, what is the requisite proportion of Divine Thinking (or bad thinking), sufficient to bless (or hurt) them? Notice how there's a certain "ripeness" quality about number: too few, and a thing doesn't work. Too many, and a thing becomes bad, even if it was good. The "balance" is the right time to 'pick the fruit', as it were. Likewise, in science we routinely see a Bell-curve property of destruction whenever the number of a population becomes too high (e.g. in viruses, Malthusian theory). We've seen in Part II and will see in Part IVc that the 'contagion' of thought is in part quantitative -- when 'too many' bad thoughts are in a populus, it degenerates.

What's the role of "numbers"? Well, first let's look at what numbers, really are: VARIETY. The very word "numbers" means "variety". There must be MANY, and each one is different from the next (+1 property of uniqueness). It's the combining of the numbers, the combining of the varieties, which underlies virtually every structure in life. Like many dots, but..each one at least slightly different from the next. So each number is unique; each combination is unique; the rate and manner of change in Living Numbers Of People, Is Thus Unique. Like a snowfall. Among all these uniquenesses, some combinations are small in 'size', but BIG in effect. Likewise, at the opposite end of the VARIETY spectrum, some combinations are big in size, but small in effect. Sometimes, ONE is so big (Christ, for example), that ALL are affected (anyone can be saved). At the reverse end, MANY are so individually small (sins, for example), they have NO positive effect. Only their WEIGHT has effect (i.e., weight of our sins crushing Him, Isa 53:5's dakah, the volume of plunder, 53:12).

So, variety means hierarchy. The Numbers Have To Fit Together In Just Such A Way, So They Can All Benefit Each Other, No Matter How Big, Or How Small; However Disparate In Compatibility; or, however alike. So, the Relationship Between Small And Big Within That Hierarchy, is simply this: Mass depends on LEVERAGE. Leverage, as you probably know, is the property of a small thing being able to 'cause' a big effect. A 'small' amount of malaria can kill you. A 'small' amount of anthrax in an envelope killed a lot of people. Germs are small. Their 'leverage' value is high. The military equivalents for this financial (and science, biology, etc.) concept is "economy of force", and "concentration of force". Use those analogies as you read, if they are more familiar to you.

This same leveraging of mass applies in happier areas, of course. Say you bought your house with just a little money "down". That downpayment leveraged the entire value of the house, for it was what the bank wanted, in order to justify Lending You The Rest Of The Money. So, that little down payment "blessed" the mortgage, without which you couldn't get the house. Thus you see how "mass" (the whole cost of the house) is leveraged (justified) by means of a little. So that 'little' is called "leverage", "seed/venture capital" (economics/finance); "hub", "pivot" or "vector" (physics); "cornerstone/foundation" (architecture); even, "preservative" (food industry). In the Bible, negative leverage is called "leaven" (yeast); positive leverage (pivot/ preservative, etc.) is called "remnant", or "salt".

We all know how salt (doctrine, yes!) makes foods tasty. But that is not the primary use of salt. The primary use of salt is to preserve your body. The cells in your body must have a BALANCE of sodium in each cell in order to keep your body sufficiently nourished. For, sodium (the principal component of salt) attracts and is attracted to, water-based liquid. Nutrients are carried by water-based liquid (e.g., blood), and the salt level in your blood determines whether the cells in your body open to accept those nutrients. So, cell health is determined by how the salt in your body works. A little salt does a big job: making you healthy.

Moreover, in the ancient world, they didn't have refrigeration. So, salt was a highly-valued commodity, for it PRESERVED large amounts of food from spoiling. So, it was often used as we use currency, today. Like currency, it was easily transportable; durable; easy to measure; universally acceptable, and needed. Just a little salt leveraged, so to speak, a lot of food. This created an economic prosperity, for if food could be preserved, the work otherwise needed for food production could be spent on other goods; so, the family with a goodly amount of salt could become more prosperous. So, the polity with a goodly amount of such 'salty' people, could become prosperous. Just a little salt leveraged the prosperity of even a whole nation. Then again, if a major flood hit a salt dome, the salt was washed away, or leached into the soil; this made the salt "saltless" (unusable, for the water leached out the sodium). So, that polity's prosperity depended on preserving its preservative!

Conversely, seawater has TOO MUCH salt. Modern Israel has no end of problems trying to desalinize its water supply, so that the soil won't become overladen with salt. For, the good thing about salt is also potentially the bad thing about it: it sterilizes. That is why it's great for food, but terrible, for soil: soil needs bacteria (mold etc.) to provide the properties food needs to grow. So, too much salt in the irrigation water overburdens the soil with salt, so nothing will grow. So, see? The "leverage", the "salt" depends on "mass", too. Body needs a Head, and the Head is much smaller than the Body, mass-wise. But the Head still needs a body, too. So mass depends on leverage, and leverage, on mass: and both must be in the proper proportion to each other. Else, growth (enjoyment) is impaired. Or, even ruined. So, both mass and leverage are mutually-dependent. For Better or Worse.

So, then, whether looked at from within the Bible's text itself, or observed from extra-Biblical sources, these leverage principles of "salt" or "leaven" are obviously structural properties woven into the entire universe. The "few" have what economics would term a "multiplier effect" on the "many". In fact, in economics, "multiplier effect" means that the "few" actually CAUSE the "many".

When you spend a dollar, that dollar is received by the seller of the product you purchased with that dollar. It's just "1" dollar, but it has now moved between TWO sets of 'hands'. In turn, that seller purchases something with that dollar, so again -- another set of hands. Therefore, at the third transaction, the "multiplier effect" of that lone dollar, is already "3". It's done the work of THREE dollars. Quickly. Now, think: who doesn't spend money? Why, everyone spends money. In fact, the complaint most have is that they don't have enough! Okay, then: that lone dollar is multiplied millions of times, because it's circulating around the populus, isn't it? Whatever one buys, another gets the money, then he buys, so the next person gets that same buck, and so on and so on. So, the "few" (the lone dollar, here) CAUSE the "many", because the "few" have a "multiplier effect". The lone dollar does the work of millions of dollars, because it is circulating through the populus!

Thus you have tax law: the purpose of tax law is to cause a multiplier effect of changing mass behavior in an economy; 'purportedly, in some salutary direction which those ruling think the country needs. See, if you pay a dollar less in taxes, you'll spend that dollar a different way. To influence you to spend it in a certain way, a government might reduce your tax by a dollar if you spend that dollar on item "x". You, and millions like you, say, do this. That money then multiplies (changes hands) many times over, circulating in things related to "x". 'Supposedly, to benefit whatever "x" is supposed to do; which, supposedly, is to benefit the people as a whole.

However, taxes you pay TO a not-for-profit government don't circulate in this way. For, a not-for-profit government itself is a cost without production. There is no "product" such a government produces. It alleges to produce something, but think: all such a government does, is buy! It doesn't "sell" anything. Unlike you, who go to a job and actually produce something NEW during the day (product or service), that government just takes your money, and gives it to other people. It, itself, produces no new goods/services in return for its own expense. You gave it money, but it gave you nothing in return. Instead, it gave your money to someone ELSE. All this, at a cost of overhead, for oodles of officials are needed to choose and then account for the movement of this money from your pocket to whomever's. So, a not-for-profit government's "product" is merely a report of how it spent something. Oh, and lots of laws, to make that report even more expensive.

Notice how all government can ever be, is a middleman. Hence, an added COST. We pay government for services, alright, but it itself, isn't producing those services. It pays someone else to do that, and it of itself, produces nothing. That's what a middleman does. Ideally, you pay a middleman because he knows the most efficient way to get you the service/goods you want: but it is always an added cost to pay him. So if the middleman has a right to your money and there is no competition (other middlemen you could pay instead), then he has NO incentive, to give you value for his expense. So, it's a true TAX on you, to pay him. Kinda like those bandits who roamed up and down Israel's trade routes, robbing from the travelling caravans...

In economics, then, you'll hear this problem discussed often. The health of a polity depends on a mostly-private-sector economy, so that there is enough NEW production to make up for the cost of having a not-for-profit government. So, an economy needs money circulating in it, but also needs EQUIVALENT PRODUCTION MADE as a result of that circulation, at each turning-over of the dollar. Else, the "multiplier effect" is really zero. For, if the money goes from person "A" to person "B", and it DOESN'T do so because B gave A something of equivalent value in exchange for that dollar, then only B has the money. It's the SAME dollar, in that case. So, if money "circulates" to that government, no-added-production-value goes with that. 'Kinda like too much salt. Ahem: For Better, or for Worse. ["Not-for-profit" is the reason why there is no value-added, the reason why such a type of government is ONLY an expense to its polity. A for-profit-government, by contrast, always has a value-added structure; viz, ancient true monarchies, where the "king" owned the polity, or received taxes as an addendum to his personal wealth. Unfortunately, it will take too much webspace to explain why a for-profit-government actually IS the best way to go. God's Kingdom is the 'ultimate' form of this for-profit structure. If inclined, maybe you'll have enough information by Part V's end to see why the foregoing statement is true.]

American liberals, of course, argue that the government does indeed produce value for the money given it. What they forget is that the private sector will always do a far better job, because Profit Drives Productivity. Government Can Just Take Your Money: It Has A Monopoly On Your Taxes, Even To The Extent Of Putting Liens On Your Property. So, It Has Insufficient Incentive To Be Efficient in how it decides to give your money away to other people. If government were run like a business, and didn't have a monopoly, then you could vote your money ELSEWHERE, which would motivate it to ATTRACT your money by producing a better redistribution of your money. As is, it only needs to promise money to those who as a consequence will vote for its own desires to TAKE your money. How well it lives up to those promises, well.. everyone knows that answer.

Liberal or no, it's true that government must exist. We need certain centralizations and laws, so a government must have certain limited monopoly-rights over your money. For, there are certain functions which only government can do: transportation/infrastructure oversight (for the sake of efficient military and inter-province/state movement), foreign policy, currency, military, costs of making those laws (as low as possible, please -- few laws, not many) are examples of the few valid governmental monopolies. And, let's face it: since the way those things are provided is by giving your money to other people WITHOUT you first getting equivalent or better value in exchange, it's just an added cost. Without production. Multiplier Tax, baby. Principle: the higher the taxes, the higher the drain on the polity, no matter how those taxes are structured to hit given groups of folks.

Here's why: Taxes only get paid if the payors HAVE money. As we saw in this subsection's first indented paragraph, people only have money if they produce something and SELL that something to someone ELSE. So, if you buy a can of tomatoes, the corporation making that can of tomatoes must charge YOU part of the tax it will have to pay, in order for it to have money to PAY THE TAX. Since the corporation, like you, pays a tax on income, and that income comes from you, YOU PAY THE TAX. Of course, you have a job, too: your job costs a corporation (assuming you work for one), money. Those who are CUSTOMERS of the corporation, which buy its products/services, thus also PAY THE TAX, AND YOUR SALARY. So if your corporation is not competitive, or overtaxed! less income will be available; so some other corporation (or person, entity) will get that income. So, You Might Lose Your Job, As The Corporation Tries To Cut Costs In Order To Save Enough Money To Pay Taxes And Stay Alive. Frankly, that's been the history of the US since about 1975 (friend of mine would date it earlier, to the late 1960's when the oil depletion allowance rules got so bad).

Just as you don't want to eat into your savings, so also (and for the same reasons, really) a corporation doesn't want to eat into its profits, when income declines; even more so, because it costs a corporation many times more than it costs you, to 'live.' No one can predict what disaster might occur, so the savings/profits are a cushion against disaster. So, cost-cutting measures are FIRST sought. Frankly, it's easier to make more money than to save it, but businesses are often as dumb (short-sighted) as the people IN them, so seek to reduce a cost rather than to become more productive. Think of the fake savings you often get from buying some cheap cellphone (etc), versus one of higher quality, and you'll get the point. The good news is, the natural 'laws' of free enterprise eventually penalize a corporation which makes stupid decisions; government, being a monopoly, doesn't get that beneficial wake-up call until it is too late. [To the extent a government tries to mess with the laws of free enterprise, it makes worse whatever problem it tries to correct. 'Roughly analogous to the Reconstruction Era in the US, or picking a pimple.]

So, if country A's taxes are way higher than country B's, country B has a sales advantage. So, country A's businesses will want to move taxable stuff OVER to country B, to reduce expenses and thus be more competitive, compared to country B. Since a lot of a country's taxes go to pay for social benefits (which US economists estimate run an extra 33%-50% of US wages), moving where employees are HIRED saves costs; so, that's why America has lost so many jobs. It's not desirable to do this: it must be done to stay ALIVE as a business. Until, the tax laws lessen in cost.

Now let's tie the 'multiplier effect' and taxes concepts, to Church. Bible calls itself money in a bizillion ways, most of which aren't well-translated, but some are: "gold", "silver", "precious stones", "deposit" (NIV manages to catch some of these terms), "true riches" (a favorite term of the Lord), "riches", and a wide variety of financial synonyms, all conveying the idea that Christ's Thinking (Deity, OT, Humanity, NT) is Spiritual Capital. So, since thought CIRCULATES (Bible depicts this via the metaphor "heart", "blood"), we're looking at the multiplier effect of Bible Doctrine in a populus; or, conversely, the Tax of Anti-Scriptural Thinking in a populus. You can flip open a Bible even in translation in almost any place and see how God excoriates bad thinking, and blesses good thinking, but the easiest-to-read passages are Lev26 and Deut28. Note how God holds a nation together due to Sufficient Circulating Spiritual Capital (Hearing His Word); or, destroys a nation due to Excessive Anti-Spiritual Taxation (Rejecting His Word, main theme of Hosea and Malachi 3). The concepts in these passages will be very useful to remember, as you read what follows.

Here's another critical numbers concept which economics addresses: money begets money. The larger the pool of capital, the more income that capital can earn, the more Addition TO Capital is available. This is the most important reason why one needs a class of wealthy people for a polity to be healthy and strong. (If you know anything about actuarial welfare/pension science, all that knowledge analogously applies here in spades, especially with respect to the role of present values.)

See, because mass depends on leverage, and because there must be a balance between them, There Must Be Sufficient Leverage, Capital, To Fund whatever mass exists or is desired to exist. So, you try to save money in a savings account, for until you have enough, you can't buy what you need, or..save for retirement. Your "mass" -- needs you have -- can't all be paid for at once. So, you try to borrow (a form of leverage) based on the mass-of-savings you have, or the expected-mass-of-income you will get. Or, you FOREGO your needs until you accumulate sufficient funds. Ideally, you keep accumulating funds by foregoing so that at some point you can stop working and just live on your accumulated capital. This, of course, is called "investment".

No country can operate if its accumulated savings/investment by its people is too small. This is called "capitalization". Lack of proper capitalization means that needs exceed funds, so a person, a company, or even a whole country, can go bankrupt. This, because There Must Be More Wealth Produced Than Spent. The leftover money is invested. Investment fuels jobs; makes available money to borrow; enables trade with other countries; makes people able to finance current needs, i.e., because there is an expectation based on the current capital/health that whatever is borrowed can be repaid.

(SPIRITUAL) CAPITAL VALUE KEY → The more you have saved up, the more comfortably you can live. So, like it says in Proverbs, invest in learning Scripture ("wisdom", yet another synonym Bible uses to designate itself).

SPIRITUAL CAPITAL VALUE TO HISTORY KEY → Bible Doctrine is a long-term capital investment which pays what's equivalent to a bizillion percent interest. However, like any long-term investment, the yield 'sits'. 'Until those who are to receive the payment are BIG enough to ENJOY so much payback!

INESCAPABLE PROFIT KEY → God is Uncreated, so doesn't have to work at 'being God'. Thus, there is no such thing anywhere as 'deserving', a term which ONLY has relevance with respect to works-issues. The term is merely a benchmark we can use to figure out how much toward-Righteousness a thing is. See, because God didn't 'deserve' to exist, but just DOES, forever; so it's NOT possible for deserving to exist: God didn't MAKE HIMSELF, so you can't technically say He 'deserves' to exist.

Technically, God being Omnipotent, He Is Capable Of Sinning, But Of Course Never Does. Being Infinite is a status quo. Greek states this via what is called the "static present tense" of stasis verbs like eimi, though John in John 1 uses the imperfect tense. Here's why he does. Hebrew states God's Nature dynamically, to stress Aliveness, e.g., the clever doubling of the verb "to be" in the imperfect tense -- signifying Absolute Existence: see Exo3:14. Because it's in the imperfect tense, there is no beginning, no end, so Outside Time, so to speak. Kinda like the Greek aorist, in its root sense.

So John uses the Greek imperfect of eimi in John 1, to stress that The God of the OT who Named Himself to Moses, is The Man he's writing about. Clever, deft, undetectable-in-English way to shout Who Messiah really is. Can't miss it. So given John 1:14&18, YHWH: meaning, He Who Always WAS, Becomes! -- a concatenation of hayah and hawah, which when merged (Hypostatic Union!) and spoken quickly, sounds like Yahweh or Yahwah or Jehuwah, etc. And of course, sounds like Yehoshua ("Joshua"), hence Yeshua, hence Jesus. [Joshua 1:1's Hebrew is very funny when it says that YeHWaH spoke to YeHosHua...] Also, the concatenation signifies that anything 'becomes', via Him. See? It's not rocket science. There's no reason why His Name should be a 'mystery' -- God Wants Us To Know Him. We don't need "ineffable names" to block our learning Him!

In short, God by nature is all-at-once, not 'time' related. So, theology tries to simplify this fact by claiming God 'can't' sin. Very misleading. If God couldn't sin, He'd not be Omnipotent, get it? So, while theology might try to claim (again, to simplify) that God 'deserves' to be God because He never sins, even that is an inaccurate argument. For, God Didn't Create Infinity, So He Doesn't Do Anything To Perpetuate Himself.

Moreover, God Doesn't Sustain Himself (property of Infinity, which needs nothing, so doesn't 'need' to sustain itself, either), so there is no such thinG as 'doing' anything at all to deserve continuing to be God. Upshot conclusion from these facts? God Is Pure Profit By Nature, So Everything Is PURE PROFIT By Nature, Since Everything Is Sourced In God's Nature. If you know even the basic math that division by a fraction, multiplies, then you understand how even the smallest thing, however divisive, can only multiply value for God. Simply because, God Is So Big. [Nerd note followup: only if God sinned, would He stop being pure profit. Since He never will, His Nature is unsustained, the natural property of Infinity is in stasis. NO works, because no need for works. So, if no works, then no deserving issues, and only pure profit can exist.]

So, however bad man is, he's but a negative mutation from God's Nature. So, just as in math/physics the derivative of a thing is but LEVERAGE, due not to itself, but rather due to the (here, Infinite) Power From Which It Derived (God), all bads are but fractional divisors, so will inevitably return a bizillion percent interest to God. This fact is repeatedly stated in Scripture using irony: verses like "valley..exalted", and Isa54:1's barren bearing more kids, and the quintessential, 'even-the-wrath-of-man-praises-God'. So "Cost" is but an interim accounting term; "Investment" is the true character. 'At a bizillion percent, Because God Is Unmade, Unsustained, And Infinite. So the smallest thing, even the baddest thing, first exists as some DERIVATION of God, so can only 'bounce off' God's Nature, thus producing a gain DUE TO the bounce-off value, INFINITY. It's how big GOD is, not the size of the derivative, as any math/physics student can demonstrate. So the 'return' on any existence reflects Infinity, so we have to use the term 'bizillion percent' to reflect the gain value.

God doesn't believe in welfare programs, primarily because such programs teach Dependence On Goodies, rather than Dependence On God. That's why Israel's welfare program was so puny, i.e., poor could only glean a field after the owner had harvested it. Bigger example: every third year you collected an additional 10% (flat) income tax from the nation, expressly for the poor. Third Example: Charity done on an individual level is very specific, personal, ad hoc -- exactly like spiritual giving (see how Leviticus differentiates between the regular daily and holiday sacrifices, versus the ones people bring). This individualized method of giving doesn't DEPRECATE the recipient, and the recipient knows it. On the other hand, Welfare Programs All Deprecate The Recipients, and teach them to expect money from people. Hurts the soul, is anti-God, this: "cursed is the man who puts his trust in man, who makes his arm his strength." That verse ends with the cause of such a curse -- the person has NO knowledge of God. So, makes idols of money, people, welfare programs, etc. With high-sounding altruism, of course.

So, if on the other hand, man is left on his own, and charity is limited, he gets to look UP to God, and look up to Learning HOW to get money. Thereby, learns how to save and use money. Starting with a little, starting in extreme difficulty, perhaps. It's a slow but permanent process of learning how to handle wealth, if he sticks to it. Every rich guy gets there that way. Those who inherit another's wealth, only keep it that way. You must learn how to forego. It's like dieting: portion control.

As we saw earlier about how the "multiplier effect" works, person A buys a product from B, with the result that B can pay whatever taxes he owes, and PAY SALARIES. So every dollar you spend, buys jobs and pays taxes, along with buying whatever product/service you wanted. For a rich person, this fact is exponentially more true, so it's absolutely impossible for a rich person not to provide jobs no matter HOW he spends the money -- well, except that if the money goes to taxes, there is no production from that expense, so NO net value-added jobs are added to the economy by it. Instead, productivity is LOST. [Due to taxes, jobs merely shift, and as a consequence, jobs are always lost. Get a classic macroeconomic textbook, i.e., by Paul Samuelson in the 1960's or 1950's, if you find this statement hard to understand. Since about the 1980's, macroeconomics laws, which are by NATURE as unchangeable as math itself, are no longer accurately explained: political-correctness interferes.]

A rich person generally has personal use of .1 percent (.001) of his wealth, if even that much. Anyone not rich has personal use of at least 90% of his wealth (97%, in the US). While the rich person's dollars are greater (because .001 of a Billion Dollars is a lot of money), he spends his time on the other 99.9% -- managing it, much like a "steward" (KJV Bible term) -- whether he wants to do that, or not. For, wealth owns the rich person, not the other way around. So, then: whatever the Rich Person does, is noticed. Is catered to. Is aped. So, whatever the Rich Person buys with his .1%, Buys Jobs. Moreover, no matter what he does with his money, someone will watch him, learn from him, and make money on whatever was learned from watching. So, the Rich Person is a walking investment benefit for all who see him. He can't ever be anything else. He's also a walking textbook of standards (hopefully, the right ones) -- which everyone APES. That, too, generates INCOME to those who watch. For, by aping, they learn to do what it takes to become wealthy themselves. In short: if YOU get rich in Bible Doctrine ("true riches", "gold/silver/precious stones keywords in Bible), because both the Holy Spirit and Satan&Co. must point you out as being so RICH -- as we saw in Part III's "Second Reason for Royalty" -- People Aping You Will Get Rich As A Result. No matter WHAT you do.

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS IN PART IVc: What You Think is True Wealth; or, Poverty. Proverbs stresses this constantly. The Lord and all the NT epistles constantly stress it, using wealth terms, like "deposit", "riches", "glory", "promise", "reward", etc. (many of these are not translated in English so you don't see them). Why is Thinking, True Wealth? Well, for one thing, anyone who got money had to do a lot of smart thinking to get it. Read the biography of any wealthy person, if you doubt that fact. Next, the quality of life is determined by the Quality of Thought. If you have all the money on the planet, but bad thinking, your unhappiness will result in your LOSING that money, guaranteed (if not in your lifetime, in your kids' lifetime). Moreover, if you have no money, but have Happy Thinking, you have more money than those with money but without the thinking.

See? "True Riches", like the Lord told folks in the Gospels, is Thinking. Which is the Ultimate Wealth. Which, by the way, is the MANDATE we have toward Father: Think Son's Thoughts. Now, obviously, God owns everything: so what would GOD consider valuable? Son's Thinking. So, What you think is the true value in life, according to Very God. This Thinking Must Be Accumulated, Just Like Any Other Type Of Wealth. The more of it you have, the more you can do with it. The more you can do with it, the more yield (return, money on money) you get. The more yield, the more HAPPINESS you have. See? Better than money, 'where thief cannot steal nor moth destroy', as the Lord put it in the Gospels. Where your treasure is, there will be your heart (circulation of thought, Bible metaphor).

Examples:
• Most people in pension plans couldn't invest in the same funds on their own. This, because the mutual fund/insurance provider needs a certain minimum in order to afford the expense of all the bookwork for smaller investors: so, a pool of investors together meets that minimum, so each participant in that pool gets a bigger yield.
• "Growth stocks" -- companies which don't pay you dividends are risky because you're betting on their profitable rise in value (owing usually to some fantastic product or service they do which will eventually wow the world).
• You pour your lifesavings and effort (aka "sweat equity") into making a business, knowing that it won't begin to pay off at all for maybe 20 years. Meanwhile, the investor must tackle and overcome all the 'enemies': government interference, competition, production and delivery problems, employee greed -- all these tend to make even a good business bankrupt within its first years of operation. By contrast, the investor could have safely invested his money in a passbook savings account, paying a small-but-guaranteed interest rate!

Hence, long-term investments usually entail considerably more risk, but usually pay off many times more than small-term alternatives. The bigger yield must 'make up for' all that extra waiting, and risk. Bible Doctrine is the most risky investment of all, because it has the most enemies, and because God's Infinity means one must accumulate a lot of Doctrine before the "payoff" can be seen! For, investing in Bible Doctrine means you are the target for the investment! God invests IN YOU for the LONG TERM (eternity)! So His Investment (with your consent) is designed to pay off, IN YOU! So what's the risk? That you won't stick with it, but rather you'll 'sell out' to Satan's counterfeit investments...

So, then, YOU are taking a risk, too. You think how, 20 billion years from now, you yourself will have had 20 billion years of perfect rapport and happiness with the Most Gorgeous Persons in the Universe; that you will have had 20 billion years of perfect rapport, activity, happiness with ALL your fellow-beings. Moreover, that 20 billion years is just a drop in the bucket, compared to the billions of billions, of billions of Unending Future Years with the happinesses all just being bigger and bigger and bigger...All this, God promises is the result of investing in Bible Doctrine during this dust-speck period called "life". Think, then: isn't the rate of return on 'your' investment in Bible Doctrine, a bizillion percent? Which He Himself (Holy Spirit) Alone can invest in you (you merely consenting)? So what's your risk? That you'll get tired of 'waiting', and instead opt for Satan's pretend-gain investments, which are all really debt, so you become a spiritual bankrupt!

So what have we seen thus far, about "numbers"?

• Well, we've seen that "number" has a ripeness property: too little is bad, too much is bad. Whether it's fruit, salt, or..people.
• We've also seen that a "little" leverages "much": be it in finance, physics, preserving food, or..people.
• We've also seen that the "little" depends on the "much" just as the "much" depends on the "little". BALANCE between them is essential to both, causes "ripeness", "production".
• More importantly, we've seen that the "little" has a "multiplier effect", because it circulates. Thus, a buck is really worth millions! So, that buck affects everyone's financial decisions, or..taxes on people. For Better or Worse.
• Most importantly, the good life depends on having saved enough; so a 'little' foregoing 'today', every day over time, accumulates into a mass of cash which can support you comfortably. Moreover, to get that good life, one must invest LONG-TERM, thus risking the loss of all!

God is the Ultimate Capitalist, and Thank God for that!

God thinks, therefore we do. The question is, WHAT do we think? Literal Hebrew of Proverbs 23:7a tells us, "as he calculates in his soul, so he is". Calculates, reckons, considers, weighs pro's and cons. Verse's main point is that you can't trust the OUTER behavior of someone, because his INNER calculations, are against you. So he may look nice, act nice -- but you'd be better off avoiding him. Pretty strong language, in that passage. Of course, sooner or later we all have run into (or have ourselves been) such a calculating person, ouch!

Thinking determines everything in life. How you CHARACTERIZE an event is how it will affect you. If you were fondled by a priest when you were 11, and you forget about it, it means nothing, and you were unharmed. Doesn't matter that the priest was horrible to do such a thing. If, by contrast, you stubbed your toe and agonize forever after about it, you are severely affected by it. Doesn't matter, that it was only a stubbed toe. Psychology is based on this premise: How You Baptise A Thing, Determines Your 'Reality'. Yeah, in the sense that You Call Real Based On Your Thinking About 'Whatever'. Doesn't mean it really is true, but does mean that's how you'll THINK.

So in aggregate, man's thinking adds up to a whole lot of bad and good stuff going on. Wives think husbands cheat, husbands think wives only want their money, children think their teachers are mean, everyone thinks Martha Stewart is guilty because she almost lied: so she unjustly goes to prison. The prison is real enough, even if the basis, is not. Principle: bad thinking and good thinking have real effects, even if based on falsehood. [I keep bringing up the Stewart case because it is so indicative of the sickness-of-accusation in the US. Flimsy stuff which people CRAVE to ACCUSE, is the sign of a nation about to terminate under what my pastor calls the "Fifth Cycle of Discipline": OT talks about this a lot. It's in Isaiah about every other chapter, and occupies most of Zechariah, Hosea, Malachi. Jeremiah spends a lot of time on it as well. General principle is Matt7:1-2, but here writ large for the nation.]

Oh boy, then we gotta know What Aggregate Amount Of Doctrine Money, Church Needs! Hmmm. Let's start with a smaller question: what's a "buck" of Divine Thinking, worth Now? Well, we learned from Part III that the only legal tender, the only 'capital' in God's Kingdom is His Son's Thinking, Bible Doctrine. What's the "multiplier effect" of that "buck" of Doctrine? What's the "tax" imposed on a populus, if that "buck" is not circulating? Conversely, What's The Capital Investment Growth, If Enough People Invest In His Thinking? Well, the answers to all those questions weave throughout the rest of Part IV. For the moment, let's look at..

"GAAP" in the American Public Accounting means "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles", meaning the STANDARD by which ethical accounting, should be practiced. Well, God's Accounting is always and ONLY based on the Impossible, in order to be Infinitely Acceptable. Because "nothing is Impossible, for God." That verse is in the context of the rich man asking Christ what good deed the guy could do to get to heaven (Matt19, Luke 18, and esp. Mark 10:17ff). Because even he knew that his wealth wouldn't get him there. What he didn't know, was that all the good deeds he could ever do (and he was doing a lot of them, with all that money).. wouldn't add up to a hill of beans in God's Accounting. Because, GOD IS INFINITE.

So, man being finite, can't ever even BEGIN to be on the same playing field. So no spiritual currency; so how can any good deeds, ever matter? Christ thus stressed the futility of good deeds as an instrument of salvation or credit toward God (see also Rom4), by making analogy to what was then known as the "eye of the needle", a night gate into the walled city of Jerusalem so small, you can't get a camel to fit through. You need to know that camels were not kosher. So Christ is also saying that Works Are Not Kosher. [Hebrew "kasher", from which we get the Yiddish "kosher", means to be right, proper, fitting -- acceptable. Paul plays on this meaning in the last two Greek words of Romans 12:1.] Only man could get in that gate (so, no works can get in): and it was the only gate through which you could go, after dark. Everyone knew about that gate: so this is also a witty warning to believe in Christ while the Light is still Shining (while He is still down on earth). This scene parallels verses about Christ being the Door of salvation. (But not in the Revelation 3 passage on Laodicea, since that is talking to carnal believers. "Church" means believers. Not all uses of "salvation", not all uses of "door", are the same, duh.]

See, if you don't know that the rich guy was hung up on his money because of his honoring his father, and his doing good deeds with the money, you miss the entire import of the passage. And you know that's the kind of hangup he had, by the question he asked. Moreover, in the Mark passage, the guy runs up and kneels (oriental sign of complete deference) at the feet of Christ. So he believed Christ was a good teacher.. he just didn't take that next step, of seeing Him as Savior -- we should take deep notice, of that kind of unbelief! So pity the greedy legalists who use this passage to rail against wealthy people, and thus miss the Wealth Of Beautiful Doctrine really in the passage. They thus have the exact same hangup as the rich guy they rail against. The rich guy was thinking he could buy his way into heaven by GIVING the money into particular good deeds. So Christ played on his hangup: Ok, Then Give It All Away. Kinda like Paul would later do with the Galatians, telling them to cut off the whole phallus, not just the foreskin, in Galatians! (How my pastor LOVES TO LINGER over that Galatians verse! It's a play on the cult of Cybele, in Galatians, a real tweaking verse!) But look: even that's not enough, see -- for Christ then told the rich guy, "then follow ME." So give all your money away, avails you nothing (1Cor13:1-3). So pity those legalists who harp and harangue, to get your money, in the alleged "good cause" of helping the poor, etc. Christ saw through all that. Hope we do, too...

Divine Thinking in us puny humans is of utmost historical importance to the preservation of the human race, as we saw in Parts II and III. Satan rules this place. So people can't get blessed by God, except through us "salt". It's a Judicial Issue: the one who you select as your ruler, rules. So the one you didn't select, doesn't. See Romans 6-8. The unbeliever is selecting Satan, whether he knows it or not. The carnal (not using 1Jn1:9) believer is also selecting Satan, but his legal status remains as a citizen of Heaven (Eph2), so some de minimis blessing still goes 'through' him. For, he's getting TIME to grow up. Clearly, the growing believer who's using 1Jn1:9 is selecting God. So, the Blessing thus Authorized through venue of that person, is.. stupendous. Note how it's not due to works.

Remember the Trial basis from Part I: who is better for the human race, God.. or Satan&Co.? The Superior Side wins. So the SUPERIORITY has to be demonstrated, but within Trial terms. And one of the most important of Trial terms, are man's Votes. In fact, the Voting criterion is the central focus of this Part IVb. For now, let's just focus on the fact that voting for God, is the harder of the two votes to make, and it almost never 'plays' pretty. Voting for Satan&Co. is always the easier of the two votes to make, and they'll play any way they can, to GET your vote. So for the Divine Benefit Plan to be operating, believers must exist. Since Satan's plan always ends with ennui, as we saw in Part II, the human race needs Divine Blessing. But, isn't Voting for it. Thus believers have always been automatically determinative of history: even though technically we are "no longer OF the world", and even if we ourselves, Do Absolutely Nothing, But Breathe.

This point cannot be overstressed. If there was only ONE believer on earth, and that person was bedridden, barely able to think, even; but what few thoughts the person had, were Doctrine, the entire planet would be blessed in some way. Even if not doctrine, but alive, Divine Blessing is allowable, because that person ONCE believed in Christ. Never underestimate the power RELEASED in consequence of the Cross, Eph1:19 and 2:7. You can practically predict a rise in prosperity following a rise of interest in getting Bible, anywhere in history you look. (In Part IVc is a "Blessing History" green table, listing epochs you yourself can empirically check.)

There are at least seven categories of this CONDUIT role of Blessing which occur locally, regionally, nationally, worldwide:

1. Blessed TIME. We saw something of this in Part IVa. You can prove this conclusively from Bible. Extensive analysis with Bible citations is in Mirroring.htm; the spreadsheet version of it is GeneYrs.xls; and a 30-page synopsis of the results is in TenWaysThisTimelineDiffers.doc. The synopsis and spreadsheet probably speed comprehension faster, but you need Mirroring.htm for the underlying principles and details on each of the people -- and especially, for the Temple timeline. When you load GeneYrs.xls, Excel's "View" menu has an option named "Custom Views": select that, and you'll find a handy listing of spreadsheet sections from Adam through 2007, which you can easily go to with a double-click of your mouse.
   Shocking stuff, thoroughly revised and updated for 2007. Smaller time grants also apply, and some of them are quite dramatic. A good example of a short grant was D-Day, where because Hitler SLEPT, the Allies were able to successfully land. God blessed that TIME -- a very strategic time -- due to one or more INDIVIDUALS who were learning His Son. We'll know who they are, at the Bema.

2. Blessed WEATHER, AGRICULTURE, ECONOMICS, PROTECTION, and all manner of physical stuff on a GRAND SCALE -- all this is outlined in Lev26. So the whole world is affected! You can easily prove all this from Scripture. The general principles are repeated as threads throughout Scripture, but summarizing chapters like Leviticus 26, Deut28 give you a panoramic view of how the Divine Blessing Plan works for a believer (under any covenant). So if you want to bless mankind, grow up in Christ.

3. Blessed other-category CIRCUMSTANCES. These are all secular blessings, things people yearn for, when we are positive. Secular cursings, things people fear, when we are negative. They are NOT 'small-potato' blessings/cursings! Category is broad, but would include whatever goes along with the Lev26 category, above. A big category would be cultural and societal norm changes. This you can prove historically. Whenever many people begin to believe in Christ, the actual social structure changes where those people are located. So, for example, you'll find that during the Civil War, many people came to believe in Christ -- and if you read how people reacted to the war, you'll find an astonishing amount of honor thinking, whether the individuals were believers, or not. The West developed for this reason, actually. People who did not believe, were still attracted to the virtues they saw in those who did believe. So they adopted secular ideas and aped them, thus growing secularly in the process. The West was once a wild continent of savages worshipping trees and rapine. Christianity civilized its ideas (and also harmed its ideas, both trends). You can say the same thing for certain cultures, like China and Islam, though these latter two demonstrate a cruelty which Christendom unevenly grew out of. Still, the root idea is that good thinking is attractive, and gets aped. So clearly God's Thinking would have a far greater impact on even the secular happiness of unbelieving mankind.

4. Blessed PEOPLE. There will always be some nation or nations on the planet who are 'celebrities' in each generation. The baton passes as Leviticus 26 and Deut 28 play negatively. Just as in the OT, when Israel was a haven people could seek to learn God, so also some Gentile nation or group of nations, today plays the same role. It's a FREEDOM role. Freedom to learn God. Substitute for "nation", "region", "neighborhood", even "family". Pockets of prosperity, from the very small (i.e., you), to the very large (a polity). "Prosperity" doesn't necessarily mean visible prosperity, though the larger-scale "blessed People" categories, are usually visible (visual aid). The US is an example: note how everyone loves to hate us, yet apes our ways of doing things (for better and for worse). They see us as prosperous, and they want to have what we have. Even though "democracy" is not necessarily a good idea, the Freedom Of Opinion, is sacrosanct: were the US not here championing the idea, many nations would be under far greater tyranny, because there would be less 'competition' for the minds and hearts of man.
   Visible or no, "Prosperity" will always be a Prosperity Of Thinking -- a vigor, a vitality, a virtue. It won't necessarily be visible, this good thinking. Sometimes, the blessed people are undergoing testing, so things can actually look quite bad. But blessing is nonetheless true: The Greatest Blessing Ever In History, Was The Thinking Blessing Christ Himself Received On The Cross, Isa53:10-11 (include the LXX, which is missing from the Hebrew). For That Process Opened His Soul For Full Compatibility With Father, Isa52:13 tied to Isa53:10-12, Hebrews 1-2, Heb5:8-9, Heb12:2 (well, the whole book)!

5. Blessed COMPETENCE. Usually, but not always, competence resides in the nation (etc.) of the blessed people. Sometimes the competence is developed elsewhere, and a blessed nation (region, family, etc.) GETS HELP from such other place(s). "Competence" means ability to function well despite the many foibles in the world. It is a vital blessing. So vital, in fact, that one of the hallmarks of Lev26 cursing, is a loss of competence in economic, political, or foreign affairs. The US is suffering a massive decline in competence, which is due to lack of interest in God. Come this time next century, we may no longer be a nation. My pastor has warned of this problem for the better part of 50 years.

6. Blessed LEARNING. Here, the root idea is that thought is contagious. Part IVc will have much more to say about the contagion of thought. Suffice it to say that if you are learning God, your thinking will become more competant in other areas as well, to support and enhance the learning of Bible. The abilities to think, reason, plan, decide, analyze are all required to learn Bible better. Holy Spirit provides those abilities, and if you are living in God's System (see GodSystem.htm) you will be improving in such thinking skills even when not in Bible class. For the idea is, you are to be thinking toward Father 24/7 -- so what must happen to your secular abilities? They improve. They improve, since you are to be online with the Spirit in whatever you do. So whatever you do, improves.
   So if whatever you do improves, the improvements will be noticed. You have associations with people, and a kind of communication life with them. So, people like to learn from each other, and people will be learning from you: even if you aren't saying anything. This is particularly true since you must be pointed out as a believer -- again, even if you say nothing. So you will be watched, aped. So people will benefit from that learning. It's a big benefit, not a small one. For all the problems in life are due to bad thinking. So if you're engaged habitually in good thinking, others will pick up on that thinking -- whether you know it or not -- and they will thus get the opportunity to improve their own thinking. Again, this is a big deal, since Father likes good thinking, even in the smallest things. And he rewards good thinking, always. If He thus re-routes to you that reward (since despite good thinking, the individuals are not voting for Him to rule them), well.. you'll be trained in how to use it. Again (at the risk of nagging) -- this is a huge benefit. Not, a small one. All other benefits are due TO it, for a populus must have Capacity For Blessing, and all Capacity, is born from Thinking.

7. Prayer is exclusively a conduit blessing which YOU control. YOU are the exclusive authority, here. If you don't follow the protocol, your prayer won't count. Only the believer has the privilege of prayer, and only if he prays following the protocol, will he be heard. Our world would be in much better shape if we properly PRAYED, i.e., 2Chron7:14. So all those Moslems, Buddhists, and other faiths who think their prayers get heard, well.. we need to pray for them, too, since they are praying to the wrong name -- God won't answer to a fake name or belief any more than you would answer if someone called you by the wrong name. We don't use prayer properly. We don't ask God for big things, we don't really believe He'll do what we ask, and what we ask, is absent sufficient Bible understanding. We don't think big, like the kings we are in training to be. Ok: so what to do? Practice. Guess. Learn the protocol until it is natural (it's real simple, a question of being in fellowship and talking to the Right Person and believing in His Answer, see GodSystem.htm's #5, or PrayProc.htm). It never hurts to pray often and practice. That's an immediate conduit blessing you yourself can do, anywhere anytime any day. Prayer is a nuclear weapon. You truly CAN pray ANYTHING in His Name -- yikes, be careful what you request!

As demonstrated in GeneYrs.xls and Mirroring.htm, God granted the world 1000 more years to live, due to Abraham. Abram found God when he was age 75. Poor guy, he went wacko, on and off for the next 25 years; with the result that the whole world today suffers from one set of cousins (the Arabs) being dead set against another set of cousins (the Jews) -- and probably at least 80% of today's world population, has at least one 'drop' of either Arab or Jewish genes in its DNA. God's sense of humor: for "Abraham" means "the father of many nations"! For all during Abram's wacko zig-zagging growth, he kept believing. By the end of that time, he'd grown up, so now he was ready to have the promised heir. Well, look at the result: we are all children of his belief (theme in Romans 4, real important to grasp).

Next example, Moses: due to him, the world got 490 and 1000 more years to live, as well. And Moses got his time, due to Joseph being granted 490 years, so the world got to live from Joseph TO Moses, only because of that TIME Grant. Through Moses, the whole of Israel was preserved, as we saw at the end of Part III. But it's really the whole world, for all history goes by Israel, and Moses was the SOLE reason for Israel's preservation, at that time. So too, Noah, like it says in Gen5: "but Noah found Grace". Compared, to everyone else in the world: God gave the world 490 years and 1000 years due to Noah, without which there would not have been an Abraham, who got his award the year Noah's expired. Many other confirming verses can be listed, like the statement Moses was the most humble man on earth, like the Genesis 5 roster (showing the heroes in GOD'S eyes, and notice how few there were), the Hebrews 11 roster. David, for example, was the reason why Israel continued to exist, viz., in the catchphrase about how God Keeps Israel Alive Due To His Servant David. Then there are the Righteous Branch verses, which refer to Christ; most famously, the Seed passage (i.e., in Galatians 3). So, see? If God Is Pleased By Even One Person On Earth (Job being another example, especially in the Trial context), then the earth continues. Never Underestimate The Priceless Value Of Bible Doctrine Learned And Circulating In Your Own Soul!

Biggest example, David. God gave David SIX Time Grants! The entire world since 963BC survived based on them. Daniel 9 is an accounting based on the time grants to David, because the TEMPLE was a promise to David, 2Sam7. Temple represented MESSIAH, was a kind of down-payment guarantee that Messiah would come. So the Temple was given its own 490-year time grant, from 950BC-460BC. But apostacy, a kind of negative voting by believers, resulted in God razing the Temple using Nebuchadnezzar, in 586BC. So it was 126 years short of its 490-year grant. So God ALLOCATES BACK those missing years, in coming up with the accounting pieces in Daniel 9. That puts Time back on track in light of David's three 490-year and three 1000-year time grants, the endings of which bracket the scheduled and realized, lifetime of Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Christ Bought Time by dying successfully on the Cross, Gal4:4. So, that's our legacy in Him: but that rule, has been true since Adam, as GeneYrs.xls and Mirroring.htm explain. (TenWaysThisTimelineDiffers.doc is a shorter explanation, so you might want to read it first.)

It makes the religous types very uncomfortable to see that the Davidic line is founded on incestuous prostitution (Tamar, Rahab -- see Matthew and Luke genealogy). It makes them even more upset that folks like Moses and David, committed murder (Moses, of the Egyptian, and David, of Uriah the Hittite). And they positively cannot abide the fact David fornicated (with Bathsheba) -- and God gives the kingly line, through that Union (via Solomon, truncated, via Nathan, from whom comes Mary)? Well, so did Abram fornicate, with Hagar. Of course, soon after the Flood, Noah got drunk and committed sodomy with his own son! Wow: decades ago, when my pastor exegeted that passage and explained "uncovering nakedness" was the sodomy (the getting drunk was a mistake, since mold was a post-Flood flora mutation), um.. I had to really listen hard, since my Bible said nothing about it -- yet the (extra-Biblical) passage heading, is "Noah's sin" (in my NASB hardcover Bible). Where is the sin depicted? Well, it's covered up, see -- in the translation.

So clearly these many heroes were not the paragons of virtue you hear about in childhood Sunday school. So, think! You can be a hero as well. Become one the same way these guys did: Live In And On His Thinking. Don't worry about what a skalawag you are or were -- Paul was the worst sinner in history (1Tim1:5 or 15?), and he lived on Philippians 3:8-14. Keep on keeping on: after all, if you are such a skalawag, then wouldn't that be more reason, to keep on going?

Legalists will never become God's heroes. They are Satan's heroes, though. Like Satan, they pride themselves on how good they are, what they do, how moral they are. Yeah: they, not God. Better to commit sodomy, than think like that. Paul was the worst sinner in history because he trusted in his goodness and morality; and as a result, he did the most immoral things (casting whole families in prison, murdering people -- see his biographical sketches in Acts 8-22, 1Cor15, Gal2, 1 and 2 Tim). But any legalistic skalawag can alike get into God's System and stay there!

We just saw that believers are the sole conduits of blessing to the world. In itself, that First Facet is a direct blessing TO the world, not to us, but BECAUSE of us. Here in this Second Facet, we'll see that the blessing accrues TO us, not the world; they share indirectly, due to their PROXIMITY to us. This has a multiplier effect, just as we saw earlier with money: blessing is better than money. The multiplier macro preservation value, as we saw in Part IVa's "re-routing" section on Legal Precedence, was VESTED in Christ, so the re-routing to us, varies with how much we've grown in Him (main theme of Paul's and others, tapping the merizw keyword in Isa53:12's LXX). So how much of it we directly get, depends on how much we are learning Him Now.

Notice the parallel. The world breathes because we do, and we breathe because HE does, and HE does, because He paid for all sins. So There Must be a Far Bigger Macro Effect Due To Believers Learning Him, post-Session. For Now, He Himself is BIGGER, Having Been Seated, Heb1:4; for He is Risen and Ruling. This fact is the central theme of the Book of Hebrews: see Heb1. We are Body, so We Are To Have The Same Effect on History. Even though, and especially because, we are not of the world, anymore.

1. So, look at the macro effect: unlike the training OT folks needed, we need much more; so, much more ASSOCIATED Blessing can flow to those who we 'need' around, to learn what we need to learn. Part III's Corollaries 3A-D, multiplied many times due to the many believers (hopefully) cause their nations, Great Blessing. Or, if we are too negative, Great Cursing.

2. BASIS for Blessing to Us: Life Now is all and only about, our Real Role, our Role Real, Our Role Royal: that of being developed into a Royal Priesthood, for FATHER. We saw the parameters of that, in Part III.

3. All this, because FATHER is pleased to do it for CHRIST: sweet savor principle, like that of the Cross (Isa53:11 combined LXX and BHS texts; and "sweet savor" verses, KJV). [Other versions translate the term differently. KJV is uniform, though, so it makes a good search target.]

   So the sum of these three, combine into a Blessing ABC: ASSOCIATED BASIS CHRIST; those ASSOCIATED with us are more blessed because the BASIS is our need for spiritual Priestly Training for Father, due to CHRIST. Now you know one reason why the wicked prosper. Some growing believer NEEDS them to prosper. (More often they prosper because believers malign them, lol, Matt7:1-2.)

   For True Blessing in Life is THOUGHT, not outers. All the outers in the world won't make you feel good if your soul is full of sick thoughts. Conversely, if your thoughts are healthy, bad outers won't matter. That is a significant testimony in the Trial (Fifth Facet), that blessing is an INNER thing, not an outer thing (i.e., accoutrements and works). Only God can bless you on the inside. So then whatever you have on the outside, is worth having even if painful.

   Meanwhile, other people are only alive because believers are alive. Because believers need to learn Him, and need circumstances which constitute a Training Environment. A 'job' requires a setup so that 'job' can function. Again, we've voted for God to rule us forever, that first nanosecond we believed Christ paid for our sins. Everyone else, didn't vote for Him (at least, not yet). So, They Continue Only Because We Do. And we continue, only because CHRIST does. And the quality of our continuance, likewise depends on Him: Learning HIM, and not learning the world. For the world, Satan owns. But God, owns us. So what we Think, Learning Him, 'pays' for the continuation of Planet Earth, even as His Thinking on the Cross, paid for us to even exist. See how that analogy continues? See how it's Only about Learning Him?

Bible "riches" keywords are many, but often translations fuzz them over. "Riches", especially in the NT, means this category: "riches of His Glory" is pretty easy to find. "Treasure" and just about any material-good word (and all food and shelter words) depict Diamond Doctrine Bucks, in the NT. For the Word is likened to every kind of material good man has or wants.

So why are we so blessed? God likes the SMELL of His Son's Thinking in us. I like to call it the "isotropic property of the universe", that God the Father Sees His Son, Everywhere He Looks. To depict this, OT uses the smell metaphor all over the place, signifying that future Son's sacrifice by means of the cooking meat of the Levitical offerings. "Sweet savor" is a really cool translation in the KJV, and it's used often. Idea was that the believer in the OT who sacrificed an animal, cooked it. The smell of the cooking is called "sweet savor". It's a really great tweak at the world's religions of the day, because they all taught that YOU did something for the 'god', YOU sacrificed. Heathen religions were all about pain. Even the mandated sex acts were designed to be degrading. So, sacrifice was about pain to you, pain to the victim. Religion is always and only about pain, in any period of history. The other polities also were often HUNGRY. They didn't get blessings of weather and agriculture, akin to how in the last Exodus 9 plagues, Goshen (where Israel lived) was always exempted. So if you travelled, you knew you were getting near Jerusalem because all you'd smell, was cooking meat from all the animal sacrifices. Meat was hard to come by, in the old days. So right away you associated the blessing of FOOD, with Israel. Easy to want to convert! So these two things, a God-sacrifices FOR you faith, plus all that meat, did a great job of evangelizing. For Israel was a center of commerce, and the world travelled through her.

Since God is Infinite, and Infinite Love, no pain can ever compensate Him. Only what He does can compensate Him. So, God can't be bribed, either. Moreover, although justice requires an eye for an eye so to teach all that there are consequences to sin, every Levitical sacrifice thus a) had no pain inflicted on the animal (carotid was cut, thus cutting pain); b) the blood and fat were the central elements of the sacrifice, depicting the life itself, not works by that life; and c) the rest of the sacrifice (the commercially-valuable part), was either burnt up (to show it didn't contribute, to show total dedication attitude) or was EATEN. This latter represented Reconciliation with God. So the Sweet Savor was Communion in all cases: life given due to dedication can only be given if desired, so it's not about any works, but about LOVE. Eating together is likewise a form of Love of Association. See Ps40:5-13.

Since He's really God, He doesn't 'eat'. That's why the emphasis on blood, fat, offal, etc. being the 'sacrifice', and you plus the officiating priest, Ate The Good Parts. [Many of the Levitical offerings are partial, with both believer and priest getting some of the meal/meat. Check it out, esp. the wave offering. Talk about humor!] He likes the 'smell' of what is not beneficial, getting cooked. He also likes the 'smell' of what you end up EATING (depicting belief). Notice how the thing has to be cooked, to be useful.

For 'Smell' is an intangible thing; so is Thought. [It's interesting that the sense of smell is so vital to man's life. I forget the name of the guy who recently won a Nobel prize for his work on the faculty of smell.] Therefore, the ultimate Chef, Christ, cooked all our sins on the Cross By His Thinking, say both Hebrew and LXX texts of Isa53:10-12. Thus, He Who Was Made Sin, Made Sin Useful, Savorful, to God. He did this by Getting The Truth Poured Into Him, Not By Works. No amount of good deeds is powerful enough to deposit Truth into the soul. So if the soul remains tainted, all the good deeds in the world can't fix it. All this, the Levitical sacrifices explained metaphorically: especially, with the emphasis on blood (depicting Circulating Thought in Messiah-to-Come). For the quality of life with someone depends on Shared Thinking. All the good deeds in the world can't create, rapport.

They got mere 'dinner', but we get EUCHARISTIA, Col2:7, His Thinking to 'eat', 24/7. So the effect of that food must be light-years larger than what they got to 'eat'. We've already seen how much bigger is our spiritual life individually, in Part III. Well, What Must Be The Macro Effect? If only one guy, Moses, was carrying the whole nation of Israel, God's Chosen People, as we saw at the end of Part III; then what 'multiplier effect' must we potentially have? Moses didn't have the Thinking of Christ in writing, "but we have the Thinking of Christ", 1Cor2:16 (theme of the epistle). Moses saw through the veil, and he was the only one allowed to do so; but we have unveiled face; he saw like a child, but we can see as adults (1Cor13:9-13).

Re-routing of blessing to us spills over to them, since we are in the world being 'cooked', while they remain raw. Idea is, the Smell Of His Thinking Is Innately Admirable, and so maybe they will opt for getting cooked, when they 'smell' us. That's a corollary and very-minor reason for our existence down here, since The First Reason Is To Think Toward Father What Pleases Him To Hear/'Smell'. But it's impossible to be down here learning Him and not 'smell' good to others, even if one never talks about God. It's the Attitude. Oh boy, people notice!

If you've been addicted to Bible, you've probably blurted out stupid stuff about it to others. So they know that you're into Bible. As you grow you learn not to do this. It takes time. As a spiritual kid, you think you're supposed to do it (idea of being loyal, wanting others to be saved, wanting to express what you are learning). As a spiritual adult, you realize that folks are upset to hear you talk, not only because you were too pushy (maybe); but really, because God the Holy Spirit and Satan&Co. are pointing you out as someone who knows God. That pointing is needed since those folks need to know God, too. They will rightly consider it superior to know God, and will react. So you will get these weird reactions, obsessive behavior toward/against you by others. When even perfect strangers who do not know of your addiction treat you in the same manner, then it will dawn on you that your own behavior, is not the cause. That's one corollaic function of Re-Routing. Information goes out, even if all you do, is breathe. Remember how the demons chased the Lord in the Gospels (esp. in Mark's), and He had to keep shutting them UP?

So even now, God 'deploys' you as it were, to an audience. They get information from you, whether you realize it or not, whether you talk about God or not. In exactly the same manner, that selfsame 'deployment' creates CONTACT; because they are associated with you in some manner (even a chance encounter), God Can Justify Blessing Them. For, you must have some need of the encounter (i.e., for spiritual training, the foremost reason for deployment). So, They Have To Be Blessed In Order For Your Need To Be Met. The company you work for must be blessed, so you can be paid. The nation you live in must be blessed, so you can live in it. Notice that carefully: YOU are the cause, not them. You need it, so to provide for your needs, they all have to be blessed. What a humbling thing to know!

Now, for the flipside. If you are rejecting learning Him, then They Have To Be Cursed, For You Need Cursing. But, the objective is still spiritual training, so the cursing you get must be modified in light of that goal. Sometimes that means you get much more cursed, thus lessening the necessary curse on them. But too much cursing won't be productive for training. So more often (this is so scary), they get cursed the more. Think of what happened when David did the census (end of 2nd Samuel). David didn't get a disease, but 70,000 (?) of Israel, did. Rulers cannot be punished, because they have to keep ruling. So others get hurt if the ruler screws up. That is the most humbling thing to know. Scariest. Just as in the olden days, when the young prince messed up, his "whipping boy" got spanked, so also we need to be frightened of the damage done to others for our own screwups. God isn't kidding when He makes us Crown Princes; as a Crown Prince, you own it all; so your decision affects what you own. No better way to train a King, than by disciplining what and who He owns. It worked for David, and it works for us. Frightening, this.

No-extra-charge corollary: "9/11" was a re-route of cursing due to believers not growing. The terrorists are just pawns of Satan&Co. So believers like me, my church, who had the most exposure to Good Bible Teaching, are the most responsible for "9/11". I can't pretend it's not true: after these years of research, I realize how very blessed we have been, and how very unappreciative we have been, of it. So, every day, I live with that knowledge. Generals live with the knowledge of how many mother's sons they sent to die in battle. Kings live with the knowledge of how many of their own, they damage when they make a bad decision. Can't learn leadership, else. Can't be a blessing to others, apart from this understanding. Which usually is learned, the hard way. For a king is but human. Big role, big mistakes, big learning (hopefully) -- so that all those damaged, did not suffer in vain!

For Bible Doctrine really IS the ultimate wealth, and if you were given a lot of it via your pastor, well.. then you have a lot of liability when things go wrong. It's one kind of liability if you never learn Bible, or learn it a little bit; it's another kind of liability when you did learn a lot, but didn't progress as a result. See, the goal of learning, is Living On What You Learned. All too often, people who get good Bible teaching, sorta preen about it, and a kind of roteness, a flashcard-knowledge approach, is adopted. To preen, one must have petty markers, like how much Doctrine one knows. That is not really knowing, anything. Until you can account for the whys, and live on the Diamond-Doctrine, you don't know squat. And of course once you really do learn the whys and living-on, you realize you are still a nothing. For IT is soooo much more valuable, than you. So you don't preen, you Prepare. With fear and trembling, as Paul remarked (Phili2:12).

If you want to see the ultimate type of re-routing, the Re-Routing of Time, spend time (heh) on Mirroring.htm. Notice how OTHER people got or lost Time, blessing, due to the individuals God used. A great example in that page, is Joseph. The development of the 12th and 18th Dynasty of Egypt is literally TAGGED to the 490-year awards to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph like birthday presents. For Joseph, it was a slavery present: Egypt was blessed 490 years due to him alone; and in the 490th year, the Exodus occurred. The 80 years while he was vizier (12th Dynasty, starting with Amenemhet II), gave Egypt a chance to develop so well economically, my 1985 Encyclopedia Britannica waxes rhapsodic about it in its "Egypt, History of" article (without noticing Joseph was the vizier, of course). God uses everyone, so orchestrates all the foreknown effects, so that Justice is Always Served. Because God Sees It, and HE should get Sweet Savor. That's why the Cross, so we are free to screw up -- that's why everything happens as it does. Freely, yet never 'outside' the Justice Requirement of Sweet Savor, Ps37:28, the quintessential Psalm about why you don't worry when the wicked prosper.

So you are being blessed or cursed SOLELY based on whether you are learning or rejecting, Bible. And everyone around you, depends on you learning Bible. Couldn't be a balder way to prove that fact, than by how God orchestrates Time around believers, none of whom did any good deeds by modern standards, but by God's Hebrews 11:6 standard!

As explained in Part III's "Third Reason for Invisibility" and "Third Reason for Royalty",

• Christ raised the Bar of Spirituality because He would Pay for Sins, which the Mosaic Law could not do (see Heb7).
• So Christ invented a Royal Spiritual Life of PERFECT THOUGHTS to Please Father. Those Thoughts Countered the incoming imputed sins on the Cross, and thus Paid for them.
• Hence spirituality is Thinking rather than ritual or works. [Doesn't mean you can't have rituals and works. Does mean you MUST evaluate them in light of What Thinking Drives Your Choices And Execution of them. For example, it is now quite wrong to impose on others or claim that set rituals or works are "spiritual", see Romans 14. These are now individually determined. Of course, if you belong to a church, you are to submit to that authority until you quit that church.]
• Hence the Legacy from Christ is a uniquely CREATIVE Spiritual Life, something you invent in light of Bible you're learning and living on, each day.
• Thinking toward God Now has no cookie-cutter rules, rote sayings, etc. You are in training to determine what to think and do, main theme of Romans 14. For Kings set Policy.
• So You Must Learn How to Think Bible, 24/7. Each time you do, you are thinking a Perfect Thought Toward FATHER, to Whom You are a Royal Priest. So your daily thinking will focus much on what is the Right Standard, and what to think or do when that standard is not met. For invariably, it will not be met. Do you get angry, capricious, depressed? Do You Use 1Jn1:9 And Figure Out Or Ask Father What To Do? It's a constant monitoring of one's own thoughts and environment, just as intense as combat would be, 2Cor10:5. For combat, requires initiative, courage, and the ability to make decisions. While spiritually immature, and even sometimes during maturity, it will be natural to forget about God during the day, remembering only when you have something related to Bible (like getting ready for Bible class). So in the early stages of spiritual growth, your combat is mainly Painful Learning Due To Forgetting God. Not to worry. You'll learn to remember.. or, you'll quit the spiritual life, and whine (or fantasize) the rest of your life.

1. First Facet, YOU are the conduit for blessing or cursing to the human race, simply because you are a believer. That, because YOUR King is God, and the rest of the world has voted instead for Satan to be its king. So it's a problem of JURISDICTION. God is King only of all believers. So Blessing FROM God can only be granted DUE TO believers. This has been true since Adam's Fall: had he not believed for Salvation (Gen3:21), we'd all not be here. So the Jurisdiction Rule applies, throughout history. It's phenomenally upgraded, for Church, as we saw.
2. Second Facet, Your King Blesses You Directly, to Train You in His Royal Son's Thinking. So as a result those ASSOCIATED with you, get blessed. You are treated as their owner, and to bless you for what YOU need, they must get blessing.
3. So Third Facet, here: you are a Royal Priest to Father, being trained in that: so you are learning His Son's Thinking, in order to develop a Thinking Lifestyle of Perfect Thoughts which Father can enjoyably 'smell'. Others in your periphery will smell them also, which has a multiplier effect on your periphery, the nation, the world -- even if you never mention "God", which effect is a Second-Facet re-routing.

Let's walk through how this works. If a point seems confusing or wrong, use 1Jn1:9 if needed and Ask God to show you the relevant verses. There are so many, I'm not sure which ones you need to see. So what follows is a summary of the doctrines, and any citations will be restricted to those which spring to mind per John 14:26.

• Christ died on the Cross 2000 years ago. During your own time on earth, you, me and everyone else, sin and commit acts of human good and evil, with the thinking of human good and evil -- both 'children' of sin -- motivating those acts. It's the motivations, the thinkings, which must be juridically addressed; and they all were, ON the Cross. When they occur, God "remembers" (zakar, official OT legal term for Divine Promise Fulfillment or Verdict) what happened at the Cross with respect to all that thinking. And He is SATISFIED. So whether you were a believer or unbeliever, whether you used 1Jn1:9 or not, God 'smells' (rules on) Christ's Thinking when the sin occurs, and is Satisfied (theological term is Propitiation, Greek hilasterion, Hebrew kapporet and other words): yireh yisbah is the clever, pithy way Isaiah puts it in Isa53:11's meter. So immediately, you know that your sins are no longer an issue, due to What Word Jesus Thought on the Cross. That's why the universe can even exist. The Decree to create begins and ends with the Decree to Create Him, Isa52:13-15, Isa53:9-12, Ps110, 1Tim2:5. Divine Contract among the Godhead For Each Other is the true Decree to Create. A Contract of Love. Everything else in the Decree with respect to creation itself, is but corollary to that.

• So, corollary: what Word you think, also has a Divine Legal Response. The Word is Perfect no matter where it appears: for example, even in your soul, it's a Perfect Thought. A perfect doctrine. A perfect application of a perfect doctrine. Obviously, the Holy Spirit alone runs this. So just as it didn't matter that your sins occur, since God smells Christ's Thinking, it also doesn't matter that your puny soul is the location where this Perfect Thinking occurs. God 'smells' the Perfect Thought, and is Satisfied.

• So He EXPRESSES His Satisfaction by Blessing you, your periphery, your region, nation, and the world. Some of that expression is because of you, and you indirectly benefit from it; some, is directly to you and then through you out to your periphery, etc.
• If Word is not in you, then "b." and "c." above require cursing, not blessing. Same 'play' out to everyone else, because of and through you. That's why 1Jn1:9 is a lifeline, not just for you, but for everyone around you. There must be a bizillion verses in the OT with the refrain that if Israel will return to the Lord, He will bless them and the world -- "return" begins with admitting one has sinned. That expresses an attitude, a thought, a desire, a Vote to Go Back To God. It's Always About Voting, in God's Plan.
• Multiplier Effect on your home polity: everyone around you will notice what you go through, even if you say nothing. They 'smell', too. Their own thinking is impacted. To the extent you are positive and they are also, their thinking will improve, so what Father 'smells' from them, pleases, and then He can justify blessing them more due to that fact. The converse is also true. And if you are positive but they are negative, God will still bless them, but will modulate it with cursing (and all cursing is designed to bless, because Christ paid for it already). So if you love other people, learn and live on Bible. Couldn't be more important to their lives or to your own.
• Notice how the objects to which you APPLY (associate, use) that Perfect Thought can be anything noble or base, Matt4:4 always occurring, Divine Treasure in earthen vessel. You can be sick or well, rich or poor, applying that Perfect Word at work or play, while watching TV or exercising, driving or hurting or eating.. whatever. Whenever and wherever IT occurs, IT is perfect, and gets a Divine Response. For whenever IT occurs, Father will 'smell' that occurrence forever. A moment 'lasts' forever, to Omniscience. So no matter how menial the task, how low you might be or seem or even are.. even when on the toilet! WORD recall, pondering, learning, applying, occurring in your head will get a Positive Divine Blessing Response. The world depends on it, and so do you.

• Additionally, as we'll see in this Third Facet: each such Perfect Thought TRANSFORMS your soul one precept at a time, like building dendrites. DDNA webseries (DDNA.htm) is on that topic. Essentially, a STRUCTURE of Word Alive Thinking is building up in your soul: spiritual capital that you take with you when you die. So much more Blessing will be forthcoming. You are being built for a sinless eternal state, yet wholly free, since you are freely choosing to learn and live on Word, down here. The resulting structure of thinking will likewise be fully Word, and fully Free. God doesn't sin due to what He knows, and when you know more you will not like sinning, either. Heaven is a free place. People don't sin because they don't like it, not because God has constricted them in some way. Soul size is determined by how much Bible you learn and live on down here ("enlarged", auxanw and megalunw, in Bible). But whatever soul size you eventually become, you'll know enough to not want sin forever. Freely.

• God LIKES doing it all in this lingering, painstaking fashion, Eph2:10. Col 1:25-27 explains He thus likes to prove His Son's Victory in the Trial, too -- by Slowly Building His Son's Thinking in us. It's a Central Trial Issue that God won't instantly make everything perfect, incapable of failure. That Trial issue is covered in the Fifth Facet. For now, notice: God's not forced by creatures to do anything, and He doesn't like being politically-correct. He created pee, and even made a covenant via a phallus, Abram's. So He even wants to bless pee, and is NOT offended by making covenants with even phalluses, so to speak. Why? Well, think of a Georges Seurat painting, which is made of lots of little dots of paint. God likes filling all the 'dots' with Righteous Answers, and He likes the painstaking nature of that process. "Verbal Plenary Inspiration" is a theological term for how God caused the writers of Scripture to breathe out Perfect Word in writing, without waiving anything about their nature or personality as human beings. Well, that's just God 'painting' one dot at a time into them with their consent, and the resultant picture, is our Beautimous Word. But He does that with everything, even the worst of human evil and violence or religiosity (raping or murdering the Word is far more evil than raping or murdering people); but also, with dung beetles and specs of dust, rusty cars, you-name-it. He is Pleased To Do It That Way; He could instead just bing! everything instantly to be what He wants. But He Loves Freedom. More about the Freedom criterion will be in the Fifth Facet. For now, just notice that God Likes Lingering Over Things, just as the Holy Spirit does, in Gen1:2ff: Responding to Word Which Makes Alive, one 'dot' at a time.

God Is Immaterial: Pure Thought, His 'DDNA', so to speak. Godness is Infinite, therefore the only 'body' He has, is a 'Body' Of Thinking, aka YHWH, Essence (ousia), Being (ho own=YHWH, Exo3:14, a term John uses), Substance (hupostasis), Reality (ho logos), The Word (ho logos, first meaning, Hebraistic for dabar and emeth). Concrete doesn't think. A couch never laughs. The planet Venus cannot read you a poem named after her. Inanimacy doesn't think. The ability to be alive had to come from SomeOne Greater Who Was Already Alive. Big hint: "Spirit" means life, breath. Gen1:2, incubating, Speaking Into Existence The Restoration Of The Earth. Heb1:3, the Hupostasis, Christ, Who (John 1) was Always God, upholds the universe by His Word. Wow. Thought is pretty enlivening, huh. So much for all those reincarnation fantasies about our coming from some bleeping amoeba, lol.

We also know that thought makes alive, because David told us so, in the God-breathed original-language texts of Ps139:16-17 (138, in LXX): David Had No Thought Until Born, Didn't Exist -- but when God Birthed him, David Could Think -- So To See God's Thoughts! [NoWombLife.htm exegetes the passage: search for the white "Don't ABORT My Word" table.]

We also know that thought makes alive because Christ paid for our sins with His Thinking, Isa 53:11. Obviously, since He was Nailed to a Cross, Thinking was the only 'thing' He could 'do'.

True Righteousness is Love-based, not hatred-based. Hatred-based 'righteousness' is what you commonly see in the world, all its crusading, shaking the fist and preening over how right and moral it is. That's not righteousness at all, but is indeed Satan's mindset. If you beat yourself up, or think God is beating you up, that sentiment is NOT coming from God. Hatred-based righteousness wants to crusade, punish and kill things: the prolife movement is a good example of hatred-based 'righteousness'. Any crusading of any type, any marching on Washington, there oughta be a law, any mass movement of any kind -- is all hatred-based. All hatred has a thirst for power and powerful 'show'. This is false morality. The satanic purpose is to make righteousness kill you -- make you dead to God, exhausted from all your effort and flagellation.

But Love-based Righteousness is relaxing, a relief, a joy -- God's -- and wants to MAKE ALIVE. So when you read the Bible, if you read it with hatred-based righteousness, you get a lot of fire and brimstone, pounding. But if you read it with 1Jn1:9 on as needed, you see that God stresses how you are Made Alive Again -- to Him. He's happy about you, never condemning, Rom8:1. The parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and especially, the prodigal son, all show Love-based Righteousness. The joy at finding, not anger at what cost the one lost inflicted. Love subordinates. Love substitutes. Love Lingers. Because, Love Loves. And what Love Loves, is Righteousness. Adamantly, Absolutely.

So the Love-Absolute Resurrection Power of God is used to save you, and to resurrect your dead-thinking soul via learning and living on Bible, 24/7. Just read Ephesians, see that stress yourself. Do you ever wonder why God allows bad to exist in the world? Because He Can Make Good On It. God is Omnipotent, so He can make anything. So, He can make a thing perfect such that it can't become imperfect, INSTANTLY. But He doesn't want that. He enjoys the slower creative process, and He wants Free. So He wants to make a thing Free.. and then if it freely becomes imperfect or dead, He wants to pay for its perfection and resurrection; and then make it Perfect and Alive, from what He pays. He wants to do it the slow way, the hard way, because He actually Loves Righteousness, enjoys it. So enjoys lingering over making what's bad, good. This is a joy to Him, no matter how much it costs. So here, it's a True Pleasure to save us, and then to remake our souls into His Thinking post-salvation. Not a burden or a chore. So that's why so many Bible verses exult over our future status as sons. Notice how even in the judgement passages the Bible continually stresses the happy side -- no condemnation, no remembrance of how bad we were. But only, on how happy we will be. True Love for Righteousness actually enjoys Righteousness, that's why there's no condemnation in Christ, Romans 8:1.

This Resurrecting is the main theme in Isa53-55, and is always masked in translations: the chapters explain in detail, almost blow-by-blow, how, because we got borne on the Cross, so we become birthed as His sons forever. Isaiah has no end of fun with pregnancy metaphors in his Book, so the metaphor pops up often, and especially when talking of Messiah (i.e., Chaps 7 and 9); so, especially the Lord Himself and Paul, plus all the NT writers, carry forward the metaphor, thickly threading it through their letters. [This wordplay is the main theme throughout Isa53-55. Crescendo verse 53:11, "Out From His Labor", in corrected English, are the first two words in Hebrew: wordplay between labor-stage of pregnancy, and labor as in bearing a load. Very funny: Hebrew preposition min is always used with birthing/separating connotation, and to study it in Scripture is a treasure worth more than all the world's wealth. Job and Psalms make the same wordplay with those two Heb words in 53:11. Maybe other verses also, I stopped checking when I saw so many in those two books. Fabulous, how Isaiah uses words there. So fabulous, how you can also use your Word Learned, in your life! Heaven, in earthen vessels!]

How apt: we die twice (muth..muth construction in Gen2:17) and we live twice. We, born the first time dead at the same time in Adam, become alive to God via that first nanosecond's faith in Christ (John 3, Romans 5, esp. v.12ff). So, if now alive to Christ and in Christ (Romans 6-8, 2Cor5, Col1-3), then our thinking is precious to God, even as God's thinking was precious to David, the only reason why David felt it worthwhile to be born either time (Ps139:17, in context). Physical birth is still a kind of deadness, since one is 'dead' to God's Thoughts. Spiritual birth depends on physical birth to precede, so now physical birth is made alive to God, due to spiritual brith -- and thus its sterility is made alive, Isa54:1! Paul plays incessantly on that theme, especially in his grand drama of Romans 8 and all of Ephesians and Philippians, 1Cor12 and 15, etc.

Consider: God already knows how you will be thinking once you've died and are up in heaven. He could have chosen instead to just MAKE you like that from the get-go, eliminating the interim process of you being born physically on earth, Christ having to go pay for your sins beforehand, you believing in Christ and then undergoing whatever spiritual growth you would go through, down here. All that pain, eliminated. God could have just made you as the end product, rather than as a beginning. Sounds good, right? Yes and no. Yes, eliminating the pain is nice. No, because The Pain Never Got Associated with Thought. So it is always a dead thing, never enlivened by the birthing thought could have given it; always a woulda coulda shoulda, never a reality which goes on forever. So it's not merely a God-would-cheat question --which is impossible, for whatever God wants is valid, even were it wrong, He's Free to Choose -- it's an ENJOYMENT question. God would be cheated of Enjoyment, and that's why He won't 'cheat' by doing something which impinges on freedom, whether His.. or yours. "Filling all in all", as Paul puts it, end Eph1. Nothing left out, nothing left 'unbaptised', as it were, by Christ's Thinking.

So it's Always And Only The Thought That Counts, since Only The Thought Makes ALIVE. We all know this instinctively, and even if we are unaware of the fact that Only Thought Counts, we are wholly controlled by that fact. If you aren't happy, then what would normally make you thrilled, is.. boring. Lack of "appetite". Grieving people lose interest in their own lives. Why, because their thoughts are on the grief: what's alive is their grief, so all else is 'dead' to them. So, that's how their lives really are, Prov23:7, KJV. So also, whatever you buy or do or get is all run by what you THINK of it. So too, all compatibilities among people: Shared Thinking. It's a real pain to be around someone whose thinking you don't share. Painful for them, too. So, reflect: To Share God's Thinking, is the Ultimate Happiness. So, consider: Wouldn't He want you to be Like-Minded?

As we also saw in Part III's twinned Third Reasons, due to the Cross everything is ruled "Qorban", dedicated-to-God. Nothing in life is excluded for being too low. Qorban is a voluntary thing. Christ has ruled on it. Now, it's our turn. To the extent therefore that we Practice Him, we are ratifying qorban. So, we get built into Qorban, as He was the Ultimate Qorban, the Holocaust Offering for the whole world. That "qorban" OT concept had two basic elements: dedicated to Destruction, or dedicated to Service -- Paul illustrates this with aposiopesis, in Rom9:20-23. See, the OT problem was, only certain things/people could be dedicated-to-God, since Christ had not yet come. But now that He has come, everything can be dedicated-to-God. And everything IS.. in Him. So now everyone can choose Which Way To Be Qorban: and everyone makes himself a "vessel of destruction", as Paul explains in that Romans 9 passage -- if he rejects Christ. Pre-salvation, never believing. Post-salvation, never learning, so No Treasure In Earthen Vessels to Survive Bema Burning (1Cor3).

Everything is holy, now. It wasn't, before He completed the Cross. Hence our Priesthood is not like the OT (central theme of Book of Hebrews). New covenant, to implement the New Covenant for Israel. So Everything About Your Life, Is Dedicated To God: Qorban table in Part III's "Third Reason for Royalty" showed how that works. So if you refuse, you get punished. It's Not About Sin, But About Growing Up In Christ. Far worse than sin, then, to refuse. Part III's Four paired Reasons covered these concepts in great detail, especially the Third and Fourth Reasons for Invisibility and Royalty. If you refuse, you are still qorban, so you will be devoted to destruction. You never lose your salvation, But There's More Important Stuff To Lose -- the Kingship rewards, which make you close to God.. forever. [Why pastors don't teach this fact, I'll never fathom. A few do: search the internet for "doctrine of crowns". There will be many goofy websites, but a few good ones. My pastor calls it by other names, so you shouldn't get his site in the mix. I want to say Travis Baptist Church -- I forget where it is -- is another listing with sensible teaching. But the teaching is out there -- sparse, but it exists. This replaces the sin question with a More Serious Issue -- and obviously, sin obstructs spiritual growth, creates more downtime getting past the habit, etc., so you won't want to sin anyway. The Bar was Raised by the Cross to Eph4:13: that's rarely taught, too. But you should be able to tell that even in translation of that verse, plus via reading even a translation of Romans 6-8, if breathing 1Jn1:9 as needed, the whole time.]

The NT references qorban concepts often, too many to list. But here is a sample grouping:

• "what God has called Holy, you must not call common" (said to Peter),
• "living sacrifice" verses,
• "members under orders",
• "thinking service" (corrected translation of the last two Greek words in Rom12:1),
• use of diakonos as wordsmith/ambassador (covered in RightPT.htm and in the "Fit Bride" section, below);
• all of Ephesians (which is about becoming a Living Temple),
• the aposiopesis in Romans 9:20ff,
• last half of 2Peter and 1Cor3's burning,
• the feasting of the birds in Revelation (19?) which ties back to many OT verses of same content,
• 2Pet3:11's "eusebeia" ("dedicated-to-God lifestyle", my pastor's translation).
• All the works verses are first about thinking toward God: "unto the Lord", like in Col3:17ff and similar passages. It's what you THINK as you move in this body, which counts. And what you think is devoted to destruction, if you are not living on God's Script. So your periphery will be cursed, the needed blessing withheld, since God didn't get sweet savor from you during that time. Hence the need to breathe 1Jn1:9!

You Are Not Of This World Anymore. God made that happen 2000 years ago. You need to know it, to orient to your new life. Just as, if you got a knock on the door; when you open it you see a dapper attorney, telling you your rich aunt just left you a billion dollars... So also, you are getting God's knock on your door of volition, that Your Status is not some mere peon, down here. Moreover, you are only a Citizen of Heaven. So, you are no longer on earth except as a King-in-Training(!) and, an Emissary. For which jobs, you need lots of training. Royal jobs are like that: ironically someone else runs your life (scheduled-down-to-the-minute); it's time-consuming, of long downtime before you do anything at ALL, as we saw in Part III.

Thinking makes or breaks the value of a thing. You know how upsetting it is when you hear thinking you don't like. Doesn't matter how right or wrong you are or the other person is -- it's not likeable, due to the thinking. So a pretty gal with a petty mind suddenly becomes very ugly. So An Ugly Guy/Gal With A Doctrinal Mind, Becomes Very Handsome/Beautiful. We've all experienced this, so now just extrapolate our smaller-version of pleasure or upset.. to Infinity. How pleased must God be, when He hears what He LIKES?

What does God like? Well, you'd have to know the Bible, to know that. You'd have to analyze Bible, to know that. Hence the need to be in God's System, and live on God's Script. Then practice analyzing, learning, playing with, using, living on it, 24/7. So you know He'd not like blamesmanship, excuses, pity-me, bullying, crusading, anti-doctrinal stuff like prolife, false Gospels, rah-rah, sacrificing, false witness, laziness, hypocrisy, flatterings, pettiness, judging, gossiping, maligning, jealousy, implacability, envy, anger (yes, anger IS a sin, Eph4:26 is mistranslated, should be "STOP BEING ANGRY and STOP sinning"), etc. Nor ideally, do you like those things when you hear them in someone else. So what you hear you don't like, don't foist on God, either. That's a starter list, anyway. God is not petty. So we should not think petty thoughts. Religion is nothing, if not petty.

Paul caught onto this fact, bigtime. Every one of his epistles is a primer on How To Think Scripture. It's really cool to see the way he matches ironies, like in the last half of Romans 5; all of Romans 6 (which is about how you are dead to this world and alive to Christ). Romans 7 is about the paradoxical tug-of-war the soul goes through, as a result of being divorced from the world, yet finding self still seduced by it. Romans 7 is somewhat prophetic, for just after Paul wrote Romans, he went back into Judaism, doing a Nazarite vow.. twice! My pastor spent a year covering that failure ("Paul's Fall" subseries in 92 Spiritual Dynamics, April+ 1999, maybe 200 lessons). So when he writes about the warring in Romans 7, it's real, baby: read Acts 18-22, see for yourself. More about that war will follow in the Fourth Facet.

Like Paul, if you keep on staying in God's System (see GodSystem.htm), eventually you will have a crisis or epiphany (often, several) where you realize, I just gotta get SERIOUS about learning Him. It's as if you wake up one day and realize it's only about the Relationship to Him, and devil-take-the-hindmost, you're gonna spend some alone time, learning. All that isolated-life you see in Moses, Paul, David, the Lord -- that's why they spent so much time alone. Once you make this decision, no matter how beset by people and circumstances you are now, God will move heaven and earth (pleasantly or unpleasantly) to get you that time, so be alert for it.

So as time passes, a focus of Looking At God In Your Thinking Will Become Habitual, as Part III's Third and Fourth Reason for Royalty, explained. So you are constantly evaluating, monitoring, analysing. That's an executive's job. That's why they need to play golf or go for other excursions, to get something mindless to do: not that golf is mindless, but missing a putt doesn't put your company in bankruptcy, and it's nice to make a decision which is not going to have epic repercussions. For all that command pressure of thinking, needs a Rest.

In short, it's command pressure you are learning. Command over your thoughts, over your tongue, over your body. Even brushing the teeth is thus of mammoth importance. Does your mind wander? Do you use the time to figure out something you heard in class? Do you relax with God, in the activity? All these things are Thinking Skills. You can't become a ruler without them, and you get no other training except via God's System (GodSystem.htm), which means living on God's Script. Living on -- in your HEAD. Not demanding someone else do it. You do it. Kings must become "spiritual Atlases", as my pastor likes to remind us.

This is a hard lesson to learn, that Thinking and not doing, is the spiritual life in Christ. The world is all about YOU doing something. It's ingrained from childhood. But the spiritual life is all about GOD doing something TO you. So you sit. Christ is Sitting, not running around doing potlucks and charity bazaars, hey-see-me-i'm-a-good-person. Matthew 4 temptations are to good deeds! But you can't do any good deeds God will accept, else every good-deeder would be long saved, and there'd be no Cross. Only God-Deeds are good enough, Matt19:17.

This shouldn't have to be said, but obviously you don't spend your life on a mountaintop contemplating your navel, since the spiritual life is about thinking. Rather, EVERY ACTIVITY is EVALUATED in light of Bible you know at the time. Even brushing your teeth. So, since you have a body and family and all kinds of obligations -- even if you're not working, you have to take care of yourself -- you will have stuff to do, every day. Ok, those things are all QORBAN, whether the world would consider them good deeds, or not. So you evaluate them, and your thinking 'cooks' the interpretation of what you do, so to make sweet savor for Father. Whether they also happen to be good deeds in the world's eyes, is beside the point. You obviously will get a lot of opportunities to do what the world also considers good. But it's just a dessert, adjunctive, not important compared to how you THINK when you do it.

In the Third Facet, we just saw the Impossible Requirement for Christ-Perfect Thoughts Toward FATHER. Everything else in life is qorban, devoted; even, brushing your teeth.

• We saw that God's Power is required for these Perfect Thoughts to occur, a resurrecting kind of power, resurrecting our dead soul thinking slowly, one thought and precept at a time.
• God LIKES low, slow, constant, even though He can instantly get anything He wants.
• So it's IMPOSSIBLE to have Perfect Thoughts until and unless you have Perfect Truth inside your head, Perfectly Operating. Hence the need for 1Jn1:9.
• Aha. So you are being given an Impossible Life, because the natural man is dead in his thinking, 1Cor2.
• But that's why you get 1Jn1:9 and Bible and a right pastor, for your thinking to be TRANSFORMED by Him, the Holy Spirit, John 4:24, Eph4:11-16, 23 (Gk), Rom12:1-3 (Gk).
• Dead, to Living. Um, that means a lot of WARRING, per Romans 7.

First Dichotomy: Infinity is never compatible with finity; that's why Christ had to be Two Natures in One Person, and then in that Dichotomous Status, Complete the Cross Without Sin. The Cross simultaneously resolves this Dichotomy, resolves the Trial and defeats Satan, creates a New Kingdom of Church, as well as accomplishes the payment for sin to Father forever. God is nothing if not efficient in His Goals. It's God Who 'goes low' (tapeinow, verb in Phili2:8), to Unite with Man. Man can't go up, see. Note well: perfection doesn't mean compatibility. The problem even in perfection, is to GET compatibility with Infinite God. The angels were initially perfect too, but not fully compatible: had there been full compatibility, Satan wouldn't have sinned. Same, for mankind: Adam was initially perfect, but not automatically compatible. God, as we know, is Infinitely Perfect. And, because He is, He Unites All Incompatibilities to Himself. That is a Choice. Perfect Infinity makes that Choice, flat. Togetherness, flat. No conditions, Eph1, "filling all in all."

This First Dichotomy between Infinity and finity, is why the Lord said you cannot be a slave to both God and mammon, Matt6:24. The entire Trial is about whether God or mammon, is better. "Mammon" isn't really worldly wealth, but the thought process behind it. So, a Trial of Two Thought Processes: God's, or Satan's. So "mammon" isn't money per se, being rich per se -- but rather, what conclusions do you draw as a result? Do you think well of yourself, as if some external made you a good person, like the guy in Luke 11:12-21? See, "mammon" represents the world's preoccupation with itself. Idea of believing in, trusting in, and above all preferring something other than God; trusting in whatever that other thing/person is, more than God. Christ is talking about God and mammon in this context: Matt6:21's, "where your heart is, there your treasure shall be also." So He's not browbeating anyone when He says you cannot be a slave to both God and mammon. It's just a fact, and He's explaining the problem: the thinking, depicted by "heart" in the verse. Not, what wealth or goodies. But how you value them, i.e., as being your 'god'.

This dichotomy between God and mammon is more fundamentally, the dichotomy between Infinity and finity, for finity is SEPARATIST, small, needy. No matter how big it is, its 'interests' are opposite those of Infinity. Infinity is inclusive, wanting all big and small, uniting, loving, holding. Finity must push off, since after all, its birth (creation) is separatist by nature. Mi beten, ek koilia, Out From The Womb. See the humorous Hebrew of Gen 3:22, how God uses the preposition "min" to communicate how man SEPARATED from God, due to sin. But look: to be born, to be created, is already a type of separation.

Thus finity by nature is incompatible with God. But God resolves it in the very Person of Christ. Satan disputes God's Solution and Togetherness Plan, so this Dichotomy is a Central Issue in the Trial. Here's how that works:

• God knows true hell is to NOT BE God.
• So, God makes sons in a manner to make us gods, John 10:34.
• The Son elected to be the One in Whom all Sons would be made. So the Lord chose to add Humanity to Himself (Fourth Dichotomy, below),
• so that Infinity could cycle inside finity,
• and thus resolve the incompatible Dichotomy between Infinity and finity, at the latter's 'end'.

• Due to His Royal Spiritual Life Legacy which He invented during His Own Life down here (theme of Heb and Eph), we Church can gain that precious Intimacy, via the Holy Spirit's pouring Infinite (Bible!) Truth into us. That's a type of hupostasis, Rom5:5, Eph3:15-21, 4:11-13, and especially Heb11:1 (Greek).
• We are literally two natures in one person (1Cor2), analogous to how He is One Person with two natures.
• Difference is, we are in union with HIM (Rom6, 2Cor5:17, Rom8:10-14, all "in Christ" verses).
• He as God, is obviously in union with Himself.
• But His Thinking creates IN us a new functioning nature on top of the Righteousness given to us at salvation (2Cor5, Rom8:4).
• That is, if we learn it. You can see this Infinty Cycling in the minds of the Bible writers, as they write. Note how their reasoning process works, how they characterize everything.

  If you don't understand the Hypostatic (God-man) Union, here's a helpful hint: you get thoughts from two sources, your sin nature and your soul, but you are still one person. One will. You decide between the inputs. You can choose to 'tap' your sin nature (give into temptation), or not. Christ, of course, had no sin nature, but as God, He could have humanly chosen to 'tap' His Deity to learn, to speak stones into bread (Matt4:3), etc. Obviously as Human He didn't automatically know all His Deity knew. But He Could Have, If He Chose to. Satan was trying to get Him to choose to, in Matt4. The Word He got from the Holy Spirit in His human Soul was sooo great, not any temptation to use His Deity contrary to Father's wishes, 'broke through'. That's why being God-man was harder, not easier.

  So, think: you are getting temptations to give into bodily stuff, to which you must say no. You can only learn how to do that (and it takes time), The Same Way He Did: learn under the Spirit, under your right pastor. Meanwhile, the resultant continual struggle will help you appreciate what life for HIM was like.

  See? It's not about your weaknesses: those are but a 'format' for Learning Him. He went through it without sin, Hebrews 2 and 4 (last half of each Chapter). We go through it with sin, but look: it's the same process. Our version is small, compared to what He went through, but we get the SAME spiritual life (theme of Part III), so we get the Same Testing. So we can know more intimately, Our Greatest Love Who Saved us. You can't get this knowledge any other way. Learning Bible is the base of operations, the foundation -- but Living on it, is a separate learning experience. Because, there is a duality of nature, soul and body. Body can't handle Bible, will always have a childish 'read' on it.

  So in this way you get the tension, the 'stretch' of incompatibility. So you can learn better how it was, for Him Whom you have come to love. That's why combat becomes what you yearn for, from spiritual maturity, onward. It takes a lifetime of learning.. because He is so big, and this experience is playing for Father. Royally. So it's not about sin, but about Christ!

  God went low. Why did He WANT to do that? We saw in the Third Facet that He wants not only to go low, but forever -- for we are forever a low, compared to Him, even once perfect -- and He LIKES IT slow, low. He can instantly get what He wants, didn't have to go through this long process of building us, could have made us differently from the get-go. But did not. WHY? Satan's positively apoplectic over this, as you'll see in the Fifth Facet. But for now, consider that your own dual-nature dichotomy gives the 'high' of you the opportunity of learning to love the 'low' of both you and everyone and everything around you. It's a lifesaver, to look at life this way. Everything teaches what Christ's Life was Like, Why God Chooses to Structure Creation as He does. So teaches His Absolute Love, despite our puniness. During the day, I try to make it a drill to name what about CHRIST is depicted by some menial or frustrating or grand thing in my life. Then I try to 'rehearse' how He'd view it and deal with it (I like acting). Maybe you'll enjoy doing that, too. Keeps one sane. It's a kind of hands-on Bible class lab, very satisfying.

• So if the same Spirit-run process as built Christ, doesn't build in us, we remain functionally incompatible.. forever. It's not a sin question, but a compatibility question. God's Thoughts Cycling In Us Make Us Progressively Compatible. It's like a pregnancy, in that a whole 'body' of His Thinking must be developed by the Spirit, IN us. Fourth Dichotomy below will cover more about the pregnancy analogy. Basic idea is that compatibility is a structure which must be built before we die. There is a de minimis compatibility, but without growing in Bible, that's all one has at the Bema, 1Cor3:10-15. ('Theme of Romans 8, but English translations always mask Paul's many pregnancy and sexual analogies. Pity: as if the God who invented marital sex, were immoral or something, to have the only virgin apostle, write so much about it in order to teach spiritual davaq with Our Heavenly Husband!] Hence the need for (ideally) daily Bible study under whomever is your own right pastor, and breathing 1Jn1:9; and, then living ON what you are learning.

  Repeat: it is Hell Not To Be God, and no one knows that fact better, than God. So He's out to put Himself into us, so that even hell is heaven. Our hell only lasts while we are down here: the purpose of life is to get saved, and then learn Him before we die. For God will only change what you authorize Him to change: love never coerces. So your happiness forever is determined solely by how well you learn Him, down here. My pastor calls this "Capacity Righteousness", and I use the term "soul size" and "dendrites" in the DDNA webseries for approximately the same concept. Another good analogy is a cup size. Idea is, the bigger you are, the more you can hold. Greek verbs auxanw and megalunw denote that idea of Bible growing your soul ("grow", "enlarged", "magnified" are some of the English translation words).

  And as you do learn Him, it's a real pistol, to tolerate life. The high standards and the low body which can never meet the standards, is progressively intolerable. Even if breathing. Even if wealthy and in good health.

  God is not compromised by incompatibility, because He created. We are the ones who cannot handle the incompatibility. So our closeness to Him, even in heaven forever, will be limited by whatever Doctrine we lived on, down here. Again: works can't make this compatibility happen. Only God's Word in you, moving! can make this happen. When we all are dead and/or Rapture occurs, we'll be standing before Him hearing our future roles. We will not want to have roles closer to Him than the ones we get, because then we will realize just how incompatible we would be, if we were made closer. It's not God who will have a problem with the closeness.. but US. So the incompatibility problem we have down here, to the extent UNresolved by learning Him, will remain permanent. By our own choice. [Nerd note: we will all be a bizillion times bigger and better than we are now, but the compatibility differential will still be vast -- just that "de minimis" level, the floor, is far higher than we can now imagine. But still, paradigmally, the differentials in compatibility will be vast. Remember that verse in the Gospels, when the Lord did the fish miracle for Peter, and Peter begged the Lord to leave because "I'm just a sinner, Lord!" (Luke 5:8, in context.) That's how we'll feel, only bigger. We will want the distance then for a very different reason, versus now. Now, we are disinterested in learning Our Husband's Thinking, but then.. we will be vitally interested, yet -- due to a sense of Justice -- vociferous about how we should not get so great an intimacy.]

  For God is Holy; and even though perfect finiteness is short of His Infinity and thus short of His Glory, and thus not Holy -- God is not compromised. The term "holy" is so abused by religion, we can't even properly understand it. "Holy" means Pure, Inviolable, Happy. Can't be happy, except to the extent you have integrity: the pressures which knock you down, are more powerful than you, so your happiness is -- as it were -- enslaved to those pressures. But God is Total Integrity, so nothing can compromise His Nature. So, He wants to Give that Nature, to us. God is "set apart" (root meaning of 'holy' is Dedicated, hence set apart, sanctified). Nothing can 'dent' Him. He doesn't have to work at it, so He Infinitely enjoys Himself. That's what "holy", really means. Safe, secure, not needing any defense, all offenses against Him, simply bounce off harmlessly. Even though, He more than all creation put together, experiences all hells, all pain, all everything -- all at once. That's how HOLY He is. [Nerd note: to say God 'experiences' everything is not like man 'experiences'. It's not a feeling. It's an Absolute Knowing, which frankly is the true experience -- feeling is just a reflex of the body in response to thought, which is a knowing.]

  Consider your body's capacities: you can lift so much weight comfortably, run only so fast, engage in only so much acrobatics or gymnastics or racquetball or whatever is your preferred activity. So whatever other activity is beyond your body's capacities, you cannot undertake. Same, for the spiritual life; so the problem is, these limitations LAST forever. It's kinda like growing up: you only grow so tall, and then you stop. With the spiritual life, there's no inherent limit on how 'tall' you can grow, except to the extent you refuse God's System. You take your soul with you, at the end: so whatever 'size' and 'capacity' it has at that point, becomes forever boundaried. There's a de minimis increase we all receive, and then atop that, an increase for what Bible we learned down here, because Bible increases your soul capacity for Relationship with GOD. So if your capacity for that relationship remains small and distant because you became intimate with works and rituals -- rather than becoming intimate with God, Learning Him Personally via His Word -- then you've a smaller soul. Forever. Happy, sure. Free, sure. Freely perfect, sure. But only within a certain sphere of 'activity', so to speak. Your choice while down here, what intimacies you want to have forever.

  Satan is royally ticked off at this Relationship God Designed to handle the incompatibility problem; Satan fancies himself mankind's defender, to 'save' us from this Design. Satan's quintessentially moral, and really imagines God is wrong, unfair, Unloving -- all due to this First Dichotomy. For it's true that God COULD have binged us all instantly to be what WE WOULD BECOME, bypassing the entire growth process. More on these satanic objections will follow in the Fifth Facet. For now, just notice how this First Dichotomy creates all the others which follow. There's a reason why you always feel like a failure, if you love God: this First Dichotomy is it. The more you grow spiritually, the more you notice the Dichotomy, and the more unbearable your life becomes. So just imagine, how IMPOSSIBLE it was for Our Lord! Again, more about this Dichotomy follows in the Fifth Facet.

Second Dichotomy, your Royal Position in light of God's Ultimate Design for Your Life has to be the SAME as Christ's, even though you are puny compared to Him. God can do anything, including make alive what is dead, Isa54:1. God knows everything, and He wants to put His Son into everything, even as He put all sin into His Son on the Cross. Thus Everything is made Compatible. For us, that means Rapport, Like-Mindedness. Now consider: if you're going to become Like-Minded, then you must get Parallel Training Which Puts You In The Same Position As God Is. Else, you can't know Him well enough to have Rapport. That's why Adam was made ruler of the world (parallel to how Satan was made ruler of the angels). God was training Adam using animals -- which were far inferior -- to see that God Who is Far Superior, is not demeaned or offended, but happy to GROW Adam (and later, the woman). For Power means RULING, not willy-nilly grabbing and doing like some lottery winner or kid in a candy store, busy purchasing everything you ever wanted, etc. When you have absolute power, you use it based on REASONS, since you are not limited by characteristics. Doesn't matter, therefore, that finity is too small. Doesn't matter, then, that a menial task has no innate value. Doesn't matter, then, that sin is disgusting. Omnipotence Can Create Any Result For Any Reason Sovereignty Chooses, and that's How It Will BE, Period. God thinks. So God wants Thinking to be the Criterion, the Reason for judicial matching of thing "n" which is mindless and even disgusting, with Thought "X" which is Christ's. So that kind of reasoning and matching, is what we're being trained in. The pressure helps us gain a stamina so that when when we die, our souls will be big enough for the new life we'll be getting.

Satan is completely bollixed over this fact: you don't bandy about your power. It is to be used sparingly. Matthew 4 illustrates his thought pattern -- and ours -- rather well. Why NOT turn stones into bread? Sounds like a good idea. Why NOT do a power display which makes people believe in You, since they OUGHT to believe in You, since you really ARE, God! That's good, right? And, Why NOT destroy me for insulting you with an offer of all the kingdoms of the world, since I am evil, and then you don't have to go through the Cross, or you can still go through the Cross? Sounds good, right? For Christ came to defeat Satan. That's good too, right? In short, why does Christ NOT USE His Divine Power? Well, the answer is, the Right Use For The Right Reasons, controls. And Satan's reasoning, isn't right. Sounds right, to us. (Satan is moral, never forget that.) But not right enough. For what difference does it make, if we get fed in the belly, but not the soul? What difference does it make if we believe -- if that belief requires flash? What difference does it make if Satan loses, if we don't become compatible with God? See how differently the LORD reasons? If God doesn't want a thing, what does it matter, anything else?

Next related Ruling Issue: we all like creating things. Parenting is a type of creating. When you're rich (or poor, for that matter) -- you're the parent of all you own. Owning requires a lot of training and self-control, as any parent or rich person, can tell you. So the Richest Parent of All, Christ -- tells us in His Word that He Loves Creating Salvation, even from sin, even from evil, even from all the wiles of Satan. And He loves it being done TO Him by the Holy Spirit -- slowly. One 'dot' at a time! So now that you are saved to heaven, well -- what about saving your soul from all the trashy thoughts, down here? So that Father can smell better thinking? That's why you are still alive, down here. One moment at a time, learning and living on Word, your soul is being REMADE -- fit for the King, from the very soul OF the King, in the same Holy-Spirit-Does-It process as the King Himself went through -- so that you too can become a King, under Him forever. Pretty creative and parenting, huh.

Ergo you must learn lessons Now based on how you would be, if you were already in heaven and promoted as a king. So when you go through your small life, you must think paradigmally, for the small structures still depict the Big Issues in Ruling. So look at anything around you, and you'll find Underlying Structure Patterns: lots of small stuff which has to be 'just so' in order for some whole to work; stuff which is always a hindrance; stuff which always just works beautifully. High and low, great and small, totally-profitable and total waste. As you work with these things in your life certain thoughts occur to you. Certain Thinking Skills are being developed, used, discarded. Question is, What Quality Of Thinking? Life=Bible principles, or death=world's principles? Life Means Life With God. All else is dead, sterile, futile, mataiotes -- black hole. Rigor mortis, still twitching, pretending life. Nothing is more dead, than morality without God running it. 1Jn1:9 means God is running it. Self considering self moral, means 1Jn1:9 is deemed unecessary. Self-righteousness is a sin. So that's dead, however moral.

God is BIG. So we need training in Big, parable of the talents [of faith=Bible=Money], Luke 19:10ff. We don't believe Him enough, so we get little; and then are resentful, wondering why God won't 'do something'. We don't get because we don't ask, James explained. We don't ask, because we are too busy trying to get from other people, what we can get from God. Because, God isn't interesting to us, except for His goodies. So we don't want God to be God, but a dog. So, He acts like one. But the believer growing in Him, wants to know Him. So gets a bigger life -- not necessarily visibly bigger, but definitely bigger on the inside. Every decision you make should be made as if you were ruling as a visible king, in public. For, you really are: in public before God and in the Trial, Heb11:1. Even if you lived in isolation. Nothing is menial. Everything is Royal. [I must have read the parable of the talents a bizillion times, but it wasn't until just now that I realized how you can prove it's Bible Doctrine which He's talking about -- because it's money you invest while He's gone, and He's giving you the WORD -- dabar, a command, Hebraistic -- and comes back, Rapture parallel. How could I have overlooked that obvious reason! Oh well, better late than never. My pastor has taught the meaning for years, and I just took his word for it, lol. But now I see it myself!]

Third Dichotomy: your entire life is Now "MISSION IMPOSSIBLE": Thinking Toward God must be CHRIST-KINGLY, PERFECT. But cannot be. Thus you are in the same dichotomous position as Christ was: Divine Thinking Required, but hampered by being human at the same time. As we saw in Part III and IVa, due to Matt16:18, it's a requirement of the Trial that we inherit the same spiritual life as Christ's: and how well we live that spiritual life, is the Substance of the Trial and the Reason for the Rapture's unpredictable timing, Greek of Heb11:1 (covered later on). So we are in the Same Position as He is. Obviously the scope is smaller; but you are in Him, so you are in His Same Position, as while HE was down here. You need that status, in order to train in His Thinking. So, that's your real status, whatever you look like to yourself and others 'outside'.

Romans Chapters 5-8 is on this Mission Impossible Life. A big threaded theme of those chapters, is the impossible dichotomy of being spiritual yet still in a body, trapped within the 'old' life. Because Doctrine Growing in you, is a Soul-Resurrecting Transformation (theme of Rom8, mandate in Rom12:1-3, Greek). Once you believe in Christ, you acquire a human spirit. Thus you are spiritually alive. But your soul is still full of dead thoughts. So the spiritual life, is one of progressive production of spiritual thoughts, replacing all those dead soul thought patterns accumulated over a lifetime. That's why a person can be 80 years old, yet a spiritual toddler. That's why people who think themselves so informed about Bible and church history, prove to be such spiritual infants when it comes to true spiritual wisdom. Flashcard knowledge is all they have. They don't "get it" about the spiritual life, even after a lifetime's study IN Bible. Truly tragic. Paul explains the need to spiritually mature and the problem of fake spirituality, in Romans 8. The Gift of His Thinking replacing our fallen human thinking, is covered in Romans 5; the ensuing thinking struggle once spiritually born, is demonstrated in Romans 6-8. Playing on Isaiah 52:13-54:1 in Romans 8, Paul likens the spiritual life to pregnancy: a fetus being developed, stressing the DEADNESS of fallen thinking being converted gradually into His Thinking; such that one is 'born' to eternity, when one dies. Very witty, not too visible in English.

Upshot of these Chapters: Parallel to Christ's Own Innate Structure as God-man, the Believer Becomes Two Natures within himself, and these two natures are not at all compatible. It is no exaggeration to say that a mini-Hypostatic Union is Being Created IN you. So you will constantly be at WAR with yourself. Romans 5-6 explains the basis, and The New Hupostasis You Find Yourself In, due to being in Permanent Union with Christ; 5 is about the basis and its eternal goal (not well discernible in English); 6 is about the Union, and the death of the 'old husband', the sin nature. [Sadly, translations can't show the marital and pregnancy wordplay rife in the Bible. Each Bible writer uses keywords, and Paul especially makes very sophisticated use of them in all his letters, for he knows they are to tie together. So first read Rom5-8 over and over until you see something of an outline. Then, do it all again and again -- this time, with Bible software which has lexicons with etymology. For, Bible wordplay makes extensive use of etymology, and you will miss the point of what's said, if you don't know the etymology of the original words. If you can't afford that or do that, parse out the origin of the Greek syllables, since most Greek words are compounds of simpler words you can look up. So, break down compound words into the root meanings you can search on. Like, menw means to dwell, remain, etc. Hupo means "standing under" (connotation of submission, trust). So, hupomenw means to remain under, dwell under as a mental attitude. So, stay under, keep going on in the Word! Granted, you need to know the idiomatic meanings as well, but at least you can get some of the etymological wordplay which is stuffed into every word of the Word. If you're interested, my pastor exegeted Romans verse by verse, and frankly that's when all the Greek-geek stuff I'd been learning under him, began to gel for me -- it's the '77 Romans series, about four years of daily classes. You can order them for free on MP3 or DVD from his ministry, up to 36 lessons per month, rbthieme.org. Suggest you go sequentially, not topically, with anything you order from that ministry, so you get the comprehensive fit of the doctrines as you learn them.]

So, Divorce And Remarriage Is In Progress; and you know what a fight that is! So, Romans 7 shows how it feels, and Romans 8 explains what it is and how to resolve it: Bear Kids For Your New Husband, His Thinking! Very funny in Greek: you yourself are a spiritual child growing up in Him, and yet the Thought He (the Spirit) teaches you in order for you TO grow up, also makes you become pregnant! LOL! Hence the war, your "labor pains": your flesh (your nature apart from what you learn of Him) will never learn the Doctrine, for it is only spiritually apprehended under the Spirit (1Cor2, Rom8:1-10). [Chaps 9-11 are a parenthesis explaining how Israel and Church are related. Isa53-55 are used to continue the birthing analogy climaxed in Rom8. Romans 12ff then basically answer questions related to, 'where do we go from here?']

This new tripartite structure (body/soul/human spirit) eventually makes the Christian either the happiest person on the planet, or the most miserable. No middle ground. So as you grow, you will constantly mistake your 'normal' human nature's recalcitrance for something bad about you, because due to learning Doctrine you are no longer compatible with your human nature, frankly. So the truth is good, not bad: you are being remade. You're in a chrysalis, now. Your old nature is the chrysalis -- that's all it's good for. So, it keeps on acting like it is, and by contrast, what you are learning about Him changes your soul to be more Spiritually Compatible: but the body, never learns (Rom8:7 -- NAB trans is ok). It will abuse, misuse, mutate any doctrine you learn. Obsessively.

For if thought makes alive, then it also, KILLS. Old sin nature is essentially an unendingly arrogant warring, a death thought pattern with its own thinking skills, as my pastor likes to remind us: self-justification, self-deception, self-absorption. If you become competent in arrogance, you will come to love, hating. At the extreme end, you would love hating so much, even flames licking around you in hell, buttress your hungry ego: note the extremely cruel thought pattern of the rich guy in Hades, in Luke 16! Have you ever seen two people fight? Didn't it occur to you, oh, they both are so silly/ugly/stupid! How tragic! But clearly, those in the fight were so wrapped up in fighting, they didn't see themselves 'from the outside', and fancied themselves, both oh-so-right! So you, on the outside, see what's really true. But they, on the inside, are living this warped fantasy. And there's no way you can explain anything to them, then.

So you'll see this internal arrogance fighting the growing Word in you, and the fighting becomes very intense. Notice how you learn via this struggle,

• how awful it must have been for Christ to be imputed and judged with our sins;
• how awful it must be for Omniscient GOD to have to 'hear' all those sins all the time.
• How complete, then, must be our salvation in HIM!
• For if HE has to hear it,
• you just know He'd make salvation work!
• So that now when He hears these sins,
• He simultaneously Hears Son's Thinking ---
• which Thinking would not be there,
• were the sins not imputed and judged!
• Ahhhh -- now that, is true relief!

So, that is your solution, also: "KOKO" with the Doctrine. ["keep on keeping on", an American expression of perseverance.] You can't explain to your human nature that its obsessive fighting is wrong. [No extra-charge corollary: that's why you can't straighten out anyone else, either. Crusading is futile.] Instead, just keep using the Doctrine you know under the Spirit: tell your new self what's really going on, Romans 7-8! The battle doesn't end until you die. Accept the fact or do not, but that's the truth of it. More about the nature and origin of this incompatibility is covered in the Fifth Facet, since incompatibility is central to the Trial. ["Positional sanctification" and "experiential sanctification" are also theological buzzwords used to describe the difference between your actual structural nature, and the process of Reconciling via Truth Deposits, by the time you die. Unfortunately, these buzzwords are poorly explained, so many think experiential sanctification is a works-thing. But Bible says Truth depositing in you is what experientially sanctifies you, i.e., in Rom5:5-8:4ff. So you can prove in Romans5-8 what Bible says these terms should mean. See also Heb4-10.]

Satan&Co. use that growing frustration at yourself to foster substitute thinking so you can get relief. That's why Christianity goes in for works, ritual, etc. to make themselves FEEL 'spiritual'. Yeah, only the body feels, and it is dead, so the thinking substituted is likewise dead, passing itself off as alive: Frankenstein. Just so much meaningless electrical current, making body parts move like reflex motility, chained to the table, fancying oneself holy. All Christianity reflects this fight, with the body's distortion, winning. It's one thing to be saved; it's quite another to grow up spiritually. The thinking is the issue. So if belief that body does something to be 'spiritual', then that view is dead as the body, get it? Christianity thus has historically played mortician, selling God as Doctor Frankenstein. Your big clue? Look who is emphasized in Christianity: people. What we do. What we don't do. What we find immoral. What we find moral. And then worst of all, we slap God's Name on everything we say -- and bethink ourselves holy! That's 1Jn1:6,8,10, 2:4, 2:9, 11, 15, 18, 22 (see 2Tim2:26-3:7), etc.

So works, which are done by a non-thinking body, are absolutely not the Bible's prescription for spirituality. Works are so excoriated, real Bible practically nags the reader: can the writer of Hebrews make it more bald, than to say "dead works"? Heb9:14, 6:1-6, good deeds are dead, just like the temptations to them in Matt4. Really bald, in Heb6:7-8, showing how without the Water of the Word 'watering' what you do, your deeds are but prickly weeds, harming anyone touching them. Of course, in the original-language texts, you see clearly that any praising of works references GOD's works, never man's, wholly consistent with Isa64:6. In all such verses, the article is used either monadically or omitted, to stress Divine Actor. But in translation, lol -- all that meaning is stripped out, reversed -- so it looks like MAN is doing the works, praise me praise me praise me i'm so good. Satan's not stupid: he knows what to target, in Scripture mistranslation!

Two-sided dichotomy, then: internally, and externally with respect to everyone around you, especially other believers. Nothing ever measuring up, who will deliver us from these bodies of death, Romans 7! Truth mediates them all, and you'll need to live on the Word to live through, the day!

If you become competent in cycling Scripture, which means competent at continually wanting it, since the Holy Spirit alone can run it for you -- if you become competent at cycling Scripture, you will come to love everything. Suffering becomes just as much a gift to you, as anything man could even fantasize as wonderful. This is Christ's testimony: even the Cross was happiness (Heb12:2, Heb5:9). So, by Thinking Scripture all the time (which means the principles, essentially -- though it's really nice when the verses come to mind), you will develop a Competence In Love which nothing can touch. But you'll FEEL more incompetent than ever. It takes a long time to recognize that what you see and feel, is the very opposite of the truth, i.e., defeat will feel like victory, but victory, like defeat; competence will seem like incompetence, and vice versa. That's why Paul quipped, "when I am weak, then [at that moment] I am strong, 2Cor12:10. Impossible to live, without that verse!

The last thing a person who has suffered much wants, is for others to suffer. So the effort, the suffering you go through is far more appreciated by God -- especially because you aren't capable of the effort, only the Holy Spirit is making it efficacious, and yet you are willing? Knowing is true suffering or happiness: we get emotion in our bodies to help us appreciate more clearly. So when you suffer, know that you're really learning something of Omniscience -- what it's like, for Him Who Loves You. It's not about suffering, it's about Rapport, and Intimacy with Omniscient God means ALL Truth. So you need suffering to grow in understanding of what it's like, for God to know all truth: good truth, bad truth, any truth, because truth -- He Loves it ALL.

Even if you are brushing your teeth, the Doctrinal thought in your head, THAT'S awesome. You aren't capable of thinking "God's Thoughts", Isa55:8+Rom8:7+8 (NIV), as my pastor explained (92 Spiritual Dynamics, L. 1740-2, or 1723, I forget which one). We were born spiritually dead. Dead people can't think -- the soul is OUT of the body, so it's just rotting away, no person 'inside' it. Well, we were born dead to God, no ability to think toward Him, and any "god" concepts we get, are completely wacko. (See godnotmag.htm for a deliberately-ridiculing roster of the more popular god ideas in mankind's history.) So what's this? Now we can think Divine Thoughts? It shouldn't be happening. We're too small, too fragmented, God is alien to our nature, and we to His; we are completely fettered by needs, so are one jot above an animal, even though souled; our vaunted philosophies are hypocritical in the extreme, everyone using them only to preen; our vaunted good deeds do nothing but complicate life; thus it's true that "no good deed goes unpunished." And on and on and on.

So there is no way to avoid suffering as you learn God's Thoughts. The differential between His Holiness and your own puniness is intolerable, the more you age in Christ. More about that problem will be said in the Fifth Facet, but for now, notice: it hurts. God knows it hurts. God doesn't want it to hurt, but freedom means consent, and the changing from what you were to what He's making you can't be always pleasant. Meanwhile, along with the hurt is a growing pleasure at knowing Him. They come to sit side by side, Heb12:2 in the making. For God is Omniscient, knowing at once all Good and Bad, so how is it, He's Happy? That's what's being developed, the same besidedness of knowledge. Again, it's about Rapport, and Intimacy with Omniscient God means ALL Truth. So, it hurts -- and no greater happiness exists, either. Side-by-side. As my pastor likes to explain, spiritual maturation is a process characterized by a gradual equating of adversity and prosperity, such that you come to welcome the one, as much as the other. For the One You See Who Is Invisible, gifts them both. Thus you'll suffer. And of course, all this equating is humanly impossible, Heb5:8.

So God is AMAZED that you would want to go through this growth process. Witness the besidedness, the impossible dichotomy of your life:

• No, you are not holy.
• No, you are not worthy.
• Yes, He made you holy that first nanosecond you believed in Christ, 2Cor5:21.
• Yes, you are made worthy, not only from that point onward,
• but each time you think Bible in God's System (i.e., 1Jn1:9 breathed and you're studying under your God-appointed pastor tailored to you) -- well, that's a WORTHY moment,
• Matt4:4's pattern in YOUR head is always occurring, smelling DELICIOUS to Omniscience!

  Main theme of the last half of Romans 8: whatever you are doing, high or low, unpleasant or pleasant, the structure of that thing is a kind of 'cross' -- which gets your thinking 'applied' to it, which Father Hears Forever. If you read the Bible accounts of Biblical heroes or even anyone mentioned, you'll see God's Assessment is always Based On What They Thought. Not, what they did. Like He told Samuel, when Samuel went to Jesse's sons: Man sees on the outside, but God sees on the inside. The flipside of that remark, is this: we only see ourselves from the inside of the battle, grunt-level: but God sees from the inside at His Level. When you're in combat, you don't see the success of the operation, you're too busy slopping up Hamburger Hill, falling down ten paces for every one you advance. So it feels like failure. But you saw (or should see) that movie: didn't you admire the soldiers? They weren't feeling admiration for themselves, they felt like losers. But we see their insides from above the fight. So does God.

  Now, you yourself only see from the inside, the grunt level. So you are constantly tempted to be offended or ashamed, because you're bombarded with temptation. But think: if you're using Doctrine to parry the temptation (like the Lord does, in Matt4), God sees you go through a parallel of what His Son went through! Matt4, The Exact Same Mechanic As The Lord Used During The Cross (again, Isa53:10-12, probably the most important passage in Scripture). Now happening in parallel form, in you! That's why it's such a sweet savor!

Here's a training aid to help you see His Amazement and Pleasure in your darker moments, for you will have many. For now, recall some moment in your past during which you trusted Him. How do you feel about it now? At the time, you probably felt pretty bad. But now -- aren't you glad about it? Remember about some discovery you've made about God recently -- wasn't it a thrill? Not necessarily emotional, but Certainty and Oh! I Get It! Wasn't that satisfying? Well, moments like these are helpful hints as to how God 'feels' about it, multiplied a bizillion times! Even the angels shout with joy, when a person first believes in Christ (Luke 15:7,10 -- see context). [New American Bible got v.10 right.] Of course, they're all watching us! [Nearly every NT verse with "angels" in it portrays them watching for Trial purposes; I didn't realize that fact until just now, when searching in BibleWorks for the Peter and Paul citations I remembered. Those latter are: Paul, 1Cor4:9 (Greek); 1Cor11:10, Gal3:19 (OT phase of Trial); 1Tim3:16 (famous refrain, at time of writing); 1 Tim5:21. Hebrews is attributed to Paul, but he didn't write it. Hebrews is all about this topic. Peter talks about it passim, actually, but the craning-their-necks verse is 1Pet1:12. Again, pretty much every NT verse with "angels" in it references their watching, not only to protect us, but more importantly, for Trial purposes.]

God knows and therefore sees, from eternity past. Everything. All At Once. Godness is One Big Now-ness. There's no incrementalism. All that could be or would be or couldn't be or wouldn't be; every flaw, every shortfall, every arrogance, every sin. So He doesn't expect good from us. He'd be stupid, if He did. He doesn't Love based on how 'attractive' the object, because He is Love. Doesn't need an object; and thus doesn't need the object to be lovable. So if the object is bad, His Love loves it because it is bad, too; but because it is bad, the Love is in the form of grace, mercy, compassion. Because He knows how ugly it is, how helpless it is, Eze16:6.

Let's posit two people standing in front of a mirror, brushing their teeth. Pretend one is poor, and the other, rich. One of them is thinking how unfair it is that so-and-so got something; how bad the teeth look, and how upsetting it is that they can't be fixed. The other of them is wondering how the Hypostatic Union works, mulling over what was learned in Bible class, grateful for the information, exulting in it. Then, this other one tries to figure out how to use that information, concluding that Psalm 22:6 was used by the Lord on the Cross to name the very thing He found repugnant, as His Dream-Come-True! Which, it was. Which, he decides to use on the disease he has, which he cannot fix...

Which of these two persons, pleases God? And which one is really rich, whatever his material 'status'? And how much Joy there would be in rescuing, both of them!

We humans obsess over our bodies. A pimple, hair out of place, fat, wrinkles, lack of muscles, shape of body parts -- all these we obsess over, spending trillions of dollars to make ourselves look better. Yet the body of our thinking goes seriously neglected, and wow is it ever ugly. Just turn on TV and look at the shallow, petty concerns, interests; what is called good; what is called bad; how there is zero concern for God in any of it. How the ugliest thinking of all, is Christian -- mouthing God's name all the time, yet clearly knowing nothing about Him. Hypocritical, holy tones to please people, for crying out loud. And now imagine you are God, hearing all this! Makes you wonder why He doesn't command another Flood.

But we're on the inside of the obsession, so like those two hypothetical people fighting, we're so engaged with how right we are, we don't notice how ugly we are. How silly we are. For we are not engaged in thinking Bible using 1Jn1:9, living in God's System. So we are truly ugly. Sin, human good, evil all share one characteristic: they are ugly to those viewing them from the outside; but deemed beautiful, to those viewing from inside. Divine Thinking in you has the opposite 'look': to you on the inside, you don't measure up, so you think self ugly. But on the outside, your inside body-of-thinking looks beautiful/handsome, to God.

Pharisee and the publican, Luke 18: let's posit two cockroaches. One is busy gloating over what power he has, looking for whatever he can devour in your house, telling himself that he's one of the most ancient lifeforms -- you know, like folks who claim they are of the "original" Christian tradition -- exulting in his huge numbers and calling himself holy because so many other cockroaches just like him, agree. Off to the side, though, there's another cockroach which recognizes itself as evil, and wishes the resident humans would just kill it. Which cockroach do you think God would rescue? Assuming cockroaches can think (and we know many human cockroaches who do) -- which one would God happily turn into His Own Son? Bing! You're NO LONGER a cockroach, but I Make You a King! Celebrate! But the other one? Okay, you exult in being a cockroach; so that's what you want, and that's what you get.

When you are truly growing in Him, you will constantly be valuing self AS a worthless cockroach, because you never measure up to His Standards. But God sees on the outside, which you can't: you want to learn My Son, you are trying to obey as My Son does, you are trying to think as My Son does, that makes you beautiful. As for the specific doctrines you fire to analyze, ponder, decide, avoid temptation, etc., well those are like home runs in a baseball game, or touchdowns on the football field. Beautiful. Fluency and quantity of these thoughts increase as you grow spiritually, but no matter how childish or infrequent, each such thought is precious. So you and the world, get blessed. But to you, it looks and feels like Hamburger Hill: hopeless, and you'll deem the self a loser. That's when you need to fire Bible like never before, every promise you can remember, every doctrine which tells you the outside reality of your situation. For Bible is Truth, and all else is but a funhouse mirror. [Cultural note: a funhouse mirror in 1950's America was a carnival attraction; warped mirrors which made you appear much taller or fatter than you were, had been arranged in a tent, and you stood in front of each one, seeing a radically distorted version of yourself and your friends. It was funny. Not so funny, is the fact that the world radically distorts reality in just the same way, deeming itself accurate. Here's your big clue: pick up a newspaper from maybe 10 or 15 years ago, notice how stale the material in it; how silly the preoccupations back then. Yet we get so riled up over politics in today's news, as if it were of vital importance? How come?]

• Christ the Perfect ELECTED to Become an Impossibly Ugly Cockroach,
• so that when God RAISED Him from the dead,
• His RESURRECTED Impossibly Beautiful Nature would BECOME ours, too, last half of Romans 8 and 1Cor15.

Our Impossible Life thus derives from His Impossible Life. Impossible, to be God-Man. Impossible, for Humanity to not 'peek' or 'tap' Divine Nature to benefit Himself. Satan was desperately trying to use His Hunger to generate a body reflex that would whoosh past His Volition and 'tap' His Divinity, in the First Temptation. But the Lord's Human Nature was so saturated with Word, not even that reflex could get past Him. My pastor spent weeks on this (92 Spiritual Dynamics, around Lessons 800). The only thing more impossible is that Father should have imputed and judged all sin in Him, thus MAKING Him sin, 2Cor5:21, Isa 53:10. But it happened. So we start out as cockroaches, but end up inheriting His Own Nature, because He started out in the opposite nature. It's a juridical exchange.

2Cor5:21 is the flagship verse on this juridical exchange, explaining Isa53:11's "bedato yasdiq" clause. Him being MADE sin (far worse than a cockroach), so we could be made sons (zera ya'arik yamim clause in Isa53:10). Ephesians 1 explains how that was the Plan from Eternity Past, Isaiah tells you how it got accomplished on the Cross, and Eph2-end book plus all of Hebrews, are flagship passages on the results. We truly go from bar-khockroach to king, in Him. John 10:34 is not hyperbole. Our current nature is just a training aid in 'low' and 'bad', because Omniscience knows all that, and how else can we too get that information, without our volitions being compromised, 1Cor15:37-57? Our souls must be grown, one consent and precept at a time. Nothing's more beautiful than His Thinking. In us earthen vessels, even. One Loving, Lingering Moment at a Time, which Father relishes forever.

So we see shame, but God sees what He can make out of it for our benefit. Isa54:1 (my translation directly from the Hebrew, aping the meter): "Whoop for joy, You-Barren-Never-Birthed! Burst into neighing trill, You-Who-Never-Writhed! Far more, the sons of the Shamed One, than of her who is Ba'aled', rules the Lord!" Translation's "Ba'aled" is literal, but the term came to mean husbanded, legally married. But in Isaiah, it's a play on words to Ba'al, a false god. The world depends on a false god, marries itself off to worldly attractions; and especially, the religious attractions, preening itself holy. But we are of the Real God, and God LOVES that being true. So Christ Who became the Shamed One ("asham" in Hebrew means a substitute offering for sin, in Isa53:10) -- HE is not ashamed of us, Heb2 (see also Ps40, which ties). Because, God Sees Accurately, And What He Sees, Doesn't Make Him Ashamed, But Instead, Loving (see also 2Tim2:13, a humorous and tender use of Ps40, Eph1:15-23, 1Cor12). [Sadly, 2Tim2:10 and 14 are legalistically mistranslated, so you miss the context. Takes too long to explain why. Basically, the mistranslation reverses the meaning of "tugchanw" in v.10, and "logomachew" in v.14, to make both look like works is better than Word. How sad; so the reader of v.13 is supposed to feel guilty, and misses the humor of the Lord being unable to deny Himself (we are part of Him, and He won't refuse Himself).]

GOD'S ALCHEMY: you contribute the doo-doo (we all are doo-doo, down here) -- and He makes diamonds out of your doo-doo. That's the deal! See 1Cor3, Phili3:8. Isa53:10-11 is quite explicit about this. Isa53trans.htm has a corrected and expanded translation of the whole chapter.

We think that what we see, is the reality. But it's not. The reality, is that we are "sons of God in Christ Jesus", Galatians (and elsewhere). Rescued (real meaning of sozo, usu. translated "saved"). Rescued from this hellhole called "life". That pleases God utterly, for the suffering of being a cockroach, He experiences more than everyone, and All At Once. He's dying, as it were, to rescue us. In fact, He Did Die For That Very Reason. So that He can be the Parent of Our Salvation, shouting Isa54:1 forever. And so can we. For those of us who won't grow up in God's Perfect Thoughts, will be perfect forever but smaller in size, and yearning to be bigger. And then those of us who become kings, can have that same pleasure of growing those in our kingdoms, in the King's Thinking. Because no one will like sinning then. No one will care about inferior or superior, then. All anyone will care about then -- is seeing Him Who is Currently Invisible.. except, through His Word.

Hence the ironic, impossible life we have in Christ: it's just a pregnancy (Rom8:11ff), this groaning, shameful life down here. Sown in dishonor, raised in max honor, 1Cor15. Even as He was, Phili2:5-10. You are no longer the same being as you were pre-salvation, 2Cor5:17. Spirituality cannot be felt -- that's why John had to write 1Jn, because believers were mixed up about it, since in those days the temporary spiritual gifts were felt, and the gifts had pretty much ended; so believers didn't know what it was, anymore. [Tongues is Isa28, related to Temple Destruction (see 1Cor14 which reminds believers of that fact), so died with the Temple. Other spiritual gifts like healing and miracles, were already dying out while Paul was alive, viz., the verses where he could no longer heal anyone. 1Jn was written circa 90AD.] But spirituality is real, and if you persist in using 1Jn1:9 and studying Scripture under your right pastor, you will see the Invisible.

God Alone makes you human at birth. It's a very important fact to know, because the spiritual life is a type of pregnancy too, meaning that what is happening here is not the real life, and only what God Makes, is Life; so, He Makes You Down Here, even as He made your soul, at your physical birth. Paul depends on reader understanding of that fact when he writes Romans 8, because it's an analogy. Same, for 1Cor12 and 15. All this life's stuff has no more 'life' in it, than developing foetal body parts, in preparation for the Real Life to come.. forever with God. Or, apart from Him, if that is what the living soul, elects. No soul is in a womb because it would not be able to think (brain is the last to develop, so no 'hookup'), and not able to be independent and see: volition would not be free until the fetus exits the womb. So God will never put a soul inside a womb. So there is no life inside the womb, it's just developing biology, an organic machine. Moreover, all that biological change would be painful if a soul was in the womb; God is neither murderer nor sadist, so He makes you alive at birth, so you can see His Thoughts (Ps139:13-17, main theme in Heb or Greek, but not the egregious translations). If you want more on that topic, read Caveat4.htm and its webpage inset, NoWombLife.htm.

Likewise, we are physically alive once born, and spiritually alive once we believe in Christ, but that only sets up the potential to be in another 'womb' -- Of Spiritual Development, which the Holy Spirit 'mothers', even as He mothered the restoration of the Earth, in Gen1:2ff. So, being in this 'womb' of earth with the Holy Spirit and the earth groaning in pregnancy-labor (Rom8:11ff, Greek), we groan, too: for we can't yet see the angels and Christ Seated (big theme in Heb2ff), but we know it is true (Rom8:28-end). And that, because Isaiah 52:13-54:1 is on the theme of how Christ was raped with our sins in order to birth all sons for all eternity.

Again, you are in a Romans 7 situation. Two natures are struggling inside you, analogous to how two developing sets of body parts were 'wrestling' in Rebecca's womb (Gen25). She sought the LORD about that problem, and so should we. It's a pregnancy, not real life, down here. What's happening is a Transformation. But that doesn't mean you abort the struggle. Ask God What To Do. Great advice for physical pregnancy, for spiritual pregnancy. The dead life down here, pretends to be alive. But the real life, seems dead. Doesn't seem that thinking toward God means much, but rather movements with the body, matter. Yeah, and you can make a marionette move, and it remains just as dead. That's what Satan&Co. do to the human race: puppet us. How well they succeed at it, will occupy most of Part IVc. For now, just notice that movement is a false 'god'. Body loves that 'god', and can only see that 'god', because that election was programmed into the biological nature, from our original parents: Adam and the woman. So it's a mindless urge, an animalism. Whether expressed as works (figleaves) or hedonism, it's still but an urge, like going to the bathroom. Dead, deaf, deafening to the soul. Only His Thinking can fight the urge which was 'birthed' by bouncing off Infinite God, rejecting Him. Maximum negative derivative, an atom bomb, constantly exploding against (or in), the soul.

So, the question boils down to developing a 'Spiritual Body' of Thinking, which means.. Growing in the Faith. Faith is first the Doctrine in Bible, and then also Believing It. Lots of words for Bible, each one stressing some facet of its value: "faith" stresses eating the knowledge and believing (metabolizing) it. That makes your spiritual body parts, grow. Your spiritual body won't be born until you die (see 1Cor15:39ff). So, while you live down here, it's a struggle, and you are blindsided. So Don't Abort The Spiritual Life. See also Jas1:15's and Gal4:19's Greek (lexicons may euphemize), and like passages. [Satan plays on this purpose, bigtime. Evolution and Gen6 and Greek-type pantheons, gnosticism, eastern religious 'reincarnation' concepts alike mock the real 'womb' meanings in Bible; the prolife campaign is also a satanic ruse. Notice how all of these ruses abort understanding about what Bible really says. Whoa, Satan's not stupid, but we sure are! Satan's trying to 'mother' us into being smothered before we are born; whether with respect to the REAL mechanism of spiritual birth (John3:16) or the real mechanism of post-spiritual pregnancy for developing our spiritual body, Satan has a brilliant and largely-successful plan to abort us all!]

Romans 8 is the happy ending of the play (begun in Romans 5, sotto voce), where finally Your Soul Reconciles Under His Thinking, no longer seduced by the thinking of this world. So, by that end, you too come to want the combat of it. In the beginning, the combat really bothers you, and you fall down constantly; but by the end, You Love The Fight, Because It Gives You Something To Give Him. So, victory: I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. No barriers. True miracle. That's what's really going on in your life right now: all the surface stuff, are just training aids. Your flaws, your strengths, another's flaws or strengths, things, events -- all just cannonfodder so you can learn, to shoot Doctrine! Which, by the way, ennobles the cannonfodder, Blesses it. Sacrifices it, Cooks it. Making it smell good because the Doctrine Applied, is such a great Chef: Him.

Imagine: here we are, dog-doo-doo by nature. Yet we can give God a gift? For surely all the money and charity and other stuff we do, God doesn't need. What do you give, to God? Thinking: His Son's. It is a volitional act, the Holy Spirit produces it, á la John 14:26 (recall of what you've learned). It's Superhuman, this Divine Thinking in you, an earthen vessel otherwise dedicated to destruction; who, of yourself, couldn't be giving anything. But now, oh! Everything is Qorban! So: that's where your body goes, but you go to Heaven. Meanwhile, you can devote this dead body to training in Qorban, to becoming a Worm of the Worm, and think like a King. Isaiah 52:14, last half: ken mishhat meish mareyhu, wa toaro me bene adam -- see all those m-sounds? More than Human, Born from the Worm Who Bore More than All Mankind Put Together.

To sum up: We get Infinity, His Thinking, CYCLING in our puny bodies, so we get an Impossible Life of learning and living on Bible, so to have Perfect Thoughts Father Will Forever Hear. Impossibly wonderful life, if we stick with it; impossibly horrible, if we do not. Bible terms depicting this impossible cycling are very wry, and usually not visible in the English. Most common, is the "Love of God" or "Love of Christ" or "Love" verse with a motion verb that is used for Bible itself; like, Rom5:5 (Word=water, in OT). Greek subjective and objective genitive ("of" in English) is a CIRCLE; subjective, God's Love; objective, Love producing Love FOR Him (i.e., Rom5:5, which is bald on the mechanics, but also 2Cor5:14, and many parallel verses which most study Bibles and Bible software, will list). So it's God's Thinking (technically, Christ as God and Man is stressed as Source). "Treasure in earthen vessels" is another catchphrase; so are "mirror", and "glory to glory" phrases (or their concepts, viz., in 1Pet1:7-8). Then there are the multitude of ironic phrases so common everywhere in Scripture, like valley exalted, mountain made low, dead made alive again; poor made rich, and rich made poor (see James 1, then look for the many parallels in Gospels and OT); all these are communicating what the Circle is: "Christ in you, the Confident Expectation of Glory" (Col1:25-27, again).

Again, It's Only The Thought That Counts to make you happy and sinless and Pleasing-to-God. God's Thought. In You. Whatever your nature. Col 1:25-27, Philippians 1:21!

This Cycling of Infinity inside Finity, is an Impossible Profit: "Christ in you, the Confident Expectation of Glory", as Paul puts it in Colossians 1:27. That's a Trial verse, a demonstration to Satan&Co. why their contentions are false. So here in the Fifth Facet, The Diamond Doctrine Bucks are extreme. So let's review again the Facets thus far:

1. First Facet, you are the CONDUIT for blessing or cursing to the human race, simply because you are a believer. That, because your King is God, and the rest of the world has voted instead for Satan to be its king. So it's a problem of Jurisdiction. God is King only of all believers. So Blessing from God can only be granted due to believers. So these are Conduit Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
2. Second Facet, DIRECT BLESSING from Your King, to Train You in His Royal Son's Thinking. So as a result those associated with you, get blessed. You are treated as their owner, and to bless you for what you need, they must get blessing. So these are Direct Blessing Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
3. Third Facet, you are a ROYAL PRIEST to Father, being trained in His Son's Thinking, to develop a Thinking Lifestyle of Christ-Perfect Thoughts which Father can enjoyably 'smell'. This has a multiplier effect on your periphery, the nation, the world, which is a Second-Facet re-routing. So these are Sweet Savor Diamond Doctrine Bucks.

4. Fourth Facet, a Quad-Dichotomous, Mission Impossible Life of Christ-Perfect Thoughts. So your nature is continually at WAR with this Training, due to Perfect Truth growing inside your head, Perfectly Operating: for your thinking is being TRANSFORMED by Him, the Holy Spirit. Dead to Living, a Resurrection and Session Power. So these are Transformation Diamond Doctrine Bucks.

5. So Fifth Facet, here: the Impossible CYCLING PROFIT of those Christ-Perfect Thoughts, and the Suffering Profit, Heb12:2; which results in Satan's Defeat in the Trial. So these are Trial Victory Diamond Doctrine Bucks. Really, you could call these Mature Love Diamond Doctrine Bucks. For when Love matures, it WANTS suffering, needs it as an outlet, calls suffering Profit, Phili1:21. My pastor warns you need "two mutual flanks": Doctrine in your head, but also Love for God. The first without the second is hopeless legalism, sterile and unspiritual, however correct one's doctrines might be. The second without the first is a crazed person, having no discernment. The two must grow in tandem. So when you study if a love for God is not growing, but rather a puffed-up love of how well you know Bible -- your salient is exposed, and you're off-kilter in the spiritual life. Same for the rah-rah crowd you see so often in churches -- their problem is no Bible. DDNA2.htm covers the "two mutual flanks" in more detail.

To the one not loving, this looks like masochism, sadism, or mental illness. Ok, which craziness do you prefer? The craziness of the seraphim in Rev4:10, or the craziness of the guy in Hades of Luke 16:20ff? Your choice. You will end up one way or the other. The small soul cannot love. What passes for love, is need. The small soul needs nice, so when it gets nice, it says "I love you." But take that nice away, and "I love you" isn't the attitude, anymore. It's "I hate you." Because, the small soul cannot love. It can only coo when its need is met. To the small soul, this cooing is "I love you." Tit-for-tat "love" is not love, therefore, because it's predicated on needs or desires being reciprocated. Absent the deemed-required reciprocation -- as we saw in Part I -- that love dies, claiming it's unrequited. Welcome to all the failed loves of the human race.

To the large soul, nice isn't what "love" means. Love includes nice, but also includes giving. Extreme love needs to pour out for the object of that love, not looking for anything in return. The Largest Soul in History needed the Outlet of such Pour-out: the Cross. As you grow in Him, you progressively will have the Same Love, Rom5:5; so you will progressively have the same Pour-Out Need. So, when you've grown enough -- and at training intervals even prior -- God will Gift you pour outs. And instead of qvetching and preening when you suffer unjustly or for someone else, instead you are relieved and grateful. Just as Christ is. Welcome to the nature of true love, which is THE Issue in the Trial: "Does God love, that He would create us so?" You can hear that accusation any day in any mouth in the world; for it echoes Satan's plaint in the Trial.

Life post-salvation is about becoming functionally compatible with God, theme of Romans 8. Any function cannot occur until a STRUCTURE is built. Hence continual living in God's System PRODUCES a Structure of Divine Thinking. It happened to Christ first, and then we inherit His Structure. But the inheritance is an ELECTION we make, one precept at a time. As we choose, the Structure of His Thinking is built in us; as it gets built, some of it starts to function right away, some starts later on, etc. Bible likens this growth to a pregnancy, and also to childhood, adulthood, and maturity. Goal is Eph 4:13, His Full Mature Structure Level. But it occurs slowly, imperceptibly, and you must CONSENT each time, learning and living on Bible, using 1Jn1:9 as needed -- else you're spiritually comatose, no truth in you. So you have a function of structural development going on, and as that structure builds, it begins to function. At "Pleroma", the structure is built, and you go through various functional testings. If you pass them all, you beat Satan in the Trial. That's the focus of this Fifth Facet, the issues one faces with suffering, for the Testing is an ongoing thing, culminating in the Love-Function-Testing which characterizes Pleroma. It goes on until you die.

As explained in Part I, this spiritual development to resolve incompatibility with Infinite God was the very same problem angels all faced, too. They had to grow up via adjusting to God, or sin. See, unlike us, all the angels were simultaneously created, and with full knowledge of Him. But, like us, knowing a thing doesn't mean your will positively adjusts to the knowledge you have. Because, you are a whole being with volition. So "knowledge" doesn't mean "wisdom" or "strength". Those things come with turning over what you know, thinking about the meaning, using what you learn. And most of all, your attitude about it. Like Paul quips in 1Cor13:1-3, even if you had all the gifts and all the knowledge, but didn't have Love, you'd be nothing. Well, love depends on your attitude to what you know, don't know, etc. Especially, with reference to God.

So also it was, for the angels; so also it was, for Christ Himself. Same issue. So, for the angels, and even more for Christ, it was not easy to adjust; it was a struggle, because as we saw in the First Dichotomy of the Fourth Facet, Infinity is not compatible with finity.

For Christ it was the Worst. For here He is, One Person, in effect torn apart by Two Antithetical Natures: Infinite, which is innately inclusive; and Human, which is innately exclusive. The sheer tension of living.. well, it's beyond what we can imagine; even if we analogized His Life to being a victim of the Hittite post-war game of 'skin the prisoner', we'd not even get a glimmer of the pain He suffered. Long before He even got to the Cross. How do you live being God and puny, at the same time? Being human and perfect is still being puny, compared to Godness. How was it He could wait on the Spirit to grow Him, when He had always at His beck-and-call, the ability to just bing! whatever learning, good, etc. He wanted? Just one thought in that direction, would have made it happen. Satan's counting on that fact, in Matt4!

So, whether the angels or even Christ Himself, Compatibility with God must be forged out from many volitional choices to adjust to the Object you know, so to be compatible. And frankly, no one can make good on such choices, with respect to God. HE has to use His Power IN you, to make that choice work. Which means, you are continually voting FOR Him to remake you, and continually voting against your own nature. "Something better" than your own nature -- His -- is what you keep voting FOR. He responds with a Yes Vote and remakes you precept on precept; and the process continues. It's a zig-zag:

• Think of a "protasis", which is a PREMISE of some kind.
• So, needs an "apodosis", the ANSWER to that premise.
• As we saw in Part III, you can have God's Apodosis in answer to the premise.
• Or, substitute your own.
• Protasis=Premise: If-God-remakes-me. Apodosis: then it will be a nightmare, because I am too small. Second Apodosis: then I will be closer to Him, knowing Him better.
• You're essentially voting on this, God's Contract of Protasis and Apodosis, no matter whether angel, Christ-Perfect-Human, or fallen human like we are.
• So you can vote no, or -- like Satan does -- substitute your own protasis-and-apodosis contract, If I make myself like the Most High, then I will sit on his throne. Good luck if you pick your own substitute, for however you phrase it, you are choosing Satan's contract!

See how it's also not about works? Whatever you do, you do as a finite person. But the problem, is that God Is Infinite. So what standards of relationship should govern?

Satan says, "works" should be the governing standard, precisely because we're not God: since, for crying out loud, we're finite, we can't have another standard! So, those works also have to be PRICED. So those who are less valuable than others, can have incentive; so those more valuable than others, can feel rewarded. God's Impossible Infinite-Righteousness Standard, and therefore His Design and Plan, throws away the entire PERSON He Himself Created! Not Fair! What kind of love, Satan asks bitterly, is that????? Hence as we just saw above, Satan contends that God's going slow -- creating creatures lower than the ultimate intended Design goal -- is really a form of sadism, not love. Especially, since if they reject as they inevitably do -- they either go to hell, or have a hellish post-salvation life. For if God loved creation, He could have INITIALLY made us all in the Ultimate Design which He Foreknows we'd choose, anyway. Pretty powerful satanic apodosis, huh. Satan's arguments are all good. Just not as Good as GOD's. Matthew 4 temptations are to good deeds, not to sin. But it would be a sin, for Christ to do those good deeds. Let's see why.

But INfinity means, No Barriers. Love means you THROW DOWN your barriers, like those angels throw down their crowns, in Rev4:10ff. Like Christ threw away His Own Life, on the Cross. For, love is essentially alien to finity's need to push off, be on its own. So even were you perfect, you would have this 'tug'. It's not temptation, but the natural property of being finite, the 'tug' of independence. Since love is all about dependence, especially the superior choosing to spend self on the inferior (parents to children, for example), love is alien to independence. That's why it feels like a defeat or a threat, to BELIEVE. For inherent in belief, is DEPENDENCE. The foundation of love is belief, so to the extent a person doesn't believe in God, he is incapable of any kind of love, even toward humans. Yet it's quite understandable, for belief is a kind of 'surrender' of your independence.

If you want to be close to God, you must go against your own finity, not merely resist sin; and ALL its innate barriers must come DOWN, with Divine Love=Truth REPLACING them. Thus functional reconciliation is achieved; for God's Attributes are Indivisible. So when the believer receives deposits of His Truth, His Love is being 'deposited', too. For there are No Barriers in God.

The warring we saw in the Fourth Facet is essentially the symptom of internal soul barriers ALL coming down. Part III's First Reason for Invisibility covers the listing below in more detail. Here is but a sketch of what amounts to an internal soul 'guerilla' war of attrition:

• As you age in Christ the warring increases; by this you know more barriers within your soul are coming down.
• As you age further, Satan&Co. will make barriers in your life and send you thoughts and feelings you'll mistake for your own, in order to demoralize you. Generally, you won't be able to tell the difference between your sin nature's barriers and these external 'inputs', so to speak. Most of the time, you don't need to know the difference: if you do, God will alert you.
• So as you age, you'll seem to yourself like a greater and greater FAILURE. It's humiliating.
• This, because your standards are rising, as mentioned in the Fourth Facet.
• Next, as the standards rise, you'll 'see' more wrong with yourself and your environment than you had; this is an occupational hazard of the spiritual life. Grace concepts used to relax will be paramount.
• Fighting continues, as explained in the First Reason for Invisibility of Part III, until at some point you begin to coalesce and calm down into maturity. It takes decades.
• During this time, you go through a reversal of values. Earthly stuff becomes almost unimportant (problem of despising it, actually), and spiritual stuff, well -- you're on fire. Satan&Co. will exploit this changeover to make you spit up or go bulimic on Bible. DDNA2.htm covers that problem. Balancing your body life with study is imperative.
• During this time, a shifting in focus has occurred away from self and the world toward Christ, almost exclusively, and then exclusively.
• When the shift to Him begins to be exclusive -- He's either the only reason you want to breathe or all other reasons are very secondary -- you've hit Pleroma, the final stage of spiritual growth. That's when you are paradoxically still a spiritual fetus (Paul's pregnancy analogy in the last half of Romans 8), yet now childbearing (Fourth Dichotomy in Fourth Facet).
• Then the suffering truly begins, to test the Love: prosperity suffering and adversity suffering. Problem of prosperity is that it's a 'highness'. Problem of adversity is its 'lowness' character. Both are really the same thing, and you discover that: two sides of a coin. High-low, depicting the 'stretch' of the Hypostatic Union.
• Pleroma is also a long phase, maybe lasting a decade or more, depending on how old you are when you enter it, and how long you have left to live.
• But in this Pleroma, only suffering satisfies, because all the 'highs' of the world just don't matter anymore, are anticlimactic. You want more out of life, and you want it for HIM, to spend yourself on Him. It's not masochistic. It's an CREATIVE outlet you need, not too unlike the athlete who wants to compete, or the soldier who wants to get back on the battlefield. It's not pointless, and you're not keen on being hurt, but you are keen on giving your all. Again, like in sports or war.
• There's a distinct duality of not wanting yet wanting to go through it: "not my will, but Thy Will be done" and "Living, Christ, dying, Profit!" are real verses with real meaning to you.
• Self has long ceased to be of much interest, since He is more interesting. Again, all this is covered in the First Reason for Invisibility of Part III.
• There are three suffering phases, in the Pleroma stage: a) private, analogous to Matt4; b) public, analogous to the Lord's public ministry ("public" might just be your friends and family); c) private+public, and you are humiliated, seemingly a spiritual loser of some kind (analogous to the Cross). If you look at Bible heroes, they had these three phases, so it's a testing DESIGN. "2-3-4-5 Evidence Testing" table in Part III has more details. Most important thing to know is that in the final phase (which usually ends in a victorious death, but you might outlive it), you seem to be abandoned by God (elohim umuneh, Isa53:4, last clause).
• It's not humanly possible to want to suffer like this. The Love in the believer at this stage cannot be dislodged; in part, the level of suffering administered is designed to show that the Love cannot be dislodged (protracted, acute, chronic, sudden, etc). Thus God demonstrates that the believer's love for God is not dependent on externals (i.e., nicenesses from God). The believer needs to see that the most, for true love always deems itself not loving enough.
• Point here, is that the Trial Victory Diamond Doctrine Bucks are at their HIGHEST. Winning here buys time for the world, vests you in your crown, and defeats Satan in the Trial (your portion of the defeat, which the crown you win signifies -- it's a Battlefield Patent you win, see 2Tim4:7-8).
• Best of all, you know you don't earn it. So you don't get tangled up in knots about winning, you're too relieved and grateful to have something to SPEND ON HIM FOR FATHER. Spared, the ego hassles attendant to winning a major victory. Usually winning causes more problems than losing. Not here. This is the ONE situation in which owning and being in charge, is a pleasure: for Father under Son via the Holy Spirit.

So the Impossible Profit of "Christ in you, the Confident Expectation of Glory", Col1:25-27, demonstrates you are supernaturally, Free; suffering DIDN'T undo the Love. God is Unpriced, and so are you. "Having done all, to stand", Eph6:13 (KJV). The Impossible Ruler is in your head, so you the Impossible Ruled, are Impossibly a Priest to Father; katartizw'd, kitted out with an Impossible Life, so now that Impossible Profit, generated via the individual mechanics of Eph3:15-19 via Eph4:11-16.. pays off. Oh, how rare a gem the Holy Spirit has made you, by this point. In Part IVc, you'll see how rare, how powerful, all this Thinking you're learning, really is. You're only getting the design, now. But remember the First Facet? The Ruler couldn't justifiably BE a ruler benefitting Earth, if you weren't learning. Not someone else, YOU. We Christians are soooo busy looking at others, we forget all about, ourselves. That's not altruism, but stupidity. Each of us is a King-in-Training. We should regard ourselves that way. Objectively, like God does. This is the Dowry Father pays Son: our training. You're worth an incredible amount of money. Will you bring it to the wedding? Or have it re-route to someone else? That's where this Thinking, Vests: in you. Not, in someone else.

When you inherit a large amount of money, it's humbling. You didn't earn it. You didn't work for it. When you achieve something great in life but someone else trained you or made some other material sacrifice so you could GET that achievement, it's humbling. Well, God's Achievement here is Priceless. We should not spurn His Wealth. We got it via the Cross, and the Son would be totally dishonored if we uttered fake-pious words like "aww, I don't want anything for myself", or other Brother-Foot blasphemies. God is Rich, and makes us Rich. It's an inheritance. Respect it, by learning it well.

So Note The Impossible Profit.. Love! As Galatians 5 explains, God wants the Impossible Profit of Infinite, Divine Love, which He produces via the Spirit Pouring In the Truth, operating in every believer, and at Christ's Level! ["Fruit" in Bible means thinking, teaching, and is always an agricultural word for PROFIT, the 'crop' which made all that husbanding, worthwhile. So when reading Gal5:22, keep that fact in mind. For the "at Christ's Level", see Eph4:13, Greek -- astounding verse! If you don't get the Greek Marital Vocabulary Paul uses in v.16, you won't understand v.13. It's a real pistol to find out from the lexicons that sumbibazw, etc. are Marital sex verbs, and even (sometimes) crude ones, in Greek lit. See RightPT.htm's exegesis section, if God thinks you should.] Love.. because God is Love (1Jn4). So, God makes Love Pour in You via those Truth Deposits, Rom5:5. So: You Are To Be Transformed, just as Paul explains (by way of imperative), in Rom12:1-3. This is a very important passage, and its translations are a royal mess. Here's a quick translation of 12:2 from Greek, so you can see how different, the meaning. Capped words vary from the translations extant. Trans:

"STOP BEING CONFORMED to THIS AGE, but BE TRANSFORMED (it's a play on words: don't copy someone else, become like CHRIST!) by means of the RENOVATION OF YOUR THINKING, in order for IT [your renovated thinking] to approve you as GENUINE/ COMPETENT (like testing a gemstone versus a fake; another play on words, hard to explain) regarding [content of "it"] what's the Will of God, the Divine Good-and-well-pleasing-and-complete."

Study Rom12:1-3 in Greek, you'll love Paul's sense of humor! For the full passage, CLICK HERE.

So how is it we finite puny can be compatible? God Cycling His Thinking in us every second is done BY Him. So it's Godness cycling in finiteness. What God does to an object makes it HOLY. Again, this is the Resurrection Power concept of the Third Facet: Only Thought Makes Alive. So if it's GOD's Thought in you, it's alive at God's Own Level, since done By God. Yes, that means we are utterly dependent, a kind of kenosis. That's why all the barriers have to come down, that's why it feels so bad and defeating. What's being defeated, is the natural barrier against God doing it all TO you. We humans value ourselves in terms of what WE do. That valuation must be utterly destroyed. Satan contends this destruction is the wrong way to have a relationship. Well, if you love God you want to be destroyed, just because: and just because He is forever better than you are, you NEED it to happen, to be happy that He's getting His 'money's worth' out of you, so to speak. That's the reasoning of Love. In humans, this reasoning has a price. But when Divine Love is built in you, it becomes Priceless, Isa55:1ff. No price is too high. God doesn't love us for what we can do for Him. He just loves us, period. And, in Pleroma, you find out you too just love Him, period. That's why Abraham needed to sacrifice Isaac, to see that it wasn't God's Promise he loved the more, it was GOD he loved the more. Love never accounts itself as loving. So the proof of it, must be demonstrated TO the one loving. By the One Loving.

Consequently God the Holy Spirit is not ashamed of us, but He is Mothering us to beat even Satan's arguments in the Unseen Angelic Trial, Heb11:1. What beats Satan is thinking Bible, 24/7, 1Jn5:4. That's how the Lord became the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life, Matt4:4. So can God do that to us also? If Yes, Satan is defeated. Writer of Hebrews likens this life to wandering in the wilderness (esp. in Heb4 and 11), during which the Unseen Trial Evidence Of Christ Is Our Faith, His Thinking, Heb11:1.

Greek of Heb11:1 is so important, you should spend time on it until you thoroughly master it. Verse in Greek reads like this, Three Equalities:

Not hard to memorize, great drama and wordplay (the "wn" words point backwards and forwards). Carries you when blindsided! Idiomatic Translation (one version, still better than extant published translations):
"It's about Doctrine Confidently Believed, [which is] the Christ of the Trial, [which is] Trial Evidence, unseen."
Here's my favorite translation, trying to match the meter in the Greek (but at five syllables each vs. the Greek's seven)
Now it's about
Confidence in Word!
Son's Thinking, On Trial!
Evidence, Unseen!

[I translate the verse differently in other sites. Greek layers of meaning can't all be fitted into one set of English wording. We all should just study and learn the original languages, and forego translations, imo.]

So what's being tested in the Trial which our faith, proves victorious? God's Choice of going slow is proven the more right. Remember earlier, this paragraph? "Consider: God already knows how you will be thinking once you've died and are up in heaven. He could have chosen instead to just MAKE you like that from the get-go, eliminating the interim process of you being born physically on earth, Christ having to go pay for your sins beforehand, you believing in Christ and then undergoing whatever spiritual growth you would go through, down here. All that pain, eliminated. God could have just made you as the end product, rather than as a beginning. Sounds good, right? Satan sure thinks so, and is mightily mad at God for not doing it that way. But consider: Yes, eliminating the pain is nice. But No, because The Pain Never Got Associated WITH Thought. So it is always a dead thing, never enlivened by the birthing thought could have given it; always a woulda coulda shoulda, never a reality which goes on forever. So it's not merely a God-would-cheat question --which is impossible, for whatever God wants is valid, even were it wrong, He's Free to Choose -- it's an ENJOYMENT question. God would be cheated of Enjoyment, and that's why He won't 'cheat' by doing something which impinges on freedom, whether His.. or yours. 'Filling all in all', as Paul puts it, end Eph1. Nothing left out, nothing left 'unbaptised', as it were, by Christ's Thinking."

Satan's saying God's going slow like this is wrong, immoral, unfair. Satan contends God's unfair to require us believe in God, to keep trusting Him to grow us, because it means rejecting all we are -- which God made, of course.

• Why couldn't He have just made us initially, as He intended we ultimately become?
• Why put us through all this GRIEF of development?
• Why put Christ through all the grief of the Cross?
• Grief which Father must forever see -- we won't ever see it as He does, since He is Omniscient.
These are pretty good arguments, huh. Satan's a moral person. All his arguments are moral. From his perspective,
• God being Omniscient and Omnipotent, could just bing! us all with the end result, and there'd be no need for a Cross, for hell.
• No pain to God, and none to creatures, either.
• The bypassed growth process would have been a what-if thing to appreciate, like a good book or movie, in our heads -- but never actually lived. Kinda like being born a fully-mature adult, but knowing what you'd have been like if you got there via a birth and growing-up life.
• To him, God is Not Loving: for He won't use His Omnipotence to BYPASS all this growing, development, sin.. and especially, hell.
You see Satan say all these arguments within the rationales behind his three temptations, in Matt4: each temptation zips past a hurtful state to an end result. Bypass, each time: bypass hunger (for the world, not just for Christ); bypass difficulty of belief via flash; bypass Cross, by zapping Satan himself for making an insulting offer. (Satan would then masochistically become the messiah, saving the world, and saving even Christ from the Cross, get it? That's why the 3rd Temptation is the most aggravating, and should have resulted in the Lord's Humanity having a gut reaction, willing Omnipotence to zap Satan into hell.)

For Satan contends that the Lord won solely because His Nature was SUPERIOR from the get-go, even though human (i.e., because perfect and God-man). Thus,

• God should have made everyone superior like that to start with,
• and there'd have been no sin;
• for if the Incarnation is not a compromise, and
• since God wants to make gods (Ps82:6),
• then why not make everyone else like Christ to start with, especially since that was already the ultimate goal?
So if we sinners also grow the same way as Our Lord did, then Satan has no arguments left. Notice how in the OT, because Christ had not come, His Thinking wasn't available to them: can't pass on the thinking of someone not yet born and completed ("perfected" or "perfect" in English translations of Book of Hebrews). So it always remained a Trial argument that since they had an inferior life to His, that God rigged the spiritual deck, making the OT folks' spiritual life too easy.
Israel, as you'll remember, had lots of flash in her spiritual life; lots of miracles, God in the pillar and cloud, manna in the wilderness, healings, etc. She had all this ritual to do which depicted how GOD pays, not the people; her laws were uniquely humane, and even the 'god' subjected himself to rule of law, a thing unheard of among nations. Moreover, when she behaved, she had the best wealth, agricultural and weather on the planet; nations were afraid of hurting her -- when she behaved. The Temple was a wonder of the ancient world. All that flash ADVERTISED that she belonged to the Real God, and people obviously saw it as they travelled through her. So it would have been pretty easy to believe.

Christ was at the opposite end of all this. He couldn't sin one sin without tanking forever. No second chances. His Spiritual Life was far higher than the Law, as Book of Hebrews painstakingly explains. And, He's UNIQUE: shemah, Yisroel! Accordingly, Satan contends that His Unique Nature plus the OT flash, 'contributed' to the success of His Spiritual Life. Thus Satan calls for a Mistrial, alleging that God rigged the Evidence, and instead really proves Satan right: See, Elohim, He only won because you made Him superior, and because you used 'enticements' to Israel to believe. That's just what I've been contending, all along! You made creation TOO LOW, and that's why we sin. So it's YOUR FAULT. Aha. Now you know why Matt16:18 and the inauguration of Church, for another reason besides Israel's rejection.

So here we are Church, all the flash gone! with no rituals, no visible manifestations, no cookie-cutter rules, and an NT which is ABSTRACT in spiritual life construction. We must make rules out of principles. Humans don't do that very well; our eyes glaze over even basic math and dates. We need stuff to DO, a track to run our bodies on, paint-by-numbers. If you ask us to define ourselves, we pick irrelevant body stuff such as our names, birth, parentage, gender, nationality, occupation, behaviors, looks -- but not soul characteristics. So "abstract" is not something we understand. But Christ won by His Thinking, Paying for Sins. So doo-doo's aren't our spiritual life, either -- we have the exact same setup as Him. Thinking. Abstract. Toward Father. 24/7. It should be impossible, since we are of inferior nature -- human, not God-and-human, and sinners, to boot. Saved, but with sin nature and messed-up souls in a world which is spiritually dead. Talk about a rigged deck! Everything is rigged AGAINST us.

So isn't it ironic, that Our Church Royal Priestly Impossible Life is used to prove why God didn't bypass the grief of development, Heb11:1. Each time you learn and live on Bible during your day, Perfect Thoughts which forever will please Father to 'smell', which transform you -- also defeat Satan's contention in the Trial about God being unfair. For look at the results!
• Your happiness is unparalleled by anything this world can offer: same as His Testimony.
• You come to prefer God no matter what, just as Christ did.
• You, a sinner, a puny, a wretch, CHOOSE to be a cockroach, and vote for Him remake you.
• The entire Trial is about whether God does the doing, or you do the doing.
• So to choose for God to do the doing, you are choosing to be done-to, which means feeling like a cockroach, since you never measure up to His Standard.
• By contrast, the world which is a cockroach, exults in its own standards and large numbers and traditions and age and buildings and whatever. So, it gets what it wants: no relationship with God.
• So it's also not true that Christ's Perfection 'aided' Him in any way, to win. That perfection actually made it harder, for He had to live in a far-inferior world, so the differential in competence and standards would have been much more aggravating.
• So it's also not true that happiness or avoiding sin, requires either a perfect nature from the get-go, or a higher nature from the get-go. When we learn and live on Bible under the Spirit -- that's what Christ did -- we are not sinning, 1Jn5:18 (should be translated in the progressive tense, "being sired by God"). That moment is exactly the same as Christ's, Matt4:4, because the Holy Spirit AT THAT TIME is running it. Just as He did, for Him.
• Rather happiness is knowing God, WHATEVER nature one has, Phili3:8. With or without pain. God knows pain. God is happy. We know God. We are happy. We know pain -- and it does not matter, same as Heb12:2.
• His Perfection was a passive thing, needing to be perfect so sins could be imputed and judged, 2Cor5:21, Heb2:10, 12:2 (the latter two are Archegos verses).
• But how He got through it, was by relying on God the Holy Spirit -- not by relying on Himself, Matt12:18, Luke 4:18, 3:22, 10:21, John 3:34, 4:24, 6:63, 7;39, 14:17, 26, 15:26, 16:13, 20:22, etc.
• All this, by thinking Divine Thoughts the Holy Spirit taught Him via the Word, and then literally making new thoughts from that Word -- just like we Church get.
• So it doesn't matter what kind of nature you have at any time; rather, it matters Whose Thoughts are in you, no matter what your nature. Now you see why Love's Buildup to emulate Christ's own Desire to suffer, is such conclusive testimony, in the Trial. For us puny in the worst situation to still be happy knowing Him (and in Pleroma, one is, nothing breaks that) -- well, Satan can't refute that testimony. The believer undergoing it isn't able to fake anything. You yourself don't know how much you love God until you go through this testing. Now you know why God gave Abraham an almost-sacrifice command. God knew how much Abraham loved Him. But Abraham didn't. We humans don't know how much "x" until pushed almost off the cliff.
• Moreover, since in reality we start low, we thus nonmeritoriously participate in the developmental process by Voting for it; so learn the same kind of satisfaction GOD has in going the 'slow' route. All of that satisfaction would have been missed, had God just binged the end result as our starting point. So a) we wouldn't have the satisfaction of having gone through the process, and b) neither would God. It would be like being born an adult, finding you had a fabulous childhood -- but were never actually a child. Pretty insipid, huh.
• Of course, if from the get-go He made us into what we'd have become, we'd not be free either; we'd not have had opportunity to reject it. So it's a sham 'relationship', like "Stepford Wives".
• But instead, the reality is that our souls are geniunely free yet big enough and MARRIED IN THOUGHT, to God. True wives, then. Happy. With and without pain, for Better and for Worse. Makes no difference. Makes no difference, He is so Superior. Makes no difference, we are so inferior.

So here we are, in this stadium called Planet Earth, each of us choosing (or not) to get this Impossible life: "what think ye of Christ?" If we want Relationship with God, we believe in Him; if we want an Intimate Relationship with God, we learn His Word all our lives, in God's System (i.e., 1Jn1:9 breathed and learning Bible under your God-appointed pastor). Else, we might marry Him (initial faith in Christ), but -- well, we just want the status (being in Heaven forever), not really the Person. So, that's what we'll get: fabulous status, retarded relationship, Matt7:1-2. Those having voted for Intimacy all their lives will get to Pleroma, and will rule the rest of us who didn't make and stick with, that election. Intimacy is voluntary.

1. First Facet, you are the CONDUIT for blessing or cursing to the human race, simply because you are a believer. That, because your King is God, and the rest of the world has voted instead for Satan to be its king. So it's a problem of Jurisdiction. God is King only of all believers. So Blessing from God can only be granted due to believers. So these are Conduit Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
2. Second Facet, DIRECT BLESSING from Your King, to Train You in His Royal Son's Thinking. So as a result those associated with you, get blessed. You are treated as their owner, and to bless you for what you need, they must get blessing. So these are Direct Blessing Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
3. Third Facet, you are a ROYAL PRIEST to Father, being trained in His Son's Thinking, to develop a Thinking Lifestyle of Christ-Perfect Thoughts which Father can enjoyably 'smell'. This has a multiplier effect on your periphery, the nation, the world, which is a Second-Facet re-routing. So these are Sweet Savor Diamond Doctrine Bucks. For Thought Alone, Makes Alive.

4. Fourth Facet, a Quad-Dichotomous, Mission Impossible Life of Christ-Perfect Thoughts. So your nature is continually at WAR with this Training, due to Perfect Truth growing inside your head, Perfectly Operating: for your thinking is being TRANSFORMED by Him, the Holy Spirit. Dead to Living, a Resurrection and Session Power. So these are Transformation Diamond Doctrine Bucks.

5. So Fifth Facet the Impossible CYCLING PROFIT of those Christ-Perfect Thoughts, and the Suffering Profit, Heb12:2; which results in Satan's Defeat in the Trial. So these are Trial Victory Diamond Doctrine Bucks. Aka, Mature Love Diamond Doctrine Bucks. For even a puny human wants suffering as an outlet, calls suffering Profit, Phili1:21. For it doesn't matter that you are of a lower nature, as Satan had contended. It doesn't matter that God is impossibly higher, as Satan contended. The INTIMACY is unbreakable, Heb11:1. Doctrine in your head, but also Love for God, same Trial as Christ's, Unseen Evidence, Nuclear Weapon, knocking down All Barriers. Wholly dependent, your own nature totally irrelevant to you. For what God does TO you alone is satisfying, even if it's a cross.

6. So here, Sixth Facet the Impossible Body of His Thinking, makes an Impossible Bride.. forever. So these are Bridal Body Diamond Doctrine Bucks. The 'body' of your kingdom is tailored to YOU. And in aggregate, we are all perfectly fitting, HIM.

The REAL building of the Body Corporate is largely something only God sees. God knows how the eternal state needs to be, for His Son. That's one big reason the Rapture is unpredictable, we are all in a state of spiritual flux. Those who died before us had certain characteristics, individually and corporately, which of course we don't know. The Body of Christ is an aggregate, composed of those still alive and those dead, those yet-to-be-born. So really, your own Bridal Diamond Doctrine Buck value is established wholly by your own personal spiritual growth, not by how you interrelate to other believers down here. Even were you isolated your entire life, part of your value is related to all those other believers in eternity. God knows how you need to develop for that value to fit exactly right. So again, it's what He does to you, not what you or other believers do to each other, that constitutes TRUE AND ETERNAL "Christian fellowship".

Christ lived an isolated life. So did Paul. So did Moses. So did David. So did Abraham, who told his servant under NO conditions, to take Isaac back to Haran (Gen24:6-8)! Christ made the blind guy He healed, stay away from Bethsaida (Mark 8:26). John the Baptist, a valid Levite priest, taught instead out in the desert, far away from his heritage, serving in the Temple. Christ Himself didn't spend much time in the Temple, even though He is the Temple, but rather spent most of His time in areas the Jews wouldn't enter! Do you see a pattern? By typical Churchinanity standards, none of these people would be "spiritual" because they avoided church and hobnobbing with believers! The frequently-cited Heb10:25 is a farce, because the verse is about being under a TEACHER, never mind associating with other believers, same as the reason you went to synagogue. Churchinanity is satanic: notice how the Word is cut out, which was the ONLY reason you went to synagogue -- to get the TEACHING. Never mind social life. So of course that All-Important-Road-to-Intimacy stressed in Heb10:25 (just after Heb10:15-17, see the context), is reversed by the satanic Churchinanity crowd. "Avoid such persons as these", Paul warned Timothy (2Tim3:5). So did Peter (2Pet2, whole chapter); Jude (12); John (1Jn 1:6,8,10, 2:4, 9, 15, 4:5, 4:20, 2Jn9-10) warn against them. All form, all sweetness-and-light, poison in their lips, all about how holy they are, what they do, human approbation alone impresses them. But not God. Rubbish!

Only about 10% of the NT is about stuff you do with the body, and the material is usually placed at the end of the letter, expressed in a peremptory fashion, axiomatic. But 90% is on how you should think, what you should know, with pretty much every Greek verb for THINKING that existed in that language. Yeah, because God HEARS us 24/7. So with Whom should our 'fellowship', be? And if you're busy worrying about what God hears, won't your behavior improve? So you don't even have to worry about relationships with people. GOD FIRST, main theme in 1Jn. And if it is God-First, then you have to spend time alone with Him. Away from people: just like Christ, Paul, Moses, David, Abraham. If you don't seem to have that time now, ASK GOD for it. I am proof that He grants it, and there are hundreds just like me who asked Him for the same thing: just cruise the internet, see how many Bible-fixated websites there are by mere individuals, alone, puzzling out the Word. It's not wrong to be isolated. It's not wrong to want to spend what the world considers an "unhealthy" amount of time, to study the Word. There is a problem of going too far with it, as DDNA2.htm explains. But isolation itself is an important phase of the spiritual life.

No wonder the Rapture hasn't happened until yet. If ecumenism was as holy as it claims, if all that Sunday potluck good-deedy nonsense was as good as claimed, the Rapture would have happened before 200AD. Revelation 17, baby. Keeping us babies, not growing the Body, delaying the Wedding. Satan must be laughing his head off. Pharisees are clearly good-deeders in the Gospels, you can see it even in translation. Yet we Christians don't notice that, what with all our many Passion plays and Christmas pageants? Nope. We childishly define the spiritual life as people being nice to people. I just got an email of some gardener guy who got beat up over and over and one of his tormentors was so impressed that the old man didn't fight back, the tormenter became a "pillar" of the community. "This is the true Gospel", the letter said. Really? You believe ONLY that, and you go to hell! Christ paid for us, not good works: John 3:16, Romans 4:1ff, Eph2:8-9. See, we Body are truly destructive to each other, spreading lies and calling ourselves holy. It's spitting on the Cross, just as the writer of Hebrews says, in Heb6:1-8. Frankly these days, it's better to avoid believers altogether, the world is so full of their apostacy. You can't be a hermit, but you can limit social contact and buying into their garbage. Quietly.

Clearly, then, TRUE Christian fellowship is that each of us is in Fellowship with GOD, never mind people. The people fellowship is adjunctive, optional. 1Jn is all about that fact, the Greek sarcasm sometimes so pointed and finely-honed, you have to stop reading. It's pretty bad when John has to warn someone not to even GREET those who are apostate, 2Jn9-10. James and Galatians too, for that matter. If you grow up, then in eternity all these Churchinanity people will have a conduit -- you -- for fellowship with God they had rejected, while down here. Whew. THAT's building up the Body.

It takes a long time to learn about the hidden trap of so-called "Christian fellowship". When you are a child, you're taught principles in terms of stuff you do with your body. So you think that's what "good" means, your little gold stars and your washings and making the bed, taking out the trash, which Mommy and Daddy praise. But they do that, because you are a child, and don't yet know the meaning behind the motions. The goal is to GROW OUT of that childish association, eventually. Many humans don't. More believers don't. After some point, Word Eating is supposed to grow you out of that. But if you keep eating it with childish eyes, and never progress into at least a curiosity to know God better for HIMSELF, well.. you'll just keep on seeking those little gold stars.

There are a lot of good pastors out there who don't teach what they know, because there's no 'market' for it. So we need to create demand by ourselves, wanting to learn Bible more. We don't form clubs or groups to lobby for better teaching, we just vote with our feet to where the teachers are. Or, we start asking our own pastors, deeper questions. That lets them know an interest exists, and they can then justify teaching more. For a pastor must feed his flock. If his flock won't eat what he is able to feed them, he must restrict what he feeds. So let's not restrict our pastors by being uninterested. Again, this is just something to kick around in private conversation, not have rallies and phone banks about. We don't need Caesar or Madison Avenue. We need interest in God, and we need to let our pastors know we want teaching about How He Is. Just Him. Else, they'll be stuck teaching us how to get those little gold stars.

Worse, Scripture goes hidden when people stop wanting it. Just because we've got the technology now, doesn't mean this can't happen again. Bible was very widely available during the first century, and they had no technology. After that, it quickly vanished. Which means interest in God was generally extremely low between 96AD and 1850 AD. Reformation and other movements (like the Waldensians) show blips of increase in interest, but these blips are of childishly-narrow Biblical scope (i.e., Reformation was about true Gospel (faith-alone), Luther and Calvin), and short-term (going apostate within a decade/generation or two after beginning). When interest in Scripture declines, interest in education declines, especially in the languages of Scripture. So yeah, maybe the technology remains, but who's around to TEACH it? Hence the need for us Christians to be adamantly seeking good teachers. We don't crusade on this. We just do it, ourselves, one at a time. Back in the 1930's, you had to study Bible languages for years, and you took your exams in Latin. For the past generation or so, you don't even need but a year or maybe two of Greek, let alone much Hebrew, to graduate -- and seminary students even complain about that much. That tells you properly-trained teachers, are NOT coming out of seminary. So yeah, the Word in the original-language texts is now in public domain, accessible on any computer. But NO ONE TO TEACH IT means it's just as hidden, as if still buried in crocodiles, within caves. Same thing happened in the 2nd century. We have come full circle.

Even worse, Lev26 plays its negative contract paragraphs when we reject Bible, so major historical crises are in the offing. By now, 6 or 7 generations into the major trend of world history since the Crucifixion, which is the Kidnapping, Freeing, and Now Worldwide Availability Of The Original-Language Texts of Bible (2-3 generations into the ease of use of those texts, see MirrorNOW.htm), our patent disinterest in Word, means a future negative history of extreme magnitude. Which negativity, can only be offset by us Learning Him -- again, demonstrated by seeking good pastors. So the magnitude of Our Learning Him in this current period of Church, is vitally necessary and extremely high. Way bigger than in the past. For there has been so much loss in past centuries, there must now be a bigger gain required. Every century which passes from here on out, must have bigger believers still; and if they aren't produced, then Satan wins in the Trial. We know Satan won't win from prophecy, but on a micro level -- what you gain if you stick with God's System, versus what YOU lose -- the results are dramatic. Positive, or negative. Every Believer Counts!

So on behalf of Our Bridal Body yet-to-be-born, it behooves us to individually grow as much as possible; and, not only for that reason, to seek good pastors, plus instill in our children a refreshing idea of God and Bible, not the legalistic Dour-God or Circus-God image of past generations. So in terms of how we relate to other Christians, probably the most useful thing we could do is TALK BIBLE. Brainstorm the doctrines with each other, find out who the good pastors are and pass on that information, encourage them and each other who are under them, think over what we are learning under our pastors. That will encourage thinking in ourselves -- ideally, without us descending into my-pastor-or-denomination-is-better-than-yours. For we all can learn from each other, as all of us are Crown Princes, whatever our gender or societal status.

The only other visible thing we should do, is STAY OUT OF POLITICS. That's Revelation 17. God will curse us bigtime for our politicking, urging our home nations to do something we consider 'moral'. We don't need Caesar, we need Prayer. We're the only people on the planet who have the right of prayer. We just ask God for whatever we think is needed. By contrast, the prolife movement is a blot on Christianity. It isn't functioning in the Right Jurisdiction, so none of its proponents are growing much spiritually, if at all. If you believe abortion is wrong, Ask God YOUR King -- not Caesar, who is one of Satan's subkings. Satan rules this world; any cause you get into will only be a vote for Satan, in the end. Why else do you think, the worldwide weather and other disasters like terrorism, have been so weird the last decade or so? Does no one bother to read Lev26 and Deut28? Guess not. So what do we do about all this? Get in and stay in God's System, First Commandment. Then He will use us to rescue our respective peoples, nations. That's the Precedence of the Cross. Christ went to FATHER for everything, not the Sanhedrin, not Rome -- get the point?

Clearly this doesn't mean some Christian should avoid seeking political office, if that's God's Will for his life. Clearly this doesn't mean you sit on a park bench and be uninformed about political affairs. What it does mean, is that you don't DEPEND or TRUST politics, and above all, you don't insert FAITH issues INTO politics. What belongs to God, is God's. Christ made that clear to Peter with regard to the two-drachma tax (Matt 17:24-27, ties to Matt22:17ff, Mark 12:14ff, Luke 20:22ff, and notice their distortion in 23:2ff). We really should read our Bibles someday, huh.

Like all other Diamond Doctrine Buck categories, this Progeny Diamond Doctrine Buck Value will be a basis for determining your inheritance at the Bema. So there are a total of seven whole Faceted 'funds' of Diamond Doctrine Bucks with which you get accredited, simply by voting for the Holy Spirit to do TO you, what He did to Christ, via learning and Living on the Word, 24/7:

So let's review again the Facets thus far:
1. First Facet, you are the CONDUIT for blessing or cursing to the human race, simply because you are a believer: Conduit Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
2. Second Facet, DIRECT BLESSING from Your King, to Train You in His Royal Son's Thinking: Direct Blessing Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
3. Third Facet, you are a ROYAL PRIEST to Father, being trained in His Son's Thinking, to develop a Thinking Lifestyle of Christ-Perfect Thoughts which Father can enjoyably 'smell': Sweet Savor Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
4. Fourth Facet, a Quad-Dichotomous, Mission Impossible Life of Christ-Perfect Thoughts, since your thinking is being TRANSFORMED by Him, the Holy Spirit: Transformation Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
5. Fifth Facet, Impossible CYCLING PROFIT and Suffering Profit, Heb12:2, Defeating Satan in the Trial: Trial Victory Diamond Doctrine Bucks, aka Mature Love Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
6. Sixth Facet, the Impossible Body of His Thinking, makes an Impossible Bride.. forever: Bridal Body Diamond Doctrine Bucks.
7. So here, Seventh Facet, Impossible Progeny of His Thinking, POST-MORTEM blessing in your name, which God gives the world: Progeny Diamond Doctrine Bucks.

It's hard to be categorically specific here, other than with respect to the blessing of Time, which I could document since Adam. But if that blessing is so dramatic and specific, then we know other categories exist as well. There are trends of history which help us see the post-mortem impact. You can look at the increase in Bible interest in nations historically, and see the contemporaneous (same-generation) rise in material prosperity; you can see it continue for about four generations within that same nation, generally each time. Sometimes only one or two generations (which tells you subsequent generations were quite negative) remain prosperous. So we know the CONDUIT blessing categories continue post-mortem, as they can be empirically traced. So if what we can see continue is so vast, then other types and smaller-scale blessings continue as well.

The most important 'progeny' we can 'propagate' is correct and INTERESTED understanding of Bible. Typically, people use the Bible as a mere location for genealogical records, or trot it out at holidays, reading Psalm 23 or some other 'traditional' passage. How sad. Historically our theologies remain quite puerile, even after centuries of having Bible. We still wrestle over GOD101 topics, as if we were all stuck in the Reformation, as if frozen in time. There's no excuse for that: our theologies of God's Nature should be way better than they are. Moreover, there's no excuse for us not understanding that Bible Thinking Alone Toward Father is The Spiritual Life, since Christ Paid For Our Sins To Father by means of His Thinking. So if you're trying to figure out what's the best propagating you can do, learn Bible and pass on your learning to anyone who wants to brainstorm it with you. People talk. Good Bible topics or ideas are refreshing, delightful, light-years more delicious than ALL other information passed on. God never lets His Word return void. But we can refuse to learn it, talk about it. What a loss to us, if we do.

As we've seen since Part II, God's Covenants require enough "salt", and "mass". Only a little salt, applied to a whole lotta mass! Consequently, the "mass" leveraged by the "salt", the "multiplier effect", the "economy of force" and "concentration of force" values for even a buck of Divine Thinking, is extreme; for, if the leverage/multiplier is high in natural things (germs, physics, finance), how much higher would it have to be, in supernatural things? Ergo the Seven Macro Effects of God's Balancing Criteria to Make Fit Bride. These seven are the product of the seven micro facets of each Diamond Doctrine Buck accumulating in us, solely by agency of the Holy Spirit (never by means of works). This accumulation -- or lack of it -- accounts for the 'play' of History until the Rapture. So the following seven Macro Effects are always ongoing, 'til then.

1. ARCHEGOS Effect, Heb12:2+Isa53:12a+b: there must be a "progenitor", (Greek "archegos", Founder/Foundation/Fountainhead/ Father/ Head/ Leader/ Ruler) to whom the covenant is granted. THE Archegos is the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is making archegoi, Pleroma Kings, from out of His Thinking. When enough of those kings have been completed, the Rapture occurs. One king starts a polity; he's one of the "great ones" of Isa53:12 who gets his share of the people booty, believers who by their own choice! flunked the spiritual life. They will be looking up to him, to better see Christ, and he will reflect Christ to Whom he looks up the most. Chief slave=king.
2. BOOTY-BODY Mass Effect for the archegoi, Isa53:12a+b: there must also be sufficient progeny. My pastor likes to remind us that "kaine" in 2Cor5:17 means new-in-species, our human spiritual nature being perfectly fitted to Christ just as Isha was perfectly fitted to Adam in body and soul. Hence it stands to reason that if you become a Pleroma king, the resultant kingdom inherited is kitted out specifically for you. Humbling thought, huh.
3. Corporate COUNTRIES Effect, 1Pet2:5,9, Rev1:6, 5:10: these Progenitors and Progeny result in a Federation of Kingdoms, each of which is in a hierarchical RANKING (John 14:2, Greek) among those of us who will be Church ("my Father's House").
4. DUE DILIGENCE Effect, Heb11:1,6,40: this Ranking is determined by how we "abide" in Him, which means living in His Thinking (His 'house of thoughts', His Word).
5. EXCELLENCY of the Knowledge Effect, Eph 3:15-19, 4:13: abiding in Him therefore determines how and where in Heaven we will have our abiding future (main theme of Eph3:15-19, Philippians 3, John 14-17, 1Jn). So the Excellency of the Knowledge He puts in you which you then LIVE ON, leads to your being called "Excellency" -- a king, forever.
6. FLUNK, the spiritual grade of Christianity thus far, Eph4:14, 2Tim2:26-3:7, Phili3:18-19: there are literally billions of low-ranking people in heaven, because the Rapture still hasn't happened. So all those vaunted holy people our religions tout were/are almost entirely, spiritual morons. This, their writings tragically prove; cruise the material on the internet or television, see for yourself. History and almost any documentary on Bible also proves how much we hypocritical Christians hate God by all our foolish, childish ideas and patent ignorance of Bible -- all the while fancying ourselves erudite and holy, of course!
7. The GAME, Our Spiritual Olympics Marathon Race Is On, Heb12:1-2, 2Tim4:7-8, 1Cor9:24-27: To Build The Progenitors, The Pleroma Kings for the King Over Kings. "King of Kings" is not the correct translation. It's a Greek lexeme, so should be translated "King Over Kings".

So the numbers depend obviously on WHAT GOD DOES, not at all on what man does. So count on it, if you're not in God's System, you're not gonna be in the progenitor class. But you can change your mind, and get in God's System. Most Christians haven't, and won't. That's why history continues, as we saw in Part IVa.

Let's revisit the Divine Formula for making the economy (oikonomia) and body-house (oikodome) for Church. At the beginning of this "Balance-in-Numbers Makes Church Ripe for Rapture" section, was a white table like the one below. Now that you've some sense of the Diamond Doctrine Bucks God wants to deposit in you; now that you see each such Buck has Seven Divinely-Rich Facets, let's ponder God's Building Formula again:

Now let's try to calculate these numbers. First, the overall size of Church is much bigger than believers expect. Ever since Adam, anyone in history who died before being old enough mentally to reject the Gospel went straight to heaven, 2Sam12:23 and all the "blot out" verses. Every human born is registered in the Book of Life. You ONLY get blotted out because you REJECTED the Gospel all your life. Well, lots of babies didn't reject the Gospel, they couldn't even understand it to reject it. Infant mortality is and remains high, throughout history. Then there's the number of people with diseases or malnutrition which so hamper mental function, they couldn't understand the Gospel. Lots of reasons why lots of people died without being able to reject the Gospel. So they went to heaven. [A child comes to recognize the idea of an Omnipresent God sometime. If he consistently rejects that idea he might not go to heaven, and it wouldn't matter if he got the Gospel, for the Gospel is based on God being of a certain character which is already rejected. Only God has all the facts. I know I was aware of God in this manner when I was maybe four or five years old, as were most of my generation. So it can happen that young.]

That means heaven's human population is in the tens of billions. Since from any ONE generation Church can complete, its size is a dynamic: on earth now, there are mainly three generations at about two billion each. (More about that valuation follows later in this section.) Conversely, how many too-young died since the Crucifixion? That number alone easily exceeds two billion. So we know that while any one generation CAN complete Church, a much larger "Body" exists.

So what's not yet enough, is the number of RULERS. So what we've not done since 30AD, is grow up spiritually. Hence Christianity's had a Macro Flunk Effect, our failing grade mentioned above. We piously claim thousands of spiritual giants among us from past and present in far larger proportions than needed to complete Church. So they aren't spiritual giants, after all. Numbers can't lie, they don't have political agendas, and the meaning of the numbers is clear: we are STILL here, so we've a very sorry report card, even among those whom we consider 'spiritual'. They are not. We should thus revisit our notions of what constitutes spirituality, since obviously our notions are NOT God's. You'll see just how stridently the math proves this, a bit later on in this section.

Accordingly, although Church can complete in any generation, there is a backup contingency criterion -- enough BALANCE between the underlying population, and the rulers. Well, duh -- the rulers are always very few. Many body parts, but only one brain. So notice: the ideal is actually the balance between, not the aggregate number itself. A dynamic -- so again, the Rapture cannot be predicted. As a result, we'll see how any ONE of us growing up spiritually, makes an enormous impact on history.. forever. (My pastor has taught this fact for decades, but until writing up this page I didn't understand the numbers. Maybe it will help you too. Scary stuff!)

Since Christians have hated God so much that history goes on for 2000 years post-Cross, you know immediately that the ruler component is incomplete, but the Body itself is rather large. The hypocrisy and puerility of mainstream and historical Christianity added to the Number of Body, but not to the Brain. In the Sixth Facet and Part IVc, we see something of this need for future Pleroma Kings to be grown bigger than past ones, to make up for the 'forfeiture' in the Divine Benefit Plan for Church (introduced in Part IVa) -- owing to past and especially current, norm of Christian apostacy. So the Brain must get progressively larger, to accommodate the larger Body which has grown since 30AD.

It should thus be easy to understand the primordial rule that God's Own Laws require "1" to start, and "3" to stabilize/perpetuate: First Adam, "1". Last Adam, "1". Noah, "1". Abraham, "1". Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, "3". Moses, "1". Moses, Caleb, Joshua, "3". Four-generation curse depends on the 3rd generation's apostacy being repeated in the 4th. That curse's span is routinely displayed in the Bible (usually implicitly): it's often 120 years, viz., the warning period of the Flood, and Assyria's 'lifetime' after Jonah went there, the sum of the voting periods in God's Accounting System for Time. So, too, in almost any "famous" family line, and in many periods of history, the same 120-year span displays a marked recurrence. [Part II's (tiny-font) coverage of this topic listed some secular books you can read to see it yourself. Most remarkable, though, is A Short History of the Arab Peoples written by an English Arabophile, Sir John Glubb. His conclusions explicitly note what he considers odd: how Arab Islam and its rulers went through four-generation cycles. Of course, we know it's God's Quarantine Law to protect humanity from four bad generations in a family, so not "odd" at all.]

Again, it only took one man of faith, Noah, to save the human race. It only took one man of faith, Abram, to justify the coming of Messiah and thus save the human race. It only took one man, Moses, to justify preserving Israel (God offered to wipe out all Israel and begin over with Moses, Numbers 14:12 and Deut 9:14). Moses only needed 70 leaders, to dispense justice in a nation of at least six million people. We'll cover the proportions in more detail later in this section; but for the moment, notice the proportions are really very small: 1 per six million is Moses (that's the proportion my pastor uses when trying to estimate the number of Pleroma preserving the US -- more on that follows later). So it becomes a fluid dynamic, if there are many being added to the Body, but very few growing up in the Head. Sadly, that also means we Church are 99.999% apostate, in any generation: 1:6,000,000 is WAY less than .0001%. Whatever is popular in Christianity, comes from Satan. Can't be another answer, mathematically. Popular doctrines, practices, etc. are all skewed, even if 'Biblical' in some vague way -- and it will always BE vague, fuzzy, emotional, empty, anthropocentrically-herded, if popular -- skewed, into something evil. Wolves in sheep's clothing. Makes you want to throw dust on your head and wear sackcloth, mourning.

• Christianity is founded upon what the world would reasonably consider an immoral act: a Father sacrificing a Son. After all, wasn't it the evil Chronos, who ate all his kids?
• Abraham is the poster boy for that, and he went against his own God-given morality to do it.

  Think about that. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all base their faiths on this would-be murderer. In Judaism and Islam, you don't get an answer why, yet this Abraham is a good guy for sacrificing? Well, lots of other fathers sacrificed to Molech or Kali (etc.), and they really did kill their sons. What's the difference? Sure doesn't seem like Abraham is any better. See the skewing? The REASON WHY is not addressed. So now, it's evil. So now, both the Jews and the Moslems PRIDE themselves on being descendants or adherents of the allegedly-same faith that Abraham had. Abraham, a would-be murderer. And these who pride themselves on him, don't 'get it' about Abraham, at all.

  Christians don't get the point of Abraham either, just as blind as their unbeliever counterparts in Judaism and Islam. But at least the BIBLE explains what we stupid believers cannot: God is Holy, So No Works Can Pay For Sin. So He Took On Humanity, of which Abraham was to be the progenitor. So Abraham needed to see that he himself loved God in the same way as God loved him, by (in the future) saving him at such an unconscionable price. God didn't need it, Abraham and Isaac needed that test. Isaac was between age 20-40 by the way: Hebrew na'ar means a marriageable youth, Gen22:5. So Isaac, like Christ he represents, was WILLING. That's why it's NOT evil, Rom5:8. So again, only the Bible tells you the full story. So Misreading or Masking Bible is Satan&Co.'s Number One Priority. Once you know Isaac was willing and Abraham was willing, there is no way you can mistake the spiritual life for works; no way you can miss the meaning of Christ. So, of course you don't know Isaac's age in Christendom so you have all those dippy cartoons and documentaries depicting him as a child being sacrificed -- all because no one cares to look up the Hebrew, lol. So both Abraham and God look like loonies.

  For the sacrifice, is about LOVE. Unpriced Love. We humans just can't take that message, unless we sugar it up with self-praise, oh what a martyr I am. Abraham wasn't thinking like that. God doesn't think like that. True love doesn't need to praise itself over what it pays. Only hatred obsesses over what it pays, as we saw in the Fifth Facet. True love belittles what it pays. Hatred magnifies what it pays. True Love is grateful for the smallest thing. Hatred is never grateful, always concludes self cheated. God is praising Abraham, but Abraham isn't praising himself; God gives him this 'sacrifice' to prove to Abraham that he really loves God. To Isaac, too. Because, True Love always belittles itself, always concluding it doesn't love enough. Hatred, by contrast, always overvalues what it 'gives'. See, we really don't get it about Abraham, be we Jews, Moslems, or Christians: we're just like Ananias and Sapphira, in Acts 5. Proof positive: when something goes wrong in the life, people complain Why did God let this happen, obviously concluding that it is unjust, given how 'good' they are. That's a hatred motive. Tit-for-tat is always based on hatred.

• How much more then, Our Father in Heaven goes against His Own 'Morality', as it were, to sacrifice His monogenes, aka Uniquely-Born Son, John 3:16? Without Money and Without Price, Isa55:1, Romans 8:32!
• To the world, this Son-Sacrifice is unconscionable. To Satan, especially.
• For if God will sacrifice His Own Son so horribly, then the relationship with lesser humans can't be all that good.
• So the world concludes, that's not "god".
• Worse, no matter were you an axe-murderer, if you simply believe in Christ you get to live in heaven forever. How moral is that?
• So very few believers will grow up spiritually, since they won't investigate Bible in depth to learn God's answers to these troublesome, quite politically-incorrect, facts.
• The price is too high, and the answers seem to make no sense.
• So the average believer will PRIDE himself on believing anyway, oh how good I am to believe something that makes no sense. Thus he blasphemes God, since he won't learn God's Answers. Thus when disaster hits, he complains Why did God let this happen to me? for he concludes himself good; at least, good enough not to deserve what hits him.
• So instead of learning God's Answers, believers make up their OWN answers and call them 'Biblical'.
• For example, they falsify the Gospel into something YOU add to simple faith in Christ (i.e., the make-Christ-Lord crowd, the baptism-required crowd, etc. ad nauseum).
• Or, they claim you can lose your salvation, must go to some purgatory place post-death, etc., ad stupidez.
• Hence everyone pants to turn Bible's supernatural actions or events that God flat SAYS are miracles into mere natural phenomena, colorfully told.
• For oh! God just can't be God if He acts like God, Who is Supernatural by His OWN Nature!
• They all have to smugly explain away what seems wrong, shrink God's Reasons and Actions down to puny humanly-acceptable size, to justify believing -- rather than, learn the Bigger Bible Why It is Right. Oh well. Now you know why Christians remain spiritual babies, and why the Rapture hasn't happened til yet.
• Conversely, it really is the hardest thing to do, to believe in Christ. Goes against everything in one's nature. It's deliberately IMPOSSIBLE, to grow up spiritually. Only God can do that TO you. So here you are, the weak link in the chain, with only your volition -- nothing else about you counts for squat, and your volition has no merit, either -- and all this HUMONGOUS ROLE devolves on YOU? It's too much to bear! But then, that parallels what Our Lord's Humanity, WENT THROUGH! God is nothing, if not impossible...

Bear in mind as you read what follows, that Ephesians 1 says EACH of us has a crown, so it is ours to LOSE (see also the "lose your crown" verse somewhere in Rev). My pastor harped on that fact for seven years of daily Bible classes when exegeting Ephesians verse-by-verse. He didn't want us to forget it, constantly reminding us that there is an "eternal memorial to lost opportunity" per person which each one losing his 'crown' can visit in heaven, because the benefits are "escrowed". A king need not have a kingdom to be a King. Christ had no Kingdom at His Resurrection. So had we all become kings, we'd have the standards, wealth, and enjoyment of a king, without the BURDEN of people to rule. So the fact that there are people to rule in eternity means most people rejected the spiritual life, and forfeited their crowns. Thus the intended wealth had to be re-routed, the Divine Benefit Plan idea broached in Part IVa (elaborated on in Part IVc), which is taken from both my pastor's exegesis of Ephesians, and directly from the wa-et-atsumim ("great ones") clause in Isa53:12. (See the JPS Tanach for the first clause, and Webster's Bible for the second; all English Bibles blasphemously mistranslate that verse, making it look like Christ only gets a part of the total, though the Hebrew is unmistakeable that He gets it ALL, and HE does the re-apportioning, laken ahalleq LO [to Him!] b'rabbim, w'-et atsumim [to the great ones, i.e., Pleroma] YEhalleq [HE assigns] shalal [the people-booty and other spoil].) Thus more training is needed to be a king, because frankly, it's a royal pain to rule people, even if they are perfect. Ruling is above all, PARENTAL: and you'll gladly kill yourself doing it, especially if the ruled are perfect. Love would drive you. Much more true, in the eternal state.

So, it becomes a race against time: will enough Pleroma be developed? And, what does this enough-Pleroma-in-any-generation criterion tell us, about RATIOS to achieve perfection-in-number? Bible and history help us here. We have some ratios to use as guidelines. None of them will be exactly correct, but they will help us get a sense of proportion. A sampling of ratios follows, with a hypothetical conclusion. You might prefer to develop your own ratios from other Bible data, etc.

The appropriate ratioing depends on how you define the scope of "Pleroma": would it just be top-tier rulers, the kings? That seems most Biblical, given verses like 2Tim4:7-8, Rev1:6, 5:10, 1Cor4:8 (sarcasm); before Church, you have the Genesis 5 roster, David, Moses -- very few people. But wouldn't it make sense also to define "Pleroma" as a designation for an entire ruling CLASS, analogous to a whole governing body? My pastor has taken both positions, from what I can tell. For example, ever since the 1960's, my pastor has speculated that the total number of Church equals the total number of demons, based (inter alia) on 2Cor2:14, since at the end of a triumph there is a one-on-one casting into the Mamertine dungeon. But he also wondered if the total number of Pleroma ends up equalling that number (in the 1997 et seq lessons of 92 Spiritual Dynamics, passim when the topic came up). In the latter assumption, "Pleroma" would have a wider meaning, not just top-tier rulers. Or, many more smaller kingdoms in a hierarchical federation. For there have to be, billions of demons. We know they organize themselves not only by task, but by nation-state in the world (i.e., Gabriel's comment in Daniel 10 on how he was detained). So there are logistical issues, and the deployment on both sides is sometimes too thin. Since the elect angels outnumber the demons 2:1, the demons have to number in the billions. Then again, a good many of them are incarcerated in Tartarus and the Abyss. (Satan is not confined to the earth, as some suppose. That happens mid-Trib, see Rev9 and 12.) So obviously many of the elect angels are on standby, or are doing other things, lest Satan contend that he's outnumbered. Therefore you also know that God gives angels a lot of initiative and executive roles as free agents -- just as He does, us. Freedom is God's Middle Name, so to speak.

That God balances to rejecting populations seems indicated by Deut 32:8, Hosea 1:10, Rom 9:27, Rom11:25. We know He cuts out and grafts in, so that doctrine ties in here. So maybe the goal is also to replace the numbers of demons, since obviously when all the angels were initially created, that number and balance was perfect. So the idea of replacement balancing makes sense. Exactly how it ought to work, well.. that's a guess, at our end. But a certitude, at God's End.

So for our purposes here, we'll use the following ratios to derive a Low-High: Low, the number of TOP-TIER KINGS needed; and High, the number needed for a RULING CLASS. So the valuation at the end of this subsection will hypothecate a Low-High representing KINGS (Low), and RULING CLASS (High). However you hypothecate the value, the number will be unbelievably small: that's the point of this exercise.

• Angelic Ratio, 1: many billions. We have a prehistoric precedence ratio, the 24 seraphim in Revelation 4. I know other pastors teach those 'elders' as if human, but if you scrutinize the passage you'll see they are angels, not humans. [In my Revelation class notes for 8/13/82, my pastor exegeted Revelation 4:4 and explained why they were angels, not humans -- basically, the scene is the Bema, so our crowns haven't yet been awarded; but these had already received their thrones prehistorically. I don't know the equivalent Revelation lesson number, but if you have his Revelation series, you can locate the lesson # by that date and verse.] Problem is, we don't know how many elect angels there are. We do know that 1/3rd among the angelic population -- created all at once -- defected to side with Satan, before man was even created. The elect angels alone would have to number in the billions, since each of us has a guardian angel, and so did every other believer in history. We die and they don't, so obviously an angel has an assignment which lasts for all or some of a believer's lifetime, but then has charge over the next human, and so on. Still, the earth can sustain at any one time, a population of 10 billion or more; and that's only one planet. Not all the angelic population is deployed to protect believers. They run the weather and maybe (guessing) they are given roles in handling the physics of the universe, as well. Their bodies are made out of light, so that kind of 'job' (they learn from it, just like we learn from ours) makes sense. They would have other jobs as well: God gives us stuff to do so we can express our relationship with Him, and enjoy. So angels have a wide variety of jobs, their own kingdoms and societies. So the proportion of angels to the proportion of a mere 24 rulers seems to be quite high. God is efficient, huh. Not taxing!
  
  
• Bureaucratic Ratio, .02%. In any society, and particularly in government, how many top-tier people are really needed? The US requires let's say 1,000 heads in the Federal government (Congressmen, Senators, Judiciary, President, government agency heads); and our nation is excessively bureaucratic! So "1,000" is really too high a number. Since each of our United States is large enough to be a country of its own, let's multiply the "1,000" by 50. So, then: 50,000, divided by 280 million people (according to the Year 2000 Census). That's a tiny percentage, .0001785=.02%, even allowing for excessive bureaucracy!

• Construction Ratio, 1:1 billion (maybe), the Genesis 5 roster. Adam, one. Adam had many sons, yet Genesis 5 lists only one line. Each one of those people was responsible for the entire planet continuing for that generation. My pastor stressed this when he exegeted all those begats, showing us how important they are, why they shouldn't be skipped over (the folks' names tell you oodles of information). Ergo each generation, one person is the cause for that generation's continuance. Wow. Dunno what the population of the world was then, but it had to number at least one billion by Noah's birth circa 3050BC, given the huge amount of archeological evidence we have. Archeologists or anthropologists routinely dismiss the large population numbers in ancient records, claiming that the land can't sustain that many people. Never mind, it took well over 100,000 workers to build any one of the many huge buildings of ancient times (including transport and agricultural support, not just the architectural labor). You see a life-is-cheap sense of accounting in ancient writings, right alongside all the virtues extolled over saving a life. That bespeaks a large population. Never mind, current-day population density in even Pakistan, India, or China proves 'scholar' assumptions about land support, wrong. It's amazing how little food people can live on. It's amazing how they are willing to live right on top of each other. If people don't have enough to eat, they have more babies: because the life expectancy is so short, the body produces more children. So don't count on past populations being routinely small, except for a few generations after the Flood (which you can't size, because most buildings would survive the Flood). [If everyone drowned, the sea would have dissolved their bodies or the fish would have eaten them all during that year. So there would be few human relics, not enough to 'prove' the Flood.]

• Deliverer Ratio, 1:6 million. My pastor has used this one to gauge Pleroma since his 1996 classes. It's based on Moses, compared to Israel. When he realized the US should have been destroyed due to our apostacy back in the 1990's, he began searching for why we were still here. Thus he learned of the role of the "Jeshurun" in the OT, and from that discovery, came what I'm calling the Deliverer Ratio. My pastor discovered "Pleroma" next, at the end of 1996; so from that point forward he extensively covered the meaning of both terms, and came to equate the ratio for Pleroma to that of Jeshurun, using Moses as the poster boy for the ratio. In 1999 he kept on trying to speculate how many Pleroma it took to justify the continued existence of the United States, varying the count from as low as 25, to as high as 300 -- but bear in mind that "Pleroma" as a spiritual stage, is not the end number by death. It's very hard to finish the course, spiritually. The thinking required is extremely intense. So failure during Evidence Testing would be the norm. It's like a spiritual Olympics. So the "Pleroma" population currently living, won't all end up being Pleroma kings.

  Concerning the Exodus population, the "six million" is a scholarly consensus you'll see used a lot by pastors and on the internet; my pastor used it, too. Bible doesn't say the size exactly, but you can estimate that the Exodus generation which left with Moses in 1440BC, numbered approximately six million (based on two million adults). That's a ratio of one-sixmillionth! By the time Israel entered the Land, only three of the initial adult males who'd left Egypt remained alive: Moses, Caleb, Joshua. Moses died just before they entered the Land in 1400BC, so then only two people, so 1:3 million became the ratio. Ergo to use the US government bureaucracy fraction of .02% greatly overstates the ratio.

  So we see that the "multiplier effect" during a period of extreme negative volition, often boils down to just one person being 'enough' to justify the continuance of History. How much more true, Now that the Lord is Seated? With a Bride in training? That's the point to focus on, here: the Greatly Increased "Multiplier Effect" Of Blessing-By-Association, Due To His Session, through His Bride.

  This Deliverer ratio is really bigger than it looks. For Israel was to be a whole NATION justifying the continuation of the world. So you'd really have 1:1 Billion, just like the Construction Ratio, since Moses was one, and you can probably presume 1 billion as the world's population (never mind its short lifespan due to infant and other early mortality). Or, you can take six million to one billion, .006, which is .6%, but that seems high.

• So Eternal Church Ratio is maybe 1:60 million, or 1:600 million? Bible says any generation can be the Rapture generation, post-Cross, i.e., in Acts 1. In 30AD just before the Ascension, the disciples asked Christ if He would come back then, so it was possible He could, or they'd not have asked. We saw in Part IVa that each NT generation expected the Rapture. So the population then would have been enough. Ok, how many Christians do you think were in Paul's generation? Historical and Biblical evidence tell us faith in Christ spread like wildfire. There were at least 100,000 in the Jerusalem church alone (Acts 21). So worldwide, hmmm.. let's be conservative and say one million. The actual number had to be far bigger than that, for Nero to torch Rome and blame it on the Christians. Nero was crazy, but not that crazy. Rulers don't engage in mass persecution and destruction unless the number of the 'adversary' is deemed so large, it constitutes a threat to established order. Think of how Hitler treated the Jews; that was an economic and power-grabbing tactic, not merely hatred. Every despotic ruler in history practices targeted intimidation: Stalyin and Mao were even more famous for it. There is a method to such madness. The goal is to foster division, in order to conquer. Using measured intimidation not only targets those whose wealth etc. you want to capture, but quells the populace from going against you. Same was true in Nero's day. That means Christianity was popular. It had to be put down.

  Most believers don't execute the spiritual life, historically. Only a very small percentage do that. So, out of let's say only a million believers in Nero's (Paul's) day, wouldn't the requisite number of top-tier believers be very few: using the US Bureaucracy Ratio, there would be only 179 top-tier, per million? And if that small a number had been reached in Paul's day, the "many" would have been raptured up! But were not! Yikes, that doesn't speak well of the history of Christianity! For the Bureaucracy Ratio is the largest of the list here. So if the ratio is truly more divergent (lower) -- and the requisite proportion SHOULD be even LESS than needed for Moses to carry Israel, due to the Session -- then how vast a loss! Progeny, but no or very very few, Pleroma progenitors!

  While extra-Biblical records and some references in the Bible seem to indicate that faith in Christ spread like wildfire in the generation after Our Lord's Crucifixion, as we saw in Part IVa (from the huge reaction worldwide to Christianity, reflected in literature and religion-changes globally) in the first century AD; while it's obvious, from the strategic, geographic position of Israel that such a fast-Gospel-spread would be logistically probable; still, we can tell by the same sources that most believers were truly weird. Rev. 1-3, 1 and 2 Thess., 1 and 2 Cor., and especially the Book of Acts, all reveal really bizarre questions and concerns among these folks. Well, every book in the NT does.

  Also, in extra-Biblical sources, much of Christendom's goofy history is all too apparent. The many fake Gospels with their slapstick themes, goofy mysticism and lurid claims; the widespread aping of the wacko Christians seeped into non-Christian faiths, including those funky stories' themes. Christians today still act just as goofy, and if you want to know what "crazy" means, just talk to them. Then you have historians like Gibbon, Mommsen, Cary to give you a sense of how nutso we Christians were, right up through the 19th century and beyond. Earlier historians like Josephus, Suetonius and others of the time explain how Christians ("The Way") often made trouble for Rome. In short, we see that believers largely didn't catch on to the meaning of Scripture's message. So, however big or small the "mass" of (say) Paul's generation, most were pretty much like their Exodus-generation counterparts: wacko. So the "Pleroma" of Paul's day were very few. Which makes a great deal of sense, for look: back in Part II, we noticed that for a long time, the whole world was indirectly dependent on the high faith of ONE person in that world's generation: Noah. Abraham. Moses. David. Christ.

  Consider: how many believers in history there have been? How many "rulers" are required to effectively rule the "many", without choking the ruled with oodles of laws? Very Few to complete their spiritual development in 1Jn's Script (Part I); easily enough in any human generation. Just like God says through Paul, at the end of Paul's prayer, in Eph3:21. [When Paul writes the doxology of v.20 and 21, he seems to know that it will be answered, and that's why he writes as he does. Thought just occurred to me while typing, considering the suddenness of the doxology. Maybe I'm wrong; the Holy Spirit will fix me later, if so.]

  Think how the numbers need to work, to get a better sense of proportion and.. well, of how apostate we've been. This is Perfect Government, not like the human micromanaged version we always see in our sordid history (Asimov was right, about Trantor). Ok, let's think this out: pretend the total Church population ended up being the size of the United States in the Year 2000, 280 million; then, Church would require between 50-50,000 rulers. "50", you get by using the Moses ratio (1:6 million), which we know must be too low, because we are post-Session. So maybe use a multiplier like in Luke 8, of 30-100.

  If we say a generation is 30 years, there have been 67 generations since 0AD, roughly; some portion of the 63-67th generations are on the planet right now in 2007. Just to pick a number: using only the Moses ratio, assuming Church at a per-generation size of 300 million (remember all who die too young are automatically saved): 67*50=3,350.

  If we apply Luke 8 the 3,350 would be divided by factors of between 30 and 100. (Parallels: Mark 4, Matt13, the talents parable, precedence is Gen26:12.) Surely the higher spiritual life He legated to us increases the leverage "multiplier effect" value beyond that of Moses. Whether it's really by the scale of the Luke 8 factors I don't know, but since the Lord used those factors, it's reasonable to use them here. So let's play with that:

So let's next think about the number of generations since Adam. According to the Bible, the year 2007 is year 6113 since Adam's fall. GeneYrs.xls is a timeline from Adam through 2007 used to show how God grants time based on believer spiritual growth, but you can use it here to get the 6113 date. That works out to 204 generations, assuming an average of 30 years each. So applying the above assumptions,

We're really missing the boat on the value God intends to make from us, huh. Even if only 60 million, that's the size of FRANCE! It is an issue how big a country is ENJOYABLE to rule, so I tend to favor the 60-million ratio. Too big a country would make rulership too remote? Of course, the kings are stacked in a federation, since Christ is Head. So Paul is maybe ruler over several billion at least, with lesser kings below him.

Okay, what about the time it takes to grow up to Pleroma and finish the course? Does that affect the number of Pleroma? Well, that's impossible to estimate too, though we know Paul got there over something like maybe 38 years (30AD-68AD, my pastor spent some time analyzing that issue in his 1999 classes). The Lord is also atypical (The Unique One), and it took Him 33 years. Of course, the Lord is Way Bigger Pleroma than even Paul; and Paul, is way bigger Pleroma than what would be 'typical'. Still, the 30-year-build-savior number in the OT, might be a guideline. Ok: let's say 30-50 years (it can be any number, now). Well, that doesn't increase the progenitor number, because the Pleroma person would be growing up during a generation's 'time'. Okay, that's enough number crunching to "get the drift" of how the proportions, play.

Now let's factor in the eternal future. The the number of "progenitors" (Pleroma) Father wants

• is not only based upon the population size of Church;
• it's also based on the number of humans who live during the Tribulation, who only derive blessing from God through whatever post-mortem Blessing Pleroma of Church are awarded;
• it's also based upon the population size of all the (Gentile) Millennial nations Church will rule as Wife for Christ; and
• also based on the population size of all humanity in eternity, since Christ rules all humanity through Church in the Eternal State (forever), as King of Kings.

We don't know how long a future that represents.

Therefore, the Pleroma number needed is maybe somewhere between 1000 (Low, KINGS) and 10,000 (High, RULING CLASS) to cover all eternity. That valuation adjusts lastly for a gut sense of the efficiency in the eternal state, evidenced by the Angelic Ratio: at some size the governing body itself is too large, unwieldy. We'd have perfect knowledge then, but it would be truly annoying to have 10,000 beings meeting in a conference; the personalness gets lost? You might come up with some other adjustment. But whatever the value, notice how it must be extremely small, compared to the likely overall population in eternity. That Church hasn't been completed yet, despite the very wide spread of Christianity in history, confirms how we Christians hate God. Which of course, history all too well corroborates. So much for our protestations of how we love Jesus. The numbers prove we don't.

However you craft the ratios, it's obvious that balance between the NUMBERS of these two groups is a perfection criterion. Son wants Father to get the Maximum Amount Of Reflection of Son's thinking in Son's kingdom/economy. That's what we live for. And frankly, in heaven the only Topic of Interest is Him, so no one will care who's superior or inferior (see how the angel censures John in Rev19:10). So obviously, if the top-tier are too many, the bottom tier is too taxed, regulated. Conversely, if the top-tier is too few, the many have no cohesion, and the Royal Thinking Standards' circulation will be too weak. In short, the top needs to be few, so that the many can have more; but not so the many are choked. That has always been the case, even down here on planet Earth; so how much more true, in a perfect life?

In our modern arrogant age, we fool ourselves that we aren't children. Yet anyone who owns anything soon learns that governance is a real pistol. Governing the self, governing others, governing even a PTA committee in grammar school! There are endless pettinesses which people get into, all of them headless, none of them seeing the big picture. Someone makes a stink about what color the invitation ought to be, for a wedding -- excuse me, is that so important, when people are dying in Iraq? Or, someone makes a stink over how some priest treated them, 30 years prior -- yeah, and what happened in the past 30 years, that the person never got over it? You can only blame someone else for so long. Others crusade on some asinine issue, i.e., the 'proposals' in corporate annual reports, like PETA's demand one play music for chickens before killing them. So it's clear that leadership must be Well Trained, Strong, and Inspiring. So that all us headless chickens can breathe, rather than spouting up nonsense all the time.

So, Church needs certain individuals to be leaders. Aka, archegoi, rulers. Not too many, not too few. Thus all can be happy, free. No chaos; and no tyranny, either. As my pastor says so often, "Freedom without authority, is anarchy; authority without freedom, is tyranny." So a perfect balance between authority and "masses", makes for a perfect society. Especially, in the eternal state. So think of Church as this growing mixture of crops (Biblical metaphor), of which some types are ripening faster than others. When enough ripens to make the whole commercially-viable, it doesn't matter that some are over-ripe, or even unripe (see the parable of the fig tree in Greek and Jeremiah's talk about figs in Jer25 or thereabouts). That's when the Rapture, will happen.

God didn't have to make us this low. God can make us anything. So clearly, whatever we are or become, is designed for the sake of enjoying RELATIONSHIP. When you have all money and power, you don't just sit around. You do stuff. You still like the small activities, the simple things -- in fact, you appreciate them more, the greater the money and power you have. So being God or grunt, you still do something with what you are. God loves all, great and small.

So the eternal state is a BUSY life. So much to enjoy. Work, yes. Work is its own kind of pleasure. Play, yes. Play is its own kind of pleasure. Hierarchy, yes. That's a relating, too: and there, it's really important that all us believers FIT together into enjoyable relationships and compatibilities. Like stones in a building.

So watch how rapport is affected. Imagine a person whose interests are in things like what she ate for dinner, the scarf she is knitting, what nice compliment she received from someone. So too, is her thinking; so too, is her conversation. Now, match her to another gal whose interests are in the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, whether light really travels, and the Attributes of God. Will these two be comfortable together? Of course not! How much rapport, then, will they have if they are stuck together forever? Very little. By contrast, if those around the one who likes knitting are like her; and those around the one who likes Gibbon, are like her, and others are between them, each one a little more 'hybrid', then the one liking dinner and the one liking koine Greek, can have some kind of Relationship. For, the intermediaries, mediate the differences. Just by breathing. Connectedness, means flow. Here, of Rapport.
You and I likely aren't on best-buddy terms with the President/Prime Minister of a country. We hear about the person from others. So our 'rapport' with that person, is distant. There is an enjoyment in that DISTANCE. Similarly, if we were best-buddies with such an individual, the rapport would (ideally) be greater -- but it would not be the same kind of rapport, as if we were distant. Being best buddies, we'd read the news and realize how wrong it is, compared to the intimate facts we know. So we would not enjoy learning about the person via those others. See? it matters how close you are, and that depends on your interests and contacts and desires. Enjoyment is not some dry product of what you own, or even who you know or how important you are: it is the product of your inner compatibility. So, variety means everyone can associate with whomever they are most alike.

People like people because we are all different. Of course, we also have problems with each other due to that same fact: our differences. For, one has money, another lacks it. One has health, another lacks it. One has beauty, or intelligence, and someone else..doesn't. So what's best about our numbers, our variety, is also what's bad about it: differences make us uncomfortable, for our interests are a result of our tastes and abilities.

Obviously this discomfort doesn't exist in perfection. Yet variety must, for God is Infinite; moreover, absent variety, "perfection" is deadly boring. Thus, one aspect of variety must be the fact that we are all of unequal rank. It's neither fair nor good to force the person who's more interested in dinner than in the organization and function of a polity, to rule. Yet today, inequality is frequently condemned, as if everyone should have the same position, in order to be "happy"; therefore, if "A" has that position but "B" does not, then "B" is supposed to be unhappy due to his lower status.

We saw in Part III that we are Royal Family of God in training to become Fit Bride for Our Royal Lord. That, if we make it to Pleroma, we too shall be royally-ruling. This of course means that most folks won't be ruling: lol, the 'dinner' is more attractive! Yet, think: it's really hard to train for and function in a ruler capacity. We saw that in Part III. So, think: those who didn't opt for that, would they be happy being forced to rule? Unprepared, rulership is an intolerable burden, not enjoyment. For all the power the ruler has, he himself is owned by his title: he has no life of his own. Even the ruler's "goodies" are subject to rules-of-use. So, then: is it really so bad for "B" to be lower? Maybe what constitutes "happiness" is more a question of being fitted to your training and interests, rather than the supposed "status" of your official job!?!

So, in a perfect kingdom, there would be variety from Top to Bottom, and everyone in between, varies. So those who are most like another group, would tend to have the most rapport with that group. Those who are very different in their societal "level" wouldn't be comfortable within that group. What the heck is wrong with that? Nothing: so long as people have the capacity to enjoy the differences. Enjoyment, then, is "close" where people have similarities, and "distant", where dissimilarities. See? It's not a question of status, but of commonality. In a word, Rapport.

First Illustration: Say you win the lottery tomorrow, with the result that you immediately receive 10 million dollars. Sounds good, right? Think again. Immediate relatives and friends suddenly treat you differently. The money interferes. For, one relative suddenly becomes grasping, and another, cold; a third tries to 'help' you manage the money, whereas a fourth is constantly touting some cause which needs your 'help'. A fifth begins to find fault with everything you do, and a sixth, becomes fawning. The seventh, well -- he doesn't know what to do. In all cases, you find that your money is like some scarlet letter on your chest, and it goes before you in everything. Suddenly "you" no longer exist. Only your money exists -- in the eyes of those around you. Fun, eh? So, what do you do? Well, you must hire "intermediaries" -- those who will deal with the long-lost relatives and other graspers, those who will interact with the many suppliers who have "just the thing" for you to buy. You become isolated, but at least you aren't pestered.

Those suddenly 'below' you of course become isolated from you as well. But you can count on this: they talk about you a lot, now. They think of you with your money and fantasize some wonderful life you have. They are enjoying something vicariously -- your having the money. If you didn't get it, they couldn't have this kind of enjoyment, for they obviously can't handle the money themselves (if they could, the relationship with you would not be changed due to the sudden money). By the same token, you yourself have more relationships than you'd have absent the money, and through those intermediaries you can actually come to enjoy having the money (instead of being isolated and burdened by it).

Second Illustration: Moses talked with the Lord directly, but the Exodus generation repeatedly reacted with fear every time His Presence was anywhere near them. In a word, the Lord was too "big" for them to know directly. They needed a mediative contact, Moses. Moses, because he had so much Bible Doctrine (as it was then revealed) deposited in his soul, was able to be closer to the Lord than they were able to be. Bible Doctrine gave Moses something in common with the Lord: the Lord's Own Thinking. So, it wasn't a fear or a burden to him, but a joy. Yet, because Moses had the contact, the people could get more out of their distant relationship to the Lord than they could have had if there were no Moses. If you extrapolate the foregoing, you can see how a variety of folks all up and down a spectrum of differences makes for a harmonious relationship amongst all differences: the folks in-between, as it were, have more-and-more in common with the other groups, yet also a commonality with "us".

So, we can't know exactly how large the total kingdom will be, to have the perfect VARIETY in it; so, we don't know how many "top-tier" and "masses" there need to be for the balance-in-numbers-perfection to occur. Thus, the Rapture can't have a warning event preceding its own occurrence. For, its only "trigger" is both volitional and invisible: the completion of the Bride. Your volition is YOURS. Your decisions are YOURS. Only GOD, moreover, can know what "number" constitutes completion: but His Knowing that doesn't make it happen. Instead, our volition makes it happen: believers, not God, by Divine Decree: how will we "finish the course"? 'Same question as applied to His Incarnation. For, He's our "Author" (Heb12:2), Greek word "Archegos", and we are in training to become "Archegoi".

Christ is God-Man, and He too is Sovereign. Having been Seated, as Hebrew 1 notes, Everything now goes through the Son. Through His Human Sovereignty, as well as His Divine Sovereignty. The Church is designed by the Father (per Eph1) as a Gift to the Son: a Bride, to the Bridegroom, and the Bridegroom is a Bridegroom because He, in His Humanity, defeated Satan (cf Heb2, 1Jn3, etc). Therefore, the Rapture is a Decree, a Ruling the Son wants, first. However, what are the terms of that Ruling? Well, this Son wants a FIT Bride, and the Father wants to make that Bride Fit for His Son, which is why we get the inheritance in Him that we do (John 8,14,17, Eph1,3,Heb7-10,12,1Cor2-4, 2Cor5, Rom6-13, Col1, all "riches" passages, etc).

This Bridegroom became a Bridegroom of His Own Free Will. He freely relied on the Spirit's Power to spiritually-develop and sustain Him -- all the way through the Cross. So, this Bridegroom is wholly-freely-determined. "God's Action", the Power provided by the Holy Spirit, was only provided to the extent the Son's Human Free Will wanted it. 'Which the Son Totally Wanted. 'Even through the Cross.

This God's-Free-Action, matched to Son's-Humanity-Free-Reception sets the Precedence and the terms of the marriage contract with the Bride. For, the Bride is to have the same spiritual life as Her Bridegroom, in order to become FIT for Him. By HER Choice. As we saw in Part IVa, precedence of the prior Bridal contract which got annulled, ported over. Further, precedence from the Groom Completing His Contract, also ported over. So it can only be a volitional criterion, for Church's 'Rapture'. Because it was ONLY a volitional criterion, for the prior Intended Couple, one of whom refused, and One of Whom Accepted.

TERMS OF OUR MARRIAGE: So, recapping from Part IVa: since HIS Spiritual Life is the Precedence for ours, which Part III explained, and since HIS Spiritual Life was fully a matter of His Freely choosing to receive, so also, the Bride's "fitness" is wholly a matter of the extent to which the Bride Herself likewise chooses to receive the same provision. And since Bride here is who-knows-how-many people, we none of us know when we are 'enough': enough due to numbers, balance, variety, etc. It's a dynamic equation, which no human can even write down, much less, calculate. Sure, God could have predicted what date: but He doesn't, because God Follows Precedence, because He is Righteous. And He never predicted whether Israel would accept Messiah when He came; nor did He predict how Messiah would use His Spiritual life under the Spirit. All He did predict, was that Messiah would be successful. Satan took deep notice of this non-prediction, and worked long and hard to make Israel antagonistic to Messiah, by the time He arrived.

A Bride marries of her own free will. A Bride becomes 'fit' of her own free will. The fact that many others do things to and for her to make her fit doesn't mean that she is denuded of her free will in the matter. In fact, whatever others do to and for her has no effect if her free will is negative. So, it should be easy to understand that all the Father and the Spirit do to us, won't force us to become FIT Bride. We agree, or we do not. If "no", the provision for us doesn't 'attach', but remains in escrow. Or, using the Divine Benefit Plan analogy from Part IVa (which we'll revisit in Part IVc) -- the provision refused, like the talent of the stingy servant, forfeits to those who will become the "great ones" (Isa53:12), and will instead distantly benefit those who had refused.

CAVEAT EMPTOR: Those who believe in Him but don't grow up in God's Script (1Jn's Script in Part I) have, in effect, said they are Only Willing To Have The Form Of Marriage, Without The RAPPORT of Marriage. For, they did not learn the Thinking of their Bridegroom. So, then: they will be in Heaven, for that is the extent of their choice. So, then: they will be officially married to Him but will not have much contact with Him. 'Because, they didn't want to get that contact, because they didn't want to learn God's Script (i.e., "1 John Outlines God's Script" in Part I). The effects of that Script are in escrow for them, as well as the structure and mechanics of the Script's usage itself, per Eph1's "every spiritual blessing" -- since eternity past. So, we see that God's Action was made First. So, all this provision was done to and for the Bride before the Bride even existed. But, during the life down here, part of the Bride has said "no" to all of that provision. So, that part of the Bride -- which is most of the Bride, the "mass" -- will be distant from Him. Forever.

Each of these covenantal changes has been foretold; each change is marked by a warning "sign". Hence, there is no more prophecy to 'tell'. It's all in writing, now. Thus you can match up what God wrote with what happens, to know it's God Who's Talking, not hallucination, not happenstance. Every "sign" is always an Orchestrated Thing, so you know it's not a natural phenomenon you can explain away (no such thing, really); so you know it's not a hallucination or wizardry (since Satan&Co. can do lots of supernatural and hallucinogenic stuff). In short, God Makes Plain He is Behind a thing, by matching the Word to the wonders. If you don't know the Word, you will screw up the wonders, and .. have a very tragic life.

The classic example of how you should use Bible to match up to what's happening is portrayed by the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall. Both exactly illustrate Daniel 9:26-27, Matt24, and Rev11:1's import. It's the most blatant possible Warning to Israel to Stay Away from the Land, that can be done. Yet no one notices. This, we saw in Part IVa, at some length. But instead, we chase after stupid ossuaries, whether we got a real Shroud, a real piece of Noah's Ark, a real piece of the Cross. How sick. So "signs" are never helpful, since man doesn't really care about learning God, he cares about titillation.

Moreover, as noted in Part IVa, you'll find that virtually all of these signs have been DUAL, which means they play TWICE: they have (what theology calls) "near" and "far" fulfillments. "Near" is generally 'micro', local. "Far" is generally, 'macro', large-scale. Further, the "near" fulfillment was in the context of the generation which received the prophet telling them about the 'sign', which is soon thereafter, fulfilled; and the "far" fulfillment, was for a much-larger parallel generation in the future (e.g., parallel in the depth of its apostacy). The far-fulfillment meaning to Isa7 Virgin Birth was a warning sign of the upcoming end to the Age of Israel. Tongues, which initially occurred circa 721BC, (Isa28:10ff, quoted in 1Cor14:21-22 to remind them of the temporary role of "tongues") was in 30AD, the Second Warning Sign for that "far" generation: that the age of the Gentiles would begin.

The "Church" was an unknown, and is not at all prophesied. Because, the LORD had to choose to bear sins for Church. Which He shows He would, in Matt16:18, and John 17. Remember: There Would Be No Church If Israel Hadn't Rejected Messiah. So there was no need to prophesy directly about it, nor would it have been fair to Christ, since HE would have to agree or disagree, to pay for sins of those yet-to-be-born. Which, again, He does, in Matt16:18, John 17 (see Eph5 commentary on that). So note the Voting Precedent: Christ had to VOTE for a Church, for there to BE a Church. If nothing else "clicks" in your head as to why the Rapture is unpredictable, that fact of Him needing to VOTE for it, should turn on a lightbulb.

Note how the prophetic "sign" always indicates changeover because apostacy necessitates it. Ergo the advance warning-event(s). Principle? 'Warning Grace Before Judgement.

Similarly, Leviticus 26, Deut 28, Rev1-3 (and like passages) tell folks how to spot when a nation is about to end due to apostacy. Warnings like these were also forecast by prophets (i.e., to the apostate nations in the Land, 40 years before Israel would enter it). So, normally, God warns of cataclysms in advance. So, the recurring historical trends of nations declining spiritually are likewise preceded by visible, predicted-pattern events. Even today. This fact is so well-known, even Shakespeare made liberal use of it in his plays. Every religion, even, Christian or no, has some like doctrine. Perhaps the most blatant recent example in history is what happened to Germany in the 20th century. It had been very strong for Bible Doctrine; got split, after WWII (akin to the splitting between Israel and Judah, which we know from Scripture was Lev26 and Deut 28's playout). Notice how a client nation drags on for awhile, before going completely out (Israel went completely out in 70AD). SPQR's client-nation history basically ended the same way, splitting and then lamely dragging on for some centuries, until 'moved' to Charlesmagne's reign. Then his kingdom split up into basically what we now call Germany and France (well, and Italy as well). So the death of a nation with enough believers in it, is slow, painful. And all written out so you can see God's running it (i.e, Acts 17:26), blow by blow, in the Book.

1. Enough believers passed the 2-3-4-5 Evidence Tests (of Part III, covered again in Part IVd), to finish God's Answer to Satan. These would be the top-tier Church believers (analogous to Abraham, Moses, et.al). They together constitute the 'progenitor' criterion mentioned above, in the sense that there has to BE a top tier (the Lord being the King of Kings, so 'top-of-the-top', so to speak).
2. Enough "masses" of believers will exist, sufficient to constitute a kingdom of "progeny", to benefit from the numbers of top-tier "progenitors".

So the Rapture's date cannot be predicted; nor did the Lord prophesy it in Matt16:18 for the sake of Church, but FIRST on behalf of Israel. For Church is wholly founded upon an ABROGATION of a prior contract between Israel And Messiah -- a contract based solely on Voting, as we saw in Part IVa. Because He had to invent it DURING and FOR Israel's 'time', the Rapture itself is a contingent prophecy, not a fixed one. Cut out, graft in.

Since we have this sealed guarantee, since no one can pluck us out of His Hands, since the Trinity Indwell us -- let us not settle for a mess of pottage, like Esau did. Let us remember to Whom we are Betrothed. We are Betrothed to the Nexus of History, The King of Kings, the Word of the Cross, the Word of God, the Word. He, and He alone, truly is history. (Isa 28:16-17, Heb1, John1, Col1:16-18,"Alpha and Omega" verse, etc.) Thank God for that! For, what value is there to breathing at all, if He's not the REASON? So it comes as no surprise that He also controls history (e.g., Acts 17:26, Isa28:16-17).

So, it should come as no surprise that the Father would want a Fit Bride for this Uniquely-Born Son. So, then: it should not be surprising that the Role for this Bride, while she trains down here, is to BE History, even as Her Betrothed already is History (cf Rom9:33, 1Pet2:6 and similar-concept passages). If even earthly kingdom's histories rested wholly on whom the Crown Prince would marry, how much more, the kingdoms of the Eternal State! We are not our own, but His, and His Title rules us. So, then: we have enormous power, and need to wake up to that fact. So, then: we must learn the rules-of-use of our "goodies", Our Extreme Profit In Christ. For, His Kingdoms are His Personal Property. Forever. And therefore, as Bride, ours.

Thus, we don't set dates for the Rapture, we instead PREPARE for it, and our preparation is likewise a volitional contingency. For, as will be shown in Part IVc's "Rap the Rapture" section, we do know from Scripture that each of the New Testament writers themselves expected the Rapture to occur at any time during their own lifetimes. What was the criterion? Had enough believers in Paul's day reached their full Royal potential -- "the fullness of Christ" (Greek word "Pleroma") -- the Rapture could have occurred before Paul even died; same, for the time of John; same, for any generation. That's another reason why the Rapture is unpredictable, since we don't know who of us will grow, and who will fail.

The most important part of this Criterion Is Whether Church Actually Completes. Part IVa, the origin of Church is to create a bridge back to Israel's time, since she rejected Christ. So an entirely new entity was needed, which He invoked in Matt16:18, and left up to Father to configure, in John 17:20-21. So we defend Israel, as shown in Part IVa, by GROWING UP. Consequently, as we've just seen, human history is wholly determined by how Church goes. Therefore, our role in the Millennium will likewise have that role, but the specifics of its configuration are in process and can't be specified. Part IVa covered how Church is being used to rescue Israel, as an Esther-type, Now. In the Millennium, no matter how we turn out, those who are Pleroma will rule Gentile nations in the Millennium, to implement the promise that Israel will have peace from her enemies, as a Wifely Service to Our Lord. Part V will cover how Church functions (and does not function), in the Millennium.

So, as already explained in Part IVa, the only prophecies during "Church" can be its terminii. And the occurrence of the second of the terminii, Depends On How We Grow, Now. This, because the terminii Bracket Jewish-Age Events:

• Pentecost, which announced the Session, thus halting the Age of Israel; [Joel 2:28-30, see Acts 2, which interprets it: "last days" in Acts 2, means last days of Israel. Which fact you know, because Peter is speaking to Jews, not Gentiles, so can't mean last days of Church] and
• the Rapture, which begins the Tribulation, thus resuming the Age of Israel. (Joel 2:31-32, the other bookend. "And" in the Joel passage is a frequent Hebrew divider, like in Genesis, marking off separate items, kinda like a bullet point. So vv28-30 are the Beginning of the "times of the Gentiles", which is Luke 21:24, a gigantic doctrine of the OT. VV31-32 reference the overall look of the Tribulation, another big OT doctrine. John's Revelation of course shows how Joel 2:31-32 actually 'play'. Also, "after this" in Joel is forward-looking, meaning that the events in vv28-32 occur before the "Day of the Lord", the main theme of his book. I wish I had more time to explain Joel, but Holy Spirit will show you.] Cf. also Paul's use of the term "Age", and his discourse in both Romans 9-11 and 1Cor15.)

BIGGEST PROPHECY KEY → All prophecy is solely related to the Jewish covenants, because all prophecy is about the "Testimony of Jesus" (Rev19:10; this is but one layer of meaning in that verse). The very meaning of the name (in Greek) "Jesus" (Heb:Yeshua, English "Joshua") stresses His Jewish Humanity in Hypostatic Union -- which wasn't predicted AT ALL until the Covenant to Abraham, the progenitor of the Jewish Race. For, until Abraham circumcised himself, there was no Jewish Race, as Romans 4 explains.

So also, There Was No Church Until He Prophesied It, In Matt16:18. Even then, His prophecy was based on Father calling the shots as to the terms, and He said in that verse, I WILL BUILD, future tense of oikodomew. Future, after He paid for sins. Because, there still might not have been a Church, if Israel had accepted Him. He had to announce the prophecy of it while alive, so Israel would be forewarned she was playing Vashti. The outgoing broken vows could yet be mended. He just knew they wouldn't be; and in typical Jewish play of prophecy, When The Days Get Numbered, Israel Gets A Prophecy About It.

So again: we are the Fulfillment of Prophecy, so we make History. They are to look at us BE the fulfillment. Church gets no prophecy of her own, for her days are NOT numbered, get it? So those days can end in the next five minutes, next five years, next five centuries. But here you can assume without being a donkey, that the sooner is the more likely --

• for Scripture has never been so available in 2000 years;
• the Jews have never been so satanically herded in 2000 years;
• there is a big counterreformation movement brewing in ecumenism and among the independent churches, again hearkening back to the 1st century apostatizing;

So, during the "Church Age", the Lord's not wearing, so to speak, His "King of the Jews" hat. That 'hat' is set aside, as it were, temporarily. Instead, He is Seated as the Heir of All Things (Heb2), Not Testifying. The King is deliberately absent from the world's view (parable of the stingy servant, and Matt24's king-gone-away), due to the four Reasons explained in the "First Characteristic" section of Part III. Instead, we are testifying, as Bride-Evidence of Him in the World. That is why we are Ambassadors. 'Whether by blood Jewish, or Gentile. All Church believers are "one" new-in-species spiritual race (cf Gal3, 2Cor5:17's Greek). So, see? We Are A Different 'Race', and have Our Own Covenant. We are used to Rescue Israel's Covenants, not replace them. Different "R". In PartIVa, the precedence spawning our creation was covered. In Part V, the outcome of our creation for Israel, the Millennium, will be covered. For now, notice How We Are Agents Of The Rest Of History, By Divine Design. Because we are IN CHRIST, not in Israel.

Being IN Christ is not the same, duh, as being Christ. All Prophecy Is About Christ Himself, And He Is Jewish. The fact that the prophecy was given to Israel, was due to the fact that the Seed of Israel would Fulfill It All. He FULFILLS It, Not Church, Not Israel. This is as blunt a fact as there being no Temple. We should all immediately know that because there is No Temple, Christ Is The Messiah, because we can exactly date the Daniel timeline, as shown in the "Dan9:26c" subdivision of Part IVa. So, then: how can we Christians not notice that all prophecy is about CHRIST, not us; even as there was a Temple and will only be a Temple, Connected To His Presence, not our own?

Tribulation Warns Of HIS Coming. Not, warning of our coming or going or anything about us. For, we are an Index of HIM. Not, of ourselves. So we Church are a "mystery", a folded in, grafted in, part of The Vine. But the Prophecy of the Trib, preceded us, and we wouldn't even be here Now, were it not for Israel's playing Vashti. So we are a Leftover, a "remnant according to the Election Of Grace"; a prophecy on earth in progress of fulfillment, not for ourselves, but for HIM. So we make history, not new prophecies. So we get history, not prophecies.

So We Go Up When We Are Complete. No prophecy needed, for that: Preparation, that's what's needed. Different "P". And since you don't know how fast even you yourself are growing, you can't possibly know how many others in the needed Very Few Number are growing even faster than you. So the whole 'balloon' may go up before you finish reading this page. Or, maybe it ends 1000 years from now. You cannot know. But you can.. prepare.

In sum: We Are The Fulfillment Of The Prophecy Of His Coming, The Means Of Implementation Of "Operation Footstool" (my pastor's term, taken from Ps110:1). So We Are Here To Make History, Not Prophecies; Because We Are Grafted In, Part Of, The Fulfilled Prophetic One, The CHRIST.

Thus, as the last section of each chapter in Hebrews notes, Operation Footstool is in its preparatory phase, and we Church are 'it'. Because, we are Body of Christ, an Extension of Him. The historical trends of Operation Footstool are also foretold in the NT, with rubrics like "the latter days"; but no specific prophecies are to be fulfilled, since the Church is NOT in the Jewish Age. We were "grafted in", remember. (Cf. also the bracketing-method of writing Hebrews uses, culminating with effective present tense of martureo in Heb10:15 -- the earlier 'bracket' being Heb8:8-12.) So there is no prophecy, no date-setting. Rather, there is a need for the Bride to Prepare, since preparation, by nature, is a behind-the-scenes function. You don't announce "the play" until it's ready to go onstage! 'Which readiness can't be dated, since it is entirely volitional.

Therefore, all events between the two prophetic terminii, as well as the quality of the epoch itself, are determined EXCLUSIVELY by how we grow or retrogress in Christ. By How Many Of Us Grow Up Spiritually To Complete Pleroma Status -- and as we saw, only a very few are needed, maybe between 1,000 and 10,000 to suffice for all time, oh! A dinky fraction of a modern city on any given day! 'Just as history during the 1st Advent was wholly dependent on how Our Lord of the Sabbath would grow toward His Cross. (Matt12:8, Heb4:10-16, Rev19:10.) In sum, this open-ended role for the Church is unique, because:

• He is Unique;
• He invented a Unique Spritual life while He was down here, and it was necessarily higher than the Mosaic Law, as we saw in Part II and III.
• His Decisions made History -- 'funds' sufficient to save all mankind! -- not prophecies.
• He's Seated, waiting for His Bride to be Prepared by Father and Spirit.
• Bride has to become "worthy", which means Bride must learn to Decide, hence RULE -- which makes history, not prophecies. For, prophecies rule history and thus people; but We Are Designed Instead, To Be Rulers For The Rest Of History, get it? We ARE the prophecy, so we MAKE History. Just as, Our Dread Lord did -- for ALL TIME, Heb10:10-14!

So, then: we can only say that "the play WILL go on!" And, Get Ready! Tachu!

Rapture is a valid doctrine for many reasons, and the many ways the Rapture is expressed in the NT, are overlooked by 'scholars' who demonstrably do NOT test pan-Bible. Witness how in the typical allegedly-scholarly documentary you see on Bible in the History Channel or elsewhere, degreed people(!) claim that "Rapture" is an invention of the 19th century. What a crock. Guess they can't read Bible, for look: "rapture" is really an Anglicized Latin Bible term: viz. 1Thess4:17 in Vulgate Online Bible mapped-to-KJV. The verb "rapere" means to snatch/take/pluck up, and has a violence/suddeness connotation. Perfect tense form is "rapto". So, in old English, "rape" -- which didn't only have the sexual connotation it does in modern English. "Rapture" in olde English then meant simply, taking-suddenly. So the term's origin has nothing to do with the insane allegation that Darby or someone else in the 19th century invented "Rapture". Bible 'scholarship' is inexcusably bad (especially in documentaries), yet passes itself off as competent. Thank God it's so easily proven inept by a little Bible digging.

As we saw in PartIVa, Christians ask the wrong questions, so don't get the right answers. That's normal, nothing to be ashamed of. Can't learn to ask the right questions without a lot of trial and error. What's abnormal is that we don't properly test, account for what we think is a right question or answer, across ALL Scripture. Even that's not so bad, because it's very time-consuming. What IS bad, is our stubbornness: we stand pat on whatever we think the answer, so we won't learn further. Kiss your spiritual life good-bye, at that point. Makes the one insisting, look like a liar or a fool.

For if you don't balance ALL the checkbook, you didn't balance it AT all. How much more important, is Scripture's 'checkbook', to 'balance'? It's bad enough to have a check bounce -- but your whole spiritual life?! Me ginoito, perish the thought! Of course, this kind of testing is also trial and error, many mistakes made en route. So the key is to stay somewhat 'loose' about what you believe, always open to a better accounting than you currently have. Only God is Perfect. Dunno about you, but I don't give a flip if I'm wrong. I do care about learning something better than I know it now. I had to be saved, so being right is impossible. Being wrong is the norm, and learning God is the magnificent life legated to us in Christ Who Made Me Right In Him 2000 years ago. So being wrong in a Bible interp is no biggie. Standing pat on an interpretation, is insane. Why people do that, baffles me no end. Stubbornness is not 'loyalty', but spiritual apnea: leading quickly to spiritual coma and 1Jn5:16, after which one lives happily with the Lord forever, sans rewards which could have been received. What a waste.

1. Misreaders who think Revelation is allegorical or symbolic rather than literal. Thus they throw out most of the OT prophecies about the Tribulation and 2nd Advent, of which there must be hundreds of verses. Revelation plays on the OT imagery and uses stock Greek drama rhetorical style to convey its message (i.e., a quadriliogy surrounding one day, the Day of the Lord). Nothing secret or hidden about it. Format is rolled out chronologically, too. All this is ignored by the misreaders.

   The Revelation imagery, just as in the rest of Bible, is metaphorical: the metaphor stands for something LITERAL the image represents. That's not symbolism, really. Symbolism is vague and ephemeral, but a metaphor depicts something real. So when John writes he's trying to describe what he sees in terms the reader can use to LITERALLY relate. Yes, they are OT and Greek drama images and each one means something real that will or is really taking place. For example, Ezekiel's vision of the wheels within wheels is literal -- he really saw it -- and metaphorical, for the Justice of God. Same too, with John: he really saw those things, and they REPRESENTED other things which will really happen, like the demon (not human) armies swarming up out of the literal Abyss, in Rev 9. (Satan opens the Abyss where demons are locked up, text is plain.) In short, those who dismiss Revelation as allegorical or merely symbolic instead of metaphorical, do so because they are uncomfortable with the supernatural. Then they don't even believe in God, Who by definition is Supernatural. Oh well.

   This really can't be too hard, can it? In Rev4:1 two "meta tauta" clauses wall off Church from the Tribulation, since Rev4:1 is the actual Rapture Event. We are a sea of glass in front of our King, so the Kingdom is complete, and we reflect Him. Nothing in Revelation after that speaks of any Kingship He has over the earth, until the 2nd Advent. So there is NO Church on earth except the Fake Church, after Revelation 3 ends. It's as bald as a blimp flying overhead. Title deed ceremony in Revelation 4 means that His Kingdom is not on earth, which is why He's OPENING the seals (Roman custom of inheritance, the heir opens the scroll). So we are not on earth, since we already know He is Our King. Can this be more obvious? Just like He said in Luke 19, He would go away to a 'far country' and receive his Kingship appointment and then return (2nd Advent). We are there in the throne room with Him when He gets that Appointment, so now He is ready to open the inheritance deed -- which has to happen with us present, since it's the Bema, in Rev4:1. Dunno how God could make it all plainer.

   Every image John uses in Revelation is backed up in either the OT's imagery, so there's no mistaking the meaning -- or was current in Roman culture (i.e., tableaus and miming were then-current features in Greek and Roman plays). So those who find Revelation vague, aren't doing their Bible and isagogical homework. Revelation 9, for example, specifically says demons come from the Abyss, a jail under the sea. Those aren't human armies, they are demon armies, and Satan unlocks them. Text is very bald. Yet if you look around on the internet, even Pre-Trib Rapture teachers misread Rev9 and call them human armies with 'modern' vehicles and weapons, making a big stink about how China's reserve army is 200 million. Yeah, it is (military training is compulsory in China), but that has zippo to do with Rev9. Point is, when Revelation is bald even in translation, we don't read it rightly; so we don't read its sophisticated OT-documented imagery rightly, either. No excuse for that.

2. Misreaders who think Church started in Abraham's tent, such that Church's covenant somehow derives from Israel's. These people throw out the entire New Testament; don't even try to argue with them, just walk away. Um, can the words "New Testament" make it clearer that we are not Israel? Term is used in Book of Hebrews, hey kaine diatheke. It's wordplay on Jer31:31-34, showing how the Matt16:18 INVENTION of Church is based on Christ invoking His Kata-Melchizedek Kingship -- a Kingship wholly separate from and antedating Israel, since the kingship is instead an eternity-past contract, Isa52:13+53:12, 1Tim2:5, Ps110. Whole Book of Hebrews is dedicated to that subject, elaborating on how the shift to Church occurred, why our covenant is separate and not related to Israel. Our newness "now" (=keyword for Church Age in the NT), is used as a 'bridge' to restore Israel, so she can get her own new covenant promised since the Exodus, Heb8:8-10:17. Due to her rejection of God, His promise to her RE-ROUTES. So she's no longer on the same odos, derek, road; but she'll end up at the same promised destinations: Trib, Mill and then the eternal state. So Church is not Israel, ever. The OT law even on the 10 commandments had to be restated de novo in order for it to apply, i.e., in Romans 13.

3. Misreaders who don't recognize that Daniel 9 signified the End Of Allotted Time. These people throw out all the date verses, never analyzing the patterns, how all the dates demonstrate God's ORCHESTRATION of time under an Accounting System of Time Grants on which the world depends. Time is not automatic. It must be granted someone on earth, or the earth STOPS existing. First grantee was Adam. So all of Gen5, 11, the king and Temple dates, etc. -- hundreds of verses, minimum -- are overlooked. God started Accounting for Time with Adam's fall, awarding 490 or 1000 years only if some believer sufficiently developed spiritually by the time an existing time grant, ran out. It's a baton-passing criterion. Else, Time would end. So if you don't know that, even if you believe in the Rapture you'll either misdate it, or bethink prophecies for the Tribulation, somehow presage the Rapture or mean Church is in the Tribulation.

As we saw in Part IVa, Israel's Time Ran Out; that's why the covenant had to change to Church; that's the root reason why Rapture can only BE Pre-Trib. The last seven years couldn't play for Israel because Time Ran Out. So that problem pre-existed Church. God's accounting in Daniel 9 is based on a Deadline For Time Ending as a result of two expiring 1000-year time grants to David, measured from his 1004BC crowning (deadline for Christ's Birth would be 1000 years later), and his 963BC death (deadline for Christ's death would be 1000 years later). A third 1000-year grant based on the anniversary of his retirement (970BC) would determine the deadline for Christ to die if Israel rejected Him. In each case, when Messiah dies, Israel's time is UP. That's why Daniel 9:27 is cut off from the rest of the text -- its seven years is PAST the latest Davidic deadline, so cannot play unless Messiah completes and Israel accepts Him. The acceptance didn't happen, so the Trib can't happen yet. Time Bridge is Out.

If you don't know God's underlying Accounting System for Time, then you can't see this deadline structure is quite literal, real, and during at least seven times in the past, time almost ended. The timeline BALANCES from Adam through today, so you have to know its accounting structure. Thus you can proof event dates derived, for error. The timeline is self auditing, wholly contained in Bible, so it's the BIBLE you use for your proofing. Not, the stars, Roman calendars or other pagan stuff. After you've constructed the ENTIRE timeline and proofed major event dates in the Bible, you see a pattern of these time grants; then of course! you can verify the event times historically, as you'll finally be looking in the right PLACE for the information. Exodus per Bible was 1440BC; only the 18th Dynasty which was on Egypt's throne then, used the "moses" moniker. It was the Greeks, not the Jews, who renamed the Yam Suf as the "Red Sea", owing to the carnage drowning in it. Hello! Joseph was made vizier in 1916BC and ruled Egypt for the next 80 years. Extra-Biblically, you can establish that a "vizier" during that same time reorganized Egypt for the 12th Dynasty, and the farming of the Fayyum Depression was a phenomenon of its day. Yeah, they wouldn't call him "Joseph", but by his title, just as "Pharaoh" is a title, not a person's name. See: ask the right questions, ask them in BIBLE, look for them -- and then you don't chase your empirical tail making silly searches for relics long since trampled underfoot by wandering beasts, covered up by sand or mud, picked up by travellers, tomb robbers, or weathered to dust by time.

Once you've constructed and tested the timeline PER BIBLE, you find that Daniel 9's 490 is but one time grant of eight which have been going on since Adam's fall; there have been four more, since the Crucifixion. (Latest grant was awarded to someone on earth in 1990, which was the AWARD deadline, not the historical deadline.) Mirroring.htm explains the accounting pieces God uses, and shows you from Bible in detail, who got these time grants; GeneYrs.xls is a timeline from Adam through 2007 showing these people and the trends post-Crucifixion show the time grants continue (but to whom, we can't now know); and TenWaysThisTimelineDiffers.doc summarizes the parameters. Suggest you start with TenWays, as it's a well-written overview (only 29 printed pages). You'll need the xls and htm files also, but the doc file best speeds comprehension of the big picture. There's nothing like these three pieces on the internet, so use 1Jn1:9 and keep asking Our Mutual Dad for verification insight as you read them, if you read them. [In GeneYrs.xls, one can document from Bible a) the intercalated historical solid-gold and green deadlines; one can likewise document from Bible b) the contiguous, baton-passing personal 490s and 1000 grants since Adam. One can likewise document from Bible c) the voting periods which show in GeneYrs.xls. However, the d) contiguous qualifying historical deadline every 490 and 1000 years (non-intercalated for voting periods), is rather an INFERENCE from the Bible's doctrine behind its given numbers; the doctrine makes consummate sense and fits the accounting philosophy Bible discloses. Furthermore, I can't find anything in Bible to contraindicate d); but more testing of that contiguity rule is needed.]

Quick example:
• Herod was well known to be dying in 4BC;
• well known, that he'd been remitting taxes to Rome himself prior;
• so well-inferred, that in 4BC the Romans TOOK OVER tax administration from Herod.
• Also well known: Augustan tax reform, Quirinius-promulgated census for the new head tax, started in the provinces maybe 12BC.
• You can prove Herod would have been doing it since then, even in ISBE or a documentary on Herod.
• Ergo: only because Herod was dying and there was no trustworthy successor --
• and since Augustus was the beneficiary of Herod's will, so would have been the executor/trustee of all Herod owned, thus would inherit Judaea from him --
• Rome took over.
• So it truly would have been the first Roman census-taking in 4BC -- just as Luke says -- having been done prior, by Herod's government. Duh.

  Second quick example:

• Luke 1:26 uses the official Greek bureaucrat's style of telling you the absolute (legal) month, so it's Adar on the calendar.
• You can verify that double-Greek-article dating style in the LXX 'dry' books like Chronicles, Kings, etc.
• So Christ must be born by the following Chanukah, nine months later, and in 4BC.
• Luke wouldn't need to say all that, the audience would already know.
• Luke revels in wryness of expression, omitting material as in a joke, so hearers can enjoy the wit. So his writing style stresses Chanukah themes and tells you when the Birth occurs, using that wit.

  Let's not even talk about the fake Star of Bethelehem, which is nowhere in the Bible. All the foregoing was covered in Part IVa. Point here: see how we're bleeping lazy about doing our Bible homework. So we ask wrong questions, come up with wrong answers, and blame the Bible for being obtuse. Handy excuse, huh.

  Bottom line: we are queasy about supernatural stuff, so we try to explain it away -- betraying that we don't really believe in God Who by definition, is of Supernatural Nature. So what's natural for Him to do, is not going to be reflected in our dead, natural terms.

  God isn't kidding when He says we can ask anything in His Name, and He's not kidding when He says you have to Believe In Him To Be Rewarded, John 3:16, John 16:9, Heb11:6, Eph2:8-9. God is Merit. So if you don't Believe In Him Who is Merit, you are saying He's worthless, so that's what you get from Him: nothing. That's why prayers go unanswered, why people lose faith, can't reconcile Bible, etc. They don't BELIEVE. So they get what they don't believe: nothing. Bible is totally provable by any standard man can come up with. But we don't test it properly, because we don't READ it properly. No excuse for that since 1850, when the whole world started to have ready access to the original-language texts. So what passes for Biblical scholarship is likewise nothing of value. There's no belief inside the scholars, so of course they don't find the Bible up-to-snuff! Use 1Jn1:9 and go through Bible, keep plugging yourself. You'll find more proof of God than you ever dreamed of!