| IVa: Macro Role, of Alpha Precedence | IVb: ..of Body | IVc: ..of Trial Combat | IVd: ..of Your Own Destiny |
Your Trial Combat leads to a Destiny God reserved for you in Eternity Past, per Ephesians 1. You can refuse it. Yet suppose you instead kept on in God's Script, so Now you are in Pleroma Maturity, ready for Evidence Testing? What would it be like? God being so HIGH and all, you'd think that Evidence Testing would be flashy or epic like "The Ten Commandments", starring Charleton Heston. Guess again. In Evidence Testing, you go BACK TO BASICS.
God is flashy by nature. If you 'saw' Him, you'd be so overwhelmed, you couldn't think. So He veils Himself; thus you can see Him indirectly, through what He creates. That is, if you WANT to see Him. That's why a dusty little country considered an asterisk in history -- but for the brouhaha over it -- would get The Visitation. So it wouldn't be besieged, so mankind wouldn't be weighed down, so decisions about Him could be private; so back then, the dusty little country whose Law He authored, could choose whether it wanted its Always-Existing Creator Who Became, YHWH! Its Savior.
Life is fundamentally basic, not flashy. Life is basic, whether you're God, or a creature. God lives. That's basic. God Thinks. That's basic. God Wants. That's basic. God gets what He wants. That's basic. And what He wants, is RELATIONSHIP, which is the most fundamental basic of all: for what's the point of being alive, if not to enjoy Relationship with Him? That's basic: Rescue, in order to have Relationship. That's the Word of the Cross, believe and you get that Relationship. Forever.
So two of the Three R's of the Spiritual Life, are Rescue and Relationship. What's the Third? "Remaining." Remaining in the Relationship, in Your Head. Bible in your head 24/7, does that. So here in the Evidence Test, it's about that Remaining, Greek verb "menw", Being At Home in Him.
This shouldn't have to be said, but a whole lot of people are horrible to live with, not because they don't behave, but because they do. And, that's ALL they do: live proper lives, always have dinner on the table, always do their job at work -- but inside, are so full of pettiness and insanity, being around them drives one crazy. It's the worst kind of hell: here is Joe/Jane Perfect, so the outers are all just right -- in return, of course, Joe/Jane expects you to spend time admiring their pettifogging correctnesses. So like the German generals at the Berghof, you are sentenced to sit around listening to that precise, perfect mind beat you to death over how perfect it is. Nicely, of course. Better a meal of vegetables, Solomon quipped.
For, these people (and who doesn't have at least some of Mr./Ms. Perfect running in the brain?) see only outers. To the inners, they are blind. So when they read Scripture, all those little perfectionistic behaviors are what they see: but the meaning beneath, oh no. Blue or white thread at dusk? If that Talmudic rule doesn't convey the whole bitterness of the world's outer-defined living standards, nothing does. For there's nothing but a shell. With dead men's bones inside. For they infect everyone with their how-good-i-am-ugliness. Pharisees, hitlers, every one of them: and the rest of the world ardently wishes for respite away from them, and breathes a sigh of relief when they die. These are the people who form the majority of the upper-echelon population in every religion. No wonder God looks like someone you'd rather avoid, Rom2:21-24; for they steal all the enjoyment out of life, 'robbing' God of His Rightful Portrayal. And betray themselves but walking dead.
Sooner or later, the bones surface: whether the broken skeleton of inconstancy, or the perfectly-fitted skeleton of propriety. Both, just as dead. Both, just as tyrannical; both, unavoidable. Worse, you yourself are so easily felled, so fragile: all the looks, all the brilliance, all the wit, even all the money on the planet, won't compensate for basics. Arthritis. Cancer. Death of a loved one. Injustice. Sleep loss. The littlest of things, undo us. Even, the common cold. No goodies, no power, no reputation or wealth or anything can assuage the bitterness which comes from these things. So the guy who's worked so hard! to get the recognition, position, and money due him, finally gets it and bam! he can't enjoy it, simply because he can't sleep, now. The gal who slaved to stay gorgeous, trusting in her looks, bam! gets into an accident, and though recovered, there's this RED RASH on her face. Ruining everything. See? We got nothing on the inside, so nothing on the outside really works, either. Too fragile. So the bones surface, and we betray ourselves as the ghouls we really are, shaking our fist at the sky, Why did GOD let this happen to ME!
Note how the world thinks exactly like the Fall's 'legacy' of the me-be-god, Dungheap table in Part II. It's impossible to stop its bleeping:
As we saw in Part II, notice again here that the outers of life are arrogated to a claim of self-worth. So the flipside: the person without those outers, is concluded bad; in order to cope with that, he must conclude himself a victim, a martyr, a messiah, as he must make himself noble in some way, to assuage ego. Hence by the end of his life ennui sets in, a kind of fatalism in which one is the unrequited hero for being so victimized. It never dawns on us that we have to PEE, so all the outers of life don't add to or subtract from, self-worth. They are merely outers. Nice to have if you've got them, but they don't make you better or worse than you are. Dependency on these outers tells us we are not worthy by means OF them. Sin nature can't 'hear' all that, it's a Lady MacBeth trying to wash away its damned spot. For it killed its king -- God -- from its mind. So now that dead-to-self king must be blamed, to hide the dirt inside; meanwhile one ardently seeks the outers, figleaves to cover up, to hide the ghoulish reflection in the mirror.
So it's a given that the human race with its rattling, pettifogging inconstancy, can't possibly remain true to God. Someone Outside must hold man together, 2Cor5:14. Notice how it's about being true to GOD, not about sin. Whereas we pettifogging humans make big stinks about sin as if we had the ability to overcome it (what a crock), God and the angels on both sides in this Trial know better. A paraplegic, can't walk! We sin-nature paraplegics fantasize we can walk, which thereby proves how blind we are. Cardiac arrest, blind, paralyzed, and fantasizing otherwise. Because we are ghouls, we fancy ourselves living. Because moving, we fancy ourselves magnificent, and don't notice how we are all instead, marionetted. Anything can manipulate us, as every politician, preacher, adman and media gal can tell you. So it's a BIG DEAL that a ghoul can want God and STAY wanting God. Especially, if all the world is thrown at him. For again, the only constant truth about man, is his inconstancy.
So Two of the world's Three R's are Resentment, Revolution. What's the Third? Remaining in ghoulish ennui. That's Satan's Testimony; the Evidence Test, trumps it.
So the fourth "R", Realization, will be the hypostatic printout from one or the other triad of R's you choose for your life. There are four other "R's" flowing from them: Result, Reproduction, Rest and Rapture. So we have a total of eight "R's" which get put through their paces in the Evidence Test. 'God's Side' of these eight, are as follows:
Conversely, Satan has his own R's in reply, but look at the Part II "Dungheap" table meanings they signify when they play:
It's hard to separately exhibit these "R's" in the following description, since they are all intertwined. So try to spot them as you read. Helpful Hint: as you read what follows, at least pretend YOU are in Evidence Testing, for everything prior to Pleroma builds up to it, so your life right now will be governed by the same testing essentials as what follows. So you grow faster if you approach your life as if you were already IN this Testing Phase. Just keep voting to know and live on Bible more and better! If a person just wants to know God, and keeps wanting to know God and keeps on keeping on in Bible, he'll come to these issues in his own life. So how much faster do you get there, if you know in advance what awaits? My pastor has taught this doctrine for years, and though I can't find anyone else who teaches it, Bible is plain enough on the parameters. So it's not invented here, but rather recast in the overall context of the Trial.
Again, the Lord is the 'poster boy' for this structure, but you can see the same structure in the lives of Noah, Abraham, Job, Paul. I can see them in my own pastor's life (he's now in iii)), which helped immensely to spot more details about these patterns in Bible and test their Biblicity over the past seven years. [I've never met my pastor, but from decades of hearing his Bible class lessons on tape, one learns much. By the way, this paragraph is written in 2007.] Evidence Testing also exhibits some coordination with significant dates in your life (i.e., your birthday): that's a pattern for awards too, ever since Adam. Click here to download GeneYrs.xls, a Bible-derived timeline from Adam through 2007 (not yet finished, post-Cross). When you load the spreadsheet, click on View, then Custom Views in Excel's menu. A dialogue box appears which helps you pick the period in the timeline you want. Spreadsheet views best in widest window, ends at Col. M so you can see all columns on-screen. Right half has comments about this birthday coordination. You can prove from Bible that God coordinated events as gifts for (inter alia) Adam's, Noah's, Abraham's, and Christ's birthdays, and the 'birthday' of David's consolidated kingship, etc. So He coordinates to a believer's personal dates in some manner, as well. The pattern varies, and not only birthdays are targeted. So I can't be more specific, here. Ask God about it for your own life.
The Trial Answer is in nine parts, all of them intertwined and complex. And they all lay bare how you THINK. Again, this is an Invisible Trial before Heaven, so it's not something you talk about. The Answer basically divides into the following categories, all of which play at once, each 'part' reinforcing the other. Nomenclature below dovetails with the A-H Precedence categories listed at the beginning of Part IVb, since Evidence Testing is an Angelic Trial Witness which speeds the completion of the Body of Christ, thus hastening the Rapture. The good news about the complexity is that you can't influence the answer. It happens TO you, and over time you come to understand it. Again, God does all the doing: that's the central issue in the Trial: if you want God, you want HIM to be doing the doing, not you. If you don't want God, you want to be your own god, hence doing all the doing, yourself.
If Bible in your head is real, you're living on it all the time, test or no test. If Bible in your head is real, you just love it. So when suddenly hit, the Bible in your head anyway, comes to the RESCUE. The "deadline" element varies with how the test progresses, but there always is one. So it's unpredictable, sudden-death-abrupt, like the Rapture. The test comes suddenly, stops suddenly. Here, "hurry up and wait", the bane of the combat soldier, is the test as well. "Be ready in season and out of season", for you never know when God will bring you a situation. Trial Witness is before heaven. It's a 24/7 "situation". You are a strategic person. You don't act on your own. Christ never did a thing without looking at Father, first.
So it's the same temptation to perform, for us. As any combat soldier, you don't know how well you're doing, you're too busy fighting (i.e., the onslaught of temptations, including guilt if you have prosperity). As any combat soldier, you see the failure all around you, so you're tempted to quit. So that's part of the Trial Answer too: your awareness of and reaction to, 'performance'. Yours, or someone/something else's. Especially, God's.
It's natural to want to be competent. So, here you are not. Or, you are but it achieves nothing. Disappointment, failure, despair, impotence, all drain a person. Doesn't matter if it's his own failure, or someone else's with which he must live (i.e., at work, in the home, whether a small failure like a Windows glitch or a big one like your house burning down). These things accumulate in a kind of attrition war, so take their toll on the psyche. The test of a person's real attitude is best seen when failure characterises the life. A spy who is not backed up by his government, does he stay loyal? When God seems to abandon us, do we stay loyal? Satan contends "no", as he did with Job (beginning of Job 1 and 2). It's easy, conversely, to blame the self for the problem, especially if one loves God. That's not the right answer either, in Evidence Testing. For in Evidence Testing, you are examined on what you got right about God, not on what's still wrong with you. If you succumb to guilt you lost the battle, here. Evidence Testing is only about whether God is good, and whether He made good ON you. It's never about you. You got paid for, 2000 years ago. Your INHERITANCE in Christ and how it's been built in you, is what's being examined. Again, Romans 12:2 above: IT (Word-in-you, your inheritance, booty from Christ) approves you, not the other way around.
This examination proves the "excellency of the knowledge" (Phili3:8), the superior performance of Genuine Gemstone Word ON you. Not, you on yourself. It also proves that performance FROM you is not required to get or keep the RELATIONSHIP. God instead will RESCUE you from whatever failure. So God basically turns Satan's contention on its head, here: yea, it's about performance alright -- God's. Now you know why 2Cor12:9-10 reads as it does! Boasting in what GOD does!
And here's the boast: it doesn't matter what life does to you. You have Him. So the 'performance' is irrelevant: end Romans 8. RELATIONSHIP to Him is happiness, inviolate; and all else matters, not at all. Body will feel otherwise, but the soul attitude's tandem reply is Phili1:21. Both are side-by-side. Hupostasis: when I'm weak, then I'm strong, 2Cor12:9-10.
Of course, this Evidence demonstrates that the Elongating Exit Resurrection Precedence in Part IVb (first section) is valid. That Time has gone on so long, your Evidentiary Witness 'redeems', Eph5:16. So the 8th "R", the RAPTURE is hastened.
God's into MAKING Heroes. He likes doing that. So it's not arrogant to BE such a Hero, because GOD did it. Boasting in Him: that's a big theme of Paul's. To someone arrogant, Paul looks arrogant in his writing: it's absolutely incredible, all the calumny said against Paul in theology. God MADE Paul The Poster Boy Of Believer Ultra-Maturity, and we are to learn from what happened to him. Paul, the worst sinner (1Tim1:15) made into the Biggest NT Hero (1Cor15:10). Paul's not shy about it, because he's supposed to show them how it works (i.e., freely admitting it in 1Cor15:1-10, Eph3, 1Tim1, all of Philippians, 2Cor12). So He boasts in what God DID to him. What God did to him the worst sinner, therefore, God want to do to anyone.
So tested here, is whether you follow Satan's plan of making yourself a hero in the world's eyes, inheriting it -- just like mainstream Christianity does, following Satan with all its hunger for world recognition -- or whether you keep on in the Word, and God MAKES you into His Son. Invisibly. In the latter case, you become a "great one", Hebrew "atsum"; getting your share of "shalal", Hebrew word for "booty", Inheritance (both terms are in Isa53:12).
Hence the Basic RELATIONSHIP Goal God has for your life, is to build His Son's Thinking in yours; the Basic Reason to even want life, is for Him to do just that. Not the goodies. Not the crowns and rewards you'll get as Pleroma if you pass these tests. Not the fame forever, the millions admiring you. No, none of those things: life is ONLY good for Seeing Him Who Is Invisible, and the admiration you get is only pleasing because you know that's their way of thanking HIM, enjoying HIM -- you are but a conduit. All else is a happy throwaway: especially, yourself. Which seeing and throwaway, you do invisibly: in your soul. The real you sees the Real Him, and basically you need and want nuthin' else. All that, the Evidence Tests are designed to accomplish and prove. In you, by Personal Agency of the Holy Spirit. To you. To Satan&Co. And in the eternal state, all the results will be on a pillar with your name on it (Rev3:12), for others to enjoy and learn from. Eternally. [Bible verses about pillars refer to historical records, since those records were inscribed on columns which held up buildings. At the time of writing Bible (throughout), kings made monuments with inscriptions about their exploits. Common example extant today, are the pyramids. Paper dies, but stone lasts.]
So, the Evidence Test: Are you as much in Christ in YOUR own thinking, as you are in Him in HIS Own Thinking? The totality of your focus on Him using Bible in your head to live, is tested per #IV, below. So it's a MOTIVE test, not a works test. WHY do you love God? It's a valid question: is 'love' given due to the attractiveness or goodies of the object, breaking or fading quickly if that attractiveness or goodies disappear? God is innately attractive, but in Evidence Testing He seems to 'act' unfaithful. Cross is an unfair thing, really. But if you really love someone, the unfairness doesn't matter. Of course God is not ever unfair, but Satan contends He is, and the human needs the 'stretch' of what goes against his nature (i.e., morality, which is a natural instinct). So although much unfairness transpiring in life has zippo to do with God, it always remains true that God can just bing! it away. See the analogy to Matt4? The Lord could have ended all hunger, all disbelief, taken over from Satan AT WILL and at any time. But wouldn't. Why isn't it unfair of Him to refuse, Satan taunts. Satan really thinks it's wrong. So do we. Evil exists, and God does nothing?
Therefore here in Evidence Testing, you STAY in the Word, because you WANT to. That's your abode-of-thinking. Where you are, 'at home'. Of course the next question is, 'what does that mean?' It means every thought you have gravitates to Bible ideas, concepts, principles. You decide or want based on Bible, you even react based on Bible, and it's all cognizant. Bible is constantly on your mind, and you want it to be, whether you are brushing your teeth, inheriting a million dollars, just diagnosed with cancer. The lesser body issues -- even the grave and dramatic ones -- all of them, take a back seat or are re-routed into some Bible 'thought'. Because you want them to. Struggle is constant, but always Bible is the arbiter. You fall down, but get up with Bible. You awaken with Bible on your mind. You fall asleep with it. Just like Moses said for Israel in Deuteronomy 6:1-9. Bible's 'home' in your head, 24/7. Because, that's where you WANT to 'abide'. And you can't abide, anything else.
Greek verb "menw" ("w" is a long "oh" sound) means many things: abide, live in, stay in, cling to or keep-returning-to in your thoughts, live with, remain in. In short, it's all about your own volition's wanting to be somewhere in your thinking, your life, your day. Consistently. Often. All-the-time, 'where' you are in your own thinking by your own CHOICE. The 'place' you stay in, is your 'abode', home. You have a 'home' in your thinking, some pattern or topic to which you keep loving to return. It's all about where you want to be whether physically, or mentally. And wherever that place, it's 'home' to you. "Where the treasure is, there the heart will be also", Matt6:21, Luke 6:45, 12:34. So the two root ideas in "menw" are STAYing somewhere, and WANTing to do that. Stay, because Want-to. [God runs this. You cannot. You vote, He replies. For example, in the above "Where the treasure is" quote, I didn't even look at the Bible, and for some reason I said "the" instead of "your" in both places, and 'just knew' I was typing differently from the translations. I've not seen that verse in a very long time. Looked up the citations, after typing it. So I didn't know I was translating it from the literal Greek of Matt6:21. But God did. Leaving out the two "your" words states the principle generically. It's common in Bible for a quote to be re-rendered to make an interpretation. That's what just got done, here. Now tell me: who wouldn't want to abide in the Word, since that's where GOD is? And so witty, His re-rendering of the quote? It was HIM who brought that quote to my mind in the first place, interrupting the typing! Again, who wouldn't WANT to stay in His Word, since that's where HE lives?]
Christ used the verb "menw" a lot during the First Advent (i.e., John 15) to illustrate the RELATIONSHIP with Him, post-salvation. It's one of the most common verbs in the Bible. As you'll see in the "Staying" link section below, all the NT writers play off His use of the verb and its many cognate verbs and nouns. Translations render these as "abide", "remain", "stay" somewhere. But those translations are vague, and strip out the motive inherent in the term. Again, the root meaning of "menw" is to live-at-home. Idea of love, comfort, wanting-to-be-there. Not just a location. Interestingly, it also has both LEGAL and MILITARY connotations -- idea of remaining-true, remaining-at-post, remaining-in-witness-box (because the opposing attorney couldn't discredit your testimony). Again, based on your attitude. In a word, Love is stressed.
So the Evidence Test is a Love-Conquers-All Test. People can't abide God, really. He's regarded as a chore you must finish on Sunday, trot out on holidays, Someone you have to appease to get goodies in this life, to avoid roasting in hell. To them, God is a have-to, not a want-to. So they don't pant to talk about or hear the latest discovery in the Word; but oh boy, mindless details regarding a celebrity they like, well they're enthralled for hours. We Christians are frequently accused of being pushy -- well, that's because the Person we are enthralled with, the world hates. Else, they'd beg us for more details. So people are preoccupied with other people and things, 24/7. Our minds are on everything and everyone but God. It's not a sin question, or a works question, but a Thinking Question. Moreover, when we are "in" all these non-God preoccupations, our thinking is pretty ugly. We blame, we manipulate, we fear, we constantly are trying to get something to 'work' as we want. The object is of interest if we are attracted, but bam! goes that attraction, if the smallest thing goes awry. GOD, well.. He was in a movie, once -- wasn't it "The Ten Commandments"? Hence it's a sheer miracle for a believer to come to focus on Christ. In the Evidence Test, that miracle has already completed, but all the "competition" against the believer's FOCUS on Christ, hasn't yet been defeated. So an individual "Operation Footstool" ensues, where all the enemies to Functional Union with Christ in the believer's Own Thinking are defeated.
Notice how the believer who passes Evidence Testing, is progressively RESCUED from all the competition. So, then: shall God Who rescued him via the Tests, not also use him to rescue his own brethren? "For He is not ashamed to call them brothers", says Hebrews 2. Well, if you pass the Evidence Tests, the God of Rescue will rescue your brothers. Who are, any humans. Good Samaritan concept. If some among those humans don't believe in Him or, having believed, don't grow up in Him, well the Rescue Was Provided. And you are used to Rescue them from what they missed down here, even if you never meet those people. You will be the ruler over some of them, and thus their teacher forever. Teaching about Him. Our Water. Our Bread. Forever. The "Facets" link sections of Part IVb, and the "Divine Benefit Valuation" link section of Part IVc cover the enormous blessing-by-association which results from passing Evidence Testing. It's phenomenal, "more than we can ask or imagine", as Paul puts it in Eph3:20. Again, due to GOD-DEEDS, not puny man's overrated good deeds.
Togetherness requires like-mindedness, to be enjoyable. Compatibility, Shared Inner Environment, not outer environment. Above all, the Cross is about maxing Togetherness. To do that, the juridical barriers between God and creation must be removed BY the Cross. These barriers are of two types:
In America, your retirement plan at work provides a required disclosure booklet called a "Summary Plan Description", aka "SPD". [Other countries often have the same rules, but I don't know their vocabulary.] This "SPD" defines certain legal terms so you can better understand your benefits. One of these legal terms is "VESTING", the percentage of the money in your accounts you can freely take if you leave the company right now. Often, there's a sliding scale of percentages based on how many years you've worked for your employer. So too, in the Divine Benefit Plan for Eternity, you must vest. In God's Plan, you must "endure to the end" to vest in your inheritance. You can't lose salvation, that's based solely on the Cross, and Christ already Vested ON the Cross, so HE already vested IN you before you were born, Isa53:10-12. Therefore, that first nanosecond you believed in Him, you became His Fully Vested Property, Isa53:12; so you cannot even get lost once you believe in Him, John 3:16+John 10:28.
Subsequently, Now it's our turn to vest IN Him, which means INvesting IN the Word to INgest it and become like Him, 2Cor5:14-21. Accordingly, the only vesting issue for any believer is the INheritance atop salvation, which is a primary focus of the New Testament -- Testament, meaning conditions of INheritance, he kaine diatheke, in Greek: term is in Book of Hebrews, elaborating on what the Lord INvented at the Last Supper, Luke 22:18-20 (term is in v.20, ties back to Jer31:33). Hence the conditions for His INvestiture pass on to us: He ate Word, Got Fat, Got Slaughtered -- so we are to do the same: IN Him.
God uses what in secular pension lingo is called "cliff vesting". Your Divine Benefits were already funded fully in eternity past, Eph1. So you have a kingly INheritance on deposit you can lose, Rev3:11, 2Tim2:5, James 1:12, 1Pet5:4, Rev2:10. So don't fall off the cliff: Stay IN, or you get nothing. You have to "endure to the end" to INherit atop salvation, IN God's Plan. It's all or nothing. If you Stay IN the Word until the end, you INherit a kingdom, get crowned, 2Tim4:7-8 example. If you don't, you are a Royal Priest Peasant forever, UNder some other believer who didn't quit. Stay, Abide=win. Quit=lose, Rev3:11. No middle ground.
If you stay in the Word you will mature spiritually. It gets harder to stay in, yet easier. Your motive grows as you understand Him better. You come to be like-minded with Christ. Of course, if you don't learn the Word, this doesn't happen. Of course, if you don't live on the Word, this doesn't happen. 99.9% of Christians won't learn the Word, because they find God boring. So the Word is boring. Variant degrees of disinterest among believers make it seem like they want the Word, but upon closer examination, you find their interest has a very low threshold. Your interest must keep growing with the learning. If not, you will quit before you die. And you'll be happy in heaven, to be sure. But you won't have the inheritance God laid up for you from eternity past, and it will instead forfeit to someone else. The Evidence Test is designed to VEST you.
Our ghoulish, pettifogging sin nature keeps making stinks about lesser, dead issues like some wrong you or someone else did, politics, junk related to the body. But God makes irrelevant, all sin and human good or human anything for that matter, due to the Cross. So what's really BAD, is that we are hostile to God -- in the name of what INdependent GOOD we do. We are thus evil, for we claim these lesser issues should have standing before God. But look:
What a child enjoys, an adult does not. What man enjoys, God does not. So if you want Oneness with God, you must grow BEYOND your own human nature, just as a baby must grow past his childhood. Spiritual childhood means you have a lot of human proclivities ruling your life. Spiritual adulthood, less so. Spiritual Maturity means you are shedding human proclivities, and Pleroma means they fall down. Doesn't mean you stop sinning. Means that God's Ways Of Thinking become so preferable to everything human, you yearn to suffer loss. It's not masochism. Everything in life actually stops being meaningful, except Him. It's not that what's nice in life stops being nice. Rather, it stops being IMPORTANT. To the world, "nice" is all-important, and God's Name is slapped on so that man can call himself holy for wanting what he wants. But as you truly age spiritually, all else in life becomes insignificant. It's a harrowing process, not unlike the time you first realized your parents (here, the world) weren't the idols you imagined as a child. There's a crusading phase in spiritual adulthood where the puny thinking you now see (because you grew bigger), you fantasize fixing. That's when you find out you're not human, anymore. It takes some years, because you don't evaluate yourself as high -- that's not even an attractive idea -- so everyone else must just be uninformed. So you try to inform them. Big mistake. When you hit your head against the wall enough -- with plenty of Divine Discipline to wake you up -- you settle into just learning Him, again. Then you mature enough to get into this final stage. And by this point, you are not human, in your thinking. So are ready for testing.
So Bible you've believed and live on in God's System -- via the Spirit -- has grown you past the sin nature's pettifogging religious proclivity for blaming self- or others (and hence rebelling), to see the real point of it all: God just uses our puniness to teach us about His Son. Sure, you are constantly bombarded with the sin nature, and habitually 'reply' by picking/voting for God's Apodoses -- Bible in your head, in God's System. So you know all the bad stuff is really purposed to teach you the clause in 1Cor5:21, "He Who Knew No Sin was MADE Sin as a Substitute for Us"; which is a summary of Isa53:10-11's contract of Eternity past. You get that same experience, paradigmally, to Learn Christ. Not because you are bad, or someone else is bad, etc. But those lesser issues really lacerate the soul -- again, teaching what happened to Him -- so make great training mechanisms for Developing Love to Completion. For as you go through this stage, even though you know what it is and why it's happening -- it's extremely wearing, and the desire to quit is extreme. Knowing that desire itself is even more wearing, for you realize you can't be loyal, yourself. But you can Vote For the Doctrine to Sustain you (2Cor5:14), which is precisely what Christ did on the Cross, sunesis and da'ath keywords in the Greek and Hebrew texts of Isa53:11: evidenced (in Matt27:46, Mark 15:34) by His shouting Ps22:1 while on the Cross (claiming the entire Psalm to stay motivated, esp. v.6). The Same Holy Spirit Who did it to Him, does it to you. You are CARRIED, in the Evidence Tests. Hence the Test is about ABIDING, not you 'doing' something. But it's a superhuman thing, to abide in Him. Only the Holy Spirit can make that happen. Your vote, but only His Power. Your weakness, His Strength.
And as you keep on keeping on (Phili3:14) over time you'll notice an amazing thing: the worse it gets, the better it gets. Moreover, the worse it gets, the less attracted you are to the nice things of this world, and the more attracted you are to the bad stuff, paradigm of Luke 22:15. It's exactly the reverse of what should happen. You literally grow out of your normal human nature. It becomes progressively unimportant, only worth throwing away. This isn't masochism, but Maturity. Spiritual Maturity. For God is not threatened by bad stuff, nor compromised in any way. So by the Pleroma stage, only the really nettlesome stuff remains (tailored to you personally, what 'gets' to you); so lots of ABnormal stuff needs to be added in cycles, to keep 'trying' to get you to divorce. You fall down a lot, but get up again, and it's a prolonged thing; but over time the fall downs are of much shorter duration and an aggressive desire to actually have what bothers you, grows and remains. Eventually that desire conquers -- yet the pressure becomes worse, not better. Until, there's nothing that can divorce you. Then you usually die, victorious. The Love is Victorious. Part III's "You, in Me!" Table, +Fourth+Fifth Facets in Part IVb: Barriers All Down, baby, "nothing shall separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus"! No Divorce! Totally DEpendent!
You can't go through this kind of torture except because you love God. Knowing His Thinking alone carries you. You are beyond-human, here. God is glorified, megalunw'd, here. So God Carries You Through It. The High of Knowing Him and the low of this earthly life -- nice or painful, makes no difference, it's all unacceptable by now, has completely lost jurisdiction -- that divergence, is what's tested.
So it's not at all like the tests of childhood. Childhood tests are basic too, but blatant and limited. The OT testing was blatant and limited. Adulthood and especially Royal testing is subtle, a thinking thing, very easy to miss: see Matt4. Most people don't even understand that chapter. They don't see that the temptations are to GOOD DEEDS, are MORAL, with Satan basically accusing Father and Son of being immoral and unloving of the human race and Each Other. So the human race actually pants after the very same things Satan does, and believes itself holy for doing so.. just as Satan contends, in Matt4. So a child falls for those temptations. Even an adult falls for them. But when you're in Evidence Testing, you have a Superhuman Understanding of these issues, and like Christ you conclude: FOR FATHER OR FORGET IT. No matter how 'moral' a thing might seem on a lesser level, to you at this point there's but One Morality: Does DAD want it? If "no", then you don't, either.
But the human is completely tapped out. The crushing Divine knowledge of what everything means -- which you now know well -- juxtaposed with what you now recognize is this impossibly puny life.. is unbearable. Divine Standard in your head, and it can never be met by the body you are in; unending frustration of being stuck with all those other ghouls, and boy oh boy you are one too -- but you are nonetheless alive? And you want to keep trying? No harder task than to ride into the Valley of Death, a quixotic Charge of the Light Brigade in a briganded world with a branding at the end, accomplishing nothing. Sheer waste. Which even while living, surrounds you. Dead minds, endlessly preoccupied with banalities, and your body is no different. Romans 7! Who will deliver us from these bodies of death? A child is buffered by his ignorance. Yours left, long ago.
So it's not at all like the normal human tests in life. The knowledge of God is egregious in every way. If you are going to be compatible with Him, you need to have that same knowledge. People quit or lose their reason to live for far lower causes: divorce, loss of a loved one, abuse by another, loss of trust, etc. Well, those things are basic knowledge for you, just to even know what Truth is. After all, even Abram was promised a universe of kids, but in Gen15:13 notice how God said that first they'd have 400 whopping years of slavery! And Abram was supposed to accept that? Not yet having even one kid? And that lone kid didn't even arrive until some 25 years later, so the long waiting tired out Sarai, who then got witchy with her slave girl (hence the Arab-Israeli conflict, the true cause). So Abram had to say "yes" to a promise of tortured kids! Before he even had one. Then, he had to wait and himself be tortured for nearly another generation -- before that one was allowed to be born. So knowing God carries with it a superhuman burden, for God's Knowledge is me ish, beyond-human. So the demon boys who are also beyond-human, get to supernaturally attack you. Goes with the territory. Their attacks are blatant+subtle, because you're not a spiritual child, anymore.
The previous (pre-maturity) "yesses" become "no's", and vice versa. When a child, you had lots of do's. The child can't think, so can't reason, so teaching a child principles requires teaching him things to DO. Hopefully he'll become curious and want to know the 'why' behind the 'do'. Then he learns to reason and associate do's with know's. The adult, by contrast, should only think in terms of principles, and CRAFT do's from them. We have a Royally-Adult spiritual life legated from Christ, so our daily 'do's' are KNOWINGS. Much harder. So in practice and in this stage especially, what was once prohibited, circumscribed, imposed: is either allowed, or even mandated. Christ had to say "no" to sin all His Life. And for what? To be MADE INTO sin by Father on the Cross! So that lifetime of "no no no" got Him a bizillion "yesses" by all of us. And He had to say "yes" to receiving that imputation (yet not resent it, etc., sinning Himself).
So paradigmally, we too have to say "yes" to conditions during this test which seem WRONG. That's anti-human. The specifics vary per person, but Matt4 is the pattern of them. We have to say "yes" to doing nothing. Before, when younger, you should do moral things; but now, you're too old for that. DAD is superior to people. So what DAD wants, however strange it seems (i.e., don't eat, don't feed people, don't jump and prove you're God, don't defeat Satan, don't withhold the knife from Isaac) -- that's what you do. And what DAD wants, is for you to do nothing, or do something when it seems like you ought to do nothing. Everything reverses, totally the opposite of what even human common sense would dictate. You can only 'do' what DAD wants from knowing the Doctrine -- Him -- intimately. Very subtle, tangled, passive, listening. The aggressiveness is passive.
A business owner, president, or general can easily remember the many times in his life he had to make a decision which was right but seemed wrong to others. Classic case in point was dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No sane person wants to kill people, especially in masses. Yet that hard decision saved millions of lives on both sides of the war. It cost hundreds of thousands of lives in both cities, to save the many more. A less-mature man than Harry Truman wouldn't have made that call, and many of us alive today would never have been born. Exodus, Lev26 and Tribulation punishments all show that same kind of kill-the-masses decision -- made by God. See also Isa63:1-9. Part V will cover this kind of decision in more detail, for it's a fact of life that we humans need disaster, in order to look UP from our puny preoccupations. Point here is that you will be making decisions which seem wrong, in the Pleroma phase. Takes Superhuman understanding, therefore, to make them properly.
Same for the Cross: to elect it rather than the Three Temptations ended up meaning that millions of people went hungry, millions more didn't believe in Him, and Satan got to keep on running this world. Seems immoral, right? Yeah, and none of us would even be alive today, plus heaven would be under Satan, if the Lord hadn't chosen the Cross over all those lesser moralities. See? Immature understanding has its own sense of rights and wrongs; something more advanced, seems wrong. God is Infinite Maturity. So here in Evidence Testing, the Exclusive Love For and Right of FATHER over everyone else, is On Trial.
The crowning Superhuman event, is ignominy. In the last phase of Testing you will be exposed and humiliated, whether to the 'public' of just your immediate family, or to some larger group of folks. It's not like the movies. In God's Trial, the hero always looks like a fool, Isa52:14, 53:2-5,7-9. That's inhuman, too. Again, only Bible-in-you-head enables you to keep going to the end.
The believer undergoing this testing literally changes nature, so there's no faking the 5th-R RESULTS. Again, "20" is the number of "battle", "years of service to retirement", "city or Temple building", and "adulthood" in the Bible. So the 2nd 20, means a "40", the number of Testing, in Bible:
Let's elaborate on how Relationship Basics #I through #VII 'play' in both the Trial and your life; with emphasis on II., the Evidence-Test "Passing Grade" of "Remaining" -- here called "Staying", as in "staying together". Essentially, you pass if you prove Faithfully-Fit Bride, and Fertile: so 'staying together in the Vine, Christ' is what's On Trial. These are TRIAL "matters", issues to be resolved at court. In legal lingo of the Bible, a "matter" is something before the court which resolves the case at issue. The frequent Hebrew term is "riv", in the OT. Greek equivalent is "pragma" and other words. Bible also uses other legal terms. So in this section, we'll see the major "matters" before the Supreme Court of Heaven with respect to Church On Trial, in Evidence Testing.
Of paramount concern: when the believer gets filled up with Christ's Thinking, he becomes Compatible, and it's time for.. ahem, maximum intimacy. Hence, the labor pains. So all the commandments, all the pushing for compatibility, all the huff-and-puff, is really.. making spiritual LOVE. Before, we were spiritually too young to make love, so we had to learn in a different 'language', like commandments and do's, and think Doctrine as if it were a 'work', etc. But now old enough, we find out hey, it's all about Being Together! HAYAH. HAWAH. BEING. YHWH. The Self-Existing One wants to Be One With All Things. And if you want that also, you'll Get It From Him! Here in the Evidence Tests that union "completes" (teleiow). Perfection of contract, meaning its completion.
So Evidence Testing is on the 2nd R: Relationship Basics, not flash.
So what follows below is an succinct upgrade stressing the macroeconomic Trial role of Evidence Testing, versus the earlier Part III content (which covers the 'microeconomics' of internal spiritual development). Ergo: flowing from the eight macro R's we just saw prior to this section, we have an outline of Trial Testing Issues. All these issues are playing AT ONCE in any given moment of the test.
This Evidence Testing runs in three phases, with 'rest' intervals in between to alert you to a phase's end. You have to pass the prior phase before you are 'moved' to the next one. These phases are all imposed and you consent to the imposition -- you don't seek the testing and you don't refuse it, either: i) a "fasting" or "adversity" phase which is internal/private (no one else knows or sees), analogous to Matt4;
Generally, the Testing Period runs the last decade or more of your life, to adequately cover all three phases; but it could be much shorter, i.e., the Lord's last three years were all Evidence Testing. "Public" could be just those in your immediate periphery, i.e., friends, family, co-workers, etc. Isaiah 52:13-14 tells you the Testing is a High-low spanning, see also the dokimazw clause in Rom12:2, and the spanning tenor of Phili2:5-10 (which parallels Isa52:13-14, 53:10-12). Eph1:23's "Filling all in all" includes divergence (a kind of leveraging); so Testing will include material prosperity (usually in the middle phase, to set you up for bigger humiliation in the final phase).
ii) a "prosperity" or "public" phase, analogous to His public ministry;
iii) a "humiliation" or "high suffering" final phase which is public+private, analogous to the Cross (publicly humiliated, but the imputation and judgement of sins was wholly invisible).
As Hebrews 11 explains this nine-part Trial Answer, the superior 'performance' of God's Deeds in reply to our merely wanting the Relationship, was Evidenced right away, at the Fall. We saw in Part II how Adam and the woman merely admitted they were wrong, so God saved them based on their mere BELIEF in the coming Savior (Gen3:15 promise, 'sealed' by the sacrifice of animals, hence the animals' skins for clothing). We then saw in Part II how for the OT heroes, the Evidence Test was a Vote of "So, what?" to everything else in life, but God. Abraham longed for but one son; God wanted to make a universe of sons out from those longing loins. Then, He did. Then, Abraham was told to go sacrifice that son on Mt. Moriah. At that point, Abraham learned only God mattered to him. God already knew that. Abraham did not. For love never accounts itself as loving enough. So that's the precedence, the prologue, giving rise to the Cross. Giving Risen Evidence, therefore, of Church's Legated Royal Spiritual Life. So the Test is now upgraded to His Eph4:13 level. At which level, everything else in life is a "So, what" -- including, life itself.
"In fact, 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 (dokimazw, like testing a gemstone versus a fake; another play on words, hard to explain) regarding [still part of eis to clause, content of "it"] what's the Will of God, the Divine Good-and-well-pleasing-and-complete." (Greek hendiadys might be appositional, but it looks like a listing which Paul doesn't complete because they know the list. Similar structure is in Heb6:1ff.)
1) the barriers of finity, and
So note the genius solution: Unite the Sin IN Christ, Who is GOD-MAN.
2) the barriers of sin within finity.The very union of His Own Dual Nature solves 1) if He completes the Cross, which He did.
Consequently, Father's Gift to Son is to make us One In Him. Remember the Fourth Facet of Part IVb? Our "hupostasis" is with The Hupostasis, Christ, the YHWH, God-Man. It's real:
The solution for 2) is the same, since for creation to 'share' in Him, all sins must 'place' in Him.
For Christ Our Archegos wanted TOTAL RAPPORT with Father, and given the nature of the 'knowledge' of sin, its imputation and judgement, He Had To Remain Sinless -- even as Father is sinless -- To Get All That Knowledge. (Sin deadens, hence deadens the ability to know it.) So No Barriers in knowings, sharings, between Son's Humanity and Father (nor Son-Spirit, etc.), due TO Cross: which, Omniscience perpetually 'sees', so The Cross Is Always 'On', Always Shared.
This isn't a have-to thing, but a WANT-TO thing. You'll never make it if you keep living like a child, viewing everything as some parental rule. That's why over 99% of Christians historically don't advance beyond spiritual age 8. The kid is supposed to grow up from "thou shalt" to "I will." Because you want to. Greek verb menw (covered above in II and below in the "Staying" section), is all about want-to. And you can't want to, unless you want the Togetherness. And you can't want the Togetherness, unless you know God. And you can't know God, unless you live in God's System. It takes some years. Took Paul almost 40 years (30-68AD) to go from new believer to Victorious Death. Took Christ 30 years to ready for His Testing from Satan and for the lead-up to the Cross. No two individuals are alike, and what's an easy fast growth today, can easily get bogged down or reversed tomorrow. We all have our knotted kinks, and God knows exactly how to untie us. But Love never coerces volition. So this isn't a have-to thing, but a want-to thing.
Hebrew11:1 is the quintessential statement about this Togetherness Love Test. In Greek, the verse says: "Estin.de pístis elpizoménwn, hupóstasis pragmátwn, élegchos ou Blepoménwn." Translation (not in any Bible I've seen): "Now Doctrine confidently-believed, is the [Christ-]Substance of The Trial: Evidence, unseen." Then there's 1Jn4:12-17, which is too long to review, here: DDNA1.htm is dedicated to it. V.17 also baldly says, as does Heb11:1's "wn" case endings, that Our Learning Of Him ("hupostasis"=Christ -- look it up in Heb11:3) is Trial Evidence. Not works, but believed doctrine (first meaning of pistis is What is Believed, not the act of believing -- see Bauer or other lexicon).
So anyone making an issue of sin or good deeds, makes an issue of something INdependent, and therefore evil. God throws all that out of Court, Zech3:1-5, Ps103:12, Jer31:34, Isa64:6, John 16:9, all of Hebrews 3 (parallel to Jn16:9, esp. 3:12-19), 1Jn1:9's "adikia", Rev20:11-15. [Noun "adikia" means a judge who abuses his office, etymologically. Worse than sin is to NOT use 1Jn1:9, because then the Holy Spirit cannot justify Filling you and furthering your growth in Christ's Thinking. So the sin itself is of zero significance, compared to the Rejection of the Pardon. Peter really excoriated that in 2Pet1:9, covered in corrected translation, in TrueSpirituality.htm. Fourth Reason for Invisibility in Part III went over "adikia" in much more detail.]
Again, the lesser issues which preoccupy the sin nature and the human race will 'compete'. Winning means you can be hit but the Love remains. Again, it's not about 'performance' (i.e., the fact you are so easily beset). It's about WHETHER YOU QUIT the spiritual life, due to the pressure. Loving Him means a tendency to be perfectionistic, to be demoralized as you see yourself continually fail the Standard of Obedience you feel He should receive from you. So whatever most makes you call yourself a failure, will be a big Test category. Conversely, if your penchant is to be a bull in a china shop (an expression of aggressive Love), you'll be tested there. The LOVE is always what's tested, just as in Matt4; and of course any sin-nature proclivities glom onto genuine Love like flies on doo-doo. So you will constantly experience failure, and that 'competing' sin nature will tempt your focus onto lesser issues of blaming, despondency, etc. Atop that, the boys at Satan&Co. wanna help the sin nature, so give it lots of oomph by sending you thoughts, messing with your periphery (people and things). Anything to get you to give up. For togetherness is the antithesis of divorce, and they need you to divorce: they hope the many fall downs will be so demoralizing, you'll either blame God or yourself so much, you'll morph out of the spiritual life. 99.9% of the time they succeed well. God empowers you (Holy Spirit), so the boys on the other side of the Trial gotta have their chance, too. You're always picking between the two, and 99% of the time you fall down. Just get up again. Think of it like practicing a golf swing, racquetball strokes, learning a language. Many failures, but persistence results in success, Heb10:36 (not "receive what was promised" but "carry off the prize", my pastor always notes); Phili3:14 (note the Greek's plodding, slogging cadence), Heb12:7 (NJB is good, here).
Fourth Reason for Royalty in Part III focuses on how passing the Evidence Tests defeats Satan, as does the Fifth Facet in Part IVb. You'll recall from the "Bible remains a mystery to Church" link section of Part IVa that the A-N Trial term categories for Church, all had to be met. One by one, the Witnesses complete, with any one of us potentially among that number. So I.B. "Bridal Battle Testimony", above, having successfully completed, results in I.H. "Heaven's Historical Mistrial Rejoinder" above, with respect to that (your) Witness. This dramatically shortens the remaining time to the 8th R, RAPTURE, for each such completion. The I.H. "Heaven's.. Rejoinder" Testimony is that creature nature doesn't matter, Happiness is knowing God irrespective of anything else no matter how bad or good (prosperity is the harder pressure to bear).
Thus the nine parts of the Trial Answer, play in your own life. And you didn't do a lick of work! Yet you are EXHAUSTED! Trial Over!
So Evidence Testing is on the 3rd "R": Remaining in the 2nd R, Relationship. STAYING, not Straying.
Staying causes all other "R's", but chiefly the 5th and 6th: Result of Oneness, and Reproduction.
The art of Ruling is to BE the Embodiment of the Royal Standard, as we saw in Part III's First and Second Reasons for Royalty. People look up to royalty. So without legislation or coercion, people are 'ruled' by their OWN desire to 'ape' what they see in a celebrity -- and especially, in a Royal. So the Royal doesn't have to make many rules for others, but himself is a walking textbook of rules he loves to impose on himself. The people seeing him are inspired to emulate, and THAT's how rulership is accomplished. We all seek to emulate Christ -- no one is putting a gun to our heads, or setting enforcement over our lives. So Christ rules us without having to 'do' anything.
Since one rules by BEING the Embodiment, ideally one is BRED for rule, from childhood. This is especially true, for the Royal Spiritual Future we have. Therefore:
Marriage is BASIC, and EXCLUSIVE. As my pastor liked to say, Adam wasn't created just a man, but a husband. Isha wasn't created just a woman, but a wife. No greater intimacy, no greater potential for heartache or happiness exists, as in marriage. A person grows up three times, in life: first, physically/mentally (normal growth); second, and ideally, in learning Him; thirdly, in Marriage. For in marriage, a couple grow up together. That's why, ideally, they first became mature before marrying. Well here in the Evidence Test, you've grown up enough not only to marry Him -- which by this point is already true in your mind -- but you are ready to bear Him kids. From the Seed in you, His Thinking. Forever. Through which Tests, you also grow bigger -- to delivery! Rescue!
So in Evidence Testing, Rulership of Love is tested. Sovereign Love, a King's Love built up in you over all those decades of Bible class, Rom5:5. For if you would be close to God, you too must become a Ruler in your mentality -- like He is, in His Essence. So that buildup is tested, here.
You've married Him in your mind by the time you enter that "Spiritual Maturity" stage explained in Part III's "First Reason for Invisibility". You are occupied with Him, and Phili1:21 is your life. But just as in a marriage between two people who are right for each other, this twin pull of dependence and independence, is bewildering. You are already 'complete' in the sense that the Structure of His Thinking is fully in you. But it's not fully functioning. The Evidence Test phase will complete that function. The form of marriage has become the full-fledged Intimacy of Marriage, total coalescence of souls.
The world focuses on the middle to the exclusion of what's outside it. Hence, "earthly things", as Paul puts it in his letters. So when mankind understands "God", even when saved, they look at Him with a middling interest. Light this candle, get this blessing, follow these forms of worship, get these goodies, do this behavior, pooh-pooh those who don't. They orient to everything based on middles: what happens down here, laterals with each other, right/wrong (irrespective of truth, which is quite different), and on and on and on. Life is a trip to the supermarket, and everyone has his own produce to sell. They get right the idea that they have a life, promises God will bless them, etc. What they don't get, is the Totality of the Intimacy. God is not a partial being, but Absolute. So the relationship to Him is Absolute. As in, "First Commandment". God is the Only Love Object, and Christ made it clear to Satan that all the kingdoms of the world -- all people, and all benefit TO people -- is of zero significance, Matt4:10. Christ essentially says in Matt4, "For FATHER or forget it!" There is only One Morality: FOR FATHER. Everything else is of zero consequence.
You now think the same way. See, this stage is no child's thing, no performance thing, no works thing, it's marriage, which is EXCLUSIVE.
Remember how the "First Reason for Invisibility" in Part III explained the Bible verses for each growth stage? Well, at maturity you yourself are able to bear children, and the 'children' come from all the Bible Doctrine you've accumulated and used for so very long (at that point). Royal issue: can the wife bear an heir? This is the 6th R, Reproduction. As you may know, many times in history a royal husband had to have more than one wife, simply to assure the royal bloodline. So, the completion of the Evidence Test proves you CAN bear spiritual children, and you DO. Just as the Cross depicts: that's our paradigm.
That's why the "God is a Perfect Actuary" section in Part IVb notes in its purple table, that Pleroma benefits go on forever to periphery. Those are the 'children'. Everything Divine is immaterial, a thinking. God just thinks a thing, and it is so. That kind of immaterial 'begetting' must be produced prior to the believer's death, even as it was produced prior to Christ's death on and via, the Cross. Such 'begetting' is vital to a free-yet-sinless, eternity. We saw that in #VIII of the "Relationship Basics" division, above. That's why the mass of Bride who reject the spiritual life -- and hence prove sterile -- can even get an eternal inheritance, because enough Divine Doctrine is available via the Pleroma person to 'feed' them all. See? It's Deut8:3, Matt4:4! The Real Bread, The Real Way To Feed The Poor is to be Full of Truth, yourself. Don't know how the Bible could make it any plainer, than that.
It's bad English to mix metaphors, but great Hebrew and Greek. Bible mixes metaphors together in the very words chosen, if you study the etymology of them. We'll see some of these terms in the next section. For the moment, remember the themes of Divine Benefit Plan 'financing' of thought, expressed in Part IVa, b, c. Also, the metaphor of a polity: King's Thinking circulates such that all the people Fit Together as a Hierarchical and Unified Society, 2nd Criterion of the Fit Bride table in Part IVb. Tandem with that was the Part III "Summing up the Reasons" and "Summing Up the Conclusions" sections. Christ is the Head of the Universe. So His Thinking must be High Enough and Big Enough to 'hold together' all those under Him. You are in training to become a King of a kingdom under Him. So your thinking must become high enough and big enough to 'hold' your kingdom. This means you lose your personal life to the Job of Ruling. So here in Evidence Testing, that 'holding power' of 'staying' is tested, to see if your thinking is High Enough and Big Enough. If so, you inherit a certain number of believers as your kingdom, and you will rule them forever. Those are your 'children', and their thinking will literally be based on yours. It's an awesome role. 100% of you must be 100% dedicated to Christ, for this structure to both work perfectly, and for you to enjoy it. God never gives gifts without first developing in the recipient, the capacity to enjoy them. Hence the royal-breeding analogy which began this "STAYING" division.
So all the other Bible metaphors signifying Word -- food, shelter, clothing, riches, life, breath, love, happiness, freedom -- these are all personal needs, but also polity needs. And in you they are to 'house'. So you will get in eternity all those material things to 'feed' your polity, if enough Word is in you. Again, that's the purpose of Evidence Testing, to complete that Word in you, so it will REPRODUCE in them. For Father, under Him your Husband forever.
For the spiritual life down here is about whether you want to relate intimately to God, and how much. Your choices forge a kind of METHOD of RELATIONSHIP: distant, or close. If distant, there need to be many intermediaries between God and you, in order for the totality of Divine Thought Father wants, to occur. 99.9% of Christians choose distance, being instead intimate with other people, works, ritual. That's the method of relating to God they choose, so that's what they get. The Pleroma make the opposite choice: they want exclusive relationship directly with God, and all else is extra, designed to be subordinated TO that exclusive relationship, i.e., the 144,000 in Revelation chose exclusivity, so they become the Lord's personal entourage it seems (Rev14:4). The 24 seraphim in Rev 4:10 are right there in the throne room, in His immediate proximity. So by analogy, the Pleroma get to be closer to Him. So they get kingdoms, because that status makes them have exclusive, marital-intimacy relationship with God their King: close, intimate. So everyone gets what he wants, from God.
Marital Oneness as a metaphor of Spiritual Life with God is the most-stressed theme in Bible. So the bullets here on how Scripture covers spiritual intimacy with God are quite limited, focusing rather on the STAYING criterion for Victory. Additionally, this Extreme Divine Desire For Togetherness often goes unnoticed in theology, not merely because Christians tend to be ascetic so avoid proper teaching about marital intimacy; but because in Bible, foundational doctrines are foundationally expressed: by the use of a preposition, a case ending, juxtaposition of words, intransitive verbs used transitively -- every nuance of grammar and syntax is 'employed'. That rhetorical style reflects God as Foundation for Everything, Omnipresence Unseen and Universality of Applicability.
Infinite Unseen Sovereignty is Everywhere, but that's not why He's in Everything. He WANTS to be in Everything, because He is the Everything, and Everything about Infinite God is a Desire for Togetherness, flat! Hence the Cross which accomplishes that Desire, Isa53:12, Eph1:23. Compatibility, therefore, isn't a "work", but a goal: Absolute Togetherness. That they may be one even as We are One, Christ prayed in John 17.
Greek verb "menw" ("w" is a long "oh" sound) means many things. Christ used the verb during the First Advent to illustrate the RELATIONSHIP with Him, post-salvation. As you'll soon see here, all the NT writers play off His use of the verb and its many cognate verbs and nouns. In 1Jn, for example, menw is usually translated "abide", in the sense of Remaining, Staying somewhere. Really, staying at home. For the root meaning of "menw" is to live-at-home. Idea of love, comfort, wanting-to-be-there. Not just a location. You'll see this word often used in the NT; interestingly, it also has both LEGAL and MILITARY connotations -- idea of remaining-true, remaining-at-post, remaining-in-witness-box (because the opposing attorney couldn't discredit your testimony). [Unfortunately, due to the insane translation rules taught in seminaries (one English for one Greek word!), English Bibles often translate menw in so many different ways, you miss its live-at-home-comfort/fealty idea. This word is worth all the time you can spend researching using some detailled lexicon: Strong's is not strong enough! Use some 'biggie', like full Kittle or Bauer Danker Arndt Gingrich et. al. Add to these the smaller, insightful lexicons like Thayer, sometimes Friberg or Liddell-Scott. Amazingly, some of the smaller ones, though seemingly shallow, actually afford more insight. Read through as many as you can find.]
As just noted, "menw" was coined by the Lord to describe our relationship to Him, in John 15. Vine and Branches. In all 60 uses of "vine" in Bible, the metaphor always has sexual connotations; it's tangentially referenced elsewhere, as in the command to creatures to "be fruitful and multiply", in Gen1. Husband fills the wife, so kids result, the "fruit". He makes this same analogy about sex in many ways within the Gospels and the beginning of Acts; baldly prays for such a marriage in John 17's "that they may be one" with the Godhead repeatedly, and makes it clear Truth being IN us is the way to do this (v.11,17,19,21-23; see also 1Cor6:16-20); and of course His Discourse in Rev Chaps1-3 are Husband-y. One of His many methods of analogizing the spiritual life to marriage is His comment that once a mother gives birth to a child, she forgets all about her 'labor pains' (Jn16:21). Bible uses that metaphor a lot, usu. translated 'travail' in KJV.
So the verb menw is 'husband' to the famous and oft-repeated hupomenw, for obvious reasons: the Greek prefix "hupo" means "under" or "underneath", and the compound verb of hupo+menw is variously translated "to be patient", "to endure", "to obey". My pastor likes to translate hupomenw as 'having staying power', and crafted a whole doctrine frequently taught us about "the Staying Power of the Cross". Hupomenw is a RESPONSIVE verb, compared to "menw" alone; but obviously still means be-at-home-underneath love, Authority. (BTW: -menw suffixed nouns change to -mone.) Hupomenw and hupotassw (latter means being under orders, is often used in a military sense) are favorite verbs of the NT writers, but it's really interesting that John strips out the "hupo", and stresses just the "staying-at-home" root of menw alone. Why? Because John focuses on Motive, which is Love. He's known for that focus among Greek scholars, and with good reason: if you don't Love being under the Lord's Thinking, what's the point of being alive? And, of course, as John develops the menw keyword in 1Jn, he's saying just that: if you don't menw in Doctrine, you aren't but a walking corpse.
Considering John's big stress on the initial Garden marriage via his "in the beginning" and other very subtle keyword uses (which my pastor stresses over and over, tying the Garden marriage to the Church, and especially to Christian marriage), I can't escape noticing a sort of 'making love' nuance in John's use of menw. The better lexicons will tell you menw has a long history in Greek drama, also sotto voce: the idea being to dedicate oneself to a god (i.e., in Euripides' play Ion). In the Greek religions, you had a communion with a god via both sexual and mental uniting.
John seems to be making a play on that principle in both his Gospel and 1Jn; and given his repeated stress on the Indwelling ( skenoo, but "menw" means "to dwell IN", too, and is frequently translated as such in the NT), it's clear John is talking about all the aspects of marital intimacy with the Real God; just that the spiritual equivalent of our responsive sexual act is the Word being "in" us. My pastor, when talking about sex, nearly always reminds us that the biggest reason why sex apart from one's spouse is horrible, is that marital sex is designed to "build the castle walls" of the marital bond. So, too, with the Spiritual Bond circulating Bible Doctrine creates in the soul under the Spirit. Hence anything not Word is horrible, disgusting. Fidelity alone is attractive. This is why learning Him is the Only Way to Stop Sinning. Something Better -- SomeOne Better -- has to REPLACE the old attractions. Fidelity exists for a reason: you are more in love with the Object than anything else in life. It's a happiness, not a preening.
The world's sense of pleasure and rightness is always animalistic: shallow, rotelike, grunting, with mere feeling passing itself off as truth ("feels right", ugh), love or spirituality. So religion caters to that worldly sense with its endless Stepford-wife strictures, robotic. Set prayers, rituals, works, etc., all conveying "God" as painful and animalistic, himself. Spin this prayer wheel, eat this food, chant this mantra, light incense or a candle, live a deprived life. Every religion has features like those (Asian ones) just listed. Same ol' game dressed up in different cultural clothing. Magic comes from the robotic observances. See? No brains, just movement: for animals are to be herded and led wherever the brains want them to go. So is it any surprise that sex is sold like animals rutting? Many partners, all about having some physical pleasure which magically turns into love if you make the right movements. No different than religion. Same with drugs, wealth, you name it. Exact same formula as that Satan's magic-fruit pitch in the Garden.
The Christian God is the Real God and He doesn't prescribe us to live like animals. True Righteousness is truly enjoyable. Animals don't know how to enjoy anything but what's animalistic. But we can't stop living like animals, until we learn the Word and come to enjoy His Superior Taste, Hebrews 6:5. Taste the Lord, for He is Good, Ps34:8. God is an Acquired Taste, and that's the purpose of the spiritual life: So Tasty, that the Lord wanted to taste ( geuw, thoroughly savor) Death, Heb2:9. As a result, He was Completed (v.10). See? Once you taste Him long enough, everything else is.. well, animalistic. So your fealty to Him, is for a reason: He TASTES BETTER.
Yep. In Gen22:5, Abraham says he and the lad will return. The "lad", Isaac, was no boy: he was between 25-40 years old, signified by the Hebrew word na'ar (Isaac married at age 40 (Gen25:20), so this passage happened sometime earlier.) So both of them needed to know how much they loved El. El already knew, of course. Hebrews explains how Abraham was able to do it: he deemed Isaac to be returned from the dead. Because, his love WAS total. For this, he became "Friend of God", James 2:22 et seq. Not for any works: James makes this fact screamingly clear in the Greek, by using the intransitive verb, sunergew -- so the 'works' weren't done by Abraham, but by the Doctrine ("faith") in him. (See also Rom8:28, same usage.) Because Abraham's love had been grown fully, nothing separated El and him. Which, he needed to know -- and the Testing Proved it to him. And to Satan&Co. So based on this one man, all of history continued. He is the father of all nations, since believers will be from all nations (see Rom4 and 9). Chief is the Son, the Christ.
That's the meaning of the Evidence Test: Togetherness, flat! even under what seem to be 'immoral' conditions. For God is #1, and any other loves are immoral, by comparison. Total Love for Christ, SURPASSING all your other loves (and hates), whatever they may be. On Trial. That's the meaning of the Cross, as we saw in #7 of Part II, the Third and Fourth Reasons of Part III, and will see again in this section's "Combat" table.
Phili 1:20 Exegetical notes:
See the irony of REST: God seems to 'just sit there', yet no one is busier. Same, for Royalty. Again, the Consummate Ruling Role of Royalty is to BE the Embodiment of the Royal Standard. The true enjoyment of Ruling is to fulfill Righteous Standards, oneself. Thus the life is actually forever busy, especially in one's THINKING. One lives for the Righteous Standards upon self, not others. That attitude inspires people, and to communicate the high value of the Standards, a Royal is generally public, yet 'distant'. The 'distance' is to give the ruled 'space', privacy, freedom to emulate or not. Granted, ruling also requires governance, but governance never inspires people: it merely regulates them. Ideally, governance would help facilitate the Standard people want to emulate anyway -- from seeing the Royal. In our world, that facilitation never happens. All any human government can do, is mess things up: for we humans are all messed up.
But God Inspires -- just to look at Him. And why? Because God Infinitely ENJOYS Living the Divine Standard. That's why He'll never sin. Only the Divine Standard is Desirable. We see Him LOVE it, and are inspired to do the same, Ps89:14-15, 2Cor5:14, Phili2:5, Rom5:8, etc. Accordingly, STAYING in the Royal Spiritual Life, is a Trial Matter of Inspired Motive, and Informed Marital Maturity: im tasim asham naphesho, "If He will Appoint His Own SOUL as a Substitute for sin", Isa53:10. Hebrew "im" means "if", so IF you keep RESTING as He did on the Cross, that's a Trial Victory. Of course, the reverse of "im" is "mi", the short form of Hebrew birthing preposition, "min". And so IF you REST, you BIRTH for your Husband Whom you have come to love with all your heart and soul and mind, in Evidence Testing.
Notice how STAYING and therefore RESTING, address the 8 R's of Evidence Testing.
Hence your fealty during Evidence Testing is due to COMFORT, even under pressure. It is not comfort as the world gives; but rather, comfort in knowing Him so great, the world's enticements and discomforts can't interfere. You are hit but don't quit, 2Cor4:7-10, 5:14-21, 12:9-10. Word in your head is the Comfort now: so the hits occur and even knock you flat -- but they don't defeat the Love. You remain because you WANT to. Satisfied despite suffering, because Full. Pleroma. Full of FOOD, Bible Doctrine, "the unhidden" (lit. trans of aletheia), Truth. So full of the Seed (Gal3) are you, that you are 'pregnant' with His Seed, it's all hanging out there, unhidden: you are the verge of delivery. So will you keep on abiding DURING LABOR, or abort? Just as, Christ "abided" in Doctrine, in the Father, in the Spirit -- even on the Cross. No glamour, no flash, but instead: demeaning and messy and, well.. BASIC. So basically, Rest. Not work. Rest, not (arrogance+rest) arrest.
Ironically, it's a lot tougher to do 'nothing', than to do something. First, we've got the sin nature inherited from Adam, which equates to an incessant do-something urge hitting the soul. Second, our bodies just can't sit still for long. Thirdly, the body (and the soul, too) has certain 'survival reflexes'. For example, if you smell smoke, your first instinct will be to get out of whatever room you are in; if you hear a sudden noise, you'll want to hide, get up to investigate..something. If you've ever had a CAT scan or other medical test (or even dental surgery) in which it was critical you stay very still: didn't you at that moment want to move more than ever? Paul talks about this problem in Romans 7 when he quips that he didn't covet, until the Law forbade it. In short, RESTING is really not something our body can handle. We seek it constantly, but.. oh, gotta turn on that TV or radio!
Hence it's a Superhuman thing (#VI above), nay, even a Demonstration of the Superior Dependence on God (#V above) -- if we can just SIT STILL while Superhuman Doctrine and the demon boys, are hitting us!
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Now let's try to interweave all the above Testing Structure, the 8 R's, +Roman Numeral parameters I through VIII, +Bible concepts about abiding, marriage, bearing kids -- together. Won't be easy! EVIDENCE TEST KEY ==> Functionally speaking, our #7 REST plays thusly: Do You (#3) "REMAIN" aka "Abide" To Completion (Greek teleios or telos, "the end" in English Bibles)? It's a full-spectrum set of testing, "filling all in all" objective to be realized in you, Eph1:23, "abased and to abound", Philippians 4:12. Soul CAPACITY is being built. A child's capacity for nice and not-nice is very limited. An adult is more 'capacious', so to speak. Christ's Soul Capacity became Infinite even in His Humanity, due to that Ultimate Evidence Test, the Cross. So here your capacity must be increased by prosperity and adversity which hits. The highest prosperity is He Himself, Whom you now See via the Doctrine itself. All else pales by comparison. That prosperity makes Evidence Testing almost intolerable. For now you have the tension of being stuck in this body: this world's nicenesses become too low, and of course the world's adversities are already intolerable. But you learn to enjoy both despite the pressure, for Doctrine -- His Thinking -- matters more than them all. GOD ALWAYS PUSHES THE ENVELOPE. It's literally like a pregnancy, your soul being soooo full of Word. Joy and its antithesis, all at once.
As noted prior, Evidence Testing of you therefore exhibits your own #I "A-I" nine-part Trial Answer, just as His Evidence Testing (Matt4-through-Cross events) demonstrated His Love for Father. So the Evidence is, "See How You Competently Love Me", successfully tested. Proving the success to Satan&Co., and to you. 'Not proof from you. GOD IS TESTIFYING. After all, creatures need the proof, not God. So, this Testing proves why #5 "R" justifiably BEGETS #II through #VI. For, God is doing the proving -- to you. To Satan&Co. (#VII). This Evidence Test phase is really the Biggest Payoff of life! God really does "save the best for last." Look: by this point, what the world drools over means nothing to you. Only the Lord matters. So, what does the Lord give to the believer who has been grown to have 'the all things'? Well, look at Romans 8:31 and following: only Combat is Enough! Imagine: enjoying true combat while in it? 'More than goodies? But that's impossible!?! Heh. What a paradox. Just as the Lord felt about the Last Supper, yearning for His Cross with all His Heart (Luke 22:15), so will you come to feel. For, all the learning, all the training, all the waiting..now pays off, and you in your puny body get to see it! It's the greatest joy and happiness one can ever know, this side of Heaven. And you'll know it, while in it: you see how true it is, yourself, for God Demonstrates The Evidence To You, Isa 53:11 in both Hebrew and Greek OT texts (see Isa53.htm last screen, or Isa53trans.htm). It's a kind of release and relief, to finally be there. Since Evidence Testing proceeds in measured segments and phases, the REPETITION of RELEASE and RELIEF, builds. So, the Testing builds. In the final phases of the Testing, an "unalloyed happiness" builds into a kind of stasis that the pressure cannot dent. The side-by-sidedness of the pressure and the "chara" aka "joy", both REMAIN (#3 "R"), coalescing into a kind of Oneness, thus REALIZING (#4) God's Oneness Goal (#III).
So the sins are worse, post-salvation, because you are internally AT WAR. Your old nature remains, its natural condition of being a 'tares' crop now agitated by the Word-wheat being planted in it. To your sin nature, the wheat is weeds, 1Cor2:14, Rom 8:6-8, Gal 5:17. It's agitating. So from the point of salvation onward, you've two crops growing, until you die. Not only that, but as you keep growing, your STANDARDS CHANGE. You are becoming more compatible with God, so what once didn't bother you, agitates: for you now see the evil which heretofore looked 'good' to you. Just like Paul says, in Gal5:17, 2Cor4-5, first half of Romans 8. Everything about God is alien to humanity. So this Rom 12:2 transformation won't play pretty. By the time you are in the Pleroma phase, therefore, you ardently want those tares defeated. For you are largely Wheat, now. Here in Pleroma you get harvested, wheat and tares together. Thing is, by this stage the tares have been deprived of their satanic water and soil for so long, they are rather sickly, yet that makes them more choking than ever. The wheat is rather strong, so the dichotomy by this point is extreme. You know that, because you're REMAINING in the RELATIONSHIP, so that's a RESULT you can finally see, main "abiding" theme in 1Jn. So it's a relief and a stasis, and the tares are there -- everything, all at once. Side-by-side, akin to how Omniscience sees everything. So it was, on the Cross -- our tares, His Wheat, harvested together, ubahaburato nirpalanu, sewn up in His Wounds and thus healed, Isa53:5, last clause. This besidedness is confusing for a long time, so often a Christian thinks he's failing in the Christian life, when in truth he's just experiencing the simultaneous pressure of the High Doctrine he knows, plus the low hits to his sin nature, from temptation. Romans 7 helps you see that simultaneity is a permanent condition, down here. But think: God Sees All At Once, so the besidedness is a permanent condition for HIM. To get the rapport, then, you need to have this besidedness of Knowing, in you. God is perfect, we are not, but we somewhat 'know' sin by sinning ourselves and living with it daily. We don't know it like He does, because being a sinner deadens the ability to know anything. But we get the 'stretch' of High-low by getting all that Wheat planted in us: Bread of Life, Bread of Heaven, Our Manná, Christ. Which of course irritates our sin nature no end, so living with this Knowledge of Better Thinking is rather abrasive to that nature. Still, the point is the besidedness remains; over time, it doesn't get better, it gets worse. It gets worse, because the more Bible you live on, the more you see how sick and puny are the world's values, the better you see what "evil" and "sin" really mean, and the more UNattractive you find it all. God doesn't sin for a reason: it's unattractive. But we are born in sin, so we are attracted to sin. Bible growing in you changes all that. But what it doesn't change, is the sin nature. So you are progressively aware of it as something you're stuck with, just as Paul explains in Romans 7. Yet the purpose of those tares Now, is to teach what it was like for HIM to be God-man, to be made sin. And, what it's like to be God, Omnisciently knowing all the High and all the Low -- at once. So the Togetherness (#I.F. through I.H., #III & #IV) grows from BOTH the Wheat and the tares in your soul, Isa54:1, Luke 8! So due to the simultaneity, your body is feeling one thing, your sin nature another, your soul is hit with them both, yet right there dominating them all, is this Wheat of Knowing Him, 2Cor4:7-10. Hence the Hypostatic Paradox of Him, but in your body, now: the hurricane-strength winds blow His Wheat, but it doesn't uproot. The low shears chop at it, but it grows even more, as a result. You should be upset, but are not -- instead you are happier still; or, are not as upset as you should be, and people are amazed (and even ticked off, for they think you don't care). In fact, only one thing can upset you: whether you are 'right' with Him. That is your weak spot. That's where all the temptations target. For nothing else will work. "Satan played to the Lord's strength" in Matt4, my pastor explained. Idea that if your strong suit is defeated, you are thoroughly defeated. Well, what's strong in Pleroma, is your love for Him. Yet the combat actually develops that love further. Happiness here is being in Him, together, seeing Him. Unhappiness is anything and everything else. You've become a one-note person: Only He is Worthy of Note. So to get you to divorce Him is critical, for that's true misery. All other attractions have lost their power. So a Cross seems as though God 'leaves', disapproves. No greater grief, than separation from Him. Of course, the Ultimate in Besidedness, is the Cross itself: simultaneous imputation and judgement of all sins in history, all to a Perfect Soul Full of Perfect Divine Truth. So what happened? |
So look at Him: Combat here is living on His Thinking, for His Thinking paid for sins, bedato yatsdiq in Isa53:11. But more than that! He was Maximally Enlarged, megalunw'd! For the 'combat' of the Cross Enlarged His Human Soul For TOTAL Rapport with Father. See Isa52:13-14 +Isa53:10-11 in the LXX, Heb1:4, 2:10, 5:8-9. That's the first reason why He wanted the Cross! He was not a masochist, but rather ardently wanted Total Rapport with the Father, as explained in #III.
Knowledge makes the soul bigger if that Knowledge is Truth, 2Cor9:10. Well, the truth about sin is that Sins Exist And Are Bad. To know any kind of truth, bad or good, is imperative for God to be God. Nothing can be 'shaved', however heinous. But of course, if one sins one knows nothing, as we saw in Part II when Adam's sin obliterated his understanding of God. So our 'knowledge' of sin is not like God's. So Christ's knowledge couldn't be either, for the opposite reason: He had to stay sinLESS. So to complete the Truth Knowledge Connection with Father and thus have that Togetherness 100%, He'd actually have to RECEIVE that horrific knowledge ON the Cross before He could know it, 2Cor5:21. From which Pregnancy while ON the Cross, He actually received and Birthed from His Knowledge all Righteousness, again 2Cor5:21 (which points back to the b'dato yatsdiq clause in Isa53:11). In union with His Own Deity, in Union with Both Father and the Spirit Who indwelled Him and Who sustained His Humanity. Unity. Community. Communion: Three. Maximum Intimacy, Full-Spectrum, from the 'top' of Holy God all the way down to the 'bottom', the true hell no one else will ever experience. No wonder He has white hair in Revelation! See, the Cross doesn't juridically work without Trinity, for each Member's 'Office' in it must be Juridically Independent from the Others. [Bye, bye, centuries of ecclestical angst, arguments, and arrogance over whether God is Three SEPARATE Persons! So easy: salvation is not juridically valid unless ONE Person JUDGES, but a DIFFERENT Person PAYS, and a THIRD Person Empowers the One Paying. Separation is required for that. So no hydra-headed definitions of God, such as those in the Catholic Encyclopedia and in Westminster Confession, are ever valid. God is NOT "diminished" if More than One (the "diminished" key to Catholic Encyclopedia's "Unicity" definition, and also in the KORAN's "partner" verses, for crying out loud). 2Cor13:14 is alone valid, and those three monadic articles say it all perfectly. We should just stick with BIBLE, not invent our own inferior theologies.] "Infinity is intensive, not extensive", as my pastor likes to remark when talking about Trinity or the Hypostatic Union. Consequently, if Infinite God RUNS THE SYSTEM, His Knowledge cycling inside a finite soul, is still a totality. Because, God is Totality, and HE is running the cycling. So yes, total Communion of Attributes and of Knowledge even in Christ's Soul, is a Totality. As Deity, of course the Totality is obvious. But also, since the Holy Spirit is Totally Just As Much God Himself, then if HE does the running of Truth in Christ's Soul, it's a totality IN His Soul. So that only leaves a question of amount, which amount gets completed On the Cross. Since God always runs it, there is no inaccuracy or shortfall. From this came the DDNA webseries. For Isaiah 53:10-11 in the amalgamated texts of both BHS and LXX say this is what happened. The confirmation in Hebrews 1:4, 2:10, 5:8-9 (teleiow means to 'complete', legal notion of perfection-of-contract) reference the Isaiah 53:10-11 contract. The header clause of that contract begins Isa53 in 52:13 (the end-chapter 52 samex marker is in 52:12). It plus verse 14 depict the High-Low completion mechanism. That's why we need to be Indwelt and Filled with the Spirit, so this High-low can be produced in us. A computer analogy might be helpful, for understanding how Infinity can run INSIDE finity, creating this Totality. In programming and in spreadsheets, you can make what are called "data pointers". These are dinky bits of code which tell you where something in a huge database is located. So you build a data-intensive program with lots of pointers, because the program [the soul] must be small in size, due to RAMM and other restrictions. In fact, you want the program to be as small as possible, for the smaller it is, the faster it can run, the more modules you can create to make it efficient. So you don't add in the database itself, which after all would frequently change anyway (pretend). So the DATA REMAINS OUTSIDE THE PROGRAM (the soul), but due to the pointers (the DDNA the Holy Spirit builds in you via those many Bible deposits), one can ACCESS the entire database (God's Knowledge) instantaneously and at any time, if the USER (Holy Spirit via John 14:26) knows how to run the program. And of course He does, flawlessly. This is how we become gods, yet remain finite. Just like Our Lord did. [In my pastor's lingo, he calls this accessing function a "frame of reference". His description isn't quite the same as I write here, but the perfection of it, is. This function's perfection is not hyperbole. Bear in mind that it's an aorist-type function, so when it is "on" it is indeed Infinitely Perfect, since only God can run it. For example, I almost never have to look up the verse citations I type or the quotes I make, anymore. They hit my brain instantaneously while typing. Back in 1999, this was not true. Eight years later, and how is it I who have no native memory can remember, decipher Hebrew and Greek important text in minutes? Yeah, BibleWorks is a tremendous help, but you have to know how to read what you're looking at. People think I'm a genius. That's a flat LIE. I'm an idiot. So how is this, I can do it? GOD and GOD alone! 1Jn1:9 really works. Living in God's System really works. John 14:26 is real. I live on it, day and night. Believe that or not, your choice. Better still, TEST the claim yourself in your own soul before God Himself. So it will be true for you, too.] |
Suddenly, a supernatural darkness descends so thickly no light can penetrate it. The crowd panics. Then, like the wind! MADE SIN! Wholly-repugnant thoughts rush into your soul: hateful-and-murderous thoughts, jealous-and-vindictive thoughts, fearful thoughts, petty thoughts; i-did-good thoughts, after-all-i've-done-for-you thoughts; self-righteous and other lusts of every smell, me me me me me me me! all these billions upon billions upon billions of waves of assault JAVELINS; wave upon wave of disgusting excrement! And you have to acknowledge: do you accept so-and-so's sins? Yes! Then parry the assault! Though you know they all hate you more than everyone! Yet don't give into, don't reciprocate the overwhelming URGES that go with the sins! Instead, EMBRACE THEM! HOLD THEM! HOLD EMBRACE HOLD wave upon wave, wave upon wave, for what seems like eternity; while the smell of contempt from the crowd blasts you; while every inch of you screams with pain, itches and oozes from every laceration: just like Isaiah promised, you are pierced through for our iniquities, both physically and psychically. So HOLD EMBRACE HOLD, keep thinking, love them, oh, LOVE them! Worst of all, Isa 53:5! the Father's Own Judgement against all those disgusting waves, all crush upon you AT ONCE! As if you were the one guilty! He 'turns His Back' to you, His Own Son?! "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani! Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani! Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani!" And He's thinking, faster than light can travel: I'm a worm for My Father, oh Thank You Beloved Father, this is what I trained a lifetime to receive! Thank You for this Pain! In Me! In Me! At Last! IN ME! Acknowledge: Millicent, Andrew, Sismus, IN ME PAID, by Your Word! Thank You, oh Beloved Father! How I love seeing Your Judgement, How I love Your Beautiful Truth! Pain, How I love this Pain, this FULFILLMENT, this Marcus, this Sally, this Mduma this Czeslaw this Deidre being purchased! How I love this Judas, this Shivakumar, this Hua Fang I was caused to Freely Ransom, with this Beautiful Truth Circulating in My Soul from Spirit giving it to Me! Pure Profit! Oh, Father, Thank You Forever! Thank You Forever And Ever And Ever For This Privilege!!! Oh, I never want to stop paying! IN ME! IN ME! Isa54:1 for all! Oh GOD of DOCTRINE! How Beautiful YOU are!!! Thank You Thank You THANK YOU ELOI SABACTHANI!
"Tetelestai, it is accomplished with results that last forever!" |
Psalm 22, triumphant, His Last Words, Ps31:5. So, then: all this utter, loathsome terror, into this Perfect Human Soul? All within 3 hours? And He lived? He remained sane? Even Enjoyed it? How? Bible Doctrine. The Truth is so Gorgeous, so unutterably Magnificent -- the pain itself 'atones' for the wonder having such Priceless Diamonds. Get that paronomasia?
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Here's the litmus test: if you really love someone or something, you ache to sacrifice on your object's behalf. Nothing you do will be satisfactory, for you always want to do more; you will be tempted to despair, or to blame yourself. Moreover, at some moments you will nonetheless realize that you gave your all, and are exhausted; or, that you were, whaddya know, competent enough. If your next thought is, Thank You God, coupled with Thank You For Giving Me This [sacrifice's name], true love is your attitude. Note how it's an attitude, not an emotion. Emotions can be and will be all emotions, tagging along for the ride. (Body reacts strongly to true love, and much of the reaction is unpleasant to feel.) For, True Love's Attitude Is Married To The Love-Object. Bonded. Enslaved, if you will. By Choice. Bible makes it clear that Love is only grown by God the Holy Spirit, Rom5:5. 1Jn1:9 makes you online with the Spirit, and that's the only way you'll have the Truth operating in you. (Greek is very clear in context, English is harder to understand). Eph5:18's mandate is thus in compliance (between sins, that is); Gal5:22 makes it clear that the PROFIT (karpos, mistranslated "fruit", meant "profit/gain" at the time Paul penned Galatians) of the Spirit is Love. Note the connection pathway from even these verses: Love is a profit, and comes from the Holy Spirit's running Bible Doctrine in you. So, if you aren't using 1Jn1:9, and habitually Learning Scripture under your God-appointed teacher (see Eph4:10-16+1Cor12 in this connection), whatever you call "love", is but a lie and an ego trip. True Love aches to give competently to the love-object, so the attention is on what the love-object wants, needs, thinks. Pseudo-love aches to call self, 'good'; so the attention is on what self wants, needs, thinks. So the people who are free with their "I love you" claims -- flee them. They only pride themselves on how much they love. True love has a very difficult time saying "I love you", because real love concludes secretly, "I don't love you enough", so hesitates to claim love. Pseudo-love, by contrast, habitually wallows in loudly saying "I love you", since it makes the speaker feel so good to say it. Better run away! As noted in Part I, Love and pseudo-love part company here. Madam Bovary needed her fantasies. Jean Valjean, did not. Pseudo-love is in love with itself. So when the bad times come, pseudo-love spins out permanently. Real love's big problem is that it denies itself, because that's its nature. So for Real Love To Get Full Expression, Combat Is Needed. It's not a masochistic thing at all: Love fundamentally denies it loves enough, because what it wants to give is always greater than what it credits itself giving. This is especially true when one is weak. So Combat 'breaks through' that innate and normal barrier of self-denial, to show Enough Love Is Demonstrated. That's why Abraham needed an Isaac to sacrifice, and why we will, also. And, until you are in it long enough, you can't enjoy knowing what is essentially a testimony TO you that yes, you really love Him! So, the Combat is the best part of your life. Remember the "CrossOver" concept in the "Fourth Reason for Invisibility" of Part III? When you stop thinking, Oh, how much I love this, Oh, how blessed I am to have this, and instead start thinking, Oh, what it's costing me, oh, I'm a good person if I do this -- then you've hit your love-limit, your kenosis-limit. For, Kenosis satisfies, is True Love's response. Think of arduous exercise, working on something difficult, or other activity which prompts CrossOver reactions to hit your soul. Say you keep doing it anyway. What happens? You are satisfied at the completion of the task. There's a certain satisfaction that you completed the task anyway. Moreover, the next time you do the same thing, that previous satisfaction comes to mind, and the task is a little more loved, and a little less difficult. Moreover, one reason why it's a little less difficult, is that the exercise of it made you a little Bigger In Your Soul. So Love is something you learn. Bible in your head motivates you to keep on even at the CrossOver point. That grows the Love, because that grows your soul. You WANT to love more than you do, so you keep on keeping on. And so, the Integrity builds, God-run at all points. So, the Love builds from all those Doctrine deposits. "Mutual flanks", my pastor calls it: Doctrine in you and voting for it, which means you love it. Not as much as you think you should, but enough to keep going. You don't quit. You don't think you're advancing. But then, in Evidence Testing, God proves that you love Him far more than you realize... |
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Remember from Part I, Part II, the Fourth Reason in Part III, the Fifth Facet in Part IVb, all of Part IVc, and #VII here: the Angelic Appeal Trial is a Divorce Trial; in this phase, Satan angles for a Mistrial Verdict, on the grounds of Church's historical negativity to learning Christ. Back before man even existed, Satan called for a divorce; there ensued a rebellion, during which one-third of the angels sided with him. After everyone had finished choosing sides, God held a Trial. It was proved during the Trial that Satan&Co. were at fault; they were sentenced to a not-yet-created universe Bible calls "the Lake of Fire", Matt25:41. But Satan appealed that sentence, which we know is true from all the Trial verses in OT and New. As initially, Satan still contends God is to blame for the rebellion and for creature sin, so no one should go to the Lake of Fire aka hell (an accusation we humans echo daily). Ergo the human race: we come in on 'appeal', dumber than stumps, and whatever we think (do's are reflections of thinking) is used as Evidence for the Appeal. So, suffering has an important role in the Trial: a role Satan continually mocks, just like he did in Matt4. He mocked Christ's Love for Father, Father's Love for Son, God's Love for the human race. So, we humans get told how worship is supposed to be sacrificial, etc. Waste, in other words. That's Satan's mindset, and that's the proselytizing message universally exported via every religion ever born: to want God is a WASTE. For Satan hates God. To Satan, God is ugly. So he sells religion which is always ugly, as holy. And if you buy religion, you divorce God -- in the name of God. Cute, huh.
So scratch the giveaway, voluntary martyrdoms! If the Test is visible at all, it's not flashy; folks won't see it for what it is, and you won't look like a hero, principle of Isa52:13-14 and Isa53:2-4 repeated in our lives. Instead, you'll look like scum: you're being abandoned, shamed, cursed by God. Just like Christ. So that, God looks bad, too. For, that's the contention of Satan: God is bad. Also, Evidence Testing is a sustained period of time, not just some flashy moments you can later tell your grandkids. More like being alone in a jungle, than roaring across the plain in a tank brigade. So, the believer in Evidence Testing will also seem a fool. Sure, in Part III's "God's 2-3-4-5 Evidence Testing Structure" table's "2)" (Second) Intensity Level, the believer receives group admiration from his periphery -- but that's a mere setup. 'Promotion, to ridicule the better, when the foolishness of his cross is administered to him by none other than God Himself. For, at that time, those who admired him will desert him, as he will have some kind of circumstance which makes him look punished by God. When in fact, the opposite is occurring. Just as, at the end of His Life, He looked like He was abandoned by God, Isa53. Man's big problem is that he at heart recognizes his meaninglessness. Ergo his constant quest to buttress ego. So, he is offended by anything which tends to mirror his smallness. So "meaninglessness" is in the small things, the invisible, the demeaning (get that pun?), the shameful. Hence anything visible would have a competing meaning; man's comfort can be fantasized to come from something other than God Himself. Ergo all that movie stress on the big noble conflict, the hero image everyone praises -- God wants none of that. Instead, God wants Pure Raw Truth cycling in the believer's invisible soul versus the smallest, most vile of both visible and invisible. Bonding the two together. So Evidence Testing isn't Arnold Schwarzenegger battling the Predator to a climactic finish. It's more like swarms of deadly gnats which no one else sees -- so your often visible exhaustion looks like something is wrong with you. "[A]nd we esteemed Him not", Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 53:2-4 (sarcasm in v.2, the outright quote ends verse 3, more sarcasm in v.4). The world will not consider you a hero, nor will you look like one. But God will call you "atsum", one of the great ones in Isa53:12; for then, you look like His Son; Thinking like His Son. One of the testing issues is whether the believer will correctly DIAGNOSE what is happening to him, as was the issue for Job: he had done nothing wrong. His friends were convinced he had. That tripped Job up for awhile, and finally he sinned in reaction to the faithlessness of his friends (Job 7:11). Then he recovered (for sure by 19:25). When ET hits, you too will be tempted to think it's due to something wrong you've done, since sin is an everyday occurrence, and in the Pleroma stage, life is extremely intense and tense, internally. Careful diagnosis is essential. However, when the test ends (i.e., a segment in the phase), like Job you will know how it turned out.
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So, look! We know the Evidence-Testing 'waste' of Wifely Thanksgiving Demonstrations, abound in the higher history books: God's. For, Scriptural examples of this "Thank You For Knowing You, For Doctrine" reciprocity-response -- even in sin-nature humans! -- abound.
By contrast, growing in Doctrine massively aids Discernment, and thus Enjoyment. So, one comes to have Our Husband's tender love toward all 'lows', to fulfill them, raise them, vindicate them, honor them. Just like in 1Cor12:22-24, which 1Cor13:1-10 explains: "For Better, or For Worse." The wasted, 'unpresentable' parts of life are made into the greatest catalysts of Thanksgiving, Love! Just as, our sins were made catalysts to provide unending gifts-fit-for-Father by Christ's Own Thinking, on the Cross. [Well, that's one way to use 1Cor12:22-24's meaning. Main point Paul makes is that the unpresentable parts are the ones REPRODUCING. My pastor taught that stridently, in late 1999 onward. So the usage is a flip of that: the reproducers will seek to honor those who are less honored. For look: the inferior, the wasteful, the petulant -- can't help itself. So it needs glory. What a pleasure, to be caused to make glory from one's petulant self?] |
It becomes a question then, of whether 'you' or 'me' will be on that Roster, at the Bema. We've now seen that:
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So the Real Message of the Cross is not the pain, but hedista oun mallon=rather! How Gorgeous, the Communion with GOD! He kept on wanting the Word to keep on energetically increasing His Soul; to absorb, parry, and embrace all that sin thinking, and even the Father's Judgements on them! That's why He's shouting from Ps22! He's getting His Outlet, at Last! [Remember, the first Adam said "At LAST!" when the Lord brought Isha to him.] Heb11:1 explains the WHY: "It's about Confidence in Word! Christ's Thinking, On Trial! Evidence, Unseen!" So in learning Him we focus on Him, are Occupied with Him, motivated to run! (Ties to all of 2Cor5, esp. v.14.) His same race becomes a Joy to Us, sprinting in the Evidence Test for the tape! Heb4:11-12 becomes Victory of "Christ in you, the Confidence of Glory", Col 1:27 (parallel passage on the Trial effect)!
Heb12:1-2 are the climax of the book: everything after these verses are applications, ways to think and act in light of The Race. So, when covering this verse pair or its parallel passages, my pastor often likes to explain His Legacy of His Thinking to us as follows: pretend you build a submarine. It has a maximum depth before the hull, buckles. Christ created the Prototype via what He learned under the Spirit, and tested it to 1,000,000 fathoms. We get the 'operational type'. We never need to go that low. So it utterly matters, that you FOCUS ON HIM during Evidence Testing, just as Hebrews 12:2 commands. This test is about TOGETHERNESS (III through VIII), which is Infinity's Sovereign Desire anyway. But it's also to fulfill the John 17 prayer, so it's to CHRIST that we bond, in Evidence Testing. So the "Answer" section in #1 on Test Structure Basics, the "Trial Answer" A-I categories (i.e., Archegos Association) all apply here. This is the 'consummation' of God's Trial Answer, how we Bond to Christ during Evidence Testing:
For, the Trial is not only about the superior happiness of wanting God for Himself, versus His 'goodies' (#VII), but also about the resultant Competence of that love-for-Him. It's a highest-level-doctrinal-thought-skill test, not merely a volition test. As will be explained further in the next section, the Demonstration is that no matter how much or often or deeply you're hit by whatever non-God things/people are in your life, God remains stably First. 'Analogous to how the Lord could be pierced with all mankind's sins, yet not react, but instead Enjoy, which is the major theme of Book of Hebrews (Heb2:9ff, 4:15ff, 5:8-9, 9:14ff, 12:2ff). See? Just as Peter notes at the beginning and ending of his letters, we are here to become hupogrammoi, inscribed chips off the Old Block. Note again: it's not about sin -- you'll do that until you die. It's not about works -- works can't put His THINKING in you. It's about Thresholds of His Thinking Being Completed. Which, of course, mean that old sins which once beset you become deadened or go away; new ones replace them, and then they deaden, too. And so on. The Increasing Dominance And Depth (etc -- see Eph3:15-19) means a whole Complex of His Thinking is built in you. So you can bear children forever. You were once sterile, but now.. bear kids, Isa54:1! |
We've just seen the Impact of Evidence Testing on the Church believer. So how does Evidence Testing in Church, compare to believers under other spiritual covenants? The following links cover much of the answer to that question:
Church is unique, because Christ is Unique. Hence the format of development and testing have unique features. We inherit His Spiritual Life which He invented down here, even as He invented a then-future entity, Church -- to become His Future Bride. As a result, the pattern differences between our covenant versus others', parallel the differences between His Unique Covenant, and everyone else's: this pattern differential is a big theme in the Book of Hebrews, especially in Chapters 9-10. There, the author takes great pains to parallel the significant features of the Temple and Levitical Priesthood, versus what Christ is and accomplished. For the main theme in Hebrews is how the covenant changed, why, and how the Trial Witness of Church is thus unique and a precondition for the continuance of Time itself. Whole book can be considered a treatise on why the Rapture precedes the Trib (Heb11:40), as a consequence.
So our format of Evidence Testing will be like that of His Covenant, not like others'. Again, the above links elaborate, but one could summarily classify the format similarities and differences, thus:
Here the macro Trial issues raised or addressed, are covered. Only Angelic Trial terms govern any pan-covenant continuities within Evidence Testing. Victorious Witness is consequently a God-First-and-Only Testimony, with everything else being a "So What?" as explained in Part II. The needs vary, what bothered these believers varied, their progressive docking of everything under Him also varied in time and content; but in every case God was #1 to them.
Covenant Design Issues are used by Satan to allege God has erred. Trial has been about the Propriety of God's Design of creation, with Satan always alleging that Design is flawed, wrong, even immoral. Covenants and their tests roughly divide over the following Essential Design parameters:
Trial Answer: Neither visibility nor invisibility improve or worsen the results, nor is man happier with or without. Man just wants God or does not, and wanting God is what makes man happy.
Ephesians 1:15ff is thus met. For Christ is Royally 'Built' FOR FATHER Across All Time! |
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As Romans 8 climactically explains in Greek, Evidence Testing is about a lot more than answering Trial Issues. It's about fulfilling the Divine Royal Standard for Father and forever. The entire chapter is about how Spirit REPLACES our doo-dooing with Divine Diamontic Thinking to glorify Christ, aka TA PANTA. The term is usually translated "all things". Christ is Everything, so "all things" go to Him, unite in Him, just as it says in Isa53; so He fills "all things", and "all things" are STRUCTURED to glorify Him, by Father's DESIGN, theme of Eph1. For the Romans, Paul is explaining the epic meaning via TA PANTA from the human perspective, all things in one's life; then, tying them to Him Who Is Ta Panta (see also Colossians 1-2). For, as Paul so constantly stresses in ALL his epistles, but especially Ephesians; for, as the "Father's Criteria" table in PartIVb attempted to convey, Father Wants Us to Fitly Complete Christ, defined in Eph4:11-16. No higher purpose can exist. That purpose, of course, makes Evidence Testing far more stringent than the most torturous of satanic cross-examinations. Just as, the Cross itself was solely among Father, Son, Spirit -- no one else was involved. So also, this Evidence Test goes far beyond what Satan&Co. could 'test'. Testing to demonstrate, fulfill: only Father can do that, just as Father imputed and judged sins on Son's Humanity on the Cross. Only Spirit can sustain, just as He did Son's Humanity on Cross.
There's another 'side' to this Filling which will really bother those of us who have problems orienting to Authority: the ONLY justification for our own existences, is to Fill Him Up. Body of Christ. We 'filled Him up' on the Cross, in the sense that, getting filled up with our sins filled Him up so totally He could have Total Rapport with Father. Father knew sin; thus was able to pass over it until the Cross, then pour it out onto His Beloved Son. Son did not know sin, so was MADE sin -- see 2Cor5:21, in context. Thus, now knows sin, but without having sinned, Himself -- that's the only way to GET that Knowledge. Thus, No Barriers To Rapport Remain Between His Finite Soul And The Infinite Father, as the "Christ's Combat on the Cross" table above attempted to illustrate. So, believer or unbeliever, positive or negative, our true worth is to fill Him up. No other. Thus, as Paul explains in 2Cor5 (as well as in Rom6), we believers live for Him now, Because We Died In Him Then. IN HIM. Filling Him up. Body of Christ. So also, the world is to fill us up: Doctrine we learn coupled with the stuff on this planet we learn is designed to make us Fit Bride for Son. So, we get filled up with the world's problems, analogous to how He got filled up with our sins. So The World Suddenly Has A Justification To Exist which it did not otherwise have -- because we need its stuff, to learn our own filling up. So, to fill Him up as Body. So, the world benefits solely for that reason: as said in Part IVb, Church Makes History, Not Prophecies. So notice how no handicap can matter, since the purpose of 'your' world is to train you: you have all the externals you need to grow to Pleroma. In short, the world exists so we can be filled up, so that we can fill up Christ's 'Body' of Thinking which will rule for eternity. If anyone in the world thus wants to 'get in on the deal' (believe in Christ), he can. If not, that's his choice. We need not go anywhere, do anything, advertise.. just breathe learning Him. Thus the world is allowed to breathe; because, just as sins were used to fill Christ up so we could too be filled up by the same Father and Spirit, so also the world is here to support us. FOR HIM. Think about it. Implications are staggering, and you will probably want to retool every 'position' you have in your own soul. Using different words, my pastor has stressed this fact for decades. Beginning about 1997 (Series 376, '92 Spiritual Dynamics audiotapes), he started to explain how the OT "Jeshurun" class like Abraham, Moses, Caleb, Joshua preserved Israel. Christ raised the bar to Pleroma (a moniker for Him in Bible), so that's now our bar, too. Over and over he stressed how the world only continues due to enough of Church still learning Him, and when the last Pleroma person is completed, Rapture happens. |
Hence we Church have a unique role in both history and eternity.
Note how our problem is soooo subtle: We Hold Doctrine, live it internally, fatten up like lambs, and stay quiet, Isa53:7. For, no one wants our meat. Not until God 'sacrifices' us at the end, will anyone be able to 'eat' us. All the other covenants had some kind of holding rule, but it was external, not internal, and everyone wanted what they had. Ours, by contrast, is unwanted and internal. We can't give it away: Cornerstone was rejected, so all His LittleStones will be also, since man wants stones turned into bread, not writing tablets. So, God Writes His Son On Us, fattens us with Him, then gives us away at the altar.. to our Groom, replicating Isa53:10-12. Forever.
So until Christ came, all the tests are trusting IN His Coming, IN His deliverance, IN His Love despite weakness or apparent abandonment. Thus, the one trusting metaphorically depicts being like that future Lamb -- for he is Trusting, yet seemingly led to the slaughter by God: Job is afflicted, Jeremiah is afflicted, Moses is afflicted, David is afflicted, and on and on and on.
So once Christ comes, He Is The Fulfillment, Himself. So, fattens up on the learning, OT-style. So, Crafts from the learning, what we know as the NT style of being filled up, directly from the Holy Spirit -- since HE IS THE FULFILLMENT, not merely looking toward a Fulfillment.
So, next: Church, the extension of Him in a no-want-fulfillment, world (theme of 1Jn, esp. chapter 4:17; see also John Chaps 14-17). We get filled up like HE did, and of course no one wants our meat, either. But God fattens us, then abandons us, then slaughters us, and all that time and because of us, the world can 'eat' of God's blessing, as the "Facets" of PartIVb explained.
So Church, like its Christ, is a Fulfillment: filling HIM up, even as He was filled up with our sins. Even as He was filled up with God's Thinking to PAY for our sins, so we get filled up with His Thinking in order to fill Him up so God will be filled with Sweet Savor Thinking in His 'ears' forever, main theme of Isa53:10-12, Romans 8, all of Ephesians (esp. the quintessential marital analogy in 4:13,16 which is fuzzed over in translation).
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As Ephesians 1, Part IVa and IVb's "Role of Church" show: Fulfillment of the Promise is Our Role, which FATHER ALONE ordained and 'deposited' since Eternity Past, as a GIFT to SON, Isa53:11's "If you will Give Your Soul as a Substitute for Sin, You will see Long-Lived Seed." So, fulfillment of the Promise of Pleroma, is our Evidence Test 'theme'. We are to Become the Fulfillment, not look forward to it. |
| By contrast the OT people, and especially Israel, were tested on how much they looked forward to the Fulfillment. |
| Hence Romans 8, Eph1:15ff, as noted in the above purple-topped white table. Fulfilled, for Him. Fulfilled, For Father. For, the OT (and hence Trib and Mill) people. "For, apart from us, they will not be completed", Heb11:39-40. Lambs of our Lamb. THAT is the goal of our spiritual lives, and THAT is what the Evidence Test, proves successful. |
Note therefore how our fattened-up learning of Him is absolutely essential to getting this Test, as well as PASSING this Test, the highest in all history, for fallen humans. Again, it's easier to pass the adversity you have, than to pass the PROSPERITY you have. It's easier to pass when you can't do something, than when you can do something. For, the latter kind of test is the harder one, for it is a test of Wealth. Power. Holding. Rev3:11 (corr.trans of clause), "Krátei Ho EXeis", "Rule/Master what you HAVE". Not 'explain' or 'share'. Heh: He tells you how to rule in the very text, for "eXeis" is the command (implicit in kratei): it means, "HAVE! HOLD!"
So Christians who hustle in activism will never actually get the true Evidence Test. They are too immature. So, they spend. They choose to squander their spiritual time-to-learn assets off-balance sheet, as Enron (allegedly) did: 'in flashy 'works' partnerships, rather than in the Son's Mind (their Employer)! So, of course they will go into debt and become bankrupt. Choked seeds (Luke 8), they didn't burrow into the soil of the Word, so they didn't produce anything but a crop of tares, weeds, a multiplier tax upon mankind. So of course, they will never vest in their Evidence/Ruler escrows (#IV). They are a shame to Christ, for they fail Matt4, and call it "virtue". Of them it will be said (1Cor4:8), "and I wish you really had become kings, so that we might rule with you!"
That crop analogy is really important, for it also explains how those who don't pass are nonetheless benefitted. Notice how most of the seed did not produce. Yet, ALL the seed was put into the soil. So, all the seed benefitted from the soil, yet all the seed couldn't be justifiably put in the soil, since most was foreknown to be sterile. However, some of the seed produced the necessary "crop". In on-earth terms, we humans don't know which seed will be sterile, which will produce, so we justify sowing so much because we do know the aggregate result. God, however, is even more efficient: He knows which seed will grow, and also He knows that the sterile seed wouldn't even be able to be ASSOCIATED with the crop if He didn't buy and plant them all. See the blessing-by-association synergy? John 13, the Passover scene, parallels the point about sterile-being-blessed-by-producing-seed, when the Lord tells Peter that unless the Lord washes him, "you have no part in Me." (v.8, NIV.) [See also 1Cor6:19 (esp. in context), 1Thess2:8,14, Heb3:1, Jude 3, and like verses.] Of course, that's the meaning of eating the Bread and drinking the Cup, too.
See? A thing is dead, of its own. Doctrinal use of it 'washes' it ("water" and "bread" are Biblical metaphors for the Word, since only God can make water or seed); so, gives it purpose, meaning, Value, HONOR. We too, are dead on our own. His Doctrinal use of our sins gives us purpose, meaning, value, honor. Not my people become my people. The sterile one becomes the bearer of more than them who have children. Living on Bible Doctrine to Pleroma-Teleios (fullness-of-Christ Completed, as we saw in "First Reason for Invisibility"), gives those others who did not get filled up a purpose, meaning, value, honor -- for, apart from the Pleroma, those others have but little (merely-saved) part in Him. For, they didn't accept the water, so became sterile seeds. So, cannot be washed by us directly; so, we who do accept the water, and thus grow to a crop, 'water' them THAT way (not by stupid works, which don't clean the soul), by Divine Decree. Just as the Holy Spirit made us fountains of living water, the Son's Thinking, so also we are drunk with satisfaction by the Father, Who in turn can thus justify them being in our inherited kingdoms' soil. Family. Synergy. To everyone. No matter what.
Moreover, in agricultural biology, a sterile seed is eventually broken down BY the soil into various molecules. The soil then is enriched (same principle as humus) more. So, those seeds which are not sterile will yield even more, because the soil's action upon the sterile seeds, enriched it further. So, even a sterile seed has a productive role. In synergistic sum: Value, Purpose, Honor.
Therefore, those who grow up in Christ are used to hasten the Conflict's end.
All knowledge-and-power "covenant" levels are displayed; in every generation, not only in this covenantal period/dispensation, but in all others, sufficient witnesses reached (each covenant's version of) spiritual maturity, and Jeshurun/Pleroma (Uprightness/Fullness). So Satan's argument that God made angels/humans defective is proven false. So, Satan's argument that he can better benefit man than God the Son can do, is proven false.We who fail permanently will stay saved, but the rewards reserved for us in the Divine Benefit Plan, aka "escrow" (my pastor's term), instead 'forfeit' to the Pleroma (see Part IVa and c); for down here, we who fail had spurned our Assets (Corollary 3A, Part III) and instead, spun down into the "sin unto death". (1Jn5:16, capital punishment of the believer, not a loss of salvation -- the context of 1Jn5 makes it clear you can't lose eternal life, only body life.) We become the mass, progeny of the progenitors (Corollary 3B, Part III, Isa53:12): their 'periphery'. Forever. That is the only way we can get any "portion", see. As a RESULT, our "substitute inheritance" is as a passive beneficiary. We are beneficiaries through them, since we are still Royal Family, and Royalty takes care of its own. Like the "infirm cousin" in Part III's Corollary 3B, we will be provided for. But oh, what we missed! In eternity past, to Honor His Son, God had reserved for each of us the title and estates of "King"; we were Crown Princes, down here, for that reason; but, alas, like England's Edward VIII, we abdicated. So, instead, we become but relatives of a King. Forever. That is why John warns us to learn Him so to "have confidence in the day of Evaluation", 1Jn4:17. 'Which of course, is the Rapture (ulp). We'd better get rid of our "Rap the Rapture" (Part IVc) defense mechanisms, then, and Look sharp! Grow up!
As we've seen, the blessing-by-association isn't a "cliff". While we are growing, God compensates the world as it were, for our "down-time" in study. God being God, even the smallest thing He does is infinitely greater than the greatest things we (think we) do. In the "Facets" of Part IVb, we saw the phenomenal blessings God grants the world due to our training down here. Back in Part III, we saw these phenomenal blessings as well, with stress on our status as Crown Princes (i.e., the Corollaries). In Part IVa and IVc, we saw the Divine Benefit Plan valuation system by which He runs it all, and how that plays in history. In Mirroring.htm and its associated worksheet and Word.doc, we saw how TIME ITSELF is granted the world owing to believers who sufficiently mature. Christ Himself could not have arrived on time, but for those grants of time. So how much more Now, does Time depend on us completing? ENTIRELY, as we saw in Part IVa and IVb. We are the very Bridge to Time: Israel's time, which Messiah won back on His Cross, now 2000 years ago.
This shouldn't have to be said, but Christians famously overvalue their works. If they witness, if they give money, if they visit the sick, etc. they imagine that their good deeds really amount to something. What hogwash. You can be nice to someone for years, but just become cross once -- and watch all those nicenesses count for nothing. People aren't so nicely impacted by good deeds as is claimed. It's all eyewash. That is, hogwash. Why? Because being nice, doing nice things -- don't affect the soul. They only entertain the body. Like Satan&Co., like Satan's 'love-plan', the body is likewise fickle. It only 'loves' you for as long as you are nice to it. The minute you stop, you're doubted or hated. "What have you done for me lately?" is body-thinking, and it's endemic in society. So much for 'good deeds', even human-to-human!
God knows that we overestimate our value founded on base-body-thinking, so we underestimate what He does. God knows what really needs mending, so we can grow out of our childish ideas about works, sin, and enjoyment -- mend the soul with Truth, and the recipient will GROW UP. When Christ was here, oh, how the groupies congregated around Him -- yet once He was accused, everyone deserted Him. Everyone became a judas. So if even the Christ's good deeds didn't avail anything, how much less, ours? So: Christ focused on the Word, and kept looking at the Father. Fulfilling the Royal Law (named such after Him, in Jas2:8), He didn't value 'works', but rather the Word. Which sustained Him on the Cross. So the 'little', 'invisible' thing of sticking to study -- leveraged the entire salvation of mankind. For He is not only the Author, but the Finisher of our salvation! (Heb12:2.) With that 'little thing', circulating Bible Doctrine in His Mind. The 'little thing' of study had an uncountable "multiplier effect". That's GOD'S economics.
But also man's, for look: the big, visible helping-the-poor body stuff -- is quickly forgotten by mankind (cf John 2:25). And saves them not at all. What about all the men who have died in war? The thousands upon thousands of soldiers who were slain, or maimed? What did they buy? A plot of land, for maybe a month -- until the next war came along. Go to any spot in Europe; or, to Gettysburg, PA; and realize that the ground you walk on was soaking in blood! What did those soldiers buy? Exhaustion, which now manifests as a lot of stupid Americans blaming each other based on what? Allegations. Accuse accuse accuse. So, did they die in vain?
Do you remember Scipio Africanus? Stilicho? Belisarius? The whole Roman world cheered these guys -- for about a month, during a triumph. That's why the slave standing beside them in their chariots kept chanting, amidst the cheers of the crowds who lined (for example) the Appian way, "sic transit gloria mundi". So the glory of the world passes. And passed them right by, for each of these truly remarkable generals of history were in the end betrayed by the very people they saved; by the jealousy and greed of their own people. Dead. Who remembers them now? They each saved Rome! Who remembers them now? And, how do we remember them? As facts in schoolbooks. Some dumb thing we gotta remember to pass a test. Whoopee. Wow, man's works really do something for the poor, don't they? Yeah, like food: you eat it, and it turns into urine, and feces. Whooppee.
Indeed, "the poor you will have with you always." Why? Because we only care for a moment. That's all our puny bodies can do: care, and then pass it on, into urine and feces. So, we name a building or a park after the one who did those good deeds -- and thus we're free to forget him; and thus we're free to look for the next idiot on which to feed. Dracula looks like Mary Poppins, by comparison! Oh, yeah: we praise anyone who'll give us goodies. Sure, Mr./Ms. Philanthropist, we'll name a building after you: the fact that only the edifice will actually 'remember', goes unsaid. Yeah, baby: like the guy who'll say anything to flatter a girl into the bedroom. Slam-bam-thank-you-m'am. Yep, yep, yep: and we seed the world with Satan's me-be-god/Sugar Daddy contagion, in the process. 'Pure hypocrisy, and no dang good to anyone. Like Paul noted, giving away all you have produces nothing but Satan's noise (1Cor13, 1Tim4:1ff, 2Tim4:1ff).
Only God remembers, because only God is Eternal. Remember the Third Reason for Royalty in Part III? What does Infinity mean, what does Infinity see? Those people are still dying on battlefields: to Him, their deaths are not in vain, because what He always sees, is Bible Doctrine, His Thinking -- applied to them. Christ's Deaths (substitutionary spiritual, and unique physical) are still occurring, to Omniscience. So, not in vain. So, then: what lasts? His Thinking. So, then, to Whom should we live, and how can anyone get anything of lasting value, except from and through HIM? And how can they get anything via us, if we have no Doctrine in us -- which we can't have, unless 1) saved, 2) in the Spirit (1Jn1:9 used), and 3) Learning And Using Scripture Every Second? See: we need, as it were, triune spiritual function.
That's how the poor get helped. We need become reproductive, heh. Multipliers of His Thinking, even. Because, nothing else lasts: "Heaven and earth will pass away [sic transit gloria mundi, see also 2Pet2-3], But My Words Will Not Pass Away".[NAS] All else is a perpetually dead battery you must jumpstart each time you wanna drive.
So if we want to bless the world, we need to fatten up on the Word. After all, we're the only ones with spiritual bellies! Unbelievers don't have a spiritual life. So how can they get help from us? We Need To Feed On The Word, so God can justify blessing them: cf 2Tim3:16-17; Deut6:4, 30:11ff; Isa55; Zech7; John 8:31-32; Romans 10:9-10, 12:2-3; Eph3:15-19; Heb4, Jas1-2:8, 1Pet1:7ff, 2Peter1-2,3:18, 1Jn. (Greek of Eph4:11-16 explains how the feeding works via diakonia, fabulous.) Else, we and they will only get Satan's 'food.'
Or, look at early philosophers through Aristotle (and onward, really): because they started with physicalities like the elements and "movement", then moved upwards to derive the "ousia" of godness, rather than beginning with the (duh) obvious implication that Absoluteness, Infinity had to be Alive independent of space and time (and hence, "movement" only applies to finity) -- they kept tangling themselves in their intellectual shoelaces (e.g., Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapters 6 and following). So much so, "one" remained a spatial concept, which Aristotle himself continually warned was inaccurate!
Aristotle's reasoning thus is the most tragic. Like everyone else, Aristotle mistakenly starts his analysis with relatives, rather than beginning with the "necessary" properties of Absolute. Granted, Aristotle does this to set his ideas in context with past and current other "thinkers"; so, he gets lost. Oh, how close he comes to recognizing True Infinity, in On the Soul, only to end up tangled, in the distinguishing of sense versus thinking! So that, by the time he gets to Metaphysics Book XII, Chapter 6 and following, he ends up dissolving into a version of the same stupid "circle" and "movement" conclusions about the "Unmoved Mover" who must be Eternal! [Einstein ended up doing this same thing with his Theory of Relativity, I think -- a theory which Aristotle first proposes, that time is but movement. The slowing-up Einstein observed was, I bet, the mathematical hint that true Infinity is Static, and time/space is but a subset of it; a point which the Hebrew Bible has long communicated, by use of its verb "to be". See Thorleif Boman's Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, the "Time" chapters, if you're interested in this topic. Moreover, for the same reason Aristotle is right about light not "travelling" (On the Soul, Book II, Chapter 7), with respect to our ability to see it. In short, because Infinity Is Static, God's the Base/Source/Cause of all existence, and any 'movement' can only occur among finity; that is to say, mass: so it is NOT true that the starlight we see is x millions/billions of years old; the non-visual properties of light have mass, so would have to "travel", but our ability to see it, as Aristotle explains, is a function of the intervening distance being of the right contrast, our position relative to the thing viewed, etc.
No wonder then, that the Jews and Christians went wacko about what "one" means. So, look: if even all these famous and educated people can't 'get it'..our brains just don't work (thanks to the sin nature we inherited at the Fall). So, our "substance", is garbage. So, all our vaunted philosophies, beautiful as many of them are, end up in the garbage dump. And save no one.
So instead of recognizing the Divine Design is to Cycle Infinity Inside Finity, hence a Circle of Love, subjective-and-objective genitive, we chase our tails in philosophic circles, and call the John 17 ONENESS, a 'mystery'. LOL -- yeah, Church is One in Him -- and we don't get it? Yikes! So we follow Satan's Mystery Math Class (see link by that name in Part IVa), and argue over Trinity, to make God an Egg. Sheesh.
By contrast, as noted in the "Your Thinking" section of Part IVc, God uses whatever Divine Thinking we are learning, to "catch" to our periphery. True Rulers reign by just BEING the Embodiment of the Rule, rather than telling others what to do, as we saw in the "Staying" section of this page, and in Part III's Second Reason for Royalty. Being the Rule rather than telling the rules is far more influential than heavy philosophical tomes, academic and political kudos, or other cups of water Satan gives to foster his visible, me-be-god morality. We are the defense against his body-works seduction technique. The only defense the world has: our "treasure in earthen vessels", 2Cor4:7. So if we aren't learning Christ, we are alone responsible for the world's troubles. And we'll be royally disciplined for it (Heb5:11-6:6, 12:5ff). Justly.
Of course, the first person He heals is the one growing in His Son, to PUT that "treasure" into us "earthen vessels". Therefore, growth in Christ is no easy life, either. It's continual surgery! Hebrews 4:12! Growing in Him is far tougher than all the world's works, put together. As we saw in Part III, God's Script is quite intense! So here are some of the Daily Combat Issues we face:
Humans can't love Righteousness. They use it to get things. So, the norm in Christianity is to bludgeon people about sin and good deeds. That's not love for Righteousness. Children do the same with respect to how they 'obey', expecting to get a reward, not having yet learned to value the obedience for itself. They tattle on others who do not obey, constantly compare themselves to others, etc. So too, we spiritual children, even when going on age 65. Only Bible in your head cycling under the Spirit on a daily basis over some years, develops a true taste for and hence love for, Righteousness.
Granted, the OT people were also supposed to think of Him all the time. However, their lives were simple, and the extent of the rule for them is our childhood. They lived on faith-doctrine, too, just as we are commanded, but for them, it was merely a believing-in life: passive, like a child's. For, as John 7:39 explains, Christ had not yet come; as Heb2 and 7 add, Christ had higher 'stakes'! His Life was not at all passive. He Crafted A New Spiritual Life Out From the OT. That is what made Him the "Author of our salvation", as Hebrews explains. So, then: our lives are patterned after His, and thus the most complex of all fallen humans'. Of course, just as the OT witnesses proved Satan's plan no-good, by every "So what?", so also we must learn to say "So what": yet, to the ever-more-intense adult tests we face.
Childhood is nice because you don't know much. Ignorance really is bliss, and so every adult longs for those simpler days. Frankly, the upset of life is to realize all those nice childhood dreams are largely fairy tales, and in the real world, nothing is nice. Hellish, even. So long as some dream is not yet realized, some answer still looks like it will work, hope remains. It's when you get all the dreams, get all the answers, that hope is seen for what it is: sic transit gloria mundi.
You get a better purpose for living when you live for God. As you learn to bring every thought into captivity, your values change. After awhile, occasionally you will look back and realize you've had a happier time of it than those around you, because they live for the world, and you are weaning off it. So it's a different "sic transit" for you, and it won't make you sick with ennui at the end.
English translations blandly say, "receive the promise". It's much more than that! Writer of Hebrews and others realized the "to seven" OT meaning of "make an oath", "promise", "swear". Yet they often use Greek epangelian or its cognate verbs (two g's are "ng" in pronounciation). The writer of Hebrews, especially: it's a keyword in the epistle, a tracking device. Greek epangelian is not just a promise, but a specific public PLEDGE, like announcing in advance What Amount Would Be Won, in a contest. So the shift is meaningful, because Hebrew "to seven" (sheba, shin beth ayin root) is not normally translated in LXX with epangelian (I couldn't find one instance -- diatheke or some other word is used). In Heb10:36 means to carry off a PRIZE due to the verb komizo, middle voice: To Carry Off A Prize Laid Up For You. Personalized. So writer of Hebrews uses the term epangelian throughout, and that 10:36 is climactic. Fascinating to link promise with prize. Like Paul talks of winner's prizes! Always, referring back to the carry-off, lift-up, carry-away rhetorical structure of Isa52:12-54:1, especially in 53:12!
The analogy to the gymnasium training is quite apt. Your daily life seems so remote from anything you would call 'spiritual'. What's really happening, is this: as you vote using whatever Bible you know to get through some task or moment, God the Holy Spirit is literally RECRAFTING YOUR SOUL via that association. So even were you brushing your teeth -- and of course, because Father is seeing it, you want to do the right job -- your SOUL is being built up. "DDNA" is what I call that building up process, in the DDNA webseries (due to Isa53:10-54:1). So something QUITE Spiritual is occurring. You are to become a Ruler, and the becomingness is accomplished by ASSOCIATING Bible with every second in your life. Again, developing this habit is hard to do, at first. As you keep on trying, think of it like learning a language, painting, golf stroke, etc: practice practice practice. Fluency comes with time. And with fluency, comes enjoyment. You are becoming a spiritual athlete for ALL TIME, one brushstroke AT a time!
Bible Doctrine shields your soul in two basic ways. First, as you learn Him, The Knowledge Changes How You Value Whatever You Know. Your entire view of life changes gradually. It's very refreshing. It's very engrossing. It's very enjoyable. Secondly, you come to enjoy this view so much, it's always "on". So, in every detail of your day, you are reminded of some aspect of Scripture. This process-of-association is what makes you progressively happy, thus competent -- and, strong.
This shielding is critical to times when you are under pressure. The "Secondly" becomes a habit, so you become progressively less apt to be snared by the temptations around you. You're instead 'on the lookout' for 'whatever' might reveal something about Him, in your life; so life's many man-centered 'bullets', whizz right by you. The "First" is also critical for handling pressures which break through when "Secondly" isn't engaged. See, however 'grownup', man becomes childish under sufficient pressure (which varies by individual vulnerabilities, and can be feel-good or bad); so at that point you need the knowledge to act as your drill sargeant. Saves your life!
Pressure which is basic to human needs tends to go below radar, and even if you don't give into it, it accumulates, thus weakening at least your body. So as the pressure continues, even if at some low level, the accumulation wears you down. So 'hits' of other types, even if simple things, can have a more devastating impact. Too little sleep, too little food, too little companionship, too little something.. and you'll find yourself uncharacteristically reacting, kinda like a child would. It will be demoralizing, which is why you need as much Doctrine cycling 24/7, as you can get!
For example, in the first temptation of Matt4, one of the many levels of attack in Satan's seemingly-innocuous request -- was the power of suggestion. Remember, Christ is God, too. If His Humanity, so very hungry after 40 days, even imagined using His Deity to turn the stones into bread -- it would have happened! Christ didn't surrender or turn off His Deity. He just kept on looking away from it, until and unless the Father dictated otherwise. That took Enormous, Full, Constant Awareness, Alertness, Attention, Concentration, Focus. Enormous, Full, Constant Jeweler's Skill. Which had to keep on operating -- even in His Sleep! The slightest slip in thinking would have wrecked everything. So, Satan was tempting Him to imagine -- and thus, to slip.
Talk to anyone who's been starved for over a month, and you learn an interesting thing -- the body keeps beeping the brain for food, by sending up sensations of look, or taste -- so, one imagines food, in an attempt to substitute for eating. It's a natural body process, a protection mechanism. Which, in Christ's case, could have prevented the Cross, had His Thinking not been so STRONG.
SPIRITUAL SUCCESS KEY ==> He learned to "associate" every thought with a doctrine. So, when some image, say -- of bread -- hits His Brain, He immediately remembers a doctrine, a verse -- like He does in Matt 4. See how skillfully the Doctrine catches, filters, interprets that image? The non-God value doesn't even get a "glance". Such so-what fluidity, we too are to learn. Expertly. So we gotta keep using 1Jn1:9, staying in the Spirit, to aim toward THAT much virtuoso control.
People gloss over Bible passages, gloss over things in life, too. So when they read Matt4, they 'get' that the Lord was hungry, but limit the meaning to their own temporary hunger if they missed lunch. Big mistake. We are all constantly hungry for a lot of things.
You are naked then. So, you feel like Adam did -- after His fall. Not before. Adam wasn't ashamed of trusting before he fell, and he was genius. Nor, of course, was he ashamed of being naked. Naked Love Looks Childish. Even, when maximally mature. When you are Maximally Hungry For Obeying God, you will reason like a child, though not one. But will feel like one. God is thus Glorified. But you won't feel that's true. Because, you are not a child, and you expect your reasoning to be higher than a child's. But naked love, mature, reasons in the same manner as a child. Because, There Is No Price. The child, doesn't know of price. The adult does, but Has No Price. So, 'looks' like a child, just trusting. It's not that you don't know better, but at that moment you are blindsided by the hunger for Him: He's God, that's all I know. You don't need justification, to believe. Neither did Christ, in Matt4!
When a person is deprived of something basic, however vaunted his achievements, his abilities, he becomes like a child. Illness, hunger, sleep deprivation, etc. all hit the body, and the body affects the mind, so the mind can't think. Interrogators know this. Satan knows this. So whatever wealth, health, success, they all count for nothing. You become five years old, under basic deprivations. Read Josephus' account of the siege of Jerusalem, sometime.
See that sly question? See how easy it is to 'cave in'? That's the prime category in the Evidence Test. What you can do, you must eschew. What you can't do, you must go after. So you are always staring FAILURE in the face. So, you feel helpless. So, you feel childish. So, the physical stuff which hits you (internal or external, the objective is to crush you with ineptitude), makes you feel worthless to God. That's what happened on the Cross -- Christ Became What He Was Not -- Worthless, Sin, 2Cor5:21.
Just as it was, for Christ. What, how do you think He learned to become so strong? By constant, never-ending, punctilious repetition. Close-order drill. Especially regarding "inane" matters. Even David with his sheep had known the importance of being "faithful in the little things." How much more, should we? After all, the Father is LISTENING. What does He hear? Is His Pleasure in hearing, a "small" thing? So: what's "small"? Nothing Is Small For The Christian. Nothing nothing nothing. Just as nothing was small, for Christ.
Satan likes to make us think "Big". Visible-big, that is. If he can get our eyes on the "big" stuff -- which is really small, that's the irony -- then the small stuff -- which is really BIG -- escapes our attention. Busy doing or wanting the "big", we miss the real way to become trained: to spot the mosquito. After all, it's a lot easier to escape the elephant. But the mosquito -- he carries spiritual "malaria". Deadly. Small. Invisible. After all, when we fly, our reaction-time must be instantaneous.
Then, there's the swarm of mosquito-inconveniences. Every movement is a major logistical operation. Going to the bathroom can take hours. Consumed with minutiae, how can one think? And then, there's the pain, for which maybe you need drugs.
Ah, but this version of "Hamburger Hill" has all the same solutions one would have if perfectly healthy. You can "baptise" (associate) every second with some doctrine, some promise. Even if you were only 8 years old, even if all you understand is 1Jn1:9 and salvation, two doctrines which even a child's "common sense" can deduce, you can repeatedly USE those doctrines to parlay into spiritual strength. Further, God will provide a pastor -- many have DVD or tape ministries -- so one can still get spiritual food. And grow Rich. And grow to Pleroma. Despite all the cackling of unwanted "helpers", all the inconvenience (can't one think Doctrine in the bathroom?), all the pain. Because your human limitations don't matter a bit. You have Divine Power - the Spirit's. Just as Christ had. No one will probably even know you are growing. So what? God knows.
Guess again. Remember from the MEGA table in Part IVc, how morality and apathy are the jewels in Satan's crown? The "average" person is lukewarm. You look average, so you will feel pressure to be average. "Average" has two contradicting pressures: the need to "fit in", and the need to break out. Bringing every thought into captivity for you will make you VERY uncomfortable being "average". Count on it.
For the "A" in "average" is exactly the "A" in "apathetic". Average people are apathetic about everything. On purpose. Don't get too involved, don't be too interested, don't stick out, BE average, emphasize form not substance, talk about banalities, be 'politic' -- herding, for SAFETY. Politicians cater to the 'average' mind, which is why nothing ever gets done! Decisions by committee are always blanded out, so never effective. It's the 'average' person who is the most responsible for the evil in the world: goes to church on Sunday, obeys forms, is respectable, Goes Along With The Crowd. Nurenberg mentality. There'd have been no Hitler, no Khomeni, no Taliban, no Hussain -- if it weren't for the 'average' German, Iranian, Afghani, Iraqi of their day.
Christianity perennially suffers from the 'average' Christian, depicted by the Laodicean, in Revelation 3. These are the worst people on the planet, totally apathetic about God, doing everything in His Name. Satan's emissaries, thinking how spiritual they are because they have nice things. The Lord calls them vomit (Rev3:16, usually euphemized in translation), invoking His Faithful and True Witness title: the Word is not in them, so He will vomit them out (obviously, what comes out when you vomit, IS vomit). See Revelation 3:14ff. [So vomitable, that the 'average' Christian interprets the "knock" verse in the passage to the unbeliever, not noticing that the passage is to a Church -- so means believers. But of course, the Laodiceans act like unbelievers, all bound up with the world and its sick ideas of worth, the visibilities. Not, the Word. So at the Bema all those who spurned God and instead practiced a whitewashed-sepulchre version of Rev17, will be "naked". One shudders at the thought. Look: this passage isn't against wealth (though other Laodicean idiots try to claim it is), but against DISINTEREST in God (the "lukewarm" moniker, ties to the origin and importance of Laodicea as a town). It's real easy to think you must be a spiritual giant, when you get physical stuff -- Satan uses that tactic all the time, and pulpits today sell his lies. Just last week I stumbled across one on Sunday morning TV, a sermon on how you can get the house of your dreams, because God thinks BIG. Sheesh. If he knew how big, he'd stop talking about such small goals! That's the essence of the apathetic mentality, the Laodicean mentality. Think and grow rich, regurgitated. Vomit is what the Christian absent 1Jn1:9 sees in Bible, thinking it wealth, because he puts a body slant on Bible, when he has no Spirit Breathing Brains into him. So he spits out vomit, and deems it wisdom.]
Notice well Rev3:21 -- you have to overcome the 'average' crowd. If you compare that verse with the other "overcome" verses, you'll realize God assesses overcoming being 'average' as big an achievement, as all the greatness the other overcoming verses address. It's A Big Deal To Overcome being, 'average'. Hardest thing to do. More about the Laodicean isagogics is in Part V's "Our Role in the Tribulation" link.
So anyone who doesn't fit in, yet belongs to the 'average' group, is discussed. Gossip and disapproval accompany anyone who is 'different', see. For if you are average yet not like them, you are a THREAT to them. They are the scum, not you, and your difference makes that clear. Even, if you don't want it to; even if you say nothing.
Moreover, "average" tends to want visibility and routine. Your life will have glitches you can't even begin to imagine, so to denigrate your (unbeknownst to you) testimony. Glitches which will cause trouble to those around you. You'll be tempted to use the standards of the "average" in your Christian life -- visibly trying to win folks for Christ, for example -- at times when you shouldn't do so. You'll get sucked into the potlucks, the nod-to-Godders, the Brave New World Leninas, who think all those lukewarm "works" aren't vomit. 'Because the standard for the "average" is that nothing should be out-of-the-way, you'll be tempted to think your spiritual life is not going anywhere. That's the weight of the masses, pressing on you to give up, because "doctrine doesn't work". Of course, Satan's goal is to make you vomit up the spiritual life, by such lukewarm surroundings. You have a true "Hamburger Hill", alright.
Remember the "Superhuman Thanksgiving Pleasure" section earlier in this page? He's thinking of US while on that Cross. He's using our repugnancy to remind Him that He's paying for us. That's the ultimate thought: the very thing which is most repugnant, is also your joy! Can there be any more inviolate a happiness than this? Can there be a greater Righteousness, than the Righteousness which can forego itself? Think that one over. He's not Righteous, if He permits sin to exist unpaid -- but He's also not Righteous if He doesn't permit it. What, is Righteousness so weak, it can't live with sin?
See why Righteousness is Gorgeous? Morality, bah! It is picayune, compared to such Thinking, Mediated by LOVE. His Righteousness pays for our sins, so we "become the Righteousness of God in Him". It was an exchange, as 2Cor 5 and Romans 6 explain. So, how did Christ Get Paid? By the Doctrine -- in advance! He spent the Doctrine on the sins, as a gift to the Father! So, no cost to Him. The Father, He gets paid from the Doctrinal thinking of Christ, so no cost to Him. So -- get this -- Righteousness is simultaneously paid and unpaid for sins ("Paradox" green table in Part V will climactically explain this point). Thus, inviolate: because paid, the standard is met. Because unpaid (in the sense that sin exists), provably unmoved. Total Integrity. Who, tell me -- thinks like Our God? Was ever there a GLORY like this?
Love is God's Head Attribute, as ArchiDes.htm explains. For 2000 years somehow Christendom has missed that, though the fact stares us in the face: John 3:16, Rom5:8, all those subjective and objective genitive uses of "Love of God", Psalm 89:14-15, even the famous Ps23:6 (usu. chesed is mistranslated "mercy", but it means the Kindness of Love). Pursuing, running out in front. As we saw in the "Core Integrity Properties" of Part I, Love alone can SOLVE Righteousness and Justice. For if either +R or +J tried to solve what each juridicates, then +R and +J would be violated. So there must be an above-and-beyond, Isa52:14's last clause, a "ken mishhat meish merayhu wa toaro me bene adam" -- beyond Human, Love.. to unite, make peace, SATISFY +R and +J. "He shall see, be satisfied" -- Isa 53:11. He, God. Above and beyond, satisfies. Not, morality of some short people towards other short people, no one going beyond to look UP at God.
Whenever my pastor exegetes Heb12:2 (he does everything repeatedly), he always translates the participle prokeimenes (which is also used in 12:1 to draw parallel), "exhibited"; rather than the normal finite-verb translation, "set before". The term really connotes a PUBLIC DISPLAY, something assigned to you to complete, so you will be ashamed if you don't make it. Your audience here is God and the angels, not so much the human race -- but if any derision can be made out of you before man, baby -- you'll get that, too. Especially, in the last phase of Evidence Testing (analogous to Cross). The trick here is to Keep Looking At Him, as Heb12:2 mandates: we saw this in the "Your Combat" table, earlier. Because, then you're looking at what's 'set before' you, your own shamefulness, through His Eyes. It really really really matters to do this. Paul wasn't kidding when he said we walk by Doctrine, not by sight! Remember how Peter only fell into the water, when he stopped looking at the Lord, and instead, down at his feet? Personal testimony: I can only get through a day, this way. Wouldn't matter what the circumstances are, unless looking at Him, there's no reason to breathe. Try it.
For God vindicates His Word. He'll use it in us, to do the only good deed which saves man anything: restoring the soul. This shouldn't have to be said, either, but man famously overvalues his body, and undervalues his own soul. Our souls are pure trash; first, due to being born in totally-depraved bodies, for we soon let that body run our souls. Second, 'due to Satan's blanketing the world with me/body-emphasis definitions of "God", "Good", and "Evil". Third, 'because it's just plain too hard to think. 'Easier to give into whatever stimuli bop volition. "If it feels good, do it!" Sound familiar? So if it feels good to steal, to retort, to get revenge, to castigate..hey, why not? So what value is any 'work', when the soul the 'work goes to', is sheer garbage?
Indeed, what value is any of the thinking in such a soul? Look at almost any philosopher, from Plato to Sartre, and see how they all run in circles. Note how they never begin with God, but rather with man and his world. Even so, they do begin well, have many brilliant and incisive analyses (especially, imo, Plato & Aristotle)..but in the end, because they started their lines of thinking in the wrong place, nothing gets learned. They do get some great insight, but inevitably crash it below tons of rumination, like Descartes did with his exhausted conclusion, "Cogito ergo sum". See? His me-be-god depravity put an "o" where there should have been an "a": "Cogita ergo sum", GOD Thinks Therefore I Exist. 'Sure would have saved him a lot of hand-cramped writing, if he began his determination of whether God exists, with GOD!
Passing the Evidence Tests is a far greater 'work' for mankind than anyone could ever do. For, God blesses the nation, the world, by association with such a "winner believer" (to borrow from Rev's "nikao") -- just as He always has done -- as with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Daniel, the prophets, the Christ.
Since Part I, we've seen how the Trial is about our decisions, not about our works. In Part II, we saw that "works" is man's totally-depraved mentality, so God condemned man to work: that was a punishment, not something rewardable. Also, since man is so totally-depraved in his thinking, he gets language-of-accomodation do's, In Order To Associatively-Learn something: just like a child. So "works" are training aids, not inherently worthy at all. It's the learning, not the 'earning', which has always been God's objective. Moreover, we've seen that the "works" named in the Bible are always preceded by a command to Know Something, and the "works" don't work if that knowledge isn't operating.
Could God make the proof of all this more obvious? Look: because God the Father heard Christ's thoughts while imputing and judging our sins upon Him, we are saved (see Isa53trans.htm for a corrected translation). After all, what does one have to offer God, but thinking? Does God need food, or clothing? Granted, such smaller thoughtfulnesses will receive their rewards..but how much more, what God wants to HEAR? So also, even among we puny humans: isn't it ONLY the thought that counts? What, if you get a nice gift from someone who hates you, doesn't that associated-knowledge-of-hatred make you not want the gift (cf Proverbs 23)?
Remember the Facets in Part IVb? Seven of them, to show how blessing by association is due to Father's Being Pleased With What He Hears The Believer Think. Even sheer logic would prove that Thinking, not doing, is all-important. But heck -- we stupidly, even at the highest levels in theological seminaries, teach Christ paid for sin with His Physical death -- so we have no logic. So God is not pleased with our thinking, we are maligning the very Cross! That's the doo-doo facets, operating. Which would you rather think God wants? Your doo-doo thinking but nice deeds which even the unbeliever can do (Iranians are very moral, you know) -- or the thinking of Christ, Who Nailed To A Cross, obviously could do, nothing? ["Grail" link in DDNA.htm goes through the incredible stupidity of mainstream Christianity's idea that Christ paid for sin with His Physical death. Sick idea! But absent 1Jn1:9, Scripture is just sav lasav, bodily interpreted, Isa28:10-12, a foreign language which sounds like drunken speech...]
More on the toxic nature of this Rev17 gambit is covered in the beginning of Part V, but for the moment, notice: all the stoning nature of mainstream Christianity. It seeks victims, it hallows its own witch-hunts, it tyrannizes folks with doo-doo plans, and all in God's Name. Lord, Lord people who are probably not Christian (if they can't say the Gospel correctly, then maybe they aren't even saved) -- 90+% of 'Christianity', today! So if they ARE believers, what do you think the Lord will be saying to them at the Bema? Better to be boiled in oil down here, than have to face Him, then.
The blessing-by-association isn't merely about life-or-death. They get goodies from God, solely because He is pleased with the "sweet savor" of our learning His Son. Moreover, we also need them to get those goodies. After all, they are 'into' the worldy-stuff, and we've not really much time for that: study takes up a lot of our time. So we need them blessed, to a) get logistical support ourselves, and b) compensate them for what we aren't doing for their bodies. So, they get goodies, and thus we do too. It's just support, to us. To them, it's like life-or-death. So, we can enjoy their enjoying the goodies (which by our Royal Standards are merely tools). Everyone benefits. Kinda like Abraham said to the rich man in Torments (Luke 16:20ff): We get to watch them have those things, and they get to watch us have spiritual things. Which gives everyone an opportunity to get more of both. (That's why those in Torments could see those in Paradise, maybe: Part V's end will have much more on this topic.)
We also saw in Part IVc how Time itself, plus the actual pattern of history, is DIRECTLY affected by our decisions, alone: for we ARE the Conduit of History itself, since we are Christ's "Body", "Bride", Royal Family -- forever. Satan's activities are directly impacted, for the time he's got left affects what decisions he makes about what to do. The more of us getting added to the Pleroma (ruling) class among the Bride, the less time he has to pull off his anti-Millenium.
So, then: Our decisions make or break history, just as the decisions of Royalty always have. That's Royalty's JOB, for crying out loud.
From Part III and this Part IV, we've also seen that Blessing-by-Association-with-Us, is the SOLE Conduit for Divine Blessing to the world. All those fake gods people worship are demons, and Satan's 'blessing' plan is Gotterdammerung, as we saw in Part IVc, and will see again, in Part V. So the Divine Benefit Plan can't flow to the world, absent us. Does this blessing come through our works? Oh no -- but only because we're breathing, and that becaue we inherited our Royal Status from Christ due to His Victory at the Cross and consequent Session, as Hebrews painstakingly explains. So also, people gain from watching us -- our thinking affects their own, directly, because we all have reciprocity desires/reflexes, and thought is contagious. And, as noted earlier, God uses this exposure to us to provide a freedom-from-poverty only God can do: heal and grow the soul. THAT is how the world's ills are fixed, not by body-works. Again, as always, Only Bible Doctrine Works.
And all that breakup started, because the West looked prosperous; people wanted to have a better economic life. So with that desire, came the idea underlying that superior economic life -- man must be FREE. Of course, the West didn't learn the very lesson it taught the rest of the world, and has been descending into cultural slavery. But hopefully by the time we in the West all crash and burn, the rest of the world will have learned the lesson, and they will carry the freedom baton.
So now see how that secular breakup reflects its parent, spiritual truth: You Are To Be Set Free By The Truth, Not By Good Deeds, Gal5:1 (theme of chapter), John 8:32. [Notice how in Gal5, as in Romans 2-4, Paul equates the immoral with the legalist. Awesome stuff.] Truth is the ultimate prosperity, for if you have it, you don't need to hate, steal, be vindictive, back-biting, cheat, immoral, etc. For the Truth is satisfying to the soul. Which then makes for a happier body, too. So that body will be free to have whatever life, and since you have logistical needs if you'll be studying Scripture, well.. God will provide. He might give you a Bugati for Bible class, or a bicycle, but you'll get what your body needs, so your soul can get fed. Now, think: if God will bless your periphery due to what you need, then.. is that not better a "work" than all the world's demonstrably impotent, charity?
Charity chains, too. If you feed a wild animal enough, he forgets how to forage for himself. That's why in national parks, you'll often see "Don't feed the animals" signs. They have to be responsible for themselves. People, even more, since people have souls. A child stays a child, if you don't at some point STOP doing for him. Nations stay children, if they are saddled with childish cultures. Tribalism, family, religion are all used to enslave and keep childish, a people. God invented competing barriers against these satanic tyrannies, but man loves tyranny, being himself, tyrannical by nature. Children are tyrannical, since they don't know how else to be. Hence we give them commands to go against their nature, so they can grow UP. Charity and do-goodism break down those barriers, and like a virus, seed into the healthy. So that we all become victims, demanding of our governments, our authorities, our neighbors, our families, our spouses. Demanding demanding demanding whining blaming self-pity. Yeah. That's what doo-doo thinking begets. Love is not so encumbered, Gal5:1-22.
People who promote good deeds have no faith. Like the straw man in Jas2:18, they think their works are as good as the Word. James proved that wrong; so of course the works-crowd, which can't read Bible except with body slants (true eisegesis), uses that same passage to claim their faith must be evidenced by works, lol -- WHICH JAMES PROVES FALSE in that very verse! So they read Bible, bass-ackwards! [Prove it to yourself: pretend for the sake of argument that wherever the word "faith" is used in James, it means Doctrine You Believed, then read your favorite translation. See if it suddenly makes a lot more sense.] So, they prove they do not believe in GOD when they make their stinks about works. So God does no work in them, for them, from them, of them, Matt13:54. So their works are sterile, their charity impotent. Seek God's Opinion before you even think about doing a work, lest you waste your time!
Good thinking teaches a man to fish. Then he can feed himself. Divine thinking teaches a man to reach Pleroma. Then he can rule a kingdom. Um, it's ONLY the Thought That Counts.
Indeed, why should Christians want it? How many jaded Christians do you know? How many depressed, maybe neurotic, obsessed, Christians do you know? Deut28:28 describes far too many of us today. We obsess over politics, as if man was more important than God. We think by electing the "right" people, passing the "right" laws, God will reward us for our efforts. Isn't this insane thinking? What, the God of grace wants us to do the work? What happened to "not of my own righteousness", and "not of works, lest any man should boast?" What happened to "grow in GRACE and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior"? What happened to Romans 13, and 1Tim2? These passages, plus the slavery ones, don't argue for changing the world. Yet we are obsessed with it today..just as much as we were during the Dark and Middle Ages.
Obsession is the first characteristic of mental illness. In California, for example, Christians are in mental hospitals in record numbers. "And I will strike you with madness" warns God in Deut28:28. "Strong delusion" is not reserved only for the unbeliever, but also for the believer, "whose god is their emotion" (Rom1, Phil3:18). "But you did not so learn Christ!" Paul shouted (Eph4:20; RSV leaves out "de", which means "But").
We become mentally ill when we replace God with our own ideas of Him, our own versions of spirituality, far more quickly than an unbeliever will become so ill. Why? Because we are more dependent. Royalty is more dependent than the peasant, that's the irony.
So, shall we grow up in Christ, or buy Satan's version? God's Script, or Satan's? Satan's leads to insanity, since that is the nicest way he can denigrate us in the eyes of the world, and get God to order our capital punishment (1Jn5:16), calling us home, in shame. As we saw since Part IVa (and especially in Part IVc) that's why the Rapture happens, too. Because Rev17 is Satan's plan so to make the official Tribulation work -- and he doesn't know when it will happen, so he started Right Away To Create The Fake Church -- Satan finally achieves such a high level of apostacy within Christendom God has to wipe us all out, like He did with the Exodus generation -- but en masse. Not exactly the boon most enRaptured folks think of that Day, huh?
Granted, we are still victorious in Christ (1Cor15:52-57), but..our victory could have been still greater. Instead, forfeited to the Pleroma, are our Divine Benefit Plan blessings for time and eternity. All we will know of them directly is by memorial to what they would have been; all blessings we get will be INDIRECT via the Pleroma, Isa53:12. But wait! There's still time, down here -- so long as one is breathing. Time to get with God's Script, and learn it "full"y. Our erudition can't substitute for that Script; our works can't substitute for it. No one is too handicapped, no one is too intelligent, for We All Lost Our Brains When We Were Born Spiritually In Christ, John 3, Eph4:23's clever genitive (He's also THE Breath of our Thinking, so we have no other brains, what wit). So everyone gets God's Script only one way: just as Christ did, in the Power Brains of the Holy Spirit. So we, like the unbeliever, also "are without excuse", Romans 1.
Worse, we become cursing by association to our nation and the world, bringing on it the judgement which our learning had forestalled. We lost our saltiness, so the world is less preserved, and more tormented. Satan is not to blame; we will be, though: for rejecting the Grace, the Love of Christ. By means of good deedism, we wreck the world! Just as Jewish apostacy, manifested in good deedism, nearly wrecked the world, so Christ came, so also at the end of the Church's completion, good deedism will require the Rapture. Then, that highest-good-deedism period dawns: The Tribulation. Are you beginning to get the impression that "doing good" is dangerous?
Ask anyone who's been a POW about how loneliness can more quickly drive one mad than anything else. In Russia, for example, if they locked you inside a red room, alone -- in 40 days, you'd be completely mad. Well, Satan's plan is like a red room, only you don't notice you're going nuts, because folks around you are also deteriorating. So, you think you're "normal". You, like everyone else, hustle and scramble to "improve", never satisfied, always on that hamster wheel -- I-am-good, I-am-good -- only self is NOT good. Self is ALONE. Why? Because Satan's plan begets progressive self-absorption. The self-is-good mantra can't survive much scrutiny. So, it hides. So, people talk "at", rather than "with", each other. So, the TV screen is a better "friend". So, good deeds have to multiply, right down to one's hair gel choices. So, one must increasingly criticise whoever disagrees -- even over hair gel. Thus driven, one becomes automatonic, since the mantra is -- sorry -- a type of masturbation. Interpersonal intercourse threatens the mantra, you see. Self can't withstand comparison! So Grace threatens the mantra, too. So, one must run! Escape!
The pace must become ever faster, faster, faster! to get the same thrill of being "right", of making someone else "wrong". One thus becomes frustrated, maddened, trying to keep up the needed pace. At some point, one quits -- or, more likely, resorts to power lust. Why? Because morality never pays off, when it's divorced from God.
| Witness? US. America. CLICK HERE for a likely scenario of US Testimony in the Lord vs. Satan Trial. |
So, then: if we have the "treasure in earthen vessels", but instead of GROWING UP in it, we hide that truth unused, like the stingy servant hid his Master's talent.. no one ELSE has any defense, because we don't have the right counteracting 'contagion' to give them. So we fail in Part III's Corollary 3C, "Caring Charge", as a "nation under God". We do not keep our Pledge of Allegiance: instead, we even sue against it, just like that guy in California did, piously claiming to defend his son's rights! Tell me: would YOU want to be that son? So, then: just as the Mosaic Law had been the sole defense against man's me-be-god degeneration into animalism, so now our Royal Treasure is the only way to "choose life"(Deut30:19). Else, Satan's vampiric, vulturic plan runs unhindered. Unless we wake up and get with God's Script.
By contrast, God makes the Pleroma Legacy from "the Riches of His Glory" (look up all verses with that phrase). He even uses it to REVERSE the decline-into-vulturism. (Cf. 2Chron7:14, Isa35-37, and "Hezekiah" passages.) 'Bonus gift. "Just because". And why not? See how the contentment of the spiritually-mature believer is superior to Satan's goodies? Imagine, as you read how the mature believer thinks, below -- imagine how wonderfully enjoyable life with humans would be, if they thought the same way.
Armed with God-knowledge, developed in Love, he doesn't seek crusades. He's not discontented, so is not obsessing over improvements. Others' sins merely mean they have freedom to learn Christ, too. So he doesn't take offense at them. His soul is uncluttered by the ever-draining needs to get compensation from others. Therefore, he himself can be poor, or rich -- it doesn't matter which one. Nor does it matter who else is poor or rich. So his relationships with others are hallmarked by contentment, and others who relate to him find themselves refreshed by that association. For them, he's an oasis in a desert of rules.
So they learn from him. What do they learn? They Learn To View Things Differently. Life's preoccupations don't hold him, unlike most others they know. What seems shocking or bad to most people, doesn't faze him much. So their own flaws as they perceive them, they notice don't bother him. He looks past stuff which would normally trap someone else, and they wonder, how can he be so calm? For, he doesn't wear his faith on his sleeve, but in his heart.
And, when he evaluates anything, his doctrinal associations supplant the me-be-god urges, so he actually comes up with the right answer -- which is normally, "Rest: do nothing". So, in whatever he does, he is far more competent. He won't encourage others to spend their money; he won't argue for taking up causes, seeking revenge; he won't sell anything. For, he will be self-sufficient. So, whatever he does, is from this self-sufficiency, and thus actually works. Ahhhhh.
So he represents an alternative lifestyle, one that refreshes, rather than drains. For he's Spiritually-grown, so he's relaxed. Christ is the center of his attention, not the world. So, unlike the rest of the world, he doesn't need 'excitement' to escape the desperate boredom which embitters them over time; because he, unlike them, finds every speck of dust full of spiritual meaning: something depicting Christ. So, the few but highly strategic good deeds he does are from a base of love for God, and competently chosen. They don't seem like effort to him, even though great effort is required. He comes to like giving, "just because". He doesn't need to do "good" to propitiate his me-be-good depraved nature.
Because he's so centered on how every speck of dust depicts Christ, he's not looking at himself. What a freedom he has: he's busy looking at Christ, so not busy looking at the traffic jam, the snide remark, his sex appeal, his good deeds; he's not looking at whether he's rich or important to his neighbors or the world. So he's not competing with anyone, and he's not weighed down with the million frustrations which come from trying to compete. So he's not trying to convert anyone, use holy tones, dress in black or manifest other ascetisms, to 'advertise'. When disaster strikes, he might react, but it will be short-lived, as the Doctrine kicks in to remind him of what's really going on -- Royal Training. So, he relaxes. And those around him, who see this suffering 'whatever', are amazed. They say nothing, or something -- but whatever they say, he soon notices the Doctrinal meaning, and brushes aside any compliments he gets. For, His Eyes Are On Christ; not much else can get in his Line of Sight. It's not that he is unaware of the world, but he Enjoys Seeing His Lord, the more.
He thus doesn't need reciprocation, approbation, recognition, for the good deeds do nothing for his self-esteem. Instead, the good deeds are refreshment, like tasty food. 'Not sacrifice, but received enjoyment. So, he doesn't need anyone to "know" about them. So, they are without "strings". So, 'satisfying. So, 'dispensable. Satan can't "hook" him. And Satan can't beat such a believer's happiness, either, because his happiness is expressed in the good deeds -- not caused by them. Most of all, Satan can't duplicate the blessing-by-association benefits God does to show HIS Refreshment -- in the believer's name, "just because".
At times, he won't look more competent to the outside world, because his life will be harder, a Hamburger Hill. But he will handle it with equanimity. 'Whether he is to die slowly and painfully, or quietly in his sleep. 'Whether he is to lose those he most loves, or enjoy the prosperity of their earthly happiness. Makes no difference. Christ matters, and all else is -- "So, what?" So, he is free to love those in his periphery, and free to love anyone. Anytime. Everything is extra, therefore everything is free. So, his love for them is free -- not based on needs he himself has. He's not loving in order to gain something from them. That is GLORY. Glory which took a lifetime! to acquire, GOD's Way. Never man's way.
Because, in the Royally-Invisible Spiritual Life, "Less is More". Less time on works, more time on learning Christ. Less time in redressing grievances, so more time to spend on what's enjoyable: Christ. Less time in "big" stuff, more time in constant small stuff: line upon line, precept on precept. Every moment, every day. Low, slow, and constant. Therefore, a habit. Therefore, easy. Therefore, enjoyable. Against this, all the goodies of the world have no attraction power. Against this, Satan has no reply. Against this, the entire world cannot stand. "Having done all, to stand"(Eph6:13,KJV) will be this believer's future. Shall it become yours? Shall it become mine? Our choice. Every moment of every day.
What responsibility we have, to learn Christ. Not only does history literally continue because a FEW believers are grown up, have passed Evidence Testing, and have reached Pleroma (Eph3:19); not only do such believers massively aid even the secular happiness for billions; but ALL mankind gets the continued opportunity to see Him, grow in Him. Can't have a greater impact on mankind, than that. Can't do anything remotely like that Except By God's Script.
So this, the highest of the knowledge-and-power level covenantal periods -- Church, Body of Christ under development -- will continue until no one wants it anymore. This "Age over the Ages" (Paul's phrase, in Ephesians 3:21 and elsewhere, a lexeme) -- this is the both the best-and-worst time to be alive, not the official (7-year) Tribulation. The official Tribulation is easier, and short. 'And DEPENDENT, for its own wellbeing, on us who reach Pleroma status -- even after our deaths -- as Part V will further explain.