Practical Speculation on the Purpose of God: His Agenda and Causation: the Names and Natures of the Antediluvian Patriarchs for Personal Character and Spiritual Development

(Added 02/14/2018: I found this woman's research interesting on Sid Roth's It's Supernatural TV program, at about 9:30 and following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MkJjLxZai8.)

Note: below is my long draft. I cut to the chase in a much shorter version:
http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2017/10/to-point-antediluvian-patriarchs.html


Why do prayer, the Law of Attraction, and causative imagination techniques not always work? Neville said that they always work, and if they don't, the problem is with us, not them. So, what with us may be the problem? In a word, the Antediluvian Patriarchs.

You know the Antediluvian Patriarchs as the men in the Bible who lived before the flood of Noah. This is real early, up through chapter five in the Book of Genesis. Everyone wonders how these early humans lived to be nine-hundred-plus years old. They didn't. They weren't men. Because the most important things Moses learned in the Book of Exodus, he put up front in the Book of Genesis, so we couldn't miss them. These "men" are manifestations of spiritual development; they are principles, natures we are to attain to in the course of our salvation. They have nothing whatsoever to do with secular history, except we haven't yet attained them, so our secular history is continuously screwed up. The patriarchs pertain to salvation history, THE personal history that has to happen in each and every one of us. If you consider the flood of Noah as a desirable goal, the Antediluvian Patriarchs are the force that gets it to rain.

The Patriarchs are a course that prepares us spiritually for causative imagination; i.e., creation. We are here to learn to create, but if we are not prepared for the work, we cannot do the work, because we do not even know what the work really is. The Antediluvian Patriarchs get us there. You might not want to get religious, but be ready to become Pentecostal.

The story isn't that some guys begot another guys; it is that states beget other states, "sons" to them. They are a buildup. God has an agenda for our lives, an objective we are supposed to be making progress on. The Antediluvian Patriarchs are the movement.

Let's rename them, because it is nuts to keep referring to states as people after you know they are states. They are, actually, developmental elements. Elements of spiritual development. We in our ignorance, which God hates, need to be developed, prepared through these elements, to do causative imagining according to his nature, which he likes. That will be our nature when the elements are our nature. Unity School of Christianity's Metaphysical Bible Dictionary (MBD) is available online and gives good estimates (hopefully) of the elements' meanings. If we take its entries as a guideline, and maybe pull shades of meaning from Strong's Exhaustive Concordance's Hebrew and Chaldee dictionary and Abarim Publications definitions, we can construct the line of progression we are all supposed to go through to become prepared. (NB: I am throwing in whatever I think, so don't blame Unity, Abarim, or anyone else for this.)

Moses did not write chapter by chapter. He set the stage of our present situation (Genesis up through chapter four: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Seth and Enosh), and then introduced the developmental elements as its fix:

Adam, red; ruddy (from "to show blood"; hence, "to show Life"); reddish; firm. Adam is an everyman (as they all are). Adam is red because dam is the Hebrew word for blood, and aleph is the prefix for the divine. Adam is God's blood. It is the nature of the human race to be God's blood, his life-force. YOU, whoever you are, are Adam, the blood of God, the vehicle of his life: imagination.

MBD: The first movement of mind in its contact with life and substance. I.e., we are God's consciousness which has annexed -- been breathed into -- material form. Our imagining ("first movement of mind") is making us alive ("contact with life and substance").

Eve, elementary life; life; living. The causative form of "to live, to declare or show," hence, Life-giver. Eve is the feminine aspect of man, outwardly manifest: "male and female created he them." I.e., our surrounding world is made alive to us by our own imagining. It is our "bride," the extension (as one flesh) of ourselves.

The giving of life comes from our desire. We want something, and it isn't there. But everything exists in potential. We desire it, and in faith believe that it IS there, assuming that it is already received here fully and completely. As God's blood, imagination, desire's creative force becomes Eve, giving life in our world to that desired experience through God's orchestrations.

MBD: Love, or feeling, in individual consciousness -- the felt imagination. The I AM (wisdom) puts feeling into what it thinks, and so "Eve" (feeling) becomes the "mother of all living": the Life-giver. Feeling is Spirit, which quickens. Woman symbolizes the soul region of man and is the mother -- provider -- principle of God in expression. Back of the woman (feeling) is the pure life essence of God. Adam and Eve represent the I AM identified in life substance. They are the primal, elemental forces of Being itself.

Man is created as life-giving imagination, a portrait of God, and enters Ignorance, the undesirable factor of the Ineffable's Imagination.

While this may seem to be weird, speculative philosophy, I mean it as the real, nut-and-bolts reality of the spiritual realm: it is because of Ignorance that we MUST become spiritually enabled in the character, the nature of the Ineffable. God is a jealous God who wants us to be making progress this direction. The Ignorance we had as the Imagination of the Ineffable is still today stealing, killing, and destroying us. It strikes at us relentlessly. We must overcome it, crush its head, and become free. It isn't going away otherwise. We must develop our personal character and spiritual acuity through these developmental elements.

Cain, possession; acquisition; centralization; draws to itself; to its own center; selfishness; sharp; cutting; a lance. It is from the idea to hit a musical note, a constant: FIXITY. I.e., thinking that we are here, and staying here (a no-no). We create this experience and think that this is all there is. It is short sightedness. This is manifestation of our ignorance. NB: the brother, Abel, that gets killed, is TRANSITORINESS, and Seth is his replacement.

MBD: Cain means possession, acquisition, centralization, that which draws to itself, selfishness. Cain refers directly to that part of the human consciousness which strives to acquire and possess.

The killing, by the body-selfishness of fixity, of the potentials of transitoriness, is represented by Cain's slaying of Abel. When the body demands possession of all the resources of mind and soul, and reduces existence to mere material living, it has slain Abel, and our blood, imagination, continually cries from the earthly consciousness to the Lord for expression.

Abel, breath or vanity; transitoriness; a vapor. Emptiness, something transitory or unsatisfactory, vain in act, word, or expectation. Abel is the emptiness of this experience. What the heck do we want with this place, anyway? It is in reality a vapor, an illusion, unreal. Zero, zilch, nada value. The only real value here is spiritual consciousness.

Abel is what this really is (spiritual consciousness and zilch else), Cain is what we think of it, that it is continuous, completely forgetting what it really is.

Seth, settled; determined; founded; set, as put in the place of another; placed; disposed; constituted; substituted (for another); compensation.

MBD: The root idea of this name is that of a surrounding sympathetic movement that envelops a thing and defines its limits, places it, founds it, disposes of it. Some mystics have seen in the name Seth a law of destiny, that which predetermines a thing and settles its order.

I.e., religion.

While man is in a sense a creature of free will, yet in a larger sense he is a son of God, made in the image and likeness of God, and is destined to express and demonstrate spiritual perfection. There is in all the universe, including man, a balancing power of good, of perfection, which causes a readjustment, a healing, to set in after every transgression of the law, every wandering away from that which is wholesome and true. We find this set forth very clearly in Bible history and symbology. Man seems ever to have wandered away to the limit; then a great reaction has set in, and he has been led back to a saner level. Thus he evolves, grows; and finally he shall come into a full consciousness of his perfect good. His growth into Christlikeness is accelerated greatly as he comes into a knowledge of the Truth that makes free, and thinks and acts consciously, voluntarily, in harmony with it.

I.e., religion. I am not endorsing religion here. I think religion is the second greatest enemy of God, right after ignorance itself.

Enosh, mutable being; transient man; corporeal man; mortal man; suffering man; miserable man. Frail, feeble, sickly, or melancholy. Enosh means a miserable man, mortal man. This is what we find ourselves to be in religion, but religion teaches us differently (i.e., that we are called to be a higher being, but cannot do it on our own).

MBD: See SETH in conjunction with this name; the two must be studied together in order to get the full significance of this one.
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Moses set he stage of our condition before spiritual development: a) the Ineffable's imagination, God, has become man's imagination; b) man is creative force, but has the ignorance of amnesia; what he creates incidentally he does not realize is transitory; c) seeking relief, we put religion (etc.) in the place of forgotten (but still beckoning) spiritual oneness, futilely conceiving and miserably calling on God as a separate being. From this position of impotence, the seven developmental elements of repair are introduced:

MBD: "And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh. Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah" (Gen. 4:26). It is when man comes to the end of his personal resources and sees the nothingness of all his efforts in the outer, apart from Spirit, that he begins to look for a higher power to express in his life. He calls upon the name of Jehovah (YHWH, Jesus). It is the activity of the awakening spiritual ideals within him that causes him first to realize the futility of his human efforts to better himself, and then to recognize the one Source of all true uplift and good (like Moses from Egypt seeking Jethro).

Cainan (Kenan), possessor; acquisitor; centralizer; one who fixes and establishes his center; acquisition. Self-centered one; fixed; ownership; centered dominion; possession invading space; general usurpation; agglomeration; welding; smith; lancer; spearman

MBD: Cainan, meaning possessor, centralizer, one who fixes and establishes his center, symbolizes the establishing of one's outer consciousness and organism in the truth that the whole man, even the body, is in essence spiritual. Thus does one prepare oneself for the new or Christ birth. Through this new birth, even the very outermost phase of man's organism undergoes a change from seeming material to spiritual expression and manifestation— the body takes on its real spiritual nature.

We saw the principle of Cainan in Cain, fixity. A lance, spear, or dart, fixes something in a constant. In Cain it was fixity in the physical. In Cainan, it is fixity in the spirit; i.e., we realize that it is really there.

MBD: Re Kenan: Enosh (meaning mortal man, mutable being, corporeal man) refers to the outer or body consciousness, in its limited, material, corruptible concept of the organism: the unreality of the material is made evident by the higher, more spiritual thought (Seth) that has begun its work in the consciousness, to the end that it may be replaced by the spiritual concept and expression. Kenan, son of Enosh (meaning self-centered one, fixed, ownership, general usurpation, welding), signifies the seemingly established materiality of consciousness and organism. But the higher, more spiritual thought, found in Seth, is working, and the man, though seemingly established in materiality, is reaching out of  the lesser self (possession invading space) and upward toward something more powerful to uplift, enlighten, heal, renew, and restore than is to be found in the material. Thus Kenan brings forth Mahalelel, meaning praise of God.

Mahalaleel (A. V., Maleleel), mighty rising; glory of brightness; mighty exaltation; raise a joyous shout to God; praise of God; splendor of God.

MBD: Man expressing his innate tendency to praise God, to hold to the light, to the good. To exalt God in consciousness is very uplifting to the individual. Like Mahalaleel, Mahalalel signifies that in man which praises and blesses and glorifies God, the good. It is the higher Judah attitude, the attitude of praise and prayer in expression.

When we discover that God is real, we repent (new world view) and of course, praise him.

Jared, descent; going down; descending; low country; declining.

MBD: The descent of Spirit, through praise and acknowledgment of God (Mahalalel), into the seemingly earthly or physical in man (low ground), that man may be wholly lifted into spiritual consciousness (Enoch, son of Jared, signifying entrance into and instruction in spiritual consciousness the new life in Christ.

So, from fixed realization that God is real, praise and worship therefore, his Spirit descends upon us. Sure sounds like the beginning of the baptism in the Holy Spirit to me.

Enoch, founder; centralizer; teacher; instructor; initiator; fixer; repentance; contrition.

MBD: Entrance into and instruction in a new state of thought, of understanding. In the case of the Enoch who walked with God, the new state of thought would be spiritual consciousness, the new life in Christ.

Methuselah, man of the sword; man of the dart; extension of the sword; swift hurled dart of death; sending forth of death; sting of death. A dart or lance, we have learned, has to do with fixity. This is anchoring in faith of what is learned in spiritual dynamics, which incurs humility, trust, and faith.

MBD: A quick, piercing thought, or word (man of the sword, man of the dart) of life, power, and oneness with God.

Lamech, overthrown; leveler; arrester of dissolution; principle of law and order; a strong young man; strength; health; power.

MBD: The strength of youth; the vital something in us that overcomes thoughts and tendencies that lead to dissolution. The vital life principle constantly inspires us from within to keep on living. This thought of youth was in Lamech, the father of Noah, and it found expression in Noah. (See NOAH.) The thought of strength and youth that is symbolized by the Lamech descended from Cain is carnal and physical. The new line of descent from Adam, through Seth, that follows this Lamech introduces a higher, a more spiritual understanding.

Lamech signifies the principle of life, which not only tends to keep one alive in the body but also brings about the building of a new body and reentrance into manifest existence for each one who lets go of his consciousness of life in the body for a time, thus allowing his organism to disintegrate; in other words, for each one who goes through the experience that the world has named death.

I find in Lamech the idea of "opposite of a king." Abdication. Lying down and giving it all up. Surrender. Being overthrown and leveled. For it was when I cast self-lordship, self-control out of myself and surrendered to, "You are Glorious God, and I am but your mud-man," that I entered the rest of Noah and was finally accepted, and baptized in the Holy Spirit. I let it all go, AND THEN IT BEGAN.

Noah, rest; calm; quiet; peace; tranquillity; equilibrium, to settle down (examples: let fall, let alone, withdraw).

"And he called his name Noah, saying, 'This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, which cometh because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed'" (Gen. 5:29).

MBD: Noah can also be said to be the obedience through which seed for a new state of consciousness is saved. Again, Noah typifies the consciousness at rest in God (Gen. 6:9). In Genesis 6:10, the three sons of Noah represent states of mind. Shem, meaning renown, typifies the spiritual; Ham, meaning warm, typifies the physical; and Japheth, meaning extender, typifies the intellect or reason.

The Metaphysical Dictionary of the Bible continues:

The interpretation of Genesis 6:11 is that, when the faculties of mind have been used in wrong relation to Truth, certain destructive processes set in and the "earth" (the man-made realm of thought) is in a state of corruption.

Genesis 6:12: The law of the Lord begins to regulate the consciousness of man. The flood is representative of the baptism of Spirit, and is necessary in order to establish equilibrium in the three planes of mental activity.

Genesis 7:11-13: When the whole man (Noah and his wife and his sons and his sons' wives) has been washed in the regeneration, he takes refuge in the "ark" of the Lord. Man rests in the spiritual part of his consciousness, even in the midst of a flood of error.

Genesis 7:14, 15: Man takes into the ark all the ideas inherent in Being. The positive and the negative (the "two and two") activities of the organism are never separated. Divine thoughts, seven pairs.

Genesis 7:16, 17: By laying hold of spiritual ideas as the only reality, and declaring Spirit to be all in all, one is lifted "above the earth" and "shut . . . in" with Jehovah in perfect safety.

Genesis 7:18-20: Water represents unexpressed capacity. The whole "earth" (realm of manifestation) is filled with potential ideas, waiting for words of Truth to move upon the intelligence of the "waters" and bring forth spiritual realities.

Genesis 7:21, 22: When the faculties of mind find their poise in Truth, all lesser ideas die or disappear through a process of transmutation. Even the ideas that seem to contain the "breath of the spirit of life" are lost sight of in the fuller realization of Spirit as the only presence and power.

Genesis 7:23: When man lets go of his false sense of things and discerns God to be the one source of all good, he rests in spiritual consciousness (Noah) with his pure ideas of Being ("they that were with him in the ark").

Verse 24: The waters prevail so long as it is necessary to cleanse the "earth," thus making ready for the expression of purer and truer ideas. p

In Genesis 9:8-17 Noah (the consciousness), with his sons (states of mind), after his purification (the flood) is very closely related to God. God covenants or agrees to bless the purified consciousness and its realm of ideas (seed). Every idea (living creature) that is illumined of Spirit— even ideas related to the body consciousness (earth)— is blessed when man knows the creative law and cooperates with it.

Once the consciousness has been cleansed and man has awakened to his spiritual nature, he is saved through obedience to divine law and is no longer subject to dissolution through negative means. This "covenant," which is eternal, is to those who give up mind and body into the keeping of divine law. The "bow" signifies the orderly arrangement of ideas in Divine Mind, and their perfect manifestation. One who is poised in Truth rests in the consciousness of God's presence, even in the midst of error (the cloud).

When man is obedient to the guidance of God he will never be flooded by negative conditions. The rainbow is a sign in the heavens symbolizing the perfect blending of the race into obedience to one harmonious Christ principle— the endless circle of natural perfection coming out of obedience to divine law.
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Well, I got this started. I wanted to get the idea out. Perhaps I can abbreviate and say it more simply in a later post, more of my own impression and less MDB.