Conversion/Deconversion: The Evidence OF Jesus Christ

That people claim to deconvert from Christianity is sad but understandable if they have never really been Christians after all. I believe they became "Christian" in the first place misled by false evidence. A person converted by true evidence of Jesus Christ cannot deconvert. True evidence = regeneration BY Him. God confirms testimony about Him with signs performed (Mark 16:20). The convert KNOWS God exists and that Jesus is the Christ. It is a spiritual thing. Lack of physical, historical evidence, inconsistencies in the Bible count for nothing: "That is on us." That I saw Him, that He healed me, that I heard Him counts for everything. THAT is the Gap I worship.

Consider Adam. Two lonely people together. They have the power to cause life, Eve, the "wife," their living situation. They manifest Cain, "Acquisition," and Abel, "Transitoriness," for "I have gained a man for the Lord" (Genesis 4:1 Alexander). Cain is the apparent physical manifestation, Abel the spiritual quality of it; if you would, its evidence of the Lord. After years in the field, we forget Abel. He is still there, but we aren't listening anymore. Moses is in the philosophical waters, panicking. God appears to him as the power of Life, "Yo, dude, remember Me?" Moses is calmed from the waters (that is what his name meant - Alexander). Moses has his evidence.

There certainly are charlatans who counterfeit the real thing, but there IS also the real thing they are counterfeiting. Why would they counterfeit something that did not exist? That REAL spiritual quality is the place to go. Seek the true Jesus, the real deal. He is inside you; you just need help, perhaps, in learning to listen to His voice and in opening the door. Bring Abel to resurrection. The only course to real evidence I know is to focus inside yourself for Him with a Pentecostal - I say PENTECOSTAL - minister.

God As Compartments

I offer this because it helped me. I was reading a bit from Jonathan Edwards On Heaven And Hell (John Gerstner, 1980, Grand Rapids MI: Baker Book House Company). On page 57, Gerstner observes (speaking of God):

"Indeed, according to Edwards, he is hell and he is heaven. Eternity for sinner and saint will be spent 'in the immediate presence and sight of God....' Preached Edwards, 'God will be the hell of one and the heaven of the other.'
"It is because God is the fire which burns in hell that words can never convey--much less exaggerate--the terrors of the damned." (Also found in this summary.)

Did someone say modes? The rich man and the beggar Lazarus with Abraham, in two separate compartments which are one God. We are rightly in the rich man's compartment: fire is our destiny in God. Because we are BORN spiritually dead, we all sin from the get-go (Romans 5:12). Jesus comes over from Abraham's compartment and offers us, after the sacrifice of Himself, THAT; i.e., escape from this fate. It was God on top Who came down to get us. What love! What mercy! What grace and glory!! Abraham and Lazarus had trusted it. All it costs us is everything: "Go, sell...and follow Me." Get everything for nothing. Not a bad deal - far better than moving to the East Side!

God's Language: Something Is Real - Bet On Forgiveness

Some of the near death experience (NDE) testimonies on YouTube are interesting. I recognize that those real experiences are language. That is, they are God saying something about something that is even more real than the illustrations of it. Our daily lives are as that: these experiences are real, but God is telling us about something more real through them. More real, but inscrutable. Our curse is that in our ignorance and sloth we do not listen nor take the illustrative communication seriously. We see God screaming...and fold our hands. We cannot say He did not warn us.

Hermetic wisdom is interesting and enlightening philosophically, but we have to balance it with God's language of evidence. It was a very small thing, but I watched my arm grow out about half an inch - I think actually about five eighths - and this at the name of Jesus Christ. This occurrence was evidence for me, a very big thing. My vision of Jesus being scourged and crucified was inwardly emotional, but when he spoke to me it was physical. I heard him. Evidence. He spoke the first three words of Matthew 11:28, "Come unto Me." For me historical and empirical. A year later, a woman prophesied to me the rest of the verse.

I have learned to listen to the vocabulary of God. It is pretty scary to hear the NDEs of heaven and hell. I know things more real than the illustrations exist in God. When He appeared to Israel at Horeb they were terrified: "Anything, anything, anything. You say it, we'll do it." In the fire they had evidence OF THE REAL THING. Follow the Law to not go there? No problemo. I look at the amazing work T. L. and Daisy Osborn accomplished. He saw God illustrated in men and women, and then he saw the real thing in the appearance of Jesus. He received evidence, and charged headlong in the love of God to save people from the Truth they did not hear nor take seriously. That is what the Apostles and the first church did. They had evidence. That was what mattered. They went and preached; God evidenced; people believed.

Do you have evidence? Will you go with it? It Works by Jarrett is a Gospel tract to me. If it works, then you have found Him. God! There is reality - power - behind the illustration. That is God smacking you upside the head with a two by four screaming, "Yes, I am really here! I have given you the way to heaven: My Son." If head-smacking evidence does not convince you, I do not know what will.

Evidence is a mercy. Think of it. In a world manifesting evil and wholly deserving of hell, Jesus appears to offer heaven. God through Christ proffers forgiveness for how we have hurt others and offended Him. Hope. All we have to do is accept the provision he gives for our sin. Do not bet on taking God up on it in your next life. There is no guarantee you or I will get another chance; the metaphysician might have been deceived. It would not be foolish to attend T. L. and Daisy's crusades via YouTube, and to accept the offer. We can fast forward to the preaching, repent and accept the Lord with the crowd, and rejoice in the evidence.

Where You Are Going Back Into God = What You Are NOW, So BE Worthy of Heaven

We are God stuff come from God and are going back into God. It is our choice where we land; it will be according to what we here become. That is what we do, right? We become. That is our name, which is our nature. YHWH is the Becoming One. We are becoming what we will be when we are in God again. "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." Repent into something GOOD. That restoration bit might be a bill of goods.

It behooves us to try to be something good as God. He is heaven and He is hell. By becoming what we want to be NOW, we insert ourselves where we want to be in God, in Him as heaven, or in Him as hell. There are not a lot of other options. We are either like Jesus or like Satan: selfless or selfish, in submission or subterfuge, peaceable or rankling, loving or livid. Job was doing real well before Satan tested him, and he kept going in spite of it. "What we do does not recede into the past but proceeds into the future to confront us there" (Neville). The sum of this life then becomes our eternal existence, for better or for worse, and we are the ones who write it! "Moses lifted the darkness by the light of life, this is how you should glorify the Son of Man" (John 3:14 Alexander; note the difference in this translation). In our one chance, if we do not go up with the saints we go down with the crackers.

God is a blessing as the one God - there is nothing but Him, and He is wrath against anything else. He is a blessing and a curse, both Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal (see Deuteronomy 11 and 27).

From Galatians 5, Alexander (emphasis mine):
16. I am telling you then, walk in the Spirit and never be a slave to the pleasures of the flesh.
17. For the flesh enjoys what lowers the spirit, and the spirit enjoys what lowers the flesh, and both of them are a hindrance to each other, so that you can never do what you wish.
18. If then you were fetched by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.
19. For you know the manifestation of the flesh, fornication, evil doing, dissolution,
20. The making of idols, witchcraft, hostility, destructiveness, backbiting, resentfulness, stubbornness, divisiveness, apathy,
21. Killing, murder, drunkenness, [outrageous] singing and the like. And those who devote themselves to such things, as I told you from the start, I tell you now as well, they shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.

"The height of wisdom is the fear of the Lord," and "At the head of wisdom is the submission to Maryah, and the knowledge of the righteous is learning" (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10). Listen to a number of near death experiences where the hell part of God is visited. Nobody likes it for a minute. Whether literal or symbolic, YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE. That the New Jerusalem is coming down means that experience of peace is going to be here. Prepare for it.

You Have Evidence

I have been trying to sew together my physical and mental spiritual evidences, my Bible knowledge, and what I understand of Neville Goddard's teachings, especially "The Cup of Experience" from 10-27-1967. I know God is real, that there is the invisible spiritual realm this world is the effect of. You cannot look seriously at the world and the universe and not know this. I have heard God's voice and experienced miracles. There is certainly something happening there. I also understand how secular history has been absconded for salvation history and its (the salvation history's) symbolic nature.

So God is a real thing and is doing stuff I know is real, and I have a symbolic explanation. It occurs to me that the "symbolic" is about real stuff. Maybe not even our stuff. The symbolic could apply universally, to our lives, yes, but also to all other peoples - "conscii" - of other planets throughout the history of the universes. Some have turned out well, and others...not so much. What we have then is a real heaven and a real hell as real destiny. Maybe we should also take the Bible's rules, ordinances, laws, and offer of salvation as real.

Did The Jews See Hell At Horeb?

Jonathan Edwards made the interesting observation that God is both heaven and hell. Literally. God appeared to the Jews at Horeb, and they saw not Him but flames of fire. Maybe that was Him. They were greatly frightened. Was what they saw burning the wrath of God they had seen decimate Egypt? "That stuff shall not be found among you." Do not let it be found in you. There is a real God; He is playing hardball.

Whose Wallet Are You Dipping Into?

We are born into this world ignoranced and discover we can lead our lives using our imagination: "I want to do this; I want to do that..." and we do it. Our imagination is a wonderful reservoir we can dip into to achieve so many wonderful things; it is a bottomless wallet to us.

The thing is, it is not our wallet. It belongs to Someone many people consider to be philosophical "woo." Well, some of us have discovered that that "Woo" is real, and It expects us to repay exactly what we have taken from His wallet. You got it? I didn't have it. None of us ever will. But I humbled myself before Him, and because Jesus intervened for my sake, He forgave and accepted me.

The alternative is too terrible to think. To reject Him whose wallet we are dipping into, to ignore His right to honor and gratitude in spite of all His grace to us is offensive. It really behooves us to not offend God Almighty, to slight, ignore, or discredit Him. What the Ineffable assumes it is becomes. And so it is with us. What we assume we are becomes. If we have assumed we are without Him, without His love, without His protection, without His mercy, so it becomes. The near death experiences which include hell might be of a real hell, or they might be a spiritual rejection of which hell is the illustration. Neither sound very pleasant. THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN THERE SCREAM, "AVOID IT!!"

If you have been reaching into God's candy jar, you had better thank Him, accept Him, and submit to Him. It is better to enjoy the candy with Him.

Vic Alexander's Birthday

Victor Alexander's birthday is Saturday, May 7th. He will be 79 years old. If you would care to wish him a happy birthday, see below.

Vic was a professional filmmaker, but being a native Aramaic speaker familiar with the ancient Aramaic language the Bible was authored in, he noted that there was not an adequate English translation that caught what the original authors meant by what they said. So he set out to translate the Bible himself according to what the ancient Aramaic Church of the East would have understood by the received texts. That is quite an undertaking, and not without controversy, as Vic found the dictionaries used to translate other "Aramaic" versions to be inadequate and in error: "This is not what that means!" So Vic's translation is unique, to say the least, and using it puts us in with that church, the Ancient Aramaic Church Jesus Christ founded: "...on this rock I am building my Church" (Matthew 16:18 Alexander).

Vic's ability to continue to translate has been curtailed by chemicals in medical treatments. What has been translated was accomplished before that. I wish he had been able finished the Book of Joel first.

Vic is a man who made a noble effort to give us what he understood the Bible to really say to the Church it was sent to. I am truly grateful. Thanks, Vic, and happy birthday!

Vic's address is 1129 Linden Avenue #2, Glendale, CA 91201. His e-mail address is vicalexander37@gmail.com

Jesus Is Here, And There

It strikes me that the quality Jesus is - everywhere as field - is concentrated in the locality of the Son of Man. The ineffably conscious Field imagined Itself a natural Human, so Jesus is the concentrated form of God's wisdom and of God's power. He is here, God in field form, and there, God in Human form, as a portable, if you would, concentration. An objective concentration?

More On The Manifestation Relationship God Desires

When I was approaching baptism in the Holy Ghost, I saw myself living my life for myself and under my own direction. My sin was not what I had done, but that I had done it without God. I had taken the life given to me by His grace and totally ignored Him. Did not even say, "Thank you." It was just, "I have this life; I will do with it as I please." The thing was, it was not my life, it was His life. I had excluded Him from His life I was living. God was not a happy camper. My deserved punishment would have been proportional to how badly I had represented and offended Him - not in comparison to other people, but in comparison to Him. And I was pretty far off.

Thank God for His holy Son Jesus Christ who for God TOOK upon Himself the punishment I deserved to redeem me back unto God, giving Himself the right to forgive me and make me His own possession for God. Get all them 'for's? So now I - we - can live for God by Jesus as God's manifestation with them in us. Make sure you have invited that Someone inside to be your Lord to god you (see God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of Mystical Judaism by Rabbi David A. Cooper, 1997, New York: Riverhead Books).

Assume, Manifest, Enjoy -- The Perfect Dish

The Ineffable is like a cookbook: assume, manifest, and enjoy. Except we are screwing it up. We are doing the enjoying. "What? I'm not even invited?" He asks. It isn't like he doesn't have a right to be the one enjoying; He has every right.

I shared a word from the Lord Randy Kay posted: Colossians 3:2, "Look up [to heaven] and not to earth." This is actually key to getting into heaven. Siti noted how scary Matthew 7:21-23 is: believing Christians DOING the things of God, and excluded, for "I never knew you." So what are "these words of mine" (v. 24) to be performed by those who do go to heaven? Him. Invite Him in and let Him do the enjoying of the heavenly things assumed and manifested. Kind of a marriage supper with the Lamb of God.

He is imagining us, not we are imagining Him.

You Are At Least Half Right If You Are Scared: An E-mail With Siti

Dan

Wow! Those two clips; Japanese pop-rock and "I’m a Pentecostal"…wild! But, I’m not offended!😊

It’s a shame that not more people would comment if they are viewing. Normally I hear people making a remark or commenting on something they merely notice on…the TV, let’s say, when they’re in the store or coffee shop. But when reading your material, people don’t understand or can’t quite get their minds wrapped around it…subject matter/topic. It’s not what is usually discussed even among Christians…because it’s not what they know anything about. Most Christians or even Sunday school teachers can and will only discuss what they’ve been told or trained about their denomination/creed/doctrine of man about God. So if I share something about the Ineffable, their comment would be, "Say what?"

I hope however, the seed is sown in their hearts, to come back to view (your blog) and chew on these things in their minds more deeply.

I’m reminded of that verse in Matthew 7:21-23 of Alexander’s Aramaic ("It is not whoever says to me, 'My Lord, my Lord..."). That’s a scary passage when read and understood correctly. When Neville talks about missing the mark/sin…it is missing the opportunity to create or imagine the wish fulfilled, or only going through it halfway because it’s too hard when your senses deny your goals, or "being a doer" of His word is too difficult. Human nature backs off and settles for less with a good excuse to accept the "status quo."

I’m probably getting too lengthy now, I only meant to let you know that I was not offended.

Siti
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Siti,

I fight obfuscation in my blog posts, but often lose. I want to be readable, and words scare people. Not many people are wrestling with these ideas. I think we do because we are scared; for we know this guy/God IS real. And if believers in His name doing those things mentioned do not satisfy Him, what does He want? Better find out before we go to visit. Sad if in platitude Christianity we do less. And those works are "abomination"? Then where is the good stuff? Him, for His sake! Let's not go halfway.

Dan Steele

PS: Thanks for your comments. I really do write better to someone than just trying to put out doctrine, insights, and ideas.

PPS: Back to the "good stuff" above: Him, for His sake. I have the example of my friend and neighbor Janet Gunther, who caught up in praise and worship and was healed. And my acceptance by God when I submitted completely to Him. But...

...did Jesus do anything on the cross? Suffering, propitiation, redemption are not works one does, are they? You are pretty much just there. Jesus said he could do something, but he wasn't going to. The only thing Jesus did do on the cross was to love God: "Eil, Eil, to this I was destined" (Alexander in Story of Jesus From His Own Words). Destined to love God to the greatest degree. Love of God was the woo in that voodoo: "Come to me, all you mourners and carriers of burdens, and I shall give you peace. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, as I am easy* (peaceful) and gentle of heart, and you shall find peace in your souls. For my yoke is pleasant and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30 Alexander).

Don't Go To A Pissed-off God

When I was saved I saw that my sin was depriving God of whatever use or purpose He had for me when He made me to live. What have YOU been doing? I had used HIS life and wasted it under my direction instead of His. Big Bozo no-no. Kneeling there, I was screwed! Vengeance was His, and He had every right to repay. And ability. Yikes! Being an offensive piece of crud in front of an angry Almighty was not a happy place. Don't let it happen to you!!

Fortunately, my mother who was on His good side was praying up a storm for me, reminding Him that Jesus had died for me. I was there because Jesus had given me His calling card, a miraculous intervention evidencing His reality. "Wait," I thought. "If that is real, then the rest of the Bible must be true, too." I looked into it and realized that yes, that IS what is going on in reality -- that invisible world is the real one, and this life I have lived, well, it is not the real mechanics of reality; it is more the results of the other.

Anyway, I had nothing. I had taken God's gift of life in a mud-man and had usurped His position. I was a thief, a rebel - hadn't even said, "Thank you." All I could do was complete surrender and cast self-lordship, the control I had over my life, out of myself. I did, and submitted myself to whatever. "You are Glorious God. I am a mud-man. Whatever you tell me to do, that is what I will do." Then I shut up and waited.

I waited awhile. I had NO intention of moving a muscle until He told me what to do. Then I heard a distinct but soft voice say, "Remember this, and it is all right." He accepted me! And I received the baptism in the Holy Ghost, an infusion of His power throughout my being.

Be sure you are there, too. You do not want to be on His bad side deserving vengeance when opportunity to repent is gone.

Notes On Being A Doer Of The Word

I especially appreciate getting comments from Siti, because I do not have a church covering in this area. (A church covering is the overseeing person or group an outlier like me is accountable to. Siti is my check and balance and her comments are often my inspiration.) I found Bryan Melvin's testimonies on Randy Kay's YouTube channel to be very enlightening: our lives on earth become the basis of our experience in heaven or hell. This scared the heck out of Melvin. As usual, Siti's comments and discussion brought further illumination (see email below).

Her first paragraph, regarding the word from God Kay shared from Colossians 3:2: "So as you may look up [to heaven] and not to earth" (Alexander). 'Look' means to think about, to respond to, to contemplate, to consider as real reality, etc. As Neville taught, the process of creation is that thought - imagination - proceeds into the future to manifest there. So our looking solely at the bad and messed up things of earth perpetuates them, for it causes them anew! If we want heaven, we have to LOOK AT HEAVEN!! Imagine how heaven is, or that the earth is as heaven would have it, like Neville imagined he was in Barbados and on the leaving ship Barbados. Think of earth, get earth. Think of heaven, get heaven. Manifestation follows assumption ("creation"). This is the pattern. It ain't rocket science.

Siti's second paragraph sent me to Alexander's translation of Philippians 2:5-6, which is drastically different from any other version: "Contemplate this within yourselves, just as Christ, who was in the likeness of God, did not think it a sin that He did not assume God's manner" (italics mine). Think about it. Not, "Christ did not think it a sin to be equal to God," but, "Christ did not think it a sin to be unequal to God." I.e., (as I read Alexander) Jesus accepted that He was both God AND man--divine and servant: "He (Satan) has nothing in Me." As Siti's father used to say (and this is one heck of a father!), "I am as real seated in heaven with Christ now, as I am here on the earth." We are BOTH ends of one Being! We are not going to be seated; we ARE seated: "What I think...is NOW!" We reign with Christ. (Be sure you reign as He desires, submitted and forgiven, because we are causing our reward OR our recompense.)

Fourth paragraph discusses the resultant condition of the world from the creative power of our imaginations. Siti sees we need to change ourselves FIRST to bring resultant change into the world. THAT is the Word from the Lord Randy Kay shared: think of heavenly, good things instead of earthly, problematic things.
______________________

Dan,

Noticed your latest post…watched some of the YouTubes you mentioned. Interesting quote about "Take my mind away from the things of this world so that I might focus my attention on things of heaven and what you, dear Lord Jesus, want me to dwell on."

That’s quite different from "Contemplate this within yourselves, just as Messiah, who was in the likeness of Allaha, did not think it a sin that He did not assume Allaha’s manner" (Philippians 2:5-6 Alexander)…which reminds me more of Abdullah’s and Neville’s practice of the scriptures.
They speak of NOW…"today is the day of salvation," or as my Dad used to say, "I am as real seated in heaven with Christ now, as I am here on the earth."

We are constantly being encouraged to take the perspective/view/path from the inside (heaven's view) and have that experience practiced, rather than the outside (earthly, fleshly view)…talked about.

Neville shares much about how we already practice or are active in our imagination, though it be in ignorance or negative…as we can see by looking at the condition of the world.
Though I am one person active within bringing change, I see change in myself first as foundation to bring (imagine) change around me (think on these things; whatsoever is good, lovely, sound mind).
Then, "Casting down vain imagination" (2 Cor. 10:5)…

Sorry if I sound lengthy or redundant.
Many times when I read your posts, many scriptures come to mind and solidifies with what you’re saying.
Just like Neville’s book Resurrection, which I do not get tired reading.

I certainly hope you have more readers who are on the same page with this perspective, and are commenting.

Siti
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Only you, Siti. You really had a great dad and mom. My blog is visited about two hundred times a day, but few ever make any kind of comment. I get some thank yous. I am thinking of culling through my posts to make sure I am not misleading anyone. Bryan Melvin's experience got me thinking. I recognize the symbolic language it was, but what it said to me was to take conversion consequences seriously. Neville's insistence that no character of scripture was historical is easily misunderstood. There were real people involved, but the scriptures are about the divine part of them. E.g., the characters in Genesis were all Moses and ARE us. Like being seated in heaven--THAT part of us is real, too. More real, in fact. In the Bible I see a bodily Jesus--He was required--but it is His more literal life as the FIELD the Season and the Scriptures are presenting symbolically. The guy and the field (and we) are one. Maybe we just can't see the field without the guy: "No human [being] comes to my Father except through me" (John 14:6 Alexander). I have bought into the imagination of the Consciousness of the Ineffable imagining It was here on schedule as a man. Knees and face down. God says He's a real guy, okay, I accept that language. That's how I'll talk.

PS: Sorry for this, Siti - completely aside: Saying that only you regularly make comments brought to mind this 1980s Japanese pop-rock song. They say "only you" a lot at the end. Not exactly a hymn. I hope you do not mind and are not offended. Otherwise, there is this industrial-strength joyful song: I'm a Pentecostal.

Focus There As Now For Then

Randy Kay "God Gave Me This Word For YOU!" Not my kind of delivery, but worth the listen.

"Take my mind away from the things of this world so that I might focus my attention on the things of heaven and what you, dear Lord Jesus, want me to dwell on."

Don't Be A Bad Imagination

We are all imagination. Everything is the Ineffable's imagination. We have free-will to be virtually any imagination we want, but we will still be imagination...imagining. We are doing what the Ineffable is doing, but in ignorance. It can go real good, or real bad. Jesus is the way to good. He is the straightening out of our imagination. He smarts us. Jesus is the Ineffable's imagination, more than a man, but totally into it. He is what we are supposed to be, and the wisdom and the power to become it.

Remember when you accept him as a man, he is an imagination, the divine imagination focused on our imagination becoming good. The man Jesus is an image, the image of the Ineffable's will for us. If you read the Bible as literal-historical, you miss the illustrative, linguistic qualities of its symbols. The image serves as language, as the Ineffable's vocabulary: God speaks in illustrations. THAT IS HIS CHOICE. His modus operandi.

My advice is to go with it. Speak the language. DEAL WITH THE IMAGE AS A MAN. He expects us to. It is what the world operates to: belief, heart-felt emotions, everything mental and expressed are effectual because they are the imagination's LANGUAGE. We are the operant power. Be a good, submitted, loving, humble, and active power.

Someone’s Experience

If I could, I would require everyone to listen to these testimonies by Bryan Melvin. Not just for what he says, but also for what he does not say. You might think they are long and tedious, but I found them challenging and enlightening. Yes, I know there are hundreds if not thousands of near death experiences (NDEs) posted on YouTube; some might even be real...

He Died, Went to Hell, Saw Hitler & What Comes Next Will Shock You - Ep. 9

From Hell to Heaven - He Died & Met Hitler & Jesus - Ep. 11

...and you have to take them with a grain of salt, as they are all mental experiences. I just want to note some of the perhaps overlook characteristics of these.

Such as the heaven and hell apparently being for earth humans only. Or did I miss something? Where are the aliens? When in Genesis 1:1 it says that Jesus ("As the Beginning, the Son of God...") creates the heaven and the earth, are they a separate-from-the-rest-of-the-universe package deal, a matched pair? Not that he does not also create the rest of the universe, but is "our" heaven just for "our" earth? Are there other heavens for the imaginations of other planets?

Note the illusion of people's experiences in the cells. They are deluded going in, but in the tiny, finite cell they seem to be in an expanse. They travel, but cover no ground. I remember in my baptism in the Holy Ghost that I was kneeling at a folding chair in the fellowship hall at Grace Bible Church, yet in my mind I wandered up a wash, descended into a cavern, covered the plain of the earth, and searched around the foot of hills in a forest before realizing I had, in living my own life as I was, STOLEN whatever purpose God had in making me to live. This was and is HIS life, not mine, and like Melvin, I was a thief and a rebel and deserved hell. But let me stop lest I begin preaching.

I also noted the correspondence between the lives lived and the recompense or reward given. What people think, say, and do proceeds into the future to confront them there. Sound familiar? It is a principle above proved to be in effect below. How here operates tells us how there operates. We can use it, ought not misuse it. The results can be nice, or not.

It is all highly symbolic. Near the end Melvin sees a man fishing in a tributary from the river of life. He learns years later that the man was his own grandfather, a Pentecostal Methodist preacher, a "fisher of men" who had laid hands on Bryan as a boy. What was the fisher of men doing? Fishing. The symbolism is not lost on Melvin. There are ovens baking the bread of life - the Word - to be given as insights - food - to those who need them. I.e., it is all a LANGUAGE. Is it real? It is what God SPEAKS. This is HIS life; it is what we are supposed to SPEAK. Getting whatsoever we want in life is not the objective. Whatsoever HE wants is.

Lastly I note Bryan's anxious pursuit of getting people saved, to introduce them to Jesus and to get them to accept and confess him. Speak the language to be sure you and all others hear good things in the future.

The Question is not Can Jesus Heal Me? or, Will Jesus Heal Me?

But DID Jesus heal me? "Healed" is an eternal state in the Godhead: "You are healed." So, yeah. Only believe.

"Jesus Was A Wack-job"

Pilate might have thought Jesus was simply eccentric. He probably dismissed the idea that Jesus was "King of the Jews" in any way, shape, or form. People almost universally do. They take the broad way of independence to keep doing what they like to do. You have to wonder, what does it take to evidence that God and Jesus Christ and the invisible world are real? You would think the existence of the universe itself would be enough. That the light of life would convince. Or ghosts or visions or miracles would indicate clearly that we are not without what God is doing.

People refuse to hear because they do not want to hear. As if that will make those evidences not evidence what they do not want to accept. After a thousand years (a very long time) of iron-clad evidence, people still say, "NO." After seeing the two witnesses rise from the dead and ascend into heaven (Revelation 11), they go on marrying and giving in marriage, trying to vibrate up what they want from the universe. Go figure.

There is a spiritual reality. Neil Tyson has implied the spiritual reality is a gap of information: it is what we have no scientific understanding of yet - an ever-shrinking bubble of ignorance. I was entertained (and disappointed) by his illustration: Jesus cast out a demon to heal a boy of epilepsy. We know now, says Tyson, that the boy's fits were caused by the disease of epilepsy, not demons. Sorry, Neil, but Jesus HEALED the boy by casting out the CAUSE of the disease. The healing power of the blood of Jesus is the Gap I want to know. 'Scuse me, that is where I want to live.

One great thing I got from Victor Alexander's translation of Proverbs of Solomon (chapters 1-24 only) is that Proverbs is not just a marvelous collection of teachings and wisdom sayings, it is two courses of living: A and B. Or white and black, good and bad, desired and undesirable, right and not right, virtuous and abominable, a way to think and a way not to think, how to escape affliction and how to create it, to be submitted to God under the Law...or not. If you would, it is how to live in the Gap.

I was going to add that I have got their shirts, but I won't.

No Wait For The Iron Rod

Waiting for the millennium when Jesus will rule with a rod of Iron? That is NOW, dude. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, now, and forever. Interestingly, as Young notes in his introduction to his Literal Translation of the Bible, the ancient Hebrew had no future tense. Jesus is ALWAYS ruling with the iron rod. It ain't coming; it is here and now.

Thinking of this fact this morning, my old friend, neighbor and classmate Janet Gunther came to mind. She contracted tuberculosis while we were at Melodyland School of Theology (MST) and living near one another at Foxy Glen Apartments. Had a big 'ol tubercular hole in her lung. She stopped me outside the laundry room and told me she had been in private devotions in her room when she had gotten caught up in them. "I felt as though I was really there with the holy angels before the throne of God, praising and worshiping and adoring God." It was euphoric, she was in ecstasy. Love and praise poured forth from her heart, from her very being. And then she heard words so clearly, "You are healed." And she was. Her next x-ray showed the hole in her lung filled or filling. I had to continue taking the medicine for testing positive for tuberculosis for half a year, but Janet was healed.

Submit and conform to rule under the iron rod of Jesus. That was Janet with her hands raised and tears streaming down her cheeks for the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ. It is the door to the words, "You are healed."

Blood Is Reality, Actuality

One of my most important points:

I believe very deeply that "blood" in the Bible means the reality and actuality of a thing. Wine, such as that at Cana, symbolizes the same thing. His blood is the actuality of the divine Jesus, YHWH's substantive intent, which saves us. THAT is the Blood. His blood is our forgiveness and sanctification. What can wash away our sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. In what apparently was a vision I saw Jesus scourged, made to carry the cross until he went into shock, and then laid on his back - like hamburger - on the cross to be crucified. His arm stretched out to be spiked, he turned his face to me and said, as audibly as anything ever gets, "Come unto Me."

Try it. How you gonna get to Jesus? Recognize the reality.

Two Are Conscious At Once In One

I had a hard time with being monitored by God. His monitoring is constant and regardless, common to all, here and everywhere all the time. His consciousness is all creative power available, but only exercised when conditionals are met. We SEE it, and do not recognize it. We do not recognize His values. We think instead that we are somehow independent, autonomous, self-elective.

But we are God fully conscious of Itself...and Him in a dream, us (or, "me/I"), at once in ourselves, on the way to becoming one. No distance is involved, only comprehension.

A Little Bit On The Road

It is a fantasy I have:

In Its beginning, the Ineffable Being becomes conscious of Itself, of Its own existence, of what It is, of what It can do. Over the eternal past It contemplates what It could be, what It should be, what It is not yet, and every possible thing that might happen on Its way to becoming what It wants to be. Every contingency, every chemical combination, every potentiality, every surprise, discovery, twist and turn...and the world has not even begun yet. It worked out Its perfection - complete and eternal - before the Big Bang. And then, ten billion years later, the earth begins to form. He who was, is, and will be was so before the Beginning, and then became the Beginning: "Now, I will DO it." There were a lot of thoughts and images - "constructs" of what might happen, imagined as possible - that God is not going to use. They are thoughts which were discarded: "Nah, I don't want to do that. Not necessary; does not contribute." What happened to them? What happens to them? Do they manifest pointlessly, or is their graveyard what sheol is?

Toward Understanding The Union

I saw the union of God and man, and I do not know if I will ever be able to express it anywhere near as clear as I saw it, but I will try. Thinking of the confusion about it, I was directed to the book Pseudo Christians by Ray C. Jarman (1972, Watchung NJ: Charisma Books). Jarman had been very confused about the union, but by the grace of God, after 52 years of hyper-successful church leadership as a pseudo-Christian, he became a "born-again," Holy Ghost-baptized, tongue-speaking leader in the 1960s-1970s Jesus Movement. My mother blessed me with three of his post-conversion books. If you can find Sunrise at Evening (1975, Monroeville, PA: Whitaker House), get it. I would like to share a moving and I think enlightening passage from that book (p. 103-107):

Carmen was awakened by a most vivid dream. It seemed so real! She jumped out of bed and wrote down what she had dreamed.
Carmen was walking along a busy street when she looked up to see a small white bird coming down and hovering over her shoulder. The bird was encircled by a ring of light out of which projected tiny flames like candles in a crown. The white bird settled upon her head as she walked along, but hardly anyone else noticed it. The flames grew dim and began to go out. The fluttering wings were stilled and she reached up to remove the bird from her head. Her hand touched a large number of white cloths streaked with blood. Carmen finally pulled off all the blood-stained cloths to discover the bird in the center--dead.
She wrapped the cloths around her hand and looked for a place to clean the blood out of her hair, wondering how such a little bird could have so much blood. She entered a large church building containing turnstiles where everyone had to deposit money upon entering, but she was refused by a well-dressed usher. "You can't come in here with that!"
"I don't want to see the performance," Carmen replied. "I just want to put this somewhere and fix my hair."
The usher was adamant.
Carmen spoke icily about her being employed by the church and only then would he allow her to enter.
She found a room where water was available and a sympathetic woman offered to help her. Then she awoke.
Carmen told me of the dream. She searched for its interpretation for weeks. Her mystical interests were aroused and she even went to a prominent metaphysical teacher and writer on the subject of dream interpretation. Carmen researched the literature on interpretation of dreams, but nowhere could she find understanding. She prayed earnestly for God's help, and a voice seemed to say, "You must discover the interpretation for yourself." And her search continued unabated.
One morning, weeks later, Carmen was alone at home when she felt an urge to turn on the radio. After the closing lines of a hymn, a man's voice began: "A minister was once speaking to a farmer about Jesus Christ but the farmer was not interested. During the minister's visit to the farm the owner said, 'Pastor, come out here. I want you to see something.'
"The minister walked with the farmer to the hen house, where he saw a hen sitting on her nest with a number of chicks peeping out from under her wings. 'Touch her,' said the farmer.
"The minister touched the hen and drew back in horror. She was cold and stiff. 'A weasel came in during the night,' the farmer explained. 'Rather than run away, the hen stayed on her nest, allowing the weasel to suck all her blood out through this bite in her head. She died to protect the lives of her chicks. Isn't that something, Pastor?'
"'It certainly is,' answered the minister. 'It is just what Jesus did on the cross for you. Now do you understand?'"
Carmen almost dropped the dish she was washing. Her dream! She quickly turned off the radio and stood there wondering. "Could that white bird be Jesus? Was I like the chicks under the hen's wings? The bird had not abandoned me, but died instead. And the white bands of blood-stained cloth--were they all my accumulation of sin?" Carmen's mind recalled the multitudes in Revelation whose robes had been made white by the blood of the Lamb. And another Scripture came in her mind: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "Did the usher represent the modern church saying of the blood of Jesus, 'You can't come in here with that!'?"
Carmen knelt and asked God in an untypical childlike manner, "Please God, may I speak directly to Jesus?"
Instantly He was there! "Dear Lord Jesus--was the pure white bird in my dream--You? Was its dead body--Your body, broken--for me? Was its blood--Your blood, poured out--for me? Did You make all my unworthiness, all my unrighteousness--clean and white? Did You do that--for me? Did You do this for--Carmen Benson?"
"Yes," came a tender, majestic reply, "for Carmen Benson." Jesus called her by name.
Tears flowed freely as she felt great love and compassion pouring down upon her. Carmen's body was shaking with sobs and she fell on her face and worshiped her Savior.
Just as I had taught her, Carmen had dismissed the blood of Jesus Christ as a relic of primitive thinking. Perhaps He was somehow the Savior of the world; but how could Jesus die for our sins when we weren't even born two thousand years ago? Why should He pay for our sins? We should bear the punishment for our own sins ourselves. The Gospel was all too simple, too easy. But suddenly Carmen accepted that "simple" Gospel.

Jesus was instantly in Carmen's mind because He is common to all beings. YHWH's eternal state of grace - His love and our forgiveness - is available to all as He is in all. We - all beings - are His imagination. His forgiving, loving grace is only as far away as our minds. And it is NOW! The eternal state of grace was meant for all FROM THE BEGINNING: it is His intention for His entire Manifestation. Jesus the human, YHWH incarnate, REVEALED it by DOING it two thousand years ago (John 1:18). Here's the point: HE IS INCARNATE IN US. Our flesh is THAT flesh. We are in a union like the hen and the chicks. It is constant and real. We are all monitored and steered toward our realization of the union: Mom so loved us. When it clicks, the reality is granted, immediate, and right here, right now, really real.

The Knees Are Involved

If we are God, why are we not like God? He set aside all His divine attributes to become flesh, us. And here we are: Him, unlike Him. We are a monitored lot; we can always ask, and He always hears, because He is always us inside of us. He knows all our faults, all our sins, all our needs, hopes, and aspirations. So why do we work, strive, imagine and affirm, and nothing happens?

Ahem. We are not like Him. We are different in a bad way--way off the mark. He wants us to be like Him, or if you would, He wants to be Himself in us. I hear about some people for whom manifestation and miracles seem to come easily, and about many, many people who strive to imagine and affirm per prescription...and nothing works. At least one difference I think I see is belief. Believers recognize that God really is. They believe He is present, aware, and powerful. Not that they are not still sinners, but He can deal--and is dealing--with that. Believers are God's family. He takes care of His family, His kin, His relatives. He is involved with them. But Himself existing differently as unbelieving rebels, well, He can deal with them differently, too. They want to be separate; He can make them separate.

This is actually a lesson in grace, the grace of God. All we all in the flesh are different and unlike the God we are. There is nothing WE can do to make ourselves like Him, and we all deserve to be treated as different and separated. But God Himself swallowed the wrath we deserved to allow those who would repent/revision themselves (Himself!) as believers to proceed with His program of manifesting Himself in and through them eternally. It is not a bad deal: we don't get whacked or separated, we get what we believe, we get cared for, and Godhood. Such a deal!

But it comes at the cost of believing. I mean really, really, really believing.