A Happy Couple (part 2 of 2)

“… in the image of God created He him; male and Female created He them” - Genesis 1:27. Being made in the image of God, we are able to sense and feel the need for companionship and love, as our maker created these capacities. God loves us, and we realize what it means to be loved, and to love another. God’s first lesson about intimacy was not to be His last. As such, the first marriage in Eden was not designed to be the last, but it and all that would follow were designed to last without end. God intended to use marriage to teach us what it means to love in a different way than we had already learned. Beyond how a spouse loves its partner, a child loves a parent in a completely different way. The romantic love was designed to come first, and through its expression came the familial love of parents and children, siblings, and extended families.

The first gift given to the newly married couple in Eden was the gift of procreation. We were counseled by God to “be fruitful and multiply” BEFORE any test of sin or disobedience. Therefore if our premise holds that what was perfect prior to sin, will one day be perfect after sin’s extinction; we can assume that procreation remains a gift given to loving couples who marry. Man’s repopulation could one day replace the loss of the angels who turned away from God and now delight in forming his demonic league, but there is no indication that once these numbers were met, we would suddenly stop our ability to procreate. God did not counsel us to be fruitful and multiply … to a point, or until we reach some magic number, but essentially “throughout the earth”. Our ability to create families from the union of two was established even prior to outlining our dominion over the earth, and before our first dietary menu was laid out. We could imply from this perceived pecking order, that family is MORE important than work, and MORE important even than what we eat; perhaps outlining a parent’s willingness to sacrifice for the sake of protecting and providing for their child.

Today’s parents struggle to provide for their children, often with both having to work to insure there is enough funds to eat under the roof of our own residence. But this was not the original intent of God’s plan. Survival was something He provided. Notice in these same verses, He spells out that HE GAVE us all the herb bearing seeds, vegetable, fruits, grains, and nuts for us to eat. He did not say, if you work enough, and to my satisfaction enough, then I will consider giving you what you have earned. Instead, He only focuses our attention to the “gifts” He has already provided. The devil has gotten good at using our need for survival to rationalize our priorities to earn money as being more important than meeting the emotional needs and companionship needs of our families. This is to our detriment.

Remember the feeling of “new” romantic love when all you really want to do is “be with” the object of your affection. Time together, i.e. companionship, is at the top of your priority list on the things you value in life. The same feelings occur again when holding your new-born child in your arms. Both the baby and you feel a bond from the close proximity of holding that new precious life in your arms. The baby is invariably happy as long as you’re around, the minute you’re out of view, the baby tends to get nervous, or cry. In short, a baby craves the tactile companionship of its parents. Over time, age will continually reduce the need for tactile assurance from mom and dad, but it never will fully go away. Watch a grand-parent of 80-90 years in age, hug a son or daughter who is in their late 60’s, and you still see a familial version of love that exists that is unlike all others.

This entirely new dimension of love opens the doors to even other possibilities. So we learn that love can exist in romantic form with a specific object of attention, or in familial manner with multiple objects of deep love – each with their own personalities and perspectives; and now also in a fraternal sense or perhaps better stated, between friends. Friendship of the deepest variety is a non-romantic love, but is also born of the choices to two friends. You are not born into your relationship as it is in families, but rather choose to share a similar kind of love with someone you develop a relationship with. The lessons of love than began in garden, ripple through time and relationships, and extend well beyond what we know today, and beyond our sin-sick-vision. For eternity we will study what love is, what it means to love and to be loved. It is a subject we will not tire of, grow bored with, or master fully; for as God is infinite, so Love also is infinite. We have only begun to scratch the surface.

All these lessons of love began in the Garden of Eden with our first parents Adam and Eve. It is believed that both Adam and Eve were naked in the garden, but covered as the angels are with a covering of light. This belief may well have been reverse-engineered from the descriptions of the Heavenly city to come, where each of the saints is covered in a covering of light. Apparently God’s “light” makes a good set of clothing. It was only after man sinned that he lost the cloak of lights, and realized his nudity. He then attempted to cover himself with leaves. God fashioned the first set of clothing from the skins of animals, a practice man would grow to emulate far too often. But these handmade clothes were only necessary after sin had been introduced to man. Prior to sin, a light, some say the light of righteousness, was what covered man, and will one day cover him again.

In my experience, sin is much like entropy. Entropy in the sense that everything sin touches disintegrates, falls apart, loses its value, and drifts towards nothingness. Evolution as a concept, stands in direct contradiction to the reality of entropy. Evolution would have us believe that everything around us is evolving into a better, more advanced state of being. Yet nothing in our reality supports this conclusion. Our cells divide, reproduce, and divide again – yet we all age and die. Prey evolve their camouflage and personal habits, but then predators adjust to continue to make the kill. It is said the level of naked self-interest grows with each subsequent generation. Everywhere I look, I see the effects of entropy at work. There are only certain areas where I see the evolutionary concept at work, such as computer CPU’s. They double in capacity as our manufacturing techniques improve, and has our ability to engineer more capacity in smaller spaces improves. One could rightly assert the computer CPU’s are evolving. Bu the people making them are certainly not.

It is believed that Adam and Eve created in perfection used 100% of their brains, we use around 6% now. If entropy were not at play, why not maintain our 100% usage. If we were evolving, why evolve more brain capacity than is required to survive as a species? That seems to be all the animals ever evolved into. Seems to me “cavemen” would have been the 6% capacity utilizers, with modern man being the 100% users. But science proves this notion untrue. Along with our 100% brain utilization in perfection, was a radical increase in proportionate sizing. It is believed man was somewhere around 15 feet tall and weighed nearly a ton. This radical increase in size would have made man much more formidable, and helped establish his dominance over the animal kingdom in the earth even after the fall of sin. But the Bible also states were given dominion over the fish as well. I guess we were much better swimmers then.

There was a certain strength formed in the union of man and wife. It was noticeable by Adam before it was present. It was appreciated by Adam after it was corrected. Men and women need to be together. They need to look to each other to complete themselves. It is not good for man to be alone. He needs a help mate. Men and women were created equal in every way, each different and with unique abilities and purposes, but equal to each other. But then too, the mantra of the day was not how much one could acquire, but rather how much one could do to serve another, and cause the happiness of another. A service focused society does not need to fear equality, but can rather embrace it, and demand nothing less. Our union was strong, and beneficial. Marriage became the building block of society. It is why Satan focuses so hard on destroying marriages as a means of destroying nations. With isolation comes inevitable failure. With concern for another, comes strength and unity.

The “image of God” was designed to teach us what love is. These were the lessons we were supposed to have absorbed from the study of our origins. But there was so much more to impart, a ton of things that must be completed, our first parents had as much on their plates and more as we today. But suddenly, after six days, God delays the work load, and takes a day of rest. Perhaps there is something more we are to learn …

 

A Happy Couple (part 1 of 2)

Simple algebraic logic states that if God is love, and God is infinite, then love is also infinite. Or perhaps better stated, we serve a God of infinite love. Just as no finite human being can fully describe God or somehow know His limitations; so no finite human being can fully describe love or any ideas of its limitations to what love can inspire, feel like, or be shared. Christ proved His love for us on the cross, choosing rather to risk that the stain of our sin may forever keep Him parted from His Father’s side, rather than give us up to the punishment we had earned. But the love of Christ was evident to us long before the cross marked it in His blood. Our creation was an entire testament to the love God has for His creation. The first lesson of which taught in the garden was the one of intimacy.

We are created in the image of God. This means we have a sense of the things that our creator intends because we carry His likeness. After naming the animals brought before him in the Garden of Eden, Adam observed closer the relationship between male and female. This was not simply a sexual relationship with the intention of procreation; it was a bond, the foundation of a family unit. Animals appeared to work and play in teams, or in reliance on their counterparts. It was this phenomenon that caused Adam to realize he had no such partner in his world. The animal kingdom was created male and female, but man was still alone. Adam missed the companionship of someone like himself, and this was the issue God solved in the creation of Eve.

There are many who wonder at the composition of the Trinity. Within it, we find God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Father and Son are always referred to in the masculine genre, but this of course is based on a human perspective. The Holy Spirit however is not gender identified, some speculate that it embodies the feminine qualities of the God head. It is pure speculation, as other theories suggest it is the “power” or “energy” of God unencumbered by a physical form. It is of note that man is created in the image of God, and we are listed as both male and female. Those who speculate that God is woman probably go a step too far. But as God created women, He certainly would know them inside and out, a feat men have yet to come anywhere near. Some speculate that God created Christ, this idea comes from the word “begotten”. If the example of Eden holds true, then God the Father might have taken a piece of Himself and separated it into His son Christ. This of course is pure speculation and matters little to our existence or fate. But this topic is one I imagine we will study for years to come once we enter the gates of perfection and shed ourselves of the nagging sins that now cloud our eyesight and judgment.

For Adam, God chose to perform a surgery (the first ever) and remove a rib from Adam’s side. Adam’s partner was more than just another creation from the ground. Woman, or Eve in this case, was to have originated from a completed part of man’s body. Symbolically she was made from the bone closest to our vital organs such as the heart. Eve was to be special, in that Adam would see her as a part of himself. The union of Adam and Eve sexually would literally be the reunification of Adam’s flesh, uniting both parts of himself into one. This was to be a special relationship. This was to be more than a friendship. This was to be inherently close. The love between Adam and Eve would be the greatest the world would see between man and wife until they died. Having been created before sin, Adam and Eve would know what pure love is like.

Notice that man was not left alone upon noticing his condition, it was promptly remedied. Notice that man was not given the sole power over procreation, it would take a team, it would take a woman to complete the process. Procreation would be the result of two who consented and shared their love, it was not an arbitrary decision for one to make alone. Notice that intimacy God intended for humans to understand required a man and woman in order to fully appreciate it. God did not create a platonic friend for Adam, He did not create a group of friends, He only created Eve His wife. Eve was intended to meet Adam’s needs completely on her own, and he to meet hers. “More” was not a consideration in this plan. “Time limits” were not a consideration in this plan.

Today we look at married couples in Hollywood and declare that if any couple lasts longer than 5 years they should be national heroes. Our standard of marriage completely embraces the concept of divorce; the garden had NO such provisions, or intentions. If Adam and Eve had never broken trust with God, we would all be living in perfection as God originally created it. Adam and Eve would STILL be married as they will one day again. Their marriage was created with the idea of lasting forever and ever. It is because their relationship was created for MORE than just sexual expression, and procreation. It was created to demonstrate the intimacy of families, and to show us exactly how God wishes to be a part of what we call family. He knows us better than our spouse, He loves us more than our parents or lover, He longs for our companionship more than Adam felt his own loneliness before Eve. Marriages were to be forever and will one day be so again.

What keeps our marriages from being what God originally intended for them lies in the mirrors of our homes. It is self-interest that keeps us from giving “all”. It is fear of rejection that keeps us “suspicious”. It is “looking out for number one” that literally prevents us from any sense of real fulfillment, joy, or peace. In short, it is the carnal man in the mirror, who robs us of God’s intent and designs. He must be killed, that is to say, “I” must die, if HE is to live in me. For, “I” am the enemy; His enemy, your enemy, and sadly my own enemy. It is my selfishness that destroys everything that it comes in contact with. It is the disease of sin that turns a relationship designed to show me the intimacy that God wants with me, into a 50:50 proposition based on a subjective fairness standard that is highly influenced by my own desires, prejudice, and perceived needs. Self-centered thinking becomes the cancerous root to all of my self-destructive behavior.

Those who debate gay marriage miss the lessons of our creation, in the same way as those who contemplate divorce as a solution for getting what they want out of life. Divorce was not an institution of perfection; it was an allowance to compensate for the self-focused hearts of man. It was our addiction to sin and self-service that made divorce a necessary escape from even greater levels of evil and pain. And once sin is removed, divorce will be unnecessary once again. Marriages will again be destined to last forever, sharing the intimacy that God intended. It is similar with the idea of gay marriage.

Homosexual life styles have been brought about by many factors such as genetic disposition, forced victimization of adult pedophiles on the innocent, and the purely optional choice to pervert or alter what “was” considered normal sexual expression into something else. It is impossible to judge the origins of another person’s sexuality, and so we should not. Christians should stay out of the bedrooms of others and suggest only that each person submit themselves fully to Christ and let Him lead as He will. If Christ is leading, we have nothing to fear. When we jump ahead, we err, and usually fall flat on our faces. Christian churches should not condone marriage outside of the Biblical guidelines we have been given as corporate organizations. This should include a re-examination of what it truly means to commit for eternity, how to submit one’s will to Christ, and what it means to give another 100% of yourself without thought of reward. However churches should not condemn gay partners for attempting to live a monogamous, committed, lifestyle as best they know how. Judgment should be left to God, and leadership to Christ. How individuals commit to each other is their own business. What the church sanctions is another.

The Government makes laws around families to protect property rights. It is impossible to legislate intimacy, or love. In point of fact, there are no laws required to limit how much we love our spouse, only to limit how “badly” we can treat them. Laws are a construct of sin. They are required to keep our self-interest in check, under threat of punishment. The government should not have a moral basis for marital law, only an equity based one. Insuring fairness, and equality under the law, must be the ONLY goals of governmental legislation related to families. Protect children and adults from abusive situations, insure equitable distribution of funds in situations of separation. These are fine ideals. But prevention of consenting adults to live as they choose transcends the goals of protection and equality and attempts to enforce a moral code based on one’s own ideology. This is a step too far for a government that is built on the ideas of separation of church and state. And the compelling of conscience under threat of law, is against the character and teachings of Christ. Christians should fight against such legislation even if it seems to agree with their ideology. It is in fact, against the entire nature of God to force compliance to His will. God invites, He does not compel.

Gay couples could “marry” in civil courts, non-church affiliated organizations, or even in privacy between themselves and God. The same thinking would apply to those groups of adults who choose to embrace a multiple partner scenario, it is morally no different. Attempting to marry a child or animal or inanimate object is forbidden by government laws as in each case, the intended object of marriage is incapable of making an informed consent. It is also out of the biblical guidelines of marriage as established in Eden and throughout our Bibles. Not allowing gay marital ceremonies in the church is only a reflection that we hold to the original ideals of marriage as set forth in the garden until Christ returns and can resolve any unanswered questions.

This does not mean that churches should ban gay members, or oppose adoption of children into gay families, or dishonor the commitments that gay families may choose to make to each other outside of our doors. Rather ALL should be welcomed to the hospital for the hurting that is our church. ALL should learn the solution of submitting the will and desires to Christ in order for the healing to begin. And ALL should refrain from judging anyone else along this journey we undertake. In truth, we ALL struggle with sexual sin, whether it be lust, uncommitted sex without love, adultery, jealousy, envy, greed, or even violence. To exclude gay members because they too suffer from the effects of a world steeped in sin, is hypocrisy. There is no effort to excuse or rationalize any form of sin and pain, only to escape it. The only solution for that is Christ. And that solution does not require the judgment or condemnation of others.

Christians who refuse to embrace their brothers because of a particular sin have not discovered love, forgiveness, or the solution to their own sins. When we love as He loved, we do not reject those in need, rather we embrace them, pray for them, and ask for their prayers in return. Divorced members, are no more failures, than any other who has fallen short of the ideals God has set forth. We have all missed that mark. There is no more a reason to judge others based on the failure of their marriages than there is to judge anyone for any reason. Marriages fail because we fail. Marriages fail because of sin, not just a single individual’s sin, but all sin. And what is more, marriages can succeed beyond our wildest imaginations when we put Christ back into the center of them where He belongs. It is Christ who wishes for our companionship from the garden until now. This is why He fights so hard to see His erring children return home. But there is more to learn about love from our first example, we will continue our lesson in the next section …

Home Sweet Home ...

Country folk understand. City folk are a product of the advancement of society, with our advanced technology and capabilities we are offered more time for other pursuits. We are free to gather in cities, socialize, and perform other work oriented functions that we would never have time to do if each man was personally responsible for putting food on the table each day. Our first home then, was not a city, it was a garden. But like all good things, even the garden did not spring into existence as a completed entity. It took preparation. It took planning. It took effort ,,, God’s.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the earth.” These words penned by Moses in his first book of Genesis describe our earth, before it was known as earth. Moses would have little understanding of modern astronomy or astrophysics, but his wording seems to describe our home as a random asteroid traveling through space. Moses’ words “Let there be light, and there was light” could have as easily been describing the big bang, as the creation of Sun and Moon are uniquely specified later. So whether creation covers only our Solar system, or the Milky Way itself, or traces its origins all the way back to the Big Bang is up for speculation. What is clear; is that the relevant processes that apply to life in this world as we know it, took only six days for God to complete.

Each day seems to focus on the creation of the building blocks central to what we have come to know as our planet. First our universe, galaxy, or solar system (depending on your point of view), then our planet rock itself, then an atmosphere, followed by our Sun, moon, and stars. The separation of water into clouds and lakes, allows for plant life to begin, watered each morning by the dew. After plants come birds and fish and bugs I imagine. Then the animals, and finally man himself. The things we depend on created in the order that we would need them, and each meeting the approving eye of God Himself. It is believed that Christ was our creator, and the nod of approval was from His Father during this process.

How God creates remains a mystery. Our finite minds struggle to understand the rules of physics, while our God writes them as He sees fit. To believe human wisdom has become sufficient to debate God, or argue the merits of the account creation is nothing more than to adopt Satan’s first lie. Evolutionists do NOT have proof that their “theories” are true any more than a Creationist can physically demonstrate the existence of God. Evolutionists rely upon what we know of science, and believe that science is in conflict with God. This is arrogance on their part. Science cannot be in conflict with its creator, only our understanding is what is lacking.

Lest any scientific mind wish to start spouting the empirical “truths” of the science of evolution; let them begin by concretely identifying gravity. If what we thought once to be mass, we now discover only to be new forms of energy, perhaps we do not know as much as would like to believe. If our scientific data were complete, it would prove the existence of God. But this is not His wish. We must learn to rely on His wisdom instead of our own. This fundamental choice was what led to the downfall of Lucifer and the discovery of evil. Man must learn to believe in spite of what he perceives as proof.

When you consider the details of our biology, and the relative biology of this planet, God’s creative work is a wonder to behold. Think of the sheer complexity of the human body, interdependent complex systems created simultaneously (proof in itself that evolution cannot account for our species), with sensory systems to feel, smell, taste; as well as emotional responses to interpret joy, love, affection, and peace. None of these abilities strictly required for evolution, yet each immeasurably adds to the “quality” of our lives. The smell of roses, the taste of cheese, the feel of moss between your toes in a slow moving cold stream; each of these sensations unique and indispensible to making life the adventure we all crave. All created for man to experience, and become part of who we are. All of these gifts to us from our creator.

And our first home was more than work of art in a painting in the Sistine Chapel. It was a living, breathing, 3D, sensory overloaded reality that enveloped every neuron in our brains. I imagine it to be a conglomeration of cultural expressions themed in areas, like an oriental rock garden, an English flower garden, a forested area with clearly traveled trails laid out, a tropical area with boardwalks over swampy terrain. And our first occupation was to “keep” this garden or rather stated “tend” to it. It was after all the last item prepared for man, to be his first home, his first paradise set aside for him by God Himself. I imagine the sights, sounds, and smells of his garden home to be a symphony of beauty. The vibrant colors, and life created not to ever know death but to bloom and bud eternally. This would be our perfect getaway. From here we would study and learn more of God, our world, and the conflict that raged around us.

Man was given dominion over the world around him by God. It was God’s intent that we care for the life he created. God caused each of the species of animals to come before Adam for him to name them all. This to me is an interesting idea. Why name something that is unimportant? Why name something that is nothing more than a “dumb” animal? Perhaps the life around us, is more “aware” than we give it credit. Perhaps again our scientific knowledge is too limited to understand the language of birds, the song of whales, the barks of dogs, and the purring of cats. We only seem to detect emotional intentions of our furry friends, but is this a limitation of their smaller brain functions, or a lack of our own to interpret the full volume of communication they intend?

I own two Akita puppies, a purebred brother and sister just turning 13 months old. They are playful, huge, and loving. They are fiercely protective of me and what they perceive to be their home territory. The mailman who continues to violate the sanctity of “their” mailbox gets a full measure of their attention each day. Yet communication is not always so overt. There are times when they simply come to my feet lay down next to me, and attempt to touch some part of me in the process. When it is time to go outside to use the potty, the female puppy will gently nip at my hand and begin to pace back and forth. It is her way of not soiling “our” home while letting me know she needs to get into the backyard to make a deposit. It is a routine she created, and I have been able to interpret. My former Akita who died of old age 2 years ago, used to shake his chains and make his collar jingle when he needed to go outside. He too developed this routine, and I was able to interpret; this after 6000 years of sin and degradation to my mind and theirs. I wonder what Adam might have been able to relay to his furry friends under the blanket of perfection.

I wonder how much the animals may have vied for Adam’s attention. My dogs love to play with me, it is the height of happy-time for them, and apart from exhausting me, a wonderful time for me as well. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Adam to have playful monkeys, affectionate lions, curious wolf packs, and lumbering grizzlies to entertain. I wonder if Adam worked with elephants to move heavy lumber, or played fetch with falcons as they learned to fly. The animals were all vegetarians, eating the bounty that was available to them all around. They did not prey on each other. They did not fear each other. They understood the dominion of man was meant for him to be their caretaker. Man would watch over them, and they would look at him as a form of father provider figure. There was no hunting, or intent to harm, on our part or theirs.

It is the introduction of evil that has made death a reality in our world. It is the introduction of evil that changed the perfect harmony of vegetarian animals into the dichotomy of hunters and prey. It is not the demands of survival, but the introduction of evil that is responsible for destroying perfection. And this means only the extinction of evil can ever see this disharmony removed from our world. Because of creation, animals had fear of man after the fall. They knew him to be superior, and decided to mostly avoid man as a result. Animals vastly outnumbered man, and had they “evolved” alongside of him, they would have considered man nothing more than tasty prey. Our species as envisioned by evolutionists would have been largely defenseless against great creatures like the saber tooth tiger and such. We would have been hunted to extinction quickly if this “theory” had merit. Rather, the fear of man, largely restrained animals from attempting to attack the top of the food chain.

Man was not created to remain sedate and idle with nothing to occupy his mind or hands. So our home was made to be a thing that required constant care and maintenance. Our first job was to be assigned the work of ever maintaining a living growing homestead. But amidst the work of the garden, and the company of lesser creatures, man noticed something. All the animal kingdom had been created in pairs, male and female, except for man. Each animal had a loving mate to share time, and make a family with except man. And upon noticing this absence, Adam realized he was still alone and became lonely. God saw this as well, and decided to remedy the situation for him …

The Beginning is the End

The Beginning is the End. By this I mean, that what existed before the knowledge of evil will one day be what is considered “normal” again. Where we find ourselves today could hardly be considered normal when viewed through the looking glass of eternity. Ages, eons, decades, centuries, and millennia passed by before the first dark day appeared on the radar of time. It is hard for a human mind to grasp how much of our time passed before evil raised its head in perfection. Some think God created evil, but this is untrue. As life was always founded in our God, so death was always found in the opposite of Him. But ages passed and none chose to deviate from life, from love, from perfection. Till one day, the third most exalted being in the Universe broke trust with God, and decided to follow his own wisdom instead of that of the Almighty, and rather than serving others He asked the seemingly innocuous question – what about me?

When the focus of our existence is moved from making others happy to serving only our own needs we rediscover the knowledge of evil in our souls. Every act of malice, of neglect, every atrocity committed by one person against another can trace its roots back to a motive of serving self. Indeed it is trying to please the man in the mirror that requires our legal system of laws, edicts, and punishments to deter me from acting on my own interests at the expense of another. Serving another requires no such restrictions. Loving someone else requires no limits to my imagination. But me loving me must have definitive restrictions or all those around me will suffer for my cause. It is heaven’s irony that we can only find true fulfillment when giving all of ourselves to serving others. And it is heaven’s mystery that any sentient being would willfully turn away from life and love and consciously choose misery, pain, and death. Yet this is our reality.

In a time before it was measured, Lucifer turned away from God and became Satan. The transformation was not immediate, but it was deliberate. Lucifer’s argument that “different” did not by nature have to be “wrong” was illogical but persuasive. Offering an alternative to a dichotomy of only good and evil, Lucifer tried to position his alternative as just another choice. But how does one deviate from the source of all good things and find yourself anywhere you would choose to be? Straying from life can only by conclusion lead to death. Straying from happiness can only by nature lead to misery. Straying from fulfillment can only leave one hungry. So it was with Lucifer who became Satan. He strayed from all things good until what is evil consumed his every impulse. Evil is not to be trifled with. More than an aberrant concept, evil is addictive by nature, self-destructive by action, and causes any who embrace it to kill everything they love before finally seeking the peace of release only found in death.

Evil takes no responsibility or accountability for what it impacts or affects. And so Satan blames God for his very existence, and any action he may undertake. Satan places his own characteristics on God and tries to shift the focus from the evil he does to a perfect Father God. Satan’s reasoning is that since God has the power to stop evil or destroy it before it even ever existed, the fact that it does exist, makes God responsible for not stopping it. This argument as well lacks the logic of free-will. Free-will is not just the ability to make choices without being forced, it is the fundamental building block of love itself. If we are not free to love, or not love, then we cannot be said to love at all. Love is based on a choice, we choose to love, or not. Had God created sentient life with the ability only to love Him, but never choose not to, the love would be a lie. Sentient beings must have choice to love, in order for the love to be real at all. This choice has always been with us, and it will always be with us throughout the eons of time yet to come.

But then, how does the Creator of all life get rid of evil once it springs into existence? This question is further complicated by the fact that at that time, no other beings in the universe had any knowledge of what evil is truly like. They were blissfully ignorant that any choice outside of following God existed at all. They knew only peace, they knew only love, and they knew only contentment. These were not aspirations for the creations of God prior to our existence; they were what were considered the norm. Happiness was the way of life; no-one knew what sadness was firsthand. But they would learn. For the first time sentient beings saw what happened when love was rejected. The pain of rejection was one of the first forms of knowledge for the universe to encounter about the nature of evil. For you see evil is inherently connected with pain, they cannot be separated. The longer the pain of evil is delayed from the acts of evil, the larger the pain becomes. But it always comes.

So to rid the universe of evil, time must be allotted for all sentient life to witness what evil is like for themselves. “Proof” must be offered that alternatives to God end in evil, and all evil ends in death. Now that trust had been broken, choices must be made about where to place one’s faith in ideology. Lucifer was not stupid, and the effects of evil had only begun to take hold on him. Over time he would be more marred by what he embraced, but at the outset of this conflict of ideas he was universally known and appreciated as the third highest being. God sat on His throne, Christ at His right hand, Lucifer at His left. This was an honored position. The one who now only thought to serve himself had recently been known as a chief among servants. And so a third of the angels took heed of the cunning words of Lucifer and joined with him in breaking trust with God. The sadness multiplied.

Where once power was only valued in how it could be applied to improve the lives of others, now power was sought to rule in the stead of one’s enemies. Even Lucifer was aware there was no way to exceed the power or divinity of God, but if he could equal it, he thought to demand the attention and worship of the remainder of God’s creation. Where God was worshipped from hearts of love, admiration, and gratitude until now – Lucifer would be happy to be worshipped from hearts of fear, or minds bent under his control. What Lucifer wanted was the absolute control over life and death in order to keep his subjects in line. After all, what choice did he have, no one could love what he proposed, for his very proposals of serving self would conflict with worshipping him. People would love only themselves in his government and therefore have no incentive to worship Satan unless based solely on the fear of pain or non-existence. None of this could God allow.

But evil does not value reason, nor will it listen to the pleas of love. Evil demands domination and speaks only in terms of power and consequences. And so the unthinkable happened, in the very center of the universe, near the throne of God himself, there was war in heaven. War is not debate. War is not merely an argument. War is not just based on a battle of ideas, it is also founded in a physical struggle for supremacy between two opposing forces. Where once a city in perfect harmony existed, the invention of weapons would soon be another byproduct of the existence of evil. There was war in heaven. Christ and his angels, pushed out Satan and his angels. And Satan began looking for another base of operations he could call home. He went out to each world where God created sentient life and presented his arguments for an alternative to the kingdom of God. He was heard. But he was not accepted.

It was during this time, that the idea of creating man was presented within the Godhead. One could argue that it could not have come at a worse time. One could argue that Satan’s exclusion from the planning for our existence was one factor in his jealousy over the distinction he now recognized in Christ’s role over his own. Christ was always the Son of God, Lucifer only the archangel or highest of the created angelic hosts. But in an environment based on the outpouring of love this distinction was not nearly as pronounced until Lucifer was omitted from the discussions about man. Had his trust remained in place, this exclusion would not have been necessary. But as he had free-will to rebel against God, and fully intended to execute that will, he had to be omitted. Man would suffer enough under the rulership of God’s enemy without him having the inside knowledge on what was to come. But why now? Why under these condition? Is there no limits on free-will?

Love has no limits. And true love must always come from the choice to embrace it. So to delay our creation until evil was exterminated was to “load the deck” and risk that man too might someday choose to turn from God on his own. There was no reason to delay our creation if one truly believes in the power of love over evil. And God firmly believes in this premise, and has been proven right many times over. So in the middle of the greatest conflict of the ages, man was brought into existence.

Those Christians who say man was made to worship God have no understanding of what they say. If all God needed was more beings to worship Him, he could have simply made more angels, or any other assorted sentient being that he made before us. We were not created to fill a void in the ego of God. We were not created with a worship or die mantra tied to our necks. Rather, we worship God for the same reasons that all other life does – from a heart of love, admiration, and gratitude what He does for us all the time. Our worship is a voluntary reaction to our love, not a prerequisite of His approval. We cannot buy His affections, and yet cannot help responding to them. It is because we are loved that we love. It is because we are already loved that we respond. We are not looking to secure love with our responses, it has already been given to us. Anything we do is in recognition of what He has already done, not what He will do. For the end is the beginning, we already know He loves us, and will love us, for it is already so.

But where would humanity side in the conflict that raged on beyond our world’s domain? Would we be faithful to the God who created us and remain trusting in Him, or would we like the one third of angelic host decide to break trust with God and put it in ourselves. It is in this time that the story of our existence begins. It is set against this conflict that we sprang into existence. It is important for us to look back and study where we came from, value the lessons of our past, as we face the choices that will no doubt end our world. While we live in the closing chapters of our human species as we know it, there is still value in studying how it began. What the intent of our God was for us, where we went wrong, and why it will never happen again. All of this can be found in the first few chapters of the first book of the Bible. There is much in what Moses penned that we still have not learned, but can.

It is these lessons that evolution would undermine. As from the foundation of time, Satan wishes us to believe there is still an alternative to the dichotomy of good and evil. He presents us evolution as a scientific theory that can safely deny his own existence as well as God’s. Man is free to exist under the power of his own wisdom. Good and evil can then become subjective concepts left up to the conscience of each person if they have one. No need to seek to find something more, no need to try to fill the hole in our soul that cannot be quenched outside of finding our maker – only empty and vain pursuits that leave us with nothing. It is not the weak mind that embraces creation; it is the mind that hungers for something more than serving self can ever deliver. It is the enlightenment of His Spirit that can take us back into the love letter that is our Bible and begin again, reading what Creation has yet to teach us. This world is not our home. We were meant for something more. Let us return to the beginning and find out what it will be like past the end of time as we know it …

Foreword & Introduction ...

Take a good long look in the mirror and realize one thing; whether you are going to heaven or not, the guy looking back at you will be the reason why.  What is more, many around you may share your fate whether on golden streets in the perfection for which you were intended, or outside the gates, fallen, miserable, and only waiting for the death you deserve.  In this too you will bear responsibility.  The only enemy you face in your quest for eternity is staring back at you in the mirror.  You and therefore I are the enemy.

Christians have lost sight of the most fundamental doctrine of the Bible; what it means to be saved.  For years we have forsaken the doctrine of surrender to Christ and have tried unsuccessfully to do the work only He can do in our lives.  We sin, and we promise not to again, we strive, we fight, we pray, and ultimately we lose our fights.  It is not our lack of faith, or the inability of our God that stands in our way.  It is our obsession that we remain in control of our quest for perfection.  We are our own worst enemy.

To reform this thinking we must go back to the beginning and re-examine why we are here, and what God originally intended for us.  We must understand better the nature of evil, where it comes from, and how we are finally going to be rid of it.  Only then can we face the tough questions that fill our world and our experiences in day to day life.  If we are going to properly represent Christ we must remember it is we alone who are our enemy, and we alone who must die daily in order to experience real victory. 

This volume is intended to provide a pathway for Christians to re-insert Christ into our lives in a life altering way.  It is time we abandon the language of religion and begin experiencing the tangible power of God in our lives.  If our God is real, then our experience must also be real; or we are all just a bunch of fakers.  Instead, let us take hold of our God as Jacob once did in the black of night when the weight of the world was upon his shoulders.  Instead of wrestling with the Lord, let us surrender to Him, and hold tightly to Him until we see His blessing lived out in our lives.  Let us stop being the enemy and find a way to call ourselves His friends.