We put little thought into very fundamental questions like what is the purpose of Creation? Christians do not normally describe creation as a trial or a test, but they believe God gave us free will and God judges us at the end of the world. Christians believe that God gave us the freedom to love Him or not love Him. This means Christians believe that creation is a test even if they never consider the question of why God created the world. This book argues that the world is not a test. To realize and fully embrace the idea that creation is not a test results in a completely different view of God and the Bible.
To achieve the real purpose of creation, God had to create creatures who struggle between good and evil. We must be evil to sin and be worthy of death. We must be compassionate to feel sorrow for those who die, so that God can experience sorrow through us.
A loving God would want to experience sorrow. A perfectly righteous God would create the conditions where He is not the cause of suffering. God allows us to cause suffering because it is essential for God to know what love is, but then God responds to the suffering that we cause. Some people cause more suffering, and God will punish them. Some people suffer more than they deserve, and God will repay them.
There is a Day of Judgment, but the world was not created for the purpose of judgment. God created a world where evil would form, resulting in a struggle between good and evil. The Day of Judgment is when God destroys evil.
Punishment for sin comes before the Day of Judgment and is sometimes called temporal judgment. Punishment for sin before the Day of Judgment, and the destruction of evil on the Day of Judgment are two different objectives. They are both essential to a righteous God as a response to suffering.
God created a world of good and evil for God to be able to experience emotions. To experience emotions like sorrow there had to be suffering, but God established the conditions where He is not the cause of suffering. God created angels, demons, and humans outside of Himself, giving them the ability to act as “free agents”. Angels, demons, and humans act freely, independent of God, causing suffering.
God created loving angels, but God also created loveless demons, including some who were given great power like Satan. God then created a tiny little rock called the Earth, floating in a vast universe. The Earth is remarkably insignificant relative to Heaven. Humans were made as weak spirits attached to flesh, but most humans were given a righteous spirit of love. Humans are like angels and demons, only smaller, weaker, and attached to fleshly bodies.
There is no conflict between the good and evil spirits in Heaven. The angels are repulsed by the demons, and the demons hate God and the angels. The demons must conceal their hatred. There is a separation between the good and evil spirits like the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy, but God transcends all existence and God exercises complete control. The demons must conceal their hatred or be removed from Heaven, but they can have a great impact on tiny little Earth.
Satan is still in Heaven since he has great power, and he stays within the Law of God even as he came to secretly hate God. We are both good and evil because we are loving spirits attached to flesh. Our flesh is influenced by powerful evil spirits causing us to violate the Law. Satan hates God but the devil can do no harm to God. God loves the humans, so Satan destroys the humans. This is exactly what God had in mind. This is how God has creatures who struggle between good and evil.
God allowed Satan to corrupt the material world. We owe our existence to Satan, and we struggle between good and evil because of the influence of the devil. Satan is part of us most of the time. When we are selfish or angry God is repulsed and will watch us from a distance.
When we are righteous, contrite, or sorrowful, God is within our mind and soul. In our most difficult times, God feels precisely what we feel. God has felt the sorrow, loneliness, and anxiety of all His children throughout time. This is how creation provides God with a full understanding of what love is. This is why God created the world.
God created spirits and humans, outside of Himself, with free agency. God allows humans influenced by the devil to cause suffering, and humans are the cause of most suffering. Satan is the source of evil, but humans are the manifestation of evil.
The devil is a bad influence on humanity, but Satan does not violate the Law of God, nor directly cause any suffering. God foreknew there would be suffering, but God also foreknew that in the end He will redeem all love and destroy all evil.
The early church believed that Christ redeems us by defeating death, or by defeating the devil, or by freeing us from the dominion of Satan. The ransom theory emerged as the explanation for how Christ frees us from the dominion of Satan.
Over a thousand years after Christ, the church in western Europe moved away from the ransom theory. The Church not only abandon the ransom theory, but they also abandon the idea that Christ redeems us by freeing us from the dominion of Satan. Instead, they embraced the idea that Christ redeems us by His righteousness and/or His suffering being somehow applied to us.
This led to satisfaction atonement for Catholicism which would eventually lead to substitution atonement or penal substitution for protestants. The problem with both satisfaction atonement and substitutionary atonement is that they are both clearly and repeatedly rejected by the Jewish Scriptures. God does not punish anyone for the sins of someone else.
We may be “healed by His stripes”, but it cannot be true that our sins, or our dishonoring of God is satisfied by the righteousness, or the suffering of the Messiah being applied to us. Everyone will be judged for their own words and actions; the Bible is clear on this. Substitution atonement espouses a means of redemption that contradicts the Bible and rejects what the early church believed.
We are healed by His stripes because the suffering of Christ somehow defeats death or frees us from the dominion of Satan. Ransom theory tried to explain how Christ defeated the devil. Just because ransom theory is a bad explanation, that does not mean there cannot be some other explanation. The redemption provided to us by Christ must be consistent with the Jewish Scriptures.
There are two parts to our redemption. The two parts to our redemption are represented by the bread and wine of the Last Supper. They are also represented by the blood and water that flowed from the side of Christ. To understand the two parts of our redemption we must first understand the Trinity.
The Trinity is best explained by pointing out that God is both outside of time and moving in time, but Trinity means three. There must be a second consciousness of God moving in time. There is God the Father outside of time, and there are two manifestations of God within time and space. These two manifestations of God exist in two different realms or two different levels of reality. The two levels of reality would be parallel to each other, or one would transcend the other. God could not allow this explanation for the Trinity to be explored until near the time of the end. This conversation would lead to the idea that Jesus transcends Heaven. This is something that had to be kept secret.
While the Holy Spirit is in Heaven, the Son of God is at a transcending level of Heaven called the Right Hand of God.
Satan has great willpower and is still in Heaven, but Jesus transcends that level of Heaven. Even when He walked the Earth, Jesus existed at a transcending level of Heaven. Jesus had a body and a soul that were fully human, but He also continued to exist at the highest level of Heaven. When God looked away from the crucifixion, the evil spirits openly cursed God. They believed that Jesus was a mere human. They had always been able to conceal their hatred of God, but unbeknownst to Satan, Jesus is God. Jesus is now a witness against the devil.
This is how God destroys evil, and this is the real reason Jesus suffered on the cross. The physical pain was nothing to God. The Lord is repulsed by evil. The Lord witnessed a supernatural expression of hatred, and by this He was tortured on the cross.
Even to this day, the devil does not know that Jesus is the Lord, and that Jesus is a witness against him.
At the crucifixion Jesus witnessed all the evil spirits’ hatred of God, and by His testimony Jesus destroys all evil. This frees us from the dominion of Satan. The crucifixion is represented by the wine of the Last Supper, and it is represented by the blood that flowed from the side of Christ.
Freeing us from the dominion of Satan is essential to our redemption, but it does not erase our past sins. There is another crucial part of our redemption which is achieved by Christ giving up His body. The bread of the Last Supper represents the body of Christ that is given up for us. The water that flowed from His side represents separation by which we are redeemed. In the Bible water is often separated from water like when the children of Israel were delivered across the Red Sea. Water was parted when the children of Israel were brought across the Jordan River into the promised land.
Luke 22:19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
Our redemption is achieved by Jesus simply giving up His body (bread) like He said He would. Christ discards His body or separates (water) Himself from His body on the Day of Judgment.
Even the devil has acknowledged that Christ is fully human, but Christ is also sinless so His resurrection to eternal life is completely justified. God will not rebuild us or alter us like toys, but Christ is one of us. If Christ discards His flesh, this justifies the discarding of our flesh on the Day of Judgment. Our sinless spirit is given a new body. The flesh is not evil, but as stated by Christ, the flesh is weak. The flesh is manipulated by spiritual forces, but while Satan causes our flesh to sin, our spirit is without sin.
Matthew 26:41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
This will redeem all children of God even those who do not believe in Jesus and those who have never heard of Jesus. The grace of Christ will make us worthy of eternal life. It will transform us into angels of God who are able to enjoy eternal life.
Our spirit is a small angel of God, perfect and without sin.
This is not Gnosticism; it merely has similarities to a non-blasphemous aspect of Gnosticism. The Gnostics did believe in a struggle between spirit and flesh which they saw as a struggle between good and evil, but it was other Gnostic beliefs that were blasphemous. Gnosticism was a remarkably effective distraction. Some of their beliefs were so blasphemous that for almost two thousand years Christians have vehemently opposed anything associated with Gnosticism.
There are many clues in the Bible to suggest that the struggle between good and evil is a struggle between spirit and flesh. The idea that we are redeemed by separation has incredible Biblical support. It is miraculous that people cannot see the great abundance of separation in the Bible.
Separation is everywhere in the Bible. Not just the parting of the Red Sea, redemption is compared to refining gold which is separating the gold. There are many ceremonies where blood, water, or oil is sprinkled. Circumcision is the act of separating flesh. The children of Israel were separated from the Egyptians. These are all acts of separation that are connected to redemption. Goats and sheep are said to be separated as are wheat and tares.
Jesus said if your eye causes you to sin, then pluck it out. The Lord does not want us to pluck out our eyes, He is giving a clue as to how He redeems us. If a person is part good and part evil, throw out the part that is evil and keep the part that is good.
God even created the world by separating things.
Genesis 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Genesis 1:6-7 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
If Christians had recognized that Jesus redeems us by separating our spirit from our flesh, there would have been a lot of thought and discussion trying to find some other explanation for why Jesus suffered on the cross. Gnosticism had to be used as a distraction. Without Gnosticism, Christian scholars would surely realize that Jesus destroys the devil as a witness.
The Apocalypse or Revelation of the Messiah is when it is revealed in Heaven that Jesus transcends Heaven. This will lead to a war, or a debate between the archangel Michael and the devil. The devil will be cast from Heaven.
Jesus transcends Heaven, but this truth could not be revealed until the time of the end because this revelation causes the end. This is why Jesus spoke in riddles and this is why the Bible is enigmatic.
God had a reason to create evil, or to create the conditions where evil would form. Evil must be contained within time and ultimately destroyed. There will come a time when God destroys all evil, and that is called the Day of Judgment. Thanks to the testimony of Christ, the evil spirits will be destroyed on the Day of Judgment. We are part evil, and we must also be destroyed. Fortunately, Christ separates our spirit from our flesh making us worthy of eternal life in the kingdom of God.
Jesus saves us to eternal life on the Day of Judgment, however, there are many things from which a person can be saved. Our righteousness can save us here in this life. This is called temporal judgment, or punishment and reward before the Day of Judgment. God executes perfect justice, so all our sins will be required of us before the Day of Judgment.
The Day of Judgment is to destroy evil; it is not about executing measured justice. God punishes sin and rewards righteousness before the Day of Judgment. These are two completely different objectives. Much of the confusion and debate concerning conflicting Biblical passages and doctrines can be solved by realizing that references to heaven, hell, salvation or being saved can sometimes be referring to temporal judgment before the Day of Judgment.
Some Biblical passages are referring to eternal life determined on the Day of Judgment, and some passages can be applied to both temporal judgment and eternal judgment.
In Judaism, the idea of resurrection and eternal life only appeared not long before Christ. Throughout the Old Testament, judgment and the Law referred to punishment or reward in this life. With Christianity this was somehow transformed into the idea that all references to judgment in the Bible are referring to eternal judgment.
Christians tend to believe that our actions in this life must have eternal consequences on the Day of Judgment, otherwise we have no incentive to lead a righteous life. Punishment can be extremely severe even if it is not eternal. Reward does not have to be eternal to be incredible. Jesus often said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”, meaning heaven is here and now. Before the Day of Judgment, all righteousness will be rewarded, and all evil will be punished. Repentance can save us from temporal judgment. Only Jesus can save us on the Day of Judgment, and Jesus has already saved us without any help from us.
Christians often deal with conflicting Biblical doctrines by not taking passages literally even if the passage seems to be intended literally. Christians will endlessly argue over which passage to take literally and which passage to not take literally.
Most Christians do not take literally those parts of the Bible that indicate God predetermined who would go to Heaven. Nobody takes literally the Biblical claims that the children of God do not commit any sins. Christians completely avoid very clear statements in the Bible that God will not punish anyone for the sins of someone else. Christians will struggle with passages that indicate we cannot lose our salvation. Everyone seems to avoid the Biblical statements that God created darkness and God created the wicked for the day of evil.
This theology explains why the Bible can say the children of God do not commit sin. The spirit of love within us is the real child of God made in the image of God. It does not commit any sin. This theology explains why the Bible can say we only make it to Heaven through Christ, yet we are judged by our works, yet God predetermined who would go to Heaven, and no one is punished for the sins of someone else.
We only make it to Heaven through Christ, but our redemption is not achieved by Christ being punished for our sins. Since Jesus discards His flesh, it is perfectly reasonable for our flesh to be discarded. The perfect spirit of love within us came from God, and God predetermined who would be born with the spirit.
We will be judged by our works. On the Day of Judgment, our flesh will be judged by works and will be found unworthy. Our spirit will be judged by works and will be found worthy of eternal life in the kingdom of God. We cannot lose our eternal salvation since our spirit is perfect and without sin. While in the flesh, we can sin and suffer temporal judgment.
Evil is not the result of God giving us “free will” which somehow allows us to be both good and evil. As stated in the Bible, God formed darkness and God made the wicked for the day of evil. What we view as free will is a result of us being small angels of God attached to flesh. It is the flesh that is manipulated by evil spirits.
It is said that God would not create Satan as a loveless spirit and then punish Satan eternally for being evil. God had reasons to create the conditions where evil would form, and God will not eternally punish the loveless spirits He created. The devil is said to be tormented forever and ever. It is also said that time comes to an end. If time comes to an end, then forever and ever comes to an end.
The timeline we are on had a beginning, and it has an ending. Christ goes to prepare a place for us, so God will take us somewhere else, perhaps another timeline or another universe. Perhaps God will create an entirely different big bang. There is a new heaven and a new earth. It is not clear what God will do with Satan at the end of the current timeline. God will deal with Satan and all evil spirits with perfect righteousness. Jesus said that God is kind to the unthankful and the evil.
Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
This book has more Biblical support and takes the Bible more literally than what any church teaches. There is the Day of Judgment when God destroys evil, and there is temporal judgment where God executes justice. Understanding these two different objectives of judgment causes conflicting Biblical passages to be reconciled.
Christians do not seem to care that vicarious atonement is clearly rejected by the Scriptures. They have become accustomed to the Bible having some passages that clearly contradict their beliefs. They have become accustomed to saying, “it is a mystery”, to having many questions that cannot be answered.
Christians have come to accept without examination the idea that the devil is powerful enough to do battle with God, and stupid enough to do battle with God. This theology presents a devil that is far more realistic and believable.
Satan causes us to sin while he stays within the Law. In the end, God turns the tables on Satan. Satan tried to show that power overcomes love, but God shows that love overcomes power.
This is something else that is accomplished by creation.
This theology is consistent with both the Jewish Scriptures and the Nicene Creed.