The Way, a way of reason that generates a way of Life

by Traveler 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Traveler
    Traveler

    Hi James, you are at least polite. Well I hadn't meant to return so soon but my wife could not believe the described quality of the responses I related as coming from a Christian site. When reading over them for herself she saw yours. Your questions are honest enough and seem sincere.

    What is it like for you as a profit of God, or someone who has intellectually found the “Way”? Someone who has diligently worked their way through the puzzle and maze that the Divine put in place to filter out the masses from those like yourself who trudged on? 

    We all get understanding "beside one another" as the original puts it. No one can boast he's more than another. The process of finding God through the Bible is only possible by using a particular type of Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is given by God for many purposes; examples would be to strengthen us during times of trial, or in Jesus’ case to demonstrate that he was the son of God.  There is one very special use in relation to man. After all other gifts were done away with, speaking in tongues for one, we received the spirit of understanding. This was to remain with us forever and would allow us the increased intellectual power to peer into the deep things of God, a reason that the Angels, our brothers, watch us. Using this last gift we are able to understand the things Jesus said, both those that related to his time and now in the time of the end, to discover new things in what he said that were not to be understood until this age. There are so many things to relate that I'll just pick a few at random, and if you are truly interested I'll start to put them in order later.

    The Bible describes God as an inexhaustible reservoir of energy from which all things are created. It also relates that all things are because he believes them to be. This means that all things are an intellectual limitation on a quantity of his energy (frame of mind). How he worked out separating from himself another identity we do not know. What we do know is that God created his only begotten son, and then having made all that was necessary for the making of things, he rested. The Bible tells us that all other things created were created through the son using God’s power. Skipping ahead we see that the universe, this dimension was created along with angels and man. The angels and man had full self-control, both having been given a full complement of Holy Spirit by their father so that through the increased intellectual capacity it imparts they could live within God’s will without error, sin. The creation was so created that it led to life, and through the pursuit of awareness in relation to self-evident reality and the direct training from God, the angels and man lived without death. There, the angels’ and man's frame of mind was described as the house of God which God dwelled within. They had “the mind of God" or were one with God. This oneness is similar to a husband and wife becoming of one mind, having reasoned for so long together that the combined conclusions held make it possible for one to answer with some certainty, "I believe my husband and I will be of one mind in relation to your question and its answer". Jesus stated "I wish you to be like I am, one with God", a reference to oneness of mind. This was to be achieved by acquiring the mind of Christ through Holy Spirit (spirit of understanding). God said that down through time when he ran into the awareness revealed by his son in the minds of man, it would be a sweet odor reminding him of his son’s sacrifice.

    Now the question is asked, first by an angel and then through his actions, by man: "Why does God have the right to decide right and wrong for us?" God meant for us to know or experience only good, not for us to understand good and bad. But the angel twisted his statement to suggest that God was withholding necessary information from man. Yep, the angel was Satan, the father of the lie.  God said that he would allow the question to be entertained, but in doing so he is bound, he cannot lie. Only when the angels or man change something not included in the original character of the question can God also act.  An example would be when the angels forsook their rightful dwelling place and bred with man creating a new race on earth, the Nephilim. God corrected this with the flood. So as the Bible tells us, “time and unforeseen circumstance befall us all",  when the little girl gets run over by the truck, God didn't need another angel, he was bound and could not do anything about it. The fault lies with the angels and man who are shaping this reality.

     Ok so the question is asked, "Why does God have the right to decide right and wrong for us?" In a physical way this statement was established by Eve taking the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden. This fruit represented man giving God the right to decide right and wrong for them and was the only thing in the garden that was forbidden. As God had warned them, Adam and Eve died in the day that they took the fruit, a day being as a thousand years to God, neither made it to a thousand years of age.

    Now, before the fall of Adam and Eve they cultivated the garden, but not by the sweat of their brow.  It appears obvious to me that, as in all things, frame of mind was responsible for this. We were the balance for all things on the earth and our awareness was to maintain and to spread it. An example might be in the Bible where it says “ask the black mulberry tree to uproot itself and be transplanted in the middle of the sea, and it will obey you.” It doesn’t say God will make the tree do this, it says it will obey you. Take also the case of Jesus’ control of weather when no unbeliever was present. Also, when his mother asked him to deal with the wine, he pointed out that it was not his time to present himself publicly, but out of respect for her he apparently used an ability he had as a perfect man, and one she was familiar with, and changed the water to wine.  I don’t want to wander far off the subject but we might also look at Peter when he walked on the water when no unbelievers were present. If the ability had been dependent on Jesus or God directly, Peter would not have sunk. Jesus asked, “Why did you doubt?” I’m sure Peter’s experience was empowered by Jesus’ presence, if nothing else, so please don’t go jumping off a building in an attempt to fly ;)

    So, God the Father cast Adam and Eve out of his house, remember house is described as a certain frame of mind, the only house he can dwell in. What this meant was that he removed the full complement of Holy Spirit that Adam and Eve used to pursue life (right), the power necessary to control or balance the garden around them which was also the inheritance they could pass on to their offspring. The earth started producing weeds for them. As they left the garden an angel was stationed at the gate with a flaming sword of light that was always turning to bar their way back, or in other words to confuse their minds, light representing understanding. Now cast out they could not pass on to their offspring the Holy Spirit that allowed for life without death and thus through sin death entered the world because all sin in their turn. Man’s inclination is now inclined towards bad. Usually the next question comes to mind, “What about the children?” I’ll explain later that according to law the stand of a person with God comes from his father as head of the house until the child reaches the age of responsibility. So if the father has not crossed from death to life, the children remain dead to God. Remember, God is not responsible for this circumstance.

    Down through time one man arrives that develops a relationship with God to such a degree that he is described by God as a friend. Because this man, Abraham, demonstrated such a frame of mind that he as good as offered his son to God in sacrifice, God made promises to him that the redeemer of man would come through his line, Abraham’s line. Abraham is described as circumcised of heart and ear. Only those who were also circumcised of heart and ear were to be called Abraham’s offspring. These offspring would, through another notable man, come to be called Sons of Israel. The Sons of Israel asked God for a perfect law thinking it would allow them to serve God faithfully. God warned them that law would condemn them to death because  no man alive at the time could fulfill the law perfectly. God put a government or organization over the sons of Israel in the form of a nation. Remember here that you could not become a Son of Israel by birth alone. I remind you of the explanation of Kingdom in my past post. I think you’re probably starting to recognize this now. The promised redeemer was set to come now. God transferred his only begotten son’s life force (the smallest part to retain identity and still be called soul) into the egg of Mary who was both a descendant of Abraham physically and a son of Israel being circumcised of heart and ear. I remind you of the consideration of God’s intellectual limitation on a quantity of energy. That’s when you are, and your identity is separated from God. This is why the Bible can say that God can know you in the womb before you are born. The transfer was achieved by the Son empting himself which as its related meant that he gave up his spirit body with its mind’s ability to generate thought.  Then the original quantity of energy designated to be him by God’s Belief (creation) was entrusted to God who transferred it into Mary’s ovum to take on slave’s form. In this new physical form with its mind he began to generate thoughts as, and within the conditions of man, thus making him a corresponding ransom. This was done so that he would be as others in the age he was born into. Slave’s form meant he was smaller in appearance than perfect man and described as disfigured. We recall that when the angels bred with our best women they produced giants, the Nephilim. Science has shown that given less stress and ample food man grows larger. I think we can assume this explains slave’s form and disfigured, yet perfect.  Again, he then started gaining awareness as any other man would, with the exception that because his father was God he had been transferred with a full complement of Holy Spirit, still a corresponding example related to Adam. His awareness from his former existence in heaven was kept by his father as this was necessary in order for him to be a corresponding ransom sacrifice. When an angel takes on form here, he brings with him the awareness he had in his other form and this is called incarnate. Jesus could not be incarnate or the secondary question involved by implication could not be answered, “Would any man stand with God unless it appeared to be in his best interest?” The only begotten son created man at God’s direction and is said to have had a special fondness for him.

    The Bible tells us that Jesus came under law. According to law the offspring achieved their stand with God under the headship of their father. Jesus was adopted by Joseph, Mary’s husband, and as an adopted son was condemned under the law. When Jesus found himself in slave’s form he presented himself to do God’s will and crossed over from death to life, demonstrating this publically by baptism. As the son of Israel who had fulfilled the law perfectly, he exercised faith in himself as the prophesied ransom sent by the Father. That’s why at baptism God stated, “This is my son, this day I have become your Father.” The reason God became his physical son’s Father was that according to law if a son of Israel was to fulfill the law perfectly, he would be allowed to reenter the house of God by adoption,  a legal connection. In doing this he would gain the firstborn’s inheritance which was to be appointed over all the Father’s positions. After proving faithful to death and according to law, Jesus received two parts inheritance (rulership over heaven and earth) through the new covenant promised him. He in turn made a covenant with the sons of Israel for 144,000 chosen from the 12 tribes to share his inheritance in accordance with the law for sons after the firstborn. The provision gave them one part, rule over the earth with him. 

    Here’s an interesting point about death:  keep in mind that God’s son’s identity as well as ours must continue to be maintained through a multi-generational answering of the question.  Jesus’ spirit or life force entered the grave (existed in the grave where it was said those in the grave are preserved alive).  When Jesus was resurrected he was resurrected to earth, and rewarded with life or return to existence. Resurrection means to stand before God and receive the reward for your actions. You exist in the grave. To exist does not require consciousness, whereas existence means to be aware of one’s self, to be conscious. That is why those in the grave can be said to have life, though not living (existence). If you’re still with me, I am impressed.

    When the woman took hold of Christ’s garment after his resurrection he said, “Why do you cling to me, I have not yet ascended to my Father.” If you hold this thought while recalling that at Armageddon, when what some call the rapture happens, the Bible states that Jesus descends from heaven and calls those out of the grave who exercised faith in him.  After this resurrection back to existence on earth, it says that all are changed in a twinkling. They receive the promised full complement of Holy Spirit, resulting in increased intellectual power sufficient to complete the taking on of incorruptible apparel. This was promised to all who cross over from death to life through Christ, having received a token of this adoptive spirit following baptism. Having received this full complement, the now living or existing twelve tribes (sons of Israel, nothing to do with nation of Israel) are prepared to enter the 1,000 year reign of Christ over the Earth. The ones who receive an upward call from Christ (144,000) then go to meet him in the air to be with him forever. In some translations it says heavens instead of air. This could be likened to us saying “as the airplane soared through the heavens.” Remember, he has at this point already descended from heaven.

    Boiled down this means, yep, there is no provision in the Bible for anyone to receive a resurrection directly to heaven.

    Entering into the thousand year reign of Christ over the Earth, the twelve tribes will have neither death nor outcry. Through the Holy Spirit now available to them, they will have completed putting on the full suit of incorruptible clothing and will no longer be found naked (right frame of mind).  Like Christ, through this process they have put on immortality which means absence of death in their reality. The Bible tells us that only God the Father has immortality. This is why all others are described as putting it on in association with him.

    At the end of the thousand years of peace, Satan, who has been held in the abyss will try the last possibility to find a way to life without God: his angels and a large population of perfect man. It says he goes forth misleading the entire inhabited earth. You see, Satan only has to prove that God is wrong in the smallest point to show that God may not be the one to decide right and wrong. This would bind God to allow Satan and those who took a stand against God to have continued existence. I’ve mentioned that God can be bound. God cannot lie, one case in point where the moral law binds God.  After Satan is proved wrong again and all things are now in order, Christ who as the firstborn son and king has been setting on God’s throne over the Father’s house, will himself submit to Yahweh or Jehovah or your choice, and the King of eternity will again be all things to all persons, as he was originally.

     

    Well, there is a very loose explanation of the “Nature of What Is” as I call it. I hope this is non cryptic enough? I appreciate you see the difference between cryptic and convoluted. The truth is simple, logical, but is hidden from the self-assuming intellectuals or those who will not reason.  As you will note, I have not answered the question, “How can a question exist in a reality created to serve God’s will?”  or “How did we get free will?”) I hope to run into someone who is at the same point on the path as my wife and I. The idea is to gather together, and in doing so to share questions in common and find answers. The goal is to cover distance in drawing closer to God through accurate knowledge. As I have explained, walking with God as footstep followers of Christ builds each other UP. All of us have the Bible but few use it to gain even the most elementary understanding. This is so in all religious pursuits, and has been observed to be true here on this site.

    I guess a one liner is out for me at death  . . . .

    If I had one I think it might be “take the red pill”  ;)

    If you are sincere, I hope the peace that excels all thought will be with you.

    Remember the general Christian of Jesus' day had little or no education, yet came to know the truth far deeper than those highly educated men of the nation of Israel and the world.

     

  • JamesThomas
    JamesThomas
    Traveler, thank you so much for your reply. Your open honesty is noted and appreciated.

    It will take me a while to digest it – as I barely have two brain-cells to rub together (and the three IPA's I just drank, don't help). I hope to comment in a day or two with something more.

    That said, it's interesting that you should use the phrase “take the red pill”, as I too used that just a week or so ago. But it was in regards to what is outside the intellectual, egoistic, monkey-mind that generally defines “us” as a seemingly separate and isolated “self” from the pure awareness of all existence, or what you might refer to as “God”. No matter.

  • JamesThomas
    JamesThomas
    Traveler (and wife),

    Funny, how fitting is the prophet and the fool icons. You have lots of deep intellectual and Biblical knowledge and information to share, (most left unmentioned). I have nothing, no reference to anything other than my own simple and nonsensical questions and observations.

    Thank you again for your extensive reply. It is certainly understandable (and honorable IMHO) your sincere desire to discover the deepest truths and expose the mind of “God”; and it can be pretty exciting at times traveling the twist and turns, drama and intrigue of the master story-teller, the mind. Problem is, even though we may have a strong sense of certainty that we are genuinely getting somewhere, can we actually get to truth from whimsical representations which are inherently erroneous?

    It's way simple. For example: any “knowledge” that the mind can relate to us about a tree, is not in any way connected to the actual, dynamic, aliveness of a tree. The very best the mind can offer up regarding a tree is abstract words and thoughts. Ideas, concepts and pretty scientific-graphs that are light-years removed from the reality we call a “tree”. If the mind completely fails at the level of a tree, how much more so when it comes to the ultimate truth or the infinity of God?

    Seemingly, with eyes which can not see what is obvious, we foolishly give the intellectual mind the definitive and unquestionable authority to define our own identity, and the nature of “God” and/or reality. We give it the power to designate our entire sphere of “truth” via its empty, artificial and imaginary constructs that are anything – but true. Welcome to the matrix where little, if anything -- is actually real.

    Lost in the matrix of the mind we are aware of nothing else. We worship, and embrace the images formed by the mind, and millions sincerely believe that they know “God's” thoughts and truths. Many have and will die and kill in the name of “holy and righteous” matrix-monkey-mind ideas, often passed down over thousands of years via words in matrix story books. None of it based in actual truth, if it was there would be harmony and unity, not separation and chaos.

    It seems very likely that if we actually had a true sense of “God” (the foundational Source of all existence), we wouldn't have anything to say about It, as our mind would be utterly silenced by a crushing humility. If we were lucky it would never speak again, unless when actually helpful like when doing our taxes.

    My sense is that there is no Way to get to truth/God; as it's simply not so diminutive or limited as to be absent. Rather it's about recognizing and stepping out of what is unreal, and focusing attention on the one and only undeniable truth that we all share: the pure, silent, aware-aliveness which is closer and more intimate than the mind. That, which quietly and subtly observes the matrix of the mind, senses, feelings and all other phenomena.  Be still, and know...

    Is taking the red pill about changing over to different or more “profoundly spiritual” concepts, ideas and beliefs? Wouldn't that be more of a blue-pill/matrix exchange? Perhaps, it's far more radical than that. A shift from all which was “real and knowable” before. More about sacrificing everything ever thought or believed to be true about self, and other. But only – everything. I don't image that is very alluring to a prophet who feels he is very near to intellectually figuring out the mind of God. More tempting perhaps for a complete and utter fool who only knows that he knows nothing, and that anything really worth saying on the subject – can't be spoken. So ignore all this.

    Please know that I mean no disrespect for what you cherish and hold dear, nor feel anything other than warmth for you. I just don't know how else to put it.


    Peace be with you and your dear wife.


  • Traveler
    Traveler
    It's been a nice experience running into you, James. The idea that nothing is provable because every fact uses other facts for its proof, which in turn means those facts must be proved, is not foreign to me. At some point each of us must decide to accept things, facts, based on either their mathematical certainty, and/or that  they are connected in such away to every other thing we approach, that we can explain them in no other way than a pre-existing order or intellect. If we had given you the answer to our question "How can a question exist in this reality..?" you would see that one thing based on another is as far as God, an alien creature to us, has himself been able to get. You might find reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, an interesting  book and subject to you. They state loosely that through math all things can be shown to have the same base model of order, music, etc,.etc. I think it's still required reading at most colleges. I figured out in the first chapter that it was his search for God and a very strong pursuit.  Of course while applauding his reason, as far as it leading him to a way to find  existence beyond one lifetime, I'd say "no cigar". I respect that you have found it easier to shoot down what's expressed as having a reasonable foundation than figure out one for yourself. I wandered around in the wilderness for a while myself watching people struggle with reason . You'll probably find you're not invited to as many parties as you once were  (and drinking more) and your circle of friends getting smaller, or larger but very shallow. "Many things left unspoken", you of course are right again, but in our defense we are looking for those who are, or wish to be on the same path we are pursuing. Yes this is dependent on deciding that some thing is true. You must admit coming from where you are, your statements hold no more water than ours. One thing I think you will soon face and agree with us on is you're about to die. You might as well use your power of mind to find a way out and not let the failure of others be enough for you. You will get up in the morning, Why? Who or what made you decide you must. Why put your shoes on one at a time? You need not reply.  We accept your respect and even love, and we return it. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was intelligent and had enough self control to be at peace with one another? bye
  • JamesThomas

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