Jesus can change the past.

The problem with sin is that it happened in the past.

The past. It is said to be set in stone. What has happened has happened and there is no way to change it. For many people this fact becomes a prison. Whether it is something they have done, or something that was done to them, their past holds them captive, restraining them from any hope of a future, keeping them in an unchanging doldrum of quiet despair. It happens like this:

Q. "Why don't you get a job?"

A. "I can't, I just can't keep working because of what happened to me."

Q. "You really should quit drinking."

A. "I know, but because of what happened to me, drinking gives me comfort."

Q. "The friends you keep are hurting you, maybe you should make new friends."

A. "Only the friends I have accept me, despite my past."

Q. "Come celebrate with us."

A. "I can't, the celebration reminds me of my past, it's to painful."

Past sin holds people captive.

We can understand that because of the infinite righteousness of God, no one who is living in sin could ever come into the joy of His presence with out causing a travesty of justice and goodness. The bible clearly teaches in passages like Romans 3:23 that "all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God". What about a repented sinner? One who has recognized the sin of their past, and turned away from it? Could a former sinner enter into God's presence, or better yet, would he? Past sin haunts and degrades us, forcing us to remain distant from God. God forgives us, Christ's death makes us righteous, and these acts of mercy provide to us by grace the right for us to enter into His Glory, however having the right to enter, by no means implies that we would find any joy in it.

Sin has consequences. I have a friend whose parents were murdered. She has forgiven the man who murdered her parents. Let's say my friend was hosting a grand celebration of the life of her parents, a joyful occasion meant to reflect on the lives of her parents, two righteous and wonderful people. There would be no way, even in accepting the forgiveness, even in the repenting of his deeds, that he could enter that celebration and not be overwhelmed with the pain caused by his past sin. The only way he could enter into this celebration and partake in the joy of it, would be to enter it without his past. And of course this is impossible for him. Sin has succeeded in forever separating this man from the fellowship with the people whom his sin was against. Even in the light of forgiveness, even in the light of repentance, the pain of the forgiven sin is only magnified in the light of the joy of the celebration. Imagine the celebration in heaven, now imagine the pain of even the smallest sin in the light of it. Heaven will be no place you would want to be, if it means being there with your sinful past.

If this man could travel through time and change his past, he would, freeing himself from it's tryanny. If somehow he could cut himself away from his past, he could enter into the joy of the celebration. Changing the past of course, is impossible. Or is there one who can do it?

Jesus Christ said in Revelation Chapter 21, that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Christ also says in verse 5 of Revelation 21 that he "makes all things new". The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.

What does it mean? A "new creation", or "to make all things new"? There is only one way for something to be new. If I purchase a new car, and while driving it home someone stops me and says "hey that's my old car!", I will have realized that I have been lied to. The lie will be evident in the fact that my supposed new car has a past. To be new means to be absent of history, to have no past.

Is Paul exaggerating and Jesus lying to us, when he says that we are new creations, or that all things will be made new? The word being used is "new" not "renewed" or "refurbished" or anything like that. Something "renewed" would still have the problem of the man, carrying into the future his own painful history. The only way to facilitate the making new of something that already is, is if you change the past. So it is clear. Jesus says to come to him in faith and he will remove your past. He has to, if he doesn't you'd be saved, but you couldn't experience the joy of it.

So how does it work? You accept Christ and the past disappears? The consequences vanish? Well obviously not. I have put my faith in Christ, believing that he has made me a new creation, however my past is still clearly in view, the pain of it in many ways greater than it was before I knew Christ. What do I make of this? I would call this the burden of my cross. Just as Jesus carried his cross up the road to Golgotha, so to must we bear the cross of our past sin as we struggle through life. Our hope is in this, that everything that was not build upon the foundation of Christ will be burned away (1 Cor 3:11-15). The sin we have done, and the sin that has been done to us will not survive into heaven. However, while the sinful past will be thrown into the fire, so long as we are not clinging to it, we will be saved. So the burden of carrying our sin (instead of the comfort of clinging to it) BECOMES the hope of our salvation, because we are bearing this burden in order to carry it to Jesus, the only one who can dispose of it. If we persevere in carrying our burdens and laying them down at the feet of Jesus, he will usher us into his Kingdom, and relieve us of the burden of our past as we pass through His gates.

So if the past is destroyed will we forget the wonderful story of our own redemption? Absolutely not. Because our redemption happened as we heard the gospel in love from another person and as Jesus did his saving work in each of our hearts.. So while our past will be destroyed, our redemption will be remembered, but remembered through the eyes of that good friend who loved us enough to lead us to Christ, and most importantly, our redemption will be remembered by Christ (who did the redeeming), and we will marvel as He shares with us the story of how he saved us. Our past, no longer our own, but now belonging to Jesus, and only as He recalls it, will we be able to bear the remembering of it in the light of His Glory!

Eternal Communities, Eternal Work, and Worldly Risk

Did you ever consider that Aquila and Priscilla created the job so that Paul could work for them and support his ministry? They would have basically hired him to work. They would have had the tent making equipment, and the market to sell the tents, and they hired Paul and paid him or had some arrangement where he could profit from selling the tents he made from their materials so that he could support himself in the area.

Acts 18:1 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them,3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.

Also in Acts 4:34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Transpose that with 2 Thessalonians 3:6Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you,8 nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.9 It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies.12 Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

So the ones who had need in Acts 4 were obviously not being enabled to maintain that need by relying on the charity of the fellowship. More likely they would have been lifted up, discipled and provided an opportunity or a direction to work and provide for themselves, so then they could be the ones helping. I think many people look on the Christian community in Acts as almost a communist one, however I don't think you can come to that conclusion if you take the whole council of scripture. For one thing, if the believers were selling all thier stuff and providing as everyone had need, pretty soon they'd run out of stuff to sell, it isn't sustainable, and definitely not an eternal mindset. However if they were selling thier stuff to lift people up and provide opportunities to work and continue in growing and enriching the community, then that is sustainable and tends toward eternity instead of toward nothing.

These people would have been seen as very strange, even crazy. They were putting everything they had at risk for the community, helping people, starting businesses, and instead of storing up treasures for themselves, they had faith that investing into the eternal community would not only provide for them now, but forever. Truly taking Jesus's advise in Matthew 6 not to store up treasures on earth but instead treasures in Heaven. They took their wealth out of their barns (Luke 12:16) and put it to work profitably in the eternal community. The believers in Acts had total unity in their fellowship which strengthened their faith to put their worldly wealth at risk, they saw the storehouse of their wealth, both physical and eternal, being in the body of Christ.

So from this and particularly the Acts 18 example we can see a 2 fold responsibility. The responsibility of Priscilla and Aquila to put their resources at risk in order to provide the opportunity for Paul to work, and the responsibility of Paul to show up and do the work. In our terms it would be the responsibility of those who have the means to use them to invest in the eternal community, and for those who need means to reliably show up and do the work.

I think it's obvious to see the implications in all of this at home and for our work in the rest of the world.

FYI, I don't believe in Islamic terrorism

Muslims don't hate us. They are just people. Most of them living in the third world just trying to get some food on the table. They want to kill us in about the same proportion as anyone else on earth does. The idea that the world is being held hostage by Islamic terrorist is absurd. It is an idea that is put forth in order to divide people and to keep us fearful so that we will continue to accept a perpetual state of war and so that we will not attempt to create meaningful relationships with those who come from the Muslim culture.

Satan is at work in the world, seeking to divide and destroy people how ever he can. In a mockery of God's love for "honest scales" Satan has worked to create a global economy in which money has no real value and is based upon an ever growing need for debt. This is a great plan for Satan, because best way to ensure that there is a constantly increasing supply of legally enforceable debt is to ensure that there are nations willing to indenture their citizenry through taxation and inflation used to finance both the military infrastructure needed to wage war and the rebuilding that comes after the damage is done. The fancifully promoted myth of Islamic terrorism has provided a cover for the invasion and occupation of several sovereign countries expressly for the purposes of expanding this corrupt global monetary policy. The retaliation of the citizenry in those invaded countries is then used to support the myth of terrorism and continue the process. The combined death toll of these invasions and retaliations has sent untold millions of people straight to hell.

In order to break the cycle of violence it is necessary for us to consider the premise that has kept us living in fear. If you will consider the instances of violence committed against western nations that are carried out solely by Islamic fundamentalists for the express purpose of demonstrating their hatred toward our culture you will find that Islamic terrorism does not exist to a degree that it should be considered a threat to our way of life. As Christians if we approach the Islamic culture with a prejudice colored by the lens of the myth of Islamic terrorism we will find ourselves unable to create meaningful relationships that can lead to Gospel transformation (that's because we can't share Jesus with dead Muslims).

The true threat of Islam is that the more we fear it, the more that fear creates a chasm between us as human beings. As Christians desiring to love people and share the good news of Christ, we must not approach the Muslim culture as if it is to be feared, but to instead place all of our fear upon the Lord and approach Muslims simply as people, people who need Jesus Christ just like everyone else. Loving Muslims in this way not only removes a barrier to sharing our faith, but it also removes the motivation being used to cause us to support an evil monetary and warfare system that is the base of power for those promoting a Satanic one world government.

Check out this link for some good reading on this subject, or if you agree, join my facebook group.

More about two realities:

OK first things first, since we have to deal in scripture let me address that. As for an explicit teaching I can show a few things that I think support my theory but mostly only implicitly. I think this is acceptable however, because if we are to require explicit teaching for every doctrine then we may have to ditch the Trinity along with my two realities theory.

So I guess my question is, if I can show that scripture implicitly supports my theory and that my theory is not explicitly negated in scripture, if it aids in my ability to reach and love the lost, then shouldn't I feel free to adopt and even promote this position? I'm not asking this question as a challenge, but really as just a question.

So for some inferences on the two realities consider Genesis. When Adam and Eve sinned God banished them from the Garden of Eden, out of His Holy Presence. "He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Gen 3:24" Now I believe that the purpose of Creation was to reveal the Glory of Christ. So it was by God's will that Adam and Eve sinned, God created them in a reality where this was possible, and he knew and even foreknew that it would happen. When the sin happened God banished them from his presence and from the direction of His will (they knew good and evil for themselves Gen 3:22), this banishment was a severe separation hence the cherubim and flaming sword. So God banished them into a reality where they would be left to decide good and evil for themselves. God created this reality for the express purpose of destroying it (Romans 9), but not until His redemptive purposes were accomplished. So God created this reality where we are allowed to decide what is good and evil on our own, the purpose he created this reality for was to enable us to marvel in the Glory of Christ as he saves us from the planned destruction. Is he still not completely sovereign over this reality? If I blow up a balloon for the express purpose of popping it to bring joy to my son, am I not still sovereign over the balloon and the air in it even if I allow the molecules inside to go where they will?

Next consider salvation: Can a sinner come into the presence of God? Can a former sinner come into the presence of God? No. (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, easy ones!) It would not be just for God to allow this to happen because of who He is. So if I live in a reality in which I am a sinner that is destined for destruction and I come to faith in Christ, the only way I can come into the presence of God is if my faith in Christ makes me absolutely new from the beginning of time. What about my past? Well at the revealing of Christ is when it will be destroyed along with the rest of the reality that was prepared for destruction. My new past is that I was unconditionally elected from before time began (because there would be no other way that I could enter into God's presence). So the blood of Christ literally makes us a new creation, not a renovated creation, a new one. So with two realities I can uphold unconditional election, and man's free will at the same time. I can read Romans 9 and go right on to Romans 10 and not see any kind of inconsistency or confusion. I guess that makes me a Calvinian, or an Arminivist.

I put some other verses on my blog post that I really think could be used to infer support of my two realities theory. Any reference to a new birth, new heavens, new earth, old passing away, kingdoms coming to nothing, etc. One interesting one is in Daniel 2:36-45. Daniel is interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar dream. In it he sees a kingdom coming: "41 And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay.42 And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle." Prior to Christ the Holy Spirit was not sent to us. God interacted with his people directly where he needed and through the priests and prophets in order to separate himself from the sins of the people. After Christ the Holy Spirit is among us. So we have the Kingdom of God among each one of us. And we each as individuals are experiencing the reality of Adam's banishment, and through the new Adam, the reality of God's Kingdom, at the same time. One of these kingdoms is strong and one is brittle, just like the interpretation of the dream in Daniel.

Now, let's talk about the will of God. Who can resist God's will? Nobody right? If someone could then they could dethrone him or otherwise thwart his purposes. So the logical conclusion of this from our perspective is that reality IS the revealed will of God, because it wouldn't have happened if it weren't. However I think I've shown how it could be possible for God to will a reality for the purposes of destroying it, and then allow for individuals within that reality to be "given over to their lusts" (Rom 1:24), with out those sins being against the will of God (because his will is that they are going to be destroyed with the reality anyway).

Two wills or two realities, which one makes for a bigger God? My argument is that saying God has two wills, one of which is constantly frustrated by our inability to live up to it, puts God into the same constraint of space and time that we exist in. If we say there are two wills and one reality then we have to do mental gymnastics to say that God willed the evil but is not responsible or accountable for it. We'll even go so far as to say that the evil is good because it accomplished God's purpose, but we should be careful because "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Isaiah 5:20" Clearly there is good and there is evil, clearly we sin, and clearly it is not God causing us to sin (James 1:13). So something has to give here. Either God wills that I sin and James is wrong, or I am free to sin against the will of God and Paul is wrong (Romans 9:6-18 ). I'm not willing to accept either one of those solutions.

However, if we say there is one will and two realities then it all makes sense. How can something be real and be against the will of God? It can't, but God could will a reality where man could live for a time outside of his will. So I'm not going against Romans 9, everything in that reality was "endured with much patience" and "prepared for destruction", for the purpose making "known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory". I see two realities here, one prepared for destruction, one prepared for glory. We are saved from the one into the other. When we enter His Kingdom we are made new creations, not refurbished creations, new creations. Something that is new does not have a history, it is new. So how can I be new if I am old unless my history is changed due to a change of reality? That's what I am saying. I think my theory sees a bigger God with a single will, instead of a God constantly frustrated by our disobedience to one of His 2 wills. I think my theory also affirms scripture more literally than I did prior to this theory (understanding kingdoms, rebirth, new heavens, etc much more clearly), and I think it solves some apparent paradoxes in scripture (which for obvious reasons can't be paradoxes).

So how do we apply this to real life? Well the story of Joseph is a perfect example. To do the will of God in the reality of Adam's banishment so that people will be saved from the coming destruction. Christ not only made it possible but also taught us how to live in two realities, to be "in the world but not of the world" (which isn't scripture but is also inferred from places like John 11:17, 1 John 2:15-17 etc).

Predestination, free will, 6000, 14 billion, or all of the above?

I was reading about the theory that the large hadron collider may be sabotaging itself from the future, which is an interesting thing. Also this week I had a conversation with a guy who has a kind of deliverance/prayer ministry. This person prays with people about their past, and invites Jesus into the memories, he believes that since Jesus is Lord over time he not only can heal the memory but also can actually change the past. This is also an interesting thought. Lately I have also been struggling with what I believe in regards to the age of the universe and how to see the Bible as infallible while also not neglecting the realities of creation. Don't ask me why, but these questions have been troubling me.

It may seem unrelated but I'll try later to explain why its not. I've also always been struggling and praying for God to reveal to me more clearly the relationship between how the Bible clearly teaches that while God has predestined before time began those who would be saved, it is also clear that each person make a choice to repent and come to him in faith through the hearing of the Gospel (which is also an act of will on the part of those who bring the word). How can this obvious act of choice and free will also be an act of sovereign predestination? Clearly both principles are taught in scripture, scripture cannot be in conflict with itself, so the only logical conclusion is that both things are true, and I don't understand it, and I want to. Anyway this conflict is similar to the conflict I feel regarding the seeming paradox between the scriptural and scientific accounts of the age of the universe.

It is hard to read the Biblical creation account, the work done on Biblical Geneology, and not come to the conclusion that the earth and universe are not more than 6000-8000 years old. However, when confronted with God's creation I am presented with scientific evidence (laws of physics that God has also ordained) that the universe is upwards of 14 billion years old. It would seem that there is a great conflict here between the Biblical and scientific record. Why would God say one thing in scripture and present another in reality? He cannot be trying to deceive us, because He is God, so clearly I lack wisdom in how to understand this apparent paradox.

In my struggle with this I've been flip-flopping between being and old earth creationist, to a young earth creationist, to considering what is real and not about evolution, and really I've just been praying that God would give me wisdom, because I've not been able to hang onto a firm belief. I've really been double minded on this issue like the guy in James 1, and I'm praying and believing that God will reveal to me the wisdom to understand these questions. It's important to me for a couple of reasons: One, I don't want to be double minded and inconsistent on an issue of scripture, and two, because I want to know how to direct my family in our homeschooling especially when it comes to this subject. It seems you can go one of three ways with the material that is out there, old earth creationism, young earth creationism, and synchronistic evolution (ie God used evolution to create). What should I teach my children?

The story of the Large Hadron collider got me to thinking about time travel, and the nature of time. The guy with the deliverance ministry got me to thinking about the ramifications of Jesus actually being Lord over ALL, the ALPHA and OMEGA, the beginning and the end, and what that really meant in terms of forgiveness and healing. My struggle with reconciling predestination with free will helped me to accept (albeit without understanding) that Biblical contradictions do not exist and that if two opposing ideas are presented as truth in scripture then somehow they both must be true, and this idea then lead me to apply this way of thinking to the paradox presented in the age of the universe. The answer suddenly hit me that the universe is both 14 billion years old and 6000 years old at the same time.

Some ideas floating around in quantum physics and string theory are that there are multiple or parallel universes all happening simultaneously. Take in to consideration the ramifications of this statement: Romans 1:24 "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves," It says that "God gave them up", this was an action taken upon people by the creator of the universe who, when He spoke, all that we know was created. Something big happened here. How can God maintain His perfect will while people are simultaneously living in direct opposition to it? I'm proposing that when "God gave them up" it created an alternate reality such as what is described in string theory. A reality that is no less real than the reality which is in God's will, but at the same time in direct opposition to God's will. For God to be able to allow for his creation to rebel against His will He would need to create a reality in which His will was not, however He would still have to remain ultimately sovereign over that reality.

To me this explains A LOT! This means that faith does more than move mountains. It actually causes you to exist in a new reality where even history is and always has been according to the will of God. So after our rebellion in Eden God created a schism in time. In one fork of that schism there exists a universe where the reality of God being absent is present, in that reality the lusts of man are what define truth (Because God has given us up in our lusts) and as of now the truth is that the universe is 14 billion years old. And in the other fork of the schism the universe is 6000 years old, God is the sole standard for truth, and people find their joy living within His will. The forks of the schism don't diverge from one another, but by God's grace they overlap, so that both are clearly evident, giving the people lost in the Godless schism an opportunity to make the transition to the "Kingdom of God" which is the domain of reality in which God has established His will. It is a matter of faith which determines which reality you exist in. Both are real, both are true, we can experience the consequences of each one, however one reality is going to last for all of eternity, and one reality will "pass away" (read Rev 21:1)

Think about this, when you repent, God says he remembers your sin no more, puts them as far as the east is from the west, etc. How can God do this? Because our sin occurred outside his will, when we repent we move inside His will. What is outside the will of God is not even in the same universe as what is inside his will! When you are saved you clearly make a choice to live in the reality inside of God's will. In that reality you were always saved, however, in the reality outside of God's will you were always damned. So see how it can be both? One thing happens in one reality, one happens in the other, they both happen to you, both are real and both are true.

When God "gave us up" to our lust, when he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden, it was not just a change in Geography and Relationship, it was a change in REALITY. We went from living in a reality that was within the will of God to living in a reality that was outside the will of God. Each one as real as the other, but the reality outside the will of God only being perpetuated in existence by the Grace of God (or by the Word of His power, Hebrews 1:3), for the purpose of saving those who He loved that still exist in that reality (John 3:16). At some point the reality outside the will of God will pass away only leaving the reality that is within God's will.

Here are some quick verses to think about along these lines:

1 Cor 13:9, For we know in part and we prophesy in part,10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (The reality outside of Gods will will pass away, and we will be left only with the perfect)

2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (Moving from one reality to the other)

Rev 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (I'm saying that the old heaven and earth are passing away while the new heaven and earth are appearing, and they overlap in a time of Grace)

Mathew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (possibly talking about how consequences from the sinful reality rippling through to the redeemed reality, such as a marriage to an unbeliever, a child born out of wedlock).

Daniel 2:44 And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, (Kingdoms being rebellious realities that are in opposition to Gods will, God's will being all that will last)

Mathew 3:2 Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Right now we can repent and have the ability to move in to God's will, this will not always be the case, the kingdom of heaven will not always be accessible or knowable by those living outside the will of God).

John 18:36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. (Hmm, the king of the universe is saying that he is not in his kingdom? This really leans toward a dual reality in my mind.)

Romans 14:23b ...For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (it is by faith we live in God's kingdom, and it is by will that we live in opposition to His, these are the 2 realities.)

[UPDATE]I was sent this article by John Piper (who I am a great fan of) about the "two wills of God".


Just reading through the Piper article (and I've read this line of thinking of the two wills before) and still it sits wrong with me. God has one will but allows things that are against his will to come to pass? The reason it sounds like double talk is because it is. The Bible clearly teaches that God's will is never frustrated. So we are left with a problem. That there is evil in the world that some how we must not attribute to God, while maintaining that it was not against his will that it happened. That's because we are obsessed with trying to discover what is "true" and what is "false", when it is possible that we should also be seeking what is "sin" and what is "righteousness". And in doing so we may find that there are cases where 2 mutually exclusive facts are in fact "true" however one is sin and one is not.

We are faced with paradoxes of free will vs sovereignty, 6000 vs 14 billion, is God a watchmaker or is he totally sovereign, could it be all of the above? The only way to reconcile these things is if we are currently experiencing more than one reality (ie the two wills of God). I don't think this violates scripture at all, in fact I believe it affirms scripture all the more, taking many of the verses we take as metaphorical and making them very literal (for instance, "new heavens and new earth", "this age is coming to nothing", "being born again", "behold I make all things new", etc). If there are (at least) two realities, then stuff starts making sense for me.

In one reality man is given into his own will, this happened at the fall of man in Genesis. This new reality HAD to happen because "God's will is never frustrated", so it would be impossible for man to have fallen and then continue to live in a reality where God will is not frustrated. Impossible unless it was God's will for there to be a time and place where we were allowed to live in opposition to God's will, a reality that God willed to be directed by man's will. Everything about the reality of man's will is sin. God is still sovereign over it because he created it, allowed for it, and in the end he will destroy it. However, during his time of grace (being allowed to live while in opposition to his will), he reveals Christ to us. While he allows man to live in opposition to his will, He still obviously intercedes where he sees fit in what we would call "miracles" and "providence". Simultaneously there is the reality that is the will of God. It will last for eternity, and it's most commonly referred to as "the Kingdom of Heaven". There are no miracles in the kingdom of Heaven, or you could as easily say that there are ONLY miracles in the kingdom of Heaven, miracles being defined as the physical manifestation of God's will.

Since God is who He is, it would be unfathomable to consider that a sinner could enter into his glory. Not even a former sinner, because any sin (even past sin) against an infinitely righteous being would be worthy of infinite punishment in order for God to be called just. Hence our desperate need for the work of Christ, in that he entered into the reality of man's will for the purpose of creating a way for sinful men to enter into the reality of God's will. When we claim the blood of Christ we are "born again" into the new reality. Since no sinner can ever live in the presence of God the history of God's reality is that we never sinned, we were elect from before time began, and God alone is the author of our salvation, so now, by the blood of Christ (who, don't forget is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end) we are made a new creation, literally, new from the beginning of time. While the physical consequences of our sin may continue after our rebirth (for instance damage to the body from abuse of drugs or alcohol), at death, or upon the return of Christ, we will diverge from the reality of man's will and we will be left only with what God wills for our bodies, our lives and this earth to be.

For those that reject Christ there cannot be any evil attributed to God. He allowed them to live in a reality where they were free to live by their own will. This in and of it self is an act of Grace that is beyond comprehension, a travesty of Justice that demands the work of the Cross in order to be reconciled. The fact that people rejected God is on them, no blame can be placed upon God because his Kingdom was evident, even to those living by their own will instead of by faith. They chose to stay in the reality where man's will determined truth. They were, as scripture teaches, created from the beginning of time for destruction, just as the elect were created from the beginning of time for God's Glory. Why? Because it would be an equally outrageous travesty of justice to allow a sinner into God's Glory, as it would be to allow a saint to be destroyed in hell. The logical conclusion of a reality where man's will is the ultimate standard for truth is death, because even though God gave us over to our own lusts (rom 1:24) he did not give our lusts power over death. So from the sinners perspective, the choice is theirs now to decide whether or not they are elect from the beginning of time, or similarly damned. But from God's perspective, and because of Christ, he only sees in what reality we exist in now, and when the two realities diverge, either by death or by Christ's return, then our course is set (and will have always been set) for all of eternity. This gives a new meaning to the phrase "once saved always saved", meaning you were always saved, from the beginning of time, not just from the beginning of repentance.

I like this idea of two realities. I'll leave it, if I can see in scripture where it cannot be true, but I think this idea neatly affirms scripture (using scripture as the standard), while also explaining the apparent paradoxes we are so often confronted with. It also helps to explain election to me, and makes it clear that while sin and evil are never God's will, it is by God's will that they are allowed to happen so that man can be saved. So we can very clearly see that no evil comes from God, but instead, even the evil that does come, comes because of God's goodness and because of His love for us (the alternative being that he could have just wiped us out instead of allowing us to live in sin for any amount of time at all).

German, Google, and Jesus

German praises, Google translator, and Jesus:

Jesus is my joy,
My heart's comfort, the source of it's beat.
He sustains and keeps me,
He is my life force,
My eye's pleasure and light,
He's the treasure of my soul and gladness;
So I will not let Jesus from my heart and face.
It is well for me that I have Jesus,
oh, how strong I hold to him.
He gave me my heart,when I had fallen.
Now I will never relent to keep by his side.
It was Jesus who first loved me,
and He who gave me all that I am,
oh if not for Jesus,
I would not be but a dead and broken heart.

Health Insurance

Here's my question, does your auto insurance cover oil changes? No? Do you know why? Because there is a 100% chance that you will get an oil change, there is no way to insure against it.

Insurance by it's nature is a transference of risk from you to another party. That party accepts payment of a premium calculated based on the likelihood of the incident being insured against actually taking place and the cost and frequency of the incident. If the likelihood of the incident is 100% then the premium would just cost the amount of the incident times the frequency of the incident over the time period being covered by the policy (plus overhead to operate the insurance company).

Most of us think that our insurance plans should cover everything, office visits, prescriptions, etc. well this is stupid. What you are doing in actuality is simply paying an insurance company to pay your doctor bill. just pay it yourself? Weird idea I know. Real insurance would only cover those events with a statistical likelihood of occurrence of less than one, all other expenses would come out of your pocket and be negotiated directly between you and your provider.

When you involve a 3rd party payor, you have paid to extricate yourself from the process of negotiating your healthcare costs. When you do this you have basically given the healthcare and insurance industries the permission to spend your money how THEY see fit. So prices get disjointed from reality, and it naturally creates a kind of "ponzi scheme" where as long as more people are paying in than are taking out then the system continues to work. Add onto this government manipulation of healthcare prices and procedures via the printing of fiat currency to pay for programs such as medicare and medicade (this causes price increases simply due to the effects of inflation), and government regulations such as those regarding emergency room treatment, and you have the perfect storm for an out of control fake economy and you and I the consumer get caught in the middle with no power no control it. And that's the idea, because then we turn to congress to fix the problem. More stupidity on our part.

The insidious thing is that the way the law currently exists just ENCOURAGES this to happen. Why? Because "they" want single payer healthcare. The same "they" that gave us the IRS. In order for our consumer based economy to work as many people as possible have to waste thier lives away toiling in some beurocracy so that they can earn fake money to purchase cheap junk made by slaves in third world countries. Naturally, as people who wish to be seen as moral, we would resist such an idea, but along comes our favorite government programs (most of which are only necessary because government intervention has priced the average consumer out of the market for whatever the government program is providing), the fear of going to jail for not giving the government YOUR money (the illegal and unconstitutional IRS), and the fear of getting sick and not being able to pay for it, add all this together and whammo, they've got you convinced to commit a excruciatingly long and drawn out form of suicide called the "American Dream".

The best thing to do about all this is to WAKE UP!