Manifest
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The following is an excerpt from my other book, The Gospel According to Judas. It’s about the Apocalypse:
At times, you know, it comes and goes — to feel that the darkness approacheth, a doom of all dooms. But I know that it is not the feeling of its imminence we sense, but how terrible in magnitude it will be when it does come. Apocalypse. Revelation. No, the time is not now. Perhaps in 30,000 years? 40? 50? When Christ says, “I come quickly,” one can think of it merely as a test of faith. For as regards things like time, I have heard that He watched the whole 13.8 billion year spectacle that is our universe, all of it. He watches grass grow. Literally. Time to him is far outside our own frame of reference.
And with “I come quickly” comes the topic, then, of scriptural infallibility. There are people who think that the Bible is literally true, and on top of that, that there are NO errors in it at all. Well, from the point of view of someone like me, who is in the state of mind like unto those who did write those texts, let me chime in with my two cents. The Lord knows that errors happen, and the Bible is no exception. If anything is meant to be, the way that scripture ends up is meant to be, as are the misinterpretations. Is it as God intended? That brings up the question of what “meant to be” means.
In one sense, everything that ever happens is meant to be. However, it doesn’t mean you didn’t of your own free will choose it, nor that you couldn’t have done things differently. If either of those things were false, “meant to be” would have no meaning to you. Because you choose it, because you could have done things differently, destiny unfolded. That which was meant to be was brought about by your choosing. Having no choice renders meaningless any action you perform. For destiny is not the same as fate. Fate is like strapped into the seat, while destiny is like driving. Choice is key: destiny comes from our own will, as it mixes with all the forces of the world that cross our path. Fate is not anything meant to be: it just is, and you just would have to accept it.
Now, it was meant to be that things God didn’t say ended up in His mouth in the Bible. It was meant to be that we think with each generation that this will be the generation where the Apocalypse will be brought about, and Christ will return. There are no accidents, now, remember? It was all meant to be. All that matters is, knowing what you think you know, what will you do? God knows what you will choose, and how all those forces work out to, and things become meant to be when they happen because it is all caught in the Purpose that pervades all things. You can be with that Purpose or against it, but you cannot escape it.
So no, He’s not coming back tomorrow, but you should act like He were. Live every day like it were your last, right? Isn’t that the aspiration? That people think that this is the generation that will see the Apocalypse may serve a purpose within the Purpose, and thus it may be “meant to be” in some small way. But anyone with the ability to see further, to widen one’s horizons larger: we should know better than thinking things like a document pieced together and edited by human beings is exactly what God word-for-word said to us. Yes, the Apocalypse does loom. But it’s the size of the shadow, not its proximity.
A Mystery So Obvious
There are mysteries, there are secrets, from the beginning of time to the last day there have been, and are, and will be. Many of these are relatively trivial when unmasked, simple to comprehend once the tarp is lifted from them, to wonder why they seemed so strange as to what their answer could be, what was beneath when they had been covered over. I’ve seen some secrets when the Archangel took me to see from the angelic heights some of what happens in this world, and why—and I think I cannot share them with you, not now: because of those reasons why there are secrets in the world, why there are mysteries. Simply put, things are kept from us because we are not ready for them, and they are revealed when we are. There is much chaos in the world—for the world was born from chaos—but the pervading order, that you may split a block of wood and the Lord is there, it gives true meaning to what is meant to be, when the mystery unfolds, and wide-eyed does one say, “Glory be to God.”
The world has been much a world at war. Yes, it is true that we always dream of world peace, in the outside world, but many an evangelist will tell you that there is and always has been a war for our souls, of two kingdoms, light and dark, who battle for over us night and day; one side who can never hope to win, but that battles out of spite, out of hate. Now I tell you of a third war, which extends from the highest Heaven to the most remote corners of the earth. I can tell you of it because I have seen it end, but lo, it goes on, still, in places other than where I am; for it is a war in Eternity, the next world. Do you not know that the realm of ideas enters into the waking world every time an invention is made, or a word written? And Eternity by dreams and visions makes itself known in the world of solidities. Did you not know the unseen world was before the world that is seen, for in the beginning, there was before anything, the Logos; and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. And something we do not think about: that before the action, there was a Plan.
If there is a God who can prevent earthquakes and floods and fires and tornadoes and hurricanes, why do they happen? If there is a God who can prevent all harm, why is harm still experienced by us? I recall some skeptic who said that if Jesus Christ were the real deal, why is it that he did not do more in his time on earth, why not eradicate all disease? feed all the hungry in perpetuity? The Son of God, right? Wasn’t that what he was advertised to be? To them I say, look, friend: the Jews still don’t think he was the messiah because he was not what they expected the messiah to be. Throw your expectations out the window, because we have no say what a being greater than us is supposed to do, or be. And if this is how the Plan goes down, we should pay attention to such things as someone who says he is the Son of God and comes back from the dead to prove it.
The Plan runs into a wall, though, the idea of it: into what is called the problem of pain. If we excise the part of the problem of pain that is the problem of evil (that which is caused by the malicious intent of those with free will to do so), we basically come to the question of why there are such things as natural disasters… Or do we? In the Book of Job, Satan is let loose on poor Job, and one of the things that happen to him: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.” [Job 1:18-19] So it is that natural disasters could be the fault of the Devil. The faithful one will concur, applied to catastrophe: “Some say it’s just a part of it / We’ve got to fulfill the Book” [Bob Marley]. But could it be so simple? Everything good has its source in God, and everything bad goes back to its origins in the Devil? Do you see that even in knowing why, it is still a secret, still a mystery?
Why would it take so long for such a fundamental thing to be revealed? I show it to you and you can scarcely believe it. We have had convoluted, agonized, pretzel logic explanations through the generations about why bad things happen in a world that was supposed to be a creation of absolute good. And here it is now, the card turned over and open faced. Do you understand, yet? Things are revealed when they can be, and it is the fact that the War in Heaven has ended somewhere that is the reason why I can shine a light on this dark place in the mind. And why it could not have been revealed before the event of our victory is an interesting story—let us say for now was that things had not settled enough in the crisis of the Godhead. Not enough had been decided, even if, like a street magician’s trick, the card he would choose was waiting for him. He being Lucifer. (That was one of the things that had not solidified yet—the Lucifer myth of the greatest of God’s angels, fallen by his pride.)
Much has happened as of late, and I have been a witness to fantastic things. Some of my visions I do not reveal, for different reasons, perhaps, than why they were hid before, the ones I reveal now. Discretion being the better part of valor. But the radical dualism that I propose: this seems to be the endpoint of a natural progression. In the beginning there being only God, and the serpent in the garden only a serpent. Then in Job, where (the) Satan is a minor functionary in God’s court, one of His employees, as it were, doing his job. And then, where we last left off, biblically, where the Devil is the prince of demons and the cause of the Lord’s death on the cross, and whom the Lord said fell from Heaven like lightning: the father of lies, and a murderer at the first: God was still the only true elemental, the only one from whom great calamities came from, and somewhere there the origin of pain. The next step is inevitable, and final.
Just like we used to think that the Milky Way was the whole of the universe, we must also adjust the scale of God and His angels. Perhaps it is to go hand in hand, the scope of the universe with the scope of God. And I would be the prophet to tell of this. What one normally thinks of the power of God, like fire raining from the sky? that would be God’s twiddling of His little pinky, if that. He was responsible for the Big Bang, right? We don’t see a greater class of power than what is in the Bible because, well, the earth would simply not survive anything of God’s true omnipotence. Things we call of “biblical” proportions, well… these would be the full power of an archangel, of which Lucifer was one. And if this is the case, giving of all the archangels true free will, Lucifer on his own—he could be of enough power to invent pain, be the cause of all calamities, throughout all of time! This is that final step, into radical dualism.
Does it seem a bit convenient to you? I must say, that was the way I felt about it when the signs revealed this mystery to me. It sounded like one of those easy answers we have come to grow wary of. But why is that? Perhaps because it literally solves every problem of there being a God who is all good and the problem of pain, in one trim idea? It makes sense of why the world and life are so unfair—it’s all the Devil’s fault? Yet this is how it is when so great a mystery is uncloaked. The greater the revelation, that much more obvious it will be when it is shown. And I tell you it is the truth. Are there greater secrets to share? It may be so, one so much greater that it has not even been put into words. But I think it is not for me to tell you answers to questions that are not asked. You need not believe me to be saved, but maybe you should perk an ear when such things as I say are spoken. Peace be with you, and Walt Disney is God!
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
Conspiracy Theory
Can it be true? Is the Devil responsible for every wrong thing that ever was, from the barest papercut to the most seismic earthquake, the hugest hurricane? For pain, itself? What does it mean, the Plan of God, and is it the same as the Grand Design? Why would the War in Heaven echo within these questions, and through time and creation? Do you think you can know the answer? For it requires a shifting of scale, as to what you thought God was capable of, and then of what you thought angels, the power of these were, who were said to be a little greater than human beings. What you probably have in mind as to what God is able to do, this is more in line with the ability of the archangels, if we say that Lucifer was once the first of them (and Michael the second).
It took a little getting used to, that last thought. I had read Tolkien’s “Ainulidalë” where Melkor, the rebel Ainur, and the greatest, shaped creation—and I thought, certainly it could not have been like that for the real world, for certainly angels and their ilk did not possess such power. And yes, the evil that was will, the harm man does to man, that could have come from the original rebel; but earthquakes? hurricanes? Certainly not having source in the Fall. Or so I thought. What it took to shift my paradigm was to hear that God had not created pain. I half overheard it, the Lord said it to me as if in a dream. And then it all made sense to me. The aesthetics of pain, pure pain: it is discordance itself. Verily, good things have been made of even this, but that result is the work of the Lord, and not of the pain. Discordance itself, permeating all creation: this was the scale of the greatest of angels. Quite the idea.
But… it was really like that?
What is this conspiracy? Why did we never know this? The Book of Job gives us clues. You know the story, Satan makes a wager with God when God gushes about His faithful servant Job. And so Satan is given permission basically to let loose on poor Job, to test that faith. So at the end of his trials, when Job is about to lose it, God appears. About the reason(s) for his travails, He says:
4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
[Job 38:4-7]
He goes on in that vein for a bit. Not once does he point a finger and say, “Satan did it!” Nope. He takes “blame” for the whole shebang. And to anyone who asks why He didn’t tell us this before, this news about pain, above—I would simply point you to that speech. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be let in on this tidbit of a revelation.
Also, there’s a look at Satan’s capabilities in the Book of Job:
Job 1:16 “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them”
Job 1:18-19 “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead”
[NRSV]
We were talking about natural disasters, here. So are all natural disasters directly the work of evil forces? Maybe not, but natural disasters are due to how the world works, and how the world works is in part due to the strivings of evil against the good. I found that the creation of pain was the start of the War in Heaven. The evil, it is told, spread through a third of all angels. We’re talking billions. The War had a good deal in making the quality of fate, as the angels contended on what was, and is, and is to be—for creation itself. And it is yours to decide which side you are on, those who fight for truth, or those who make their own desire the greatest of their ideals.
So, if you ever come to a place were the walls seem to shut around you, when there seems before you only a dead end, know that these are from the twisting of the innards of the cosmos, and indeed there you may be able yourself to fight in the War in Heaven, which has ended, is ending, and will end—as herald to a new age. If you can make a way out of a structure sealed in shadow, you give the angel fighting on the side of faith and logic a means to bring the demon down. The conspiracy of the darkness is one of despair, for this is how it propagates. Like a virus, to the detriment of its carrier. Find the truth, indeed, the faith and logic: it is with us, not our foe; we are of the light. The Grand Design inhales the darkness and breathes out the dawn, and we are one with the Plan if we do likewise, to carry the candle flame into corners light forgot.
And the grandest conspiracy of all? That which makes all other conspiracies pale in comparison? Of course, it’s right before your face. Pretty much every day. What is the way to all you ever could hope to want? It is simple, and no one ever told you: it is love, and only love: be not but love, do not but love. That’s it. As the soothsayers 4 said, “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you meant to be. It’s easy.” It is what’s behind the whole ball of wax, why God took the blame for all the wrong that’s ever happened, when it’s never His fault for anything (never!). If God is all good, but let His greatest creation have the greatest angle of leeway, and it was from that created one that ultimately, all evil and pain come… it almost seems too easy. But that’s God for you.
“I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” [Luke 10:24 NRSV] It is many a time such a way with mysteries, that once unraveled they show a very simple underlying structure. If this is a great saying, what I write here, remember that it was not the Lord who said, “God is love.” But the Lord, indeed, said that they who were to follow him would do greater things than he had done. Yea, verily. He gives us even this. There is no question, love is the answer. The secret is love. Tell everyone.
If you like what’s written here, check out my book, Memoirs from the War in Heaven.
God in the Age of Iron
The Black Iron Prison was the hidden architecture of what was called the Age of Iron. Which was what basically the Old Testament covered: the wrath of God, who was a jealous God. The Age of Gold is what Jesus Christ came to bring about: the God of mercy, the God who is love. One might well wonder, just exactly how is it that the first God is the same God as the second? There was one theory a friend of mine handed me, that when God came down to Earth and lived life as a man, He at that point understood the human condition, and sort of mellowed out. But aren’t we told that God does not change? How is it that the God who is love rained down fire and brimstone and obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah?
One idea that might lead us somewhere is the Book of Job. This is where God and Satan (the Satan who at that time seemed to be a minor functionary in His court) made a wager at the expense of Job. Satan, in stages, completely wrecks the man: kills all his children, breaks his bank, and even covers him in painful sores. At the end, when Job is at the end of his rope—complaining how it’s not fair—God shows up and asks him, where were you when I laid down the foundations of the world? Basically, oh, do you really know so much as to criticise Me? What one is careful to mark, however, was that at no time does He bring up Satan as the culprit of his pain. God takes all the credit for all that happens to Job, good and bad—telling him, I know better, I know why.
What if there are other “judgments of God” that aren’t actually Him, in just the same way? It’s an interesting take. He would have known about them all, but He had delegated certain authority to other entities, who were not “all love”, that did all the bad things we associate with that unforgiving Age of Iron… But we can investigate another avenue, which is to follow what Jesus Christ said about divorce. That Moses gave divorce to the people because of the hardness of their hearts. Down that simple road of thought, the trip leads to the stop that it was us that changed, not God. Something happened to change us, to change the whole equation of the world: and it was Jesus Christ. Not just what we observed on Earth, but a hidden act, within the sign of Jonah.
Harshness, in the Age of Iron, was the only way things got done. We were all in the Prison, which, indeed, was not the work of God. The Black Iron Prison was what the world in its entirety was contained within. We had to play by Prison rules. And if we were going to be like that, God was going to be hard on us—not the least reason of which was because we deserved it. Then, something amazing happened: Jesus who is Christ came here, and He broke the vicious feedback loop, and breached the Iron. And the breach was like the tiny mustard seed, which took and is taking 2000 years to blossom. For a thousand years is as a day to God, and the Christ was two days in the earth. The breach finally bubbled up to the top in 1974 in the resignation of Richard Nixon—a king deposed by tradesmen, without a drop of blood being shed. Hallelujah.
But now, as we are still left with much of the trappings of darkness, let us be ready to understand the world in a greater vision than was apportioned Job: the Iron was not of God. You can believe in a God who is all love, and that includes both mercy and justice. Many things He took credit for, and blame, many misunderstandings he patiently suffered until the time came as to remove from us the judging of God by man. Whether we be ready or not for the Age of Gold to come, it comes. In certain places it has come already, but not nearly enough. And some still work as if the Iron has not broken, but we know better. Light has already peeked in. Hearken: the Beginning is near.