3diii) Resulting Conversations on the Trinity
At 11:46 AM 8/28/2007, you wrote:
Michael,
I read your page on the trinity more carefully, and I have a couple of
questions. The first thing that jumps out at me is what appears to be the
implication that the universe is not real but merely exists in the thoughts of
God. Thus, you and I do not have any real material existence but are merely a
thought. The second point I noticed is that nothing exists outside of the form
of God; this sounds like a blur of pantheism and panentheism except that the
universe is viewed within God rather than God within the universe. Third, if we
exist only as God’s thoughts, how do we account for sin? If God thinks us into
existence and we have no existence outside His form, how can there be any
reality outside His form and outside His thoughts? Thus, every evil thought I
have is really God’s thinking that I have evil thoughts; I cannot be
accountable because I am one of God’s thoughts, and I am not a being separate
from God. Somehow this seems akin to something that reminds me of Gnosticism,
in which things aren’t really real but mere appearances.
Can you clarify these issues for me?
Best wishes,
Jim
Hi Jim,
I'd be thrilled to clarify each of your issues:
1) The universe is not real but
merely exists in the thoughts of God.
What is "reality? Is something that is Eternal more real
than anything which is not? I suggest that God alone is eternal and
therefore God is more "real" than anything else. As such, there
must be levels of reality. For Example, the chair we are sitting on is
more real than the image of that chair in our mind. If we stop thinking
of that chair, then it goes away, but the chair we are sitting on
remains. I am as real as anything in my universe; but if God stops
thinking of me I go away. If God continues thinking of me then I would
have "Everlasting Life".
2) Nothing exists outside of the
form of God. How can there be any reality outside His form and outside His
thoughts?
How can anything exist outside the First Cause? If the
universe is the First Cause of everything else, then what can be outside of
it? In fact, not even "Nothingness" can exist outside of this
universe. As we look for Causes and Effects, there must be a First
Cause, which itself has no Cause. Likewise, there must be something that
has nothing outside itself. As we cope with the concept of Eternal, we
know there must be an eternal First Cause even though we cannot fathom
eternity. I accept that the First Cause must have at least two more
dimensions than we do.
Conclusion is that everything is indeed inside the First Cause. If a
personal God is that First Cause, then indeed everything is in the mind of
God. In conclusion: We are "real" as long as God is thinking of
us, but we exist only in His thoughts. This is why God knows everything
about us and why we can talk to God by merely thinking. Because God has
at least five dimensions, He can visualize His thoughts in 4D (angels) and in
3D (humans) and in 2D as we do. God can literally visualize solid objects
(3D) in His mind.
3) If we exist only as
God’s thoughts, how do we account for sin?
"Good" is the set of all the free-will choices we can
make, which will enhance our existence. "Evil" is the set of
all the free-will choices we can make which will degrade our existence.
"Sin" is the result of doing Evil. The wages of Sin is eventual
death because you are doing things that hurt you. Knowledge of Good and
Evil is required in order to avoid doing Evil. God understands Good and
Evil, but His knowledge of Evil does not make Him evil. Angelic beings
are literally watching us (ie this Great Controversy being played out on Earth)
to learn about Good and Evil without having to do Evil. As long as no one
does Evil, Sin will not arise again.
4) I cannot be accountable because
I am one of God’s thoughts, and I am not a being separate from God.
We cannot avoid the consequences of Sin, ie we all die
eventually. We all have Free Will, hence we can choose to do Good or
Evil, but that requires us to understand the difference and often we
don't. What is really happening on the Earth is the following:
God created angelic beings to
live forever, but they have free-will and thus they must learn about Good and
Evil. They must learn what works and what doesn't just as any naive'
child. The alternative is for God to create more animals and to program them to
do only what He knows will work. So, God has observed that naturally
angelic children will eventually do things that are self-destructive (ie Evil)
just because they don't know any better - just like any children. One
thing leads to another and eventually the angels will self-destruct and God can
start over. Sin must eventually arise in any world of free-will beings,
because, even though they may be "perfect" they are going to try
things naively until something hurts them, ie until Sin arises. There is
no need for them to have a propensity to do Evil.
God must find a way for His
angelic beings to learn about evil without doing evil. Hence, He creates
our universe (Genesis 1) a little lower than the angelic universe (Heb
2:7). We are as on a 3D movie screen in a 4D angelic auditorium.
They can watch us, while we cannot see them (1Cor 4:9). We are all in the
Mind of God, but our entire universe is more temporary than theirs. Our
Universe was created after the angelic universe and our universe will disappear
leaving only their pre-existing angelic universe (2Peter 3: 7, 10-11).
Clearly we are players involved in making a training video for all angelic
beings to watch as a pre-requisite for entering a Heaven where Everlasting Life
is assure and Sin will never arise again.
We have been created to play
out every facet of decisions to the point where those watching will completely
understand what works and what doesn't - ie Good and Evil. Until this
Book of Life is fully written, the audience will not fully comprehend what they
need to know to avoid making bad choices. When it is written, then the
angelic audience will still have their free will, but then they will understand
Good and Evil thoroughly and will thus avoid doing anything that would degrade
their existence. They will live happily ever after in that perfect
Kingdom of heaven.
What about us? Surely when
we die, God could let us stay dead and the angelic beings would not be worse
off for it. However, God has said that He loves us enough that even
though we die, yet He can give us Everlasting Life, too. Before He does
this, we must also see the training video and get on a par with the rest of the
angelic beings. Hence, until the video is completed (Rev 6:9-11) we all
must wait until the Last Day. Then on that Last Day, we are recreated as
angelic beings (1 Cor 15: 50-53) and raised to Meet Him in the Clouds (1 Thes
4: 15-17). Clearly, it makes no sense in general for people to be raised
to watch the training video until it is finished. Then once we are
raised, we are to "Live and reign with Christ for 1000 years" (Rev
20:6) and "Don't you know, we will judge the world and the angels"
(1Cor 6:2). This all means that we must be quarantined as angelic beings,
with Christ while we review the training video for as long as it may
take. Then as in Rev 21:1-3, our quarantined "spaceship" the
New Jerusalem, will come down from the sky and land on the New Earth (4D) in
that pre-existing angelic universe, which was fashioned to be our home in that
place we call the "Kingdom of Heaven".
RSVP
Mike
28 August 2007
At 07:10 PM 8/28/2007, you wrote:
Thank you for your
explanations. I will try to phrase my questions more carefully.
Best wishes,
Jim
Hello again, Jim,
I appreciate your concerns.
I've certainly been exactly there myself and I can see where others throughout
history have come to various conclusions like pantheism and monism and that
there is no reality outside God.
My approach is to be totally logical. I feel that whatever the truth is,
it must explain both the observable facts and the Biblical texts. As I
see it the answers lie in the interpretations of these two sources of
information.
That said, consider the following:
I must conclude that everything exists only in the mind of the Creator and is
therefore a figment of God's imagination. For starters, where else could
it exist? Could it exist outside of God? What force acting at a
distance without a connection could explain how God is able to sustain the
entire universe? Inside God's mind, we could attribute that control to
His thoughts just as we can observe ourselves doing. If this controlling
"force" is then part of the universe, then the sum of this force
(thought energy) and the material universe is what I'm saying is inside the
mind of God. I suggest that indeed the energy we detect throughout this
universe is in fact the thoughts of the Creator. Regarding God’s form, I say that God must
have a finite form with more than three dimensions. God’s form cannot be limited to this 3D
universe if indeed there exists higher dimensional angelic beings. Rather, this universe is one of God’s
visualizations. The Angelic universe
would be another. Whatever form God
actually has, none of His thought creatures could ever get outside of it to
look back on it and measure it. It must
be finite in order to have a form at all.
Yet, there can be nothing including nothingness, outside of it.
If indeed we are figments of God's imagination, ie visualizations of His
thoughts, then are we still "Real"? We are certainly as real as
everything else around us. However, we are not as real as the eternal
God, Who is sustaining us. We are tangible and physical. We have
substance. These qualities make us "Real". We can think,
and we can imagine situations and put ourselves into them. All these
characteristics together make us "Personal". We are created in
the image of our Creator, Who is personal. The conclusion is that there
are levels of reality, based on the thought which creates them. You
are real and you can imagine a situation and put yourself into it. Yet
that image of yourself in your thoughts only exists as long as you sustain
it. In this sense you are more real than the image of yourself in your
thoughts.
Noticing these conclusions, some cultures have come to believe that nothing is
Real, but the Creator. This is another way of saying that the Creator
alone is not dependent on anything else to sustain Itself. How is
that possible? What supernatural characteristics must the Creator have in
order to be self-sustaining? The answer is that the First Cause/Creator
must be eternal. This is more than an extraordinary
characteristic. It is a supernatural characteristic akin to an additional
dimension, beyond all those physical dimensions associated with the reality of
our universe. It is logical to conclude that the Creator has more dimensions
than anything He creates by visualizing in His Mind. This conclusion is
observable. The way to understand this is to draw an analogy between the
audience and the movie they are watching. Those living inside the movie
screen would have a sense of reality and completeness as they move around in
that 2D universe. However, they cannot perceive what the audience would
call "depth". Hence, they may hypothesize that they are being watched
by supernatural beings with more than 2 dimensions, but they can never get
outside of their world to verify that.
With regard to the idea that everything is God: If I think of an apple,
that apple is inside my mind and thus a part of me. However, that apple
is not me. I am me whether or not I think of that apple, in the same
sense that the Creator is independent of what He is creating. Everything
is not God, even though everything is in the mind of God.
Pantheism
is an identification of the universe with God. With this view there is a
blurring of the distinction between the Creator and the creation as well as an
attack upon the personality and nature of God. Pantheism tends to equate God
with the process of the universe and states that the universe is God and God is
the universe. This is not true because God is the creator of the universe
(Isaiah 44:24) and therefore separate from it.
Panentheism
(Greek words: pan=all, en=in and Theos=God; "God-in-all") is the view
that God is immanent within all Creation or that God is the animating force
behind the universe. Unlike pantheism, panentheism does not mean that the
universe is all God or that God contains the universe inside himself. In
panentheism, God maintains a transcendent character, and is viewed as both the
creator and the original source of universal morality. ...
With regard to Free Will: It is easy to see that we might doubt we have
any free will at all, given that we are merely figments of God's
imagination. Is it possible for us to make an independent action without
God controlling it? Could God create a situation and some governing
rules, and then put it in motion, so He can watch the outcomes? Could God
introduce active chemistry into His thought worlds of stagnant, inanimate
objects? It would be quite a step up
towards a far more "interesting" world, I'd suggest. Now He has
things like grass growing on His rocks, and some rocks radioactively decaying
into other stuff. Then there would be a whole new value to
"Time". Things would be different over time due to the separation
of events.
Now all this creation is the result of God thinking, so next He introduces
living Creatures who themselves can think. These life forms make
independent decisions, but they essentially follow a tight script of
limits. The plot thickens. Eventually God experiments with
independent Imagination, ie Creative Thought.
He creates angelic beings, who can make independent decisions. Even though He can override their decisions,
He elects not to. Is God capable of
doing this? I’d say, Yes. What God is doing, is creating children, who
have free will and who must then learn about the decisions they can make.
With regard to Sin:
My approach is to define Sin as the result of doing things that will
hurt you. “Good” is the set of all those
decisions a free willed being can make which will enhance their existence. “Evil” is the set of all those decisions a
free willed being can make which will degrade their existence. Sin is the result of doing Evil. You can know what is evil, but sin does not
arise until you do evil. God knows evil,
because God knows what works and what doesn’t.
God’s position on Sin is that He wants to avoid it. Why?
Because it degrades existence.
Like any good parent, God wants His children to learn about what works
and what doesn’t, without getting hurt in the process. Then, they can make free
will choices without ever choosing to do anything that will degrade their
existence; and thus live happily ever after in the
At 06:40 AM 9/1/2007, Peter wrote:
Mike:
It dawns upon me this morning, why did God have such a relationship with
Satan? It seems rather entertaining:
He comes in with the other sons of God ( wonder who they are ), has a nice
chat, God lets him do what we as
the recipients of this "game" of people chess as it were, would
consider “play with us” (Job in this case).
Our (his ) life our / his children's/servants lives, are destroyed
by storms, murdered by marauding bands of thieves,
all to prove some point and discussion that we are not aware of. And, I guess this is the prerogative of
Deity and supernatural spirits to do this?
Its almost odd, that this will be the future of all of Gods people at the end
of time - to be killed during the time of trouble which is coming.
What will be said about us then?
What will our attitudes about God be then?
Pete
RESPONSE:
Pete,
Only God can work miracles.
Recall that Jesus told His apostles that He didn't work the miracles, but the
Father did - and the Father would work even greater miracles for them, as He
later did.
Therefore, it is clear that Satan doesn't work miracles either.
Instead God works the miracles for Satan.
Imagine the Big Picture again, to see how all this fits:
God has set up this Great Controversy on Earth as the pre-requisite training
video that all His created free-will beings must watch in order to be prepared
to live for everafter in the Kingdom of Heaven. While they are watching,
they have questions. Satan, too has questions as depicted in the Book of
Job. God must demonstrate that He is not simply manipulating the events,
but that they are unfolding because it is the nature of good and evil.
They already know God can do whatever He wants, so why bother with a video if
that's all this is about. No, this Great Controversy is about
understanding Good and Evil and thus when questions arise, God must deal with
them without violating the first principle. Therefore, in the Book
of Job and later throughout the Bible we see God intervening on the request of
Satan or people in such a way as to retain the free-will status of
mankind. When all is done and the inhabitants of Heaven all understand
Good (ie what works) and Evil (ie what doesn't work), then they will exercise
their free will routinely without ever choosing to do evil and thus sin will
never arise again.
The Book of Job demonstrates this for us and it shows us that God is addressing
all the questions that the dark side comes up with as well. Got to be.
When Bad things happen, God has allowed them or He has intervened to control
the situation; which then stimulates responses, but does not control free-will
decisions (eg with Paul being knocked off his horse and then asking God what he
should do instead; or with the Pharaoh and the hardening of his heart.)
Satan cannot work miracles, but he and his angelic beings can influence people
via their thoughts. This is the science behind the Occult. As God
said, if you invite them into your mind you're on your own and beware of the
consequences. Then if you kick them out and don't fill your mind with
godly thoughts, they will return and be even worse. This is telling us
that we should never turn our minds over to hypnotic beings, ie those people or
angels, who can (under hypnosis) tell us what to think. If someone can
control your thoughts then they can control your sense of reality. This
is what we see happening with paranormal UFO sightings. There is nothing
physically there yet the person truly believes they are seeing it while you,
standing next to them don't. Angelic beings - once a person makes contact
(develops a channel to a familiar spirit) - can put thoughts into that person's
head, which the person believes are their own. Angels, being higher
order dimensional beings can put 3D images in a persons mind, which are only
manifested as visions in front of them, ie apparitions.
There's a lot more on this subject of UFOs in my book-on-line, www.nasamike.com/main/book
RSVP
Mike
3 September 2007
For more on this and a response to any questions, please email any comments to nasamike