Text 2199, 338 rader
Skriven 2009-01-28 11:35:50 av Dick (8:8/2003)
Ärende: Mysteries of God
========================
From: Dick <rfraning@mchsi.com>

         A TRILOGY ON METAPHYSICS AND THE HUMAN SOUL
           (Dedicated to the Honor and the Glory of God)
            --------------------------------------------
             A SHORT TREATISE ON THE REALITY OF GOD
God is the ultimate reality. He has spun the universes into existence and has
created all other beings. As humans, we too had our beginning from God. Like
Plato and Socrates, I believe that we pre-existed in a spiritual realm prior to
being born into this world. Unfortunately the church fathers, with the
exceptions of Origen and Augustine, rejected this view as an overreaction to
the heresies of gnosticism and neoplatonism that threatened to subvert the
Gospel. How do I know of this pre-existence? I have very faint memories of a
spiritual existence before being born into this world. My children spoke of
this of this existence when they were small. I have heard of other 2-4 year old
children being able to talk of their own pre-existence in the spiritual realm
prior to their earthly birth, when carefully questioned about it. One couple I
know of had three boys who each spoke of having been with God and the angels
prior to birth without any prompting from their parents when they were small.
Evidently as people age and develop, these memories are overlaid with countless
earthly memories and are largely forgotten.
  One may ask why are we here and forced to leave that spiritual
realm. I believe that the answer lies in the fall of Lucifer from Heaven along
with a third of the angels. It is my own belief that human spirits were
originally intended to be part of Lucifer's cadre in the spiritual realm. Once
Lucifer fell, there was no further need for our existence in the spiritual
realm, since we had been created to serve Lucifer in carrying out his heavenly
responsibilities. Lucifer's disobedience led to our own eventual banishment
from Heaven, even though we were not involved in his revolt against God. God in
His infinite mercy has brought us to this world to perfect our redemption. He
is bound by His own spiritual laws in the eternal realm, but at the temporal
level, He can rewrite our destiny through His plan for our redemption. Had not
Adam and Eve disobeyed God, this plan would have been much simpler and
salvation would have been universal for all mankind. When that couple listened
to Lucifer rather than obey God, suddenly salvation became much more difficult.
Man had chosen sides and was no longer just an innocent bystander thus bringing
condemnation on all mankind who was to be born on earth from that time forward.
  Man himself had sinned against God and lost his opportunity for an
easier salvation. To put it in the vernacular, man really blew it. Now
man's disobedience had to dealt with in a manner satisfying God, fulfilling the
new parameters now required for our salvation and permit
our return to the spiritual realm (Heaven) after leaving this earthly sojourn.
Christ, the second person of the Godhead, came to earth in the form of a man to
die a sacrificial death for our redemption so that by believing in Him and on
His death, we can be redeemed and made new spiritual beings fit for His
kingdom. Through Christ, the Holy Spirit creates us anew and we are reshaped
into His image, no longer designed to follow after Lucifer and his entourage.
  Praise be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for their gift of
salvation through the Son's loving sacrifice of Himself on the cross, the
Father's willingness to send Him and the Spirit's perseverance in causing us to
believe.
  Some have a difficult time grasping the concept of the Trinity. The
Trinity is the three distinct, separate, yet simultaneously occurring dynamic
states in which God exists and through which He expresses Himself. It may be
easier to understand the Trinity by the functions they perform. The Father is
the Creator of His creation. The Son controls the interface relationship
between the Creator and His creation. The Holy Spirit permeates the creation
carrying out the will of the Father and the Son.
  Others may ask how does God create worlds and universes, i.e. this
temporal existence. I believe the new physics gives us an insight into God's
methods. The big bang which began our universe was caused by a large quantum
fluctuation. These fluctuations are believed by some cosmologists to be power
spikes in a tremendous quantum field of incredible intensity. Since there are
undoubtedly many of these power spikes, and at the top of each powerful enough
spike is a created universe, there are probably many overlapping sister
universes to our universe in existence at this very moment. They are separated
from each other only by the different quantum time value that each universe
possesses. Thus we can not see or sense them nor can they see or sense us. You
may ask how does God fit into the overall scheme of these things. I truly
believe that the energy that creates and drives this quantum field issues forth
from the mind of God even as He speaks the Word. The beauty of God and His
methods is that while we may seem far removed from where God is, He is only a
prayer away. He loves us and cares for us, who believe on His dear Son, and
longs that all mankind will come to a saving faith in His beloved Son; but God
wants our love freely given and not given through coercion. He gives us His
Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us into paths of righteousness for His
namesake. All that is required of us is simple faith in our living Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.
  I look forward to the day that I return to the spiritual realm from
which we have come and can worship, adore, praise and glorify Him forever. Our
Lord made a way back where there was no way, so that we may dwell with Him and
enjoy Him forever. Praise be to God that He has not left us nor forsaken us,
but through His death established His plan for our salvation when we come to
believe on His shed blood. Hallelujah, God is truly great and greatly to be
worshiped in spirit and truth.
In awe of the Living God
Richard E. Franing

                      AN INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS ONE
  I've decided to take a shot at this one, so you folks need to get
the
stake ready along with the rope, wood and matches because I'm about to reveal
my pet theory concerning the first chapter of Genesis. In second Peter 3:8, we
find the following in the RSV version: "But do not ignore this fact, beloved,
that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as
one day." This is a way of saying that God is the creator and ruler of time as
well as every thing else in this universe and beyond. So even a million or a
billion years can be as one day or one nanosecond to Him as He chooses it to
be, since He is beyond time. With that in mind, lets move into Genesis. In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I think that this represents
the start of our universe. The heavens representing space and the earth
representing matter.The Earth without form and void and the Spirit of God
hovered above the waters. The matter had not coalesced together sufficiently to
form large physical bodies in space, but had coalesced enough that internal
heat within the matter was driving off water vapor that may have condensed on
the surface of that matter. Then God said let there be light. This was
beginning of nuclear fusion in our universe, along with planet building. Where
the light hit these protoplanets, there was day and on the backside of these
bodies was night just as God had commanded. Obviously it took billions of our
years for our universe to reach this stage, but to God that is little more than
a blink of the eye.
  God called this time the first day. The morning and the evening
being whatever time that God wishes it to be or when He wishes it to be. I
think it highly unlikely He is saying an Earthday at this point because our
solar system had not been created yet, that did not occur until the fourth day.
On the second day God separated the waters into the seas and the sky. Evidently
certain planets in scattered solar systems had cooled enough for their
atmospheres to start clearing instead of one big shroud of clouds enveloping
these planets from their surfaces lions of years to occur. During this day God
formed the land surfaces upon these planets. Again in God's time there could
have been another blink of His spiritual eyes. Evening could be when He closes
His eyes and the morning when He opens them again. So ended the second day. (I
can see that you folks have erected the stake and gathered the firewood. You're
having a cookout! Right?). On the third day, God brought forth vegetation.
There have probably been many planets within our universe in times past and yet
today that have some forms of life upon them. This is God's universe, along
with any others, and He can do with them whatever He so desires. Who are we to
limit Him to only caring about what happens on our dinky little planet, as
important as it is to us? Don't get me wrong, God does care about us and this
Earth, but We are not His only responsibility. Again God blinks His eyes and
another day is over in His book, even though more millions of Earth type years
may have elapsed.
  On the fourth day God created our sun, the moon and obviously the
planets in our solar system. From this point on, I think that God is referring
to our planet when He speaks of the earth, although He is not yet talking in
Earthdays when He speaks. We tend to limit God into our way of thinking, not
realizing that He is far greater than we could ever imagine. God also created
the land and plants on our Earth in this time frame. This "day" must have been
several billion Earth years long. It is wonderful that God never gets tired
doing all this creating, because if He did He would probably get worn out just
trying to keep up with all the petitions I offer up to His throne, let alone
those that everyone else bring to Him in prayer.
  On the fifth day, God created the animals. Plants were already in
existence on the Earth, being part of his previous day's work. This time frame
probably lasted hundreds of millions of Earth years. As you can tell by now, I
think that God used an evolutionary process to bring this to past. Not a random
type of evolution, but a God inspired and God driven evolutionary process that
only He is capable of doing. Truly e have a great and awe inspiring God.
  On the sixth day, we arrive at the place where the rubber meets the
road so to speak. Did God create man? You bet He did. Did God use an
evolutionary process to create man from the higher mammal animals? You bet He
did. (GASP!) You say what about Adam? I think He came along later. This day
probably lasted several million years. God looked at all of this creation and
declared it good. Who are we to argue with God about something like that. If He
says it is good, then it must be good. Anyway God decided He needed a little
vacation after all that work of creating. I'll bet my bottom dollar that the
seventh day did not last even two Earth seconds, because God loves what He is
doing so much that He won't ever give it up and keeps on keeping on.   Getting
back to Adam, I believe that Adam was the first human with a spirit bearing
soul. God created him from the dust of the Earth and breathed life into Him
because God had created him for a special purpose. Adam was a perfect man. He
could not say that bad genes had caused him to sin. Likewise Eve whom God
created from Adam was perfect. These two were to be the first of mankind to
enter into this world with a God created spirit. All men existing before Adam
had a soul, but no spirit indwelling that soul. This leads me to think that the
fall of Lucifer from Heaven occurred sometime after the sixth day. This I have
reason to believe: that spirits of men are leftover remnants from the old order
that existed in Heaven before Lucifer launched his revolt against God. As
beings who did not take part in that revolt, but nevertheless of suspect
loyalty to God, we could not remain in Heaven in our old form. We have to be
transformed into new creatures before we are acceptable to God again. This is
the purpose of our earthly existence. God knew that Lucifer and a third of the
angels were going to revolt against him. He also had originally created us as
subangelic beings to assist Lucifer in carrying out his heavenly
responsibilities, before Lucifer got the big head and decided to try to take
over God's position. I wonder if that happened while God was on vacation during
the seventh day. It would be just like old Lucifer to try something
like that.
  Anyway, once God decided that we subangelic spiritual beings (see
Hebrews 2:7) could no longer dwell in His heavenly kingdom in our then
spiritual form and He began thinking of ways to change us. He could not do this
at the eternal level because He is constrained by His own eternal laws at that
level. He had to bring us to a temporal level to accomplish that. Since a
suitable vehicle (man) was already in place to accomplish this objective, God
decided to piggyback these spirits into men's souls. This is why our soul also
contains a God created spirit (see Hebrews 4:12). Enspiritment of the human
soul occurs in the first two months of pregnancy, but it is unlikely that this
happens in the first few weeks after conception.
  Adam was the first of these spirit souled men. Had he not disobeyed
God, he would have been permitted to eventually eat of the tree of life and
been transformed into an eternal creature, with rights to dwell with God
forever. Adam and Eve were a special test case. God knew that if they failed
the test, then all men from that point on would fail this test. They were cast
out of the Garden and forced to live among the other existing humans. From that
time on all human beings have had a spirit bearing soul. How long will this go
on? Probably until heaven is emptied of its condemned subangelic spirits or
until the church on Earth becomes so decadent that so few are getting saved and
transformed thru faith in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there
is no purpose in continuing the process. This why spirit bearing souls should
not be aborted and the Gospel must be preached with great fervor everywhere on
Earth. This is our one and only chance to be able to dwell with God forever. We
pass this way but once and each spirit bearing soul gets only one chance. There
is no reincarnation. We must not rob ourselves or future generations of this
sole opportunity for salvation. Once Adam failed, only the new Adam (Jesus
Christ) could salvage the situation for us. He is the Way, the Truth and the
Life. He who has Christ has eternal life and this life is in God's only
begotten Son.
  I have presented this theory, not as an absolute truth, but as an
attempt to bridge the difference between fact and faith. Many people choose to
ignore the physical facts around us or to twist them to agree with their
particular interpretation of God's Word. Likewise too many people ignore the
Scriptures in a vain attempt to arrive at the facts. God does not lie nor do
the facts lie, and ultimately they are saying the same thing. (So why are you
folks grabbing me, not the stake. Oh well, let the flames begin. (Arrrgh!!!)
Thoughtfully yours in Christ Jesus, Dick Franing

                   A SHORT TREATISE ON ORIGINAL SIN
  The Lord God took man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it
and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of
every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you
shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
  But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows
that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil."  .....she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave
some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they
knew that they were naked. .....
  Then the Lord God said, "Behold the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the
tree of life, and eat, and live forever"---therefore the Lord God sent him
forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he as taken. He
drove out the man: and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the
cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the
tree of life.
       (excerpts from the Book of Genesis, Chapters 2 and 3)
  How often has man pondered these words throughout the ensuing
centuries and speculated as to their exact meaning. Some say that it was an
actual fruit such as an apple, some look at it as being an abstract historical
event, some think of it as a crisis of the spirit that man experienced, while
others think that these verses represent a supernatural experience that Adam
and Eve had. Some people think that it represents some form or type of superior
knowledge. Still others think of it as a mythical story told to explain how sin
began. None of these concepts are comprehensive enough to adequately explain
the true nature of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
  I fear that I now know the meaning of these verses. The tree of
this
knowledge lies deep within the soul of man. It is what the Christian teacher
Watchman Nee refers to as "the latent power of the soul". So what is this
latent power that lies hidden deep within the inner recesses of man's soul? I
believe that it is a type of angelic power, which might be better thought of as
Adamic power.
  Man is a sub-angelic being who is endowed with a certain degree of
latent angelic capability. Man is not an angel, but man may be distantly
related to the angels in some manner. Under certain circumstances, the latent
angelic capability of a relatively few number of people can become momentarily
activated for short periods of time. Probably at least 99% of the human race
never experiences any of this activation and thus are totally oblivious to the
existence of the latent angelic capability within themselves.
  Activation of this capability primarily occurs during spiritual
dreams while asleep. The person begins a troubled dream while in a deep sleep,
then slips into a state of spiritual dreaming through which the person can
temporarily enter into the angelic mode. While in this temporary angelic mode,
the person is able to direct the course of future events, depending what the
subject of spiritual dream is. If the person exercises his angelic powers in
concert with the direction of the Holy Spirit of God, the results will be good
and beneficial. If the person exercises his angelic powers in a unilateral
manner, then the results will inevitably be evil. The person acting in a
unilateral way is trying to play God by usurping God's authority in total
disregard to God's will. This is the reason why Adam and Eve fell in the
garden. As a result, they were stripped of their innocence and left naked
before the Lord. It appears that the ability to be activated runs in certain
families. It may also be that this ability may skip generations within a
family, as well as individuals within an active generation. My father's mother
was an angelically active person, but my father never experienced activation as
I have.
  In honesty, I must admit that I have exercised this angelic power
both ways in the past, for the good of mankind when exercised in concert with
the Holy Spirit and to the detriment of man when I exercised it unilaterally.
This was largely done in ignorance before I
realized what the exact nature of this power was and how capricious this Adamic
power can be. It has a Jekyll and Hyde quality about it and must be exercised
with extreme caution and then only under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Adam
was warned about this danger, but he chose to disregard God's warning. When God
told Adam not to eat of that tree, He was telling him not to exercise his
angelic capability because it would cause him fail the test and all future
mankind with him. After man's fall in the Garden, this capability became
latent. Because Adam sinned, he was not permitted to eat of the tree of life.
The way of the tree of life would have to be personified in the Way, the Truth
and the Life in order for man to have that opportunity again to gain eternal
life and that life is in God's only begotten son, our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
  My experience with this phenomenon is that it begins in earnest
during the early teen years, reaches its peak about 30-35 years of age and then
slowly declines until it reaches a point of near cessation during one's lower
fifties. The time of greatest power during a person's early thirties is also
the time of greatest danger because it when the greatest extremes of good and
evil are possible. Momentary angelity can a potent stealth weapon if used
unwisely. Following one's spiritual instincts can indeed be dangerous, thus the
person must stay close to God and be clothed in His righteousness. The old
testament and book of Acts states that the young men shall see visions and the
old men shall dream dreams. In those days, an old man could be any man past the
age of thirty because life expectancy was not very long in those days. I have
experienced these visions and dreams in the past. The visions are basically
learning experiences while the dreams are basically doing experiences.
  Adam lost any chance to gain access to the tree of life in the
garden when he disobeyed God, thereby losing the opportunity for eternal life
with God in heaven. As children of Adam, we also share that lost opportunity,
but God in his great mercy has created another way for us to obtain eternal
life with Him. God sent his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die and shed his
blood to free us from the first Adam's curse and our own sin. Through faith in
the Lord Jesus we are born anew into God's family and receive the promise of
the Father that we will stand faultless before the throne at the day of
judgement. We are no longer children of disobedience, but we are now children
of God fit for His kingdom. All that is required of us is simple faith in the
Lord Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross, and to open our hearts and
minds to the working of the Holy Spirit of God.
  Man tries his own methods of attempting to tap into this latent
angelic capability that some are vaguely aware of within themselves. Some
gnostics, certain psychics, many new agers, kundalini yogis, certain mediums
and supernaturalists of various kinds are trying in their own way to regain the
power that Adam and Eve possessed, abused and subsequently lost during the
fall. Little do they realize that they are playing with spiritual dynamite. A
few people may try to regain this Adamic power with an intent of somehow
attaining angelic status which they think might give them access to the tree of
life. God has blocked this route with his cherubim and flaming sword. They
would be far better off to seek the Lord Jesus Christ and His righteousness as
the path to eternal life. Having experienced this Adamic power first hand, I am
well acquainted with good and evil even as Adam was. I thank God that Christ is
my refuge, that in Him I find forgiveness through faith in His shed blood and
that He sets my feet on the path of righteousness for His name's sake. Truly He
is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Praise be to God for His everlasting grace,
love and mercy.
Under the Blood of Jesus,
Richard E. Franing

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