05 November 2021
Over and over and over again: This world does not matter.
Perhaps it will help if I explain the terminology here: "this world" refers to fallen human space and aggregate behavior, along with all the expectations, hopes and dreams of fallen mortal humans. The created natural world is a separate thing. When the New Testament refers to "this world," it's meant to indicate the system of human mortality and moral blindness in rejection of revelation.
The created natural world belongs to our Father. It did not fall in the Garden; we did. The natural world didn't change; it is still "very good" as He made it. It is the same as it was in the Garden of Eden. The reason it's not a paradise right now is because it's unguided and generally unmanageable to fallen humans. Adam and Eve were commissioned to manage the Garden by the revelation of God. They were eternal beings in a mortal place, keeping it the way God said He liked it. They did this by the guidance of the Holy Spirit living in their souls.
Satan was previously assigned as God's Covering Cherub. Whatever else you make of that, he was God's link to Creation. All the glory and wisdom and revelation flowed through Satan both directions. We can't possibly comprehend any of this; we are using parables to indicate something we cannot grasp. At some point, Satan decided that some of that glory was rightly his. This was a violation of his mission. He was demoted to a lesser position, one that is not pleasant for him at all. Instead of glory, he handles temptation and wrath. This situation was in place before Satan shows up in the Bible.
Satan was already in his demoted position when he came and tempted Adam and Eve to use their human capabilities without reference to divine revelation. He suggested that they trust their intellects and so forth, to decide for themselves what is morally good and right. It's a simulacrum of his own mistake. He asked them to make an idol of their human abilities outside of revelation. They fell from their own lofty position, same as Satan. They were demoted. Their choice doomed all humanity that would sprout from their genes. They entered a fallen mortal condition. They surrendered to Satan's guidance against the guidance of the Holy Spirit. With this choice, the Holy Spirit departed from them. Since Creation itself is feudal, their choice made Satan the master of the human race. Satan is "the god of this world" in the sense that this world is the limited sphere of aggregate human awareness without divine revelation, standing in a mortal fallen state.
So, Satan does not rule nature. He has to get specific permission to use any natural forces. He already has permission to use any human force for anything that suits him. The whole human race in its fallen state is his domain. But his job is primarily to tempt and punish those whom the Lord elects to redeem from their fallen condition. That's the real work for the Devil.
The Children of Heaven are those whom the Lord has decided wholly on His own initiative to bring back into His divine household, with a promise to restore their eternal condition and put them back in the Garden. They still have to walk through a mortal existence; the covenant requires that they endure the hostility of Satan within his domain while belonging to God's household.
Thus, it's not this world that matters. It's a big lie, shadows and mists. It's not reality as God made it. Nothing about the human mortal perception under the constraints of time and space matters. Everything mankind does outside of the boundaries of the Covenant, outside the divine revelation of God, will be removed at the Return of Christ. It's all futility and vanity. Everything that fallen mankind does to change the natural world will be wiped away, and it's original condition restored like it was in the Garden.
Nothing accomplished in this world will make it into Eternity. What God will remember is our personal devotion to Him in how we dealt with our mortal lives, and how we handled the things He created for us to use for His glory. It's not the stuff, but the obedient use of the stuff that matters. That includes what we do with our bodies, which are now just another part of the natural world. Among all humans, we are the only ones truly capable of connecting with Creation as God intended, from the position above Creation we had in the Garden. Our bodies aren't elevated, but our hearts are. Our spirits awaken and we are no longer just smart animals. We don't have the full power Adam and Eve used before the Fall, but we do have some portion of it, some foretaste of the Eternal condition we will eventually inherit. Miracles are actually built into Creation, but fallen souls cannot connect to that power, not fully.
You and I can connect to the natural world because we move our conscious awareness into our hearts, instead of trusting in our fallen minds. The heart is wired to communicate directly with the Created natural world. Fallen minds could do that in theory, but without the Holy Spirit, they would never have the full divine perception that goes with redemption. So they could be able to tap into some limited portion of the miraculous, as it were, but it comes off as magic -- powers of the Dark Side. They can never understand its true purpose. Yes, that's a part of how God left things outside of Eden. That's why, for example, Pharaoh's magicians could do weird things with staves and snakes to match in a limited way what Moses did when he tapped into the miraculous by birthright -- spiritual birthright. Yes, Moses was "born-again".
It used to be a pretty tough path to arrive at that "born-again" condition. Jesus talked about the tight, climbing trail and the narrow gate into the Kingdom of Heaven. Prior to the Cross, you had to wade through the Law Code to discover the character of God, and then become aware of your divine election. You weren't going to get there without prior election. But after the Cross, you can receive the awareness of your election before wading through the Law. You still need the Law, but you get to wade through it as one who already understands the character of God instinctively. The mastery is built in, if you will just use it.
That is, you can if you bother to move your conscious awareness into your heart instead of leaving it in your head. See, there remains this really big problem that a lot of spiritually born people have yet to lay claim to their divine heritage. I'm talking about just that part of the heritage that God placed in this fallen world for us. It's the Covenant, and that means the boundaries symbolized by the Law Code. Not that the Law Code is the boundary, but it indicates something about the boundary. Jesus is the Law Code personified; His teaching is the boundary. But you have to understand Him as He came: a Hebrew guy teaching a Hebrew mystical religion of the heart. The Bible is a mystical Hebrew book.
That "mysticism" part refers to a faculty outside the fallen human mind. The Bible calls it "faith," but over the past two millennia our civilization has burdened that word with a lot of false baggage that we must reject. Faith is not in your head; it's in your heart. Your heart is the seat of faith, the seat of commitment and trust in God as your feudal Lord and Father. Your covenant boundaries are His personal moral character as expressed in your convictions. The business of "walking by faith" means acting according to your convictions as you best understand them at any given time and place.
So your convictions should tell you that this world doesn't matter. The stuff people build outside of the Covenant means nothing. You'll need to interact with that stuff, because that's how we shine the Father's glory into a fallen world. But it's never the stuff itself; it's a matter of the glory that shines in how we go about things. Anyone who tells you that society, politics, economics, and laws matter is a lying fool serving Satan. How you interact does matter, but not the thing itself. The outcomes should hold no interest for us. What matters is how people have been brought under conviction and whether they begin turning back to the revelation of God.
That includes you and your convictions. The only thing you can really change in this world such that it matters is your response to revelation. If you don't commit yourself to moving back inside the covenant boundaries, then nothing you do will matter. You cannot bless anyone with God's divine provision unless you do so from within the boundaries of the Covenant. The material life you build for your family means nothing; by itself, it's all just a curse. When you demonstrate the power of faith in this fallen world, then you have given your family the very best you could ever give them. It's how you handle all that material stuff that tells the story of your faith.
That doesn't mean you'll never engage society, politics, law or the economy. It means you never take those things seriously. If you can point to it and give it a name, it doesn't matter. That includes all the human activity on behalf of religion. Religion is rightly a mere manifestation of your faith; none of the stuff involved actually matters. If it's possible to fake it without the revelation of the Holy Spirit, then whatever it touches or produces can't be that important. Only what's in the hearts of people matters.
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