CHAPTER THREE
THE LOGIC OF IT ALL
I will do all my pleasure: … I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it. (Isaiah 46:10”‘11)
I. Divine Purpose
Granted the existence and reality of God, let us consider the following extremely relevant question: What would an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent being, knowing, having, and being capable of anything and everything, possibly want? The only possible thing that such a being would want would be an entity, perfectly complementary to Him, that was His of its own choice, and not out of necessity.
II. THE NECESSITY FOR A SECONDARY WILL
Obviously, if there existed only one will (God’s) in the universe, there would be no possible way for such a divine purpose to be realized, as all actions would necessarily be in response to that divine will. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to the attainment of such a divine purpose that there exist in addition to divine will a secondary, opposing will.
III. FREE WILL
It should be equally apparent that, in order for such a complementary entity to choose to belong to God, it must have an independent, free will.
IV. FURTHER STEPS NECESSARY FOR THE ATTAINMENT OF DIVINE PURPOSE
A. Such a being with a free will, in order to practically choose to belong to God, must exist in and be subject to the process of time. A choice made outside of and apart from the process of time would be a one”‘shot thing (pro or con) and would be as much a matter of chance as of choice.
B. Such a being must not only embody a free will, but must also be capable of embodying both the divine will and the opposing will, with the free will located between the two.
C. But God is eternal, necessitating that the part of said being capable of apprehending divine will be of a like eternal nature, necessitating that both the other parts of such a being having the free will and capable of containing the secondary will be temporal. (The specifics of this will be elaborated in the next chapter.) A further and confirmatory reason for the temporality of the part capable of containing the secondary will is, again, the fact that should a being make the wrong choice it would be of eternal consequence if that part of its being capable of containing the secondary will was also eternal. Once again, this would cause matters to be subject as much to chance as choice.
D. It should be somewhat apparent by now that for divine purpose to be achieved on other than a one”‘shot chance situation, such a temporal being must first choose the secondary will and then by a series of many choices choose the divine will.
E. Yet if such a being chooses the secondary will first, how can it then possibly choose the divine will? Only by God partaking of the temporal nature of such a being by the process of incarnation.
F. There remains but one further step necessary: that of the attainment of E. above being made available to said being. After E. then, God would have to retain the accomplishment of such a temporal incarnation yet make it available to said being in the form necessary for it to be able to choose it, i.e., the same as the eternal part of that being. It should be obvious by now whom the being with a free will that we have been talking about is.
V. CORRELATIONS TO SECTIONS I. ”‘ IV.
For reasons that will be elaborated on in chapter 7, it was also necessary for God to communicate His intentions concerning man to man. All the books of the world’s religions are claimed by their adherents to be divinely inspired. Besides the fact of the many intrinsic contradictions of each of these versions with all the others, do you really think that there is a need on God’s part to inspire more than one of these books? No. Only one of them is inspired by God, and by now it should be obvious which one we are talking about. (We shall see later who inspired the others and why.) Bearing this in mind, let us now see how precise is the correlation of this book to what, until now, have been the deductions of purely logical reasoning.
A. DIVINE PURPOSE (I.)
… Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine. (Job 41:11)
But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee…. 0 Jehovah our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee a house for they name cometh of thy hand, and is all thine own. (I Chron. 29:14, 16)
… Yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it. (Isa. 46:11)
… the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a people for his own possessions … (Titus 2:13”‘14)
And he (Jesus) said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. (Matt. 22:37”‘38)
I (Christ) am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (Rev. 22:13)
Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth was. (Prov. 8:22”‘23)
(God) Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; (Heb 1:2 King James Version).
Whereby, when ye read, ye can receive my understanding in the mystery of Christ; (Eph. 3:4)
making known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which lie purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ …(Eph. 1:9”‘10).
Even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to his saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: (Col. 1:26”‘27).
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Eph 5:32 KJV)
And to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things: to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places may be known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: (Eph 3:9”‘11)
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it. (Eph. 5:25)
And he [God) put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. (Eph. 1:22”‘23)
That he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. (Eph. 5:27)
B. THE NECESSITY FOR A SECONDARY WILL (II.)
… your adversary the devil … (1 Pet. 5:8)
And the devil said unto him (Jesus), If thou therefore wilt worship me all shall be thine. (Luke 4:6”‘7 KJV)
How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning! ”¦For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds I will make myself like the Most High. (Isa. 14:12”‘14 KJV)
… the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, (2 Thess. 2:9).
And no marvel, for even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light. (2 Cor. 11:14)
It is Satan’s very nature to oppose God in every respect. But he is not merely interested in frustrating God’s purpose; he is also determined to exalt himself. In so doing, his originality is mainly exhibited in finding ways of counterfeiting the works of God. How very successful he has been will be exposed later.
C. FREE WILL (III.) (See Appendix I.)
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father”‘in”‘law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, unto Horeb. And the angel of Jehovah appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, here am 1. (Exod. 3:1”‘4)
Heisenburg called this the Principle of Uncertainty. In one sense, it is a robust principle of the everyday. We know that we cannot ask the world to be exact … Heisenburg’s principle says that no events, not even atomic events, can be determined with certainty, that is, with zero tolerance.29
It follows that at least at the microscopic level where everything starts, there is no way with certainty to determine the future. The devastating effect that this has on a mechanistic view of the world is quite clear. In fact, some have taken this to be the likely place to intrude man’s free will back into the physical world from which it was so summarily dismissed by classical determinism.30
I am, however, very far from wishing to deny that instinctive actions may lose their fixed and untaught character, and be replaced by others performed by the aid of the free will.31 (Statement by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man)
No longer could the future be related to the past in a one”‘to”‘one way: An uncertainty born of conscious choice had henceforth to be folded into any descriptive theory of the planet…. Out of the new force there sprang an uncertain relationship between universal purpose and conscious choice; there arose the peculiar, nonphysical realities of responsibility … 32
D. FURTHER STEPS NECESSARY FOR THE ATTAINMENT OF DIVINE PURPOSE (IV.)
The Incarnation of God:
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, (Gal. 4:4)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us … (John 1:1, 4)
After Christ: for in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, (Col. 2:8”‘9)
Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same … (Heb. 2:14)
The Availability of Christ (See Appendix II.):
”¦Or know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you? (2 Cor. 13:5)
… The last Adam [Christ] became a life”‘giving spirit. (1 Cor. 16:45)
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Cor. 3:17)
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord who is the Spirit. (I Cor. 3:18: A Compendium of different translations according to the original Greek)
That good thing which was committed unto thee guard through the Holy Spirit, which dwelleth in us. (2 Tim. 1:14)
Author’s Note:
A brief illustration of the futility of trying to comprehend (rather than apprehend) spiritual matters:
1. In the physical realm, an entity cannot be in more than one place at the same time. Yet, in the spiritual realm, Christ is present not only on the throne of God in the third heavens, but is also as available as the air, to come into your being. Also, there is the example of the Father in heaven with the Spirit in the air as a dove and the Son on the earth, all at the same time.
2. In the physical realm, two entities cannot occupy the same space at the time. Yet, in the spiritual realm, God and His people mutually abide in one another.