Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (9) The Story Is Enough

Regarding the Bible, I have got 49 years of studying theology, and 49 years of reflecting on apparent "reality" and the Bible. Of the two, I'd say that reflecting on the Bible and reality were the more important and fruitful undertakings. Reality comes in three forms: 1) what the Bible says is going on, 2) the reality we experience, and 3) the ontic spiritual reality.

My impression is that the spiritual ontic reality is a field of consciousness that wants to be known so that it can exist in "form" via its knowers. In the reality we experience, we are agents of this form's manifestation. Trying to pick this apart would drive us mad, as it has (reportedly) some people. Does anything really exist? Are both God and ourselves imagination? You can write books endlessly on the questions that arise; philosophies--some conflicting--complete with proof texts, and not get one inch closer to what anything is really about.

The Consciousness and Its mission are not really that complex. We are to live in a consciousness of faith, of expectation of the Consciousness being what It says It is. We are to rely on Its reliability, to be in the state that It is in, to trust and obey. All of this is to be a state of mind, an attitude that no matter might come up, the Field and the Consciousness are right, because they were first, and the Ineffable was before them.

This doesn't sound very romantic, but it is. It is a love story, a romance: we're a bride. Our husband is our maker, and he has paid EVERYTHING to win us. Even to the simplifying of all the complexities of our formation and ascension via the qualities and interactions of forces in the ontic reality, into a simple, simple story about people getting through this life and accomplishing what the Consciousness wants and its mission fulfilled. Do I believe in a "fer real" historical human Jesus Christ--Eashoa Msheekha in his language? Yes, I do. But I do not think a historical HUMAN Christ is necessary. It is the Jesus Christ QUALITY the bible story is ABOUT that matters. That spiritual-reality QUALITY created us, died for us, justified us, provides the spiritual breath's enlivening of us. WE ONLY HAVE TO BELIEVE THE STORY ABOUT THE MILTA AND IT MISSION, ITS MAN. The reality is behind Him. We believe the story, and the GOD-QUALITY accounts it as believing Him, which is where we went wrong in the first place. This puts us back where we should have been when we became humans, even a little bit better: we graduate from here as the man.

It matters that we believe, for that is the scientific adjustment of our spirit to being like the Consciousness. It is our faith that His Word is true that saves us. We do not want to pass into that world without matching its quality. That Quality is with us all the time, monitoring us 24/7 from within, influencing us, guiding us to the Life It desires for us. I'd think that for you girls/women it would be easy to accept this marriage, for that is what it really is: Someone loved you enough to die for you.

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (8) Nothing Is More Convincing Than The Guy Himself: The Eighth Sign

I have to thank you for this exercise I've elected. "You never learn as much as when you're teaching," and I've been learning a lot.

I once heard a scientist say something to the effect that if he was sitting at a cafe, and the person at the next table suddenly shot up and disappeared into the sky, he would not think that he had just seen a miracle, but that he had just observed a hitherto unknown physical law in action. That is kind of where I am in my faith in God. I SEE things, I know that they are real, but I do not know exactly what they are. There could be a number of explanations, but no explanation could negate what I have seen: e.g., the person DID shoot up into the sky. One of my favorite explanations is that everything is the imagination of "God," the Consciousness of the Ineffable Being, for He is imagining us.

The Milta (Miltha) being the Ineffable's becoming the manifest form of Itself is another associated favorite, the Milta being that imagination.

The rather flat story in the Scripture being just exactly what it says is another possibility, but the language needs a lot more and better translation and a lot of explanation.

Any one of these can account for the "law" that I have seen.

The law, the "Kingdom (powers) of God," has to do with attitudes, and the scriptures seem to be illustrating, explaining that. There is a tension between the symbolic value of the stories and the ontic realities, the forces they illustrate. My point is that the ontic is ontic, i.e., "fer real." And while believing the stories may be enough, there is no reason the forces of the Kingdom could not become the real characters of their story to DO what they said they were going to do. God is big enough to do that. Whether He did or not, I don't know - I wasn't there, but I believe the Milta DID imagine Itself Jesus Christ and literally DID what He said He was going to do through Christ, which was to fulfill God's promises. Those Old Testament promises are the "glad tidings" we are to believe, and our belief seems to be what activates the law.

(Ah, I'm finally getting around to what I wanted to talk about.) I mentioned my friend seminary Janet, who got caught up emotionally to heaven, and was healed of tuberculosis. She entered the pattern of the law's operation, which is to believe God and to humble oneself in submission to God. Taken to the extreme, God responds by killing, as it were, the life or spirit of whatever is wrong with that person. Something had caused my left arm to be stunted. The life of that fault died, and my arm grew out t its proper length. Janet was afflicted with the life of a germ. She ascended to the presence of god, and the life of that germ died, and she was healed. A boy was in epileptic convulsions, his father asked Jesus if He could help. The spirit giving life to epilepsy was cast out--died--and the boy was healed. My back was severely injured in Honolulu. I recovered enough to get back to Walnut, where I asked Vern and Dio to pray for my back. I remember Vern saying, "Lord, let my hands be Your hands." He laid them on my back, and my back was healed.

I am a big fan of T. L. Osborn. He was a failed missionary, and he wanted desperately to find out how to succeed at leading people to Christ. He wanted so desperately that, at six o'clock one morning, Jesus walked into his bedroom. In the air. T. L. saw the concrete person, standing in transparent glory. Do I believe it? Yes, I do, because a) I have known T. L. Osborn. Pretty much the only message he preached for seventy years was: the Jesus then is the same Jesus now. And b) if Jesus could transcendently speak tome physically, why couldn't He physically respond to Osborn's ATTITUDE? The life of whatever failing was in T. L. must have died, because there has never been another missionary like him. Having SEEN Jesus alive, Tommy acted with purpose, driven by what he KNEW, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever: our resurrected Savior. He is the manifestation of the Law that the Consciousness of the Ineffable is: every thing is set right as the Ineffable in form.

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (7) On Time

I am not sure how to figure this one; it's probably the last one I'll write to you for awhile. No, I'll probably report T. L. Osborn's experience to you in a short while. But this experience I had was weird. In 1988, 1989 I lived in Hacienda Heights, at the very northern edge, right by the train tracks. I was working at the McDonnell Douglas plant at Lakewood Blvd. and Conant Street in Long Beach. It was 25 miles from my home to the factory, and I think we had just changed from starting work at 7 AM to starting at 6 AM.

All I remember is that I woke up and saw that the minute hand was at 40 after the hour. Not a biggie. The clock was set ten minutes fast, so I had half an hour to get to work. Not that I was going to make it. Give me at least five minutes to brush my teeth, get dressed, and to the car. Twenty-five minutes to work, and I'll still be late getting from the parking lot to a clock across the street to punch in. I was going to be tardy.

Not a biggie. I hadn't been tardy before, and it took at least three tardies before they'd fire you. First you'd get a warning, then you'd get a counselling, then they'd fire you. Interestingly, this was the only violation for which the union could NOT get you back on the job. If you were fired for being tardy, you were out PERMANENTLY. I know guys who had stabbed their supervisor and had still been returned to work, but tardy? Good bye.

Anyway, I still had twenty-five miles to drive, and the freeway was traveling slow. Bumper-to-bumper, I was seeing thirty-five on my speedometer. I know it picked up sometimes, but I had miles to drive on surface streets, too. So I plugged along. Hmm. I still had fifteen minutes on my car's clock, which I kept accurate. I hit the surface streets. Still had five minutes. I found a parking space waaay out there, but still had a minute. I ran to Lakewood, through the parking lot across the street, and punched in just in time.

The thing is, I just couldn't do that in half an hour. I didn't have times or spaces where I could speed up to catch up with where I should be. I was late, the traffic was slow, time just did not allow for the distance, and yet I was on time. It was just super weird to me (but I appreciated it!).

Danny

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (6) Mine Didn't Go With Hers

While I studied at Melodyland, I became friends with Janet, a neighboring student in the apartment complex. I think she was a bit younger, a very nice Pentecostal Jewish girl. We had some classes together, and she would sometimes invite me to share lunch with her at Belle Isle restaurant down the street. Then word came from the school that she had contracted tuberculosis, and we all had to get tested. I came up positive. To kill the germ in my body, I had to take a prescribed medicine once every day for half a year. Janet, of course, could not attend classes while sick.

Janet loved God like no one I had even known. She stopped me one afternoon just outside the laundry, which was just across the walkway from her apartment. "Dan," she gasped. "I've got to tell you. I was worshipping in my private devotions, and I was so caught up in them, in the Lord, that I seemed to be in heaven itself. I mean He was right before me, and I was exalting Him, praising and worshiping Him. I felt I wasn't on the earth anymore, and then I heard, 'You are healed.' I felt it. I went to my doctor for another chest x-ray, and the hole in my lung is filling in. I am healed. I don't have tuberculosis anymore!"

But I did. And I had to take my tuberculosis medicine every day for the rest of that half-year.

Danny

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (5) I WATCHED It, Jim WATCHED it

During junior high and high school, I went with Mom to Saint Matthews' Sunday morning services. It wasn't unusual for me to wear a long-sleeved shirt, suit, and tie. I mainly went to please Mom, get a donut after the service, and to have some social life. Third Avenue didn't provide  much social grouping (and by the way, the United Methodist Church is considered to be an apostate church nowadays). The long sleeves at church always bugged me: tight on one side, loose on the other. I figured that the cheap shirts were poorly made.

After I became a Christian in the 1970s, I attended Melodyland Christian Centers' services. Being a Pentecostal sort of church, they hosted an annual Charismatic clinic during the summer. One night, a healing evangelist named Charles Hunter was speaking, and he had everyone in the audience, about two thousand people, stretch out their arms and/or legs to compare them. My left arm was about 5/8 of an inch or more shorter than my right arm. Dang; it wasn't the shirts that were poorly made; it was me.

Anyway, Charles asked us to hold still, and he asked Jesus to make our limbs as long as they were supposed to be. I held very still, and I watched as my left fingertips grew out to match my right fingertips. I WATCHED them grow out. I didn't move, did not adjust; it was just me frozen, and out they grew. And my arms are STILL the same length, so I wasn't hypnotized or anything like that.

Jim? Jim Spillman was an associate pastor at Melodyland. He left to start his own church, Omega Fellowship, in another city. I visited and supported that church for awhile. We talked about some of the things he had experienced during his time at Melodyland, as he had participated in many of their healing services. He said the biggest shocker to him was when he had been asked to pray for a young woman who was blind in one eye. He dutifully prayed for her, and asked her to remove the gauze patch that was over her eye, so she could see her vision restored. He said he was shocked to see a dry socket where her eye should have been. "They didn't warn me. I wasn't prepared for that," he said. He braced himself, trying to put on a brave face for what obviously wasn't going to work. But as he looked at the woman, he saw an eyeball forming in the back of her dry socket. He WATCHED it grow into its place. She was healed, just as he had asked and, apparently as she had believed. "I'm not afraid to pray for anything, anymore."

Watching my fingertips move to match the other hand is a biggie for me. The experiences of Jesus intervening in a spiritual deception, being baptized in the Holy Ghost, and watching Jesus be crucified were in my imagination. Though they were "other" for me, you and many others would discount such events as hallucinations and/or the influence of stress-induced hormones. It isn't like I am not aware of those things. But my fingers are out there, free of stress and delusion. I don't know how Jesus did it, or even if it was Jesus who did it, but whoever or whatever did it did it at the exact moment Jesus was asked to do it, and it was done. Obviously, SOMEBODY wants me to believe in Jesus, and whoever it is has got a step up on me.

Danny

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (4) Jesus Vision Speaks

I mentioned earlier that some "Christians" deconvert from Christianity because they have no evidence that Jesus ever actually lived. I have no evidence that He lived two thousand years ago, either. I have evidence that He lives NOW, and I believe that He has lived in humans as long as there has been any.

The thing is: He is displayed in His ACTIONS. We don't recognize and acknowledge them, but all life is His working (He is qualities in the Field). Sometime after I was baptized in the Holy Spirit (the "Breath" of God), during a Sunday morning service at the House of Praise, the pastor asked us to share what God or Jesus (I don't remember which term he used) had done for us during the week. I couldn't think of a specific thing that stuck out (though I knew there was something - I just couldn't or wouldn't articulate it), and apparently neither could or would anyone else. Rod, the Pastor, rebuked us, saying we should always be ready to give an account/ share what God was doing in our lives. He told us to be quiet and think about what it was that Jesus had done for us.

I closed my eyes, and in my mind's eye I saw Jesus, which I now know as the Milta, being tethered between posts, or to a post, by Roman soldiers. They were going to scourge Him. And they did scourge Him with a cat-o-nine tails until His back was torn up as hamburger. I watched as they put the cross on His back to carry, and as He hauled it down the paved path. He passed out, going into shock from the pain. He was dying. They gave the cross to another man to haul, for they had to keep Jesus alive long enough to kill him. All the while, I was mentally reaching out, desperate to trade places with Him. "It was MY sin!" I mentally screamed. "It should be ME being crucified. The punishment deserved is MINE!" Almost like a voice heard, I saw that I couldn't pay for my own sin, because if I died I would simply be dead. For the wages of sin is death. I'd just be eternally dead. But Jesus Christ could pay for them, because he had no sin, up to and including doing this act in obedience, for His honor of and love of God. Jesus was doing this for the joy of winning the right to forgive me. He was going through all this for ME, for the joy that would be His, because HE BELIEVED THE PROMISE OF GOD: "You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful (or holy) one see decay" (Psalm 16:10). Talk about confidence!

They got to Golgotha, laid the head of the cross on a stone, and made Jesus to lie on that rough-sawn timber on His torn-up back. I know you have been to church, and that you are familiar with the story. But here comes a twist: I am in my imagination looking at Jesus from his right side. The soldiers stretched out His right arm and put a stake to it to fasten it to the cross. As the soldier lifted his mallet, Jesus turned His face to me and said, "Come unto Me." But not in my imagination. I heard it physically, in the auditory nerves of my brain. Not through the right or left ear, but transcendently from Him into my brain. It wasn't any voice of my imagination; it was full and strong and pointed directly at me. I thought: A) that is a really good trick; and B) I don't know how to get there. You are in heaven, and I can't fly. I've got no road that goes up there. I don't know how to get to where You are.

Did I mention to you that I am dumb? Christ Jesus is IN us. "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." "Lo, I am with you alway." "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is IN you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Corinthians 13:5). It was from within me that I heard a real, literal voice. Jesus is ALWAYS monitoring our thoughts, because He is in our BRAINS. And He can talk, too.

Danny

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (1a: The First Snail-Mail Introduction Letter About Theology, Edited a Bit)

This is the second page I wrote to you:

I know I need to explain my point-of-view a bit. My bag is theology, not religion. Not a lot of people subscribe to my perspective and conclusions. I have thousands of pages on my blog that pretty much all say the same thing: God is real; the world is mental. We create the worlds we live in by what we think, by what we assume to be real. That is how God creates the world, except we create worlds without God.  We master our own lives, direct everything by and for ourselves. This is self-lordship, and THAT is the sin that separates us from God. It's the "I'll do it myself," in our lives that has to go.

Heaven isn't about us. Heaven is HIM. We either get patched in, or not. I do not want to proselytize you into a church; I want to proselytize you into THE Church, the Body of Christ, into a living relationship with God through Christ. They are real stuff. Think of "God" as a field of divine consciousness, and Jesus as qualities of that field.

I am just testifying to things I KNOW are true, whether we like them or not, because of the EVIDENCE I have EXPERIENCED. I am telling you stories of things that have HAPPENED to me. It is because they have really happened that I believe what I believe is real.

There is a fad right now of "Christians" posting videos about their deconverting and deconstructing from Christianity. They all say, "It turns out that there is no evidence of there ever having been a real Jesus Christ." I'm like, "Whaatt? Who cares about evidence of a Jesus who lived two thousand years ago? The Jews would have destroyed every trace of Him having been. If He was real then, His evidence of still being real is NOW. I only care about the Jesus who gives us evidence of His being Lord RIGHT NOW." And He gives me ample evidence to confirm that He is Lord in the PRESENT. That is the last verse in the Gospel of Mark: they "went preaching everywhere, God CONFIRMING THEIR WORDS". . . then and there. God's present actions IN MY  LIFE are why I believe. Because of them I can say, "I KNOW Him in whom I have believed."

This is the first page I wrote to you:

The New Testament era was lived in the ancient Aramaic language. We've got the Greek translation of that living in our Bibles. I have discovered there are English translations of the Aramaic version of the Bible written by native Aramaic speakers who have learned the ancient forms of their language. The differences are as radical as you might expect. Like the difference between logos in the Greek, and milta (miltha) in the Aramaic.

Logos, as you know, means 'word', 'thought', or 'idea'--something to do with consciousness and communication. There are Hebrew wors which mean much the same.

The Milta, used by John in 1:1 in the Aramaic), is the Manifestation of the Ineffable, the non-existent-but-in-existence. The Milta is not different from the Ineffable, except for that. The Milta is not distant from the Ineffable, is not "other," is not a subset. The Milta is from and of the Ineffable; and yet It isn't, yet.

Here is what the Bible is about: the Milta, which is God, is becoming. In this there are two Miltas. One is the complete and full, absolute Manifestation of the Ineffanble the Ineffable has ASSUMED, i.e., has imagined to exist. This Milta is the mental picture the Ineffable has of Itself in perfect and complete form, which It will become. The Ineffable, though, thoroughly believes--assumes--the Milta to exist right now as a done deal. The No-thing believes It IS Thing-ed. In our reality, the Thing the Ineffable believes It is is working on Its becoming reality. These are all qualities of the field of consciousness "God" is--all part of the Ineffable Being.

The Milta was and is the beginning of all things. Some Jewish sages do not read Genesis 1:1 as "In the beginning," but as, "AS the Beginning, the Milta creates (note present tense) the heavens and the earth." Here's the thing: the idea of the Milta is also 'word', but includes all action unto its becoming concrete reality. Milta INCLUDES THE END. The Ineffable has assumed Its own manifestation . . .to the completion of that manifestation. I guess you could say, "It's Miltaed." Have this in mind when you read John chapter 1. In John 1:18, the Milta declares/reveals God. THAT is what this is all about.

The Ineffable and Its Milta has values, character that have developed over time. A long time. To become the end Milta, the becoming Milta has to inculcate, develop, and cultivate those same values and character in us. So here we are, in school as  it were. We are in the process of becoming what the Ineffable has assumed to already exist: THIS one is becoming THAT one. The assumed Milta is perfect; this one, not so much. We, born in ignorance (I often point out in my blog that we have been ignoranced, our consciousness of what we actually are removed), vary from being like the God. What He says to us we doubt, disbelieve. We think, "God didn't really mean what He said." After all, we like what we like, and want to do what we want to do, forgetting that we are His, and for Him. Me thinks this is "the tree which gives knowledge of good and of evil." Ignorance causes doubt and disbelief, disbelief causes unlikeness, unlikeness causes separation. Our sin, unbelief, separates us from God. We create for ourselves worlds without God.

God is a faith being. Remember assumption? Faith makes us like Him. Believing God really means what He says saves us. "Your faith has saved you." Asking Jesus to forgive us is expressing recognition of Him, honor and humility, submission to right relationship, and faith--the assumption that He both can and will forgive us. Now, it was His becoming and our being ignoranced which have caused our variance, our sin, which fault God says He took upon Himself on the cross, paying the price for our forgiveness and redeeming us. . . He says completely. This put us, as far as He is concerned, up in the end Milta, as though we had never been separated from Him or in error in any way; not just being "at" the right hand of God, but being the right hand of God itself. That is another Aramaic-ism I learned: according to their perspective, Jesus didn't sit down at the right hand of God, but AS the right hand of God. In other words, all good things come from Him. He is the essential connotation, the character of that field of the Ineffable's Consciousness which is "God."

That is about all that I wrote in my mailed letter to you. I will only note further that the Consciousness (and the Milta which is It manifest) manifests as people. It localizes and appears functionally as a Person and as myriads of people. When in Deuteronomy 6:4 it says that God is One, I believe that the message to Israel is that we--God's Prevailing (hopefully)--are included in that One!

Danny