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

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (3) Baptism in the Holy Spirit

I went with Mom to Saint Matthews Methodist Church in Hacienda Heights for years, and was a member of their Youth Fellowship, so I wasn't completely in the dark about Jesus being the Son of God. I had absolutely no understanding of what that actually meant, of course. There's baby Jesus in the manger; there's proud Papa God sitting on His throne in heaven. I was sitting in the House of Praise, wondering how Jesus could be the Son of God. I finally resolved I didn't know HOW Jesus could be the Son of God, but He was working, acting AS God in response to His name, and the Bible says He is the Son of God (the House of Praise was a Pentecostal commune where tongues were routinely spoken and there were a LOT of miracles both seen and reported. Services were held in the living room). I decided to go with the Bible and observed reality in spite of not understanding it, and got up to confess Jesus as my lord and savior.

I stood in front of the pastor, who greeted me, but he turned to a young, slovenly attired bum of a guy sprawled carelessly across the overstuffed chair. "What about you?" he said to him. The guy pulled himself together, stood up, and then suddenly started weeping and crying . . . and then just as suddenly began, still weeping, emotionally praising God in tongues.

I felt good about having gotten up to confess Jesus, anyway.

Ralph asked me to go with him to an evening service at Grace Bible Church in Honolulu. They were having a special, Pentecostal/evangelical musical performance. After the performance, Ralph stayed behind to talk to the ministers. Raised an Italian Catholic, Ralph wanted the gift of tongues we saw constantly at the House of Praise. The ministers took Ralph over to their fellowship center to pray with him. I waited, looking at the notices in the vestibule. One of the ministers stuck his head out: "Have you spoken in tongues? Do you want to get the gift Ralph is seeking?

Yeah, well, why not? I followed the pastor into the prayer room and knelt before a folding chair. "Just give your voice, your tongue, your mouth to God for the Holy Spirit to use, and let him use it to praise God with." Not rocket science. So I did. And nothing happened. Hmm. Maybe not enough of me. So I gave God my breath, my lungs, my larynx, my lips, my volition to speak. Nothing. I gave Him my life, my future, any kids I might have in the future. Nothing. I realized I was rejected by God, that He wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. I mean like, utterly! I started to weep and cry like that guy at the House of Praise. I didn't know why I was rejected of God. I'd given Him my life. What more could I give Him? Inside I searched, reached for the reason God rejected me.

I didn't know it, but in my despair I had slipped into a trance. I was among bushes in a wash, like the one in La Puente down at the end of Fifth Avenue. I walked along a trail, and eventually it turned into a developed, concrete wash. A concrete wall rose on the side as I progressed. Finally, the trail dead-ended at a huge concrete block. I couldn't move it. I couldn't jump high enough to haul myself up it. I thought of back-tracking to where the wall had started to rise, and coming up the other side, but I realized that the trail I was following went down underneath it. This block was like a cap. It was the thing of me I hadn't given to God. But I didn't know what it was. I searched all over it--no marks, no name. I couldn't tell what it was for which God, still, utterly rejected me. "I'd give it to you if I could," I cried. I didn't know if it was a big thing or a little thing, or of what consequence it would have in my life. I finally said, "I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, I give it to you."

In my mind's eye I saw that I was below the huge block that had blocked me. It reminded me of the workshop I had formed in my mind in the occult, but it was more like the Combat Information Center I saw in operation in the Navy. I looked, and in a muddy plain of earth a figure of a man was scooped out of the mud. It was sat on a chair, and the mud was formed into bones, muscles, sinew, vessels, organs, skin, hair, eyes. It had everything except for life, and then it was given life, too. I wondered what it thought, not having a mind until a moment ago. It stood and looked out. "This is earth. It is day, but night will come, and it will get cold. I had better find shelter in those hills over there."

Then started the weirdest adventure: the mudman started walking to the forested hills in the distance. I followed right behind him, a little above and to the left. I saw through his eyes and listened to his thoughts. Here is the thing: I became him. We fused. We searched for unoccupied caves, thought about building a fortress, finding firewood, and wondered how to tell what food was safe as we had never eaten before, etc. And in the middle of wondering if I should harvest vegetables to eat or plant for tomorrow, it struck me (it would have struck me to my knees if I hadn't been on them already): I was directing my life as though it were mine, but just a moment ago I was a lifeless mudman. I was GIVEN this life--it WASN'T mine! God GAVE me this life in His grace, and yet I had never as much as said thank you, never acknowledged that it was His, never asked for what purpose had He made me to live. Whatever His purpose was, I HAD ROBBED HIM OF IT. I was a thief, an ungrateful rebel. I had "given" to God what wasn't mine to give; He already OWNED me. I had usurped what was His all along--"rebellion as witchcraft!"

I cannot tell you the abject horror that went through me. I had received life from God, He had made me to live, and I had not honored Him in the least for it. I was desperate to rid myself of self-control. For a second, I wondered if I would fall flat on my face if I totally relinquished self-control of myself. I didn't care if I did fall. I cast self-control out of myself as one might cast out a demon, or an armful of dirty clothes onto the floor. It didn't escape my notice that I couldn't have done this without the spiritual talent I had gained in that meditation class. I'd been sent there for a reason. I didn't fall; I was caught! I thoroughly and absolutely surrendered God's life back to Him, and submitted myself for whatever purpose He had for me.

 I was kneeling beside a large fallen pine tree. We were on a clearing high in the mountains, aspen glow on the snow-capped peaks and in the clouds above. I was kneeling to pray. Though my head was bowed, I was aware that the aspen glow was giving way to the rose-colored glow of the presence of God. I said to that presence, "You are Glorious God. I am a mudman, given life by your grace. Whatever you tell me to do, that I will do." And then I shut up and listened.

I listened intently for awhile. And then I heard so faintly, "Remember this, and it is all right." It's all right! I was forgiven. God had accepted me. The gratitude I felt was immeasurable. I felt my bowels flooding with joy. I wanted to tell God how much I appreciated and loved Him, but English didn't have adequate words to express my gratitude. As the joy and adoration rose in my bowels to my mouth, my mouth began to move on its own. "Don't try to control it," I heard the pastor say. Controlling was the furthest thing from my mind!! I raised my arms in complete surrender and a torrent of praise and worship poured out of my mouth. I was speaking in tongues, a distinctly oriental language.

So there was my sin: self-lordship, and its solution: recognition, surrender, honoring submission.

Danny

Dear Sister: My 80 Papers (2) Jesus Intervenes

Mom would have wanted me to write you these stories. Take them as reports from your brother, for that is what they really are. I have every day thought about writing you, but I know you don't want anyone pushing religion on you. Sorry. It isn't religion I am pushing, but an actual relationship with the Living God. Not a fantasy relationship, but a real one, all sparkly and exciting. I don't go to church myself, though I would love to have some serious Christian fellowship. I just know too much about God for me to put up with the moronacy that has taken over the modern "Christian" church.

Anyway, I have started to write to you several times, and the problem is: how to write to you? At 75 years of age, my hand cramps up if I write by hand, and it isn't necessarily legible. You do not have a smart phone, e-mail, or digital messaging. I do frequently write blog posts you could read (I have well over two thousand posts on my blog, and over 573,000 views), but you can't access my web site. My regular blog is "The Becoming God," at imagicworldview.blogspot.com. This letter is going into my new blog, "Letters for a Sister," at lettersforasister.blogspot.com. My first blog was "The Lost Flocks of Jethro." Its url is thebecominggod.blogspot.com. I didn't know how to change the title of the blog to keep that url address, so I just started a new blog with imagicworldview.) My worldview is that the whole world is imagic--an image--of God, who is Himself becoming more complete in and through it. Our personally created "worlds" are His communication to us: we are either creating a world without God, or a world that manifests Him, i.e., IS Milta.

Who cares what happened thousands of years ago if it isn't happening NOW? I have written a number of times in my blog that if someone whacked you up alongside your head with a two-by-four, you'd certainly know it, and no one in the whole world could possibly convince you otherwise. Well, I've been whacked by God, and I want you to also be whacked--a person who has indisputable, personal evidence of the PRESENT DAY reality of God and of Christ's lordship. What good is a god who can't answer?

Stories:

I got interested in kindergarten occult stuff out of high school. The Beatles were introducing Eastern philosophies and religions, TM, we played with Quija boards, songwriters were on acid, the Whole Earth Catalogue, dream analysis, Edgar Cayce and Jean Dixon--you know the drill. I pursued the apparent spiritual part of me with Transcendental Meditation, and, dissatisfied with that, joined an occult meditation class in Honolulu--trying to read auras, levitate, open chakras, etc.

So there I was one morning in a meditation, opening a door I had made in my mental workshop, to allow an Ascended Master to enter my mind. Mano y mano training time! Descending a ramp in the distance was a figure, a glowing man. Could it be . . . Jesus? It was impressed upon me that this was THE Jesus of the New Testament who had learned the secrets of the spirit and had taught them privately to his disciples to teach their disciples. But unspiritual men who wanted to control society had gotten political power in the church, and being unspiritual had discounted the spiritual secrets as but legends and superstitions. It was further impressed upon me that because I was a truly sincere disciple, like His original disciples, the Ascended Master Jesus was coming to teach me--privately--the things He had learned in His life (I was as sincere as I was stupid, which is to say I was VERY sincere). I was also quite humbled and amazed.

But something was off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Peering into the darkness, I watched Jesus approach my mind. He had the white robe, sash, long hair, beard--the whole nine yards. Light was emanating from him. As he got closer, in my imagination I looked at the light emanating from him itself. Suddenly, I could see through the light and into the spirit being itself. The light was just a façade, and the spirit behind it was all darkness within. TWO things immediately struck me. One: the thing that wasn't exactly kosher here was that this entity needed my permission to enter my mind, because it was of less authority than I. I was of the earth, and it was of below the earth. As a deceiving spirit, it couldn't actually enter me unless I lowered my authority to it. And two: my mind's eye had just been acted upon by someone beyond myself, enabling it to see something this "Jesus" had not wanted me to see. This entity had wanted me NOT to see that it had been tricking me for many years, but was powerless to stop the one who had just exposed it. And that one had been fully aware all this time, using the entity's work for his own advantage to cultivate some spiritual talent in me, and he was now intervening--not needing my permission, because he was of greater authority than mine--to "harvest" me for himself. Amazed and humbled, I closed the door.

I lie there thinking: spirit stuff is indeed real, BUT I'VE BEEN GOING THE WRONG WAY. My pickup truck was just a few minutes bike ride away. (For the previous year I'd been illegally living in a homemade camper shell in the Ala Wai harbor.) Although I was 25, I still had the zippered King James Bible mom had bought me when I was 7 years old. I opened it to the concordance like I knew what I was doing and found 'Deceive'. That sent me to Revelation 12:9-12:

9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

Uh-oh. I'd just been whapped upside along my head with a spiritual two-by-four, and THIS STUFF IS REAL!

I could literally hit where Lynn lived with a well chucked rock, so I went to tell her what had happened. She had news for me. Mom had been sending her "Jesus" books, and had half the Christian world praying for us (for you, too). Lynn read the books by her taxi's dome light at night while she awaited fares. She had developed a horrible, splitting migraine that was just killing her. A mutual friend of ours, Ralph, was a Christian and was trying to console her. "Ralph," she said, as flippantly and as sarcastically as she could muster, "Jesus gave me this headache, AND HE CAN HAVE IT!" She told me, "It left. That instant. Completely. I couldn't make my head hurt. "

Ralph had taken Lynn to a Pentecostal fellowship called The House of Praise, where she confessed Jesus as her Lord and Savior (see "the power of His Christ," above). A week later, she took me.

Danny