Article 9: Beginnings that come Anew

Rule Three of the Firmament:

All intelligent races in existence likely stand within one or more of these states

*Primordial
–Made New and Blameless
-Corrupted and Afflicted:
- Recipients of Passive Wrath
- Promised and Waiting
- Justified or Judged
- Made Blameless Anew
-Maturing and Blameless
-Authoritative and Blameless
-Mutually Interactive

This will be the last article on the sub-categories of Corrupted and Afflicted. I have made the decision to merge them because they are very closely connected. We have now spent months on the human timeline, and while I have written in brief on these topics, I hope you have found them edifying. I will admit, in particular, the various parables and analogies have been so for me, even as I write them. I have done my best to explain, to reason, but not to preach. These articles are not written to convert or evangelize. But they do represent a focused explanation that I was never given, and would have so deeply enjoyed in a childhood of churchgoing. My attempts to reason out the decisions God has made in his desire to save have taken years of study and thought, and left me with a narrative universe where I can hopefully build with a realism that matches the behaviors of God and his character.

Justified or Judged

Justice is not justice if the verdict is never rendered. It remains, at best, an idea of right and wrong. With no action, the theory of justice is insignificant. Likewise, if judgment never comes, then mercy is rendered meaningless as well. After all, if there is to be no punishment for the crime, then what quality remains in saying the guilty have been spared? Spared from what, a punishment never to come? The God of my first Rule is not a God of theory, but of facts and acts. All that he does is predicated first on what will be done. The behavior of God is as his perception, holistic.

The reason Justified of Judged contains two options is that it represents a turning point in the course of a race. A race in Corrupted and Afflicted moves towards a destiny where this relationship with God has become mutual, real, and perfected; or else rejected in entirety. Those who have rejected the offer of help, of hope, of life, will find themselves in their place of rightful judgment. They have earned it, and they have chosen it. Make no mistake, the final judgment will not be laid upon the ignorant. All will know with clarity the facts of their case, and even if they willfully reject them it will not invalidate their knowledge of them. They will choose what to believe, but the choice will not make their belief true in judgment any more than it did in life.

What then of the justified? In order for there to be justice, there must be a punishment after the verdict is rendered. So where has this wrath fallen, this cost, this reparation? It is my thinking that the entirety of the sacrificial system was to teach two fundamental truths. That something had to be done to fix things, and that this something could not be achieved by anything else but a guiltless (or without blemish) party. This problem could not be addressed by ourselves, otherwise, we might have had an option once in our father Adam. Surely, if his transgression can be imputed through all our race, then an act of righteousness might have been possible also. Yet we learn that as one who is inherently of a corrupted nature, Adam and consequently his line, could not do so. We needed a blameless element of humanity who could do what needed to be done, who could pay a price we were literally incapable of paying as “Animals unfit for sacrifice”. We were adopted by God himself individually into his new family line. In the case of humanity, the judge rendered the verdict, then he himself paid the price in full before reclaiming his gavel. I do not know if this is the only way for a price to be paid in every World, Realm, or Plane. That such a thing might happen even once seems scandalous.

Let us take a moment and consider the other sentient race of Angels. Specifically, its moralistic offshoot, Demons, the third which split off and entered into Corrupted and Afflicted. Since that point, they have become Recipients of Passive Wrath. And one day, as the bible has revealed on numerous occasions, they will be judged. They themselves know this outright, as we see when Jesus came to the country of Gadarenes*. To say it clearly, there is no reason to believe that a race in Corrupted and Afflicted will necessarily be saved from themselves. Whether they are, or not, seems to be directly related to a fore-understanding of their crimes.

For humanity, this moment comes at our deaths. Are we to go to heaven as members of God’s family, or else to endure a punishment that results from a refusal to acknowledge our situation? Justice is inevitable, it must be so for it to be at all. The space in time between mortal death and the opening of the Book of Life is where this category solidly sits. To restate for the Firmament specifically, I draw the borders of this category as existing between God’s offer/acceptance of redemption and the ultimate fulfillment of that offer itself.

Made Blameless Anew

As a category, I admit that Made Blameless Anew might seem redundant at first Glance. How does it differ from being justified? After all, a person or race that is justified is inherently made blameless. In order to justify this category (pun intended) I need to make a clear distinction here. To do that I need to zero in on one massive element of the human timeline.

Heaven.

I do not believe it would be theologically sound to insist on the idea of a human in heaven being fully redeemed, fully made new. If they were there would be no need to bring them back for the book of life. It is also clear, logically speaking, that heaven is not a corporeal realm, or else we would not need redeemed bodies to live on a New-Earth as described in revelations. I think it is fairer if we understand heaven as an in-between state in our existence. A state in which we are waiting to be made whole, to be in essence reassembled to the original design. Our lives begin as mortal humans, our flesh deteriorating unto death. Our inevitable death will detach our spirit from our bodies. If our nature has been made new through relationship, our destination is Heaven, if not, Hell. I would therefore argue that if God’s intention is for redemption, not merely salvation, it would necessitate the correction of our bodies in the same way being ‘born again’ does to the nature of our souls. The creation of a redeemed body is in essence being born again, again! This will, of course, happen to all the believers throughout history all at once. Until then our spirit, a mere portion of our being, resides elsewhere.

But why is heaven so important? It is because our souls do not enter into the kingdom of God unless we have been justified through faith. There is, therefore, a period in our existence where we have been justified, and yet are not wholly made new, thus necessitating the category. Because we will be made new.

I like to think of the Made Blameless Anew category as a new beginning, and I mean that in a very literal way. Those in the Made Blameless Anew category will have the opportunity to steward their world in a way they might have in Made New and Blameless. The distinction is of course that we have already learned the knowledge of good and evil. We who stand upon the earth in those days will experience the fullness of our world in ways we have never yet. Whole potential realms become available, a New Heaven, a New Earth, a New Jerusalem. **Revelations 22 speaks even of a potential return to Eden, the Garden where the tree of life grows. Our World will expand dramatically, potentially in ways it should have if we had been led from the first garden in the fullness of God’s timing, instead of cast out through our rebellion.

Those coming out of Made Blameless Anew have now learned rightly what there is to know of the knowledge of good and evil, eaten so far beyond its rightful time. What will come next is a category wherein took place the Angelic rebellion. A place of mature blamelessness. A place where, in all likelihood, any trips beyond our own limited World may begin in earnest. Will it begin with other Worlds? Plains? Realms? Who can say? But any image of it will be aided by one simple acceptance. It will be greater than all things that have come before and will eclipse our dearest fiction.

* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+8%3A+28-29&version=ESV

** https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+22%3A+1-2&version=ESV