LITERALLY - Part 2

  Referring to the key verses, we shall examine them literally. The koine (common) Greek in the New Testament is the “received text” (Latin; “textus receptus’). Some consider the ancient Hebrew of the Torah (Old Testament) “textus receptus” as well. Textus receptus are the literal words of God, but of course, Jesus often spoke in metaphors and the Greek New Testament consisted of text that was a “shadow of things to come” (Col 2:17). Likewise, the entire Old Testament has much revelation, and there are numerous “shadows” of coming things.

  Jews believe, as I do, that some early form of Hebrew is the original language of God, the angels, and mankind. That language was the actual word of God, and Greek the actual words of Jesus. Some words in both the Old and New Testament are Aramaic. Those words are textus receptus as well.

  My conclusion is that the words of God when read or heard are textus receptus and are literally what God spoke. There is no evidence that Jesus ever spoke in one language and the inspired authors wrote in a different language. For instance, when your mind receives insights from God, they are received in a language that you would understand. Even those languages of Acts 2 were in understandable languages. Hence, if languages are not interpreted, it is because they are not understood.

  Translations are not literal. Thus, the textus receptus is the ultimate source of the inspired words of God. All languages are ambiguous, and many words may have several meanings. Also, context must be considered to determine which meaning is most applicable. For example, according to Strong’s Dictionary, sozo means either “safe” or “saved,” present and past tenses, respectively. Which is it? There is much disagreement! The same applies to soteriios. Is it “saving” or “salvation?” The difference is crucial — whether a born-again person is “safe” of “saved.” Christians are divided over those words.

  With that background, consider the key verse, repeated here for convenience:

KEY VERSES:  ¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ² And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. ³ And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made. ⁴ These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. (Gen 2:1-4)

  I will spend little time to explain why, because in my book, On the Origin and Survival of the Universe, I wrote about the “heaven and earth” thoroughly. That “heaven” is not a place but the unseen, and neither is the “earth” a place but the seen. They are space and matter, two of the mass-space-time coordinates.

  “Finished” in the key verses is kalah in the Hebrew. It is a root word that everyone agrees means either “finished” or “completed” since they are synonyms. In engineering, it would be written, “Thus, the processes of transforming something from nothing reached equilibrium.” That is because God’s Energy was transformed into things seen and unseen, perhaps matter and antimatter, but certainly matter and space.

  “All the host of them” (tsaba’), literally means “mass of persons” which is most often considered armies. It is unclear whether tsaba’ refers to the creation of Adam and Eve, or the bodies of the cosmos being compared to armies. Theologians accept the latter — a mass of heavenly bodies in the cosmos. In the Book of Revelation, “stars” symbolize angels. My question is, “Does that passage refer to human persons or angelic persons?” Just when were the angels created? They were the masses either created in the beginning (the first process) or in the second process.

  Creation of the angelic “stars” took time, and it took additional time for them to rebel. Hence, creation of the angels was a sub-process of the first process of creating the heaven and the earth on “day” one. In my book, rather than “day” I refer to “process” as the contextual translation from the textus receptus, yowm and layil that was translated in about all versions as “day” and “night.”

  Literally, the words mean, “to be hot” and a “twist” the latter which implies movement away from the light, or heat source. Engineers should easily recognize yowm to layil as a thermodynamic process wherein energy producing heat to convert (twist) things to a cooled state that we call “equilibrium. A day is the process of the Earth twisting (turning) around the Sun.

  The problem with using “day” in the first three processes is that the Sun and Moon until then had not been created, so in context, “day” is not literally correct. On the other hand, “process” is close to literal, at least in meaning. With that said, my hypothesis is that the “host of heaven” refers to the angels since the literal “stars” (hosts) were not “persons” and they were not made in the first process but the second. Sacred text, however, says that angels were created on the “second day.” With that explanation, the angels as “stars” makes sense. I can accept either explanation because they both preceded Adam and Eve.

  The next key expression is, “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made.” The word “seventh” is a direct translation. No issue with it. That could be interpreted then as “the seventh process.” From the beginning to completion, or equilibrium, took seven processes. The first process was transforming energy to mass in space. Scientists operationalize that process by the equation, E=mc² (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared). (Refer to my book referenced previously for my explanation of that to be the “God Equation” for creation.)

  On the seventh day, all processes were completed, and the overall creation process reached equilibrium. Literally, God “rested” because the work of creation was finished. The substance of God that is Power is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God provided the Power, and that “Goodness” or “Virtue” ceased to flow, twist, or transform. Why must we not blaspheme the Holy Ghost? Because that is the substantial “Power” that created (generated) in the beginning and will regenerate all things in the end.  

  With the Holy Spirit in Him, Jesus lost Virtue to heal. In the beginning, Jesus was there as God (John 1). He was losing Virtue, not to heal, but to generate. When Jesus died, He gave up the Ghost, losing all the Virtue that He had to heal the nations! Then, God rested in the tomb three days. God’s Holy Spirit deserved the rest because that was the Power that shall transform Christian in the end.

  What happened to Adam when Virtue flowed from God to generate him? Literally, he was created, not “very good,” as the translators wrote, but entirely good. That perfect condition is “glorification.” The creation process of Adam came to rest when Adam was glorified. It was finished with Jesus’s death as He gave up the Ghost. God’s Purpose in the Flesh was finished. Thereafter the Holy Ghost of Jesus would provide the Virtue, not only to Comfort, but glorify Christians to the glorious state in which Adam was generated; hence “regeneration” is not at rebirth but at the resurrection.

  Now for the phrase, “God ended His work.” The word “god” is “‘elohiym.” That Word is plural, but One god is “el.” There were not three “gods” that created, but three identities (states) of God. The Father seeds the Garden and is thus the “Husbandman,” the Son is the “Vine,” and the Holy Spirit is the “Living Water” that provides life. Thus, just as John wrote in chapter one, God’s “Flesh,” Jesus, was there in the beginning, and the Holy Spirit as well, as all three substances were in homeostasis in the One “Person” of the Holy Trinity.

  “Homeostasis” is harmony between the substances of God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are always together and always as One because there would not be homeostasis otherwise; God would be out of balance with Himself. When Jesus gave up the Ghost, His Spirit was still on Earth, but His Flesh rested. Where was the Father? Looking over His Plan in action from another realm right there but unseen! Jesus felt His presence, and when the Father rested in that realm, Jesus cried out because He felt abandoned. After three days, He lived and found out that the Father would never leave nor forsake Hm, just as He said long ago!

  “Ended” is “kalah” in the Hebrew, and that has already been explained. The work process had come to completion, and equilibrium would be reached when the process became static for a time. No more “twisting” or activity would be required. Like yeast, all that needed to happen after the kneading is rest. As with dough, further kneading is required for the best bread. That will happen when the heaven and earth are “kneaded” and rest again in the end of time.

  “His work” (mela ‘kah) literally means “deputyship” and comes from the root noun “mal’ ak,” meaning “message.” Thus the “Husbandman” (the Father) had performed His job of working to completion. Just what “message” was in the work of creating? “God so loved the world” (John 3:16). How is God’s love measured? “That He gave His Son and Helper” to redeem our sins. His was a work of love, and creation was by grace.

  We think of only the Man Jesus on the Cross, suffering death, but it was obvious that the Holy Spirit was there as well because as Jesus died, the Holy Ghost left Him. How about the Father? Was He there? Yes, from another realm he suffered as he watched and felt His Flesh die.

  With homeostasis when Jesus is seen, so is the Father, and the Holy Ghost is sensed. At the death of God’s Flesh, the Spirit of God was transformed from the dead man, as the “Holy Ghost” of Jesus (John 7:39). That took work, and the Holy Ghost of Jesus did that virtuous task. Never blaspheme the Holy Ghost of Jesus because “He” is Goodness.

  Next consider the phrase from the key verses about the things of God “which He had made” (‘asah in the Hebrew). That word is literally either “fashioned” or “produced.” Fashion means that there is a plan. Planners have a vision of the best design, make an image of it, develop a process to produce the envisioned image, seek out a source for the materials for the production, develop the methods of production, design and procure the tools and equipment for the process, ensure there is power to produce, procure the hands for the manual labor, then produce the product. The Man called “Jesus” was the “hands” that John wrote about in John chapter one.

  “Made” then is inadequate for God’s entirely good production. It was perfect! God inspected what He had produced and declared it entirely good (Gen 1:31). If it had not been, the defect would have been repaired before the production was released to the customer. Just who was the “Customer?” God produced all things for Himself for His utility, companionship, and pleasure.

  What was God’s pleasure? Not an automaton that would be programmed to do good, but one with life that would choose to do good. He created man a “person” with a unique “personality.” Before sin, Adam’s personality was like Jesus’s!  Thus far, no automaton has been made with personality. Adam was, and it was an entirely good one at that! Lucifer was melancholic and proud. His was a bad demonic attitude. He chose his own “personality,” and God needed Lucifer to do that.

  The purpose of Lucifer was to test the new “products.” The method God gave for that “inspection” process was to endeavor to induce failure. Lucifer does just that and acts both as God’s and Man’s “Adversary.” The word “Satan” is the job description for that assignment. Rather than endeavoring to check that the “product” performs as designed, Satan endeavors to make God’s “products” fail. The world is the test environment. Adam essentially agreed to be tested. He was told the failure mode, then entered unto temptation. Adam showed a willingness to sin and allowed himself to be tested by approaching the Forbidden Tree. The actual sin was the failure mode but entering that mode was increasing the probability of failure. Perhaps the Tree of Knowledge was the “test booth” that Adam freely entered to fail there before he was released to the world!

  Adam entered unto temptation, but where did he first sin? It would seem from the Bible that Adam sinned in Paradise. If that was so, then it would not have been in the Garden in Paradise because it was perfect! It was in the “test booth” in the middle of the Garden.

  “Booths” in scripture are “tabernacles” (tents). The Hebrews stood in their booths and worshipped God in His Booth when the Hebrews were in the wilderness outside “sin” (Egypt). The Trees of the Garden may be symbolic or metaphors for “booths.” The canopies of the trees would be the “tabernacles” from which mankind, if they had not sinned, would have viewed God beneath His “Tabernacle” which scripture calls, “The Tree of Life.” Failure mode was when Eve viewed the booth of Lucifer and entered it rather than God’s “Booth.” He chose is God wrongly. That was the original sin — the willingness to enter the forbidden booth where he would be tested. As a side note. Eve knew nothing of the “test” and failed. God essentially declared, “She knows not what she does,” as she was only an accomplice in “killing” God. Adam knew as God told only him about the failure mode.

  The Books of and Adam Eve (sacred literature) indicates that Adam was tempted in the Garden, was cast out, then he sinned. His mistake was entering unto temptation. The two Trees were inspection “booths” for God’s produce. Partaking from the Tree of Life would provide an eternal “shelf live.” Partaking from the Wisdom Tree exposed the failure mode that Adam might have in the world.

  God created a perfect specimen with a personality. Adam was free to make decisions, to love or hate, and to obey or disobey. He would be okay in the test environment but what about the world? God knew he would fail, so He provided what is called a “band-aid” type of repair in industry. He patched the defect with a coat of skin that would slow the withering of the products as they aged. His desire was for his produce to overcome the world and never to perish.

  The skin of an animal would not suffice. God then planned a redesign for that defect and in the future, the temporary “patch” would no longer be necessary. To make His “produce” perfect again, God would cover them with His own Flesh. (My interpretation is that since the Holy Spirit remained ON Jesus when He was baptized, that Christians are covered by the Holy Spirit until the “Temples” were completed at the time the Holy Ghost descended to fill the “produce” that was perfected by the cross.)

  Once corrected (i.e., “born again”; John 3:7), the new creatures put on the Flesh of God, and soon Life is breathed back unto them, (i.e. they are imbued with the Holy Ghost) and the repair begins to be more effective. The soul has been patched to suffice until the Christian is totally made anew.

  Regeneration is glorification when the mind, soul, and flesh of Christians are made as original Adam’s. Adam (Man) when he is re-glorified, shall be perfected entirely again when Jesus comes to take him home to Paradise, and that will be before those who are living in Christ (Those dead in Christ shall rise first.)

  Next consider “He rested on the seventh day from all His work.” “Rested” in the Hebrew is “shabath” from which the English word, “Sabbath” comes. It means “to repose” or “desist from exertion.” In any process, after the activity ceases, rest occurs when all the interactions desist when equilibrium is reached. God is “Equilibrium.” That is “homeostasis.” Just as the Holy Trinity is in Equilibrium, the Holy Creation was as well, at least when Paradise was in earth. (Now it is in heaven and remains in equilibrium.) The purpose of the Sabbath is for Christians to come to homeostasis after six working days of chaos. 

  The Sabbath is the time for the mind, flesh, and soul to return to equilibrium (homeostasis). God deserves to rest from preserving His people. The Sabbath is His repose, and we join Him on His ay of rest to be on harmony with Him.

Tomorrow we will continue with verse three of the key verses.

(picture credit: St. Albans Catholic Church; "The Holy Ghost")