5b) What about Temptations?
What does this mean to us while we are in this 3D world? It means that we too need to develop our own relationship with the Thinker on a daily basis, because this is not something that happens instantly. Relationships need to be cultivated. Our decision to act might be sudden or slow, but the relationship must grow. God has allowed a mechanism for this growth that is common to all of us. It is called "temptation". Temptation is a routine situation where we are faced with a choice: immediate gratification (when it precludes trusting in God) vs delaying that gratification on the grounds that we trust God to provide even greater gratification for us in the long run by other means. We trust that He actually has our best long-term interests in mind, even though we don't always understand His plans. We also trust that He can and will deliver on this promise. Each time we give in to temptation, we pull ourselves a bit farther away from God, until eventually He will look like only a glow on the horizon that is probably just city lights and not God at all. Conversely, every time we fight these temptations, we get a bit closer to God. These are the hardest things to fight, because, by definition, we really want to surrender to them. Our temptations are fine tuned to fit each of us perfectly.
The sources of temptation are threefold: Our own corrupt natures, which inherently seek immediate gratification; the world around us, which tells us that bad things are normal and hence OK; and sometimes the fallen angels. Yes, God has thought about these angels as well, according to His Bible. Otherwise, how could they exist? Of note, God does tell us that one day He will put evil out of His mind and from then on it will never again exist. But, for now, He lays before us the two choices: life and death - choose life.
Now, the way to win at temptation is to fight rather than to always give in. You can't win all the battles, but you must not lose them all either. The "unforgivable sin" is to tell God that you don't want to fight the desire to surrender to bad temptations. It's then that you are most vulnerable to demonic infestations as described in the gospels. When Christ would cast out a demon, He would say, "Your sins are forgiven; go and sin no more." The hardest thing you can do is to ask God to prevent you from collecting on a temptation in progress, when you really do want to give in. Once you can muster the strength in this crisis situation, you'll be shocked at how quickly God responds. The whole temptation mechanism will somehow just fall apart. The goal is to ask God to change your "heart of stone" into a "heart of flesh", so that you will no longer want those things that lead you away from Him.
Trusting God is a way of living. We make decisions everyday regarding incremental temptations to choose "Life" or "Death". While it's not the score that counts, it is a fact that we become what we choose. When we choose Life we convince ourselves that we want God to continue thinking about us. When we choose Death (eg we prefer to max out on this temporary life rather than to delay gratification based on our trust in God), we ask Him not to think about us, ie we try to “Hide” from God. Our position oscillates throughout our lives until we either want Life enough to ask God to change our hearts; or we want Death enough to think we can live without God.
Once this underlying choice is made, the rest of what we do in life is merely a sound and light show for others to learn from. Our fate is settled. It's a "Pass/Fail" criteria. There's always an opportunity to change our minds until we have made that underlying choice. After that, nothing will affect our position even if we are still oscillating between good and bad deeds.
When you have made this underlying choice, you will know it.
19 August 2001
PS: Note that it is during temptations to do things that pull us away from God, that we can best know the true God. “Good” is the set of all the choices we can make that will lead to a happy, productive existence. “Evil” is the set of all the choices that will lead to self-destruction. Children cannot often tell the difference, because the consequences are often too far removed from the initial decision. The True Creator God is like a parent, not a dictator. He wants His children to make good choices, which will ultimately benefit them, even if they at the time cannot see it, or conversely if they see it and would rather do something else. It works two ways. God is in favor of us choosing to do good things and He is against us doing evil things. For example, if we consult Him, He will advise us to help others over ourselves; to humble ourselves; to focus on the long-term happiness not the immediate gratification, etc. So, if we are talking to Him, this is the direction He will advise us to pursue. Other spirit beings do not have our best interests in mind and they will advise us to follow our own preferences even when we have doubts about the eventual consequences. This advice is how we can distinguish the real, true, Creator-Father God.
The Key to everlasting happiness is in our developing a relationship with this true God during our human life. We need to talk to God all the time: when we are good or bad, happy or sad. Talk to God, Who gives you the advice you know you need, with you wherever you go, and share your experiences with Him as you would with a loving parent. Get to know this God by talking to Him when you’re in the middle of a grave temptation, because then you’ll know He’s the real God by his advice. Then hang on to that relationship in general, talking to Him as Christ demonstrated we humans can. If you do this, then in the End Times, when the truth is so obscured even the elect can be deceived, you at least will know the real God and you can trust His advice. 11 September 2002
Another thought on “Forgiveness” Christians talk a lot about “Forgiveness” and how they need to be forgiven in order to get to heaven when they die. What does this mean? Let me suggest that it is impossible for any of us not to sin. God knows this, because He created us a little lower than the angelic beings in order to make free will choices, which will often lead to sin. It is essential for us to sin if we are to demonstrate the wages of sin, so that the onlooking angelic beings can learn about “good” and “evil”. Once we sin we will eventually die. Any sin is enough to cause us to die eventually. Some of us are big time sinners and others are small time sinners, but all of us will surely perish, ie die a human death – no longer be human. Yet, God has shown us that He has a plan where even though we die this human death, yet He can re-create us as angelic beings and give us everlasting life. This plan is set up so that it really does not matter how bad we are. Everyone who wants to be “saved” can be. Only those, who do not want to be saved, ie who decide to hide from God permanently, will be lost.
What then is the criteria for salvation? It is that the individual actually wants to have a personal relationship with the true Creator God. As described above, we can know this true God if we call out to Him when we are under temptation and ask Him to help us avoid giving into something we feel is “evil” when we really want it anyway. Note that it is a matter of what we feel is evil, not what actually is evil on some absolute scale. This is all about personal choices and what we do about our feelings. If we think something is evil and we do it anyway, that causes sin to arise as well. Likewise, if we ask God to help us not do it, then that will bring us into a personal relationship with God. Once we find God, we must keep talking to Him when we’re good or bad, happy or sad and we’ll maintain a relationship with Him that will lead to everlasting Life. As noted above, we all must die due to sin, but God will recreate us in angelic form to live in heaven with Him and the other angelic beings on the New Earth, which He creates for us. Lastly I stress again that humans will not be knowledgeable enough of good and evil after one lifetime. If God sent us directly to heaven, we would still be too naïve’ to make choices without stumbling into sin and then there would again be “war in heaven”. God’s plan as revealed in His Bible indicates that after we are changed we will be restricted to being with the Glorified Christ alone on the “New Jerusalem” in heaven, but quarantined from the other angelic beings. For 1000 years (symbolic for “how ever long it takes to be completed”) we will live and reign with Him judging the world (1 Cor 6:2) and reviewing the records of the human Sin Drama until we are on a par with the angels, who watched it all in real-time. Then (Rev 21:3) this New Jerusalem will land on the New Earth and we can start mingling with the angelic beings for everafter.
6 December 2003
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