Chag sameach Shemini Atseret, Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el, glory to the Father Yahweh-Elohim, grace and shalom (peace) in the Name of our Master (Lord) and Deliverer (Saviour), Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) and may the Blessed Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) dwell with power in our midst during this assembly! Welcome to the Last Great Day of the seven annual cycle of festivals of Messianic Israel and to my final message this Sukkot or Tabernacles season. I regret being unable to offer you all any more during the remaining days of Sukkot as I have been extremely ill though studies have got underway on Restoring the Johannine Community. As promised I have a final message which I felt was of such importance that I would spend a little time each day, whenever I could, to make sure this is on record. I hope this blesses you all. As it's a very large presentation, I have decided to split it up into at least three different parts inbetween which we shall take breaks, depending on how much we feel we can manage. So whilst these presentations are all an important part of the theme of Shemini Atseret we may extend them beyond today itself. It has been a fantastic experience receiving this message but the flesh is weak even if the spirit is strong. So without further fanfare, let's dive straight in!

Whenever Shemini Atseret arrives our thoughts ought to turn to the Millennium. This is the time when Christ will have returned and is dwelling among us, and His just Kingdom will become the only rule and authority allowed on earth. This will be a proper, rightous theocracy, which means God-Ruling. There won't be any deomocratic elections. All local rulers will be by appointment from Him and themselves be bound strictly to execute His righteous reign. There won't be any tyrants or those execercising power to ungodly gain.

Right now we are all sick to death of our politicians, their agendas, the steering élites who secretly rule us and the infernal military-industrial complex whose life-blood is war and who therefore want more of it to make profits. We are also sick to death of the corrupt medical and pharmaceutical industry whose cynical and murderous watchword is 'a patient cured is a cusomer lost' maiing it in their interests to keep us permanently ill. Millions of us are suffering and dying before our time because of this money-driven death cult of a society we are forced to live in which is why many are rightly leaving it and forming alternative societies running in parallel to Babylon. But to do so requires both a degree of experitise which we normally don't have and a long-term committment to succeed and minimise dependency on the Babylonian system. As Christians I think we are a little bit late on the scene but better late than never. I follow a number of such communities with great admiration such as the Woodlanders in Britain. Hopefully we can talk about this another time soon because there is an urgency now to get these established and to gain experience. Because once freedoms are lost, they are not easily regained, if at all.

Today I want to build up your hope as we consider what awaits us on this day after Yah'shua (Jesus) returns. This is what we should all be longing for. The key revelation we have on what this millennial world will look like for the children of the first resurrection is the description we are given of the Holy City in the Book of Revelation. The language is highly symbolic and easily misinterpreted by those more accustomed to thinking literally. The city is described both as a woman and as a giant cube with three gates on either side representing each of the 12 Tribes of Israel because these two images represent different aspects - the the gentle feminine and the continuing family unit which is how we know that both gender and marriage continue in the resurrection:

"I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from Elohim (God), prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of Elohim (God) is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and Elohim (God) Himself will be with them and be their Elohim (God). He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then He said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true'" (Rev.21:2-5, NIV).

About a year and a half ago we studied this topic in great depth in that portion of our big Book of Revelation study in Part 73, A New Heaven & a New Earth & the World After the Millenniumand in Part 74, The New Jerusalem so I am not going to cover that material here other than to remind you that the Giant Cube cannot possibly by literal as it is so big that it would destabilise the earth. So unless earth is going to be a lot bigger when it is renewed (personally I think it is going to shrink, but that's another story), we must not treat this description of the New Jerusalem or Holy City as anything other than a metaphor for a spiritual reality even if the location is this physical earth. So what is the purpose of visualising this new reality that isn't literal? To help our finite minds understand to some degree with a reality that belongs to the infinite. Nothing more. Yahweh is forced to use imagery that is familiar to us and that is what I shall be doing today only going a lot deeper, I hope. In this case, the imagery is of the Temple of Solomon with its cuboid Holy of Holies to represent absolute holiness and perfection, and twelve gates for each of the 12 Tribes of Israel telling us that tribes, clans, families and - most importantly - marriage still exist in this new world along with the social order of ancient Israel.

We know so little about what the resurrected state is going to be like. Most assume, as did the ancients, that things will more or less be as they are now only we will be immortal, pain free and very happy. That's really all the assurance we need at this stage because we are mostly far too busy grappling with mortality's challenges to concern ourselves with amounts to 'esoterica'. It's only with the industrial revolution and the technological explosion of the second half of the 20th century that we even have the time to contemplate such things. And even then for some, because of war or sickness, it's even then not possible. There's still great povery in the world, still slavery and still great ignorance as our ediucational system, which could potentially have served us all so well (and did once), has been reduced to training people to work in factories and their managers to manage them. And even those who do have much leisure time tend to fritter it all away in useless pursuits.

Life in mortality imposes many limitations on us but it is possible to rise up above them with some decent hard work. Then there's the bigger philosophical question, why did Yahweh make two creations - the one fallen and full of misery and the other restored and full of joy? You will often hear people complaining why Yahweh didn't create the better creation in the first place and skip the misery of the fallen one. Why not create Paradise on Day #1 and keep it that way? Man's agency aside, and I don't want to get into the importance of free will because we have had that conversation before especially in dealing with Calvinism, Islam and other deterministic belief systems, Yahweh created two universes because this one is essential preparation for us for the new one. In other worlds, it would be impossible for us to inhabit the New Creation without first passing through this old and corrupt one.

And in case you think the New Creation Paradise is going to be a restoration of the old one that Adam and Eve inhabited, it isn't. The Paradise that Adam & Eve inhabited compared to the New Creation Paradise that awaits us is a bit like comparing Kindergarten to University. Knowing what we do now - and we shall always retain what we learned down here - we would be bored stiff returning to Adam's world. Yes, it would be nice to play there a while in the same way we enjoy playing with our literal children, but we wouldn't want to do it forever. Children need what they need, and adults need what they need. We would not be content simply eating fruits and nuts and gardening for eternity. Just as there was a Paradise for immature spiritual children, so there is a Paradise for mature, adult human beings.

That's one thing. But there's another which we discussed briefly last time at Sukkot and as we have discussed at great length at other times in the past (see the websites on Time and Hell for a glimpse). Remember, the reality that follows this world doesn't just contain that perfect, glorified world which is the inheritance of the Torah-obedient, Christ-trusting childen of the first resurrection, but another less glorious one for the disobedient believers and yet a third, with a vast number of divisions catering for such folks, an even less glorious one for the disobedient, unsaved too. How these are all positioned relative to one another we don't know, beyond our having been told how those in these different spheres 'see', and interact with, those of other glories, if at all. Just as ants get on with their lives in their anthills doing what they do oblivious to our world, so those in the lesser glories will do something similar, one supposes, comparitively speaking. What lies beyond and above their own lesser spheres will be of no interest to them because they simply won't be able to comprehend anything above and beyond their sphere of resurrection reality. So they won't be sitting around feeling sorry that they didn't inherit this or that because 'this or that' will be utterly meaningless to them, much as our own life and experience of Christ is utterly meaningless to the unsaved. They will be content with all they have because it's all they will ever know, and have ever known. You don't miss what you've never had and any description of another reality will just be words, much like 'heaven' is to us right now beyond what we can imagine. They will at least be grateful not to be in the inferno they previously inhabited for a season. [2]

The New Creation to come is currently beyond our comprehension. We are like ants in this comparsion too. Yet we can comprehend certain things. If we are to live back in the presence of Elohim (God) again as Adam and Eve did, then we shall require considerable acclimatisation. Gone will be our primordial innocense this time. Yet we are already being prepared. We can, and do, experience Elohim (God) in a limited way down here - in a way sufficient for us to navigate this life in faith. According to the Bible, our trials and troubles prepare us to partake of a kingdom we wouldn't otherwise be equipped for otherwise. We appear 'peculiar' to non-believers because we are preparing for something that is entirely beyond their ken, and will remain unknowable until they are born again to see as we see, and so respond to life in the way we respond. We live in a world alien to theirs, and though we once inhabited theirs to different degree and can understand much of theirs, ours might as well be science fiction to them or utterly 'other-worldly'. And though many try to force their way into seeing the way we see (cp. Mt.11:12), they cannot, which often frustrates and angers them.

It's like me and mathematics - I so much wanted to do physics but mathematics was an imponderable to me, and though I tried and tried, I ended up frustrated and disappointed. Today I can understand a lot more physics than I did back then because I have learned an alternative language - I sometimes 'see' in pictures what mathematicians see in numbers and letters and as the German chemist Kekulé did when he finally solved the structural formula for the hexagonal benzene molecule thanks to a dream he had of a snake swallowing its tail. The language the apostle John uses in the Book of Revelation is such a language - the language of artists and of seers. And 'speaking' that language sometimes enables you to 'see' realities that mathematicians cannot, much to their frustration. This is the difference I occasionally make reference to when I speak about left-and right-brainedness. Our gifting seems to be predominantly in one more than the other. Very rarely to you encounter someone who can exist in both comfortably.

The language of the Ruach (Spirit) has to be taught you directly by Yahweh Himself through the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit). No human being can do it. This is one of the many reasons I reject the babbling of the so-called 'tongues'-speakers because many of them have been taught this by an instructor. My wife was and had to repeat gibberish phrases until it 'flowed'. I've seen people like Sid Roth do this on his TV program called It's Supernatural. Others, who are more suggestive, seem to just pick it up on the psychic airwaves, as it were, or just by listening to others babble, the same way parrots and little children pick things up. What you listen to - demons, the flesh/psyche or Yahweh - is what you learn to 'pick up' and 'tune into' through experience. Sadly most believers cannot tell the difference including (and especially) pentecostals and charismatics (not everyone, but most). But not all receive revelation the way John the apostle did. [3]

So whilst in our mortal bodies we have a limited ability to visualise other dimensions other than our own. This is a good thing. If we sometimes get frustrated that we don't hear Yahweh it's because if this were something automatic we would be bombarded with extra-dimensional or trans-dimensional forces from demons, our own chaotic psyches and the chaotic psyches of other people around us (what people call being 'psychic'). No thank you! What a nightmare if we could see and hear all that was going on in other people's minds, let alone demons'! Praise Yahweh we are limited, forcing us to test everything with both halves of our brain, the way Scripture teaches - "Prove all things" is the way the King James Version puts it (1 Thess.5:21, KJV) or better, "test everything" (NLT). That implies work and most people - including the vast majority of believers - are too lazy to 'test everything' - they're rather take the word of someone else. That attitude is probably the greatest reason for ignorance and delusion in the Body of Christ. They are too bone idle. Before the 'lack of education' excuse could be made but not any more. And you all know what the Book of Proverbs says about the lazy and idle (e.g. Prov.24:23; 19:15; 29:13).

I know what I know because I test, test, test. All the time. Lots of times and in different ways from a variety of angles because every view enables you to see the sobject differently. People once thought there were pyramids on Mars (as I did) when looking from above but when seen from a different perspective they were clearly just regular mountains. That's one boon of my scientific training. I test both supernatural experiences and theology using my left brain or intellect which processes facts, and I test with my right brain which processes more abstract, 'big picture' things. The apostle John was very right-brain, Paul, definitely left. Paul was one of the greatest intellectuals of his day, the first Christian theologian, and he's still misinterpreted and misunderstood. John was undoubtedly the culmination of the nevi'im (prophets), seers and revelators of both the Old and New Covenants as his Book of Revelation demonstrates. He thought in pictures, which is my preferred way too. Father trained me up early on John's writings which was very much in the tradition of the Hebrew nevi'im (prophets), as the Remnant must be, for whom the Spirit of Elijah or Ruach Eliyah is essential.

Paul, on the other hand, was trained both in the way of the Greeks and the Hebrew prophets so when he writes, he writes as a Greek or a Helenised Jew. That was essential so the Gentiles could understand the Gospel when he presented it. I was brought up in the classical Greek tradition in England, like Pauline scholar N.T.Wright, so I understand it, but Yahweh progressively weaned me off it through the Johannine School. The division between Evangelicals and Messianics largely represents this Greek-Hebrew mindset division, a reason they often clash because they don't understand each other, even though both present perfectly legitimate ways of approaching the Gospel that reflect Right- and Left-Brainedness, respectively. Training believers to use both is the great challenge if ever the New Testament is to be divided or interpreted rightly.

Now it's more complex that that, obviously, since, as I said, we don't shut down one hemisphere of the brain to use the other one exclusively, but there can be no doubt that one side tends to dominate in most people, making the left dominant (conscious/male) and the right recessive (unconscious/female), or vice versa, a reason men tend on balance operate more by conscious reason and women by unconscious instinct or 'gut feelings'. That's why the two halves of our body look different, particularly the two sides of our face and the two palms of our hands. We are asymmetrical. If you've ever seen photogarphs were the two halves are separated, duplicated, and one half mirrored and then glued to the orginal halves, you'll find two different types of 'you'. It's an interesting subject because this is how creativity and imagination work in our setup by the Creator! The more asymmetric the more creative we tend to be. So it's sad, I think, when women especially think this is 'bad' and elect for cosmetic surgery to 'balance the two sides up! It's also the reason for divinely appointed gender differences as women tend to be far more at home in the right hemisphere and men in the left, a reason we're often mysteries to one another, at least until we probably know one another.

Torah-based believers tend to be more male left hemisphere-orientated and Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) believers tend to be more female right hemisphere-orientated. Picture the left brain as male Torah and the right as female Ruach (Spirit) and I think you'll see why messianics and evangelicals often fail to understand one another. They are both right. That's why true believers must learn to sing both left-brain and right-brain parts of the divine melody and why marriage is the main enabler when it comes to acquiring that skill. Hence John described then as "[singing] the song of Moses the servant of Elohim (God) and [singing] the song of the Lamb" in the Book of Revelation (Rev.15:3, NIV). And we know these aren't two different groups of people singing different songs but one people singing one because we're given the lyrics:

"Great and marvelous are Your deeds,
Yahweh-Elohim Almighty.
Just and true are Your ways,
King of the æons (ages).
Who will not fear You, O Yahweh,
and bring glory to Your Name?
For You alone are qadosh (holy, set-apart).
All nations will come
and worship before You,
for Your righteous acts have been revealed"
(Rev.15:3-4, NIV).

So can you see another reason, now, why it is written that "the man is not without the woman, or the woman without the man" (1 Cor.11:11) and why "man is not from woman, but woman from man" (1 Cor.11:8, NKJV) because as husband he is the head, and why the dominant male part of the song is the song of Moses (who revealed the Father's Torah) and the the second female part of the song is the song of the Lamb (not because He is female but because He is in 'female', subjective position to the Father)? Equally, mortal man is birthed by mortal woman (his mother) so the inter-dependency is complete and why believers are born again of the female Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit)? Can you see the divine harmony and tavnith (pattern) in it all? I could go on, but you get my meaning, I hope, and are seeing the greater picture, and why marriage is grounded in creation itself and why it must be a part of the eternal resurrection world. This comes simultaneously with the underdstand that the Elohim- or Godhead is a Divine Family.

So, to recap, Christianity's two creations are radically different, in some ways like the functionality of the two sides of our brain - they exist for two radically different purposes. The first is temporal, the second, eternal. And they do not overlap or intersect unless you have been born again in which case you have a partial overlap and are experiencing, as it were, a "deposit" (pledge, token, 'earnest' - KJV) or bikkurum (firstfruits) of the resurrection life-to-come (2 Cor.1:22; 5:5: Eph.1:14). That is how we bring the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth - by manifesting Elohim (God) through our spirits. We can't inhabit the fullness of the New Creation until the present one is fully removed from existence:

"I (Paul) consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the Beni Elohim (sons of God) to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of Elohim (God).

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits (bikkurim) of the Ruach (Spirit), groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently" (Rom.8:18-25, NIV; cp. Rev.20-22).

Not only do regenerated believers here introduce the life and power of this New Creation temporarily (while they are alive on earth) but understand that the Millennium is but the intermediate stage of the coming of the New Creation. The New Jersualem is the New Creation but contained within the boundaries of the Holy Land much as the Mosaic Temple contained a little bit of the ehavenly glory on earth during the time of the Old Covenant. There's a lot of confusion about this in Christian circles. Not until the end of the Millennium does the whole planet dissolve and is replaced with a new resurrection world (2 Peter 3:10). My understanding is that the whole of the Holy Land will be cordoned off in this way and yet its influence will be powerfully felt planet-wide. Broadly speaking, there will be two groups of people on earth during the Millennium, the resurrected and unresurrected, the latter being those who are born here who must be tested like all mortals, hence this is why Satan is released for a short season at the end of the thousand years before being permanently locked away from this world and the New Creation as a whole. What his fate is, along with the demons, I do not know, and neither am I very concerned to be honest.

This first Creation is, if I might borrow Hugh Ross's words, "the best possible realm to encourage as many people as possible to choose something far better: an eternal relationship with the Source of all goodness. This creation also equips and trains individuals to receive the rôles, rewards, pleasures, and relational fulfilments of the new creation. It's the best possible place to bring about, part of that preparation, a rapid conquest of anything less than perfect goodness, and that of course includes evil" [1].

The New or Second Creation, unlike this old first one, is perfect, meaning that neither evil not anything less than perfect goodness will ever exist there...that is what the Holy City or New Jerusalem is. Yet no limitation restricts anyone's free will, no matter what the Calvinists falsely tell you. As a result, pure, divine love without limits can, and will, be expressed which is impossible in this creation. We do our best and we try, try, and try again when we mess up. We're being trained for the life to come and without it we would be unprepared and therefore unqualified. So never think this world is unimportant. It's vital, just not the final destination. All our interpersonal relationships will be qadosh or holy, including and especially holy echad marriage in its fullness, which is at the pinnacle of love, which is why Yahweh uses eternal marriage as a metaphor for His relationship with us, as the allegorical Bride.

With that thought in mind, we'll end there for now and return to Part 2 in due course.

In the next two parts of this Shemini Atseret presentation, in which we must do some reviewing of fresh concepts you've learned over the years, I want to show you something new - something to inspire you - even though it's not that new as I have been hinting at it for years, and especially more recently. For though, like Israel and the Body of Christ, this rightly-related humanity in Christ is portrayed by John as a woman in the Book of Revelation, she is also two women on the next level down, much like the two halves of our brain. And the two cerebral hemispheres, though right next to each other and apparently a single unit, they are actually clearly separated and are connected by what in medical jargon we call the pons, which in Latin means 'bridge'. It's what connects the two halves together making for one 'brain' or whole 'person' mentally-speaking. For as anatomy shows us, we are both 'one' person and 'two' halves which are in constant 'conversation' with one another like an aeroplane with two pilots: a captain and a co-pilot. These two halves we respectively call 'Eden' (after the first Paradise of Adam & Eve) and 'Astara' which is a Greek word meaning 'star'. Together they represent the 'New Paradise' of the resurrected elect. They are linked together, as our two brain halves are, just as the Holy City consists of Eden linked to Astara - a Garden-City. The apostle Peter wrote:

"And we have the word of the nevi'im (prophets) made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star (Gk. aster) rises in your hearts" (2 Peter 1:19, NIV).

Who is this "morning star"? Well, not Satan who is a counterfeit morning star (Is.14:12) though he was of that stellar fellowship once before he fell, but "the Offspring of David", who is Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), who in the same verse is likewise called "the bright Morning Star" (Rev.22:16, NIV). The Greek for 'star' here is Aster and 'Astara' is the Bride of Christ, specifically, the female counterpart of the Bridegroom, or at least one of the two parts of it. Whereas Eden represents the initial innocence of our first parents, and is a reflection of Yahweh the Father in the Garden Paradise before the Fall, Astara represents the fullness and maturity of the firstborn believer in Messiah having passed through the vicissitudes of the Old Creation and is recused by the Son, and so reflects Him. We always have those two aspects - Eden and Astara - reflecting our relationship to the Father and the Son, hence, 'Eden-Astara' which I first introduced you to in my 15th and final sermon series because this teaching is the culmination and apex of my work of restoration.

The image of Yahweh-Yah'shua and the Eden-Astara principle is to be found throughout the Sciptures as Jerusalem and Samara, Judah and Israel (to whom the Father was allegorially 'wed') and also Jacob with His two wives Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, who are also sisters. This picture was marred only by sin - the favouritism of Jacob and the resultant rivalry between Leah and Rachel - which we often find expressed within ourselves as the rivalry between the left and right sides of our brain when they are not echad or one. We see this artificial division between the rather bland but faithful, rational, organised Leah-side which focusses on details, mathematics, science and the like - and the faithful, arty Rachel-side which focusses on the bigger picture and is passionate, carefree and romantic (which carnal Jacob fell for without recognising the blessedness and necessity of the Leah side too).

But how, you may ask, do Zilpah (the maid of Leah) and Bilhah (the maid of Rachel) who became the third and fourth wives of Jacob, fit into this picture? Are they another layer of meaning? Well, yes and no. These were pilegesh or servant-wives without inheritance rights where as Leah and Rachel were ishshah wives with full inheritance rights. Each brain hemisphere is itself a compound but let's keep things simple or we shall drown in too much information and miss the bigger picture. Simply stated, the both of the two hemispheres are made up of two types of tissue:

• 1. The thin outer layer of grey matter known as the Cerebral Cortex and is responsible for thinking, emotion and sensation and correspond to Leah and Rachel; and
• 2, The larger inner layer of white matter which are immune cells that fight infection, which are servant cells to the grey matter, and correspond to Zilpah and Bilhah.

We find the same second-level symbolsm in the New Testament with Martha and Mary, Martha being the practical housewife-type and Mary the more dreamy enthusiast for Yah'shua's (Jesus') teachings. Martha and Mary particularly teach us something about the right order of these two dispositions in different situations. In the situation where Yah'shua (Jesus) was teaching in Bethany, Mary's attitude was the correct one and took priority, Martha earning a gentle rebuke from the Saviour from being so 'busy' with less spiritual activities. But when Lazarus, their brother and Yah'shua's (Jesus') dear friend, died, it was Martha who had the right attitude toward faith and the resurrection - while Mary remained at home complaining in her grief and lack of understanding, Martha demonstrated her particular spiritual strength. So you see, Eden and Astara are both important and equal, but one presides over the other when either the latter is out of order or they are performing different tasks. Sometimes Innocence teaches us, sometimes Maturity. Like a comet-head pulling a beautiful tail behind it, so sometimes Mary leads, and sometimes Martha.

> To give one other illustration: Peter was functionally the head of the Messianic Community (Church) but when he was out of order, Paul had to call him to task and restore him to a right mind. You'll recall this was over Peter forgetting Gentiles and Jews were now one family - for a while Peter refused to eat with Gentiles believers in order to appease Pharisee converts still stuck in their old Talmudic ways. You can read about this Antioch incident in Galatians 2:11-21.

Search the Scriptures and you will find this divine tavnith repeating again and again. When 10-tribed Israel was in apostacy, 2-Tribed Israel remained true...a bit longer. But when 2-tribed Judah apostacised even more thorougly than Israel, Judah's 'pot' was smashed (because it was hard and brittle and inflexible) whereas Israel's was yet soft and remouldable, meaning he was still humble enough to be teachable (Jer.18). We see exactly the same tavnith or pattern in Leah's and Rachel's two firstborn sons - Levi and Joseph, respectively. Leah's was the elder (and therefore as the firstborn overall possessed the leadership rights after his father) but committed grievous sins so Joseph was appointed in his place. That is why Israel-Joseph-Ephraim is the tribal head of the New Covenant work (elsewhere I pointed out that nearly all the 12 apostles were Benjamites like Paul, Rachel's younger - she died giving birth to him), so once again we see the Divine Hand. Judah was reserved to bring forth the Messiah before being dismissed for spiritual adultery and appstacy, and Joseph-Ephraim held in reserve for the New Covenant with the calling to lead the Last Exodus and the Final Gathering. We don't have time to go into all the history now but the Book of Revelation course covers all of that and more.

This one key I am sharing with you today in greater detail than ever before will unlock so many Bible mysteries. Just as New Creation must be entirely separate from the Old Creation ultimately, so Judah was separated from apostate Israel, the latter called a "silly dove" in Hosea 7:11 (See Silly Dove: The Story of Ephraim & Israel). At that time Judah was in the right and Israel in the wrong. Now the rôles are being reversed for the Final Gathering even though Judah, deceived by pride, is up in arms about this and why Messianic Judaism, which is laced with so many false Talmudic teachings, must renounce his pride, stand aside and come under the proper Remnant authority of the House of Joseph.

Let's return to an earlier question I posed. Why didn't Yahweh just place Adam and Eve in the New Creation to start with? Because it seems that unless humanity is exposed to, and tested by, the greatest possible temptation, which is the most compelling attraction of evil in the First Creation, that the rewards, pleasures and relationships of the New Creation cannot be made both perfect and permanent. And to be trapped in a world forever without that overcoming would be hell.

Dr.Hugh Ross, whom I also mentioned earlier, unpacks this Plan of Salvation in 15 stages in one of the best, most accurate and most thorough summaries [5] of Bible doctrine I have ever seen which I hope will be a useful teaching tool that you can use in your witness of the Gospel - I think those of a scientific leaning will appreciate it most of all. I have slightly adapted it:

• 1. Yahweh created the physical universe of matter, energy, space and time. He also created human beings in their pre-existant spiritual form along with the malakim (angels) though we're not told the precise time or in what order. What we do know is that by the time the earth's foundations were laid, we were all present, when as it is written, "the morning stars sang together and all the b'nei elohim (sons of Elohim/God) shouted for joy ('praised Me in a loud voice' - LXX)" (Job 38:7, NRSV). Recall that the apostle Peter describes the pre-incarnate Christ as "the Morning Star" (2 Peter 1:19) where 'morning' means primordial or the earliest cycle of time;

• 2. Yahweh "laid the foundations of the earth" (Job 64:4; Ps.102:25) and over a very long period of time [6] miraculously shaped the planet and created hundreds of millions of different life forms. He used all of this time and a miraculous orchestration of its timing and features to prepare an optimally suitable place for humans, building up rich reservoirs of biodeposits for human civilisation;

• 3. The most powerful being that Yahweh created, the archangel Heylel or Lucifer (Satan), chose to rebell against Elohim's (God's) authority and reject His love. Satan enticed one-third of the angelic host to join his rebellion (Rev.12:1-9);

• 4. On earth, Yahweh created Adam's physical body and then placed him in a beautiful, bountiful paradise, the Garden of Eden (Gen.2:7-8);

• 5. In Eden, Yahweh created the physical body of Eve from Adam's own 'rib' (tsela) or DNA and brought her to Adam (Gen.2:21-22);

• 6. Yahweh allowed Satan to enter Eden in order to test Adam and Eve (Gen.3:1);

• 7. Satan tempted Eve first to distrust and then defy her Creator (Gen.3:1-6). Eve, in turn, tempted Adam to distrust and defy Yahweh (Gen.3:6,12). In their act of defiance, Adam and Eve incurred "spiritual death" (Gen.3:7-8; Rom.5:12-19). They attempted to hide from Elohim (God) and experienced the vastness of the gulf between His glory and their vainglory, a gap they could never cross on their own;

• 8. Yahweh took away the Tree of Life and ejected Adam and Eve from Eden. Having experienced spiritual death, they and their descendents would suffer physical death (Rom.5:12-19). Their labour and relationships involved intensified pain, work, and wasted time (Gen.3:16-19);

• 9. Yahwenh shortened the maximum potential life spans of humanity from 900-plus years to about 120 years (Gen.6:3);

• 10. Yahweh gave humanity a moral written code, the Torah, to compliment the one already placed within the conscience of every person (Rom.2:14-15). These moral laws served to define goodness and expose the evil within every human heart, proving to all individuals their inadequacy to deal with, and conquer, their own propensity for wrongdoing;
  

• 11. At the precise monent of His choosing, the Creator of the universe confined Himself to human flesh, allowed Himself to be born of a woman, and grow up to manhood in a gloabl crossroads, Israel. He lived there for about 33 years. Yah'shua (Jesus) of Nazareth, fully Elohim (God) and fully human, served as a living, breathing example of moral perfection. He revealed His deity not only in words but also in expression of His power over the forces of nature. Then, through His death on a cross, He made atonement for all of humanity's moral failures, all passive and active defiance of Elohim (God). In rising bodily from the dead, He showed His sacrifice had been accepted and proved the tangible reality of a realm beyond the cosmos, even beyond physical death;

• 12. After Yah'shua's (Jesus') resurrection and ascension, Yahweh sent the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) to personally indwell individuals who humbly receive Christ's payment and forgiveness of their own best efforts and worst deeds (past, present and future), turning away from self-rule and submitting to Elohim (God) as the first and final authority in life (Jn.15:5-15; 1 Pet.3:21; Eph.1:13-14). With the consent of the surrendered individual, the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) began the process of transforming that person's mind, heart and character to bring that person into a deepening and widening relationship with Yahweh, our Heavenly Father (Rom.12:1-2);

• 13. The Creator prepares a new creation for all people who choose His offer of forgiveness and accept the terms of an eternal relationship with Him, including consent to be transformed by His Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) (Jn.14:2; Rev.21-22);

• 14. Once the full number of individuals willing to receive Yahweh's offer of forgiveness and resurrection transformation has been reached at the end of the Millennium, Yahweh permanently moves them from this (old) creation and removes anything less than perfect goodness (which of course includes all evil) from their presence (Rom.8:18-25; Rev.20-22). Those people who receive Yahweh's gift enter His presence, an entirely different realm. Those who reject Yahweh's offer are forever sealed off from the highest glory, are isolated in an equally unimaginable place where, according to Revelation 20:12-13, expression of the evil in their hearts will be restrained, to whatever degree is necessary, by torment [7]; and

• 15. Yahweh brings all those who choose life into the new creation, the new habitat where they will dwell with Elohim (God) and one another for all eternity, free forever from sin and its consequences or even such a possibility (Jn.14:1-4; Rev.20-22) [8][5].

The story that is told here is a summary of the whole Bible narrative. It answers clearly and succinctly the three big questions everybody asks in some form or another at some time during their life:

• 1. Where did I come from?
• 2. Why am I here? and
• 3. Where am I going?

Atheism's answers bring no solace to the soul: I came from star dust, I have no purpose, and I will cease to exist when I die. The soul demands something more, and indeed could not - would not - make a demand for answers to such questions were there no built-in need to understand the meaning to life. We would just get on with life and adopt a cynical attitude such as 'Life sucks, and then you die. Period' if I might borrow the American vernacular for a moment. But that's not at all what life is about and the innermost part of man rebells violently against such a thought.

If you'd like me to reduce life's purpose into its simplest terms it's essentially a story about relationship building and maintenance with Elohim (God) and man, with human marriage it's highest expression which is in turn used by the Creator as a metaphor for the kind of relationship that should exist between man and Elohim (God). For any individual to possess security in a relationship with their Creator, Yahweh-Elohim, that relationship must be tested. The more arduous the testing, the greater the security. To ensure the possibility of eternally secure relationships, we see that individuals endure the most difficult tests possible.

Marriage is never an easy ride. Those who think it is, or will be, soon discover it's the very opposite. All that men and women have to learn about living together, possessing as they do very different temperaments, is the same we have to learn about living a life with the Creator, which is our ultimate purpose. All other human relationships stem from learning the lessons of marriage one way or another. That is why we underline this truth so emphatically in this ministry and fellowship.

In Eden, Adam and Eve lacked any assurance of that relationship with their Heavenly Father, Yahweh, or with one another. There was no assurance that their relationship with Eden's creatures would remain pure either. You see, we not only have to learn how to relate to Yahweh, with our spouses and with our children, but we have to relate to animals too. Are you surprised? Yes, the way we treat animals says a lot about our ability or inability to form human relationships. That's why Father's Torah protects them so that we don't abuse them either. They too are to be allowed periods of rest, just as we are commanded to take sabbath rests too. To be able to establish relationships with one another, Yahweh gives us agency - free will, free choice. Why is human free will so crucial? Because without free agency, love is impossible. Imposed love is fake love. This is a reason why so many who deny freedom of choice - they're called 'determinists' amongst other things - tend to be so emotionally stunted. It's why they can sometimes be so undevelopped and immature in their relationships. To be truly free, though, means that a person's will must be tested by deliberate choices. That means free will is awfully risky. Free will meant that at any time humans had the potential to go their own way, do their own thing, and worship something or someone less worthy than the true Elohim (God).

There's a reason Father left Eden's gate wide open. He made certain that Satan, and not some lesser demon, approached Adam and Eve to tempt them. Deliberately - on purpose - Yahweh permitted Satan to tempt His own Son, Yah'shua (Jesus), as He was about to embark on His public ministry (Mt.4:1-11). Similarly, Elohim (God) deliberately allows every human to be exposed to evil and its source in the spiritual realm. That's why Paul explained:

"...our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph.6:12, NIV).

As the world gets more and more evil, more and more people are realising this. And though his Buddhist religion acknowledges no personal devil, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, came to understand this when as far back as 1949 he came to see the truth of the personal evil that lay behind the Maoist communism that ravaged and occupied his country. Even secular journalists are starting to see it more and more now as in penultimate judgment the world goes through massive exposure. In allowing Satan to beguile humanity, Yahweh gave individuals the most difficult of all possible tests. No created being anywhere in His creation is more powerful, appealing or clever than Satan. If with Heavenly Father's help an individual can overcome this great temptation, he or she can rest assured for all eternity that never again will there be a more difficult challenge than the one already overcome. Do you understand now why, at the end of the Millennium, Satan has to be overcome, not to test the resurrected souls living then but their children born to them, and how this is one more proof that resurrected persons are yet married and that they can, and do, continue to have children for a thousand year-long season.

Only at the end of the Millennium is the full compliment of souls born and the pre-existence world of spirits emptied of unembodied human beings. That's why. Otherwise the Scriptures make no sense, contradict each other and cannot be harmonised. You see, being a resurrected being isn't at all what you at first supposed, is it? At least for the Millennium resurrected people can have mortal children which means that resurrected persons aren't so 'other worldly' as to be unrecongisable comparitively speaking. It's why Mary thought the resurrected Messiah in Gethsemane was an ordinary mortal gardener. Nor does this align with the false doctrine that Catholic-driven orthodox Christianity has taught you about everyone being single in the eternities. What about at the end of the Millennium? No more children will be born after that, but will we still be married? If not then the allegories of Yahweh being married to Israel, and Christ and the Messianic Bride, make no sense and break down. And if that happens, then Israel must go her own way without a Husband, and the Bride of Christ without a Messianic Bridegroom. No, the allegory is an eternal one because Elohim (God) is eternal. We remain married, yes, but when Satan is finally released, no more children are born or raised...or tempted by Satan again once properly tested.

I speak only, of course, of the children of the first resurrection. Anyone not living in the presence of Elohim (God) - in a lesser kingdom liked by Paul to the brightness of the sun and stars - must therefore be single too (1 Cor.15:35-44). Marriage is that precious, that valable, and therefore full of temptations and challenges too, like life itself. We live in a world where moral freedom has never been so great and where successful marriage has never been so rare. So let's be real - let's not skirt around reality. Life for every human being is an arduous and enduring struggle against temptation but the struggle is absolutely worth it if we endure because a temptation overcome confers great strength of character. Jacob renamed Israel, after wrestling with the malak (angel) at Peniel, was a completely different man to the carnal Jacob before (Gen.32:22-32). He became spiritual, utterly trustworthy, a just and fair husband and father without favourites, but the lesson took a long time to learn. There's no escaping that school of learning. Thereafter, when he was renamed Israel (meaning 'Struggling with God' until an overcomer), he became the model of a Messianic Israelite, an example for all of us, and his 12 sons are immortalised as the names of the 12 Gates of the New Jerusalem, depecting 12 perfected character-types. Unless a person accepts help from the all-compasisonate Creator in overcoming his carnal nature - Heavenly father who is eager to help - that individual is doomed to fail. In passing life's most difficult test - choosing whom to trust and follow amid the most powerful distractions possible - an individual gains assurance that never again will he face a test any more demanding. His choice is secure.

And if you've ever wondered what the true assurance of salvation is, that's it. It's not the cowardice of the lie of determinism that Calvinism proclaims, it's not the grotesque phantom called 'Once Saved, Always Saved' which is the cheapest, 'woke'-ist counterfeit form of salvation Satan ever invented. True assurance of salvation comes in overcoming temptation. I can't emphasise that enough. Paul said:

"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And Elohim (God) is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it" (1 Cor.10:13, NIV).

"...forgive us our sins, for (because) we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one" (Lk.11:4, NKJV).

So what exactly does that mean? Why would He instruct us to pray, "lead us not into temptation" (KJV) as though Yahweh might actually do so without our first asking Him not to? You have doubtless heard many responses to that question, which you'll agree is a vitally important one to answer. Are Catholics right when they claim it's a request that Elohim (God) would not permit them to be tempted by sin...which is totally contrary to why we are here on earth!? Not until we understand that this is a Hebraic expression that means, 'When we are tempted, Master (Lord), help, equip and enable us to flee temptation' through the power of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) as one who is spiritually regenerated or born again. Without divine, supernatural help, temptation is hard to resist at times. Without being saved, it is impossible to fully resist, and we will wear ourselves out trying. Once tempted and compromised, we are no longer a bother to the Adversary who then moves on to others who spiritually threaten his hegemony. That's why sinning sometimes feels like a relief because the Enemy moves on seein as we are disarmed. He may return to complete his corruption at a later point in time so we need not suppose that that is the end of his dealing with us. Thus the incentive to overcome is that much greater.

There is a discipline involved in this that I feel obliged to explain very clearly. The explanation I have given you only comes through understanding the 'big picture'. Spiritual transformation is a gradual process, a reason why even regnerated believers make so many mistakes and yield to temptation in life. So if you are sincerely trying to understand and do what's right, know that Father understands and accepts that. The important thing is to have a right attitude and whilst this is not an excuse to procrastinate a full overcoming, it is equally not an opportunity to be lax and makes excuses. If Yahweh shows us mercy, we must show mercy to ourselves too. If He is strict, we must be strict too. It's a question of integrity, and integrity progressively grows out of maturity.

The gradual transformation of desires and motivations takes place when one bows to Christ as the Master of Life and invites the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) to metamorphose or transform us into the image of Christ (Rom.12:1-2; 1 Cor.2:14-16; Col.3:10), like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, which is another assurance of eternal security. Our initial satvation is secure if we sincerely have this ongoing attitude of mind and heart! There is no loss of free will in the process of giving one's life to Christ. The new believer continues to execise free agency in either cooperating with, or resisting, the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) in the transformation process.

What results when you so cooperate with the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is the emergence of a pattern - a tavnith in Hebrew - a pattern of increasing consistency in obedience to Yahweh, and thus a growing reflection of godly, Torah-compliant character. The human side of Yah'shua's (Jesus') character was defined by what? By His perfect obedience to His Father's Torah. If we, by our surrender to Him, acquire His character, and if we are enabled supernaturally by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), what kind of character will that look like? Torah-compliant, of course, the same as the Saviour's! We would come to resemble a Hebrew in Christ in nature, in temperament, in behaviour, in attitude. Very simple to understand. The apostle describes this effect as growing in conformity to Christ's will (Rom.7:15-8:17, 12:1-2; Eph.1:11-14; Phil.2:13; Col.1:28-29)...which, of course, is His - and our - Heavenly Father's will. It won't contradict Yahweh's mitzvot/commandments, obviously. And if it does, then there is a mischievous spirit somewhere in our spiritual mix that must be exposed and cast out. Again, obviously. By conscious, active choice, the captive makes such a practice of obedience that Christ's will in his or her life becomes strong enough to overcome the tug of personal autonomy with all its illusions.

The reverse is also true. One can also become 'captive to evil' and to sin by making a long-term and consistent pattern of rejecting Yahweh and His ways (Rom.7:15-25; 2 Tim.2:22-26). Subjecting yourself to a church or messianic synagogue with it's own manmade rules is one sure way of becoming incrementally habituated - and thus led captive - into religious sin, with a darkened character and dulled conscience the fruit of such behaviour. For with a dulled conscience, sin starts to cease looking like 'sin' and to appear 'normal'. Truth can seem ourtageous and even disgusting at times, because of a defiled conscience, with one error leading to another error, and another, and another until one is left with layer upon layer of error leading to ever greater hostility to Elohim (God) and His ways. That's how false religious tradition progressively arises. For instance, orthodox (read 'Catholic) Christianity's redefinition of biblical marriage has led to not only various kinds of sexual perversion and the corruption of women through feminism but also to the demonisation of men which we see today happening in 'progressive', 'woke' Christianity. Little wonder our image of Elohim (God), which comes through various marriage metaphors, gets badly distorted, 'love' gets redefined, and we start imagining Him to be something He isn't. This in turn leads people away from Elohim (God) and into false religion or atheism.

A second reason that evil can never exist or be expressed in the New Creation is that all new creation inhabitants will be captive to Christ's will. Like I said, though, this does not mean that those who enter the New Creation have relinquished their freedom. Because of the manner in which Yahweh exposes humanity to evil and offers His assistance to overcome it in this present old creation, evil will no longer be possible in the new realm. Yahweh's plan is to use the universe to release those who choose life with Him to a new level of free will and love far beyond anything ever experienced in earthly life. It's the same in Holy Echad Eternal Marriage. When a wife fully surrenders to her husband, as she is required to in Christ (Eph.5:22-24), she does not lose her freedom, in exactly the same way, because she experiences a freedom and love far beyond the wildest experience of any worldly marriage, something that I explain at length in the Book of Eden-Astara for those obedient, faithful and loving ones called to that kind of wholeness and perfection. The apostle Peter wrote:

"Praise be to the Elohim (God) and Father of our Master (Lord) Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ)! In His great mercy He (Yahweh) has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through emunah (faith) are shielded by Elohim's (God's) power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:3-5, NIV).

This would be a good place to end Part 2 for the moment. We shall return to the themes of this second presentation and take them even further next time.

In the third and final part of this the longest Shemini Atseret presentation I have ever made, I shall attempt to complete this relatively new quadrant of the 'Big Picture' that I have been telling you about now for so long. I speak of our glorious future, of which Shemini Atseret is the first day - at least of the Millennial Æon (Age) sequal to the present Babylonian [dis]order. Understanding what the New Creation will be like, even if only in part, more thoroughly motivates us to live out the challenges of this mortal life in the Old Creation. It does me. A big mistake, though, is to want to leave this existence prematurely because we find it too burdensome. There have been times when I have wanted to close the book on this life and simply move to the next one but my many responsibilities and the love I feel for my family, friends and brethren down here makes me equally reluctant to part from them too until I have helped them all I can. You will remember the dilemma that Paul felt when he started thinking about these things and gave voice to them in his letter to the Philippians:

"I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Messiah Yah'shua (Christ Jesus) will overflow on account of me" (Phil.1:20-26, NIV).

I have to truthfully say that the more Yahweh reveals what the Millennial Age and the New Jerusalem will be like to me, the more I long for it. Yet seeing it also enables me to see my own imperfections and failings all the more starkly and this in turn persuades me to remain here, no matter the suffering involved, so that I may be better prepared and more worthy of the first resurrection. For none of us know exactly what our rewards will be even in the general sense until we draw our last breath. So breathing we must continue to do until we can breathe no more.

Down here we are confined within four space-time dimensions. This world is all we are familiar with and what distant memories of the pre-mortal world we may once have had...and I have only had a few tiny glimpses personally...the memory dims over time. So trying to fathom a world that has more than these four dimensions (I include time as the 4th)....and I am speaking principally about the end of the Millennium when heaven and earth fully merge together...the human mind cannot possibly form visual pictures of anything like that. Now, to be sure, inside the New Jerusalem, which at the end of the Millennium will encompass the whole earth when there are no longer any mortals living on its surface, will certainly be like the New Creation in its fullness, so those who are resurrected on the earth will be able experience this though to what extent I do not yet know. One supposes the resurrected will have a fuller comprehension than the as yet unresurrected millennial humans.

The fact that we cannot grasp five or more dimensions may explain why people struggle to envision the New Creation and themselves within it. We are so used to thinking in our limited way down here which we have grown more and more accustomed to. Newborn babies are still connected to the multi-dimensional pre-existential world for a short while because, I believe, there is still an opening in their skull - several, in fact, known as fontanelles. These are gaps of soft, membranous tissue where the skull bones still haven't fused. These allow the skull to change shape both during birth when the head is expelled from their mother's womb and after to allow the brain to grow further in size. There are two fontanelles in particular which I am sure you must have felt if you've been a parent, one in the front and one in the back, which are very fragile. The larger, diamond-shaped one is at the top-front of the baby's head which is the one we most commonly and unexpectedly come in contact with. I remember how surprised I was when I felt the anterior forntanelle in my firstborn daughter and was concerned that I not prod it by accident and injure her brain! (The membrane is actually pretty tough). There are those who believe that when these close the baby's memory of Yahweh and the life which they are aware of while it's open, slowly fades away as it closes. I am one of those, for reasons I don't have time to get into now.

Because we need to know something about the multi-dimensional resurrection world we will one day inherit - a world that differs only with the pre-existence in one important respect in that it is a physical resurrection world whereas the premortal world is purely spiritual (non-material) - Yahweh is forced to utilise our imaginations to conceptualise the world-to-come by means of comparisons with those things on earth that most closely resemble what is to come. Because of this gift He made us insatiably curious. We are driven to explore, discover and figure/work things out and - where our current experience fails us - to express these in metaphors and allegories such as we find saturating the Book of Revelation. This means we must tread carefully and not fall into the trap of being too literalistic (three-dimensionalistic, that is) always. There are no literal multi-headed and multi-eyed beasts such as we find in John's Apocalypse. Nor can we reconstruct an ancient spaceship, as one NASA engineer tried to do, from Ezekiel's Throne Room Vision. Nor do malakim or angels have literal wings, these being merely symbols of power with the freedom that power gives them to move in ways that we cannot, a power I believe we shall have too in the resurrection. This is for the same reason Yahweh does not have feathers, breasts, nostrils and other human and animal anatomical parts such as we find in the Psalms, even though at least one deluded British pentecostal 'prophet' who moved to America claims that He does. I think you know who I am talking about [9]. In any case, he disqualified himself to prophethood by falsely predicting that he would live to see the Second Coming of Christ. He's been dead for over a quarter of a century now, since 1998.

There is another gift Father has given us that is important to make mention of here. He has instilled in us a capacity to recognise and appreciate beauty and an intense desire to seek it out, something that makes absolutely no sense from a blind evolutionary point-of-view. Having done that, Yahweh went ahead and filled the universe with reflections of His majesty. And as Solomon testified, "He has made everything beautiful in its time" (Eccl.3:11, NKJV), and the true artist's pursuit of beauty in his paintings, sculptures and the like is evidence of this divinely originated passion for that which is lovely. It is one of those virtues that we are admonished to think on always by the apostle Paul, "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things" (Phil 4:8-9, NIV). We are admonished to pursue the lovely and the beautiful provided it is within the context of truth, nobility, righteousness and purity.

Not only did Solomon recognise beauty coming from Yahweh, but also adds a second essential component which I would add to Paul's list, for "He (Yahweh) has [also] put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out ('fathom' - NIV) the work that Elohim (God) does from beginning to end" (ibid., NKJV). If we humans, in spite of our education, wealth, technology and artistic abilities, cannot fully fathom or find out the elegance and beauty even in the Old Creation that surrounds us, how much more inconceivable is the splendour of the New Creation going to be! Having one or two briefest of glimpses myself, I can assure you it is incredible! I have scoured the works of artists to try and find something that even closely approaches this kind of celestial beauty that I have seen in visions and it's almost impossible, though I have found one or two, both realist Russian artists whom I doubt anyone has ever heard of because the world's idea of beauty has little or nothing to do with the kind Solomon and Paul spoke of. I have seen marriage in the New Creation too and if you think marriage at its best can be ecstatic here on earth - and it can, though few are able to maintain it for long - then as the Americans say, 'you ain't seen nothin' yet!' Both these artists are devoted to their work and have been given glimpses too, a husband-wife team, interestingly enough - I believe they inspired each other, always the best form of inspiration because there are certain kinds of inspiration that can be seen by both genders together in echad union.

Paul was all too aware of our limited Old Creation abilities. Quoting the navi (prophet) Isaiah, he cried out:

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what Elohim (God) has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Cor.2:9, NIV; cp. Is.64:3; 52:15)

"but Elohim (God) has revealed it to us by His Ruach (Spirit)" (1 Cor.2:10, NIV)!

And yet...and yet...Paul exhorts us to do all that we can to stretch our minds and strain our spiritual eyes toward that future so that we can build a sustaining hope. He explains how this hope is the best means to encourage one another and to motivate maturation and the development of godly character (Phil.3:7-4:1; 1 Thes.4:18; 5:19-24; 1 Tim.4:9-10; 6:11-16; Tit.2:11-14) and in so doing we may utterly repudiate all the false, superficial, flaccid, antinomian (lawless) gospels being preached in the world, like the lifeless 'Once Saved, Always Saved' deception which is one of the surest ways to spiritual stagnation, loss of beauty and a halting of spiritual growth in any believer's life. True, no mind can fully conceive of the magnificence of the New Creation, yet Yahweh has sprinkled generous glimpses of the life to come throughout both the Old and New Testaments. He has planted exciting clues in nature's book as well, a reason I am also such a passionate biologist because I am always discovering new truths in nature that reflect invisible spiritual realities through my understanding of divine tavnith (pattern).

And that includes our stretching our very minds - both the left and right halves! But first they must be awakened from their slumber. I'm sure you know that aspects of our minds are asleep at certain levels of functionality (speaking now of consciousness)? We use surprisingly little of our mental capacity and abilities at these higher levels, some people considerably less than others, usually from a lack of spiritual stimulation, even though on the surface it looks as though all of our brain is in constant use on an autonomous level. It's certainly busy, not silent as some claim, but that doesn't mean its full potential is being used. Indeed, without interest and commitment to chayyim (life) we lose consciousness and quickly fall asleep.

Worse, in some ways, we have a tendency to overdo one side of our brain and neglect the other - overstimulating one and anaesthetising the other - and so get out of balance. We're good at balancing diets now (the serious nutrition folks, that is) but not the two hemipsheres of our brain. Crudely put, the artistic tends to be prioretised to the detriment of the scientific, or the scientific at the expense of the artistic. That lack of balance soon becomes apparent in exaggerated behaviours. I am sure we have all encountered left-brained nerdy intellectual types who are away in their own world of facts and figures and wild right-brained arty types away in their world of pictures and grand designs, the two having little or no time for each other!

I remember as a young science student in my late teens at school and early 20's at university having quite an arrogant attitude toward actors, dancers, painters, singers and others because I detested their disorganised, lawless, bohemian lifestyles and disparaging lack of interest in science. I wasn't entirely nerdy though as I always had a passion for music which was my salvation in this matter. Indeed, a friend of mine once rebuked me for having so little literature in my growing library which then consisted of only two bookcases! I was stung at the time (partly because he was an arty-minded chemist which to me was a misnomer but also because his interest in acting was - how shall I put it...of the baser kind - but I resentfully took the criticism to heart and eventually did something about it. So I went along to a modern interpretation of a Shakespeare play with my friend together with his father (who was as nutty as his son), hated it, but in time was drawn to more traditional interpretations of the great writer. Inheriting an uncle's leather-bound collection of English Literature that included Shakespeare's works helped. I had one other interest too which necessarily combined left and right brains, namely, drawing maps and illustrating doctoral students' theses. This required great attention to detail but also placed demands on my artistic side to make the whole aesthetically beautiful. So I guess I wasn't entirely a nerd [10]. A similar interest in philately and reel-to-reel tape recorders reflect the need for attention to mechanical detail combined with the aesthetic. I have been interested to observe how these two sides have played out differently in my seven children and celebrate the diversity of their talents.

An American friend of mine at Oxford, who was doing his doctorate on the artwork of Anglo-Dutch painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, opened a wholly new world for me that was purely artistic. It was then I fell in love with the Victorian romantics. It was about the same time I developped a passion for photography which my wife says I have a good eye for. So as my right-brain began to progressively activate, gradually my left-brain opened up more and more to my right-brain and you might say a kind of 'romance' ensued. Perhaps some of you can understand that, because the two sides played off each other and began to appreciate each other. I have always viewed both halves as servants of each other, the one sometimes presiding, and then the other. I think of David and Jonathan in scripture, the many British comic acts (like Morcambe and Wise & the Two Ronnies who bounced their comedic art off each other quite brilliantly). I also think of some of the girls I knew growing up who had female best-friends they could not be separated from - they always went in two's - three's never, something that mystified me for a long time. Girls don't generally do well in uneven numbers, unlike Yahweh who arranges higher principles in triplets (Abraham-Isaac-Jacob)...but that's not a discussion for now.

I think also of Haguth and Sabea in our Books of Abraham through whom Yahweh revealed something of the mystery of the Seven Ruachot or Spirits to me and how they are related to each other in the heavenlies, a subject for some reason Christians never seem to have shown much of an interest in because of their failure to see that the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is both female and a compound unity of seven. They may note the 'seven spirits of Elohim (God)' or that Wisdom has seven pillars (Prov.9:1) in passing but it rarely registers because of the Greco-Roman way we view marriage in the West. Instead, they default to the idea of more abstract sevenfold qualities like the seven primary colours of the rainbow. Yet the sacred menorah has seven separate arms just as we have seven separate annual festivals, not one festival in seven phases, the seven women in Isaiah 4 and not one woman with seven different character traits, and the twelve sons of Jacob and not one son with one multi-coloured door leading into the Holy City on one side of the cube only, but four lots of three. Only the apostle John raises the matter of the Seven Ruachot (Spirits) of Elohim (God) in his Book of Revelation (1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6), albeit fleetingly and without explanation, but it grabbed my attention early on. I have been interested in compound unities for as long as I can remember, from sub-atomic particles to the mystery of the Elohimhead. The threefold one you find in the Elohimhead (Godhead) is so much more beautiful than the sterile all-male formulation of the Trinity doctrine that the early Greek Christians came up with. It got the Father and Son more-or-less right but flopped on the Holy Ghost except to accurately describe Her motherly impact on humans and vital rôle as instrument in spiritual regeneration and much more besides!. Indeed, the Eastern Orthodox Church has a tradition of the Ruach (Spirit) being female that has survived the earliest belief.

Between them, we are able to start understanding the beauty of Father's own world, and especially the union of Elohim (God) and Man which is the mystery of the Incarnation of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). Into a similar picture comes the echad union of our two essential selves, the dichotomy of 'spirit' and 'flesh', which one day will become inseparably connected and therefore indistinguishable in the resurrection! The two parts for now create a tension - two poles of perception - which, when properly balanced, enable us to peer into eternity itself in gradual increments. But getting them to cooperate, that's the thing, and requires a Unifying Person: Christ. He alone can bring about the resurrection of our two components, being the bikkurim or firstfruits of the Resurrection. Likewise, only Jacob could restore the lost unity of Leah and Rachel through Yahweh, Yahweh alone can bring back Judah and Samaria together like a Divine Husband with two wives who become one wife. I have talked about this at length already but I am keen that you grasp the bigger picture today. I want to expand your minds - not I, but the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) - only Yahweh can show you this through Her. In the same way, only Christ can unify the Garden and City - or Eden and Astara - aspects of the New Jerusalem, as their Divine (allegorical) Husband.

Yet in the flesh none of this is 'natural'. Consider this. Scientists and artists tend, in their pride, to look down on each other as inferior or missing something, though sometimes the comparison is more uncharitable. The truth is, they are compliments to each other, and are all the more impoverished without each other. I often think of what would happen if the art and music of the 18th and 19th centuries could be combined with some of the technology of the 21st. The Enlightenment began well enough but when Science thought it could surplant art, music and religion as the 'thing' to be uncritically followerd, it created a virtually soulless shell. Indeed, is it not true to say that the 'science' is never finally established? Science is an everlasting exploration. It's never finally settled because man is not Elohim (God). The quest goes on...and on.

The reductionist left needs the bigger right-brained picture of religion to give it purpose and direction. The very 'male' reductionist-oriented left brain, ever seeking to dissect and analyse, isn't enough because the moment you dissect something, you lose its essence - that which gives the whole a dynanmic cohesion and structure. As they say, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Alone and exalted out of all proportion, following atheism and evolutionism rather than the Creator, Yahweh, it has given us the atomised, colourless, purposeless and dark culture we have today - the very opposite of Paul's goal of nobility, virtue and beauty. It was, I think, my passion for romantic classical music and art that animated my love of Biochemistry - the chemistry of life - and which led me into an extraordinary world of molecular beauty that effortlessly connected with my search for Elohim (God). I always found them complimentary, as a result of which a deep 'romance', as it were, has formed between the two with Yahweh guiding the overall 'marriage union'. Astronomers like Hugh Ross, whom I have already mentioned and cited, in the content of his writing is an example of how physics and artistic beauty can be 'married' too. The point is this: the two halves are not without each other. They need each other. And they need Elohim (God) over all to bring it all to exciting, throbbing life!

I am nearly done but I must make this complete, in case it's my last message. There is so much to share, but so little time. Let's return to biblical symbolism. Throughout Scripture, Heaven or the New Creation is described as 'up' and Hell as 'down'. If we take this literally then we don't have a problem with hell because no matter at what point of the earth's surface you go 'down', you end up at the same place - the core. The problems start when you go 'up' to heaven because if you rise vertically from New York, Beijing or Cape Town you are going to arrive at lots of completely completely different locations in outer space depending on the time of year and the time of day. When you take 'up' and 'down' literally you end up with all sorts of silly hypotheses like a flat earth. There are similar problems if you take Yah'shua's (Jesus') gravity-defying exit from the planet in the presence of His talmidim (disciples) (Mk.16:19; Lk.24:50-51; Ac.1:1-11). If He is to return vertically again at the same spot He must not only do so when the earth is at the same physical point in space around the sun as it was then but also at exactly the same time of day else the trajectory of His re-entry would have to be a complicated, non-linear manoeuver.

If you insist that Yah'shua (Jesus) is in some place 'out there' in the Cosmos, then applying a little left-brain logic, you have an immediate problem. What's that? Well, Scripture testifies that heaven and hell continue to exist after Yahweh commands the cosmos to be "rolled up like a scroll" (Is.34:4, NIV), as it "disappear[s] with a roar" (2 Pet.3:10, NIV) and "melt[s] in the heat" (2 Pet.3:12, NIV), i.e. ceases to exist. When our familiar space-time dimensions come to an end at the conclusion of the Millennium then clearly 'up' and 'down' must take on a new meaning. It also means that right now 'up' and 'down' with respect to the invisible spirit realm cannot possibly be taken literally so we are forced to defer to some right-brain Hebraic thinking.

As I have pointed out in my other teachings, what we describe in 3-dimensional terms as the 'second coming' is better described as the 'second presence' as the Greek word parousia from which we glean these terms bears both possible meanings - coming and presence. Without getting into too much physics (for I am not a physicist, as you know), heaven and hell are best described as existing in the same physical space we currently occupy but in different dimensions. When both malakim (angels) and demons appear in our time-space-continuum, they do so out of 'thin air', as it were. They don't descend out of the atmosphere like a returning space shuttle or capsule from a distant place in space. They might possibly, on occasion, go up physically to accomodate untrained mortals who can only thing in terms of up and down, and then disappear, but they surely do not head off into outer space, which is why the first Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts never saw any whilst in orbit. I have had numerous angel visits and they have never come through the ceiling or wall but have simply 'appeared' right in front of me. Viewed in this way, our meeting Christ 'in the air' when He returns at Yom Teruah might very well in reality involve - not vertical or horizontal physical movement on our part (try to picture believers in Australia and the UK 'rising' in 3D to appreciate the difficulty of this model) but rather being partially transported into a 5th dimension to meet the returning Saviour and the dead returning with Him which has the same 'loci' wherever you are on the earth when the final trumpets sound.

This intra-dimensional picture also makes better sense of the whole UFO phenomenon which I firmly believe are inter-dimensional manifestations of demons and nephilim and not extra-terrestrial ones...they're not aliens from outer space but come from the same space we inhabit. This explains perfectly the gravity-defying movement of these UFOs which are able to accellerate and deaccelerate at tremendous speed, sometimes sharply turning at right angles and typically vanishing into thin air when pursued by Air Force planes, which in ourtime and space would result in crushing G-forces that would tear apart and destroy both pilots and machines.

This conveniently brings me to the question of time and to a commonly held error that Yahweh and Heaven itself exist in a timeless place. Certainly created time as we know it will one day end when heaven and earth merge together in the cosmic resurrection as these are two different spheres of reality, and there can only finally be one. We know that the New Creation will not be a timeless sphere because of what the Bible tells because there will still be cause-and-effect relationships which means some kind of other uncreated time must exist - it just operates differently to our present 'time'. A timeless eternity would, as Dr.Hugh Ross correctly points out, be static (not moving) and eventless which is at total variance with the picture painted by the Scriptures in Revelation, chapters 21 & 22, which "describes the New Creation as alive with activity - events, travel, and meaningful relationships" [11] similar to the Old Creation.

Dr.Ross uses the helpful word "time-full" - meaning the 'fullness of time' as opposed to the incomplete 'time' we have in this fallen Old Creation - as being the right way to describe eternity - "some kind of 'time', perhaps multiple time dimensions or super/supra temporal dimensionality (or the equivalent), must exist there," Dr.Ross adds [12]. I totally agree. This explains something Father showed me many years ago in which I was having simultaneous, unbroken 'conversations' with several persons on different subjects and was also present in multiple locations doing so. It made 'Azotus Travel' (as I call it) look primitive by comparison...and we haven't even started to avail ourselves of that ability yet! That reality doesn't make a lot of sense in this world but it made perfect sense in the Ruach (Spirit) as I experienced it at the time. I can't wait! Picture the simple example of transitioning from playing 2D chess to 3D chess with multiple boards (which is possible in this dimension - it was invented in concept by Lionel Kieseritzky in 1851 using cubes, was developed further by Ferdinand Maack in 1907) and was popularised in the Star Trek science fiction series by Andrew Bartmess in his 1976 Star Fleet Technical Manual where I came across it as a Science Fiction fan, and you get something of the idea of what I am talking about.

This explains how the resurrected Messiah can visit mutiple people in different locations at the same time. We often wrongly assume that because He has a physical body since His incarnation that He can only be in one place at one time. As a mortal that was certainly true even though we're told in the secret Nicodemus conversation that He was, even as a mortal, simultaneously in Heaven and on earth:

"No one has ascended to heaven but He (Yah'shua/Jesus) who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is [even at this very moment still] in heaven" (John 3:13, NKJV) [12].

But the Saviour now has a resurrected body that is not limited in movement like a mortal physical body, and was able to 'appear' out of 'nowhere' in a locked upper room to His talmidim (disciples) (Jn.21:9-23; Lk.24:36-43; Mk.16:14; Ac.1:13), He being the bikkurim or firstfruits of the resurrection, so He is no longer limited by the physical constraints of mortality. He did not walk, as I once used to believe, through solid walls and doors (that's actually an occult idea which you will see in the Harry Potter movies) but 'manifested' from a different dimension. And so it will be for those who inherit the first resurrection too, but clearly not those who inherit the second resurrection for they cannot be where the children of the first resurrection are. This is a deep, profound truth that is alas spoiled by poor translations...by traslators 'interpreting' the text to 'fit' their beliefs and expectations. We must always let the ground text speak for itself.

Now I am not here talking about the Millennium which is a transition period, but of the time after the Millennium. In the current old Creation we can experience, as I said earlier, the New Creation in part by being spiritually regenerated or born-again. In the Millennium there will be a greater intersection that pertains right now...for the resurrected. Not until the complete merging of heaven and earth after the Millennium will we experience on a permanent basis what I have been talking about concerning New Creation Time. However, one thing I was shown recently was that inside the Holy City there will be something approaching the Total New Creation experience. I don't know how to explain it because I currently lack the language to do so. I know, for instance (because I have seen it) that we will be able to physically hug several people at the same time which is currently impossible in this our current state.

So do you still think you will be experiencing boredom in Eternity? Not a chance! It's not going to be 'one long day with a lot of singing, playing the harp and worshipping Yahweh' as a single, perpetual and static event. Far from it, even if you might come away from reading the Book of Revelation with that impression because of our current inability to mentally process higher realities in which we will be able to multitask in ways that are physically inmpossible now. This worship will, however, most definitely characterise every activity in the Eternity of the First Resurrection qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) because we'll worshipping Yahweh and be doing all of the other creative things at the same time. As do malakim (angels) right now - even when they're on missions down here they're worshipping Yahweh in His presence too!

Indeed, if you come to think about it, we are already starting to learn to do this by "pray[ing] continually" (1 Thess.5:7, NIV) which means to be in a constant state or prayer even when we're doing other things. You've experienced this driving a car too, no doubt. Yes, there's prayer-time in which we drop everything else and are giving Yahweh undivided attention, but that's not the only way we pray - or the only kind of prayer - is it? We don't stop what we're going to exercise faith but do so while we're living out our lives. This is all practice for the resurrection. By this means Yahweh will be literally present in everything we do in the eternities, from the spiritual to the material which in the resurrection is one continuous spiritual-material spectrum, not two different realities held tenuously together by a fragile "silver cord" (Eccl.12:6) which is severed at death in this current world, as we're told in Scripture in poetic language.

I could go on for hours on this subject which, I hope you agree, is really enjoyable, but there isn't time. I have already spoken long enough. Perhaps another time, Yah willing. Suffice to say that the dawning of the New Creation marks the beginning of Yahweh's 'eighth day' of Creation - the 'day beyond' the sabbath itself. Yes, this is a new creative activity but in another, more glorious and even better reality. Yahweh's Old Sabbath Creation Day of Rest will have ended and it will be the natural state always - a spiritual quality learned through actually observing sabbath properly. Indeed, our Heavenly Father may well have numerous creation weeks mapped out for our future, who knows, but one thing I totally know: we won't be bored! Father's work of redeemed humans could well involve far more than anyone now can even begin to imagine. Such a work can help us appreciate all the more our need for the training that life here provides for us. Without it, we would sinmply never be able to live first resurrection-type life and indeed might even be horrified by it. So never believe that life here is pointless however horrific it can get, and no one is minimising or denying that. It's never meaningless - ever - even it certain events make no rational sense. Things are being worked out by our choices which even we cannot see yet but which Father foreknew and has integrated into His plan for your life. We are setting the tone by our choices for the kind of life we shall live in the better world. Our character is being shaped.

This is my hope and what I live for. I hope it it yours too. And Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) has done all this for me (and you) by His work on the Cross. This is why He died and atoned for our sins so that He might one day take us back with Him to His Kingdom, His world and our inheritance if we remain the True Bride through faith and Torah-obedience to the Heavenly Bridegroom. He invites you, if you haven't already done so, to accept His offer of salvation and of a glorious future in our New Home. Do it today. The more time we have enjoying His presence the quicker and better we shall spiritually grow and mature,

May the ongoing grace (undesrved loving-kindness) and shalom (peace) of our Master (Lord), Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) be with you now, and always, is my fondest, affectionate prayer for you all. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Hugh Ross, Why the Universe is the Way It Is (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI: 2008), p.185
[2] See the Graded Universal Salvation website
[3] See the Revelations, Dreams & Prophecy website
[4] Courtesy of Youthlab.com.au
[5] Hugh Ross, op.cit., pp. 186-188
[6] Sending on whether you are a young or old age creationist, several thousand or billion years
[7] Until the Cosmic Jubilee - see the Apocatastasis website
[8] For a similar, more detailed summary, see The Way of Yahweh: The Plan of Salvation
[9] Pentecostal minister Percy Collett
[10] A nerd is a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest
[11] Ross, op.cit., p.195
[12] Most Greek MSS 'interpret' or distort this pasage by changing "who is in heaven" to "who came from heaven" (e.g. NIV) including 'conservative' versions like the NASB, LSB & ESV. Only those that use the Byzantine Text (KJV, NKJV) preserve the original as found in the Aramaic, "who is in heaven" (HRV) in this instance.

Comments from Readers

[1] "What a fantastic job you do in presenting a phenomenal depth of insight into the realm of truth that is such an inspiration and motivation for one to seek the purist relationship with our Creator through surrendering to His divine tavnith (pattern). Love all you do for us in your amazing ability and dedication and sacrifice! Many thanks and blessings" (MW, USA, 13 October 2025)