Page 252 - THE REVELATION OF THE THIRD HEAVEN and THE MEAT OF THE WORD

Rev 20:14-15, 22:8) and is by default eternal (Rev 14:11). Man is not God (Num
23:19, Job 9:32, Hos 11:9, John 1:18) and God as Love will not make him so as
absolute Love is indivisible (Mal 3:6). Man should love Love (that is God, 1 John
4:8) and thereby he will be loving to all (Mat 22:37-40, 1 John 4:8).

Man continues to attempt to be God which both ‘precedes’ (Gen 1:26, 28, Rom
4:15) and follows the parable of Adam's fall (Gen 2:17, Rom 10:3). God eternally
responds to this attempt by setting what is His being namely the Law (Gen 2:17,
Rom 2:2) as the standard which Man must reach to be like God, in so far as this is
possible, on his own terms as a mortal and imperfect being (John 1:17, Rom 2:2,
3:10, 19-20, 7:7, 12). Given that Man is who he is and in the totality of his
circumstances then if he was to be God then he needed to demonstrate the absolute
separatism of Love from that which is not Love (Mal 3:6, John 1:5, 1 John 1:5).
This is alien to Man (Isaiah 55:8).

For example the Law commands the Israelites to practise a holocaust of genocide
in the conflict between the existing inhabitants of the cities (who had built the
cities) given to Israel and the people of Israel (Deut 3:6, 7:2, 13:15, 20:16, 1 Sam
15:13-26). The absolute separatism here being the continued spiritual purity of
Israel (Deut 20:18). God recognised the inevitability and necessity of such a total
conflict (Deut 20:18), both peoples could not inhabit the land and remain as totally
separate peoples with different religions (Deut 20:18). It was for a spiritual reason
that God commanded that women, children and even the cattle of these cities
should be killed because the danger lied in the fact that all the inhabitants, the
cattle and the spoil of these cities would have been offered by the prior inhabitants
to their gods. These rituals would therefore rebound on the Israelites as curses, in
effect the spoil was cursed (Deut 13:17).

None of this was God's primary will but was necessitated by Man's disobedience in
coming under the Law which is the desire to be God (Gen 2:17, 3:22). God allows
the awful implications of free will (Gal 3:10). Free will, without Christ (John
1:17), is the desire to be God (Gen 1:26, 3:22, Mat 6:24, 22:19-21, Mark 12:16,
Luke 16:13, 20:24, Rom 10:3) who is Dominion (Gen 1:1, 26).

Any sin as described anywhere in the Word, is a sin against the Law (1 John 3:4)
and any sin against the Law is a sin today for those that are not Christians (Rom
10:4, 1 John 3:4). So, for example, it is just as sinful to disobey the
commandments of Leviticus as it is to disobey the commandments of the Gospels
or the Epistles (Deut 28:58, 30:10, John 1:1, 14, 1 John 3:4, Rev 22:18-19).
Furthermore any one sin, under the Law, means absolute unrighteousness and guilt