Evidence

To anyone who actually reads my weekly blog, I wish to apologize for the lack thereof last Sunday.

This week, I would like to take a closer look at Luke 17:37. I failed to address it in the previous study. This is it: “And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”

Imagine, then, that you are a game hunter on safari. You see vultures circling in the sky. From your wealth of hunting experience, you know this to be a sign that there is carcass ahead. Sight of the vultures is evidence of something you do not yet see.

There is, in our existence, not one thing that is self-evident, and while many hold with the concept – as in, 'we hold these truths to be self-evident' – evidence, itself, implies the support of something else. For example, the carcass is not self-evident. The truth of its existence, while as yet unseen, is supported by the vultures circling overhead. It is quite obvious.

I would like for us to consider how many different ways we may express the obvious, or how many life experiences include such obvious evidence of things as yet unseen.

Imagine that you are driving down the freeway, approaching the off ramp you wish to take. You move over in preparation. You see the sign that says 'Business District ½ Mile.' That sign is the obvious evidence of the off ramp you do not yet see. What if, however, the sign has been removed – is all evidence of a truth gone? I think not. You still move over in preparation; your experience is obvious enough.

Imagine that war is coming. There are no troops on the streets; there is the report of neither bullet or bomb. Where is the proof of a coming war? Where is the evidence that supports the truth of it? If you are young, you are probably not even paying attention. Let us say, then, that you are mature. Let us say that you follow the news. Let us go one step further and say that you have experience in the political intrigues that presage the onset of war. You've seen it all before.

The political maneuverings, as well your own savvy experience, are both proofs of coming war. In this case, obvious evidence is the support of such as 'knowledge', 'perception', 'understanding', 'insight', 'discernment', 'acumen', and 'common sense'.

Imagine, now, that a major flood approaches. Some guy named Noah keeps going on about it. Where is the proof? You've never, in your entire life, seen a drop of rain. Water falling from the sky – who makes this stuff up? You are the type that is most affected by the things you see – and you have never seen rain, only the solid ground you walk upon. You cannot imagine the land covered with water. You believe only what you see.

Noah has been building a huge boat he calls an ark. It stands before you, bigger than life. You see it with your own eyes. If you believe only what you see, why don't you believe what you see?

Imagine the end of the world approaches. Where is the obvious evidence? Imagine a mortal man who is actually the very Son of God. What supports the truth of it? Imagine God. Is there evidence? Your eyes see no off ramp sign. Your eyes see no drops of rain. Your eyes see no troops and your ears hear no bombs. Yet, your eyes see and your ears hear. You are mature. You pay attention. You have experience and knowledge. You have perception and discernment.

Finally, you are the game hunter again. Beside you walks a game hunter with less acumen, less insight. He will not believe a carcass lies ahead. He is adamant in his self-limitation. He will not listen. He will not learn. He will not believe until he stumbles blindly into the guts and maggots. Belief at that point does little benefit; he has the mess on both boots.

Between the sighting of the vultures and the sighting of the carcass, there is a sojourn that rests in faith as the sole and sufficient evidence of truth.

The Son of Man Revealed

Let us continue our study of the spirit of God in man by taking a look at Luke 17:24-37. Jesus had just dropped the hammer on the religious-minded, on the kingdom-minded. He told them, and us as well, not to look outside ourselves for the kingdom. The kingdom is not on the outside, he said. The kingdom of God is within.

Then Jesus predicted what they should look for. It is not like the arrival of an army in a cloud of dust, it is more like a revelation. It will be a realization. When the kingdom and the king are finally realized, it will be all at once. It will illuminate everything. He said this in Luke 17:24, “For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven, so shall also the Son of man be in his day.”

We have sayings such as, 'your day will come', and. 'every dog has its day'. The predicted day of the Son of man will be the natural outcome of all that has gone before. Things will come to a head, so to speak. What has been developing all along will finally bear fruit. There will be a sudden all-encompassing flash of illumination. We will, at last, when the Son of man is revealed, understand everything. It will all be clear.

Who is the Son of man? People around Jesus did not call him the Son on man; it was Jesus, alone, who styled himself thus. We get this from Wikipedia: The Hebrew expression "son of man" (בן–אדם, ben-'adam) appears 107 times in the Hebrew Bible, the majority (93 times) in the Book of Ezekiel. And this: The New Testament features the indefinite "a son of man" in Hebrews 2:6 (citing Psalm 8:4), and "one like a son of man" in Revelation 1:13, 14:14 (referencing Daniel 7:13's "one like a son of man"). [9] The four gospels introduce a new definite form, "ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου", literally "the man's son." It is awkward and ambiguous in Greek. [1] In all four it is used only by Jesus (except once in the Gospel of John, when the crowd asks what Jesus means by it), and functions as an emphatic equivalent of the first-person pronoun, I/me/my.

Scholars seem confused as to the exact application of the expression. They suggest it shows the unreachable Holiness of God as opposed to the attribute of man's utter commonness. I would like to suggest something else.

God, a spirit, knows what it is like to be a father, i.e. the expression “only begotten son of God.” God has an opinion about the whole 'son' thing. Men, as flesh imbued with spirit, share that opinion. A son is the better part of the father. The father is proud of, or knows great joy in the son and lifts him up. The father paves the way for the son, gives him all that he has.

My suggestion is that son of man is the mortal equivalent to son of God. The two are connected in a spiritual sense and combined, act as a bridge between the lost state of man and the redeemed state of man.

When the only begotten son of God called himself the Son of man, I see a natural extension of state between the son and all who are one with the son. Consider the earnest prayer of Jesus found in John 17, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”

How can mortal man be one with a spiritual God? The answer is this: they must be on the same spiritual page. I think the beginning of that is the realization that man is not separate from God – he is built around the Godcore – spirit is mind.

That realization will come. The seeds have been planted and everything develops according to a predetermined schedule. Among spirits in man, there are those who embrace their spirituality and those who reject it as so much wish fulfillment. The realization will come to all, but to some, it will be an 'oops' moment.

It will be like the fable of the grasshopper and ants. All along, the ants were preparing, developing, embracing. The grasshopper – well, he just wasn't the type. He laughed at the ants and made no preparations of his own. He cared not to develop. He may have been successful at ignoring it all summer, but when the cold winds began to blow, the realization came to him as well. It came in a flash.

Jesus made that point to his audience: the time will come. The realization will come, just as it did to all those who ignored and laughed at Noah, just as it came to all those who ignored and laughed at Lot.

The revelation will be a realization. All of a sudden, it will be everywhere and everything. We will no longer be able to laugh at it or ignore it. It will not be outside of us and unaffecting. It will be within us and we will be forced to take it personally.

The coming of the kingdom of God will be the revelation of his son, whom he has exalted. The son is one with the spiritual father and we are one with the son – it is internal. The kingdom is within, us right, now developing. The king is in his kingdom. His son is with him. We are all in here together. We are on a trajectory toward revelation. We travel from the inside to the inside. The revelation of the Son of man is, by extension, our revelation.

Jesus said there will be, at the realization, two men in one bed (we have a modern expression regarding bedfellows, allies due to circumstance.) One will have an oops, the other will not. One will be accepted into the ark, the other will drown. There will be two women grinding at the same mill. One will fly high, the other will crash and burn.

I just hope your moment of realization is not an oops.

If you find yourself on a higher plane than the world you inhabit, consider yourself developmentally sound. Do not turn back to the world. If you are in your field on a trajectory toward harvest, let it grow. Some of us are wheat, some of us are chaff, but we all develop along the same trajectory. To turn back is to drive the wrong way on a very crowded highway.

The legend of Lot's wife is an admonition against turning away from the progress you have already made. Jesus said in Luke 9:62, the plowing man who turns back proves himself unfit for the revelation.

The realization will be a dark time. Jesus described that time with the words, “in that night.” It will be the oops moment of everyone not in the ark. It will be, for many, a time of stumbling and a time of weeping. The realization cuts deep.

Kingdom Come

This won't take long . . .

. . . but it needs to be said.

We've got it all wrong. People of passionate faith believe in a place, either real or quasi-real, that the devout resort to after death. It is viewed as a place of splendor, a heaven, a paradise. Some see rewards dispensed for their faithfulness: wings, halos, crowns, or virgins. It matters not the religion, the view is that the faithful and the good will leave this wicked world for a better place, while all the enemies of the faith will go to a place far worse.

Those who do not believe also have an opinion about the afterlife. They see a pipe dream with all the silly flutter of cardboard wings, they see the wishful thinking of the male libido, egotism, fantasy, and thought structures not thoroughly rooted in science.

What if I told you all of us are wrong? What if I told you there no Heaven, no Paradise, Nirvana, or Valhalla. I do not mean this in the sense that the unbelievers have already postulated in countless tirades. I mean there is no place outside the human experience, and again, this is not intended as the same argument as that of the unbelieving.

There is a place, but it is a place in the spirit – by which, I mean the mind. There is a kingdom, there is a paradise, but so far, all of us have wholly misinterpreted the subject. Our normal misinterpretation involves a movement from one outside to another outside, all being separate from and external to the conscious identity.

The Pharisees, masters of the law of God, also got it wrong. Their concept of a kingdom was a place of victory for the nation of Israel, a place where the tyrannical rule of Rome was crushed beneath the heel of Abraham. In Luke 17:20-21, the Pharisees demanded Jesus to tell them when the Kingdom of their God would come.

Jesus answered, 'When? 'You can look for it til you turn blue in the face and you'll never see it coming. You can observe the stars, the prophecies of old, or anything you like – there are no signs. Neither may anyone say the kingdom is in the east or in the west, in this nation or that.'

As plainly as anyone could ever say anything, Jesus told them in Luke 17:21, “the kingdom of God is within you.”

Let me put that in perspective. If the kingdom is within the conscious identity of the individual, the king is also there. As Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is a spirit.” Here, we must understand that 'spirit' is not something outside the human condition – it is the human condition. It is what makes us who we are. Aside from so many pounds of flesh, there is only the spirit to define who and what we are. The body, despite the science, is merely a vehicle for the spirit.

Each of us has a spirit – by which I mean, a conscious identity.

Each of us has a spirit – by which I mean, God is a spirit. Each of us is a part, or extension, of the same conscious identity that is God, the same spirit, the same mind. Each of us, as a spiritual seed, has been planted in mortal clay. Some seeds will grow and be harvested, increasing the one who planted the seed. Some seeds will not grow at all. Some seeds will grow wild and be slated for a fiery end, as when the stubble and refuse of a field are burned.

Each of us is a part of God. What we make of that is in our hands. The kingdom is inside of us; the king is inside of us. And yet, the flesh will always perish. We seem to be tied to the eternal wheel of life and death. Where and when does the kingdom come if it is inside of us?

We look for something better. We look for it outside of ourselves, outside of our daily practices and rituals, outside of our thoughts and intent – anywhere other than where we actually are. We are here, each of us with our own little part of God and his kingdom inside of us. Sadly, we do not do the things that might bring God's kingdom to bear. Here, within the societies on earth, in each of us, in our own time, we might produce God's kingdom on earth – with the right efforts.

Connect the dots: there is one king, there is one kingdom, and all of that lies within the human condition. Each of us has a spirit. God is a spirit. Are you looking for the kingdom of the spirit? It is within.