Three Big Bangs

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion  of knowledge.

Daniel J. Boorstin

To all souls that have walked from faith because of dogmatic instructors who, from a position of baseless traditions have killed their spirit of inquiry.

Shawn McCraney

Before reading this short theoretical book of possibilities that have gone relatively  unnoticed over the ages by those who collectively call themselves Christians, it is  nothing short of vital that you, the reader, takes a moment to understand what and  where I (the author) have come from, what I have come to understand, and what I 

completely embrace now as the most reasonable, contextual, understanding of the  Bible on earth today.  

I realize that this is a bold statement but allow a brief summary of how I have come  to this conclusion and see if my validations hold weight in your mind. 

NOTICE !

(If you are familiar with my assessments derived from the following explanations)  there is probably little need to continue reading this introduction and you might  just skip to the first chapter). 

I was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, (Mormonism) which I  abandoned after 40 years of activity including a full-time mission, temple marriage,  and numerous callings in leadership. I learned the Bible my first time through from  the LDS perspective and clung to it throughout my years as a member. When I  discovered issues with LDS doctrine, practice, history I began to drift theologically  over seventeen years. During those years I ardently searched under every major  belief system, philosophy, life-style and truth claim that I could understand including  time exploring other Christian expressions, Islam, Buddhism, Bahai, Taoism (to a  certain limited extent) along with Marxism, the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Descartes,  Rand, Nietzsche (and several others) along with and the writings of Freud, Jung,  Hesse, Richard Wright, Eric Hoffer, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Edwin Von  Mises, Thomas Gilovich, Thomas Merton, Marcus Arelis, Khalil Gibran and so many  more. All of them had an influence on me in distinct ways; all of them failed to bring  me to a place of inner peace or external rest because in my estimation they never  rightly solved the inner complexities of my person as an individual nor provided an  acceptable grand overview of things material or spiritual. 

In 1997, at a genuine low-point in my life, I had a direct spiritual encounter with the  living God and from that day forward abandoned what I look back on as “the lost  years” and began to learn (very slowly by the way) how to walk in spirit and truth. 

At first this journey was pocked with personal failures (which persisted) but I was  what the scripture calls, “a babe in Christ,” and had yet to develop teeth to dive in and 

devour the meatier things. From the onset of my years in spiritual infancy I did make  a personal commitment to never trust a man or men or their religion to tell me what  to believe or do but to look to Him and Him alone for support, direction and advice  while continuing to voraciously seek Him in and through study. And where I would  read other books about and from people of faith, it was only to try and see what was  happening in the world of this faith I had so personally discovered and not to try and  be told how and what to believe. 

Part of my personal journey for this newly focused pursuit based in Him and His Son  was to enroll in the Calvary Chapel School of Ministry which was part of Pastor Chuck  Smith’s Costa Mesa, CA Church. It was here in the two years of full time but non accredited studies that I learned the Bible from the Chuck Smith point of view. I  always thought it amusing that I cut my teeth on the teachings of Joseph Smith, Jun.,  and then found myself learning the Bible from another “Smith” with the given name  of Chuck. Little did I know that I would ultimately smash both biblical views to  “smithereens” (pun fully intended).  

While in the now defunct School of Ministry, I finished writing my first full non-fiction  book titled, Born-Again Mormon: Moving Toward Christians Authenticity. Long story  short, someone in Salt Lake City, Utah got ahold of a copy and gave it to a woman  whose husband was the manager of a full-powered television station out of the same  city. After some events I was offered my own weekly live hour long call-in show on  Tuesday nights which we called, Heart of the Matter. This program lasted nearly  seven full years. I also started teaching through the Bible on a weekly basis in town.  Another long story short, I came to see how the local churches were “doing”  (teaching, fortifying, educating) the LDS folk who left Mormonism because of the  show we were doing (or any other reason) and after calling them out and saying that  we were going to expose them, the long arm of Christian fears got me removed from  the air permanently. 

This was a blessing and disguise as it enabled us to dig deep and really start to  challenge the way modern Christianity worked relative to everything – praxis,  doctrine, approach to the Bible – and ultimately every major theological position  known to me at the time. 

We still continued to broadcast, record and host weekly shows and over the course  of really digging in and dutifully studying everything we could lay our hands on  relative to the make-up of God (ontology), the study of end times (eschatology) the  afterlife (Heaven and Hell) church (ecclesiology) sin, the Kingdom, and ultimately the  Bible itself (relative to contextual application, veracity, secular history and traditional 

views) we landed squarely on some notions we feel stand in contrast to what has  been taught due to accepted traditions, so-called orthodoxy, church-playing and  claims of authority to speak and act in Gods name. At that point we began to gather  and organize all of our findings under one vast umbrella which we have called, The  Great News Network.com 

In short, we have culled through the entire Apostolic Record (wrongly called the New  Testament) verse by verse, consulting the Greek, other manuscripts and translations  and it relativity to the Old Testament. We have taken a serious look at Revelation  (took us almost two years of weekly 90 minute verse by verse teachings) and in the  end we produced twenty-two chapter summaries and one larger footnoted version 

of the whole tome. I could go on, but the fact of the matter is, we took our  understanding of the Bible and of all we had been taught about it and subjected  Christianity to scrutiny – seeking for contextual truth wherever it could be found.  

Without going into all of our discoveries and views (some of which we readily admit  may be off) below is a summary that should be fully understood before you, the  reader, continues forward reading this book: 

We submit to you he following 

The Bible is an inspired written history of all God (who will from this point forward be  identified as YAHAVAHH) has done to reconcile the world to Himself. The material  history, along with its laws, ceremonies, and gatherings (Old Testament and New) is  materially a closed book with church playing and institutionalized religion ending 

nearly 2000 years ago and the world, has ever since, 

1. been returned spiritually to the Garden of Eden with each individual personally  choosing for themselves how to live out their respective lives. 

2. been without sin in the sense that YAHAVAHH is not angry and holding human  beings evil deeds to their account. Sin was paid in full by Yeshua for all making  access to the Father open and unencumbered (just like it was in Eden). 

3. been in the hands of the Spirit of YAHAVAHH, which does the converting,  teaching and guiding on behalf of Christ, and 

4. that the faith is entirely subjective and as a result, is solely between  YAHAVAHH and the individual with all souls responsible for their choices and  allegiances or rejections of Him. 

With these postulations in hand, we maintain that the Bible is one of the greatest gifts  bestowed upon humankind by YAHAVAHH, but that its value is in principles rather 

than in material instructions. We absolutely reject the idea that the contents of the  scripture are the primary force and factor in a believer’s life but stand as a secondary  witness of all YAHAVAHH wants His children to realize by the Spirit of Christ. In this  sense, we maintain that if there are ever divisions over scriptural interpretations or  practices, the Fruit of the Spirit should reign and take precedence between differing  parties and differences should not ever lead to infighting or division. 

Finally, with all of this made clear, we embark on exploring the suppositions and  theories that we believe ought to be encouraged and received even though they  stand far afield from clear biblical support. We see the Bible as serving humanity  well, but that human-beings have wrongly taken its contents and used them to  concoct all manner of traditions and dogmas that truly have no basis in scripture and  often lack in reason. Having seen this, we want to embark on exploring “other”  admittedly theoretical ideas about YAHAVAHH, His nature and make-up, and how He  has personally chosen to enter into the physical and spiritual realms of the Universe  as a means to bring about events for the betterment of humankind. 

We maintain that because Orthodox views have historically led the institutional pack of the faith (for the simple reason that fear and certainty reigns in the hearts of most  men) causing heterodox views to take a back seat to tradition. 

We suggest that all Orthodox views must be supported completely by a contextual  reading of the text and that if or when any doctrine, practice or belief is proven to be  extra-biblical that it not only be dismissed but that the field of discussion and inquiry  remain open, engaging and free. Specifically, in this book, we are going to step 

around Orthodox claims when it comes to the make-up of God and while respecting  the Biblical narrative (when rightly timestamped and applied) and will step way  outside of Orthodoxy as a means to think, to reconsider, and to explore. 

We are going to begin by suggesting that the Biblical narrative was specifically for  this earth’s inhabitants and that it describes a narrow window of time and space. We  maintain therefore that the first words of Genesis, “In the Beginning,” refer to the  beginning of when YAHAVAHH specifically perfected humanity to the point that we  were equipped with everything necessary to live, thrive, choose and mature in and  through the vicissitudes of mortal existence. We reject the notion that the line, “In  the Beginning,” describes the beginning of everything visible and invisible; that there  may have been eons of time prior (not referenced in the biblical narrative). Here we  will try and explain a non-traditional view of the first beginning. Additionally, we will  move forward and posit that the biblically described creation and all that belongs to  it served as a new beginning for YAHAVAHH and His human creations and then finally,

we will describe the incarnation of Christ as YAHAVAHH’S victorious and climactic  end of the Creative beginning and paradoxically, the beginning of what may never  end – at least not completely. 

From this point, let’s get more specific. It was in our decades of research and study  that two standards of Christian Orthodoxy presented themselves as lacking. The first  was the man-made construct of Creedal Trinitarianism. For reasons far too large in  number to list here, this construction was weighed and found wanting. Once the fog  of that tradition lifted, we concluded (again, with the caveat that we could always be  wrong) that the Living God, who called Himself YAHAVAHH, was not three in One,  but is better understood from scripture as One Perfect Plural – with the plural being  two and the perfectness of that plural being found in perfect masculine and perfect  feminine form. (Note we do not mean perfect male or perfect female, but perfect  masculinity and perfect femininity). We support this notion with the following simple  observations: 

a. Genesis 1:26 And elohiym said, Let us make man in our image, after our  likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the  fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every  creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 

b. Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God  created he him; male and female created he them.  

We suggest that the Old Testament expressions of YAHAVAHH lean more to His  perfect masculinity, and that in and through the life and teachings of Yeshua that He  leaned more toward His perfect femininity. 

The second tradition we dismantled was the notion that the Living God never  changes. Admittedly, we hold to the idea that His character is unchanging but step  away from the dogmatic idea that He is a materially fixed immovable object that will  not move or adapt Himself in the least to any external conformity or need and step 

far more toward the following ideas 

a. That the Living God does nothing but change in His approach to reaching His  creations (as proven by His interactions with the Nation of Israel) and as seen  in the simple adaptations even a human parent will make when working with  their own offspring. 

b. However, we step out even further from the man-made idea of YAHAVAHH  being utterly immutable and suggest that the incarnation itself is direct proof  that this man-made assessment is unreliable.

c. Frankly, we see His very “Word” made flesh, and in and through His very Word  embracing a human existence, learning obedience through the things He  suffered, and having gained the ability to know and understand us in our plight,  and that God Himself also gained understanding (within Himself) which proves  to some extent that the so-called immutability of His person is not entirely  correct. Consider the following in support of this idea: 

1. Hebrews 2:18 For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able  to succour them that are tempted. 

2. Hebrews 4:15-16 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched  with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we  are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace,  that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. 

3. Hebrews 5:2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that  are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. 

We also maintain that the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God is exactly that – His Spirit – not a separate spirit-person or the third person of the Trinity. We suggest that the  Spirit of God also changed in and that in and through the incarnation it became (only  after the resurrection) with “the Spirit of Christ.” For the Holy Spirit to also be  immutable, the new information (obtained in and through the incarnation through the  Word made flesh) becoming the Spirit of Christ, we maintain that the Holy Spirit is  also mutable. 

We sincerely believe that what we are about to set forth, in addition to all of our  findings and observances about the failures of organized religious traditions and  Orthodox demands, that more and more people of faith will be readied to unify with  people of science and this will not only bring more peace and unity to the world but  might help people of faith to never again find themselves unmoored by irreligious  prooftexts proffered by academia. 

I am anything but a scientist. My thoughts are not scientific but derived after decades  of reading and study in ancient scripture. Nothing to follow should be taken as  doctrine or theological truth. These are admittedly theoretical without any claim to  divine interventions or inspiration. We readily embrace the inspired contents of the  Bible given by God are spiritually “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,  for instruction in righteousness.” We lay no claim that the following contents meet  this criterion in the least. We do, however, demand the right to discuss and present  them as some of these views that may lend to greater understanding of our Creator  and His Love for His creations. Standing on the heap of all we just described, we are  now going to present Three Big Bangs as a means to help explain our present 

considerations. Each of these Big Bangs begins with an Atom or an Adam. Each of  them represent a true new beginning of an era of which God Himself is intimately  apart; each of them central to the story of God and His Human creations. Each of  them appear to play a part in the overall panoply of God’s vast eternal expanding  vision. We will describe them as 

BIG BANG 1 – ATOM 1 

BIG BANG 2 – ADAM 2 

BIG BANG 3 – ADAM 3 

And we will conclude with the possibility of a final potential shift that might be worthy  of your attention. 

Understand plainly, please, that as the author of this short book I am just a man who  has refuse to look to any source of information on earth as authoritative in my  spiritual life but God. I’ve been willing to listen to and hear many views and even  more corrections to what I see and believe, but I learned early on that my personal  source of spirit and truth is Him and Him alone. That said, I would encourage you, the  reader, to test all things and hold fast to what is good. But do not be afraid. Be fearless  in your search for Him and never let anyone/anywhere at anytime cause you to feel  badly for wondering, for challenging or for differing with established traditions. Feel  shame when you fail to love as He has commanded, and turn to Him quickly in that  case, but never confuse an inquiring heart with disobedience or failing to live up to  some standard He has set – His standards are faith and love. Period. 

We hope the information to follow will bring about more reason to honor and worship  Him in spirit and truth. If it brings less, throw the book in the fire – it’s that  unimportant.