Chapter One - The New Order of Being

On the journey to enlightenment, with truth being the end-goal, it has to start where it began, as this is the point of departure of this lifelong quest, dwarfing any other natural exploration embarked by man. Our search must delve into the greatest story ever told, as this is the exact point where our passage to freedom commences. This most extraordinary tale is one of love, wildly improbable by human standards, pushing the mind to heights unknown, challenging it to peer at the supernatural. This love is not between equal beings with the same capacity for love, but between the Divine and a mortal; between the Creator who is the Lover and a most beloved creature, who is his handiwork. Such a story is beyond the imagination of a mere creature, as he is the recipient and not the primary cause that sets this drama into motion, billions of years in the making and ages more into the future for its rightful conclusion. Only love, infinite and transcendental, beyond the province of a heart molded from clay, can bring to reality what is deemed as an impossibility-- the natural and supernatural coexisting in one being with a consciousness experienced as one. This most beloved hybrid creature is the modern human, Homo sapiens sapiens, which is the new order of being, and not to be confused with its prototype which was the product of evolution like all other life forms on planet earth. He and no one else is created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1: 26) and gifted with a dual nature, a distinction he shares with no one else. In short, a being capable of living forever with a free-will like his Creator-God but with a physical body, taken from dirt, complete with primal instincts like any other life form from dirt. The mortal component is visible, and the invisible undying soul, which is pure spirit, is the stamp that attests to his supernatural pedigree. Only in death can the two separates from each other, with the corporeal unit returning to dust while the soul goes back to the eternal realm of the immortals where it belongs. In short, immortality clothed in corruptibility; death and life intertwined in one integral being with a single consciousness; temporal and eternal co-dwelling in the ultimate miracle of creation, uniquely human by Divine design, which cannot be copied or duplicated, for no one else has the capability to match the All-Powerful God to whom nothing is impossible. Corruptibility does not only mean physical death, which is the tenet of mortal life, but at the nitty-gritty level is the slow gradual deterioration of the mortal body, down to its cellular component, even when it is still alive, as the physical component is degradable with the passage of time, by illnesses and the manner of its use, as in lifestyle. This is an entirely new order and vastly different from the two other life forms that God had previously made. The bodies of plants and animals are finite and come with an expiry date. Theirs are the true conformer to the adage, ‘from dust to dust,’ unless recycled to some other forms of matter like coal or crude oil, the life blood of the modern world. Yet, still finite and the adage remains the law without exception, as they remain part of the natural world even in death, prisoners of time they are. Only man can survive beyond the natural creation, as he is the “connecting link’ between the two other life forms that came before him, i.e., the entirely natural which are plants and animals and the purely supernatural which are the angels. He is created for the timeless realm and to “live like the angels in heaven,” as Jesus said in Matthew 22: 30, though his life began at the cellular level with the meeting of a sperm cell and an ovum. Angels, on the other hand, are the spiritual beings created long before the creation of the natural order and are the immortals in the eternal kingdom of heaven, with perfection as their state, unchanging for infinity. They are pure spirit without a physical body, and thus endowed with mighty strength, as there is no physical encumbrance to limit them; exactly right and proper to their function. God is spirit and those ministering to him must likewise be pure spirit, as only such a blessed state can withstand the infinite glory of the Almighty God. The Holy Scriptures attest to their existence. In the Gospel According to Luke, an angel announced the birth of the Messiah to the shepherds and “Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the high heavens, peace on earth to those on whom his favor rest.” [Luke 2: 13-4] In the garden of Gethsemani, Jesus said to the one who drew the sword when they arrested him: “Do you not suppose I can call on my Father to provide at a moment’s notice more than twelve legions of angels?” [Matthew 26: 53] First in the order of creation, dazzling in beauty and splendor, yet something terrible happened in heaven for Jesus declared in Luke 10: 18: “I watched Satan fall from the sky like lightning.” In the Book of Ezekiel, it is written: “You became haughty of heart because of your beauty; for the sake of splendor you debased your wisdom. I cast you to the earth, so great was your guilt; I made you a spectacle in the sight of the kings.” [Ezekiel 28: 17] What gives? Why was Lucifer a.k.a. Satan expelled from heaven, instantaneously like lightning? This must be probed first, as this is a consequential event for humanity though it happened before the creation of man. There is a need to backtrack and deal with this truth before proceeding to the discussion of the new order of being.