One Coin Two Sides,

And A Lot More!
Post 215

Resolution of Problems:
By my personal embarrassing exposure of my own wrestling, I have been showing you the intricate details that caused Peter to sinking into the sea, which were only covered in scripture by the single line; “But when he saw the wind boisterous 2478, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.” Matthew 14:30

Boisterous 2478 ischuros; from 2479; forcible (literal or figurative).
2479 ischus; from a derivative of Is (force); forcefulness (lit. or fig.):- ability, mighty, power, strength.

By approaching the problem that erodes success with a scientific mind of investigation we can learn much more from scripture as it relates to our own experimental trials than we can if it remains untried (James 1:2-3).
As it relates to my own experiment I notice that Peter was not actually struggling directly with the turbulent sea as we imagine; the verse tells us it was the forceful wind that had his attention and caused fear. It was the fear of the very powerful wind that caused his sinking but it was the turbulent sea into which he sank.
In past posts we have been learning quite a bit about the winds and that while they are very real destructive forces of nature, they are even more significant the spirits that drive the winds. So in representation we can understand that while indeed the turbulent sea as riotous mankind was making his spiritual journey quite difficult, it was the very powerful spirit that drove mankind which was actually giving Peter the problem, this is played out in his denial of Jesus (Matthew 26:74). It is very easy to focus on the people or situation standing against us and miss the forceful spirit that drives them because as much as we like to think we have a handle on the spiritual concepts it is difficult to really understand how the spiritual and the physical world interact.
The East Coast of America just had another big storm they named Hurricane Irene that caused significant damage, and we accept it as something in our temporal world that just happens from time to time. And we really don’t have a problem spiritualizing the storm to mean spiritual activity moving against us, but when we try to combine the actual spiritual spirits driving the actual temporal winds (Daniel 7:2, Zechariah 6:5) we find it quite hard not to automatically allegorize that. To actually blend the spiritual and the temporal is ingrained in us to be wrong. We have been successfully educated by society that the two are not to be blended. This is the powerful “Separation of Church and State” philosophy that America has swallowed wholesale by segregating God from Reality, demanding he stay within the context of religion where we find him at church on Sunday. We live in a two-dimensional perspective of life and try to introduce three-dimensional thinking into it. It simply will not work but we confuse ourselves by trying and the world mocks the effort.
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The Coin:
Imagine with me that you reach into your pocket right now and pull out a coin and place it there on the table in front of you. Go ahead. Do you see it in your mind? Good.
Now describe that coin to me:
“It is circular like a disk, it has a serrated edge, there is the face of a reasonably forehead-bald guy with a ponytail in a side profile, there is a date below his neckline 1987 and by his collar the words IN GOD WE TRUST, and over his head is the word LIBERTY.”
Good, I have no criticism to your very good description; it is completely correct and needs no further embellishment to make the description complete.

Now from your explanation of the coin before you, I know which coin you have, so let me describe it as I know it even though it is on the table in front of you:
“There is an Eagle with his wings stretched out as if he were drying them while perched on a bundle of arrows, below him is two tied branches of leaves and below that are the words QUARTER DOLLAR. Above his head is the phrase E PLURIBUS UNUM, and above that is the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Isn’t it curious that because you know the general properties of the coin you will not argue with me, but while the coin is lying on your desk in the two dimensional flat plane, everything I just said appears to be completely wrong.
How hard will you have to stare at that two dimensional image before you begin to see what I described? Will a magnifying glass help? Does it matter if you further identify the ribbon in his ponytail or the single letter “D” nearby? What help is it if you study it even more and describe his noticeable Adam's-apple or the fact that you cannot see his ear? Perhaps you should do some research to discover the identity of the man and why he is on the coin. Does any of this very personal and diligent investigation help you see what I have described?
While the deep investigation is certainly good information, none of what you are so earnestly studying has any relationship with what I described as long as the coin remains in the two dimensional plane. I suggest this two dimensional view of the coin is the human perspective of reality. It is completely correct with nothing missing but still has nothing to do with the description I gave, to the point you are obligated to determine I am either a liar or insane. The coin is in front of YOU, and you just described what YOU are seeing; who am I to tell you that what you are seeing is wrong?! (II Timothy 3:7-8)
But I did not say it was wrong, just “small”. I’m trying to give you a bigger (not larger) picture by an entirely different view of the same coin.

Now some people with the coin on their desk in the two dimensional view will get all excited because they agree with me; they see exactly what I am describing… and so YOU are the one insane as my description proves it!
I suggest this view is the spiritual side of reality still seen from the two dimensional human perspective (Romans 2:12). And with two guys seeing clearly two different views of the same coin in two dimensions, we have the contention of trying to convince the other guy that he must be seeing wrong. In the two dimensional human perspective they both CANNOT be right. If I say they can it seems that I am declaring the “both hands” system of worldview perspective while you declare the “either or”. But this is not so while at the same time it sortof is. How confusing. The law of non-contradiction seems to agree with you; both CANNOT be right, so which is it?

Now enters the third guy who declares that he sees "a sailing ship with a serpent as the mast with an eagle in his mouth and the word DEMOCRACY over the ship sailing to an island in the form of a forehead-bald guy with waves crashing against his nose near the date 2009 and below all that are the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA". (for the none American readers; there is no such coin.)

Now how do I declare HE is insane since the first two guys can’t agree on what they see and I seem to reject the law of non-contradiction by claiming they are both right?
THIS is the confusion coming on the world because we are stuck in a two dimensional perspective of reality; some focus on the temporal issues of reality such as crime while others focus on the spiritual issues of reality such as hate; Two sides of the same coin but somehow unable to reconcile the foundations of the apparently different perspectives. There is simply no way these views will ever be reconciled between them.

God has a view too, but his is not a two dimensional perspective.
God sees the coin not as a double two dimensional image, but a three dimensional object made for a purpose in a three dimensional world that really has little to do with the image on either side but to identify the way the coin is to be used.

You know this concept in a vague kind of way but somehow you don’t know how to get that image on your desk to “become” a useful three-dimensional coin. In fact many people can’t even figure out how to flip over the coin to examine the other side they have not seen.

Pluralism is the two-dimensional philosophy reconciling the views of all three guys in the argument; declaring that the coin has no image but what the viewer "sees".
This is true insanity but about the best possible explanation of the facts from a two dimensional perspective!
So until you have seen and know both sides of the coin and how they are not in conflict, how can you declare there is no ship on the coin?
This is the unending conflict between Law and Grace, Free will and Predestination, Armenian vs. Calvin, Legalism vs. Lasciviousness, Resisting evil vs. Turning the other cheek. Accountability vs. Forgiveness, Christian nation vs. No religion legislated, etc. etc. etc.
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Excluding the whacko that invents his own image of the coin through Evolution and such, the Christless honest world studies reality from the head side of the coin through temporal science while common Christianity studies the scriptures to understand the spiritual tail side of the coin. We learn of God and of Jesus and even find salvation all from that two dimensional human view, but the reconciling of both views at once is another matter all together; it takes a three dimensional perspective from God’s angle.
This is what Peter faced as he ventured to walk to Jesus on the sea, and this is the conflict I face as I wrestle with the application of two sides of the coin in a single perspective of reality.
How do you change from a two-dimensional human perspective to the three-dimensional perspective of God? That is the million dollar question.
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Not a third side:
The first step is the relatively easy one and that is to flip the coin over.
First you have to realize there is another side. The religious person has a head start on this as he has no problem understanding the two sides concept, but the two-dimensional view encourages the study of one side you can see while ignoring the other as a hard to grasp illusion that you cannot see except in your mind. Independently viewed at different times, each side makes very good and easy sense as long as they stay exclusive as if they were two coins, but you can only focus on one at a time while the other becomes a ghost memory.
It is wise to become familiar with the details of both sides of the coin by flipping back and forth between them as regularly needed. In this way you can by familiarity spot the impostor view as elements not even on the coin. And the light begins to dawn that a two-side view of reality is not Pluralism or a “both hands” worldview.
The next step is quite a bit more difficult because you cannot simply slide both views together making one mixed view as is expected in a two dimensional perspective, but rather you must “see” the coin rise off of the table and stand on its edge as if by magic. The coin must become three-dimensional to your sight, not overlapping the temporal and the spiritual but not just complimenting either. They are inseparably blended into a single world-view coin that suddenly has a very real and practical use that could not be comprehended in the two dimensional perspective regardless which side of the coin you studied.
So how is this actually done?

The study of scripture over time eventually flips the coin from the head to the tail side, but while studying that side through scripture don’t miss the greater fact that it actually flipped the coin in the first place! The flipping of the two dimensional view to comprehend there is another side to it, is a dawning of comprehension how the third dimension is viewed. While the study of scripture flips the coin, the study of scriptural Prophecy stands the coin of reality on its edge in all its three-dimensional glory as God sees it, not as a third side (Revelation 1:3,22:7).

Prophecy:
Now don’t get all weirded out by the word prophecy. Scripturally that word simply means to see things from God’s perspective and so a prophet is one who reveals that perspective of life. Prophecy is just one gift of several revealed in Ephesians 4:11 for the purpose of making the people of God complete, and as tools of the ministry, and to edify 3619 the Church (Ephesians 4:12).
Edify 3619 oikodome; …architecture, i.e. (concretely) a structure; figuratively confirmation:- building.
Prophecy, like Apostleship is one of those tools in the list now made clear by this fuller understanding of what it does. Prophets of scripture were often given insights into the future to validate that they indeed heard from God, but the message of their prophecy was actually reveling the perspective of God which is what made it prophetic; revealing God’s perspective to man.
Evangelists and pastors on the otherhand are able to explain the tail side of the coin to those looking at the head side, and teachers are able to reveal God in the head side view. All very important to the work.

In our imagined coin, while you were looking at the head side of the coin, I metaphorically prophesied the other side that you could not see. To understand the prophecy gave you the needed concept to flip the coin and then see it for what it is; a two-sided object; opening the perception of three dimensions as God sees the coin of reality. It doesn’t matter which side of the coin your looking at, I’m going to “prophesy” the other side because this is how you begin to understand the third dimension of God’s perspective. My blog has been flipping this coin back and forth from side to side for this purpose.
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