What is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. The prevailing understanding is that man is a trinity, of sorts-- comprised of body, soul, and spirit. This view, however, is not sufficient to satisfy some difficult statements in scripture; nor is it useful in learning of the righteousness of Elohim or of the destiny of man; neither is it consistent with even scientific thought, which generally recognizes conscious, sub-conscious, and unconscious levels of mind, all of these being fed and animated by the life force-- the libido, or id. Of the three generally recognized components of man, only spirit is immortal by nature, according to scripture; and as spirit is the gift of YHWH and returns to Him at physical death, one wonders how creation could serve perfection of soul to mankind's benefit, or by what logic mortals could deserve an eternal condemnation for failing to achieve that end. Nowhere does the scripture speak of an immortal soul, though soul can put on immortality; yet there must be an immortal component to every incarnation, else the reason for our trials and tribulations here, below, can only be irrational-- the whim of capricious omnipotence. When our view of self is askew, can our view of Elohim be any better? Misunderstanding ourselves, how are we to bring light to the world? The great lamp that first shone in Galilee proclaimed of John the Baptist, that John was Elias, while John uncategorically said that he was not. There must be a cohesive interpretation by which both statements are congruent; for in Mashiyach were not found yea and nay, but yea. If apparently contradictory statements are found in scripture, the reason can only be that the reader has yet to come to the paradigm of perfect affirmation. Further, Yahushúa said of Avraham, Yitschaq, and Yaaqov, that they are not dead, and that those who see them as being dead do greatly err: among whom we must also number Peter, if we judge-- by extrapolation-- only by the letter of his words concerning the mortal patriarch David. Again, there must be a level of interpretation in which all testimony is congruent; and I began my study of these matters by taking hold of the affirmation that the Father is El of the living, and by then scrutinizing the New Testament scriptures most closely associated with a finality of death: those dealing with blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
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I found that, according to the letter, those statements also differ somewhat: Matthew says, "but whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." Mark says, "he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost never has forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal condemnation." Luke says, "but unto him that blasphemes against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven: never forgiven, period-- however one interprets the world/age context-- but yet, only in danger of eternal condemnation!

Many believe that only the greatest sinners are guilty of this greatest sin. However, blasphemy against the Spirit of Truth is not limited to vocalization of disbelief in the words of Moshe or of Yahushúa or to the misuse of holy names. The master of Torah, who judges according to inward thought, teaches that "Whenever you have done this unto one of these, the least of my servants, you have done it unto me"; for "Him that receives you receives me, and him that receives me receives Him who sent me." Argued differently, he who offends in one point is guilty of all.

We are all on the block; for we all have ignorantly blasphemed the Lord of Glory in our midst. We all, at one time or another in our lives, have called the truth a lie and have rejected its messengers, thus crucifying Truth in unbelief. One might say that the sin of blasphemy can only be committed willfully, purposefully; but-- willful or not-- it has the same effects in the lives of those who commit it carelessly, ignorantly: it prevents them from receiving of the Truth; and it blocks access to those they influence, as well. Far from being a rare sin, blasphemy against the Spirit of the Holy is a common sin. Indeed, it is the first sin.

Realizing I was vulnerable to the ultimate condemnation, I recalled Ezekiel's words (we must live by every word): "The soul that sins, it shall die": an unequivocal statement! To what, then, does salvation pertain, since all have sinned and since all sinning souls are under an unequivocal sentence of death? We know that the wages of sin are superseded by the gift of Life to those who believe; but how are we to receive this gift, since we have all characterized truth as falsehood at some time in our lives, our souls thus being forfeit to the most solemn judgment?

The Father's words in the mouth of the Son are, "Unless you believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins." Well, belief is the gateway to ransom, but not of sinful souls; for they are under an unequivocal sentence of death! When we receive of the Father's Life in the Son, we become not reformed or realigned souls, but new creatures: we walk in the newness of the Father's life, not as reformed sinners; however-- more troublesome yet!-- the new creature Paul (or him speaking through Shaul) characterizes himself as the foremost/first/chief sinner! Where, then, lies the hope of men living less careful lives?

In answer to these questions, I remembered the words, "He that overcomes shall not be hurt of the second death." This scripture did not fully answer my concerns, but it became very like a magnet, drawing my mind through the inquiry. Some see the first death as the physical birth-- as our incarnation into flesh; others, as the spiritual death of the man of sin, that the child of light can be born. Although both views have merit for certain lines of inquiry, I understood from my youth that the second death is none other than the death of the sinful soul, subsequent to the death of the physical body: for it is given unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. Note that the scripture does not say that the overcomers shall escape the second death, but that they shall not be hurt of it.

I believe that the atonement for sin that comes by the voluntary shedding of the lifeblood of him who knew no sin provides a scarlet thread by which we escape the overthrow of perdition: that this atonement makes possible the process of salvation, bringing us near the congregation of Yisrael for the purpose of perfection. Strangers no longer, we drink of the Living Waters apportioned to Yisrael; and the old man-- the karmic husk that climbed down the scarlet thread for atonement-- continues, now, in subservient sacrifice to the authority of the Life now found in the New Man-- the Son of Man, the Complete Adam.

Atonement pertains to receiving the spirit of adoption, the fruition of which is the redemption of the celestial body (not of the sinful soul, which must die; nor of the physical body, because flesh and blood cannot inherit). The book of Romans testifies that we are, simultaneous to spiritual adoption, already the children of Elohim by an immaculate conception through the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 4:15; Mt. 23:9). We conclude, therefore, that salvation is an ongoing birth process that must be worked out in our natural lives, and that the manifestation of the sons of HaShem has yet to appear in its fullness because they are yet encumbered by karmic swaddling clothes, their full light being yet hidden in this final age of worldly dominance, this third measure of meal.

We share Serai's triumphal laughter at the promise of a child in her old age; for what can be the mother of this holy child promised to each of us, other than our own, imperfect souls? For that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, while that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and soul is the medium in which spirit and flesh interface: soul is the body formed by the impregnating breath of Spirit, and it monitors and integrates the sentient faculties of the flesh.

As living souls that walk the paths of atonement, we take up our crosses daily and crucify the old man on them, that the new man might live in us. What is the old man, other than the sinful soul? What is the new man, other than the developing soul of the new creature? By following in the footsteps of HaMashiyach, we work out our salvation by faith, sharing the interest accrued on the wages of sin. Men of spots and blemishes could never pay the debt; but the teachings of sowing and reaping make it clear that there is somewhat to repay, and that the walk in Messiah is the narrow path to Life, and to a balancing of accounts. Thus it is written, that if the Anointed of Yah shall make us free, we are free indeed.

The holy, embryonic child we carry in the temple of our bodies is wrapped in swaddling clothes-- in the convulsive garments of the soul of the old man (Lk. 17:34). Are we not instructed that a woman will be saved-- not hurt of the second death-- if she continue in child bearing? Let us not lose hope, therefore. The travail of Yisrael's wilderness is long and difficult because of sin, but HaShem promised that He is able to bring us to the birth-- but again, each in his order.

Our zeal for the new man being born in us makes us ashamed of the swaddling garments belonging to the old man; and the temptation is to suppress them, to conceal them. To do so, however, is to abort the process of birth. Further, to do so is to embrace the processes of death-- to become a whited sepulcher; for we have somewhat to repay for the bones buried in our pasts, and we cannot enter into freedom until the last farthing is paid. This is good; for it is the garments of the sinners we were that distinguish the mission fields that will be expedient, both for working out individual perfection and for the efficacious spreading of the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven unto all peoples everywhere.

The apostle Shaul speaks of the two laws of sin and of grace operating simultaneously within himself. The intersection of these laws displays the dynamics of the cross: by a narrow focus on their interactions, we witness-- step by step, in our lives-- the righteousness that is ours through the second Adam as it victoriously confronts and cancels the unrighteousness that entered into the first Adam: the triumphs of each day contribute to the maturation of the new creature unto its state of perfection at the last day. As it operates within us bodily, it is the intersection of these two laws that brings us into alignment with the measurement of the Godhead that is in Messiah.

These two laws-- one pertaining to the old man, and the other, to the new-- are as the sons (words, works, formulations) of Yahúdah (praise) by Tamar (upliftedness): they are as Zerach (the arising) being supplanted by Perets (the breach). These sons war together in the spiritual womb of the new creature, a struggle that is congruent with the process of salvation, itself. Like with our struggles at Ephesus, Zerach appears first, to our joy, but succumbs to a falling away at the supplantive emergence of Perets. Nevertheless, the election of the firstborn belongs to him who bears the sign of the scarlet thread; and the fruits of the falling away, like the days of Edom, shall be as though they had never been.

The appearance of the finger of Zerach is as the first sign/wonder of our experience of salvation. When Zerach is withdrawn back into the spiritual womb, it is on behalf of Perets, who is as the karmic debt of the sinful soul comprising the old man; for only after full presentation of the parameters of Perets can Zerach be truly born-- all debt paid, every accuser cast down, every brother lifted up. Zerach's complete measurement appears only in those who have overcome: only in those who have faced the bones within and have fully returned life for life by the walk in Mashiyach. In this fashion, the perfection that appertains to humans is consummated by the true birth of the soul of the new creature, which is the Son of Man. Until the full manifestation of the Sons of Elohim, we are "babes" in Christ-- embryonic heralds of that which is to come.

At physical death, the body returns to the grave of earth, where there is no understanding; the spirit returns to HaShem, who gave it; and the soul-- only if it is perfected in its human dimensions and no sin/guile is found therein-- is not hurt of the second death. This means that the second death for those who overcome is a change for purpose of extension, not a termination.

But what of the fathers to whom the promises pertain who died owing wages of sin? For of them, as also of us, it is written, "There is none that is righteous"(doeth good), "no not one"! Having died in unrighteousness, are they now living in a purgatorial Sheol or Gehennah? If so, we must understand Avraham's bosom to be a kind of hell! Furthermore, the "good" thief on the cross, with little to recommend him, was promised paradise on the day of his death. We can say that the thief died after the cross and the patriarchs before; but the Lamb of Elohim was slain from the foundations of the world; and Avraham and those with him are clearly pictured in the gospels as residing in paradise previous to the temporal cross.

There is a higher interpretation of the patriarchal functions than can be understood from the literal Torah stories, but the words of spirit and life must have their effects at every level of interpretation, in harmony with the extension capabilities of the Crown Diamond display and the developmental levels of God's children. The land is promised to Avraham's seed and to Avraham, himself. By what means, then, does he inherit it?

This is what I understand concerning man: the body is the outer garment; the soul is the inner garment; the angel is that which is clothed; and the spirit that proceeds from the Father is the life and the unity of the entire organism. It is given man once to die. Take away any one of these elements, and man is no longer man: he becomes a disunity, with his constituent parts being extended to their realms, or localities, of origin-- with them being gathered to their fathers.

In fact, there is no death; there is only extension from one form to another, as also from one state of being to another. The natural law of the conservation of energy should settle that question, even for non-believers. If thought is electrical impulses carried in the nervous system, it cannot be lost; it can only change. Look for death: where is it? It is the invention of man! Even a natural corpse is full of life, though the life of man is absent. Death is extension, and the questions it raises have relevance only as they teach us about life.

The body is a garment that returns to the earth, from which it came. We know, also, that the spirit of man is the gift of Elohim and returns to Him at death, and that no man has power to retain the spirit. If we settle the core of being upon the soul, what is left to be hurt of the second death? The second death, if such were the case, would be mere oblivion! The core of our being, on Earth as it is in heaven, must be in the angelic: as it is written, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

The chariot vision of man explains John/Elias. John was not Elias: he was a soul named John; the soul named Eliyahu/Elias lived and died in another age. John was Elias: he was the spirit and angel of Elias returned as a soul named John. Yahushúa turned the age upside down: he taught us that our roots are in heaven; and because our angelic roots are there, we rejoiced at the creation of Earth. Further, because salvation pertains to the inward thought of the creature made of dust, those angels not buried in the flesh greatly desire to look into the good news concerning man. Barak-El!

The immortal angel is the fiery grub, the chrysalis of the soul; and the flesh is the cocoon. The transformations that occur in life-- good and bad-- are not from one thing to another thing; they are transformations within the same thing. It is by virtue of this fact that the angelic Sons of Elohim, seeing that the daughters-- spiritual wombs-- of mankind were pleasant, were able to father "sons" in them: exerting their projections into the flesh.

The angel is the first formulation of Spirit. It is naked fire. Delineated as a spark within the consuming fire of HaShem, the angel seeks a house but is incapable, on its own, of inhabiting one without causing its ultimate dissolution. The angel is a pillar of fire, a tongue of fire, a worm of fire. It achieves stability only when positioned in a lamp. Knowing this to be true, the angels therefore rejoiced at the creation of Earth. "Worm" is a fitting metaphor for fire, the natural element of the angelic. A worm is all slopes-- all eshdat-- "the manner of fire." It climbs tentatively, it burrows, it consumes its path. Divided, it is cloned. Water, in its free state, is its natural peril.

When the angel incarnates in a cocoon of flesh, the soul's life commences with the body's first breath; however, the soul's life at birth is but the beginning of a process of transformations that lead to eternal life. The destiny is certain, but the stages along the way depend upon the soul's progress in the will of YHWH. When that which is perfect is come, the imperfect stages fall away. We have a foretaste of this truth even now, as we daily mature, stage by stage, towards perfection.

Spirit is the breath of life; and the life of the body is in the blood: the fire/angel/ish is empowered by the blood-- its experiential fuel is metabolized there as in natural combustion, wherein air (spirit) feeds the fires of transformation. Without the spirit and the inward fire, the body dies and the soul is surrendered to spiritual judgment in the angelic.

The angel's immortality consists of its .... link to HaShem's Spirit: the angels are His words, even as Yahushúa is His Word; and they do not fall to the ground in vain. The body's mortality is due to its dependency on the light energies of the incarnated angel. By means of the body, the immortal angel puts on mortality; and by means of the perfected soul, the naked angel gains an immortal garment of soul, a celestial body.

As the blood (lake of fire) interacts with the cells of the body in an incarnation, the soul is energized: the sentient capabilities of the cocoon/flesh are activated, and the life of the angel becomes manifest in the faculties of the host's shell (body). Thus, we see soul/p as the expression of the life within; and it is that. But it is also more than that; for the body/cocoon is a womb both inhabited and, in a sense, impregnated by the angel, and the soul/b (butterfly, celestial body of light) is also the embryonic child of that union.

The lake of fire above is HaShem. He sends forth His angels/sparks by means of the holy flame of His Word: He speaks them, breathes them: one by one, He sends them forth to the Earth. It is these sparks of HaShem that become man/ish. As natural man/adam, the flesh/adamah glows with the light of the fire (divine spark/ish) incarnated within the cocoon of the earthen tabernacle. This glow is soul as expression.

As an expression/p, the soul is the son/work of man/adam (Ps. 8:4): the glow within is seen without. As an enformulation/child/b, soul is the Son of Man/enosh (Ps. 144:3), one to be transformed by mortal experience in preparation for an immortal garment suitable to its ultimate state of being.

A woman/isha ("garment"/the flesh) encompasses a man/ish ("fire being"); and this woman dies (is extended) in childbirth, transforming the man by her extension. That which we have been is the womb of our becoming: the emergence is Zerach, a "lifting of the inner light." Zerach-- the emergence of the light body (soul/b)-- appears first, but is quickly swallowed up by Perets-- by faulty expressions (soul/p) engendered in the experience of mortality/enosh. When those expressions have been fully measured and comprehended, they are overcome; and Zerach is truly born, at last.

An imperfect son of mortality/enosh clings to the mortal and perishes with it: such a son is stillborn. In the metaphor of Perets/Zerach, it does not gain the inheritance/birthright of the firstborn. A perfected son of mortality puts on immortality and rises from the cocoon of the flesh in an imperishable form, the body of light. The scarlet thread-- the karmic trail of blood/life-- accompanies the elect son (Zerach) through all of his struggles with Perets in the cocoon/womb/flesh.

Not every incarnation produces a butterfly (perfected soul/light body): adversity exists; breaches occur. The angel failing to complete its transformations in an incarnation is not lost, however: it remains immortal, a spark of HaShem. It is gathered, again, into the lake of fire above, where it is purged and purified. The aborted soul that was in process of formation in an incarnation but failed to reach perfection is lost; but that loss does not involve the life of the angel. The immortal angel can be sent forth again, into a new cocoon.

The light body is formed by the release/surrender/p of the full nature of the light energies (angelic character) resident in an incarnation as the angel again becomes aligned with the perfect unity of the Life Force, the Spirit of HaShem. This is analogous to the formation of the physical body within the natural womb. A partial release of cell energies creates an imperfect body/soul/b, which cannot be sustained. But unlike the natural mother, who survives childbirth by retaining those things necessary for her own life, the chrysalis of the soul must utterly abandon itself to complete transformation if it is to emerge from the cocoon in a new form. This abandonment of self releases every expression within the chrysalis: the scarlet thread is entirely spooled from the skein of yarn above into the garment of light forming below.

I've written many words and have failed to write clearly. Discussing the p soul and the b soul is like dealing with the double helix of the DNA string: it's possible to make the jump between the two understandings, but it's no easy matter to explain exactly what you're about. I've had visions of people I know, seeing them in their angelic form as they were previous to incarnation. That form is an unstable cloud of fire, like the blaze of a sun, and must become a fiery grub for purposes of incarnation. In comparison to the light body we are destined to attain, the earthen body is like a bushel over a lamp: it obscures the light within; and the light within must eventually burn up the earthen vessel, releasing the incarnate fire. To develop an enduring house, our souls must be fully transformed.

For it to appear, light must inhabit a medium. Without a medium to differentiate between them, light and darkness are indistinguishable. "Space" is black in full sunshine because there is nothing to receive and reflect the light. Praise The Name of YHWH, who divides light from darkness!

It is written, "...the times of this ignorance, YHWH winked at," and this wink encourages the imperfect soul. Thus, now, "we see through a glass darkly..."; for the eye of YHWH outshines the sun, and a soul that is as an unpolished diamond cannot adequately measure or convey the light of His countenance. The soul's imperfection is the measurement of the darkness within. Once perfected, however, we shall see Him "face to face"-- that is, "face upon face"; for it is also written: "I know that in my flesh shall I see YHWH...." Praise The Name hwhy, and may His faces shine from within each of us. Shalom.