Rev 1/21/82ff; 5/4/82; Eph 32 5/25/86, Eph 123, 296, 712 12/29/87
A. Even though history is the record of man’s thoughts, decisions, actions and motivations, it is Jesus Christ who controls history.
1. This is the first dispensation in which Jesus Christ controls history from His Hypostatic Union.
2. There are two sources of judgment in history: the sovereign decisions of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the erroneous decisions of mankind.
B. As goes the believer, so goes the historical trends at any point in any generation of the Church Age. Residence, function and momentum inside our very own palace, the operational-type divine dynasphere means historical uptrend, while involvement in the cosmic system means historical downtrend.
C. People individually and collectively are the products of their own decisions.
1. Decisions create environment, not environment decisions.
2. There are no tragedies in history, just historical disasters. So- called historical disasters are not tragedies since individuals, nations, and empires are the products of their own self-determination.
3. The pattern of historical disaster begins with economic depression, moves to moral and immoral degeneracy, and ends in military disaster.
4. God selects the most evil nation to administer the fifth cycle of discipline to a degenerate client nation. Evil one destroys evil two. Evil is always attracted to evil to destroy evil.
D. Individual subjectivity destroys national objectivity.
1. Arrogant people result in arrogant nations. Arrogant people or arrogant nations never see their own inconsistencies, only the inconsistencies of others. Jealous people and envious nations never see their own sins and production of evil, only the sins and evil of others.
2. This is why Christ taught the doctrine of perpetual warfare until He returns. The only way to prevent war is to be so well prepared that no one will attack.
3. When maximum subjectivity is in a nation, God will destroy that nation, not directly, but through the first three principles of historical trends.
E. The demand for power always exceeds the need for power.
1. There are more people with old sin natures than there are slots for power to be exercised. There are millions of people without power who want power to go with their arrogance in cosmic one.
2. The need for power is determined by the laws of divine establishment which define legitimate authority and power in the civil realm.
a. The first authority in life is parental. How you respond or react to parental authority determines the pattern for your life.
b. Few people ever recover from total rebellion against their parents.
c. God issues the exact right parents for each child.
d. The Word of God is the believer’s authority in spiritual life.
e. The pastor is the authority in the communication of doctrine and the supervision of administration of the local church.
3. The demand for power is determined by the motivating evil of cosmic one and the functional evil of cosmic two.
4. Legitimate power always functions within the context of legitimate authority delegated by God through the laws of divine establishment, so that authority is defined for personal, social, economic, professional, national and spiritual life.
5. Evil and its destructive power exists to the extent that cosmic arrogance exceeds the restraints of legitimate power and authority.
6. This principle is true in a sport where the referee loses control; or in a nation where bad decisions from a position of weakness on the part of the government fail to protect the freedom, privacy, property and life of its citizens; or in a local church where the congregation is to be protected by the teaching of Bible doctrine and privacy enforced; or in a home where parents have no control over their children.
7. Since we are the products of our own volition rather than environment, motivational and functional evil of the cosmic system can only be restrained through gate 3 of the divine dynasphere, i.e., enforced and genuine humility, which characterizes the mature person in life.
F. Historical trends are related to the conflict between objective reality (life in the divine dynasphere) and subjective reality (life in the cosmic system).
1. Believers are not only the products of their own decisions (not their environment), but the nation in which they reside is affected by their good or bad decisions.
2. Good decisions result in life in the divine dynasphere; bad decisions result in life in the cosmic system. It’s how the balance between these two works out at any given time in history that determines historical trends.
3. Arrogant individuals, groups, or nations never see the consequences of their own bad decisions related to the cosmic system.
4. For example, arrogance includes jealousy, bitterness, hatred, anger, vindictiveness, implacability, self-pity, and guilt complex. Decisions made with these mental attitudes accumulate and produce a national historical downtrend.
5. Preoccupation with self to the exclusion of objective reality is the greatest blindness problem in life and the major reason for criminality.
G. There is no progress in innovation without truth or a legitimate system.
1. Innovation without truth is historically disastrous, while innovation without a system is destructive.
2. Innovation without a system includes modern art, religious cults, hard rock music, weirdo poetry, Keynesian economic innovations that ignore the basic truths of supply and demand, high fashion which ignores female symmetry, and everything from gnosticism to communism. Innovation which ignores basic strategy and tactics in the military means disaster. People are so arrogant that they want to innovate without learning the sound basis from which innovation is derived.
3. Innovation imposed on others without their consent runs the gamut from personal arrogance to collective tyranny. Historically, innovation based on truth is progress, solution, and the historical uptrend to prosperity. Innovation based on a false premise is the retrogressive downtrend of history leading to disaster and destruction of the client nation.
4. Redistribution of wealth, the welfare state, socialism, and communism are innovations of disaster. Revolution and terrorism is the disaster that results from innovation without truth.
5. Innovation is often related to progress, but it is never progress unless related to truth or a system. You must learn basic doctrine before you innovate or make multiple applications of doctrine. Innovation without truth is application of doctrine without cognizance of doctrine.
6. True innovation is the application of doctrine to experience, while false innovation is the believer’s false application to life from residence in the cosmic system. Cosmic innovation results in great weakness.
7. All true spiritual innovation has its base of operation in the function of the royal priesthood and its application in the function of the royal ambassadorship.
H. Too often history is the story of how the weak control the strong.
1. Weak, insecure, thoughtless, arrogant people often control policy, procedures and people in social life, culture, business, professional life, marriage, government, and churches.
2. Through arrogance, self-centeredness, and preoccupation with self, the weak in society control and manipulate the strong.
3. This is why a nagging wife makes a scene and dominates a thoughtful, courteous, and kind husband. This is why peons and scum are possessive and often control nice people. This is why irrational self-righteous crusaders often dominate in politics and government administration. This is how a power mad and irresponsible press can dominate and destroy great leaders or potentially great leaders. This is how a junta can make a bad decision and start lawlessness internationally.
I. Man’s strength lies in the non-meritorious use of his volition, not in his human ability.
1. With his volition, the believer can make right decisions relating to God’s power and Bible doctrine, but he can also make wrong decisions based on subjectivity and human arrogance, and thereby succumb to Satanic propaganda of the cosmic system.
2. Choosing to believe Satan’s propaganda whether in religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, or any other academic subject related to human viewpoint results in choosing the thinking and environment of the cosmic system.
3. This doesn’t imply that these academic subjects are all Satanic viewpoint, but most contain a great deal of human viewpoint.
4. Such a choice thereafter limits the use of one’s free will to making only bad decisions until one runs out of bad decisions, closing the door to all options in life and terminating life under the sin unto death.
5. By choosing divine truth in three categories (the laws of divine establishment, the Gospel, and Bible doctrine), decisions result in both residence and function in the divine dynasphere, where the filling of the Spirit produces the power, and where enforced and genuine humility produce teachability for greater options in life, plus personal blessing and glorification of Christ.
6. Man must inevitably choose something greater than himself by which to live. He must choose greater wisdom, power and ability. There are only two power systems available from which to choose: the divine dynasphere and the cosmic system. Anytime you choose to live by something less than yourself, you are a loser in life.
7. If man must live by his wits, he must live by his volition.
8. Non-meritorious use of volition, linking up with grace and the protocol plan of God, results in historical blessing by association for all.
J. Too often history is the narrative of man’s weakness and not his strength.
1. Inside the divine dynasphere the battle is the Lord’s and you win; inside the cosmic system the battle is yours and you lose.
2. There are no winners in the cosmic system, just different categories of losers.
3. There are no losers in the divine dynasphere, just different categories of winners.
4. There would be no human history without man’s wrong decisions, and wrong decisions are made every day in the cosmic system.
5. This is a part of the great conflict between the arrogance of the cosmic system and the enforced and genuine humility inside the divine dynasphere.
6. Weakness becomes strength by choosing for the God’s plan rather than your own plan, while strength becomes weakness by choosing for the cosmic system.
7. Once Adam ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, history became a matter of self-determination. Now the human race is plagued with wrong decisions.
8. The use of human volition is now the issue in human life.
9. By making good decisions you open options for greater decisions and blessing.
10. By making bad decisions, you destroy those options.
11. The historical trends of the Church Age are related to the believer’s choice of options. Believers choosing for the divine dynasphere and producing a large pivot of mature believers means blessing, but believers choosing for the cosmic system means great disaster.
12. While man is free, he is also weak. Therefore, he must use his volition to identify with a power system greater than he is which can turn weakness into strength, i.e., the divine dynasphere. The cosmic system turns strength into weakness.
13. Inside the divine dynasphere men’s lives are changed by doctrine. Inside the cosmic system men’s lives are changed by arrogance and by evil.
14. Under the principle of liberty, man must be free to succeed or fail. Therefore, true freedom is the source of both failure and success.
K. Knowledge of Absolute Truth Manufactures Freedom.
1. Jn 8:32, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
2. This is another way of saying that good decisions create options for greater decisions, while bad decisions destroy those options.
3. The cosmic system has the power to change lives for the worse while the divine dynasphere has the power to change lives for the better. None of us stand still; we are getting better or worse.
4. Better or worse is the daily option of the free will functioning in the sphere of freedom.
5. Freedom carries the responsibility of making decisions based on truth or doctrine rather than on arrogance and evil, Satan’s propaganda system, the cosmic system.
6. Freedom to fail results in recognition of our human frailties and our weaknesses. Recognition of our weaknesses is neither demeaning nor degrading.
7. All solutions in life begin with weakness and the recognition of our failures, and then move to God’s provision for strength, and finally the development of integrity. The grace principle is the only true principle in life that recognizes that we are weak. Once saved we are still weak. You cannot make objective decisions until you realize in humility you have weaknesses like all the rest of mankind. Man is helpless and hopeless without God’s provision.
8. All strength in life is from integrity.
9. Weakness in the unbeliever makes evangelism meaningful, while weakness in the believer makes doctrine meaningful.
10. If man is not free to fail, he cannot orient to his need for the grace policy of God the Father, the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and the fantastic availability of the power of the Holy Spirit for the execution of the protocol plan of God. If the believer is not free to fail, he cannot orient to his need of life in the divine dynasphere and for the daily perception of doctrine. He cannot orient to his need for God’s plan, will, and purpose for his life.
11. So by taking the responsibility for your own failures, you have the beginning of a solution. Those who blame their failures on someone else will never have any happiness or solution to the problems of life.
12. So by taking the responsibility for his own failures and bad decisions, man learns his inherent and acquired weaknesses, and he seeks for a power system greater than his weaknesses and greater than himself.
13. The greater the use of positive volition toward the power and the plan of God, the greater the blessing and prosperity for the client nation in any given generation of the Church Age.
14. Therefore, knowledge of truth not only manufactures freedom but deliverance and prosperity to the client nation. This is effected by that group of believers who form a pivot by advancing to spiritual maturity, at which point they become invisible heroes with invisible impact.
L. Out of suffering for blessing comes strength through positive volition toward the truth.
1. Providential preventative suffering plus spiritual self-esteem equals spiritual autonomy. Spiritual autonomy plus momentum testing equals spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity plus evidence testing equals the glorification of God.
2. We need God and His plan for our lives. God’s plan begins when we believe in Christ and continues when we learn Bible doctrine in the divine dynasphere.
3. Man is not the master of his fate nor the lord of his destiny.
4. Man lives in the devil’s world and through weakness is vulnerable to enslavement in the cosmic system.
5. Man can use his own free will to become a slave or he can use it to become a servant of God.
6. The sooner the believer realizes his need of a power greater than himself and outside of himself, the sooner he establishes the right priorities for life and a pattern of good decisions relating to the God’s plan.
7. Man is not an independent power but a creature of weakness whose strength lies in the functions of his soul, especially in the function of his free will to choose God’s power system.
8. Human power, authority, ability, genius, talent, self-righteousness or even a dynamic personality or beauty are no substitutes for life in the divine dynasphere. Yet people depend on almost anything of a creature nature rather than on the provision of their Creator, Jesus Christ.
9. It often takes personal or historical disaster to bring the believer (or anyone) to an understanding of how weakness is turned into strength. 2 Cor 12:9-10 illustrates. “And then He assured me, `My grace is sufficient for you. For the power [omnipotence of God] functions in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather demonstrate confidence toward God in my weaknesses in order that the power of Christ may pitch a tent over me. Therefore, for the sake of Christ I discover contentment [+H] in weaknesses [helpless situations], in the antagonisms of arrogance [opposition from cosmic one], in pressures [momentum testing], in persecutions [opposition from cosmic two], in disasters [hopeless situations]; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
M. The Principle of Borrowed Strength.
1. Borrowed strength is weakness; acquired strength is power.
2. Acquired strength is spiritual power that results from residence in the divine dynasphere under the enabling power of the Spirit and momentum from metabolized doctrine.
3. Borrowed strength is that form of human weakness by which the believer becomes involved in the cosmic system. He becomes involved by depending on the apparent strength and alleged wisdom of others. Borrowed strength is leaning on others for help, encouragement, counseling, or inspiration.
4. The implication is obvious. You can use your own free will to gain strength in the divine dynasphere, or you can use your own free will to borrow strength in the cosmic system. If you live in the cosmic system, you borrow strength and live on Satanic principles in a state of weakness.
5. The believer who lives consistently in the divine dynasphere gains strength through his daily decisions to learn doctrine. Phil 4:13, “I have the endowed power [divine dynasphere] to attain all things [maturity] by means of the One [Holy Spirit] who keeps on pouring the power [Bible doctrine] into me.”
6. If you use your volition to gain strength, you will advance to maturity. But if you use your volition to borrow strength, you will be weak all your life.
7. You borrow strength when you make decisions to go with people who influence you erroneously. 1 Cor 15:33, “Do not be deceived; evil companions corrupt good morals [standards].”
a. You borrow strength by taking bad advice, or simply going through life being influenced by people rather than what the Word of God says.
b. You never have a thought of your own, but always depend upon the counsel of others.
c. You use others as a crutch rather than learning and applying doctrine for yourself.
d. You use someone else’s scale of values rather than developing your own priorities through the perception of doctrine.
e. You may eventually depend upon chemicals for comfort and courage. You borrow strength by depending on drugs or alcohol.
f. You depend on others for happiness rather than living inside the divine dynasphere and deriving your happiness from the function of its eight gates.
g. You cannot learn doctrine by sending someone else to Bible class. You must relate your volition to what you do, not to what others do. Wimps spend their whole lives relating their volition to what others do.
h. You must make daily and consistent decisions to expose yourself to Bible teaching. You must decide to learn doctrine; no one else can do it for you. Therefore it’s a principle of live and learn: live in the divine dynasphere and learn the doctrine.
8. An example of a historical trend related to this principle of borrowed strength is western Europe who has derived its freedom and strength from American industrial power. They depend on us yet despise us. The power of NATO is borrowed from the power of the USA, yet they hate us being there. As they borrow strength from us, we become weaker and weaker until all our strength is gone. Whenever the rapture occurs, the USA will be weak and western Europe very strong.
N. No nation has permanently survived the prosperity of manifest destiny.
1. There are three components of manifest destiny: landed aristocracy, industrial complex, and the undeveloped frontier.
2. For prosperity to exist, all three components must be combined under the leadership of the middle class industrial complex. This is what occurred during the American Civil War. The industrial middle class had to win or the United States would not have become a client nation.
3. During the combining process there is a struggle for freedom, the attainment of freedom, the establishment of freedom, and the capacity for freedom necessary for the function of the client nation.
4. When all components are combined, there is great prosperity and prosperity testing.
5. Once the prosperity is established through the consolidation of the three categories, it cannot be perpetuated apart from a maximum number of mature believers in the pivot. The prosperity is perpetuated spiritually, not materially.
6. The pivot of mature believers which perpetuates the prosperity of manifest destiny is formed by residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere, resulting in the execution of the protocol plan of God.
7. When believers become so wrapped up with their life of prosperity that they neglect doctrine and transfer their lives to the cosmic system to exploit and enjoy their prosperity as they see it, then they use their own volition to destroy themselves. But no believer ever makes bad decisions from a position of weakness without weakening the client nation and eventually destroying it.
8. In other words, it is the prosperity of any client nation which brings ruin and destruction to that nation. No nation goes down under adversity. It goes down under prosperity.
9. Prosperity creates the climate for destruction. People lose track of traditional values. Prosperity leads to economic, social, and military decline.
10. The cosmic system becomes the detractor and the basis for failure to pass the prosperity test.
11. The cosmic system offers pseudo-prosperity by eliminating capacity and perspective and by putting up such things as promotion, success, money, pleasure, approbation, social and sexual prosperity as substitutes.
12. All capacity for prosperity comes from Bible doctrine or truth and is related to humility.
13. Bible doctrine plus freedom (which Bible doctrine was used to produce freedom) become secondary priorities, and so freedom is distorted into a system of pleasure leading to social degeneracy, and into a system of welfare state economics leading to economic disaster.
14. Therefore, self-gratification rather than the enjoyment of prosperity is always the ruin of a nation.
15. Prosperity cannot be maintained apart from truth, and residence and function inside the divine dynasphere. Prosperity cannot be perpetuated apart from the positive volition of believers.
16. No nation has ever permanently survived the prosperity of manifest destiny. In these times of the Gentiles, S.P.Q.R. holds the record for client nation prosperity due to its prolonged pivot, resulting in almost 500 years of prosperity.
17. Authority is a matter of human volition.
a. All authority in life is dependent upon human volition. We are free to accept or reject authority in life.
b. All legitimate authority is delegated by God through the laws of divine establishment and through the principles of freedom. All illegitimate authority is based on the function of the cosmic system.
c. While God has delegated authority in the human race, like government, marriage, home, this authority is no good unless human volition accepts it.
d. While the husband has legitimate authority over the wife, his authority is useless unless the wife from her own free will recognizes and accepts it. That requires some degree of love.
e. While parents have legitimate authority in the home, this authority is useless unless the children from their own free will recognize and accept it.
f. Authority becomes useless and meaningless unless recognized and accepted. This is why we have revolution, crime and other functions of evil. This explains the rise of evil dictators. This is why believers like Balaam recognize and accept the authority of God until God gives them a command incompatible with their personal desires. At that point, Balaam rejected the directive will of God.
g. The permissive will of God permits the function of human volition under the principle of human freedom. Therefore, the permissive will of God functions when the believer rejects the directive will of God as in the case of Balaam.
h. God does not tamper with human volition. When the believer rejects the authority of God’s Word and its divine mandates, he has, in essence, destroyed the authority of God in his life, so that he reverts to the cosmic system and the authority of Satan.
O. No nation ever learns from the mistakes of other nations when involved in cosmic arrogance.
1. This refers to non-client nations where there is neither a pivot of mature believers nor freedom for perception of truth in the three categories: establishment, evangelism, and doctrine.
2. The non-client nation serves Satan and its own selfish motivation. Furthermore, the non-client nation is the product of its own self- determination.
3. When a nation is involved in cosmic arrogance, its people are blind to the fact they are making exactly the same mistakes that destroyed other great nations before them.
4. Hegel stated this principle as follows, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
5. This is another way of saying that arrogant individuals or nations are unteachable and become blind to their own failures resulting in their own self-destruction long before they are invaded and overrun.
6. Three things destroy a nation.
a. Economic depression. It can result from government destruction of industry through legislation, or from destruction by the greed of labor or management.
b. Social degeneration. Individual bad decisions destroy the structure of society. The sacredness of freedom, property, and life are ignored or rejected. Integrity disappears from society and is replaced by every form of crime or immorality.
c. Military defeat. No nation can win a war when the manpower suffers from social degeneration and the industrial complex cannot provide logistical support.
P. No nation can survive functioning on principle without a pivot of mature believers.
1. Survival takes evangelism, positive volition toward doctrine, the function of the protocol plan of God, and cognizance of the portfolio of invisible assets provided for each believer.
2. For principle to function in a foreign or domestic policy, there must be a pivot of mature believers in a client nation. Out of that comes traditional values for unbelievers as well.
3. Principle is always based on truth. Therefore, truth must be backed by truth: the principle of Bible doctrine.
4. If truth is used in foreign policy, you must have a pivot of mature believers thinking truth to concur with that policy.
5. For principle to be the surviving factor in any national entity, there must be a client nation status.
6. The Roman Empire not only survived but had fantastic prosperity during the period of the Antonine Caesars immediately after the New Testament Canon was completed and circulated, from A.D. 96 - 192. This was due to the first great pivot of believers found in the Roman province of Asia with its headquarters in Ephesus.
7. A nation without positive volition or a pivot is a nation on its way to destruction, or is a nation which perpetuates itself through evil and is used as a divine instrument of judgment during the Church Age.
8. The function of principle and integrity and traditional values in a nation’s foreign and domestic policy is reserved by God under the historical trend for client nations only. Only client nations are to have foreign policy based on the function of principle and integrity.
9. When a nation such as ours is not functioning on the basis of integrity and principle, this means fantastic disaster.
10. Deut 32:8, “When the Most High God gave nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of Adam, He established the boundaries of peoples according to the number of citizens in Israel.” Client nation Israel was the determining factor in nationalism for many centuries.
11. The same principle applies during the Church Age, Acts 17:26, “He made from one blood the human race, every nation of mankind to live on the surface of planet earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.”
12. Every nation must function on the basis of self-determination. No nation has the right to tell other nations how to run their business. But as a client nation we do have the right to send out missionaries and establish churches. We have no right to superimpose our false standards, acquired through cosmic living, on other nations.
Q. The Church Age is the only dispensation in which historical trends are determined by the volition of the individual believer in Christ.
1. The Church Age is the dispensation of historical trends without prophecy. As goes your volition, so goes the Church Age.
2. Only during the Church Age are historical trends related exclusively to decisions made by believers in any given generation.
3. In all other dispensations historical trends are determined by prophecy. Prophecy determines the historical trends in every dispensation but the Church Age. But you cannot use prophecy to determine historical trends during the Church Age. This is the age of no prophecy.
4. Decisions of believers and unbelievers of other dispensations were programmed into the divine decrees and the print out is prophecy.
5. This is the only dispensation where eschatology does not determine historical trends, where the believer’s decisions are the only thing that determine historical trends.
6. This means that your decisions and applications based on doctrine determine the historical trends of your nation.
7. You have personal impact in blessing by association. You have historical impact in being a part of the pivot of mature believers. But you also have international impact through the function of indigenous missionary activity. All of these things depend on your individual spiritual life. If enough believers combine to do this, then manifest destiny is perpetuated for another generation.
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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved.
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