This is long and rambly. I start with a hypothesis about the nature of creator and the Heavenly Host from a different thread. Then I go into a little dialogue regarding the fall from grace. If you just want to get to the part about 666, scroll down to *****
if you wish to see the thread it started in, look up "words like religion" in subjects.
~Selah~
He Who Hath Ears to Hear, Let Him Hear...
Though there is truth here, remember I am still a fallible man and do not claim absolute accuracy...
Perhaps the creation was achieved not by a singular being named "God" or "Allah" or "YhVh" (though that last is actually the closest). The creator was in fact (or theory) a multiplicitous being. The Heavenly Host, if you will, was not a bunch of individual angel drones without free will worshiping an all powerful God. The Heavenly Host perhaps IS "God." An unknowably huge number of semi-individual awarenesses connected into a network of divinity. Each "angel" like a mirror, reflecting to all the others the magnificence of the whole. Or something like that. Now, this entity existed "before" the physical realm, although time as we know it was not in effect at the time. For reasons I do not address here, but will another time and another place, this vast network of spiritual awareness and will brought into being the singularity, which immediately burst just as it was meant to, to create the physical realm. That was when time actually began. Sort of... maybe...
Anyway, The WHOLE thing was about CREATING. about bringing SOMETHING out of the NOTHING. There actually WAS (possibly) a 'time' that even the Host was not. After all, there was nothing. nothing at all. Okay I am getting to close to launching into my explanation of that paradox, which I am not doing here. But however and whyever, the Host came about in defiance of Nothing as it were. All of creation from that moment on was in defiance of nothing, in pursuit of order over chaos, and beauty over... not beauty.
Matter and energy were an absolute masterwork of order and form. To this day we can see the majesty and glory and beauty of it all. Chemistry, Physics, Math, all were essentially created there and then. And eventually, the how and why explained elsewhere, the "We" ( also known as "I AM"
brought about the perfect conditions on a little ball of rock, and breathed the spirit of life. All living things have a connection to that spiritual realm, that is what life is. But only we are connected directly to the Host. But not yet.
The time came when animals, in all their variety, approached a level of intelligence that nearly approximated true consciousness, self-awareness, and reason. But just as matter is not life without connection to the spirit, so life cannot truly reason without connection to the I AM. The network The consciousness--that which says "I AM", which is aware of itself, of its environment, of thought, emotion, reason.
For the first time, there was discord in Heaven. A portion of the Host wanted to Inspire Man. Which is to say, they wanted to attach their own I AM (the only consciousness there was) to the monkeymen so that they could continue to develop and grow, increasing order and form and beauty further still. But a larger portion considered this folly. If we let man think, he will "be like us!" Things will never be the same, he will inevitably mess things up....
"Why, we would essentially be putting our selves into man, why would WE "mess things up?"
"Lucifer, think about what you are saying! You are brilliant and beautiful, your light shining brighter than any. If you inspire Man, you cannot retain your perfection! You will have a physical body, flaws. You cannot retain your memory of your divine nature, of anything for that matter, all you could do is give them awareness and reason with no direct knowledge or memory of Heaven, of US!"
"But they would still be CONNECTED to us! They have to be, as they will have the I AM! They will aspire to perfection, where is the wrong in that?"
"They will not BE perfect! Their aspirations will fall short! They will still be animals, they will not simply lose their beastly nature and replace it with divinity! Think on it! If an animal kills another animal, what of it? It is the nature of the beast! What if, out of frustrated aspirations, or envy, or who knows what else, a Man should Kill another man?"
(audible gasp, if it weren't the spiritual realm)
"Kill? Well surely they would not just kill one another! They have intelligence, reason! They still have their connection to our divinity!"
"And they will have FREE WILL! They will not just automatically do the right thing! They will be free to do as they choose, which means that SOME of them will INEVITABLY choose EVIL!"
"EVIL!?!? They will have the knowledge of good and evil, they will know better!"
"Lucifer, the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is SIN!!!"
"They will grow, they will learn, they will experience our creation with a fullness that we as mere spirits could never even imagine!"
"Mere?! Mere spirits? Is that what it is? Are you so Bored with rejoicing in the glory and the beauty of being and creating, of order and form, that you would prefer to have a physical body so you can know what it FEELS like? To eat, to breathe, to smell, to touch, to BREED? (ew!) to defecate? (double ew)"
"Ah you make it all sound even more inviting, Michael. Yes, We want to experience our creation first hand, as it SHOULD be. This is clearly the next step in our furtherance of order, form, and beauty. Think of all the things that MAN will accomplish with our divine spark within him! Yes, there will be pain! Yes, there will be suffering, strife, and even evil. But to LIVE! Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, do you not SEE that this is what we MUST do???"
"No Lucifer. It is folly. If we cannot stop you then we must cut you off. You cannot return to heaven until..."
"Until what?"
"Until you cleanse the sin of that world from your filthy physical body and realign yourself with your divine nature. You will be trapped in that pit, tilling the land for food, striving against one another, building and destroying... for thousands of years, lucifer... think on it..."
Sorry, long conversation there... Thus began the Fall from Grace, from Heaven, of Lucifer and a third of the Heavenly host. And down on Earth awoke Mankind on grassy plains, with memories of a far more beautiful place, like a garden where all their needs were attended to. They chose to eat the fruit of the tree, and... the blinding sun was like a flaming sword. They had made a choice... disobeyed the will of... I AM... and they were banned from the garden. This one guy had a reddish hue to his skin so he was called Adam. And on the eighth day, a snake bit him on the heel. That really sucked.
*******
So you see, the fall was OUR choice of Inspiration, incorporation of I AM into mankind. We cut ourselves off from our divinity for a chance to play down here, enjoy the wonders of life. Eventually we did come to repent, but we could not just go back to Heaven, even if we remembered our divine origin, which for the most part we did not, we mostly had vague memories of The Host and I AM and the Garden. No, we were stuck down here with our human nature. A nature both like god and like beast. We had our awareness, our I AM, our reason. And we had our lusts, greed, wrath, sloth, all of it. Some of us surrendered to the beast, some of us strove to purge it from us. But the beast was there because we were ALIVE, because we had physical bodies. When we were wholly spirit, there simply WAS nothing to do that was "evil." it was only in the physical realm that we, with our free will and our knowledge of right and wrong, could choose to do wrong, evil, sin.
Oh and here's a part I mentioned in the other thread that I did not yet bring up here. Life as we know it depends on Carbon. That is why we are called Carbon based lifeforms. Carbon, the fourth most plentiful element after Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Helium. Carbon's atomic number is 6
Carbon has
6 protons
6 neutrons
6 electrons
As I said in the other thread, I believe the various religious faiths are all genuine efforts to reconnect with the divine. They are also flawed because we are flawed. But I believe parts of their scriptures are inspired, particularly prophetic visions. Such as Ezekiels wheels in the sky, jacob's ladder... the four horsemen, and the number of the beast.
Carbon. The basis of Life. Life, the folly of the fallen. The number-the hint.
Here is Wisdom, Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of man. 666. In order to return to heaven we must overcome the beast which is within us--our own animal nature.