No.

Equality has a precise and unambiguous meaning: identity, exact sameness. To be emphatic or tautological, self-identity. This definition holds in all areas of comparison, except apparently, that of persons. When it comes to persons, equality is stripped of its clear and unambiguous meaning, and then gets filled with whatever it is the speaker wants it to mean, and the hearers fill it with whatever they want it to mean. Everyone just knows that somehow equality of persons is a good thing and we should treat everyone as equals. But no one can say exactly what the equality of persons means and have everyone agree. And so down through ages we get all the different ways that enforcing recognition of equality of persons ultimately plays out: the horrors of godless fascism, communism, socialism, and capitalism; the horrors of the holocaust of hundreds of millions of unborn children; the horrors of sexual abominations, abuses, and slaveries of countless depraved kinds that arise from the grasping at equality with God with regard to His design and purpose for human sexuality and the new life that should arise from it. Whenever tried, equality always eventually fails as an organizing social, civil, and governmental principle. The collapse of Western Civilization (Christendom) can be blamed almost single-handedly on equality, that poison pill formally inserted into the Christian understanding of the fundamental nature of God in the aftermath of the early 4th century when a pagan Roman emperor decided that Christianity from now on was going to be the official religion of the empire.

Equality is clearly used to try to imbue humans with some kind of equal worth that requires us to treat all humans in some kind of fundamentally equal way, whatever that means. It is not a gnostic concept of equality that dictates how we should relate to each other, it is God Himself Who does so, and His commands are clear. Appealing to equality adds absolutely nothing to this. The world has substituted equality for God. Equality is a false god. Grasping at equality always leads to death and destruction, without fail.

Christians, the words and concepts you use in your biblical teachings and discussions, whether from the pulpit or otherwise, should only bring light and clarity. Your use of equality obscures and confuses; it opens the door for your hearer and your own self to be deceived in a myriad of ways. Unless you explicitly define equality of persons each time you use it, you have not engaged in any actual meaningful communication, because everyone has their own idea of what it means. So why traffic in this word and concept at all? For a statement of equality to be true, it must be a tautology or it must be qualified.

Equality of persons, divine or otherwise, is not taught in the Scriptures. The equality of God the Father and God the Son is explicitly contradicted by the Scriptures. God the Father, the Supreme, Almighty, All-Knowing One, declares unambiguously and irrefutably that He has no equal (Isaiah 29:16, 40:25, 46:5). In John 5:18, the enemies of Jesus Christ, the Jews who were trying to kill Him, accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath and of making Himself equal with God because He healed on the Sabbath and called God His own Father. However, the declaration out of Jesus’ own mouth is that “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). And the Apostle Paul makes it unambiguously clear in Philippians 2:6 that Jesus did not grasp at equality with God. Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the Son of God, is the only person who never has and never will grasp at equality with His God and Father, Who is also our God and Father (John 20:17). Nowhere in the Scriptures are the Father and Son declared to be equal. This false idea and doctrine is a post-apostolic innovation.

The Bride of Christ has been deceived by the false god of equality and by the gnosticism of the Trinity and the Godhead. The early Christian churches of the first and second centuries had to battle various forms of gnosticism. It is clear now that gnosticism won with regard to this issue of the equality of persons, and the Bride of Christ has been overwhelmingly deceived since early on, grasping at equality with Her Lord, and declaring “truths” about Him and His God and Father that are explicitly contradicted by the Scriptures. This was done by Her from a place of good and pure, but fully deceived, intentions. Eve being deceived in the garden by the serpent Satan, the father of lies, is a type, a picture of the eternal and spiritual truth that unfolds with regard to the Bride of Christ.

We sing and most definitely should sing “Christ the True and Better Adam” because it is gloriously true. From the biblical type of Adam and Eve, we should also see more fully that Christ and His redeemed Bride and soon-to-be Wife are the True and Better Adam and Eve. This more complete understanding of the grand story of reality that God has brought forth is what I have tried to describe in A Parable For The Blind.1

Equality is the forbidden fruit, and grasping at equality is the original sin. Take the beam of equality out of your eye, take the false god of equality out of the Trinity, let the plain reading of the Scriptures and the forthright reasoning from it reign supreme, and a clearer understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ should come into focus. Without equality, the Trinity of divine persons resolves into the thrice Holy Triune One, Jesus Christ the Nazarene, who unites His God and Father to and in Himself, and unites His elect Bride and all the rest of creation to and in Himself by His eternal life-giving Holy Spirit (John 17).

Why does faith like a child

need to be any more complicated than calling upon the name of the Lord
The Saved One’s Prayer

confessing the Lord with one’s mouth
Creed

and believing in one’s heart that God raised Him from the dead?
He Died For Me And For You
The Holy One Died, But He Did Not See Decay
He Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed!

Why does seeking to know one’s Lord need to be any more urgent than being still
Let’s Pretend To Be Ents!

musing on His invisible attributes — His eternal power and divine nature —
Eternity And Time
The Knowledge of God And Of His Son
Pauper And King, And Where They Meet

and asking Him to purify one’s mind and take it captive to Him?
The Beauty Of Alzheimer’s
The Beauty condescended

Why does seeking to order one’s loves as the Lord commanded
LOVE, Loves, And Their Proper Divine Order

require anything more than desiring to see the face of Him
who loves more supremely and sacrificially than any other
Jason’s Prayer

and sincerely answering to the best of one’s ability the question He asked,
“Who do you say that I AM?”
Who Are You, Lord?

Why when seeking to stand on as firm a foundation
as one believes with all their heart to have been revealed
He Is
He Is Holy
He Is Man

and when seeking to understand how one is made in the image of His Lord
The Image Of God

one is surprised by a joyous vision of who He is
what He has done and what He will do
A Parable For The Blind

why should that one not proclaim and sing His praises
to the utmost without fear or restraint?
Now Is The Time

I do not have the inspiration of a poet and a psalmist like King David,
nor that of a prophet like Isaiah or an apostle like John, Peter, or Paul.
Nor do I have the skill of a theologian who can systematize in many volumes
the perfection of knowledge he understands about His Lord.
I cannot even begin to imagine and tell a transcendent myth or fairy tale
like Tolkien or Lewis that captivates the wonder of a child, young or old.
The workings of a mind like that of Handel or Bach to compose and sing
with angelic beauty a new song and hymn of praise is a mystery so complete.
How can visions flow forth with such grandeur from the minds and through the hands of a Rembrandt or a da Vinci on to canvas or hewn stone?

Such talent is so far, far beyond me.

So I do what I can to plainly declare the Good, the Beauty, and the Truth
I see revealed by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in His Holy Scriptures.
This is the best I can do thus far to paint a simple picture with words
in my poor attempt to share the pearl of great price over which I rejoice.

May the words of my mouth
And the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD
My Rock and my Redeemer

Crown Him with many crowns
The Lamb upon His throne
Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns
All music but its own
Awake my soul and sing
Of Him who died for thee
And hail Him as thy matchless King
Through all eternity

Crown Him the Son of God
Before the worlds began
And ye who tread where He hath trod
Crown Him the Son of Man
Who every grief hath known
That wrings the human breast
And takes and bears them for His own
That all in Him may rest

Crown Him the Lord of love
Behold His hands and side
Those wounds yet visible above
In beauty glorified
No angel in the sky
Can fully bear that sight
But downward bends his wondering eye
At mysteries so bright

Crown Him the Lord of life
Who triumphed o'er the grave
And rose victorious in the strife
For those He came to save
His glories now we sing
Who died and rose on high
Who died eternal life to bring
And lives that death may die

Crown him the Lord of lords
Who over all doth reign
Who once on earth the incarnate Word
For ransomed sinners slain
Now lives in realms of light
Where saints with angels sing
Their songs before Him day and night,
Their God, Redeemer, King.1

‘I saw the Lord continually before me;
Because He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted;
Moreover my flesh also will live in hope;
Because You will not forsake my soul to Hades,
Nor give Your Holy One over to see corruption.
You have made known to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of gladness with Your presence.’1

The Old Rugged Cross

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suff’ring and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
Such a wonderful beauty I see;
For ‘twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died
To pardon and sanctify me.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
Its shame and reproach gladly bear.
Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I’ll share.

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.1

… came the voice clearly from afar, the words landing softly and tenderly in the depths of the little hobbit child’s soul. Whispering quietly in his heart and then louder and louder with his lips …

You are my Forever Daddy, and you are over there on the other side of the river building a big, big beautiful house in a big, big beautiful garden like you said in your big, big beautiful Book of Life that you left behind for us to read.

You are over there talking about us with your Forever Daddy, which means he is my Forever GRAND Daddy, right? You said he is greater than even you, which means he is the greatest of anyone ever, right? Because no one else is greater than you! He is so great and so far away that we cannot go and try to see him without you helping us and being there with us. That’s what I read in your book.

You also said in your book that you will come back soon to get me and all my brothers and sisters and take us to go live forever in our new forever home that you are building. You are making a special room just for me. That’s what you said. I can’t wait; it sounds like it will be so wonderful. Sometimes I still like it over here, but I really, really would like to be over there with you instead. It get’s really dark and loud and scary over here a lot of the time. There is so much shouting and fighting.

Please come back quickly. You seem to be taking forever.

I love you.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a family, Father, Son, and the Bride of the Son, who will soon and forevermore be the Son’s only Wife. She will be made the greatest, most glorious, expression of all that is Holy, Good, Beautiful, and True.

“woman is the glory of man”2

Before all else, reality was just God (YHWH), unitary.3 The Father is not just originally unitary, He remains so, and always will, because there is no shadow or variation4 in His essence, His very being, His very soul. Then God begot His only Son who is divine by nature because the Father gave Him to have life in Himself.5 In their divine nature, the Father and the Son are One; they are in perfect and complete union in their eternal divine Father-Son relationship.6 But they are not equal, because their distinctiveness as divine Persons is eternal and without end. The Son was begotten by the Father with a perfect spiritual and physical nature, which is the glory He had with the Father before the foundation of the world, and is why the Scriptures state that the Son is the Firstborn of all creation.7 The Son of God is the One and only begotten God revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures8 as the One True God-Man (body, soul, and spirit)9 in Whose image we are made body, soul, and spirit;10 male and female, we are made in His image.11 The Son’s triune nature has never changed and will not,12 not even temporarily when He condescended and appeared to us as the Son of Man, born of a virgin, in the form of a slave.13 Nor when He ascended to the Father after conquering death, becoming the Firstborn of the dead.14 His eternal birth, condescension, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension all happened first in the eternal order,15 but were not revealed to us in the chronological order until about two thousand years ago.16 In the Son of God, all of creation lives, moves and has its being.17 Only the Son can fully see the Father and be in His direct presence unveiled and not be made nought, annihilated, cease to exist. All of creation must always be veiled in the Firstborn of creation or it would be made nought. When the Son of God died, He was completely and utterly separated from the Father, forsaken18 for a moment of eternity;19 but because the Son has life in Himself, He did not cease to exist. And because all of creation is hidden in the Son,20 creation did not cease to exist when the Son died. Otherwise, there would not have been anything nor anyone but YHWH B.C. From the eternal perspective, there actually is nothing and no one Before Christ, except for YHWH.

So instead of the Godhead and the Trinity, I believe in the One Triune God, Who is Jesus Christ, our Everlasting or Eternal Father.21 He gives us eternal life and unites us individually and collectively to Himself and in Him unites us to His God and Father,22 Who is also our God and Father.23 This unity is accomplished by the life-giving power and might of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, who is Jesus Christ Himself.24 God the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal in the only way that can be absolutely true, self-identity.25

There are three divine persons: the invisible God the Father, the visible God the Son Who makes His God and Father visible to us, and the Bride/Wife of Christ Who shares26 in the divinity of the Father and Son and has eternal life by the full indwelling of the life-giving Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. Within the chronological order the Bride is still being washed clean and sanctified to divine perfection. The Bride of Christ has eternal life because the life-giving Son gives freely of His eternal spiritual and eternal physical nature to Her. The life-giving first Adam, with Eve being fashioned from the living flesh and bone taken from him27 before their fall into sin and death, is a wonderful and beautiful picture of what God has accomplished in the eternal order and is accomplishing within the chronological order. Christ the True and Better Adam!!!

The Bride also called Wife28 is divine by the eternal decree of the Father, and is sanctified within God’s chronological order to share in the divine nature of the Son, Who is Her Betrothed Groom and Her Eternal Husband upon the Marriage Feast of the Lamb29 and the consummation of the union between divine Husband and divine Wife. Repeatedly in Scriptures, God commands us to not uncover the nakedness of another.30 Uncovering nakedness in the sense required by the context should only occur before our Holy God in a union of one husband and one wife bound together in the life-long marriage covenant. The Father, Who does not know evil,31 does not uncover the nakedness of His Daughter-in-Law, divine Daughter by decree, and neither does the Son uncover it to His Father. Hence, there is inequality in the knowledge of Father and Son.

I believe in the triunity of the three unequal divine persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as the Bride of Christ. The Son of God is in eternal subordination as a distinct divine person to His God and Father. The Bride is in eternal subordination to Her Kinsman Redeemer, Her Groom, and soon to be Husband. The Bride is also in eternal subordination to Her One True Supreme God and Father in and through the Son, as the Body of Christ, the Church universal, the Communion of the Saints, of all those sanctified by their Savior and Redeemer. The Scriptures declare that the woman is the glory of man.32 I believe this is not only inevitably true in properly formed and ordered marital relationships in the here and now, but also much more gloriously true without end in the eternal perfect union between the Bride and Her Maker and Husband in the Heaven of Heavens.

The reality God has brought forth is triune (divine, spiritual, and physical). This reality is unequal, hierarchical,33 authoritarian,34 authoritative,35 and patriarchal.

Reality is a divinely ordered hierarchy, with the first order being YHWH Himself unveiled in all His unequaled supremely self-existent Holy divine nature. He is One and He is Life personified and the supreme Author of all other life. He is without beginning and He is without end.

The second order of reality is like the first, but glorified with an eternal triune nature as the Three in One only begotten Son of YHWH God the Father. The eternal nature of the Son is eternally divine, eternally spiritual, and eternally physical from the eternal moment of His eternal divine birth and without end. In the Son of God Himself is the union of the divine, spiritual, and physical aspects of the reality we experience. The Son is given to have Life in Himself by His God and Father and is The Author of Life for all creation. The Son is the Firstborn of all creation.

The third order of reality is created and has existence within the Son, Whose Holy Soul is in eternal full union with the Holy Soul of His God and Father. The Son is the Veil between the Father and creation. Nothing in creation can have a relationship with the Father outside the Veil. Nothing in creation can exist outside the Son.

And the rest is the GRAND STORY that the Almighty, All-Knowing One True God and His Only Begotten Son are weaving and revealing to us, His creatures, in whose hearts He has set eternity.

This is how I understand the nature of existence and reality as I see it declared in the special revelation of God’s inspired Holy Scriptures36 that was given to us and preserved for us down through the ages.

I urge you to be like the noble-minded Bereans and go search the Scriptures to see if it so.37

Voliscience is dialectically true and rhetorically true.

Omniscience is dialectically false, but rhetorically true.

If God or the Son of God says He does not know something or someone, then I accept His saying, whether I understand it or not. If He does not say, then I assume He knows, until He says otherwise.2

“Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it. … Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you make Me know.”3

Surely I am more senseless than any man, And I do not have the understanding of mankind. Neither have I learned wisdom, Nor do I know the knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name? And what is His Son’s name? Surely you know!4

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is unsearchable.5

Then Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us to know good and evil;”6

and say, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle. Because they have forsaken Me and have made this a foreign place and have burned incense in it to other gods, that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever come upon My heart, therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh,’7

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”8

And someone said to Him, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” And He said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ And He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; depart from Me, all you workers of unrighteousness.’”9

The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.10

“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”11

The First:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”1

The Second:

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”2

The New:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”3

…

Any other love is misplaced identity.

…

Any other love wants much more than I can give.1

…

So take away the part of me that forgets the price of Grace.2

Now is the time to believe

Now is the time to surrender

Now is the time to give your heart

And NOW is the time to worship

“I AM The Way and The Truth and The Life

No one comes to THE FATHER but through Me”1

This is my story This is my song

Praising my Savior All the day long

This is my story This is my song

Praising my Savior All the day long

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”1

Be still, and know that I am God.2

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom the work that God has done from beginning to end.3

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”4

“But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.”5

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”6

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”7

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,8

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.9

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”10

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.11

Not all who wander are lost.

The One True God is divine because He just is and there is none His equal.

The Son of God is divine because He is the only Begotten Son of God and the Son’s divine nature proceeds from God the Father.

The Bride of the Son of God is divine because She has been declared to be so by the One possessing the sovereign authority to issue such a decree and possessing the almighty power to cause such a decree to be accomplished.

The Son of God, in the glorified nature of His being that was bestowed upon Him by the Father, is also the One True God-Man, incarnate from before the foundation of the world. The Son is body, soul, and spirit; physical, divine, and spiritual. In Him we live, move and have our being.

The Holy Spirit is divine because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son of God. The Son of God and the Holy Spirit are the same divine person.

The Bride of the Son of God is being sanctified, set apart, to be the divine Wife of the Son of God. She is being fashioned from the dead souls of man on earth, male and female, from every tongue, tribe and nation. All mankind is brought back to life as the Bride of the Son of God by the power and life-giving nature of the Holy Spirit, which the Son shares freely with His Bride that He has washed clean, and by which the Son unites His Bride to Himself in One Holy Spirit.

The physical proceeds from the spiritual, which proceeds from the divine.

There is no equality among persons, divine or otherwise.

God did not create all men equal. God created all men, men.

Every person must know his place before the One True God, the LORD of Lords, and the KING of Kings.

You are my Everlasting Father who created me and molded me from the dust of the earth in Adam, who rebelled and sinned against You. You gave me the breath of life in the womb of my mother, and to her, in the womb of her mother before her, and so forth to Eve, who You lovingly fashioned from the living flesh and bone You took from Adam after You made him a living soul by breathing Your Spirit of Life into him. Thank You for the breath of life You provide mother to mother and thereby to all of us born of a woman. And thank You for the air You give us to breathe every few moments to sustain our earthly life.

You are the Son of God and my Everlasting Father and my God because You created me and You are the very image of Your God and Your Father and my God and my Father, the Supreme Almighty Holy One, Who is invisible and has no equal. You are the only begotten God, who makes Him visible. He is a consuming fire; I cannot be naked in His Holy Presence and continue to exist. Only You can see Him face to face, Holy Soul to Holy Soul, and only You are the face of Him Whom I cannot see. So I look to You and You alone. And I approach You as my Intercessor, my Mediator, my Advocate, and my High Priest before The Father. Only You can clothe me in Your righteousness and make me perfect in You – in Whom I live, move, and have my being – so that I can boldly approach the Father and His throne of grace where You sit at His right hand.

You are the Son of God, and You are the Great I AM from before the foundation of the world, the only begotten God Who is the firstborn of all creation. Your God and Father and my God and Father is One. You are the One and only thrice Holy Triune One, for You are The God-Man and You are Holy Body, Holy Soul and Holy Spirit. You are the Incarnate God from before the foundation of the world, begotten of the very essence and being of The Father, with a Holy spiritual and Holy physical body. The spiritual and the physical aspects of the triune reality I exist within can only exist in You because You were begotten of the very divine nature of The Father and glorified with a perfect and complete spiritual and physical nature. You are like Him by being of the same divine nature and yet unlike Him by being Incarnate. You, the only begotten God, are the Everlasting Triune One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are the One Who made me in Your image, body, soul, and spirit. You made Adam and Eve in Your image and all mankind descended from Adam, male and female, are Your image-bearers. But in Adam we all are dead, separated from You by our sins of deception and our sins of rebellion against You and Your Holy Will. Apart from You we have no hope for life, for we cannot sustain ourselves because we do not have eternal life within our own creaturely nature. We cannot raise ourselves from the dead and give our souls new flesh animated by a new spirit that we create. Only You can do so, not only for Your own Self, but also for all of us who are in You. So it is only in You that we can die and yet live again. Only in You can we die a physical death, returning to dust when our fallen spirit and soul depart our body upon our last breath, and yet come back to new life. Only in You by the power of Your living and active Word can our fallen dead spirit be separated from our soul and we can become a living soul, a new creation given new life by Your Holy Spirit. Only in You can we die the eternal death of complete separation from The Father, the Supreme Author and Giver of all Life, and our soul, our very own self, not perish, thereby ceasing to exist. For we are mere creatures and not self-existent like You are.

Thank You, Lord, for becoming the life-giving Spirit, for that is Who You are. From the souls of dead man on earth, male and female, from every tongue, tribe and nation, you are fashioning for Your own Self a divine bride, like you did for Adam. You are the True and Better Adam! You take of Your own Holy Spirit and breathe new life into our souls causing us to share in Your divine nature and to be Your living body. When you give us new life, You live in us and unite us in You, by the power and glory of Your Holy Spirit. You preserved and sustained the breath of life You breathed into Adam and then gave to Eve from Adam. Adam's breath of life ended with him after he willingly and knowingly rebelled and grasped at equality with You, falling into sin and death. In the Seed of the woman, from Eve – who was deceived by Satan and grasped at equality with You – to Mary – your favored one in whose virgin womb You chose to conceive by Your Holy Spirit, the Son of Man – in You, the Seed of the woman, You have provided salvation for all mankind.

You are the Son of God and the Son of Man, the Seed of the woman, Jesus Christ born in Bethlehem. You are the Babe in the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, the Child Who was born unto us, a people perishing in darkness. But You are so much more than that, for You, although existing by Your very begotten nature in the form of God, did not grasp at equality with Your God and Your Father, but instead emptied Yourself, taking the form of a slave, the lowest of mere man on earth. And being found in appearance as a man, You humbled Yourself, bore our sins and our sorrows, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For our sake, Your God and Your Father, was pleased to crush You, to pour out upon You His wrath against sin and sinners, so that we might be forgiven of our sins. And He, after He turned His face away from You and utterly forsook You on the Cross, after You died, were buried, and on the third day rose from the grave, conquering death for all time; He highly exalted You and bestowed on You, Lord Jesus, His Name, the Name that is above all names, YHWH, the I AM WHO I AM, the Great I AM, so that at Your Name, Lord Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that You are the LORD of Lords and the KING of Kings, to the glory of God the Father.

This, Lord Jesus, is Who I believe You Are.

If I have erred and any of this I declare to be true is found by You to be false, then I pray You cause that which is false to be disbelieved and forgotten by me and any one else who believes it.

This is my will. Yet not my will, but Thine be done.

May You alone be exalted!

May He Know You 1

You know that I am utterly lost without You. And I know that too. Thank You for bringing me to the end of myself in ways sufficient to bring me to this realization. And thank You for not testing me beyond what I can bear.

O LORD, You know my hopes and my fears. You know the fear I have had of losing my mind to Alzheimer's, like my mother before me, and her mother before her; the fear of my descent into the confusion and the unknown that accompanies the mental and physical incapacitations that develop over time.

Thank You, LORD, for the hope that You give me. I trust that You will never leave me nor forsake me. I rejoice, LORD, and give You thanks for all the glorious ways unknown to me by which You will sanctify me in the midst of whatever lies ahead. I believe You began a good work in me and I trust You will bring it to completion. You make everything beautiful in its time.

You and You alone are My refuge and my portion. Please take my thoughts captive to the obedience of You, LORD Jesus. May the posture of my heart always be to submit to You in everything, and may my tongue always confess You as my One and only True LORD. May You cause my mind to always dwell on thoughts of You and Your Holiness, Your Goodness, Your Beauty, and Your Truth. May the last words on my tongue be “Thy will be done” and may my last thoughts be of You.

O LORD, I see so much potential beauty along this unknown path that You have placed in front of me. If Alzheimer's is part of my journey of sanctification, then please wipe my mind clean of everything that does not exalt and glorify You. May You destroy the parts of my brain where the imprints reside of all that is wicked and ugly and false that I have set my will, my mind, my eyes, my ears, and my desires on. May You destroy any toxic ways of thinking that cause darkness and bitterness to persist for sins committed and wounds suffered whether real or imagined.

O LORD, ruin those parts of my mind where the intent is strong to engage my tongue in speech towards or among others that is not edifying and make me mute in response to urges to give voice to any thoughts that do not communicate love and praise for You and for all those whom You love. May You loosen my tongue in endless Hallelujahs to You for Who You are and what You have done.

O LORD, if Alzheimer's is not part of my journey of sanctification, nevertheless, I still plead that You vanquish my fallen mind, taking my every thought captive to the obedience of You, and cause my thoughts to dwell only on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

O LORD, this is my will, yet not my will, but Thine be done.

May You alone be exalted!