One of those strange conundrums is how we have been created in the image of God and yet the devil is acclaimed to have so much power over humanity that it's cosmic battle of epic proportions, with the victory somehow in doubt, but not really. Say what? I believe that Jesus was with God-Creator-Father-Consciousness before the foundation of the earth. I embrace the fact that we were as well. I believe that Jesus returned to the Father (easier title for most to accept) as we will also. However, when it comes to the depiction of the Ascension as is found only in the Gospels of Matthew and John, I depart from agreement. The easiest way to explain a very difficult and touchy subject is to say that I don't believe in a BODILY RESURRECTION! We are spirit, came from spirit, and will return to spirit. I agree with D. M. Murdock who wrote, "Rather than serving as an ‘historical event', perhaps the ascension was added to the gospel tale also to testify against the Docetists that Jesus did in fact possess a physical body." There are lots of reasons why certain aspects of the "Jesus story" were adopted. Many of the early church fathers, like Justin Martyr saw it as a way to ‘compete' with the mystery and pagan religions of the time such that the ‘Jesus story' would be no less historical and no more mythical than their. What I can't endorse or come into agreement with is my earlier fundamental teachings. Seeing that dozens (if not hundreds) of so-called gods had been resurrected previous to the time of Jesus, the ‘devil got there first' argument was sort of a last resort argument. The argument says that Satan knew in advance what would happen to Jesus, so he orchestrated the earlier resurrections to confuse us. Huh? Talk about confusing people, this has to get some sort of an award. The devil or Satan never got anywhere first, aren't real personalities, nor made any of us do anything. But, it sure does shift the blame (albeit erroneously) to say the "devil made me do it". About the Author:

As a spiritual-futurist, I have a BA degree majoring in history. One cannot know the future without knowing the past which holds clues to what is on the horizon. The world is in such a rapid expansion of knowledge that we are close to entering a tipping point that will forever change earth as we know it.