Conclusion of Spiritman #1

"How's it going?"

"Fine"

"No, with the comic book.  How's it going?"

"Oh, that.  Well..."

So we had updates coming out on a fairly consistent basis but nothing recently. This may cause you to wonder if we have given up and abandoned the comic. Far from it. The last page published to the web site was page 15.  I am currently putting the finishing touches on page 20 out of 22.  When the book is complete I will publish them all at the same time.  This should happen at the end of this week.  My reasoning is that the conclusion of issue 1 is spectacularly fast paced and fun.  To allow the story to trickle out a page at a time would deprive the reader of this fast paced and fun experience.  You may rest assured, and rest you should, because the pulse pounding conclusion of Spiritman #1 will hit the web soon.

Everett Paul Burris - illustrator
www.spiritmancomics.com

Deep 8. Old and/or New

I said in my last blog that we don’t understand eschatology, or what’s going to happened in the end times, because we lost the beginning. 

Isaiah 46:8-10 (HRV) – “’Remember this, and stand fast; bring it to mind, O you transgressors.  Remember the former things of old:  that I am El, and there is none else; I am Elohim, and there is none like Me; Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying:  ‘My counsel shall stand, and all My pleasure will I do’;’”

(Translation note:  El = God.  Elohim = Gods.  When YHWH refers to Himself as Elohim in the plural, it’s referring to the trinity.)

“Declaring the end from the beginning,…”  That word, “beginning” in Hebrew is exactly the same word which we used to translate “In the beginning…” from Genesis 1:1.  YHWH has already told us how everything will end because He’s already showed us how it all began.

Confused yet?  Let’s rewind a bit and start from another direction. 

There are two things we MUST keep in mind when translating scripture.  1)  God is perfect and 2)  God exists outside of time. 

1)  God is perfect.  Most Christians would say that they agree with this statement, but few live like it.  For the sake of time, I’m going to leave this statement at face value for now.  Although many don’t truly live in agreement with this statement, we do know what it means and I’ll move on.

2)  God exists outside of time.  In fact, time itself is His creation.  God doesn’t merely have a plan for the end that He’s pretty sure He can accomplish, He IS the end.  He IS the alpha and omega.  He IS the beginning and the end.  Right now God is creating the world.  Right now Yeshua is dying on a cross for your sins.  Right now God is wrapping up this age and putting an end to sin and death.  RIGHT NOW!!  God explained Himself as “I AM THAT I AM” not “I WAS” or “I WILL BE”.  When God showed John the dragon and the beast and all that he revealed that he saw in the Book of Revelation, He didn’t just show John a movie that revealed His intent.  No, He actually took John to that time to witness it

Combine these two things, the perfection and the timelessness of God, and we are forced to come to the conclusion that NOTHING God has ever said or done exists in a limited scope.  EVERYTHING God has ever said or done was meant for everybody in every age, in every time, in every nation, in every walk of life.  It is perfect, and when He spoke it or did it, He spoke it or did it simultaneously for every moment in this planet’s history, even the moments that we haven’t experienced yet. 

Our error, or part of it anyway, is in treating the Old Testament as if it’s done and gone away.  Whether we say it or not, many of us treat it like the Old Testament was a goof.  God was on a trial run.  It failed and he did His best to hold it together with spit and duct tape until Jesus could come and start over.  Many of us call ourselves New Testament Christians as if the Old Testament doesn’t exist anymore.  Our history began with the cross.  So we've created rules and ideology by translating the New Testament, not according to how YHWH wanted it interpreted, but according to how our particular culture and ideology wanted to interpret it, thus creating conflict with the verses that should have been used to understand it. 

Of course not every individual thinks this way, but I generalize because every major Christian denomination has, as an organization, fallen into this trap fully or partially.  We treat the New Testament as a uniquely separate entity, when in fact, “New Testament” is an incomplete translation in and of itself.  A more correct translation of “Old Testament” and “New Testament” would be “Original Covenant” and “Renewed Covenant”.  The New Testament didn’t start us over.  It made the original covenant whole again as if it had never been broken in the first place. 

In a nutshell, God knew the Holy Spirit, whom the bible says guides us in truth, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, was not indwelling us pre-Pentecost.  Therefore it was impossible for us to understand spiritual matters.  So, in His grace, he gave us physical examples of His truths.  He gave us practice runs.  They were never intended to save us or make us perfect.  In and of themselves, they only have physical value and cannot affect our spirit other than as an example.  They were intended to reveal God to us in the only way we could understand at the time.  We are to follow God’s spiritual laws, but they must line up with the physical laws God gave us.  If they don’t, then we made them up.

There’s so much more I want to say about this, and I know there are many questions I’ve left open, but I’ve already gone much longer than I wanted to.  In fact, I’ve deleted much of what I originally wrote to keep this from getting way too long.  Let me end now by saying this.  The simple fact of the matter is that we CANNOT understand the New Testament without understanding the Old.  If you try to translate the New Testament according to what you desire, or according to what your denomination believes, or according to what any man has called true, you will get a partial truth at best.  We must let God define God.  If you count yourself as one who trusts God but wonders why there seems to be so much conflicting information in Christianity, this is one reason.  If you count yourself as one who doesn’t trust God because of the apparent conflict in what He claims to have given us, this is one of the reasons why.

My hope and prayer for you today is that you’ll let Him reveal Himself to you.  His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  If the burden seems overwhelming, it’s a good indicator that it’s probably not really His.

Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com
 

Deep 7. Spiritual Warfare and Eschatology

Several years ago a friend of mine said something to me about end times eschatology that made me stop and think.  For those that don’t know, eschatology is a study of the timeline of what’s going to happen in the end as well as a study of what "the end" actually means.  What my friend said was, “You know what I believe?  I believe whatever the last guy I heard believes.”  She explained that everybody sounds right.  People with completely conflicting points of view in which they can’t both possibly be right, both sound totally right.  Everybody has scripture to back up their point of view and everybody seems to have a compelling, reasoned argument when discussing their point of view.  So she said she finds herself believing whichever ideas are freshest in her mind as they all seem to make sense.

That got me to wondering why and how all of these people were coming up with partially or totally contrarian viewpoints and all sounding biblically accurate.  I set out to collect all of the data I could get ahold of.  I wanted to study all of the various beliefs and the reasoning behind those beliefs by some of the most vocal backers at the time.  It is my belief that people tend to get a small fragment of the truth and then extrapolate it out too far with their own ideology and desires, so what I hoped to do is by analyzing each viewpoint’s logical inconsistencies and failures and then removing them, I hoped to get a better idea of what would happen by combining all of the pieces that people truly got right.   

This task, which I began over a decade ago, led me to a conclusion I hadn’t looked for when I began my search.  We’re not getting biblical prophecy correct, for the most part, because we’ve been wrong from the beginning. 

I’d like to say that this shocked me, and that I was stunned beyond belief, but it really didn’t and I really wasn't.  Much of what I had already studied from history and much of what I had already experienced my entire life had already told me that something was very, very wrong.  I already knew that God doesn’t desire to establish religion in our hearts, but rather relationship and yet the church was full of religion.  I already knew that historically religion generally has been supported by powerful governments and that anyone who supported the truth of who God is in opposition to these views was generally beheaded or worse.  And most damning, I already knew that although we Christians claim to have one God and He has one body, we’ve got five hundred different denominations and eighty nine different sects within each of those denominations who all think that they’ve got the real truth of God and everyone else is messed up at best.  We've got family strife at best, and at worst we have civil war already going on in a supposedly unified body.

Let’s face it people.  We are not unified.  We might smile politely at each other in the restaurant after church, but really we think to ourselves that if they truly want to be loved and blessed by God then they need to come to our church.  WE'RE right and they're not.  It's as simple as that.  If they don’t, then maybe, MAYBE, they’ll end up in Heaven, but they certainly won’t be as blessed as they could be down here.  They could be saved, but their wrong ideas are hurting them and others right now.  Baptists think Catholics are confused pagans.  Catholics think Lutherans are off the beaten path.  Lutherans think Pentecostals are mindless hippies.  Pentecostals think that Baptists are apathetic pagans.  And so on, and so on, and so on.  The simple fact of the matter is that we’re all wrong about something but we either don’t want to acknowledge that or we honestly don’t see it.  (And before you say it, yes, I know that includes me.)

So why am I bringing this up here?  Because our comic is diving into a spiritual war that’s been going on for millennia.  There are a lot of questions about what really happens.  Millions of people have asked Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus through the centuries, "What is truth?"  By displaying this spiritual warfare, we’re inevitably going to be offering opinions on what it is and other spiritual truths. 

And as we will be offering opinions on such matters, I thought it only fair to give you some insight as to where I’m coming from.   So for a while, my posts are going to address a few things that I believe we’ve gotten wrong as the body of Christ.  My desire with this blog, and indeed with this comic, is not to enrage the masses or bully those that disagree with me, but to hopefully encourage those that have been struggling with their faith walk.  Sometimes things don't seem to make sense or you feel like you're looking for answers in the wrong place.  You know you've got the right house, but there are so many rooms.  You ask, "Am I supposed to be in this one?  Where does this corridor lead?  Why can't I find my way around?"   

Someone told me once that Satan doesn’t have to turn your gaze one hundred eighty degrees and get you going in the opposite direction.  He only has to get your gaze off of God by one degree in order to make you miss the mark.  But he’s so subtle and so clever that even if you refuse to take your eyes off of God for your salvation, he has been thoroughly successful through the ages at getting us to take our eyes off of God in other areas, if not every other area of our lives.  If he can’t drag you to hell with him, he’s going to try to make sure that you do as little as possible while you’re here to hurt his cause.  If you won’t be a victim, he’ll at least make sure you don’t factor in this battle.  He knows that a house divided cannot stand and he’s doing everything he can to divide God’s house in any way he can. 

I've already begun to deal with some of our errors on a very basic level.  I'm going to keep going deeper.  My hope and prayer for you is that you’ll allow His truth to replace whatever deception currently is keeping you from Him in some way.  And I hope that you’ll pray for me in this area too.  I say "our" errors and not "your" errors for a reason.  I'm just as much in need of grace as you are. 

Scott Snyder

Edgiscript3@yahoo.com

ICON October 19th, Des Moines, IA

Just a quick hit to let you know we'll be at I-Con on Saturday, October 19.  Please check out their website if you'd like more information about the event.

http://www.iowacomicbookclub.com/

Scott
edgiscript3@yahoo.com

BTS: 9-10-13

Hello again.  I wanted to give you...


...  Sorry about that.  That long pause was one of my cats, Jackie, deciding that it was time to pet him RIGHT NOW!  Ok, he's satisfied and I'm back.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  I wanted to give you a heads up on what's coming. 

The last few weeks haven't provided Paul much of an opportunity to draw due to kid stuff.  But that's cool.  Nobody's going to get angry for putting our kids first.  Right?  But now that his kids are in school, he's got more time to draw and we should be seeing some new pages to the website pretty soon.  He's also looking into how to streamline the process, as well as the simple fact that repetition is making things flow a little more smoothly.

We also discussed trying to create limited series of sorts.  This is a continuing series comic and not the first of several graphic novels with a definite beginning and end, but due to the length of time it takes to put these out, we don't want to create a storyline that runs for 37 issues when that 37th issue won't be out any year soon.  Paul is shooting for 4 full comics a year fully inked and colored as well.  So, with that in mind, we're going to try for 4-issue runs where a common theme runs for those 4 issues.  The first 4...


...my cat decided he wasn't quite done yet.  Ok, he's sitting on my lap now.  Let's see if I can't finish this\quickly.

Anyway, the first 4 issues are essentially introductory.  You're meeting the characters, finding out what's going on, and learning more about this world. 

I'll wrap it up now before Jackie decides he needs all of my attention again.

Have fun.

Scott
edgiscript3@yahoo.com

Deep Calling Deep 6. Superhero Tragedy

I’ve been asked by some friends that have read Spiritman what Martin’s superhero tragedy will be. 

For those that don’t keep up with comics or superheroes in general, it feels like every hero has to have some sort of tragedy occur that gives him a reason for wanting to put on the tights and fight villainy month in and month out.  To an extent, this is a valid statement.  It’s not an absolute necessity to have a defining tragic moment in the life of a superhero, but many of the most famous hero backstories certainly follow this pattern. 

A few examples:

Peter Parker, after being bitten by a radioactive spider (or genetically altered spider in the Ultimate universe and in the movies) doesn’t seek to fight crime and right wrongs right off the bat.  Instead he uses his newfound powers to seek fame and fortune until he realizes that his surrogate father, Uncle Ben, died due to his single, selfish act of letting a villain go free.  The tragedy is of his own making and he takes it very personally.  Hand-in-hand with that tragedy comes the famous line, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The infant, Kal-El, is rocketed away from a dying planet Krypton.  Kal-El is adopted by human parents and is now known to the planet Earth by the names Clark Kent and Superman.  The tragedy, the events leading to the destruction of his home world, is not witnessed or caused by him, but that tragedy still shapes his every decision as he tries to help his adopted home world in any way he can.

A young Bruce Wayne witnesses the cold-blooded murder of his parents and not only decides to use his abilities to fight crime, but he spends the rest of his young life gaining the abilities necessary to do so.  While other heroes have powers and then something occurs to guide them in their decisions on how to use their powers, in Batman’s case his tragedy actually pushed him to gain the very abilities he uses to fight crime. 

(Side note on the topic of Batman:  Affleck’s going to be fine.  The movie will be great.  Please come off the ledge. )

So what’s Martin’s tragedy?  He’s got to have a tragedy, right?

Right?

Wrong.

 

There is a tragedy that has occurred in our hero's life, but you're looking to the wrong guy if you think Martin's the hero.  The real hero in this story is God. 

The tragedy belongs to YHWH.  The love of His life, humanity, broke His covenant and His heart.  As the Jars Of Clay song goes, “Taught you to walk but then you ran away from me.  That’s not how it’s supposed to be.”  The way I view this is that we caused His tragedy.  We put Him in this position.  The tragedy is that everything could have been wonderful and perfect, but we decided not to go there.

And that tragedy determined God’s actions.  “For YHWH so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son.”  God sacrificed EVERYTHING out of love for us.  We caused the tragedy.  We created the separation.  But through all of that, He never forgot about us.  He never let us go. 

Martin’s motivation is this:  He loves God because God first loved him.  God didn’t have to die for us.  He didn’t have to care about us anymore.  He could have scrapped us all and started over if He wanted to.  But He chose to love us.  He chose not to let us die.  He chose to renew the relationship with His own blood. 

It’s not Martin’s personal tragedy, but God’s.  That is the knowledge that drives Martin.  My hope and prayer for you today is that it will drive you to get to know Him more as well.