Ophannim Eye

Ophannim Eye

Jesse Steele

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Copyright © 2017-2019 Jesse Steele

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ISBN: 978-137-048-514-7

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For my little sister

Table of Contents

For my little sister

Introduction

Prologue

Search

Sight

Starlock

Song

Solution

Story

Seduction

Silence

Signs

Settle

Spirits

Salvation

Slipped

Slaughter

Sanctified

Secluded

Summit

Secrets

Conclusion

About the Author

Introduction

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Some things are best told as a story and, in the immortal words of Paul Harvey, This is the rest of the story.

This is a novel, a form of fiction. It retells many stories of the Bible and introduces many stories from before Bible times. The actual events are more detailed and more Biblical than the fictitious stories of this novel. But, this novel was written to tell stories from Heaven’s perspective and, though they are Fiction, these stories are more Biblical and contain greater detail than we often perceive the rest of the story to be.

The best way to overcome our doubt about God’s goodness is the reminder that He sees many more things than we do. At best, these stories are accurate by coincidence. At worst, they are a good start to understanding that angels are real and that a lot more happens than we know about.

Much has been said about Christianity and the Bible that is unfair. About half the time, the unfairness comes from the religious establishment itself and is used against the general public—Christians and non-Christians alike. Twisted Scripture justifies heinous action against mankind, such as some crimes of the Crusades or when the Catholic Church burned the Anabaptists for being baptized a second time. The religious establishment should know better. Still, though we should always be humble and helpful, decent Christians, whether today or in history, need not apologize for a bureaucracy which has all the indications of being a poser. All of us have suffered at hands that abuse Scripture—which treat the Bible as a cudgel instead of a book.

Rather than seeing the counterfeits for what they are, those oppressed by religious impostors often believe False Premise Number One: that the oppressors represented God—which is an obvious lie.

Even though nothing condemns tyranny more adamantly than Scripture, unwitting victims—their memories marred with visions of Bibles in the hands of their captures—blame God for things He opposes.

In their rage and pain, they scream, So if God is good, then why does this happen? It’s okay to ask this question. Everyone has. But, it’s not acceptable to claim that the question is birthed in anything other than uninformed emotion and pain. The question is only asked by those who experience pain caused by evil, whether through participation or observation. Sooner or later, it is a good question to ask—so long as we’re honest about both its origin and its answer.

It would be as if someone wore a mask of your mother’s face and beat you saying, I’m your mother. Then, in your pain, you decided to hate your real mother. Why did she do that to me? is the common reactive question. Perhaps you’d be among the few who realized that it wasn’t your real mother. Why wasn’t she there? you might then ask. If she was there, why didn’t she do anything? But in either case, you assume that, since you don’t have a good answer to these questions, she couldn’t possibly have a good answer either—which is faulty reasoning.

Nonetheless, would you blame your real mother for what an impostor did? That would not reflect on the character of your mother if you did; it would be a sign of your own emotional distress. Your pain would be real, but you would not have the mental faculties to explain what had happened to you. And, your mother would most likely experience more grief than you would.

As a result, many who only know straw-man misrepresentations of Scripture and Jesus claim that the Bible is fake or partially true or that God is unfair. But, to be responsible, a scholar must be willing to look at a situation honestly. Being angry at a hypocrite’s so-called Jesus is not honest. A plaintiff must become sober from his pain before presenting his case. But, that’s not easy. So, the misunderstanding is understandable.

The Word of God is powerful and nothing can harm people more than a proverb in the mouth of a fool—especially if the fool has a PhD. It is neither the Bible nor Christians who are to blame for evil on Earth—it is wicked people who knew what they were doing was wrong, though they never admit it, not even to themselves.

But oh, how we love to lynch a hunchback!

So, Scripture is presented unfairly. Half the time it is used to oppress people. The other half, the oppressed rebut only against twisted Scripture, not being diligently studied in what Scripture actually teaches. Thus, everyone is unfair to God. He would gladly answer our outcry against evil—if we would merely cry to Him instead of against Him. This book attempts to set the record straight, as Lincoln said, With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right…

Background is Everything

The harsh wrath seen in the Old Testament—and even greater wrath seen in the New Testament at the Cross and Final Judgment—are punishments against evil, not against those oppressed by it. Christ himself suffered at the Cross, both spiritually and physically, more than any soul will suffer in the eternity of Hell. In doing so, he gained the authority to deliver mankind from oppression. So, we never saw how much Satan suffered as a result of Christ’s victory at the Cross. God has been judging the oppressors from the Beginning. We just haven’t see much of that judgment, for now.

The Bible tells the story of Noah’s flood, burning Sodom and Gomorrah, and Israel’s war against Palestine—but it was written to an ancient audience that already understood the great evil of those days. Why didn’t Scripture describe more about that evil? Why doesn’t the Bible explain why those wars in Canaan were necessary?

It wouldn’t make sense for a sports announcer to describe the rules of basketball in every score report. It wouldn’t make sense to explain why people play sports at the beginning of every game. It wouldn’t make sense for a stock ticker to explain the basics and rationale of trading on the stock market. Reports, news stories, and history assume that the reader has some background information. Christians who study Scripture thoroughly know how evil many societies were in the Bible times. But, homework is required before anyone can understand literature written for people who lived thousands of years ago.

In all of the wrath God delivered throughout Scripture, He never commanded punishment against the atrocities that aborigines commit against each other nor against what the United States did to the Native Americans nor against what great evil the Nazis committed. The societies whom God punishes in Scripture are far more wicked than anything modern society knows. We should not blame God for revealing His wrath in the Bible, but be thankful that we such a better world that many of us don’t understand why those punishments in the Bible were necessary.

The wickedness of those God punished in Scripture was so terrible that it would make Nero seem like Santa Clause. Were it not for the pain, it would be almost comical that so many of us accuse God of being unfair for punishing only the most evil societies, yet, we also slander God for not punishing someone who dares to cut us off at an intersection. Perhaps, it is God who is just and fair and we are the tyrants. Maybe that’s the deeper reason why we often object to God’s wrath—because His wrath reminds all of us that we need His mercy.

We must distinguish pop culture’s so-called Christians from Bible-believing Christians. Many people use the label Christian without understanding or agreeing with its original meaning in the book of Acts. Pop culture’s understanding of Christians can often be that of establishment Christians, who believe Christian fellowship requires a licensed religious establishment. But, Bible-believing Christians genuinely believe the Bible itself and merely apply it to the rest of their lives, informally discuss it with other Christian friends, and that’s all there is to it. Religious establishments aren’t necessary if the Bible is the true center of a Christian’s life.

Moreover, those Bible-believing Christians, specifically, believe that in the Bible God is merciful and only poured out His wrath on the most wicked of mankind and the Fallen angels who incited evil in Earth. That explanation doesn’t always come from establishment Christianity since establishments have auxiliary prerogatives that often take priority over clarification of the Bible. So, the fiction of this book attempts to tell some of the best-kept secrets among many Christian establishments.

This book describes what that background of the Bible times might have been, to give some explanation for what Bible-believers are thinking when we tell Bible stories, whether about wrath, mercy, or anything else.

Whether you agree or disagree with Scripture, true Bible-believing Christians do not believe that God sits in Heaven, watching for us to make the slightest mistake, with His finger on some smite button. So-called Christians who believe that God does this are merely pop culture Christians and many of them may even think that they believe in the Bible. They need help and prayer, not agreement. Those who believe in the mythical smite button either celebrate it or despised it, but true Bible-believing Christians know that the smite button is only fiction and its author is none other than Satan.

Christian Fiction

Many stories begin with unexplained events which capture the interest of the audience. Mysteries are explained throughout the plot, sometimes creating more questions than are answered; hopefully some of those questions resolve toward the end. Sometimes, more unexplained events may set the story up for a sequel. We understand the idea that the unknown can be explained in action films, whodunit books, and court cases.

This nature of story-telling can apply to history telling. Perhaps we could give God the benefit of the doubt. After all, He will explain all the mysteries in the End. For the time being, some Christian fiction might help.

CS Lewis wrote an allegory of the Christian worldview to help children understand what Jesus did at the Cross. The wrath and redemption of Christ Jesus are beautifully depicted in Aslan. As Lewis once explained to a concerned mother, if we find attributes of Aslan attractive, we will, hopefully, give credit to Jesus, since those attributes are seen strongest in him—the real him. I don’t know which Jesus you’ve heard about, but the Jesus I worship is a lot like Aslan. And, as with Aslan, the White Witch doesn’t want you to know the truth about him.

Some theologians may express concern about writing angelic fiction that so closely traces Scripture while filling-in gaps with speculation. Such objections would stem from their desire for truth and it is admirable for theologians to feel this way. Not a word or paragraph of this novel was written when the same ramifications did not weigh heavily on my own heart.

The truth must not only be told; it must also be understood. God has been slandered through undue skepticism. If we are going to speculate, we owe it to the truth that we speculate in a way that accepts the premises of the Bible—that God is, in fact, near and that His wrath against evil demonstrates His mercy on all people. Sin existed before we were born and Jesus Christ offers us redemption from it, through repentance unto hope, having suffered more than even the most condemned humans ever will. I don’t want to merely trumpet this from a bullhorn. I want the message to be understood and received.

Consider the Homiletical question. Preachers and teachers and mentors use their own words to help people understand the Bible all the time. Why not use fictitious angels, or fictitious stories about real angels, to do the same thing?

Angels do something with their time and space. Though we all know much about what Angels do, we rarely give diligent consideration to what kinds of things that something might be. However, if we speculate about the types of things that happen in Heaven without our knowing—carefully basing our considerations on what we know from the Bible and literature quoted in the Bible that agrees with the Bible—perhaps we’d be better off.

Angels have a story. This is the rest of the story of how things could have happened. And, if they happened this way, it was both good and Biblical. So, this novel cannot be factual in all of its detail, but it just might strike a chord of truth to set us on the right path. And, that is the point.

Types of Angels and Names

The word Angel and Human are capitalized in the storyline. This is to treat them as a kind of ethnic group from the view of Heaven. The Heaven has the definite article when referring to the place where Angels and God dwell, more or less. It’s difficult to define Heaven, but we all know what it is. I call it the Heaven here. Earth appears as a name, capitalized and without the article.

Ophannim, Cherubim, and Seraphim are plural. Ophan, Cherub, and Seraph are singular Ophannin, Cherubin, and Seraphin are cultural-ethnic, such as referring to an uncountable people group, language, or culture and its elements. Archine is the plural, singular, and cultural form for all of the normal or conventional humanoid angels with two wings. This is not necessarily from actual linguistics, but it was the form of the words I chose for this story. If the -m and -n differences for Ophannim, Cherubim, and Seraphim seem confusing to you, feel free to think of them all as plural and me just being in love with my own complex use of language. That’s probably what it is anyway. But, when writing about things we can never fully understand, I felt it was only appropriate.

Update from Previous Publication

This book could be labeled as Memoirs of Ophannin, Edition II. It was largely based on Memoirs of Ophannin and the final chapter (the end of Christ’s millennium on Earth) is almost identical to the same last chapter, the exception being some events at the Great Judgment.

But, the changes in this book were too much. Entire chapters were added. Almost every chapter was rewritten. Nearly all of the long page turner narratives were cut and more dialogues were written in their place. So, rather than making this a second edition, I made the name more palatable and the content more interesting.

The first stories about humanity in the final chapter I left mostly unedited, except for typographical and grammatical errors, mechanical form to keep some level of consistent style, important details that may have slightly altered in other parts of the through lines, and nomenclatures such as Rings. The term Ring reads better and contains some hint at deeper meaning for readers to ponder. I did not edit those stories for much beyond this because I wanted to preserve a taste of the first edition.

This is by many reasonable accounts, a different book. The original Memoirs of Ophannin should remain available for quite some time after publication, mostly to satisfy the curiosity of the curious.

Prologue

In the Beginning of Beginnings was the Void. Then came the Light Source. Apart from Him was no other Source. He created Light by separating what was in the Void. But, the Void did not separate easily.

The Light was vibrant and violent. But, the Darkness sought to return to become one again with the Light, returning the Void to nothingness once again.

The Darkness was conscious and forever non-negotiable. It was jealous of the Light—of its power and strength to overcome. It hungered for and blamed the Light. Still, the Light shined in the Darkness, yet the Darkness had neither the understanding nor the wherewithal to overcome it.

In the Beginning of Beginnings, in that era of Times, the Darkness engulfed everything except where the Light reached. This was how the purification of the Void began. The Darkness was first separated from the Light, then overcome by it. But, the purification had only begun.

And, so, the Light purified the Void and overcame the Darkness and the Darkness objected.

You come in vanity, protested the Darkness.

"I am the Light that shines. I shine not for myself, but for all others who will follow me, responded the Light.

You come without invitation to take and control all that is not yours.

"I am the one who created the Void you oppress. I have come into that which you occupy, but did not create. I have come already and I will come."

You took the Light from me to keep it for yourself. Give it back!

"I am the Giver of Light. But, you would not give the Light that was given you. You only took Light, which did not then shine. So, the Light has been taken from you so that the Light may shine."

Your work is greedy and selfish. You don’t want me to have what is mine.

"I am selfless. Selfishness and selflessness are neither one the same. Yet, you cannot tell the difference because you are blind to all things revealed by the Light, including the results of your own failed deeds."

You have none to support your claim here.

"I am the Light and Life. All who have the Light of Life will support my claim everywhere. And, while your witnesses are yet to come, they will not have the chance to testify, even falsely, in your favor as you obliterate all who serve you and all that you possess."

Your aim is too far. You are alone and you are small.

"I need but one light to reach my aim, still I will make countless."

The Light began by spreading many stars and constellations, enlightening Truth in the Void. And, among them, one star in particular burned with a kind of fire that the Darkness feared. Though the Darkness feared all stars for their light, this Star of Fire, in particular, posed a threat to the Darkness.

You have created a star that I can neither penetrate nor search. Yet, you claim that you act to give rather than to take. What secrets have you placed in that Star of Fire?

"I am the Light which has no secrets of Darkness. Nor are any secrets in the Star of Fire. It is a place where your servants will be safe from the obliteration you plan for them. Here, they will know less sorrow than you would give them, yet they will also be forever refrained from destroying the remainder of this Void."

You do this because you expect me to fear and obey. I will not fear you and I will not obey you. So, your plan is undone.

"I am already finished in my plan. Your fear, folly, obedience, and disobedience are yours. Whatever I do, you cannot understand. Whatever you do not heed will continue regardless."

You lie! There is no witness to confirm what you claim.

"I am the first of many witnesses; yours will testify against themselves and mine will deliver the Void from yours."

You can collaborate no witness with one word against another.

"I am the Creator of the Void you now occupy, and I will be the first witness to index my testimony, and their selfishness and selflessness will confirm my every WORD."

Then, the Light hung the orbits of stars and bodies in their places and the Darkness cursed them so that they would give no life, all except one, which was too humble for the Darkness to notice. It would become the footstool of the created order. And, that world would come to the Light in its Time, in the Beginning.

The formation of the constellations was the means of the exchange between Light and Darkness and, while the servants of Light know their meaning, the Darkness always told an alternate version which, though it contradicted one version after another, nonetheless gave servants of the Darkness the excuse they needed to reject the Truth long enough to bear their false witness against the Light. The children of Light and Darkness would follow, and while they appeared the same at first, they were irreconcilable from the Beginning of Beginnings.

Here are the records from memory, which were written by one of the few righteous ever to speak with the Ophannim, the governors of the Void, who came before the Angels…

Search

The Ophannin orbited the One under the expanse. Constellations took their courses all around, above and below, and millennia passed as mere moments. The Ophannin themselves were wheeled gyroscopes within gyroscopes, covered with eyes. The One shined like a star among them. The Ophannin searched Him out, His light more fascinating than all the stars of the expanse.

Triennia passed. They saw all and knew all and they all orbited in silence. The stars spoke for themselves according to the will of the One; they explained Him as the Ophannin beheld and understood.

Then there came a question.

What of choice?

The question wasn’t spoken, it was merely understood. It seemed to come from the stars among the expanse. Everything happened according to the will of the One. The only sentiency beyond Himself belonged to the Ophannin who circled and watched.

As constellations continued their courses, the Ophannin queried that question, What of choice?

The only active wills were that of the One, who shined in the Darkness and created whatever lights He willed, and that of the Darkness, who only begrudged and resented the light that It could neither consume nor understand.

Then came the first knowledge.

The Ophannin understood a new found power. They had choices to make all of their own. Spinning, they redirected the courses and forms of constellations and starlit bodies. The Ophannin set the courses and changed the courses as they willed. The expanse began to move with a new orbit as the Ophannin built creativity upon creativity.

Triennia passed as the Ophannin spun their thoughts and understanding of the One into the stars that light the expanse until, at last, the One joined them and inspired their own creative thoughts with His own. He neither challenged nor changed their reason, but empowered their own creativity to hasten and amplify.

Then came galaxies and worlds. And, the question returned, What of choice?

The galaxies reflected the will of the Ophannin as they understood the One. But, what of a will beyond their own—a will to exist within the galaxies and worlds?

As the Ophannin orbited and spun, they searched the stars they did not create for answers. They searched the galaxies they did create. But, they found no answers to the question of will within will.

It seemed that all was vain, though such beautiful knowledge could not possibly be. The only answer came in waiting.

Once the Ophannin had come to understand, in silence, their second question, all their eyes turned to the One. They felt it. Globes began to emerge from the One until their numbers reached billions. It was not so countless that the Ophannin struggled to know their number, but their eyes grew wide, for each globe had a will of its own.

The sea of globes took its place beneath them. They were colorless and clear. They had no form other than their own globe and each only stood as a lens to refract willfully from whatever it beheld.

Without warning, from the One shined a bright vision above, a wide circle, a kind of projected and directed light, such as had never yet been seen in the expanse. A bright and white glow engulfed a vast center. The outer rim of the circle was a rainbow, having seven rings of color, which were from inside-to-out: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, indigo, and purple.

Where did this directed light, this vision, come from? Had not the Ophannim already seen everything there was to see? In Ophannin thinking, every question, every thing must be seen and known. They pondered and searched the light, but found no source of this new vision. Then, they turned their gaze back to the One for answers. That’s when they saw it: A single globe had quietly taken its place, not below the One, but above Him.

This is My Son, lifted up.

The knowledge rippled through the Ophannim as they understood. The globe of the Son, clear and plain, had taken light from the One and explained what he saw in the One through the vision in the space above: A large circle of white enclosed by a rainbow.

Now, to the eyes of the Ophannim, the rainbow continued to phase through other colors to the very center of the circle. But, those were spectrums of color which were only known to the Angels at that time.

This is the will, above, and those who will to see it work, below. The Ophannim understood. And, though they had been given the power to direct constellations and create galaxies, they had no means by which to affect what would happen next.

The Darkness stirred and approached the directed light. It hated the light, this directed light above the One more than any other. For this light was the will of the Son of the One. The Darkness had lost