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Speaker 1: Welcome to the God's I View Podcast. I am your host, Trevor.

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Today is what I like to call an accidental podcast.

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This is a podcast by default. Let me explain. So,

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I think you've all heard me say complain. No, I

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wouldn't say complain, but you've heard me say that. You know,

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the podcast does not make money, and that's fine because

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that's not really the intention. You know, however, you know

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it would it. It'd be cool if it made money, right,

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you know, that'd be nice. So I don't know if

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you guys know, but a buddy of mine who I

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co host a podcast with and I started a publishing company.

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And it's that word is those words are doing a

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lot of work, as the kids would say, because really

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it's just you know, he's he's a writing coach and

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an editor. And so he edited my book. I formatted it,

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I made the cover. We got it all typeset and

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formatted it correctly, and we went through Amazon and so

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you can buy the book on Amazon. And I recorded

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the audio book and stuff. So hold on, want to

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said anyway, So we did that and afterwards we're like, well,

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we could do this for people because it's a bit

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of work. Actually, and you know, it's not really a

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good business because like, when I wrote a book, my

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instinct was not to give anyone any money, you know.

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That's why I did it myself. With help though, with

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my friend David. Anyway, so we have this thing, it's

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called Hemospheric Press. There's a website, there's a substack, and

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so he mostly he I do very little, is helping

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other people write books. But it's not really a good

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business because it takes forever to write a book. So

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like he's been working on books with people for like

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six months, eight months, you know. And we've also done

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a lot of royalty only contracts, which means you don't

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pay as the author, you don't pay anything. You just

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give a percentage of your sales to us. And because

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it's like such a long lead time to actually get

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products out, it just ends up being a lot of

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free work. So I've been kind of trying to think

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of ways to make money, not really for the podcast,

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but for him, because he's doing all this work. And

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you know, I'm a co owner in the company, but

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I don't expect really to ever get money. We'll see

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maybe in five years. But so I was thinking, I

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don't want to edit. I don't want to format. I

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want to let him keep doing all that work. But

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is there anything I could do that would help bring

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in some money? And so my idea is this, tell

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me what you think about this. Email me at Godsy

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view book at gmail dot com. There are a lot

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of books that are in what's called the public domain.

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What this means is that they're either I think, one

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hundred years old, or they the author has died more

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than seventy five years ago. There's like all these rules

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for what becomes public domain, Like the Bible is public domain.

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That's why you know you can listen to a million

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different versions of the Bible on audible, and I think

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you're supposed to make some modifications, like maybe you write

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a short introduction or something. Anyway, So the problem with

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this if you want to try to make a business

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of it, is most one hundred year old books suck,

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and the ones that don't suck have already been reproduced

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and you know, the the updated edition ten times by

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ten different people. So it's just like a difficult way

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to make money. But I have found a category of

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books that for some reason has not really been reproduced,

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and so my idea was that I was going to

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start recording these books on audio. Now I'm not probably

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you know, I'm not Morgan Freeman, right, so it maybe

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doesn't make sense for me to record audiobooks. However, no

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one else is doing it, you know, and so this

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category of books, it's it's all of these books that

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are important to the early Christians, you know, it's big

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and Orthodoxy, and then also other books that aren't necessarily

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specifically orthodox, but are you know, ancient virtual texts. Now,

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many of these are pretty unreadable, but some of them aren't.

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Some of them are actually really good, like they really

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hold up. And so I thought I would start recording

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these and then probably either like put publishing them on

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our substack, also audible, but somewhere that we control, because

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if you don't know, Amazon, like they take like eighty

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percent of the money when you buy an audiobook something

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like that, and so whether that's an app or a

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website or so or they actually is really cool. You

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can make a paid podcast feed, so maybe you pay

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a dollar a month or whatever, and you get a

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podcast feed email to you, and you can enter it

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into your existing podcast app that you already use. So

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anytime we publish a new book, it pops up, and

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so I thought that'd be kind of cool, like a

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subscription based audiobook thing for books. A lot of these

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books don't even have audiobooks. I looked up some and

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one of them had like an ai voice, but most

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of them didn't even have an audiobook. And there's other

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books that I can't believe don't have audiobooks, like some

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of the Deutero canonical books that are in some Bibles

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but not others, you know, like the Book of Wisdom

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or even some of the now most of the apocryphal

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books like Book of Knoch. There's tons of audiobooks. So

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I'm trying to find this niche, you know, of really

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interesting ancient spiritual texts that in my opinion, are not

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like going to lead people astray. You know, they're not

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like weird pseudo apick or full gnostic texts have been

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like discredited as heretical, you know. Now, I will say,

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some of these books, if you are a modern Christian,

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might kind of shock you. And it's interesting. It's interesting

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reading what the first Christian's thought, and I will admit

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it's it's more gnostic than we are. And what I

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mean by that is, you know, there's a lot of

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emphasis on becoming God's ourselves, but lowercase G like becoming

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a son of God, not actually becoming God, because the

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desire to be God this is like a Satanic impulse, right,

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This is the lucifer, the rebel who's cast out of heaven.

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He wants to rule heaven and be God. It's different.

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The word they use for it is Theosis. And there's

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actually a book called Theosis. And stop at Google AI,

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I google, you know, public domain first century or No,

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I didn't say that. I said like early church, Church

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father books something like that, So it should have it should

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have been like fourth century. That's kind of what I

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was assuming, and much of them were. And one of

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the books was called Theosis that came back in the

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search results, and I started reading it and I'm like,

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this is good. This sounds like it could like it

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could have been written yesterday. So I recorded the first

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chapter and towards the end of the first chapter they

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have the word television in radio, and I'm like, oh,

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this book wasn't written sixteen hundred years ago. So I

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look it up and it was written in nineteen ninety,

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so it's still under copyright, so there's a waste of time.

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But that doesn't mean I can't play the chapter I

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recorded for you all right now. Now this is a

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this is what is called if you're interested in copyright stuff,

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this would be called like fair use. You know, we're

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we're commenting, we're talking about the Osis, and we're going

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to listen to one chapter, only a sample, and I'll

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kind of explained to you why it's relevant. So I've

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commented on it, so I think it's okay, but we'll

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see the monks of saying atmos can can send me

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a cease and desist and I will happily remove it

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if not. Anyway, So it's very short. I don't I

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don't even know if the top of my head along

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it is probably like five minutes, ten minutes. And so

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that's going to play now or briefly once I finish

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wrapping this up, and then we'll get back to our

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regular style podcasts soon tomorrow or something. But just wanted

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to put this idea out there, curious if anyone would

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be interested. I mean, the idea is that they would

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sort of be curated, you know, So there's all of

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these public domain texts, and ninety percent of them are

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just tedious. So the idea is I would try to

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find the decent ones, ideally kind of on the short side,

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like under one hundred pages, and we could record. We'd

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make an ebook too for those who are interested, but

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then we would record the audiobook and they'd go into

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like a library, like a a Patristic early Church library,

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but also other stuff, not necessarily just Christian stuff or

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just Early Church stuff, just things that I think are

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interesting and helpful, and some of them are pretty helpful.

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The one I'm working on right now, I'll tell you

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it's called the Ladder of Divine Assent, and it's thirty

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rungs of a ladder, and the idea is that you're

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sending this ladder towards, you know, on your journey to

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be a son of God. I didn't realize how central

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that was to Orthodoxy, and I think most Protestants would

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sort of criticize that as gnostic, but it's it strikes

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me as there are some key distinctions, you know, but

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we can get into that on another episode. Well briefly. Briefly,

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I'll just tell you, like the thing about narcissism is

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that they They believe that the physical is evil and

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that the spiritual is good. And so therefore the kind

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of fallen being called the Demiurge that created this universe

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is a imperfect being. He is flawed and his creation

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is flawed, and it's sort of our job to escape.

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It's weird. What's weird, though, is most Gnostics consider themselves

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Christian Gnostics, at least the early Gnostics did. I think

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that's less true today. But and so there is this

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like positive attitude towards Jesus, but they tend to view

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the God of the Old Testament as evil. And this

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is supported by some early like theoretical ideas in the church,

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like Marcianism, obviously gnosticism. Val what are they called Valentini's

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I don't know what that other one is called. But

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there's all these guys who kind of are struck by

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the difference between Jesus and some of the things that

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happened in the Old Testament which they are interpreting as

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being evil. And most of these things have pretty good rejoinders.

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Like there's the bear that attacks the bald the kids

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who criticize him for being bald. I don't know if

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you know that story, but there's there's rejoinders for these

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Like the Hebrew word they use for young kids actually

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means like military age, like this is how soldiers are described,

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and it's not a kid, it's like forty kids. And

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so this man, this prophet is being fronted by forty

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men outside a city who worships a different God. And

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the content and maybe that context means like that they're

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basically it's a confrontation, and so God protecting his prophet

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causes a bear to attack them. I don't know, listen,

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I don't know. But the point is like there's rejoinders

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for much of that stuff, but some stuff there really isn't.

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I mean, some stuff it's like, man, that's rough, you know.

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So there were early Christians who saw this and kind

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of drew this parallel between the God of the Old

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Testament and then Jesus. Here's the problem though Jesus didn't

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draw that that distinction. So so what I find is

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that like often the insistence that Jesus is good and

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the old God is bad, people really just say that,

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but they're actually they tend not to be very pro Jesus.

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Like I know gnostics who are mythicists, and they don't

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think that Jesus ever existed. And so I know gnostics

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that are basically like pretty openly uh you know, I

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think most traditional Christians would call them Satanists, you know.

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And there's obviously a lot of gnostics who think the

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serpent in the garden is a good guy. And I

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think that's all fine, like, if you want to feel

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that way, it's just I don't. I don't think there's

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a way to call that Christian gnosticism, but people do.

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And I think this is kind of like a almost

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like a recruiting tactic, you know. It's like, oh, yeah,

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you're a Christian. Well, I me too. I love Jesus

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as well. However, you know, the God of the Old

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Testament is evil, and it's like, well, but Jesus said

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that's who he was. You know, we've we've done a

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bunch of those episodes, and he's constantly referencing Old Testament scripture,

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constantly referencing Old Testament prophecy, and that he's the fulfillment

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of that prophecy. So you can't have it both ways,

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that's my opinion. Of course, I don't know what the

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truth is, right I'm just that is an internally inconsistent

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argument in my opinion, but it's very popular, very popular.

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So just something for you all to just be aware of.

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I mean, I'm I'm all for exploring. It's just it's inconsistent.

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So it's it's been explored as far as I'm concerned.

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I've explored it. It's internally inconsistent, and so in order

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to continue exploring it, I would have to like radically

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change my belief system and basic basically just stop. I

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think you basically have to throw it all out to

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be a quote unquote Christian gnostic. So so that is not,

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in my opinion, what these books that I will be

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showing you do. These books are very clear about who

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God is. There's no inconsistencies, there's no hereticism. It's just

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you know, Jesus is the God man. He is the

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incarnate God of the universe. And our job is to

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similarly ascend to improve ourselves in these very specific ways

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which we will describe in the book, so that we

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can become like God's ourselves, which they would argue is

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what God always wanted for us, because if you remember

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in the garden, you know the serpent says, God just

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doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want

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you to eat the fruit. But a careful reading kind

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of kind of makes it seem like God always intended

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for us to eat from the tree of life and

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perhaps from the tree of good and evil, knowledge of

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good and evil, just on his terms when we were ready,

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you know. And of course we violated the first instructions

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we were given. We were deceived, and you know the story.

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So so I think you could argue that that is

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still God's intention for us. Certainly if you read the

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New Testament. There's many places that you could many there's

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many things that Jesus says that Gnostics use to support

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the idea, like, you know, the Kingdom of God is

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within you kind of a thing. So anyway, So well,

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I like that. I think it's cool. I like ways

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of sort of uniting the aspects of the different religious

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practices that all make sense to me. Like I like

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trying to find coherent theories that sort of tie all

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the interesting things together without contradicting things. I think, you know,

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I like that in physics, I like that in neuroscience,

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and I also like it in theology. So let me know,

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what you think. Let me know if that's something you're

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interested in. There could even be old scientific books we read,

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although I kind of suspect that would be boring, you know,

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one hundred year old science books. But maybe not, maybe not,

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you know, we could read Tesla's autobiography or something. Anyway, Yeah,

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so God's I view book at gmail dot com. Until then,

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enjoy the first chapter of Theosis. God bless Theosis. The

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true purpose of human life. The question of the destiny

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of our lives is very serious, as it concerns the

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most important question for man, for what purpose are we

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placed on earth? If man takes a correct stance on

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this issue, if he finds his true destiny, then he

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will be able to take a correct viewpoint in relation

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to particular questions that arise in our daily life, in

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our relationships with our fellow men, in our studies, profession, marriage,

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and the bearing and upbringing of children. If he does

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not relate correctly to the basic issue, then he will

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also fail in life's particular purposes. For what meaning can

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a particular purpose have if human life as a whole

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has no meaning. Our life's purpose is declared in the

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first chapter of the Holy Bible, when the Holy Author

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tells us that God created Man and his image and likeness.

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From this we discover the great love the Triune God

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has for Man. He does not wish him simply to

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be a being with certain gifts, certain qualities, a certain

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superiority over the rest of creation. He wishes him to

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be a God by grace. Externally, Man seems to exist

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in a purely biological way like the other living beings,

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the animals. Of course, he is an animal, but an

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animal which is in the process of theosis through its

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inclination towards God. As Saint Gregory the Theologian says, in

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his characteristic way, he is the only being that is

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distinguished from all else in creation because he is the

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only one which can become a God. The phrase in

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his Image describes the gifts which God gave only to

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Man in order to complete him as an icon of God,

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and not to any of his other creatures. These gifts

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are a logos related news, conscience and individual sovereignty i e. Freedom, creativity, eros,

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and the yearning for the absolute and for God, personal

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self awareness, and anything else which puts men above all

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other living beings in creation and makes him a man

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and an individual. That is to say, everything that makes

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man a person. These are the charismata by which we

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are formed in his image. Having been endowed in his image,

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man is called upon to be completed in his likeness.

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This is theosis. The creator, God by nature calls man

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to become a God by grace. The charismata that form

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us in his image we're given to man by God

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in order that he may reach very high, so that

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through them he may attain a likeness to his God

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and Creator, so that he may have not only an

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external moral relationship, but a personal youthinion with his Creator.

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Perhaps it is very daring for us to even say

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or think that our life's purpose is to become gods

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by grace. However, neither the Holy Bible nor the Church

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Fathers have hidden this from us. Unfortunately, ignorance not only

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exists in people outside the church, but also in many

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within the Church, because they assume that the purpose of

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our life is at best simply moral improvement to become

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better men. When we are told by the Gospel, by

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the tradition of the Church, and by the Holy Fathers

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that the purpose of our life is not just that

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man should become better than he is, more moral, more just,

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more self controlled, more mindful. All these must happen, but

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none of them are the great purpose, the ultimate purpose

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for which are Maker and Creator molded man. What is

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this purpose? Theosis? For man to be united with God,

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not in an external or a sentimental manner, but ontologically,

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in a real way. Man is placed so high in

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orthodox anthropology that if we compare that with the anthropologies

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of all the philosophies or social and psychological systems, we

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will very easily find out how poor these are, how

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little they correspond to man's great yearning for something very

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great and true in his life. Since man is called

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to be a god, i e. Was created to become

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a god, as long as he does not find himself

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on the path of theosis, he feels an emptiness within himself.

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He feels that something is not going right, so he

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is not joyful, even when he is trying to cover

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the emptiness with other activities. He may numb himself, create

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a glamorous world, or k and imprison himself within this world.

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Yet at the same time he remains poor, small, limited.

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He may organize his life in such a way that

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he is almost never at peace, never alone with himself,

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surrounded by noise, tension, television, radio, continuous information about this

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and that he may seek to forget with drugs, not

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to think, not to worry, not to remember that he

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is on the wrong path and astrayed from his purpose.

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In the end, wretched contemporary man finds no rest until

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he finds that something else, the highest thing, the thing

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which actually exists in his life, which is truly beautiful

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and creative? Can man unite with God? Can he commune

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with him? Can he become a God? By grace step