Reorganizing Everything Online

In the middle of 2018 we reorganized nearly everything about our online presence. We had told friends we were going to do this early in 2018. But, we were delayed with some technical work. This post explains the delay... We found a book.

In early 2018, following strong prophetic leading, Ryan and I moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the Colorado Springs area of Colorado.

Housing values are very different between those markets and eventually we moved into a serious fixer-upper. The house sits on a little land, with a view of Pikes Peak, and is very similar to mountain places we'd lived in while in Oregon and Idaho when we were just starting this project. We were very happy, even though it would take much work to make it safe to even stand in the kitchen...

In early May, about 2 months into the rehab, we were in town looking for parts. In walking around a certain hardware store we found a wood stove that was modern, clean burning and on a great start-of-summer sale. By late that day we had the beast home, appliance dolly and all, but somewhere in the process I had sprained an ankle and the next morning I could barely stand, much less walk.

Work on the house came to an abrupt stop, and for the next roughly 10 weeks we turned to computer work, as the sprain triggered other foot problems that all had to heal.

Every minute of pain was worth it. Here is why.

For years we've been working on precursor projects that lead up to the inspired autograph behind the Bible.

At first we thought this was a clean-up of the manuscripts. Our Hebrew Alphabet teacher had explained the evolution of the manuscripts across time. She had taught us that in various attempts to keep up with changes in pronunciation, the spelling of most words had been altered. First with added vowels and later with vowel pointing.

We had good reason to think we could repair that level of manuscript damage. In part this involved restating the text on Phoenician and then relying on letter based patterns that show off divine inspiration.

The same work could theoretically repair Aramaic too, and would produce a single-language manuscript of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. Starting in late 2009 we set out on a journey to do just that.

It has been more than 9 years since we started this, and we have learned a lot. Our Alphabet teacher had no concept what-so-ever of the scale of the changes to the manuscript that happened across time.

There are explicit rules, given in the Bible, which explain how to coarsely identify what types of material cannot possibly have been inspired. Details of those rules await future posts. All serious readers of the Bible are supposed to have applied those rules before they ever used the book for anything else. Of course nobody ever does this, which is yet another story for the future.

We arrived in Colorado early in 2018 having applied the Bible's own rules-of-additions to itself. We'd worked across the entire manuscript. In some books nothing passed the Bible's own rules. In most of the larger books only smaller sections passed the rules. It was a strange thing that was happening. It almost could not be called a Bible any more.

It was not clear what to do with the inspired parts. There are no explicit directions on what to do once the additions are removed. The next phase of work is not discussed by the Bible's writers because it would become self evident.

What was happening is that the Alphabet was informing an emergent structure. By Alphabet I mean the Phoenician Alphabet but for reasons that will be covered in future posts what we precisely call the "Paleo" Alphabet.

What we did, sitting here in a badly broken down house, with a sore foot that prevented any other work, is take the pieces of the Bible that seemed to be inspired, and essentially "plug them in" to a structure demanded by the Alphabet itself.

What emerged slowly, day-by-day, across those 10 weeks was a book that had plot. It had intentional order, and stories that chained from one event to another. It had no plot spoilers and no contradictions. It told a story down across time, from Adam until Paul's journey to Rome.

We could also read it to learn about itself. We could also read it to learn about the public Bible everyone holds today. It calls itself "The Testimony of Joshua," or just "The Testimony" for short. Nearly all of The Testimony is a series of testimonies that can be attributed to specific authors and specific things they saw. The Testimony calls the Bible that we know today the "Law of Babel," or just "The Law" for short.

The Testimony identifies the names of the primary editors that took the inspired Testimony and produced the uninspired Law of Babel. Those editors had the political power needed to force the public onto their edited version, creating complimentary "state religions" which is why the Law of Babel, or just "The Bible" for short, survives to this day.

The Testimony explains the trouble many people went through to preserve The Testimony down to New Testament times. Primarily this was done through vaulting of pristine copies, which were refreshed every 500 or so years.

The Testimony also explains why it isn't available today. It apparently waits for a time, the computer age, when the Bible itself can be used to reconstruct The Testimony from clues given within. It says the reconstruction of The Testimony will eventually see widespread availability and adoption.

(Pause for Dramatic Effect.)

We made some commitments to friends that have followed this work for years. We said we would rebuild our online presence as we got settled into Colorado.

We've taken longer than planned, but for this very good reason. 10 weeks of working on a draft of The Testimony.

We spent some time praying about what to do with all of our online resources dealing with The Bible or that had Bible in the name. We were told to drop them all, that those names are obsolete. Some of the projects will eventually be restated using The Testimony when it makes sense to do so.

With this post, we are online again.

Join us as we finish this journey of discovery. And, Joshua willing, generate the letter-perfect autograph of The Testimony.