Our Spiritual Awakening: Post #9 (Post #8 of Our Spiritual Awakening can be found here.) “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  —Genesis 3:4-5 In this series, I've been introducing the possibility that the Second Coming of Christ has already occurred and we are each in the process of experiencing the metaphorical “Rapture” and “Tribulation.” The actual outcome will depend on the spiritual level we have attained, both individually and/or collectively. This End Times situation parallels what happened during the time of Jesus. For example, when key people in Israel failed to recognize Jesus as their Messiah, they and everyone else suffered the consequences. By 70 AD, Israel ceased to exist and the Jews were scattered north, south, east and west. And, without Jesus and his ordained bride, the world was deprived of achieving the Tree of Life. Today, we have a chance of undoing these mistakes of the past. But to do so, we each need to recognize the role we are playing in God's providential of restoration.  When Lucifer chose to usurp God's position and place himself as master over Adam and Eve, he put in motion the defilement of all the was good and beautiful. Henceforth, we lost our destined position as God's prized-creation and became bastardized imitations of our true potential. This put us in spiritual darkness and ignorance. To rectify this, God devised a plan that would restore us back to our proper relationship with Him. This plan of restoration could not violate the principle of free will, least we never regain our true potential as God's blessed sons and daughters. (Hence, the reason why the plan is taking 6,000 biblical years to complete.) The plan of restoration began its implementation with God placing Cain in the position of Lucifer and placing Abel in the position of Messiah. This was done in order to re-create the same emotional dynamic that caused Lucifer to rebel against God.  Thus, when God asked Cain and Abel to make an offering to Him, He deliberately rejected Cain's offering. This caused Cain to feel anger and jealousy against Abel — so much that he killed Abel.  “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”  —Genesis 4:6-7 By creating this setup, God had hoped that Cain would overcome his jealousy and resentment and accept Abel as his “Messiah.” If Cain had accepted Abel as God's chosen One, this would have given God the condition to re-claim Cain back from Lucifer's control. Then God could have equally blessed Cain and Abel and, then, could have restored Adam's entire family back to its original position as sinless people. Today, we are in the same situation as Cain. God wants to bless us with the complete restoration that can only come about with the blessing of the Messiah — and his bride. (Rev. 19:7) But as long as we keep a fallen countenance, and remain resonating with the same fallen emotions that Cain and Lucifer had, we won't be able to overcome our ignorance and recognize the new Messiah that God sends us. Worse, we may even try to kill him.  So what are we to do? How can we overcome our “Cain” nature so that we won't repeat the same mistakes that Cain and the Jewish leaders made against their respective “Messiahs?” I hope to answer that in the next installment. (To be continued.)