Sometimes people inquire as to what prompted me to write Journal of the Angelic. First, let me say that I am a conservative Christian believer in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the veracity of God's Holy Word. I believe the Bible to be a divine work...and precisely what God wants before His people at this point in history. After all, if He is able to inspire the great book of our faith is He somehow incapable of directing its process from prophet to papyrus to Bible?

I was reared in a wonderful Christian home by loving Christian parents that saw that my siblings and I attended church regularly. Those churches were predominantly of the Southern Baptist and old-time Methodist variety and provided an excellent foundation for a young man to learn about God, faith and the need for a savior. However, I had a lot of questions in my little mind and often wondered why no one discussed what were, for me, obvious puzzlements.

When I think of an angel I think of a creation whose intelligence is vastly superior to ours, as humans. After all, they have existed with God for the dateless past and, as sinless beings, are worthy to gaze upon His humanly unknowable countenance. In Journal of the Angelic, I write that the one mental faculty they lack that we have is the ability to...forget. They remember every single instance...every single moment...every face, every word, every thought that has occurred to them across the ages and eons. Indeed, angels are unimaginably much more intelligent than us.

It also stands to reason that angels know God far, far better than we will ever know Him while we are on this Earth. By virtue of their unstained souls, they are able to look into the unspeakable...unknowable eyes of the Almighty God of the universe. Indeed, the angels in Heaven know Gods power, His majesty, His capabilities...and His sovereignty.

So, if angels are so much more intelligent than us...and they know God so much better...how is it that one-third of them thought Lucifer had a better deal??

When I was a young fellow, I, along with my younger siblings, attended a small, private, Baptist elementary school. One of things I learned early on was that God is omniscient...God is all-knowing. I also believe that God presents Himself as one who tolerates no sin. In fact, He is the antithesis of sin...transgressions existing as perhaps the lone, self-imposed limitation of His power.

So, if God is 1) all-knowing and 2) intolerant of sin, how is it that so many angels were able to defect to Lucifer right under God's nose? After all, it seems doubtful that so many angels could have 'fallen away' in an instant. If that happened, the angels (that know God so intimately) either lost confidence in God's abilities or God's imprint failed to sustain their faith in Him. Right? No. I don't believe either scenario is correct. I believe the angels likely 'fell away' over a very long period of time, probably by way of a process similar to the way humans commit sin: 1) We are tempted 2) We ponder the temptation 3) we make a choice. Perhaps, the angels in Heaven 'fell away' by the same method. That said, how could such happen right under God's nose, especially since He is all-knowing? I write that God was gone.

I believe nothing dependent on this universe could have created it. In other words, if God created the universe (and I believe He did) then He must have been someplace else before He created it...right? With that in mind, who are we to question God's ability to travel to that place again...that place outside our universal realm? And, if God was gone...He makes no claims about His ablility to discern the events in this universe while extant in another. Or, perhaps He did know, but the reason (s) for His leaving this universe were too important for Him to return expeditiously.

So, just like when Moses was upon Mt. Sinai, the children of Israel had witnessed some of the greatest miracles ever to grace our planet, including the plagues on Egypt, the waters turned to blood, the Passover and death of all the Egyptian's first-born and the parting of the Red Sea. They had even witnessed God's voice coming from atop the mountain and the ensuing smoke that arose with such ferocity that they begged Moses to never allow this to happen again; yet, Moses was upon the mount a few days longer than the Israelites thought he should be and they built and worshipped a golden calf!

I write that, perhaps, the Kingdom of Heaven fell in much the same way. Perhaps, God was gone and Lucifer was rightfully in charge. Lucifer eventually tempts the saints, the angels consider and ponder the temptation (s) and their implications and then make a choice. And, many (maybe billions) fell away to evil.

These ideas and questions are only a few of those that provided the impetus for Journal of the Angelic: Odyssey of the Divine. But, there's simply soooooo much more than this fragmented smidgen of conceptual ponderings. So much more...