I am one of those people who failed the "big test". But, in my case at least, Satan doesn't have anything much to "crow" about; because, what's to crow about? It is difficult for me to envision any reasonable person taking great glee, pride, or sense of accomplishment over the fact that something was pulled out from under, or something put over on, a fairly ignorant being who's total awareness, strength, and power constitutes a teeny, tiny fraction of that of the big bad guy who is reputedly doing the testing. It would be like whooping it up because a professional football team won a stunning victory over a trio of Brownie Scouts. I know, I know, "But JC won. He passed the test." Yeah, maybe, but again, was there ever any real doubt?
I guess where I started to lose the test was when I started to connect the dots. A recent example of this is when I started asking why has there been over 2K years of pain and suffering to humanity AFTER Jesus supposedly died for all of us. It would seem that the legal case, the Job case, and every other case that could possibly have been initiated to, at, or around this Supreme Being was brought to successful completion with the "perfect" sacrifice. So what's the problem? The moment JC took it to the wall, there should have been a cosmic whistle and a booming voice saying, "Okay. That's it. Case closed. We win, you lose. All you people are dead. All the rest of you, it's out for ice cream! My treat!" Instead, we end up with 2000 more years of hapless, helpless, hurtful, short, little lives that can not, in any way shape or form, add anything to the cosmic equation.
Another dot sequence: In Matthew, Jesus describes the first marriage and supposedly says, "What God has yoked together, let no man pull apart." Now, it would seem safe to assume that the "no man" part refers to the husband as well, i.e. Adam. Such that, then when Adam got home that evening and found out what Eve had done, he had two basic choices: turn her in or follow suit. However, if he had turned her in, she would have died for her action, and he (Adam) would have been complicit in unyoking himself from Eve and thereby disobeying God. Afterall, there was no "till death do you part" in the original contract. His other choice was to stick with his wife as per the plan, and because the two were now "one flesh" they were in a mental/emotional state whereby "a daughter will leave her mother and a son leave his father"...but wait, who was Adam's father again? Oh, never mind about that. So, pretty much, Adam was fairly well screwed from the git go. Unfortunately, his rather gutless reply to God's question as to whether he had done the bad left no room for discussion, he just immediately and totally accepted that the guilt was on the human level. It was all his fault. Wow, where have I heard that one before?
Of course, I am looking at this thru the eyes of a romantic, rather than the eyes of "Christian". I want to believe that Adam did what he did out of a love for his wife and a need to protect her no matter what. As opposed to the well worn WT declaration that Adam did it because he wanted to prove that he didn't need God, that he could (oh, how telling this statement) "decide for himself".
One final recent dot matrix. One of the things I used to hear so often was how "Jehovah has always had an organization on the Earth that He works thru." I probably missed it because I was to busy failing the test, but can someone point out to me the organization that Ezekiel had? How about Isiah? Joseph? Abraham? Job, Jonah, John T. Baptiser? I kinda recall these guys as being rather singular individuals in OPPOSITION to the established organizations, but then, my memory must be weak, which is why I failed the Big Test.
