Booklets
Karl Roebling's
KNOCKOFF THEORY
HOW THE MORTAL REALM DEVELOPED
Also A Look At Evolution, Material Creationism
Intelligent Design, And Spiritual Creation
The knockoff is death-sentenced, dangerous, messy, fragmented, confusing, limited. It is based on good-and-evil, the system the serpent told Eve was the inner secret of man being like gods. The Real God is all-good, the key to getting rid of all evil in a manner harmless and helpful to humans, is in Jesus and his ministry.
The material creation's upper regions may at times be good, but its lower regions are terrible, with much more evil "enmity against God" down there yet unknown (Mat. 24:21; Dan. 12:1).
We think the material realm is God's creation, but it's not. Jesus told us God's spiritual creation or Kingdom is here, now, even in us, but "hid" by our limited perception which fails to see, hear, or understand (Lk. 17:20-21; Mat. 13:44, see also v. 15).
The "natural man" (I Cor. 2:14) doesn't easily grasp the things of the Spirit, but by using Scriptural references about spiritual man and identity (as in John 3:8 and many others - - see Appendix p. 248), the higher awareness can come into human experience.
As seen in the lives of Bible figures, there's a spiritualized upper human zone (not the pyramid upper areas) overlap with the divine. But in their great writing and speaking - - trying to tell us of the unseen - - they had to use material terms and their own subjective seeing. Hence in reading the Bible, we can easily believe God's creation is the death-sentenced material realm, when God did much better - - and we often glimpse overlaps, overtones and evidences of this in our human experience.
Counterfeit two ways
The carnal realm is counterfeit two ways - - an attempt to be like the higher, and the opposite or darkness.
Despite some good, it basically has the enmitous motivation to be the only kingdom, and to retain death as the supreme power.
Scrambling to match today's Spirit-based progress
Today - - with awareness of the spiritual Kingdom growing on earth - - the carnal (or material) mind (sensing its end) is desperately scrambling to be similar in some ways and opposite in others.
As for the opposite counterfeiting, new evils threaten us, and Bible prophecies point to latter-day figures like "666," and great battles (the devil's wrath [Rev. 12:9, 12], falsely blamed on God).
But when "playing nice," the carnal mind tries to present good. Newscasts tell us that cell technology promises "immortality." I encourage progressive work in matter, but immortality has always been available in the spiritual Kingdom, and cannot be achieved in the death-centered carnal mind and its matter. Indicating immortality, Enoch and Elijah ascended, and Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Such realities are available to us, if we know how to qualify, and access and use them.
Eventually, the carnal mind quits many of its " Mr. Nice Guy" good and useful things, and instead increases evil and wrath up front. Still later, after losing more ground, it will try to commit suicide taking us and all the world with it (while trying to blame its "end of the world" campaign on God). But instead, Bible prophecies culminate in the end of all evil (Rev. 21:4, 7), while the world gets upgraded.
The carnal creation's most fatal of many flaws is that it is not the Original. With today's Spirit "on all flesh," the evil package has to desperately expand to keep its grip on our thoughts. But the more closely evil touches the Light in order to nicely or oppositely copy it, evil's darkness is nullified in a degree. Evil operates best from hiding. Exposed, it erupts in anger, but loses.
The Bible calls the adversary "liar," also serpent and dragon, that "deceiveth the whole world."
In contrast to lies and liar, Jesus called his God and message - - which includes the higher creation and higher man Paul said was "hid with Christ in God" - - Truth.
Without an origin of its own, and yielding ground to healings, the fake has to collapse. But first it shows its ugliest nature.
Divided against itself - - dichotomies
Carnal creation is split into halves - - into opposite, dichotomous positions such as the serpent's opposites of "good and evil." And deific murdering. And "mortal life." And the Garden's Yes-yes, but No-no about sex (still not resolved in society or religions).
We also see material humanity split into males and females (in which humans are halves, needing another half to fulfill them, whereas the divine image is a wholeness - - John 17:20-23, others). There are more splits inherent in the all-pervasive pyramid, such as controller and controlled, superior and inferior, top and bottom, devourer and devouree, and others.
Too, we have peace and war, love and hate and other things in the general carnal mind concept of "two sides of the coin."
The dichotomy of benefit and detriment is in everything. Our finest machines can fall from the skies, our best pills can kill or cripple with "side effects." On beautiful days, we perceive overtones of the divine in the material good - - but violent, murderous weather can appear.
Material creation is the "kingdom divided against itself" which Jesus said could not "stand."
The carnal mind and material realm - - and how matter beneficially changes
The carnal mind objectifies itself as material creation - - biblical, but set forth in this age by Mary Baker Eddy.
When the "mind...which was also in Christ Jesus" changes the material mind with the good news of spiritual creation, matter changes. These "divine Kingdom" type healings (Mat. 10:7-8) deal primarily with the carnal mind behind matter.
Bible figures who ascended left no material remains. Their awareness of their image and likeness of Spirit in the spiritual Kingdom had reached a point where their human bodies corresponded.
Physical scientists tell us matter converts to energy, and furthermore, that even solid matter is mainly space, with particles constituting only an infinitesimal amount.
This is a scientific age. Faith is wonderful, taking us to a certain level. But today we want to know how things work. We want answers. Is there knowledge that reveals God's constant good power - - and helps us to use it? Evidences abound in the Bible and today.
Major progress follows defrocking the carnal mind
The carnal mind isn't God, it only plays God. But it gets tossed from our sense of heaven (Rev. 12:9). Only Jesus' all-good God gets rid of all evil - - and does so harmlessly, as in his ministry. The unprecedented evil on earth in the end-times (of evil) - - the predicted earthquakes, etc. - - are evil's reaction, evil's wrath (Rev. 12:12).
The good in Jesus' all-good God is omnipotent (not the worthy but weak human good which, sadly, is often evil's doormat). But human good is important because it lets the divine come through.
Satan and the First Commandment
If we have a real Satan out there (and not just a "con"-identity) aren't we breaking the First Commandment? With the carnal mind - - or, really, mindlessness - - we are dealing only with tangled inventions and masses of thoughts opposite to God (often with "con" names).
We have invented many things (Eccl. 7:29), hewed out "broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jer. 2:13).
The whole package of evil is a lie about the real God and real creation, but awareness of God as love (I Jn. 4:16) - - not "good and evil" - - beneficially changes it, as in Jesus' ministry.
We unwittingly give credence to the material instead of the spiritual because we can see, hear, and understand (Mat. 13:15) the mortal creation instead of the spiritual.
And, we usually can't think our way out of the carnal mind's split and paradoxical walls of consciousness. We need help from outside, and we need to think outside the carnal-mind box. We need Jesus' divine-life system which beneficially changes the mortal scene.
Part of our slow and often reluctant grasping of the ever-present divine is that we have to change and grow in order to receive it - - and this is gradual. But the better is always there in its fullness.
The carnal mind death-system works through our minds and identities wherever and whenever possible. Con games collapse if people don't believe and act on the lies.
As we progressively grasp the divine, evil increases its show of power in order to try to keep us convinced of the supremacy of death and destruction. Gradually, though, we change sides and basis, join the divine team and go to work as "labourers" against evil.
Advances good and evil
Many advances on earth are partly with the divine, but others are just the material mind trying to keep up with the divine.
As for material weaponry, some is good for the time being - - for national and personal defense - - but some is just from evil's pits. In time we will use spiritual warfare without carnal weapons (II Cor. 10:4).
Advances entirely by evil include more earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, plagues (HIV in Africa is in the tens of millions), than ever in recorded history - - and Jesus said these things would occur more and more. They are not from God, but are evil's reactions to our progressive awareness (called the "coming," when it's always been there) of the ever-present divine reality, and to our work in conjunction with it, which in time ends all evil.
But as we work ourselves out of the flesh, out of Egypt, out of the mortal condition, out of evil's grip - - as in II Corinthians 3:18, from inspiration to inspiration - - we are transforming in ways small and large.
Thus we see advanced fleshly states based more in the divine Spirit than in the carnal mind. The idea that God harms sinful us when He finds us, is a fiction designed to keep us away from God.
We put on immortality, put off mortality, put on the new man, put off the old, as Paul said. And become a "new creature."
Harmlessly, by steps - - although often with struggle.
The "Bible pattern"
Encounters little or large with the Kingdom - - or with the Holy Spirit, or Christ Jesus, or angels, or with people, helpers or visitors on earth like men, or with genuine voices - - produce beneficial, upgrading changes in us, our bodies, and circumstances.
This is unvarying. It can even be called scientific, because it is constant, involves higher knowledge, and produces results higher than physical sciences which are often useful but also often destructive.
The carnal mind falsely frightens us that if we contact the Higher, we might be sent to hell - - so stay away from the frowning, mean-tempered, unpredictable God. But that's not the God of Jesus (see also John 17:20-23 inviting us to be one). Staying away is the opposite of the Bible-pattern encounters which result in benefits.
Faced today with the inflood of the Spirit "on all flesh," the carnal mentality scrambles wildly, expanding at a dazzling rate with both useful knockoffs and things of deepest evil, to attempt to hold our conviction that it is our life (and death). This "shall…if it were possible…deceive the very elect" (Mat. 24:24).
The bad events of the "time of trouble, such as never was" (Dan. 12:1; Mat. 24:21) are productions of the carnal mind, and don't come from God. They are evil's reactions to Christianity's progressive awareness of God and the power that overcomes all evil.
So Let's Look At Evolution
Could the intricacies of gene spirals and DNA have come by evolution? That's a popular question today, and the equally popular answer is that it's not likely. Darwin is reputed to have said he couldn't see how something as beautiful and detailed as a peacock's tail could have evolved. Others have cited the human eyeball.
Even sincere advocates of Evolution struggle in this hour to see how the mortal realm with today's astounding activity, speed, fast changes and developments and many complicated and incredibly-detailed and mathematics-based things like computers could have come from pond slime.
But under the knockoff theory, these things can easily occur as the result of the carnal mind's ever-growing perceptions of the much more intricate and perfect spiritual, divine, little-seen formations.
We readily accept the "natural selection" part of evolution, and selectively breed animals and plants, using the bigger, stronger, more productive stock. As for wild creatures, we accept that if short-beaked birds can't get the food they need from crevices in rocks, they die, while those with longer beaks live and breed. That makes sense, so generally we're OK with this type of "evolution."
As part of that, we're also able to accept that mutations occur.
Evolutionary theory has not explained to everyone's satisfaction how new species appeared, or how some gaps can be bridged - - particularly where there are large leaps forward. Some of these sudden jumps upward are in the theory of human development.
Granted, in some areas, there are intriguing overlaps, but big gaps remain.
Yet, supporting evolution are the reptilian, ordinary mammalian and higher mammalian brains in today's human brain (National Geographic and others).
Can something come from nothing? Or is it more logical that something came from something higher?
The knockoff theory explains species, jumps and gaps as the limited and crude attempts by the carnal mind to copy much higher and spiritual things which it can't even see, much less understand.
Evolution, too slow, has been passed by changes moving so fast today that we can't keep up with them. Things and ideas are obsoleted or upgraded almost as soon as they "make the scene."
However, I think my knockoff theory explains and fits all cases past and present.
And Creationism?
I have the greatest respect for prayerful people and Bible students advocating Creationism. I listen with great interest to TV presentations and debates between honest, fine people regarding questions that arise within Creationism, and Creationism vs. other concepts. I enjoy TV shows from the Creation Science museums.
I'm intrigued by artifacts showing dinosaur footprints alongside human ones. I have to admit that "behemoth" the grass-eating huge creature with the tail like a "cedar" in Job, sounds like a dinosaur. I'm fascinated, but I think a few examples of ancient animals could have come forward, as the Coelacanth (pron. seelacanth), recently caught (and mebbe even "Nessie"!).
I'm a scholar who has seen world opinions change so many times on archaeological, anthropological and evolutionary subjects since my long-ago childhood that I'm able to respect different views and their sincere and dedicated advocates. And now I present my knockoff concept (which allows for the possibility of some remaining dinosaurs in, for example, Job's time).
The time factor is less critical in the "knockoff." The Original (which is also the Real), is the eternal spiritual Kingdom with all things, Jesus said, always there.
Back, then, to basic Creationism. One might ask, Couldn't God have done much better than the primitive realm? Some say He did - - that the Garden was perfect - - but that man's original sin, and continuing sinning, caused the thousands of primitive years that followed, without anything modern, even writing.
But don't the Scriptures tell us of a higher, spiritual creation indicated by figures who visited then (and visit today), from above, and in ascensions, and in Elisha's Kingdom experiences, Jesus' references to the Kingdom, including his Lord's Prayer, and in Paul's references?
Something spiritual is there, perfect and largely unseen, that we leave out of our reasoning while saying God made the dangerous material creation, and leave out of our prayers that which beneficially changes things.
The Bible has to use material terms to attempt to describe the spiritual. Admittedly, it's hard to read the Bible - - which has to use material terms to attempt to describe the spiritual - - and not believe that God created the material heaven and earth. But, when we encounter the spiritual Higher, the material lower is beneficially changed - - so something's there that helps us escape death-centered life. It includes man in the image of Spirit - - a much better deal than creation of dust.
Jesus said we couldn't see, hear or understand - - but that if we did, we'd be healed (Mat. 13: 15). Something is there.
Today, Adam's human limits are challenged by genetics that improve animals, plants and humans. Too, bionics remove human limits. Also, Kurzweil would connect computers into our brains. Fukuyama tells of "transhumanism" moving "the species" to the "next stage." In 2007, "WIRED" took us "Beyond The Body," into areas of "human enhancement."
Especially important to religion: Are we going beyond Adam? Was Adam the image of the divine - - or a fabrication of the carnal mind in whom "all die," while in the spiritual image or Christ, all "live"? Today, the Adamic type is being upgraded. Are humans trying to do better than God?
Jesus improved the Adamic type, but by awareness of the spiritual image of Spirit.
Paul wanted to be free of his "vile body" (via upward steps, not death). He was "willing to be absent from the body" and "present with the Lord." He said "we…in this tabernacle do groan...."
Many sports work against limits without chemicals. But some seek legal and illegal hormonal, steroidal and other enhancers.
We speak of "out of body" and near-death (NDE) freedoms.
We like entertainment's superhumans sailing through the skies, and such things as "beam me up."
Jesus walked on the water, invited Peter (who tried), crossed the lake in an instant, and could become invisible - - showing possibilities from the higher identity and its spiritual body (Jn. 3:8).
In our concept of ourselves as Adam, how can the material and limited be the image of God, Spirit? And yet, we each have an image - - progressive realization of which doesn't hurt but helps us.
Doesn't Genesis' first chapter attempt to show us creation in Spirit's image - - all "good," the fruit of all trees edible, and no serpent?
Adamic creation (Gen. 2:4 ff) is the carnal mind's, or material (from dust, not from Spirit) creation.
Our real life is "hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3-4). This never "fell" into death's material "prison."
To get out, we have only to start grasping the higher identity Jesus showed us, follow his prison-breaking Victory, and move upward.
Creationists like a beginning some 6,000 years ago. Some Creationists go back 10,000 years. Others debate whether some verses in Genesis are literal or not.
And Intelligent Design (I.D.)?
Intelligent design's great "plus" is that it's hard to see how intricate, detailed, complex and beautiful things could appear without an intelligent designer.
Its great "minus" is that there have been and are so many not-intelligent creations primitive, useless, adverse, ugly, destructive.
Creationism and Intelligent Design are uniting and challenging Evolution, and presenting arguments in Creation Science.
Evolution is taught in public schools as a science, and has the backing of governing bodies that specify what can and cannot be taught in public schools. Intelligent Design advocates want the science status - - want I.D. to be in the same classroom with Evolution (or better, boot Evolution out). As it is, I.D. and Creationism can be taught (or at least mentioned) in some public schools, but in religion-type, not science-type classes. And this has been the "rub."
These struggles appear in the secular news from time to time, and are covered much more deeply in religious broadcasting.
My position from Scripture is that God's design is seen in the spiritual Kingdom and man in Spirit's image, the primary reality.
Its unseen creations have perfect form, and don't need matter and limitation to give them form. The carnal or material mind attempts to copy this higher but ever-present status, and thus there are hints of God in many knockoff objects. Spiritual beauty abounds in flowers.
Paul said he could see the invisible things of creation clearly (Rom. 1:20 to ,), or at least through a glass darkly (I Cor. 13:12), sometimes. And that inspirations produced upward transformations, not harm (II Cor. 3:18).
Earth has three general categories - - the carnal mind's attempted nice copy, its evil one, and the healed and partly spiritualized condition in which there's overlap, and we get out by stages.
Today's colossal speedup has left slow evolution "in the dust." We have inventions, flight, communications, rockets and satellites, scientific medicine and surgery, the electronic and computer explosions, and the crossing of genetic frontiers - - all racing forward.
These beneficial things in our realm hint of super-intelligence in the Original far beyond human minds or evolution from nothing. Their rapid upgrading and also quick obsoleting of things show they are not I.D. creations per se, but attempts to copy things far greater.
DNA predestinates the human being - - but does God do that? Some religious schools once believed in predestination.
Even while we attribute marvelous gene spirals to God, we change genes to correct defects, and genes related to diseases. (In plants and animals, we've done types of genetic changing for years.)
The fascinating and detailed gene spiral isn't an original creation by God. Divine healing will - - or even now can - - change genes just as it changes other parts of the human body.
The genuine, perfect, permanent and reliable is in the Kingdom which includes the Higher man Jesus taught, where "all things" are added to seekers - - harmlessly, transformationally, progressively.
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© 2008 Karl Roebling. All rights reserved.
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