"I write these words in steel..."

[Ripheus23]

So, I'm in a bind. I just came to a verdict on a question that has haunted me for some time now... As I said, years ago I started devoutly investigating the Christian religion and came to the conclusion that the figure of Apollyon from the Book of Revelation is a kind of destroyer-god, the antithesis of the Creator, the ultimate evil in the story of the religion... and that this being has been corrupting the religious beliefs of the world, especially in the Christian church, to keep its existence sort of secret---and that when I "discovered" this I had to keep quiet about it at first because the safeguard I had against it knowing what its foes know, is that it can't read their minds. And that the numbers 16, and 23, had some mystical significance, as numerological signposts in the conflict with Apollyon. ---And, then, half a year or so later, I read The Hero of Ages, after years and years and years of believing that the LDS were going to play some special, overwhelming, good role in my life, even if I never outright joined them.

That wasn't the only instance of such an uncanny coincidence between books I happened upon at some interval or another, and the circumstances of my life as I was living it. It's not even that I'm so obsessed with Brandon Sanderson's work and it's all his stories that I'm talking about. No, this started well before I ever knew of him, though in clearer retrospect I was led to him along a fairly straight road. But anyway, I ended up meeting an LDS man by the name of Dean, after years of being obsessed with that show Supernatural, and again, it's not that I'm talking about coincidences between just the Cosmere and Eric Kripke's show on one hand, and my life on the other. However, it was The Way of Kings that I left at the park in my hometown, for Dean to find, when I knew not his name, neither whether I would ever see him again after I met him. (I have to emphasize, the guy's name really is "Dean." Not "Dean Winchester," granted, but I hardly ever thought about the character in those terms. And when Mr. LDS was nameless to me, I did tell myself that it would be quite strange if his named turned out to be what it was in the end, for the reason just stated (elliptically).) So it was through Sanderson's work that I was reunited with him, the second time I ever got to hang out with him. (I even left a piece of paper with Aon Rao marked on it, another time before Dean came back then, for him to find.)

Because I met him, I became inspired to work on a film project. I would like to be a filmmaker but in those days, I'd never actually tried my hand at it, even as an experiment. The story I came up with was going to be a found-footage movie where the footage was from a "dream recorder," and the "dream" was a nightmare; but monsters are often in nightmares, so... "God is the monster" is the solution I came up with, i.e. there was to be an actor in the movie who seemed like a dream character but who eventually told the protagonist that He was God and that the nightmare world was Hell, and so the protagonist ended up trying to run from God in Hell. When I finally got around to carrying out this task, though, I adjusted the premise in a particular way...

First, it mystified me why so many Christians would argue that Jesus Christ saves us by having paid the penalty for our sins in the way of suffering our punishment for us. If this were true but if Hell were the intended punishment, wouldn't Christ have to be in Hell forever to atone for anyone's sins? Yet He's not supposed to be in Hell. When an evil book became the enemy in my "movie"

... I decided to have the problem be that if the protagonist woke up with the evil book in hand, the world would be destroyed because the nightmare world was Hell and the book would break the seal on Hell, freeing all the monsters from there and unleashing them on creation. So the book would try to trick the protagonist into holding on to the book by appealing to his moral intensity. It would point out the question of eternal substitution and tempt the protagonist to believe that this book contained the truth and so must be held on to, for the protagonist would then offer to sacrifice himself forever to save everyone else from Hell. But the protagonist was bound to awaken anyway so, like I said, it was supposed to be a trick.

Now, over the years I got the feeling that I had some kind of foresight about my own life that had been transposed into this story. I thought that the discernment of the Spirit (so far as I accepted the Christian idea of the Spirit indwelling the believer) entailed, here, that one day, Apollyon would try to deceive me into trying to sacrifice myself, but that by doing so I would instead pull a Vin and, well, you know. Because the sealed-evil-in-can trope has been done a little better than it was with Ruin, but not much better, and if the trope is a moral archetype and if Apollyon does somehow exist (or at least if a Christian would have reason to believe so on the basis of their scriptures and the judgment of the Spirit, or whatever), then the destroyer-god does intend to set itself free from whatever is as of now holding it back. (The intuitive appreciation of this archetype's existence and its subconscious role in the course of human history, as a natural drive in the subconscious, an as-if personified evil, is reflected in the spiritual continuum of the entire fantasy genre, though. Again: I've lost track of the number of books---and movies and shows and even video games, for that matter---that have mysteriously entered into this "pattern." Psychiatrists, some of them that is, even have a label for the "enemy": mortudo/mortido, the thanatos-impulse. (During the Vietnam War, many American soldiers spoke of something called "the hedonism of destruction."))

How, though? Who knows? What difference would it make even if it were true? Well, it's a risk I shouldn't take. I might not have proof that you or I or anyone else is or can be implicated in a transcendental conspiracy to annihilate existence, but I do have evidence, both historical and personal, that people can be sucked into a dilemma of this nature and since I have nothing worth fighting for otherwise, I can't just go along thinking, "Well, who knows?"

Dean, to my understanding, is at the heart of what I would have to do. This is literally true anyway, since I am so enamored with him, despite the incredibly brevity of my friendship with him. But, in the New Testament it often talks of Christ alone as our Savior, and yet it does say, somewhere, "How do you know, wife, if you will save your husband? How do you know, husband, if you will save your wife?"

So let's suppose that love never fails and endures all things. If I, as a Christian, love someone enough to wish they would not go to Hell (Paul expressed such a wish once, no less), and yet this person with whom I am enamored is impenitent unto death, then what if I can justify this person regardless, as Christ by His sacrifice justified me? The caveat would be: I must be a Christian to even offer to make this sacrifice for someone else, and unlike the Son, I will not be resurrected from the Second Death, but must pay the price for the one I love, forever and ever. Not only that, but I might only be giving someone else a second chance at life unto repentance, and so even then if they would ultimately make it to Heaven, might their rapture in their paradise be lesser in glory than that of those who were saved by Christ in the first place? Paul talks of a "third heaven" in which inexpressible (for us, on Earth) mysteries are known to exist, and in the LDS picture of the afterlife (after all), this lesser realm of deliverance, while surpassing the occurrent Earth in splendor, is nevertheless not the highest height of God and His light possible.

"And so, I come to the crux of my argument." My only impression of Dean as he is now is that what happened to the character in Supernatural---he was possessed by Michael, who is equivalent to Apollyon in the real world---happened to him, too, namely Apollyon possessed him. (Michael in the real world is the angel whose name means, "Who is like God?" God's name is "I am that I am," which expresses constructive existence. Theological destruction is, therefore, "I am not that I am not," and since the answer to the form of Michael is, "No one else is like God," Michael is not that he is not, i.e. he is the Angel of the Lord, Who is the Lord, and the destroyer-god of Christian faith over the ages. (Just so you know this for sure, I will note that the Jehovah's Witnesses think that Apollyon is Christ, and that Christ is Michael; wherefore, though those Witnesses do not think that the Son is of one substance with the Father, they virtually admit the point in question, which is that the divine nature did not only Incarnate by assuming a man unto itself, but as an angel too. I think Samael (Satan) and Michael were the firstborn and first in might, though which was which I haven't figured out yet. Something to do with the myth of Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, maps onto the answer, though.)) But what does that mean? It wouldn't necessarily mean anything apocalyptic except that our damned president and the fanatical form of Christians who believe in his administration, are of a very violent cast of mind, and if every American president has gotten us into some kind of war or other, I daresay it is not a leap in judgment to dread that the occurrent one has a decent chance of doing so too, especially considering the kind of rhetoric to which he and those surrounding him are prone. Now Dean would be liable to join the military (one of the things he said, when I first met him no less, is that he had been thinking of joining the military, maybe even the navy (who hold the power of the Trident submarines, which are as far as I know the worst individual keys of evil on Earth, in their hands)) and if he is so corrupted as I dread, I dread that Apollyon would have him do something that would break my heart as much as possible, namely participate in an atrocity, a massacre or mass rape or who knows what, but something terribly wicked, and so Dean would be guilty unto damnation, unless...

I don't know what to do, though. Not yet. I'm bringing it up here, in the context of having discussed the periphery of the issue beforehand, because of the place Sanderson (and my membership in fantasy-analysis forums) has in my life, and because there's always the off-chance that someone would be able to fight off tl;dr syndrome and read through all of what I've said, and understand, and they'd know whether there was anything that they ought to do about it (but what?). I'll be honest, I have this incredible wish that Sanderson himself would find out about all of what has gone on, and he would understand, and so on and on. But what the chances of that being the difference to make are, I don't know. There was a point in the "Pattern" when it seemed like Apollyon could interfere with my mind when I dealt with "messages" in books, but not if the "messages" were in electronic format (and books with special "seals"). But that sounds absurd when said aloud, I'll say, even if does seem true to me.

Edited October 12, 2018 by Ripheus23

[+ILuvHats he/him]

I don't want to intrude or make assumptions about anything, and I'm really trying to understand your post.  I've read it and re-read it.  So don't take offense, I'm just attempting to comprehend everything.  My question is how do you know something bad is going to happen to Dean?  Is it something you intuited, or is there more tangible evidence?  You seem seriously concerned, and you want to take action, but you're not sure what to do, right?  Maybe you don't believe in the power of prayer in your belief system, or maybe you've already been doing it, but that's about the only thing I can think of doing at this point.  That and waiting.  I honestly don't have enough information to give any other advice...

I'm definitely not the person you're looking for who truly understands, but I felt that for some reason I should try to answer.  I'm not sure what else to say, except that I hope you can resolve this situation in good way.  

[Ripheus23]

10 minutes ago, ILuvHats said:

My question is how do you know something bad is going to happen to Dean?  Is it something you intuited, or is there more tangible evidence?

It started out as a "vision," which I thought was just my overactive imagination, except that things did end up turning out the way the vision said they would.

Praying I've done, and maybe on this side of the veil it's all I can do. My dread is that either I ought to make sure I am substituted for Dean so that he doesn't go to Hell some day (since he seems liable to this fate?), or that I am being tricked into thinking that I ought to be his substitute.

[+ILuvHats he/him]

33 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

Praying I've done, and maybe on this side of the veil it's all I can do. My dread is that either I ought to make sure I am substituted for Dean so that he doesn't go to Hell some day (since he seems liable to this fate?), or that I am being tricked into thinking that I ought to be his substitute.

Well, I'll pray for you to make the right decision, whatever that is for you.

[whattheHoid she/her]

I'll be honest, please don't take offence, I got somewhat confused with your post, but happy, heart hugs. Soul searching is hard and I've certainly have done a lot. Spirituality to me is realizing how awesome it is that we, as a species, are sentient and aware enough that we are alive in this Universe and can create multiple ones through our powers of imagination. I'll pray for you friend, for clarity and peace and good fortune.