"Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit."

If power and spirit are separate then, since matter is of power and entity a material concept, there is no such thing as a spiritual entity. Nor is there need for one, because immortality is material. As physical creatures contained in the brain' s configuration those who pass are transferred intact in a twinkling from death to the moment of redemption without passing the interval, each death at the end of time. There is no afterlife (somewhere else) but only life (here), and this is prelife, tunnel to the world to come.

What of the soul?

It is a metaphor for the self: we are built to function in every conceivable sense precisely as if we were spirits clad in matter. Since the metaphor was the principle of the design, the soul is the only means by which the condition may be fully understood. There is no literal answer to the question of the self and other metaphors are flawed.

What is the spirit?

It is to do justice and love kindness, to do to no one what you hate done to you. Beyond the senses ("spiritual energy" also cannot be; nature means no magic), it is somehow accessible. Israel's experience has been cartography.

The spirit resists analysis and definition, but yields to metaphor. Heisenberg's principle for metaphysics is ineffability: you can't put your finger on it because it's not it with your finger on it.

Whence evil?

There can only be creatures like us, born blank and free to draw conclusions. With the Creator apparent the spirit would still have to be revealed, could not be made obvious and could be denied. Poof!Paradise would lead inexorably to a dilemma requiring for resolution something very like the human condition.

Since this had to happen anyway that didn't, but this had to happen just as if it had. The theodicy is a metaphor for the human condition and, like that for the self, it is adequate and requisite.
 

What can we know of God?

The single exception to nature was the revelation to Israel. The holy people has since, unassisted, built on its foundation an all but boundless and implausibly coherent map of the spirit.

To what end?

Human behavior is as determined as that of subatomic particles (not a bit) and quantum physics makes the rule: no single event is predictable even in principle, but in the aggregate patterns appear, enabling foresight. Demographics like physics is constant and as a scientist projects the outcome of a given quantum state to test his paradigm against fact, the outcome of a historical state may be "foreseen."

Empire was implicit in evolution, bound to happen of its own accord. All roads led to Rome and the revelation to Israel along the way was to be injected into the mix as Rome peaked, creating the given of 30 CE.

If, given merely material and human causes, what happens next matches the projected outcome, the spirit will have been embodied, giving these airy nothings a local habitation and a name, and the process will be in retrospect all revelation. God told Moses He would only be seen from behind.

How could this be?

Miracles of power pale next to this of the spirit and the apocalypses hold the key. Behind the smokescreen of interference and foreknowledge are four numbers showing the whole sweep was scripted.

Two are in Revelation: Israel will spend 1260 "days" (years) in the wilderness and "Satan" (the adversary) will be bound for 1000 years.

Power will be adversary to the good, but takes secular and cleric forms so righteousness will resist one and then the other and then both in rounds of 420 years to total 1260. The separation is made by the revelation's introduction to Rome at the bottom, delaying the advent of cleric power for a millennium, and by the first round, which takes secular power out for the same span.
 

From 30 CE this gives us 450 CE as the end of the secular, 1030 as the birth of the cleric, 1450 as the rebirth of the secular and 1870 as the emergence of Israel from the wilderness with the stage set for the final battle.

The other numbers are in Daniel: from the end of the daily sacrifice to the abomination will be 1290 days (the Temple was destroyed in 70, after 40 years, so the abomination is slated for 1330); and "blessed are they who see the end of 1335 days." With 1260 as 1870. these are 1940 and 1945.

What of Christianity?

Given the paradigmatic relation between Israel and Rome, the tale of the man who thought he was messiah was bound to undergo a rewrite and become gospel. The rest is history, with the stage provided by the church.

The New Testament was at once a misapprehension meant to happen, necessary if the drama were to unfold, and a final elaborate projection: the "Passion" was a play the first time. It did not happen but would, much later. A people which had for ages expected messiah would fail to recognize him when he appeared, kill him while the world watched and still not recognize him when he rose from the dead.

The "resurrection" (for the man' s friends, a shared experience of his momentary reappearance in the flesh) was both the necessary effective cause of the sect's perseverance and a prediction that Israel would be reborn in 1948, three "days" after 1945.

What of the nations?

The injunction is the same: choose life. While even barely animate organisms struggle to survive there is a purely human choice which comes with the territory. Characteristic of the condition, implicit in experience, it not only requires no revelation but is inescapable.

The human itself, regardless of culture, is an embodiment of two (the only) absolutes. Life means the absolute autonomy of the self and the absolute equivalence of the other. They are the law and the prophets, marvelously inclusive.
 
 

The full implications of accepting autonomy and equivalence are not clear yet, but as a bottom line for extenuation empathy was implicit when the condition came to be. Life can only work well where acceptance is general, and it cannot be enforced. The human condition is a chance to choose life and those who do so earn a share in the world to come.