The Inscrutable Question: Protestant Theology Produced Our National Glory; The Sophisticated Spiritual Life: Definition of “Destiny”
	26-	Thus, we see that honoring certain individuals is required in order for mankind to properly honor God.  Honoring parents, i.e., expressing proper respect, paying deferential attention, and offering willing obedience, is a behavior that glorifies God and his parents and brings honor to the child who does so.
	27-	These same characteristics can also be manifest in a country and its people.  When a nation submits itself to the divine mandates associated with establishment truth it means that its citizens are an humble and submissive people.  This humility is expressed outwardly by their accomplishments.
	28-	Blessing and prosperity to a client nation reach maximum capacity when there is a remnant of believers within its population who execute the Sophisticated Spiritual Life.
	29-	The sophisticated spiritual life is the modus operandi of believers who have through wisdom dressed their souls with a uniform of glory.  Their application of these truths to life is perceived by others as personal honor.
	30-	Our understanding of how a human being dresses his soul in a uniform of glory will go a long way in helping define the concept of glory within a client nation.
	31-	Our nation is fast losing its glory because of the brain drain caused by the incremental physical deaths of believers who have attained the Sophisticated Spiritual Life.  Once their thought is gone, then the client nation begins to invite the five cycles of discipline.  We entered into the Third Cycle on September 11, 2001.  The Fourth and possibly the Fifth Cycles may well be defined historically as the Third World War.
	32-	If the Fifth Cycle is to be avoided we must be among those who dress their souls with the uniform of glory and the way by which this is accomplished is by advancing in the plan of God to a level of spiritual sophistication.
	33-	This leads us to a study of the Sophisticated Spiritual Life.  In it we will define the personal sense of destiny which projects the believer into the adult spiritual life and ultimately to spiritual maturity.
	34-	From this we will develop five formulas that will summarize the outworking of internal glory, developed by knowledge of Bible doctrine, revealing itself to God and others in the form of honor.
The Sophisticated Spiritual Life
	I.	A Personal Sense of Destiny:

1-	The Sophisticated (Adult) Spiritual Life begins with a personal sense of destiny.
2-	The English noun destiny may be defined in three ways pertinent to our study.
Oxford English Dictionary,  s.v. “Destiny”:
1.	Appointed or fixed by divine decree, that which is destined to happen to a particular person, country, or institution.
It has been decreed from eternity past that those who believe Jesus is the Christ will inherit eternal life.  He will at physical death enter into the presence of God and Christ forever.  That decree also applies to the nation Israel during the millennial reign of Christ and in the new heavens and the new earth.  It also applies to the institution of the Universal Church whose members have special privileges in the eternal state.
2.	The power by which all events are unalterably predetermined.
It is the omnipotence of God that insures the fulfillment of the future destiny of believers in Jesus Christ and the environment in which it will occur.
3.	The agency that predetermines these events.
The sovereign will of God has predetermined this future history for those who believe in Christ and is the result of antecedent and eschatological grace.  Antecedent grace is the provision of salvation from eternity past.  Eschatological grace is the provision of eternal life forever and ever for those who accept salvation through faith alone in Christ alone.