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>> Wouldn't Satan build a spaceship and come back? I mean super genius with time on his hands...

Since Connor will throw the dagger at De Rosa, I had thought to destroy his physical form, leaving just Satan's spirit. But then I have to figure out how to drag him and all other demons into the lake of fire since humans can't hold him. I can leave that up to Jesus, I guess. So, it's only his spirit that goes through the lake to another world, or perhaps to an asteroid or moon like Io, preferably a celestial body that is spiralling into a black hole. Also, Satan's spirit has very little power to manipulate the physical realm without De Rosa's genetically engineered body, which is where most of his physical power came from while he was masquerading as the dark figure in Rome (same breeding program as Connor).

Because Satan is headed for an eternity in the Lake of Fire on Judgment Day, which he is desperate to avoid. Ditto for the Antichrist (Connor) and the False Prophet, all grave human sinners, and (I think all other demons).

Satan knows God will know the outcome of the Last Challenge, which is why he asks him to agree to the challenge regardless of the outcome. I've taken out the concept that Christ could be destroyed as part of the challenge and will make it so that only Christ's human half can be destroyed, forcing Christ back into spirit form, after which the Holy Trinity and all angels must leave Earth for the spirit realm and never return. Normally, Christ and his body are inseparable, but the Father created the supernatural dagger that Connor will eventually throw at either Christ or Satan. Since the Father created the dagger, Christ, who is equally all-powerful, could easily sidestep it, but because the Father agreed to the challenge and the potential results, if Connor throws the dagger at Christ, he will honor the Father's commitment and allow his human half to be destroyed.

The next thing I need to figure out is why would the Father take such a risk. As it says in my content summary, what is so important that he would risk it all? It originally was supposed to be because of the huge rescue mission into Hell that Connor is meant to lead. However, God could implement the rescue plan himself with a single thought, so I need better logic.

Finally something that came together easily. A bit wordy, but I can trim it once I've written the other sections.

One tweak I need to make here is to remove/rewrite prophecies that suggest Christ will win since (in theory) this document may fall in Satan's hands and God doesn't want him to know his ultimate fate. That avoids me giving away the apparent ending, which of course it isn't, but why let readers think I just did?

I'm not sure how God handles that. Fortunately, I don't need to answer that in the book, although my own personal answer is: I have no clue.

Thanks for the link. That's a terrific article but not an argument I'd want to make in the book because Catholics consider it inerrant too. It'd be the same problem I have now, which is that story events contradict the Bible, and since the events are real to the characters in the story, the Bible would have to be wrong. Yikes!

The alternate timeline allows for differences, but somehow I have to connect it to the real-world Bible. The goal is for my characters to conclude: yes, events differ from the Bible, but the Bible was written for another (real-world) timeline. The question then is, how did it end up in the story's timeline instead of one specific to that timeline. The key difference, of course, is the existence of the challenge, which leads to most other differences.

I definitely rely on some of my own interpretation of Revelation. The book is inspired by Revelation but doesn't follow it 100%. That previous sentence will be included somewhere near the beginning of the book once I publish to keep from pissing off my target audience. Admittedly, they should be able to tell that just from reading the trilogy's blurb on the back cover, but I'd like to minimize negative reviews from people who buy it expecting a more traditional interpretation of the Apocalypse.

Although there are endless interpretations, there is quite a bit of consistency among Catholic interpretations (e.g., the two witnesses represent the Church's testimony about Jesus, not the kooks Moses and Elijah, who I threw in for fun (they're from a common Protestant interpretation); a destroyed/rebuilt Jewish temple is actually Jesus returning from the dead after 3 days; Jesus ruling for 1000 years is actually Jesus in the Eucharist for some "large" number of years (1000 is not literal); no final battle at Megiddo (my final battle is actually between Connor and his father, which is fine); etc.).

What if Satan wanted to issue the challenge but only if it's fair. God could tell him that due to God's omniscience there's no way Satan can win, but God wants to do the challenge anyway (for a higher purpose), and he offers to reduce Satan's punishment (and that of others?) if he participates, without telling him why?

Problem is, that makes God responsible for the conspiracy and all pain and suffering that stems from it.

Way to blow up a solution. Fortunately, like I said earlier, I don't have to solve it. The following took half a [censored] day, but I think it's as simple and short as I can get it:

Don't forget, there are three persons in one God. The Father could be the one to agree to the challenge based on what he foresees (God wins), after which the Holy Spirit walls off the Father's ability to see the outcome (because it may change). The Holy Spirit then goes to Satan and says, the Father's knowledge of the outcome has now been walled off. You're previous proposed challenge would have resulted in us winning, so you don't want to stay with that. Pick a different challenge. I, the Holy Spirit, will know who ultimately wins, but the Father no longer will, and he already accepted the challenge, regardless of what it ultimately ends up being.

While one might argue that the Father would have foreseen what Satan chose even after the Holy Spirit told Satan to change his challenge, clearly the three persons of the Trinity are not individually 100% omniscient, otherwise the Holy Spirit would know the date for the end times. Jesus says only the Father knows. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not 100% omniscient, but God as a whole still is.

My solution's really no different than two-thirds of God agreeing to forget/not know the date of the end times. Clearly God can and does do it. My solution doesn't need to state anything as fact, merely a character observing that God can and does do it.

I'm using St. Augustine as the person to whom the hermit with the detailed vision/revelation sends his write up of the revelation. Bishop Augustine forwards it to Rome along with his own strongly worded letter supporting the fact that the hermit/Church scribe is someone who can be trusted, especially after a detailed investigation of the matter.

Naturally, the documented vision and Augustine's accompanying letter to the pope are forgeries, placed directly into the Vatican Secret Archive by Satan after the Vatican and the archive were created.

As much as I like the 3rd option, it's a natural question to arise from the second draft, where the 4th (8th?) century manuscript documents a hermit's (future saint's) private revelation (vision).

As I thought about this yesterday, I remembered that Jesus said only the Father knows when the end will come. Granted, Jesus had a dual (limited) nature by then, which could explain why he didn't know when the end would come, but the only way the Holy Spirit wouldn't know is if he chooses not to know or the Father prevents him from knowing. Of course this begs the question why the Holy Spirit shouldn't know the end date.

EDIT: To close the plot hole, I need only have one of the characters think that Satan's demand that the Father not know the outcome before agreeing to the terms of the challenge is similar to how only the Father knows the end date, implying that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit have the ability to not know that information.

EDIT: It also begs the question why Jesus shouldn't know the end date. I'm guessing he can keep a secret.

That's hilarious. I feel the author's pain.
I forget how many times I went back and forth between imperial and Imperial in Galaxy Tales/Archangel, but it was too many. I finally settled on lowercase because that's what Star Wars did in its books, but then Jack argued that I should treat it like Canadian. Eventually, I went back to several sources and discovered I had somehow screwed up the earlier research for imperial in Star Wars. They do capitalize it. Not sure how I screwed that up. It became absolutely clear as I toyed with different names to replace Realm. Most of the names fell into the same category as Jack's example, where it definitely required caps.

Ethereal's not the issue. They have to be like the Archangel Phanuel anyway, whom I described as ethereal in v1. However, angels have the ability to make themselves appear solid. If I remember correctly, it was (solid) angels who were threatened sexually in Sodom (or Gomorrah?). Also, a small force of solid angels will participate in the final battle on Megiddo against a horde of Satan's corporeals in book 3.

Angels can appear as either ethereal or solid. Demons lost the latter ability when they were cast out of Heaven, which is why they have to take over dead bodies to be solid, whereas angels don't. One advantage of demons taking over dead bodies, though, is that the dead bodies protect the demons from the effects of holy ground, otherwise they'd never be able to enter a church as they do in my book.

The thing I was asking about is what the demons should look like. Slightly rotting human corpses is what they take over to become corporeals, so I'd like their spirit form to look different: some hideous transformation from beautiful, humanlike angels to some highly corrupted version. A shriveled form and stooped could be two attributes. Red eyes and (ethereal) black bodies might be two more. Something reminiscent of orcs or goblins or gargoyles?

I'd like something that is very easy to describe and easy for the reader to picture. Perhaps they have (spiritual) bodies like bats and faces like black dragonfish. The advantage of batlike bodies is that bats can fly as can demons (they still have wings left over from when they were angels, but they look gross (singed/blackened, holes in them, shriveled)).

I wonder if they should have some fluids oozing off their nude/hairy bodies that drips from the spirit world to the physical world. Imagine a scene where a character feels something drip on their neck and looks up to see a scary-ass demon flying down at them. (Angels make themselves appear clothed, whereas demons, with their hairy, batlike bodies, wouldn't need to.)

Safe for work:
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-worlds-sc … ls-4105205

Stuff like that.
Dirk